Tag Archives: Politics

May 2, 2013 · 1:08 PM

MSNBC’s Brzezinski And Heilemann Blast ‘Childish Purely Political’ GOP

TFC wrote about Sen. Pat Toomey’s “revelation” here.

Mediaite

On Thursday, Morning Joe took on Sen. Pat Toomey‘s (R-PA) remark about how many Republicans opposed background checks because they didn’t want to be seen helpingPresident Obama. The roundtable criticized the GOP for being “childish” about an important issue, making their moves based purely on politics. It may work now, John Heilemannargued, but it’ll do the party long-term damage.

“In the end, we didn’t [pass the measure] because our politics have become so polarized,” Toomey said. “There were people on my side who did not want to be perceived to be helping something that the president wanted to accomplish, simply because it’s the president who wants to accomplish it.”

“You would want to argue that that potentially couldn’t be happening” Mika Brzezinski remarked. “And that, potentially on issue is as important as this, would not happen — that Republicans would not be so childish.”

Yet polling shows otherwise, she asserted, including among Republicans. It’s “purely political throughout,” Heilemann later added, noting that it’s just the latest development in what has been congressional Republicans’ strategy for some time: Opposing Obama.

“This feeds into this fundamental dynamic of the Republican Party right now,” he asserted. “The things that they do to try to thwart the president every turn do not hurt them particularly at the level of congressional politics. They will likely hold on to the House of Representatives in 2014, they may even make gains in the Senate in 2014. But they continue to do themselves long-term damage at the level of a national party because of the fact that 88 percent of people are in favor of this bill.”

Take a look, via MSNBC:

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January 31, 2013 · 5:35 AM

Fear of a Black Gun Owner

I’ve often wondered how the over abundance of illegal handguns always seem to find it’s way into inner city neighborhoods.   Do poor Black kids really have that much clout or are some mysterious, nefarious benefactors “gifting” them (for a hefty price) with the hand guns and other automatic weapons used to kill tens of thousands of Black youth every year?

Without sounding  too much like a conspiracy theorist, lets just say that there might be some interested “high-end” groups that have an interest in Black on Black crime and the results, whether its lessening the Black male population (and many young females as well) in the ghettos or wanting to see arrests and convictions to fill the “for-profit” jails that have popped up all over the country.

Oh, by the way, keep in mind that a prisoner has no rights,  None what so ever,  So essentially, those thoughtless young men who end up in jail have essentially given up every right they were born with.  In essence they are slaves, period.

Here’s an interesting factoid:  There are more Black men in prisons today than there were slaves in 1850!  Also…African Americans make up 13% of the population of the United States, yet…account for 39.4% of prison population in this country.

The Root

Ironically, the NRA used to support gun control — when the Black Panthers started packing.

It may seem hard to believe, but the modern-day gun-rights debate was born from the civil rights era and inspired by the Black Panthers. Equally surprising is that the National Rifle Association — now an aggressive lobbying arm for gun manufacturers — actually once supported, and helped write, federal gun-control laws.

In light of the Newtown, Conn., school massacre that claimed the lives of 20 children as well as escalating violence in cities like Chicago, which saw 500 homicides in 2012 alone, President Barack Obama recently unveiled his plan for stricter gun control. The proposal calls for a universal background check and a ban on assault-style weapons and high-capacity magazines, along with 23 executive orders. But these efforts — no matter how reasonable — are not without their critics.

In a statement released last week, the NRA expressed its disappointment that “the task force spent most of its time on proposed restrictions on lawful firearm owners.” Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Texas) went so far as to threaten impeachment if President Obama used executive action. The conservative entertainment complex — from Fox News and the Drudge Report, which likened gun control to Nazi Germany, to talk-radio host Alex Jones, who invoked the Tea Party insurrection of 1773 – employs propaganda tactics to convince Americans that Obama wants to take away their guns. Nothing could be further from the truth, and the history of this debate is a curious one.

It is ironic that the modern-day argument for citizens to arm themselves against unwarranted government oppression — dominated, as it is, by angry white men — has its roots in the foundation of the 1960s Black Panther movement. Huey Newton and Bobby Seale became inspired by Malcolm X’s admonishment that because government was “either unable or unwilling to protect the lives and property” of African Americans, they ought to defend themselves “by any means necessary.”

