October 2015 Acquisitions

Books:
John Albano et al, Jonah Hex: Welcome to Paradise, 2010.
Scott Allie et al, Solomon Kane, Vol. 1: The Castle of the Devil, 2009.
Brian Azzarello et al, El Diablo, 2008.
Dan Gutman and Jim Paillot, My Weird School: Dr. Carbles Is Losing His Marbles!, 2007.
Sheila Lukins and Julee Rosso, The Silver Palate Cookbook, 2007.
Ann M. Martin and Raina Telgemeier, The Babysitters Club: Kristy's Great Idea, 2006.
Mark Millar and Sean Gordon Murphy, Chrononauts, Vol. 1, 2015.
Mark Millar et al, Jupiter's Circle, Vol. 1, 2015.
Rachel Renée Russell, The Dork Diaries: Tales from a Not-so-Graceful Ice Princess, 2012.
Rachel Renée Russell, The Dork Diaries: Tales from a Not-so-Perfect Pet Sitter, 2015.
Robert Scheer, Thinking Tuna Fish, Talking Death, 1988.
Scott Snyder et al, Batman, Vol. 6: Graveyard Shift, 2015.
Si Spencer et al, Bodies, 2015.
Lego Friends: The Adventure Guide, 2015.

DVDs:
Barbie: The Pearl Princess, 2014.
Elvira: Mistress of the Dark, 1988.
Star Wars Trilogy, Episodes I-III, 2013.
The Wolf of Wall Street, 2013

"Isn't a Liability, and May Even Be an Asset"

"At a higher level still are operations that are in principle engaging in political activity, but mainly seem to be generating income for their organizers. Last week The Times published an investigative report on some political action committees raising money in the name of anti-establishment conservative causes. The report found that the bulk of the money these PACs raise ends up going to cover administrative costs and consultants' fees, very little to their ostensible purpose. For example, only 14 percent of what the Tea Party Leadership Fund spends is 'candidate focused.'

"You might think that such revelations would be politically devastating. But the targets of such schemes know, just know, that the liberal mainstream media can't be trusted, that when it reports negative stories about conservative heroes it's just out to suppress people who are telling the real truth. It's a closed information loop, and can't be broken."

 

Paul Krugman in The New York Times describes the Republican presidential campaigns as a "Springtime for Grifters."

As does Jonathan Chait in New York when regarding Ben Carson.

And Mike Lofgren at Consortium News explains the rise of conservative "anti-knowledge."

Finger on the Trigger

"I'm not saying that if we said these things nicely, students would suddenly get it; they won't. I am living proof of that. I'm just pointing out the fact that putting on an academic face of elite speak isn't helping either. Maybe pointing out the horrifying political stance these students are making would be more effective.

"When a Duke Student refuses to read a book because it has lesbian sex in it and students who are liberal, who are activists, also refuse to read and watch things because they see it as triggering, we see the collusion of the right and left wing. When I get an evaluation from this course that says, 'as a white male heterosexual I felt unsafe in this course,' and another that reads, 'as a survivor this course was traumatizing,' we are at a moment that needs some radical re-thinking. Do students of a radical nature think that if they are seeing eye to eye with the most extreme conservative element of the population that they are doing something right? Fighting for something positive? Participating in something different?

"I don't have the answers. Hell, I gave up on the whole thing. This was the last straw for me. I didn't know the answers but I knew this was a crisis. Colleges are the new helicopter parents, places where the quest for emotional safety and psychic healing leads not to learning, but regression."

Rani Neutill in Salon talks about her experience with "trigger warnings."

"A Timeless, Endlessly Re-Inventable Signifier of Dashing Badassery"

"As with many illicit affairs, official censure only heightened the passion of Clarks collectors in Jamaica. When Clarks introduced the Wallabee (a boxier, moccasin-inspired version of the suede chukka) in 1967 and the Desert Trek (a center-stitched hiking shoe, instantly rechristened as 'bankrobbers' in Jamaica) in 1971, they practically flew off the stockists' shelves straight onto the album covers of reggae's most influential singers and DJs, dreadlocked Rastas and razor-trimmed lyrical gangsters alike. "

Edwin Houghton in Vogue discusses the popularity of Clarks Desert Boots in Jamaica.

