Arkansas 10-year-old Will Phillips isn't your average disobedient fifth grader. While other troublemakers his age initiate food fights or fling spitballs, Phillips' rebellion is enough to make Gandhi jump for joy in Nirvana.

Upon last month concluding that a country in which gays can't marry shouldn't be allowed to include the words "liberty and justice for all" in its Pledge of Allegiance, Phillips has taken to remaining seated while his classmates recite the oath every morning. For this, he's been chastised by both his teacher--who he told to "jump off a bridge--and his peers, some of whom have begun calling Phillips a "gaywad."

Unfazed, Phillips says he's not even sure what gaywad means, other than being a "discriminatory name for homosexuals."

A lot of unreadable nonsense in former Washington Times editor Wesley Pruden's Times opinion piece today, so we'll spare you everything but the best (worst?) part: "It's no fault of the president that he has no natural instinct or blood impulse for what the America of 'the 57 states' is about. He was ... born to a mother attracted to men of the Third World..."

How about that unfettered racism/xenophobia/classism? Shame on Barack Obama's mother for falling in love with a man from a poverty-stricken African nation!

Meet Steven Crowder, the young court jester of right-wing media conglomerate Pajamas Media and, apparently, one of Sean Hannity's favorite political comedians.

When not appearing in blackface to mock detained Arab torture victims, Crowder can usually be found appearing in blackface to mock immigrant Mexicans, mincing and lisping to mock homosexuals, and wearing flannel to mock "filthy hippies" and demean college educations. Yes, the Detroit-born Crowder does a whole host of insane things in the name of conservative politics, though perhaps none has been more egregious than his latest stunt.

Using his patented "blond dreads" hippie character (seen above), Crowder has put together for Pajamas TV a video alleging that everyone's all wrong about Gitmo, the Cuban prison currently at the center of the debate about Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's upcoming trial

While many qualified experts think that KSM's New York City court case will expose the lengths to which he and fellow detainees were tortured at the hands of American forces in Gitmo, Crowder, a 22-year-old comedian, claims these legal analysts simply don't understand "the real Guantanamo Bay," and he's made a flippant, unsourced YouTube video to prove it.

If you can sit through all 12 minutes of Crowder's riotous prison rape jokes, very timely Bend It Like Beckham references, and assertions that men in the Navy are all effeminate gays, you're a more patient viewer than I. For the rest of you, I've condensed Crowder's absurdly protracted point down to this rather telling quote: "Our troops are not even allowed to ... threaten [detainees] or ... force them to do calisthenics or deprive them of sleep..."

Can you believe it? Our troops aren't allowed to torture people! And, according to Crowder, because the rules say torture's not allowed, that means it never happens. Which in turn means that Gitmo's really nothing more than a place with a "beautiful ocean view."

Don't ever say that Steven Crowder oversimplifies things beyond rationality, because then you'd probably sound like a "filthy hippie."

In the immediate wake of Oprah Winfrey's much-ballyhooed Sarah Palin interview, during which the O repeatedly told Palin she was "touched" by her new book, Going Rogue, I'm left wondering what all the fuss was about

Not only was the show's obnoxious fawning both prevalent and mutual--"No, you're the queen of media, Oprah!"--the whole affair was unrecognizable compared to Oprah's last majorly contentious interview, 2006's sit-down with disgraced novelist James Frey.

Interviewing Frey--whose A Million Little Pieces was an Oprah's Book Club choice before being outed as a fraud--Winfrey told him she felt "duped" before forcing the author to explain his absurd lies. Where was that Oprah today?

Where was that Oprah when Palin called people with valid concerns about her leadership potential "haters"? Where was that Oprah when Palin attacked the "news media," of which Oprah and her Harpo conglomerate are major parts? Instead, we got the Oprah who asks if it's difficult to raise five children (turns out, by the way, that yes, it is!).

Anyone who's even slightly progressive should be irritated by Oprah's softballing today, especially James Frey.

If nothing else, Sarah Palin's new memoir, Going Rogue, is quite the wellspring from which to draw blog posts.

HuffPo has already published several items about Palin's tome, my favorite of which quotes the New York Times' review of Rogue:

Elsewhere in this volume she talks about creationism, saying she "didn't believe in the theory that human beings -- thinking, loving beings -- originated from fish that sprouted legs and crawled out of the sea" or from "monkeys who eventually swung down from the trees."