UCLA law professor Adam Winkler explores this history in his 2011 book, Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America. “Like many young African-Americans, Newton and Seale were frustrated with the failed promise of the civil-rights movement,” Winkler writes. In their opinion, “the only tangible outcome of the civil-rights movement had been more violence and oppression, much of it committed by the very entity meant to protect the public: the police.” Winkler goes on to say, “Malcolm X and the Panthers described their right to use guns in self-defense in constitutional terms.” Guns became central to the Panthers’ identity, as they taught their early recruits that “the gun is the only thing that will free us — gain us our liberation.”

The Panthers responded to racial violence by patrolling black neighborhoods brandishing guns — in an effort to police the police. The fear of black people with firearms sent shock waves across white communities, and conservative lawmakers immediately responded with gun-control legislation.

Then Gov. Ronald Reagan, now lauded as the patron saint of modern conservatism, told reporters in California that he saw “no reason why on the street today a citizen should be carrying loaded weapons.” Reagan claimed that the Mulford Act, as it became known, “would work no hardship on the honest citizen.” The NRA actually helped craft similar legislation in states across the country. Fast-forward to 2013, and it is a white-male dominated NRA, largely made up of Southern conservatives and gun owners from the Midwest and Southwestern states, that argues “do not tread on me” in the gun debate.

Continue here…

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Historical Fact:

Before the Civil War ended, State “Slave Codes” prohibited slaves from owning guns. After President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, and after the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing slavery was adopted and the Civil War ended in 1865, States persisted in prohibiting blacks, now freemen, from owning guns under laws renamed “Black Codes.” They did so on the basis that blacks were not citizens, and thus did not have the same rights, including the right to keep and bear arms protected in the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, as whites. This view was specifically articulated by the U.S. Supreme Court in its infamous 1857 decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford to uphold slavery.

The United States Congress overrode most portions of the Black Codes by passing the Civil Rights Act of 1866. The legislative histories of both the Civil Rights Act and the Fourteenth Amendment, as well as The Special Report of the Anti-Slavery Conference of 1867, are replete with denunciations of those particular statutes that denied blacks equal access to firearms. [Kates, Handgun Prohibition and the Original Meaning of the Second Amendment, 82 Mich. L. Rev. 204, 256 (1983)] However, facially neutral disarming through economic means laws remain in effect.

After the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1878, most States turned to “facially neutral” business or transaction taxes on handgun purchases. However, the intention of these laws was not neutral. An article in Virginia’s official university law review called for a “prohibitive tax … on the privilege” of selling handguns as a way of disarming “the son of Ham”, whose “cowardly practice of ‘toting’ guns has been one of the most fruitful sources of crime … .Let a negro board a railroad train with a quart of mean whiskey and a pistol in his grip and the chances are that there will be a murder, or at least a row, before he alights.” [Comment, Carrying Concealed Weapons, 15 Va L. Reg. 391, 391-92 (1909); George Mason University Civil Rights Law Journal, Vol. 2, No. 1, “Gun Control and Racism,” Stefan Tahmassebi, 1991, p. 75] Thus, many Southern States imposed high taxes or banned inexpensive guns so as to price blacks and poor whites out of the gun market.

In the 1990s, “gun control” laws continue to be enacted so as to have a racist effect if not intent:

  • Police-issued license and permit laws, unless drafted to require issuance to those not prohibited by law from owning guns, are routinely used to prevent lawful gun ownership among “unpopular” populations.
  • Public housing residents, approximately 3 million Americans, are singled out for gun bans.
  • “Gun sweeps” by police in “high crime neighborhoods” whereby vehicles and “pedestrians who meet a specific profile that might indicate they are carrying a weapon” are searched are becoming popular, and are being studied by the U.S. Department of Justice as “Operation Ceasefire.”

1856: Dred Scott v. Sandford - Upheld Individual Rights (to the slave owner.)

The Second Amendment as an individual right was affirmed by the Supreme Court of the United States in its decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford in 1856. With the rights of slaves in question, the nation’s highest court opined on the intent of the Second Amendment for the first time, writing that affording slaves full rights of American citizenship would include the right “to keep and carry arms wherever they went.”

