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Richard Grenell was Mitt Romney's foreign policy spokesman until Tuesday, when he resigned from position in the campaign. Dorian Davis is a journalism professor at Marymount Manhattan College and writer for WNYC. He tells us about the case on Grenell and why the Romney campaign made such a misstep in this situation.

Slate political reporter and MSNBC contributor Dave Weigel and It's A Free Country blogger Dorian Davis discuss Mitt Romney's position on the situation with the Chinese dissident--and the candidate's relationship with social conservatives following the resignation of a gay aide, Richard Grenell. Read Davis' latest post on the topic here. 

Republicans have a knack for harpooning their general election prospects with misguided panders to the Right.

You knew that Britney Spears was in trouble when she shaved her head and started chasing paparazzi with an umbrella. But she’s not the last to compensate for a career meltdown with unhinged contempt for the media. The latest is Barack Obama.

Framed as a response to pieces that have run in the New York Post and elsewhere on “the talk” that some black parents claim to have had with their kids about survival in a proverbial White Man’s World, John Derbyshire’s latest post at Taki’s webzine on “the talk” that he claims some white parents have with their kids about blacks is a racist rant chock full of unsubstantiated claims and anecdotal evidence presented as fact.

Describing African-Americans as both less intelligent than and hostile to white people, he outlines a nine-point plan based on what he calls “statistical common sense” to help whites look out for their “personal safety.” These include warnings to keep out of black neighborhoods, to avoid large concentrations of blacks in public and to make black friends to guard against charges of racism. 

Here’s something that people without a sense of humor don’t get: laughing at something disarms it. There’s no such thing as a topic “inappropriate” to joke about because joking about it makes it less formidable and easier to handle.  

Rick Santorum's presidential campaign is like Charlie Sheen's stand-up tour: a disorganized mess of lunatic rants, doomed to failure but veering from one state to another regardless, awing people more with the sheer magnitude of its badness than with its message.

Vetoing New Jersey's gay marriage bill was his first big lapse in leadership—and it won't necessarily help him win Republicans in 2016..

The GOP should talk more about that kind of entrepreneurship and acknowledge illegal immigrants who manage to hold down jobs and contribute to Uncle Sam.

Whenever I log onto Facebook now, I see people posting that 15-point list of President Obama’s alleged accomplishments. Some of them like “Got Osama bin Laden” and “Won a Nobel Peace Prize” are right. But a lot of them are wrong.

Gingrich misrepresented King’s question – and its newsworthiness. That Gingrich’s ex-wife accused him of having an affair might not be “news.” But that it comes after Gingrich himself spent months trying to get Bill Clinton impeached for lying about Monica Lewinsky IS.

In South Carolina, conventional wisdom is that Mitt Romney has this Saturday’s primary all wrapped up, despite Newt Gingrich’s tour-de-force debate performance on Monday. But that calculus ignores the potential political earthquake that could ensue if former U.S. Senate candidate Alvin Greene makes a last-minute bid for the presidency. 

Greene ...