"Symptoms of a Moral Malaise in Our Society"

"Jobs represents the ultimate freedom to be a jerk. As one Forbes blogger claims: 'Good for him…Those that have the confidence to be jerks, like Jobs, are the ones that give themselves more opportunities to succeed… And nice guys often do finish last.' As a businessman, Jobs did know how to keep costs to a minimum: when he had to make cutbacks at Pixar, he fired people and didn't provide any severance pay. Jobs also had a penchant for parking in handicapped zones, as well as verbally abusing his Apple underlings until they reached their breaking point.
"So what would a city of Steve Jobs wannabes, a.k.a. jerks and 'Stanford assholes,' look like? Well, take a good look at San Francisco, once a flourishing epicentre of American counterculture, and now a self-absorbed corporate colony for the 1 percent."

Christine Jun in Salon denounces the "ongoing deification" of Steve Jobs.

"FBI Counterterrorism Agent Wistfully Recalls Watching 20-Year-Old Muslim-American Grow Up"

"'Sometimes it feels like it was just yesterday that I was watching little 12-year-old Omar get on the bus and head off to seventh grade, but I guess time really flies,' said the FBI agent, expressing amazement at how a middle-schooler who had seemed so shy when talking to girls on the phone could become so confident and self-assured in his conversations as an adult. 'God, I remember seeing him on his first date, just this scrawny teenager at a 7 p.m. showing of Captain America trying to work up the courage to put his arm around a girl. Look at him now—handsome, popular, and getting straights A's in his junior year at Michigan Tech.'
"And to think we've been right there with him every step of the way,' Tierney added."

From The Onion.

"How Did This Come to Pass?"

"But after the election, when they were free to speak their minds, they either remained quiet or abetted the dumbing-down of the party. They stood by as Donald Trump and others noisily pushed claims that Obama was born in Kenya. And they gladly rode the tea party tiger to sweeping victories in 2010 and 2014.

"Now that tiger is devouring the GOP establishment. Party elders had hoped new presidential debate rules would give them greater control. But they are watching helplessly as Trump leads the pack and House Republicans engage in fratricide.

"It's hard to feel much sympathy. The Republican establishment's 2008 embrace of Palin set an irresponsibly low bar. Coincidence or not, a batch of nonsense-spewing, hard-right candidates quickly followed, often to disastrous effect."

William M. Daley in The Washington Post argues that Republican "dysfunction all started with Sarah Palin."

And Frank Rich at New York analyzes Donald Trump as Palin's heir.

"Report: Red Meat Linked To Contentedly Patting Belly"

"The report further revealed that the consumption of processed meats, such as bacon and sausage, was linked to a 100 percent chance of seconds."

From The Onion.

"My Anxieties Have Anxieties"

"But some people detested the new Snoopy and blamed him for what they viewed as the decline of Peanuts in the second half of its 50-year run. 'It's tough to fix the exact date when Snoopy went from being the strip's besetting artistic weakness to ruining it altogether,' the journalist and critic Christopher Caldwell wrote in 2000, a month before Schulz died, in an essay in New York Press titled 'Against Snoopy.' But certainly by the 1970s, Caldwell wrote, Snoopy had begun wrecking the delicate world that Schulz had built."

Sarah Boxer in The Atlantic reviews The Complete Peanuts 1995-1996, and Trunkworthy looks at Peanuts and music obsessives.

"Who's With Me? Anyone? I'm Really Not That Picky"

"What I'm trying to say is: Yes, fine, I am a snob. I revere the formal achievement of the first and most recent 'Mad Max' movies. I sneer at most biopics and costume dramas. I like my pleasures slow and difficult. I would rather watch a mediocre film from South America or Eastern Europe about the sufferings of poor people than a mediocre Hollywood comedy about the inconveniences of the affluent. I look up in admiration at models of artistic perfection, sound judgment and noble achievement, and I look down on what I take to be the stupid, cheap and cynical aspects of public discourse. I sit at my cobbler's bench and hammer away. If the words nerd and geek can be rehabilitated—if legions of misunderstood enthusiasts can march from the margins of respectability to the heart of the mainstream—then why not snob as well?"

