Opinion

It has been a bad few weeks for the First Amendment.

The sinister commonality to the Internal Revenue Service and AP scandals and the James Rosen affair is that each appears to have been (strike "appears ": each was) an attempt to suppress a core American right.

The last time New York City elected a Democrat mayor was in 1989 – that was David Dinkins, whose stint was an unmitigated disaster.

In September 1802, journalist James Callender published the first of a series of articles detailing a long-term affair between President Thomas Jefferson and his household slave Sally Hemings. The story was a sensational revelation that definitively fit the definition of political scandal: The exposure of corruption, illegal or unethical practices, or a moral violation committed by public officials. Jefferson broke 19th century norms of anti-miscegenation by committing racial admixture.

You'd think the conservative base would have learned its lesson in 2010, when, in a fever pitch of epic magnitude, it nominated Christine O'Donnell, Ken Buck, Sharron Angle and Joe Miller to run for the U.S. Senate. Suddenly, what looked like a prime opportunity for Republicans to flip the upper chamber and send Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., packing turned into an example of a party letting its base lead where the rest of America dared not follow. Or perhaps in 2012, when Indiana Senate nominee Richard Mourdock was sunk by an extremely ill-advised and incorrect rape comment.