Following two presidential election defeats in 2008 and 2012, the Republican party is still making the same mistakes

Stupid is as stupid does and, apparently, the Republican party didn't get Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal's "stupid memo" because it looks dumber by the day. After losing the 2012 presidential election the "GOP establishment" from former Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour to former GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich and every white man in between acknowledged that the party must make "the tent" more welcoming to minorities and women – where the votes increasingly are. So what does the GOP do? It keeps headlining white men behaving badly.

Americans were treated to a double feature of GOP stupidity this week brought to you by the senator from Arizona on 12 June. Republican Senator Jeff Flake had to apologize for his 15-year-old son's unsavory remarks on Twitter. According to Buzzfeed, Tanner Flake tweeted he would find "the faggot" who stole his bike and "beat the crap out of you." Tanner also posted screenshots of his scores from an online game "Fun Run" where he used the handle "n1ggerkiller".

If this isn't enough to make anyone's eyes roll in disgust, Buzzfeed reported that Tanner's Twitter account, which is now locked, revealed his repeated use of the racial slurs in January and February. Tanner made equally offensive comments on YouTube, including "nigger" and "faggot" along with calling Mexicans "scum of the Earth". Strong words for a 15-year-old, who also gleefully reminded everyone his father was a member of Congress, according Buzzfeed.

Issuing an apology, Senator Flake wrote:

"I'm very disappointed in my teenage son's words, and I sincerely apologize for the insensitivity. This language is unacceptable anywhere. Needless to say, I've already spoken with him about this, he has apologized, and I apologize as well."

The burning question is where did Tanner hear this kind of "unacceptable" language? Typically, children repeat things they've heard their parents say or those close to them. The fact that Tanner Flake used these words with impunity across various social media platforms for months suggests he's quite at ease with bigoted thinking. Whether the senator knew about it or not, it's just another example of why blacks and other ethnic minorities don't trust the GOP's words of inclusion.

On the heels of the son-of-Flake hate rant, the good ole boys of the House Judiciary Committee, chaired by Representative Bob Goodlatte (a Virginia Republican), thought now is the time to pass an abortion ban bill and alienate more women voters. As Washington Post reporter Dana Milbank aptly noted with sarcasm, not one of the 23 Republican members on the House Judiciary Committee is a woman. They are all white males dedicated to legislating women's health issues. Do you see the irony in this?

The bill would ban abortions after 20 weeks and has no exception for pregnancies resulting from rape and incest or when the mother's health is in jeopardy. In all his male wisdom, Representative Trent Franks of Arizona said there was no need to include an exception because "the incidence of rape resulting in pregnancy are very low". Interesting, particularly when studies prove otherwise.

The bill has no chance of passing, "even if it clears the House", Milbank wrote, because the Democrat majority in the Senate would almost certainly vote it down. Introducing the bill makes Republicans look stupid, and I say this as a member of the GOP and someone who's against abortion. Now is not the time to try and open up Roe v Wade.

America has a severe jobs and economic problem. Republicans in Congress should be focusing on those issues "not trying to legislate morality", as a good friend told me. I'm against abortion and the horror of how Kermit Gosnell killed live babies in Philadelphia is a tragic reminder that we as a society need to focus on the inhumanity of abortions through churches, charities and parenting that teaches morals and the value of life to young girls and boys.

After two presidential shellackings in 2008 and 2012, the Republican party seems to be stuck on stupid and doing business as usual. It's been three months since the Republican National Committee issued its 100-page autopsy report about what went wrong in 2012 and promised to reach out to more non-white voters.

The country is still waiting for the RNC to actually do something. What's evident is the GOP has the same white guys in charge doing and saying the same stupid things that lost them two presidential elections. The Republican party is rotting, but boys will be boys and that seems to be the way everyone in the establishment likes it.

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Republican-controlled chamber also limits president's attempt to reduce nuclear weapons in version at odds with Senate bill

The House of Representatives has overwhelmingly passed a sweeping, $638bn defence bill that would block President Barack Obama from closing the US detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, and limit his efforts to reduce nuclear weapons.

Ignoring a White House veto threat, the Republican-controlled House voted 315-108 for the legislation – which also authorises money for aircraft, weapons, ships, personnel and the war in Afghanistan. It must be reconciled with a Senate version before heading to the president's desk.

Despite last-minute lobbying by Obama counter-terrorism adviser Lisa Monaco, the House soundly rejected Obama's repeated pleas to shutter Guantánamo. In recent weeks, the president implored Congress to close the facility in Cuba, citing its prohibitive costs and its role as a recruiting tool for extremists.

A hunger strike by more than 100 of the 166 prisoners protesting against their conditions and indefinite confinement has prompted the fresh calls for closure. Obama is pushing to transfer approved detainees – there are 86 – to their home countries and lift a ban on transfers to Yemen. Fifty-six of the 86 are from Yemen.

