D.R. Tucker

I almost had a panic attack the day David Roberts of Grist.org announced his hiatus from writing about climate change. On August 19, 2013, Roberts announced: So as not to bury the lede, let me begin with the big news: I’m taking a year off. As of Labor Day weekend, I am going underground. I […]

On September 7, 2011, Republican presidential candidate Jon Huntsman declared that the GOP cannot continue to be an anti-science, climate-denying party, in a debate held in Simi Valley, California. Two weeks prior, on August 21, Fox News Channel host Clayton Morris noted that the scientific evidence validated Huntsman’s claim that human-caused climate change is real…but […]

Joe Scarborough on Meet the Press? Do they just want to make all their viewers depressed? Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough will become a permanent fixture on NBC’s Meet the Press as his colleague Chuck Todd takes over as the show’s new moderator, according to the New York Post. Citing unnamed sources, the Post reports […]

The woman who should have succeeded Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy could be on her way to succeeding Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, and becoming the first female elected governor in the state’s history. Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley, who was defeated by pinup boy Scott Brown in a special January 2010 election to fill out the […]

“Stay out of the Bushes!” Jesse Jackson repeatedly intoned at the 2000 Democratic National Convention. His advice still has merit fourteen years later, especially in light of a controversy over whether a scion of the Bush family has really broken with the most deranged elements of the GOP. Last week, the Texas Tribune reported: On […]

On September 6, 2011, in an exclusive piece for Mother Jones, investigative journalist Brad Friedman posted audio from a secretive June 2011 conference in Colorado hosted by climate-change-denying libertarian billionaires Charles and David Koch. In one clip, Charles Koch compared President Obama to Saddam Hussein. That evening, Friedman discussed the conference on MSNBC’s “The Ed […]

Hey, I thought National Review editor Rich Lowry was pro-life. National Review Editor Rich Lowry said at a recent immigration forum in Washington, D.C., that some Republicans who champion the legalization of undocumented immigrants “should be shot” and “hanged.” The forum took place Thursday at the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank. Lowry said the Republican […]

Back in June, when former Bush Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson urged fellow Republicans to support efforts to reduce carbon emissions, I remarked to a friend that it’s not enough for him to do so; he, and the handful of other Republicans who hadn’t prostituted themselves to fossil-fuel johns, had a moral obligation to call out […]

Was Justice Lewis Powell as good as he was evil? In all the retrospectives about the 40th anniversary of Watergate and the end of the Nixon administration, there seemed to be little coverage of one of the most controversial decisions of President Richard Nixon’s tenure: his 1971 decision to appoint Powell to the US Supreme […]

Earlier this week, Politico reported: Actor Leonardo DiCaprio is lending his voice and support to a new short film, bringing attention to climate change and calling for federal action over carbon pollution. “We cannot sit idly by and watch the fossil fuel industry make billions at our collective expense. We must put a price on […]