On March 6, 1857, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney delivered the majority opinion. Taney ruled that:

  • Any person descended from Africans, whether slave or free, is not a citizen of the United States, according to the Constitution.
  • The Ordinance of 1787 could not confer either freedom or citizenship within the Northwest Territory to non-white individuals.
  • The provisions of the Act of 1820, known as the Missouri Compromise, were voided as a legislative act, since the act exceeded the powers of Congress, insofar as it attempted to exclude slavery and impart freedom and citizenship to non-white persons in the northern part of the Louisiana Purchase.[5]

The Court had ruled that African Americans had no claim to freedom or citizenship. Since they were not citizens, they did not possess the legal standing to bring suit in a federal court. As slaves were private property, Congress did not have the power to regulate slavery in the territories and could not revoke a slave owner’s rights based on where he lived. This decision nullified the essence of the Missouri Compromise, which divided territories into jurisdictions either free or slave. Speaking for the majority, Taney ruled that because Scott was simply considered the private property of his owners, that he was subject to the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution, prohibiting the taking of property from its owner “without due process”. Ultimately, the 14th Amendment to the Constitution settled the issue of Black citizenship via Section 1 of that Amendment: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside…”

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Key Clauses of the 14th Amendment

Four principles were asserted in the text of the 14th amendment. They were:

  1. State and federal citizenship for all persons regardless of race both born or naturalized in the United States was reaffirmed.
  2. No state would be allowed to abridge the “privileges and immunities” of citizens.
  3. No person was allowed to be deprived of life, liberty,or property without “due process of law.”
  4. No person could be denied “equal protection of the laws.”

Over time, numerous lawsuits have arisen that have referenced the 14th amendment. The fact that the amendment uses the word state in the Privileges and Immunities clause along with interpretation of the Due Process Clause has meant that state as well as federal power is subject to the Bill of Rights. Further, the courts have interpreted the word “person” to include corporations. Therefore, they too are protected by “due process” along with being granted “equal protection.”

While there were other clauses in the amendment, none were as signficant as these.

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January 18, 2013 · 6:34 AM

Obama Called On ABC The Most During First Term Conferences; Fox News Comes In Ninth

Fox News Obama

Is there any wonder why the POTUS picked Fox News the least in his first term news conferences?

Ironically, while I’ve routinely avoided Fox News for many years now, I stopped watching ABC after the 2008 debate in which George Stephanopoulos and Charlie Gibson openly hammered then candidate Barack Obama on every question.

Conversely, their questions to Hillary Clinton were softballs in comparison to the questions they lobbed at Obama.

The Huffington Post – Media

In 2010, President Obama said that Fox News had a point of view which was “ultimately destructive” for America. So the findings of a new study about Obama’s press conferences are not too surprising.

The University of Minnesota’s Eric Ostermeier tallied up the number of questions each member of the White House press corp had been able to ask during all of Obama’s first term press conferences. ABC, CBS, the Associated Press and NBC led the pack, with ABC having been selected for questioning 29 times over 36 solo press conferences. (Overall, reporters have had fewer chances to ask questionsthan any White House press corps since Ronald Reagan’s.)

It makes sense that the wires and broadcast networks have had the most opportunities to question Obama. They traditionally are the first to be called on at any press conference, and their reach is bigger than any other outlet.

Bloomberg — whose business-oriented audience would likely be one Obama wanted to target during the depths of the recession — was also a winner, being selected 20 times.

Fox News, though it has a reach that far outstrips its competitors and sometimes rivals the broadcast networks, was in ninth place on the list, having been called on 14 times. CNN, by comparison, was called on 16 times. Ostermeier said the network had been “shunned,” which may be overstating things a bit.

When Obama has called on Fox News, he often winds up verbally sparring with its reporters in one way or another.

NBC’s Chuck Todd and ABC’s Jake Tapper (now at CNN) were called on the most of any reporters — they each got 23 chances to question Obama.

Read the full study here.

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January 15, 2013 · 8:56 PM

The Wall Street Journal Doesn’t Think Anyone Makes Under $100k a Year

The Contributor

“While the top 1 percent of taxpayers will bear the biggest burden, many other families, affluent and poor, will pay more as well,” wrote Wall Street Journalreporter Laura Saunders in a story about the effect the “fiscal cliff” agreement would have on taxpayers.

However, a graphic that accompanied the story might help explain the conservative mindset about cutting taxes for the rich. Despite writing about the effect tax inceases will have for the poor, apparently no one in their Wall Street Journal’s world makes under $100,000 a year.

I especially feel bad for the poor, single parent struggling to get by on the measly $260,000 she earns a year. After all, how’s she going to afford paying an extra $280 a month in taxes when she’s only bringing in $21,666 a month?

At least the retired couple that barely squeaks by with $180,000 a year of income in retirement won’t have to pay more taxes (although, wearing a sweater tied around your neck like Carlton Banks is a requirement).