A. O. Scott in The New York Times admits to being a film snob.

"Trey Gowdy Just Elected Hillary Clinton President"

"These morons in Gowdy's committee were so bent on proving that Hillary is an unfeeling, ambition-crazed schemer bent on riding gleefully to the White House on the corpses of Benghazi victims that they ended up making her look like the one thing she really isn't, at least not very often: a regular person.
"Most of us who watched the fiasco imagined what we would do in her position, facing that same ludicrous barrage of circular questions. Most normal people would have done all of the same things she did: sighing, choking back angry retorts, shaking a head in disbelief at times, even laughing at the absurdity of it all.
"Actually many people would have lost it early on and grabbed Gowdy by his goofy silver fro-hawk somewhere in hour six or seven, a fact that made Hillary by contrast look patient and presidential, in ways her campaign had been unable to achieve all year."

Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone reacts to Hillary Clinton's appearance before the House Select Committee on Benghazi.

I Wore My Fringe Like Roger McGuinn's

"Guillory's jeremiad against bangs—that they require too much effort; that they cause forehead acne; that they de-emphasize your nose at the expense of your eyes; that on the continuum of hairstyle-based regret and childish regression, they presumably rank somewhere near the mullets-and-fauxhawks section—inspired hosannas, rebukes, soul-searching, and a whole lot of digging-up of old childhood pictures. Outpourings of memories! Bowls came up a lot, and also perspiration, as well as existential anxieties about the relationship between being and time."

Staffers at Slate recall their experiences with bangs.

"I Want My Children To Have A Better Nightlife Than I Had"

"When my grandparents first came to this country seeking a better nightlife, they didn't know any of the right people, and they were certainly never on the guest list. While there were far more clubbing opportunities here than back in the old country, they were often denied admittance simply because of the way they looked and dressed. But they partied hard and persevered. My parents' nightlives were a vast improvement, even though they had little to dance to besides disco and never had access to quality club drugs. Meanwhile, I'm proud to be the first member of my family to get into Club Altitude, and I made sure to take full advantage of that pulsating house music and pure, uncut MDMA. But I want even better for my children."

From The Onion.

The End of Jeb!?

"Donald Trump is not noble. Jeb Bush is going to be questioned on this and he's going to need a better answer than saying his brother kept the country safe. He didn't. And he didn't do any better in the aftermath. He made some good speeches and, to his credit, he cautioned Americans not to blame Muslims in general for the attacks (which may be the best thing he did). Other than that, it's not a good record, no matter how you look at it. In fact, it's astonishing that Jeb ever thought he could run without having to answer for it. Trump is going to make sure he does."

Heather Digby Parton in Salon looks at how "the Donald finally pushed a button that was too much for Jeb to bear."

The "Unfinished Revolution"

"Recall where the Constitution stood 150 years ago today—before this Second Founding. It didn't mention the word 'slavery.' And, worse, various provisions—including the Three-Fifths Clause and the Fugitive Slave Clause—had increased the political power of the slave states throughout the pre-Civil War period. The Constitution was silent on the Declaration’s promise of equality and on the issue of African American voting rights. States could violate key Bill of Rights protections like free speech with impunity—and many Southern states did throughout the pre-Civil War period, banning abolitionist speech, with at least one state punishing such advocacy with death. And citizenship rights were left to the states and the courts—with Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney infamously concluding in Dred Scott that African Americans could not be citizens and that they had 'no rights which the white man was bound to respect.'
"While the American people rightly revere George Washington, James Madison, and their fellow Framers, it took the heroic efforts of Lincoln, Stevens, Frederick Douglass, John Bingham (the framer of the Fourteenth Amendment), and many others to create the 'more perfect Union' built on winning a bloody Civil War and ratifying a series of amendments that ended slavery, protected fundamental rights from state abuses, guaranteed equality for all, and expanded the right to vote. While the 1787 Framers succeeded in creating the most durable form of government in history, it's only after the Second Founding that the Constitution fully protected the liberty and equality promised in the Declaration of Independence."