Two things to take from that passage: 1. Sarah Palin doesn't believe in evolution, and 2. Sarah Palin seems to think that only human beings are capable of "thinking" and "loving," despite mountains of evidence to the contrary.

I suppose ignorance is bliss when you're blasting animals in the jugular with a high-powered rifle. Which brings me to another direct quote form Going Rogue: 

I always remind people from outside our state that there's plenty of room for all Alaska's animals -- right next to the mashed potatoes.

Former Congressman Tom Tancredo is rumored to be eying a run for Colorado governor. If he actually goes through with it, look for more ads similar to this one, in which a worried voice warns of all the "mothers killed" and "children executed" at the hands of illegal immigrants.

If this is Tancredo's opening salvo--bloodied bodies juxtaposed with menacing pictures of Latinos--I'm terrified at the thought of the stunts he'll pull towards the end of the race, when he'll no doubt be desperate.

According to the Chatham, Virgina, Star-Tribune and our very own Think Progress, the Danville TEA Party organization will close its "Fired Up for Freedom" rally tomorrow by burning House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Tom Perriello in effigy. The protesters, who say they feel unrepresented in Congress, are responding to the historic health care bill passed through the House last Saturday.

Three weeks ago, other right-wing protesters advocated effigies depicting Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid "burning in Hell" for supporting abortion rights.

"From Justice Kennedy, a Lesson in Journalism," reads a recent New York Times headline. But from the sounds of the story therein, a more accurate description might be our header.

Despite his historically progressive stance on First Amendment rights, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy last week demanded he be able to vet an article a high school paper planned to run on him.

After Kennedy spoke to upperclassmen at Manhattan's ritzy Dalton School, editors of the Daltonian anticipated printing a review of the justice's appearance. It all seemed fairly standard, until:

Justice Kennedy’s office had insisted on approving any article about a talk he gave to an assembly of Dalton high school students on Oct. 28.

Kathleen Arberg, the court’s public information officer, said Justice Kennedy’s office had made the request to make sure the quotations attributed to him were accurate.

The justice’s office received a draft of the proposed article on Monday and returned it to the newspaper the same day with “a couple of minor tweaks,” Ms. Arberg said. Quotations were “tidied up” to better reflect the meaning the justice had intended to convey, she said.

Aftery "tidying up" the Daltonian piece, Justice Kennedy returned it to the paper with his print approval.

What the Times calls a lesson in journalism, Frank D. LoMonte, executive director of the Student Press Law Center, calls something else entirely: "an exercise in image control."

Something to think about the next time you're outfitting your dorm room or apartment: Swedish furniture maker IKEA, long a staple product for college students and easily pleased grads alike, is now the subject of a damning tell-all.

According to The Truth About IKEA, written by former IKEA executive Johan Stenebo, the 66-year-old mid-range furniture giant is all the work of a vehemently racist founder, Ingvar Kamprad, 83.

On the executive floor, Stenebo claims, foreigners were repeatly denigrated as "niggers." They apparently had no chance of promotion within the company -- something Stenebo blames on Kamprad's increasing paranoia. Ikea, in spite of being the world's largest furniture company, is run exclusively by people from Älmhult in the Swedish region of Smaland -- the small town where Kamprad himself grew up. ... The importance of blood and place of birth within Ikea is no coincidence, Stenebo claims -- blatant racism exists within the company.

Stenobo left IKEA on his own accord several months ago, after a dispute with other executives, though he asserts his book represents an attempt to regain a "clean conscience," not dejected bitterness.

Besides the racism, Stenobo also alleges IKEA works secret deals with environmental non-profits like Greenpeace, paying the organizations to keep quiet about its massive consumption of forests. Naturally, Greenpeace denies these claims.

In a shocking bit of media news, News Corp CEO and founder Rupert Murdoch went on the record earlier this week to say that he understands why mercurial Fox News host Glenn Beck once called President Obama a racist.

On a news program in his native Australia, Murdoch remarked, "[Obama] did make a very racist comment about blacks and whites," adding, "if you actually look at what he [Beck] was talking about, he was right."

Of course, as many of his FNC underlings are wont to do, Murdoch never defined exactly the racist comment to which he was referring, choosing instead to equivocate and fearmonger. All the better to worriedly backpedal when people start to question him, which he's already done on Politico. Through a spokesperson, Murdoch now says he "does not at all, for a minute, think the president is a racist."