I would remind the editors of the Wall Street Journal that the median income in the United States is right around $50,000 a year, and less than 5 percent of households in the country earn more than $166,000 a year.

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November 8, 2012 · 8:07 PM

Conservative’s Three Part Tragedy

The Republican Bubble - mariopiperni.com/

I have to agree with Mario Piperni, the folks on the right are not only upset over the POTUS’ re-election, they are downright delusional…

Mario Piperni

I don’t believe conservatives and Republicans quite understand what led to the trashing of Mitt Romney and the Republican agenda. Mary Matalin lays it out in a piece titled Mendacity and Malice Won.

Her villain…

What happened? A political narcissistic sociopath leveraged fear and ignorance with a campaign marked by mendacity and malice rather than a mandate for resurgence and reform. Instead of using his high office to articulate a vision for our future, Obama used it as a vehicle for character assassination, replete with unrelenting and destructive distortion, derision, and division.

and hero…

Mitt Romney distinguished himself and conservatism with a grounded, courageous, forward-thinking problem-solving reform agenda for a nation ready to renew and starved for leadership and maturity. He is a man of integrity and character, as is his whole family. And unlike in the 1996 and 2008 Republican campaigns, which — though led by men of great personal integrity — were marked by dead-end policy prescriptions, Romney/Ryan laid a durable philosophical and policy foundation for the next generation of conservative leadership.

…and tragic end.

Unfortunately and unfortuitously, forces of nature bookended the general election: Our convention was compromised by one weather disaster and our momentum stalled by another. Two human hurricanes also radically altered the political atmosphere: Bill Clinton’s unique windbaggery constituted a campaign updraft, while Chris Christie’s deplorable and gratuitous gas-baggery infused the campaign with a toxic political pollution.

They’re hopelessly delusional but let them keep on believing this crap as their party slowly drifts into irrelevance. Despite Matalin’s misguided rant (projection, anyone?), the political narcissistic sociopath she so despises is currently the president of the United States…and will be for the next four years. That makes me smile.

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October 28, 2012 · 10:07 PM

ANONYMOUS Puts Karl Rove and American Cross Roads on Notice: We Are Watching You…Do Not Attempt To Rig The Election

I was just thinking earlier today how helpless Progressive Americans would feel if Rove, et al stole the 2012 election as I believe they did in 2000 and 2004.    Then tonight I ran across the following article and video on:

Daily Kos

This will be a short diary.  I just ran across this video from Anonymous warning Karl Rove and his Crossroads group not to “rig” the election. They claim they are watching his servers. I don’t believe the election can be rigged as some do with voting machines.  I do like the idea of an independent Anonymous keeping an eye on Rove.

I must say the whole thing is interesting.   I’m just happy someone cares enough to make sure the election is above board…

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September 8, 2012 · 10:08 AM

Ann Romney Refuses To Answer Questions About Birth Control

I’m not certain I can stand much more of the Romneys obfuscation on the real issues in addition to the economy.

What thirty some odd states with Republican Governors have done to dictate to women about their reproductive rights is incredible.   The only thing I can attribute to Mrs. Romney’s hesitance to answer the question is that Mitt Romney knows it’s a liability to his campaign.

In 2010 the Republicans campaigned on “Jobs, Jobs, Jobs!”  However, in reality, it’s been about “the fetus” and person-hood.  The problem of course is that the Right has this way of loving and protecting “the fetus” but starving and ignoring “the child”.

By the way Republican politicians…where are the jobs?

Think Progress

In an interview with KWQC-TV6 today, Ann Romney refused to comment on the issues stemming from the ongoing War on Women, declining to address whether she believes women should have access to contraception through their employer-based insurance plans. Such questions are irrelevant, Romney said, because this election is not going to be about birth control:

KWQC TV6: Do you believe that employer-provided health insurance should be required to cover birth control?

ANN ROMNEY: Again, you’re asking me questions that are not about what this election is going to be about. This election is going to be about the economy and jobs.

KWQC TV6: Well, a Pew research poll shows those issues are very important to women, ranking them either “important” or “very important. [...]

ANN ROMNEY: Listen, I’ve been across this country, I’ve been for a year-and-a-half on the campaign trail. I’ve spoken with thousands of women and they are telling me, they’re telling me a couple of things, one they say they’re praying for me which is really wonderful, and then they’re saying, ‘please help, please help. We are so worried about our jobs.’ So really if you want to try to pull me off of the other messages it’s not going to work because I know because I’ve been out there. [...]