In The Atlantic, Jeffrey Rosen and Tom Donnelly announce a five-year initiative to commemorate America's Second Founding.

"And Hand-Loomed Persian Rugs Selected by the Wife of Gov. Earl Warren"

"In 1967, Nancy Reagan spearheaded plans to build a new governor's mansion in Carmichael, northeast of downtown Sacramento.
"The 20,000-square-foot house was constructed on a bluff overlooking the American River, but work wasn't finished until after Ronald Reagan left office. His successor, Jerry Brown, then in his early 30s, called it a pretentious 'Taj Mahal' and refused to move in.
"The state auctioned off the Carmichael home in 1982. Proceeds from the sale, plus interest generated over the years, covered the cost of renovating the historic mansion."

Phil Willon and Chris Megerian in the Los Angeles Times report that Jerry Brown will move into the California Governor's Mansion.

"Service Compris"

"The purely moral arguments for the abolition of tipping have been around for a while now, and they are impressive. There is something corrupting in the habit of having to wheedle money out of people as a favor, rather than a professional obligation, and though it may give the giver some sense of self-importance, that sense is surely not worth the degradation to the one who gets. Even the best diner devolves into a relationship with the to-be-tipped server like that of a tourist with the locals on a resort island, which isn't healthy for anyone. Undemocratic, unjust, and, worst of all, encouraging of fake, stagy servility—all the odder that tipping has held on here longer than it has anywhere else in the Western world."

Adam Gopnik in The New Yorker criticizes tipping.

"It Appears That the Left Has Finally Managed to Stop the Rightward Momentum of American Politics"

"All five candidates on the stage, with the partial exception of Jim Webb, set forth a set of unabashedly liberal policies with a feisty anti-conservative attitude that would been shocking just a few political cycles ago. For decades Democratic candidates tripped over each other trying to distance themselves from the dreaded 'L' word. Indeed, they ran so far that they ended up abandoning it altogether.
"The demonizing of the word 'liberal' was one of the most successful campaigns in conservative movement history. It has many fathers, not the least of whom is Newt Gingrich, but the political strategist who gets the most credit for turning the word 'liberal' into an epithet is a man named Arthur Finkelstein. In the wake of the legal earthquake known as Buckley vs Valeo, the Supreme Court case which first unleashed a flood of money into the political system back in 1976, Finkelstein created the first Independent Expenditure PAC, which he recognized could work outside the norms of partisan politics. His strategy was simple: associate Democrats with the word 'liberal' and associate the word 'liberal' with something deviant and un-American. It worked beautifully. By the 1990s, his PAC had been instrumental in deposing a number of Democratic office holders and replacing them with much more conservative Republicans. This had helped to drive what had been the political center inexorably to the right; the Democrats, determined to stay with the center, followed."

Heather Digby Parton in Salon reacts to the first Democratic debate of the 2016 campaign.

"Apples and Watermelons"

"The notion of Kennedy as supply-side forerunner is a powerful myth, but it is a myth. Context is key. Conservatives love to quote a speech Kennedy gave at the Economic Club of New York in December 1962. Here's one quote—I've italicized the crucial part often left out: 'Our present tax system, developed as it was, in good part, during World War II to restrain growth, exerts too heavy a drag on growth in peace time; that it siphons out of the private economy too large a share of personal and business purchasing power; that it reduces the financial incentives for personal effort, investment, and risk-taking.' JFK was not expounding an implacable economic philosophy; he was speaking about a very specific circumstance. The top marginal tax rate was 91 percent, which JFK wanted reduced to a 'more sensible' 65 percent. Compare that with today's 35 percent top rate, and ask: If supply-siders are so enamored of JFK's tax policies, would they advocate a return to a 'more sensible' 65 percent top rate?"

