Author: Ring of Fire Staff

As president Obama enters his second term, the GOP has decided to revive the “birther” debate. Thank goodness for Senator Tom Casperson (R-Mich.) because it has been way too long since we revisited this issue. In an interview on Michael Patrick Shiels’ Lansing, Michigan-based radio program Tuesday, Sen. Casperson stated that he still does not know whether or not the President was born in the United States. Of course, Shiels was more than helpful in raising the issue when he prompted, “Do you find it weird that we have a, uh,  commander in chief for his second term now...

By Mike Papantonio I sat through more than a year of Constitutional law classes with our Con Law professor telling the entire class again and again that the beauty of the way that the US Supreme Court operated was that it was not a political process; there were no politics involved. All the decisions were based on precedent, rule of law, and pure stare decisis. About half of the class would smirk and roll their eyes because we understood how goofy it was to ever try to pitch such an idea. Antonin Scalia and John Roberts just yesterday again...

Camel cigarettes turn 100 this year.  What does a 100 year-old cigarette brand look like? Pretty darn young. In 2008, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company unleashed Camel Crush.  It is a conventional filtered Camel cigarette with a novel twist—a menthol capsule is embedded in the filter so that with a squeeze, the smoker can supply a burst of menthol, converting his or her normal cigarette into a minty, menthol smoke.  Just what every 60 year-old veteran Marlboro smoker was waiting for, right?  According to RJR, yes. RJR says, “Camel’s colorful, irreverent personality captures the very spirit of adult tobacco consumers,”...

GOP efforts at rebranding are being thwarted by their own pursuits from over the past few years, which are only now being taken up by the Supreme Court. While the Supreme Court is addressing issues like the Voting Rights Act and same-sex marriage, many Republicans are attempting to refocus the attention away from those topics, in order to appear more aligned with the voters they alienated during last year’s election. Even less constructive for the GOP rebranding campaign is their unofficial leader, Bobby Jindal’s, lackadaisical approach to rebranding: to change the GOP without changing any of its policies. In...

Rick Scott’s attempt to have welfare recipients drug tested under the guise that it would save taxpayers money is over. An Appellate Court in Florida shot down Scott’s drug-testing law yesterday and suspended the requirement. Data collected since the plans implementation shows that only 2 percent of welfare recipients have tested positive for drugs, information that illustrates how ill-conceived the Governor’s plan was to start. The Court called the testing “intrusive” as it violated the Fourth Amendment protection from unreasonable searches. One of the main cruxes Scott used to support the plan, and one that garnered support from his...