I’m going to talk to you about the economy and about job creation and about how my husband is the right person for the right time. This is going to be an election that is very important for women, and we are going to make sure that their economic prosperity is more certain under a President Romney.

Despite Romney’s attempt to pivot to the economy, her claim that birth control is “off message” ignores the real economic situation of women across America. In fact, women’s access to reproductive health services is inextricably linked to the economic issues that countless women face. For example, the Obamacare provision that requires employer-based coverage for contraception — which Ann Romney sidestepped after the interviewer brought it up twice — attempts to address the fact that one in three American women report having struggled to afford birth control at some point in their lives. And when women risk pregnancy without reliable access to contraception, they strain their own finances with the expensive addition of a dependent, as well as incur millions in taxpayer costs for medical care.

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September 6, 2012 · 1:00 AM

Thank A Liberal – Redux

Thank a liberal

From dKosopedia

If you do not have skin cancer, and have ever stood outside without having a peeling sunburn within moments, thank the ozone layer, thank the ban on CFCs, and thank a liberal.

If you have not died in a heat wave, drought, hurricane, flood, wildfire, or other climate change disaster, and like the idea of your children and grandchildren not living in desert wastelands, thank a liberal.

If you have ever breathed clean air or drank clean water, thank a liberal.

If no woman you know has died or been maimed in a back-alley Abortion, thank a liberal.

If you have never been lynched, or had your children firebombed in a church, thank a liberal.

If you are glad we don’t live in a right-wing dictatorship along the lines of what conservatives overtly and covertly created in Iran, Guatamala, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, the Congo, Chile, Brazil, El Salvador, the Phillipines, Indonesia and many others, thank a liberal.

If you have ever used Medicare, thank a liberal.

If you have not gotten cancer from radiation, thank the Nuclear test ban and thank a liberal.

If you have ever sat on a public seat, drank from a drinking fountain, stood on a bus, or done anything in public without worrying about being beaten up for being in the wrong section for your skin color, thank a liberal.

If you’ve ever driven on an interstate highway, thank a liberal.

If you grew up in a family of less than 12 kids, like the idea of being able to choose if you have 12 kids or not, if you don’t live in an overpopulated third world slum, or just think birth control is a good idea, thank a liberal.

If your family benefited from the GI Bill of Rights, FHA Mortgages, and so forth, thank a liberal.

If you have ever bought anything from Europe, and are glad the Marshall plan kept it from remained a bombed-out shell or falling to communism or neo-fascism, thank a liberal.

If you are glad that the Nazis don’t control half the world (conservatives opposed joining World War 2 until it was forced on them) thank a liberal.

If you have ever eaten food (agricultural subsidies), flicked on a light switch (rural electrification) or benefited from the Tennessee Valley Authority, thank a liberal.

If you ever drank a beer or a glass of wine without being thrown in jail, thank a liberal.

If you are not a land-owning white male, but have voted, thank a liberal.

If you have not died from tainted meat, been prescribed something useless or poisonous by a quack doctor, have not given your children cough syrup which turned out to have heroin as its secret ingredient, thank a liberal. (and Nixon)

If your workplace is safe and you are paid a living wage, including overtime; if you enjoy a 40-hour week and you are allowed to join a union to protect your rights without being lynched, thank a liberal.

If you’ve ever seen a national park, and it hadn’t been strip mined and clearcut into a desert wasteland, thank a liberal.

If you have never suffered from an economy of massive deflation, and have never even heard of an economic phenomenon called a “panic”, thank a liberal.

If your children go to school instead of working in coal mines, thank a liberal.

If you’re a Native American and have not been killed or died in a concentration camp, or if you live near Native Americans and are not at war with them, thank a liberal.

If you have an industrial or high-tech job – or really, any job other than those available in a slave-powered cash crop economy (ie, a third world economy) thank a liberal.

If you’re not a slave or “indentured servant” (white slave), don’t think protection of slavery belongs in the constitution, if you’ve never been chained to a boat where half the passengers die, been whipped, had your family split up, been forced to “breed” with another slave you’ve never met, been raped by your boss, or killed for not being profitable, thank a liberal.

If you oppose political parties starting massive wars to destroy America, just because they lost the election, and killing hundreds of thousands of Americans in process – if you just don’t have that much fanatical hatred of Lincoln’s policy of to restricting slavery to states where it already existed, thank a liberal.