Robert Schlesinger in a 2011 U.S. News & World Report article confronts "The Myth of JFK as Supply Side Tax Cutter."

"The Biggest Pop Star in America Today Is a Man Named Karl Martin Sandberg"

"Millions of Swifties and KatyCats—as well as Beliebers, Barbz, and Selenators, and the Rihanna Navy—would be stunned by the revelation that a handful of people, a crazily high percentage of them middle-aged Scandinavian men, write most of America's pop hits. It is an open yet closely guarded secret, protected jealously by the labels and the performers themselves, whose identities are as carefully constructed as their songs and dances. The illusion of creative control is maintained by the fig leaf of a songwriting credit. The performer's name will often appear in the list of songwriters, even if his or her contribution is negligible. (There's a saying for this in the music industry: 'Change a word, get a third.') But almost no pop celebrities write their own hits. Too much is on the line for that, and being a global celebrity is a full-time job. It would be like Will Smith writing the next Independence Day."

Nathaniel Rich in The Atlantic considers John Seabrook's The Song Machine.

Slate presents an excerpt on Denniz Pop from Seabrook's book.

"But Things Change, and That's Part of Los Angeles”

"'The identity of the Sunset Strip as a place of creative music — I'm sure it's still happening, because every night there are bands playing in clubs,' said John D'Amico, a member of the West Hollywood City Council. 'But I don't think the Sunset Strip holds an identity as a center of music as it did in the late '70s, early '80s, or the '60s.'

"'We have to make sure that we don't destroy the hotel and entertainment industry we have there as we welcome these new hotels,' he said."

 

Adam Nagourney in The New York Times investigates the transformation of the Sunset Strip.

"Calibrated From the Very Beginning to Allow a Bigoted Harassment Campaign to Flourish"

"On an Internet built on the assumption that every contribution is equally valid, harassers are just as valuable as their victims. But as the harasser flames his victim into silence, he becomes more valuable than his target. In a recent essay, fantasy author Ferrett Steinmetz argued that, to a social media company’s 'cold bottom line, a troll calling women names all day gets more advertising hits. He is a devoted user. And so they are loath to ban anyone, because these companies make money off of large user bases, and kicking someone off risks trouble.' By 2004, Barlow had recalibrated his brand of technolibertarianism to take aim at how corporations were co-opting digital culture for their own benefit. 'Most libertarians are worried about government but not worried about business,' he told Reason. 'I think we need to be worrying about business in exactly the same way we are worrying about government.'"

Amanda Hess in Slate asks, "why does hate thrive online?"

"A Specter Is Haunting the 2016 Democratic Party Primary"

"The basic question was whether socialists should work toward revolution and the outright collapse of the capitalist system—or whether they should work to pass social reforms that make capitalism more humane.
"Bernstein favored the reformist approach. Socialists, he believed, should abandon the goal of bringing capitalism to a point of crisis and achieving some final socialist end state. The point of having a socialist movement is not to 'achieve socialism' in some sense, but to exist as a force pushing to make life better for workers. 'The movement means everything for me,' Bernstein famously wrote, 'and … what is usually called "the final aim of socialism" is nothing.'"

Dylan Matthews at Vox explores how Bernie Sanders connects to the history of socialism.

"It's Uterus Not Uter You"

"We were so thrilled to find out that we were with child! Remember how we went to the first checkup and we looked at the sonogram and we heard the baby's heartbeat together for the first time? That was nice. The fact that the heartbeat was coming from somewhere very close to the large intestine belonging to just one of us didn't really occur to us then. We were just excited to hear it! We were having a baby! Hooray for us!
"It was strange, though, when we started to vomit every morning, but only one of us would actually go into the bathroom and stick her face in the toilet and hurl. Why would only one of us experience symptoms of pregnancy if we were both pregnant?"

Heather Havrilesky at New York takes on those who say "we are pregnant."