So to clarify, Rupert Murdoch does not think Barack Obama is a racist. He just thinks his employee Glenn Beck is right when he calls Barack Obama a racist. See the difference?

This week brings even more evidence that Bill O’Reilly is not a legitimate news source, though this time the Fox shouting head’s reality show tactics were revealed to have once been directed at a then-lowly junior Senator named Barack Obama.

Writing in the Huffington Post, former HarperCollins executive Steve Ross reported an incident that happened all the way back in 2004, when a member of the O’Reilly team ambushed none other than Obama himself, who had just published Dreams from My Father.

During the book signing I stood next to Barack at his table and opened each customer's books to the proper page. Before signing each copy, Barack personally greeted each customer with a handshake and a question or comment. One young man in his late 20's, pale and nervous-looking, stepped up and said, "Why won't you appear on Bill O'Reilly's show?"

Because, the Senator explained, he hadn't been invited to appear on the show. "Do you work for Mr. O'Reilly?"

"Why won't you appear on the O'Reilly show?" the young man asked again, turning sideways. I looked and saw that he was being filmed by his own cameraman. I signaled to security.

After repeating that he had never been invited on to Mr. O'Reilly's show, the Senator, keeping his cool, said that he watched the show and would be glad to appear if invited to do so. At this point two security officers escorted the young man off the podium as he raised his voice and asked over his shoulder, "Why won't you appear on O'Reilly's show? What are you afraid of?" In retrospect this may have been a precursor to the current disaffection between the White House and Fox News, and perhaps the first, albeit minor, gauntlet thrown down.

Four years later, President Barack Obama would be asked to appear on O’Reilly’s program and do so, with grace—a grace that stands in stark contrast to the Punk’d-esque quality of O’Reilly’s initial invitation.

For his part, O’Reilly hasn’t changed much. He’s still sending producers hunting after people who dare criticize him or Fox News, like when he sicked Jesse Watters on Think Progress’ Amanda Terkel earlier this year. Of course, when they’re ambushed and peppered with questions, O’Reilly’s producers turn tail and run.

Senator David Vitter (R-La.) is apparently making a habit of awkwardly running from his constituents.

After last month refusing to answer questions about his tacit support of a bigoted Louisiana marriage official, choosing instead to duck into a well-timed elevator, this past weekend found Vitter again fleeing a tough line of inquiry.

Faced with a rape victim interested in his opposition to preventing the federal government from hiring contractors who deny rape victims the right to bring their cases to court, Vitter first tried to dodge the woman's questions. Perhaps you'll recognize his "But so-and-so did it!" defense from your own elementary school days:

WOMAN: But how can you support [a law] that tells a rape victim that she does not have the right to defend herself?

VITTER: Ma'am The language in question did not say that in any way shape or form.

WOMAN: But it is unconstitutional to have a law that says a woman does not have a right to defend herself.

VITTER: You realize Mr. Obama was against that amendment that his administration was against that amendment

Reasonably unsatisfied, the woman continued pressing Vitter, at which point the senator literally scampered out the back door.

Vitter running scared is pretty pathetic, but more interesting to me is the way he initially attempted to sidestep rational criticism by invoking Obama's name. It was a mini-exposition of the latest obnoxious tactic Congressional conservatives are employing to stymie health care reform: Rather than respond directly to issues and work toward a solution, just try and villainize Obama as a socialist, a Nazi, or even, in this case, as a right-wing sympathizer. And if that doesn't work, run.

Justice Antonin Scalia, ladies and gentlemen: 

The whole purpose of a constitution is to constrain the desires of the current society.

That's from a talk he recently gave at the University of Arizona with his colleague, Justice Stephen Breyer.

Now, I'll not be the blogger who sets out to debate constitutional law with a member of the Supreme Court. But regardless of how you believe the judicial branch should interpret the Constitution, you have to admit that Scalia's language here is a bit strange.

Why does he use the word "constrain"? Why shouldn't the Constitution be used to support the desires of the populous, like free speech and the right to vote? That Justice Scalia seeks to hinder freedoms with the Constitution rather than promote them is both telling and frightening.

Add this to the already overwhelming pile of evidence that Scalia is a dangerous person, one who seems intent on maintaining America's traditional white male power structure, even if that means constraining you and me in the process.

Chris Healy, head of the GOP in Connecticut, has a very simple explanation for why Twitter shut down 33 fake accounts Republican leaders had opened under Democratic state representative's names: "I'm not quite sure what the issue is, other than that the Democrats were successful in stopping free speech."

