The Tipping Point: Perhaps I'm engaging in a bit of wishful thinking, but if my new entry at the Adbusters blog is even remotely correct, the right is heading for a fall. Starting out with a visit by Bush's Secret Service to an out-of-the-way art exhibition critical of the president, the article runs down a host of ways the conservative right is scrambling to put out fires, quell dissent, and maintain their tenuous grip on power:

...Scan the headlines of the past few days and you'll see it fits a pattern of similarly histrionic—even hysterical—behavior by rightwingers. Are they getting desperate? Starting to crack? At the very least, they seem to be flailing.

As accusations of ethical breaches by DeLay pile up like Texas cordwood, conservatives are angling to blame the "liberal media" instead of facing the obvious. Fox News' John Gibson made the bizarre postulation that convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh might've been in cahoots with the Iraqis to blow up the Murrah building ten years ago (after all, white guys can't be terrorist masterminds, can they?). Taking the same podium where DeLay hoisted a gun days earlier, aged rocker Ted Nugent thrust twin assault rifles in the air at this week's NRA convention as he called on gun-rights advocates to be "hardcore, radical extremists demanding the right to self defense." ("I want the bad guys dead," he said to the swooning crowds. "No court case. No parole. No early release. I want 'em dead. Get a gun and when they attack you, shoot 'em.") And, despite Bush's insistence that "homeland security" is a top priority, his White House can't stand a little criticism on the topic: it just canned publication of a major report on international terrorism, the same annual study that found acts of terror last year reached a 19-year high despite Bush's tough talk.

Admittedly, the GOP's Teflon armor still has its shine, but with Bush's approval ratings hitting historic lows, with a majority of Americans standing in opposition to Republican meddling in what could've been a dignified death for Terri Schiavo, and with Republicans trying to quash criticism at every turn and monitor the work of artists, you have to wonder if we're nearing a tipping point.

Read it all.