"We're All Still Being Kept Down on the Farm"

"After what was then the longest trial in California history, eight of the defendants were convicted on a lesser charge of conspiracy to commit criminal syndicalism. But the particulars of the case counted for much less than the stirring spectacle of bona fide labor-agitating Communists being led in shackles to serve years-long prison terms. District Attorney Neil McAllister—a 'principal tool' of the agribusiness establishment—brought out an actual American flag as a prop during his closing argument and implored the jury to return a conviction 'for the good old U.S.A, for My Country 'Tis of Thee, for the Star-Spangled Banner, for my Own United States, and God will bless you.' He crowed at a post-verdict press conference that the outrageous verdict was 'a step forward for America and all that America stands for.'
"These labor struggles have cast a long shadow on our national politics, particularly when a Californian—who made a point of eating grapes in defiance of the United Farm Workers boycott—launched the conservative revolution proper in the 1980 presidential election."

Chris Lehmann in In These Times explains the story depicted in Kathryn Olmstead's new book, Right Out of California: The 1930s and the Big Business Roots of Modern Conservatism.

And Elias Isquith interviews Olmstead in Salon.

Though I Wear a Shirt and Tie

"The Cherokees resisted state and federal efforts to remove them from their Southeastern homelands during the 1820s and 1830s. During that time, most whites saw them as an inconvenient nuisance, an obstacle to colonial expansion. But after their removal, the tribe came to be viewed more romantically, especially in the antebellum South, where their determination to maintain their rights of self-government against the federal government took on new meaning. Throughout the South in the 1840s and 1850s, large numbers of whites began claiming they were descended from a Cherokee great-grandmother. That great-grandmother was often a 'princess,' a not-inconsequential detail in a region obsessed with social status and suspicious of outsiders. By claiming a royal Cherokee ancestor, white Southerners were legitimating the antiquity of their native-born status as sons or daughters of the South, as well as establishing their determination to defend their rights against an aggressive federal government, as they imagined the Cherokees had done. These may have been self-serving historical delusions, but they have proven to be enduring."

Gregory D. Smithers in Slate explains why so many Americans claim a Cherokee ancestor.

"I Want Everybody to Be Able to Come to the Party"

"How many reviews do you read where it says something like, 'This is something your mom would like'? It extends the maligning [of] the teenage fangirl. Teenage girls are the number one purchasers of music. Are we going to say their fandom is fake? This idea that there is a right way to like music and a right music to like and a right way to express that—it all works together in this prescribed idea of how women are supposed to participate in music. Decades and decades of women being told we like music in the wrong way. It's all just a myth."

Eliza Berman in Time interviews Jessica Hopper about The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic.

"The Freedom Caucus Is a Minor Third Party and Should Be Treated That Way"

"As I've explained several times, the Republicans who refuse to stop demanding government shutdowns and debt ceiling brinksmanship are not best understood as wayward lawmakers who won't accept any leadership. They are best understood in the parliamentary sense as being a party in their own right. In our system, they are still called Republicans, but in any other system they would be a minor party that has allied itself with another larger party to form a majority. They would be given some kind of token power like control over a minor ministry, which in our system of divided government would translate to either low-level congressional leadership positions or the chairmanship of low-priority committees."

Martin Longman at Washington Monthly calls for a coalition of Democrats and sane Republicans in the House of Representatives.

Additionally, Tierney Sneed at Talking Points Memo talks with Norman Ornstein about the "dysfunction of the Republican Party," David Brooks in The New York Times denounces the "Incompetence Caucus," and William Greider in The Nation argues we are seeing the end of Richard Nixon's "Southern Strategy."

"What It Said Was Not Academic and Abstract, but Vivid and Urgent"

"'I see it in cities: in London, Manchester, Leeds,” he told me. 'I see it in social media politics; in that huge response to the refugee crisis. I see it in the wave of people who want to be social entrepreneurs, and the soul-searching of lots of people involved in capitalism who think it's in crisis. I see it all over the place. Just not in the Labour party.'"