That's right, censorship! Apparently, Healy considers low-level identity theft to be a First Amendment right.

In related news, "ChrisHealyGOP" is still an available Twitter handle.

Question: Why did so many feminists take issue with Sarah Palin's 2008 vice-presidential run? Was it her anti-choice stance on abortion (even in cases of rape)? Maybe it was her belief in abstinence-only sex education classes, which prevent young women from getting healthy lessons about choice and birth control.

Wrong on both accounts, according to The Persecution of Sarah Palin, a new book from the Weekly Standard's Matt Continetti. In Continetti's view, feminists were just jealous of Palin:

Palin's sudden global fame rankled those feminists whose own path to glory had been difficult. To them, Palin was less a female success story than she was the beneficiary of male chauvinism ... It was telling that Fey should be the actress who impersonated Palin. The two women may look like each other, but they could not be more dissimilar. Each exemplifies a different category of feminism. Palin comes from the I-can-do-it-all school. She is professionally successful, has been married for more than 20 years, and has a large and (from all outward appearances) happy family. And while Fey is also pretty, married, and has a daughter, the characters she portrays in films like Mean Girls and Baby Mama, and in television shows like 30 Rock, are hard-pressed eggheads who give up personal fulfillment—e.g., marriage and motherhood—in the pursuit of professional success. On 30 Rock, Fey, who is also the show's chief writer and executive producer, plays Liz Lemon, a television comedy writer modeled on herself. Liz Lemon is smart, funny, and at the top of her field. But she fails elsewhere. None of her relationships with men works out. She wants desperately to raise a child but can find neither the time nor the means to marry or adopt. Lemon makes you laugh, for sure. But you also would be hard pressed to name a more unhappy person on American TV.

Catty Tweet of the Week award goes to CBS' Mark Knoller, who yesterday proclaimed, "Today - Obama ties Pres. Bush in the number of rounds of golf played in office: 24. Took Bush 2 yrs & 10 months."

Call me crazy, but it sounds like Knoller is attempting to paint President Obama as a flippant layabout, worse even than his notoriously sluggish predecessor, Dubya. Funny, the veteran reporter must be forgetting his January 19, 2009, piece, "President Bush by the Numbers," in which he wrote, "It’s difficult for any of us to convey an objective assessment of the Bush presidency - but numbers come close to offering a bit of unbiased insight." He then went on to detail Bush's vacation days, all 1,020 of them (that's more than two years worth).

By contrast, 10 months into his tenure, Obama has taken one vacation, for a week.

Either Knoller needs to get off the presidential leisure time beat, or he needs to check his selective memory at the newsroom door.

Republican David Vitter, the junior senator from Louisiana, continues to remain mum about the Louisiana official who refused to marry an interracial couple.

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal (R) and senior Senator Mary Landrieu (D) have both called for Keith Bardwell, justice of the peace in Tangipahoa Parish, to be fired. But, as this video shows, Vitter won't join his colleagues in admonishing Bardwell, who doesn't believe biracial children can function in society ('cause, y'know, they might grow up to be president).

Saved by the elevator doors. Apparently the only time Vitter likes to discuss mariage is when he's blasting gays or apoligizing for cheating on his wife with prostitutes.

In the middle of Campus Progress' battle to make college affordable for all Americans, a new report says higher education costs rose drastically last year, putting a degree even further out of reach for thousands of young people.

According to the College Board, from July 2008 to July 2009, tuition and fees for four-year public colleges rose an average of 6.5 percent, to $15,213. At private four-year institutions, costs went up 4.4 percent, to $35,636.

It's grim news, and grimmer still is this:

Leave it up to Details magazine to make Gossip Girl look like an HRC ad.

Hot on the heels of Kay Steiger's commendation of GG's sultry male-on-male kissing scene, Details has released photos of its latest cover shoot with Adam Lambert, American Idol 2009's much ballyhooed runner up. The images are, shall we say, a bit queer.

Despite the fact that Lambert is gay, the pictures depict the 27-year-old kissing and caressing a nubile female model--because God forbid anything gay happen at a fashion shoot.

Sure, the spread dovetails nicely with Lambert's revelation that he "likes kissing women," but I can't help thinking it's fishy for Details to snap an openly gay cover model--a rarity for the mag--in positions that totally subjugate his homosexuality.