The Progressive Midwesterner

U.S. Representative and white nationalist Steve King (R-IA) has been stripped of all of his committee assignments by an unanimous vote of the steering committee of the House Republican Conference in response to disgustingly bigoted remarks that King made, which were published by The New York Times in an article by the Times 's Trip Gabriel: “White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive?...Why did I sit in classes teaching me about the merits of our history and our civilization?” Those words are not mine, and they are not those of Gabriel. Those words are those of Steve King. Before I explain the significance of Steve King losing all of his committee assignments, I will directly address King's offensive remarks. There are major reasons why white nationalist, white supremacist, and Western civilization are offensive terms. Those terms are all offensive because they are used to describe a political system in which...

TRIGGER WARNING: This blog post contains content including profanity and referencing an act of sexual assault that did not occur in real-life. Reader discretion is advised.

Tomorrow, voters in Ohio's 12th Congressional District will vote in a special election to fill the district's vacant U.S. House seat. Recent pre-election opinion polling has shown that the election is expected to be extremely close, although support for Democratic nominee Danny O'Connor appears to be surging in the lead-up to the special election. One recent pre-election opinion poll had O'Connor only one percentage point behind Republican nominee Troy Balderson, well within the poll's margin of error, and a different pre-election opinion poll had O'Connor ahead of Balderson by only one percentage point, also within that poll's margin of error. The 12th District of Ohio was gerrymandered by Republicans to be what would be considered in 2012 to be a Republican stronghold. After cracking the Columbus area into three Republican-leaning districts after the 2000 Census, Republicans in Ohio, after the 2010 Census and despite Ohio losing two congressional distr...