John Harris in The Guardian looks at the life and legacy of Marxism Today.

"Biden Huddling With Closest Advisers On Whether To Spend 200 Bucks On Scorpions Tickets"

"At press time, Biden announced plans to form an exploratory committee to look into the possibility of acquiring Scorpions tickets in exchange for a pair of 240-watt Pioneer stereo speakers."

From The Onion.

"The Word 'Cartoon' Describes the Best Rock-and-Roll Songs"

"'John Henry' touches upon several themes that C.C.R. went on to explore, foremost among them the nostalgia for some lost agrarian past. But, of course, that same nostalgia was a founding theme of the South, where Albion's second sons sought to recreate, on the backs of black slaves, an imagined English arcadia. And if this vision was itself a sort of cartoon—a brutal and deadly one, with strange fruit hanging from the trees—an odd thing happened when you spread the cartoonish map of 'Born on the Bayou' across the partly real, partly imagined Southern landscape: you got a one-to-one ratio. The result was something like realism."

Alex Abramovich in The New Yorker talks with John Fogerty about songwriting inspiration.

"They Are More Than a Little Concerned About Sanders"

"Hillary Clinton almost never says the words 'Bernie Sanders' on the campaign trail despite the fact that the Vermont socialist is running ahead of her in the New Hampshire primary and has been surprisingly competitive with the former secretary of state in the fight for fundraising dollars.
But just because Clinton doesn't say Sanders's name doesn't mean he isn't on her mind--a lot.

Chris Cillizza in The Washington Post looks at Clinton's reversal of support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

"Crossed a Historic Threshold Where 'Gun Rights' Has Become the Dominant US Position"

"The politics transformed because of a dramatic shift in opinion on the part of Republicans that began at the outset of the Obama presidency. Democrats have remained more or less unchanged in their position, at least within a band that has been broadly stable since the early 90s. This probably overlaps with the dramatic increase in gun and ammunition purchases after President Obama's election.
Going slightly beyond what the data tells us, it seems clear that being pro-gun has become a key element of Republican self-identification. That is to say, it's not just that many Republicans' views have changed since Obama took office, but that being pro-gun has become an elemental part of what it means to be a Republican."

Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo considers the "politics of guns."

"They Do Not Seem Capable of Comprehending a World in Which They Exert Less Than Total Power"

"That is to say that, contrary to the recriminations of Boehner's Republican critics and the nostalgia-tinged accolades heaped on him by moderates, Boehner did not preside over an era of compromise or bipartisanship. The overwhelming thrust of his tenure was one of obstruction. But obstructionism meant stalemate, and stalemate meant maintaining the status quo. Having deemed the status quo after two years of Obamaism a socialist monstrosity, the rebels demanded that the GOP bend the president to its will. Lacking the two-thirds majority required in both chambers to override a veto, however, it never had a chance to do this. None of which prevented bitter recriminations. The ultimate source of right-wing anger at Boehner was the Obama administration's continued existence."

Jonathan Chait in New York looks at the downfall of House Speaker John Boehner.

"Could Be an Occasion for Celebration"

"Such assurances did not sway conservative critics of the reform, but a last-minute change in the legislative language did alleviate their fears of a massive African and Asian influx. The original version of the 1965 Act, cosponsored by Senator Philip Hart of Michigan and Representative Emmanuel Celler of New York, both liberal Democrats, favored those immigrants whose skills were 'especially advantageous' to the United States. Conservatives, led by Representative Michael Feighan, an Ohio Democrat, managed to change those priorities, giving visa preferences instead to foreigners who were seeking to join their families in the United States. Feighan, who chaired the House Immigration subcommittee, argued that a family-unification preference in immigration law would establish, in the words of a glowing profile in the American Legion magazine, 'a naturally operating national-origins system,' because it would favor immigration from the northern and western European countries that at the time dominated the U.S. population.
"Feighan and others were wrong."

Tom Gjelten in The Atlantic marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Immigration and Nationality Act.