If you’re part-Irish, Catholic, Jewish, or for that matter anything not Anglo-Saxon Protestant, and are allowed to live in America, and are not harassed and attacked for failing to be born Anglo-Saxon Protestant, or if you’ve ever bought or used anything built by a non-ASP American, thank a liberal.

If you kind of like freedom of speech, and don’t want the state government to be able to censor you – (you think the 14th amendment is a good idea) – thank a liberal.

If you have ever bought or sold anything transported by the transcontinental railroad, or eaten food from a farm created by the railroad, thank a liberal.

If you think the US constitution is pretty cool, and have ever traveled too or done business with a country whose democracy was inspired by the American revolution, thank a liberal.

If you have not been drafted and used as cannon-fodder in some war caused by some petty insult between nobles, clan leaders, or other various overfed dictators, or suffered rape or looting in one of those countless wars, thank a liberal.

If you have not been tortured to death in a religious inquisition, thank a liberal.

If you don’t have to walk though ankle-deep sewage in the streets (because sewers are big gummint), thank a liberal.

If you have ever done anything that is a religious or superstitious taboo (ie, done anything at all) without being stoned to death or cast out as a heretic, thank a liberal.

If you have never been raped, and then had the rapist escape punishment on the grounds that he marry you, thank a liberal.

If you are not a slave toiling to build a pyramid for some lazy dictator who’s so spoiled he thinks he’s god, and won’t even see it until he’s dead, thank a liberal.

If you have not been killed as a human sacrifice in the name of some god, thank a liberal.

In short, if you’ve ever enjoyed anything of the post-stone-age world, thank a liberal.

…And if not, become a conservative.

“Liberal policies made America the freest, wealthiest, most successful and most powerful nation in human history. Conservatism in power always threatens to undo that national progress, and is almost always frustrated by the innate decency and democratic instincts of the American people…” - Joe Conason

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August 27, 2012 · 12:44 PM

Military Terror Plot: Murder Case Uncovers Terror Plot By ‘Militia’ Within U.S. Military

Military Terror Plot

This should come as no surprise…

The Huffington Post

Prosecutors say a murder case against four soldiers in Georgia has revealed they formed an anarchist militia within the U.S. military with plans to overthrow the federal government.

One of the accused troops, Pfc. Michael Burnett, pleaded guilty Monday to manslaughter and gang charges in the December slayings of former soldier Michael Roark and his girlfriend, 17-year-old Tiffany York.

Burnett told a Long County judge that Roark, who had just left the Army, knew of the militia group’s plans and was killed because he was “a loose end.”

Prosecutor Isabel Pauley says the group bought $87,000 worth of guns and bomb-making materials and plotted to take over Fort Stewart, bomb targets in nearby Savannah and Washington state, as well as assassinate the president.

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August 7, 2012 · 7:34 PM

Intelligence Study Links Low I.Q. To Prejudice, Racism, Conservatism

As I’ve said before in a similar article, this study is not a conclusive statement that all of the above have low I.Q.s…

The Huffington Post

Are racists dumb? Do conservatives tend to be less intelligent than liberals? A provocative new study from Brock University in Ontario suggests the answer to both questions may be a qualified yes.

The study, published in Psychological Science, showed that people who score low on I.Q. tests in childhood are more likely to develop prejudiced beliefs and socially conservative politics in adulthood.

I.Q., or intelligence quotient, is a score determined by standardized tests, but whether the tests truly reveal intelligence remains a topic of hot debate among psychologists.

Dr. Gordon Hodson, a professor of psychology at the university and the study’s lead author, said the finding represented evidence of a vicious cycle: People of low intelligence gravitate toward socially conservative ideologies, which stress resistance to change and, in turn, prejudice, he told LiveScience.

Why might less intelligent people be drawn to conservative ideologies? Because such ideologies feature “structure and order” that make it easier to comprehend a complicated world, Dodson said. “Unfortunately, many of these features can also contribute to prejudice,” he added.

Dr. Brian Nosek, a University of Virginia psychologist, echoed those sentiments.

“Reality is complicated and messy,” he told The Huffington Post in an email. “Ideologies get rid of the messiness and impose a simpler solution. So, it may not be surprising that people with less cognitive capacity will be attracted to simplifying ideologies.”

But Nosek said less intelligent types might be attracted to liberal “simplifying ideologies” as well as conservative ones.

In any case, the study has taken the Internet by storm, with some outspoken liberals saying that it validates their suspicions about conservatives and conservatives arguing that the research has been misinterpreted.

What do you think? Do conservatives tend to be less intelligent? Or is this just political opinion masquerading as science?

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