This week, we saw a bunch of racist assholes protesters blocking the roadway leading to an immigration processing office, holding up three buses with mostly women and children with hateful, misspelled signs while alternating between shouts of “USA, USA” with “Go Home” and “Get Out.”

Those Amerikkans blocked three buses with mostly children, all in the name of patriotism? Oh yeah, American exceptionalism at its best, huh?

Sorry, but after witnessing scenes like this play out and after the embarrassment of riches from our Supreme Court this week, I’m ashamed to be an American. This is not the country envisioned by the framers of the Declaration of Independence. Perhaps someone should sit these holier-than-thou jerks and read it to them. After all, that’s what we’re celebrating tomorrow, isn’t it?

Perhaps those protesters should take a trip to Ellis Island to see where so many of their ancestors may have entered this nation of immigrants. While there, they should, perhaps, read Emma Lazarus’ poem, “The New Colossus” – which is inscribed on a tablet on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty.

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

“Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she

With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

 

Maybe they should stop thinking they’re so much better than everyone else, and understand why the US was, perhaps, once the greatest nation in the world, but not so much any more.

Watch Jeff Daniels as Will McAvoy explains why in the opening scene of the first episode of HBO’s The Newsroom. (They’ve disabled the ability to embed the scene, but you should click here an watch it anyway. It’ll be about 8 minutes very well spent, I promise.)

This morning, I spoke with the always insightful Will Bunch, author of  Tear Down This Myth: The Right-Wing Distortion of the Reagan Legacy and The Backlash: Right-Wing Radicals, High-Def Hucksters, and Paranoid Politics in the Age of Obama, and who writes the Attytood blog at the Philadelphia Daily News about the new Quinnipiac poll that found Ronald Reagan as the best president since World War II and Barack Obama the worst!

Will had many of the same thoughts about this poll as did I. He wrote about it in a piece called “What that presidents poll got wrong…everything.”

On Tuesday, after the Supreme Court’s horrific decision in the Hobby Lobby case, I wrote that it was time to get in gear and finally ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. Today, Amy Simon of She’s History joined in to give us the history on the long awaited and long fought-for but as yet unrealized constitutional amendment.

And finally, we ended our week with Stephen Goldstein, author of The Dictionary of American Political Bullshit and his weekly “No More Bullshit Minute.” Today we discussed the bullshit surrounding the Fourth of July!

Have a great holiday weekend.. we’ll be back Monday with Howie Klein and The Steve Israel Hour, and FL Senator Nan Rich, the progressive candidate for Governor…  Radio or Not!