The House voted down an amendment to close the naval detention centre by 31 December 2014 by 249 votes to 174. It also backed an amendment – by 236 to 188 – to stop the president from transferring any detainees to Yemen.

The restrictions in the House bill put it at odds with the Democratic-controlled Senate.

The Senate armed services committee's bill gives the defence department additional flexibility to transfer Guantánamo detainees to the US and other countries, with the objective of closing the detention facility there.

But, in a move that reflects deep divisions in Congress over Guantánamo's future, the committee did not hold votes on the provision in the bill, opting instead to have that debate when the legislation moves to the Senate floor.

In its current form, the Senate committee's legislation would permit transfer of terror suspects to the US if the Pentagon determines that doing so is in the interests of national security and that any public safety issues have been addressed, the committee said Friday in a statement detailing the bill's major provisions.

Detainees could be moved to foreign countries if they are determined to no longer be a threat to US security, the transfers are pursuant to court orders, or the individuals have been tried and acquitted, or have been convicted and completed their sentences.

Transfers to third countries also could occur if the Pentagon determines the move supports US national security interests and steps have been taken "to substantially mitigate the risk of the detainee re-engaging in terrorist activities," the committee said.

The defence policy bill also bars the Pentagon or the National Nuclear Security Agency from spending any money to implement the new Start treaty with Russia that the Senate ratified in December 2010 until the defence secretary provides certain information on reducing the US nuclear arsenal to Congress.

The bill also imposes new punishments on members of the armed services found guilty of rape or sexual assault as outrage over the crisis in the military has galvanised Congress.

Obama backs the measures, which would require a mandatory minimum sentence of two years in prison for a member of the armed services convicted of rape or sexual assault in a military court. The bill also would strip military commanders of the power to overturn convictions in rape and sexual assault cases.

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I'll say this for the Republican congressman from Long Island: his political positions are so inconsistent, they're beyond bias

As you may have noticed, New York Republican Congressman Peter King has been doing what he does best: calling for journalists to be prosecuted. The latest recipient of this badge of honour is the Guardian's Glenn Greenwald, whose behaviour King characterises as treasonous, thanks to his reporting on Edward Snowden's NSA leaks, and specifically for "threatening to disclose" the names of CIA agents.

This last charge is pure fantasy, emerging from the mind of Peter King: Greenwald has threatened nothing of the sort.

Just watched the King video; everything he said is based on the blatant *lie that I threatened to disclose names of CIA covert agents

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) June 12, 2013

But that's nothing new: trying to understand King's positions on the basis of principle or connection to reality is an exercise in futility. He's a passionate defender of American freedom, except for the freedom of the press; he's one of Washington's most full-throated opponents of terrorism, except for his long history of support for the IRA; he claims to think that most US Muslims "are as loyal and patriotic as any Americans", but also that there are "too many mosques" in the country. It's appropriately decorous that the Guardian, in its official response to King, describes itself as "surprised". But speaking in a personal capacity, I'm not.

It's interesting to consider King's outburst – and, indeed, the whole cacophony of opinionated responses to the Guardian's NSA revelations – in the context of a fascinating study highlighted on the Washington Post's WonkBlog the other day. It's a truism of America's partisan politics that people on different sides of an issue can't even agree on basic facts. Supporters and opponents of the Iraq war will express radically different views of the casualty rates there; Republicans are more likely to tell you that unemployment fell during the Bush years, while Democrats will claim (correctly, in this case) that it rose. But a new paper from researchers at Yale and the University of California at San Diego reveals something intriguing: offer people a material reward for answering such questions correctly – in this case, an Amazon gift card – and the gaps between partisans' answers shrinks by 55%.

In other words: when there's money on the line, people get less partisan. Why? A reasonable conclusion is that, when money isn't on the line, their judgments aren't solely based on an honest appraisal of the facts – and that, consciously or unconsciously, they're heavily influenced by the desire to signal their affiliations with certain positions, parties or groups. On issues that divide Republicans from Democrats, each wants to demonstrate, whether to others or themselves, that Republicans or Democrats is what they are. On issues such as the NSA revelations, which divide us along different lines, all those columnists arguing in favour of trusting American power and of not rocking the boat want to show that's where they stand. And of course, we anti-surveillance, pro-Snowden types don't escape the charge, either. I have to accept that my position isn't just an unprejudiced assessment of the facts.

In a sense, this simply underscores the most obvious truth imaginable about political opinions: that our backgrounds and loyalties shape the views we hold, while cynics like Peter King will spout any old nonsense to pander to their constituencies. Still, it's striking to see how far this affects even our understanding of basic, measurable facts, such as casualty rates or unemployment figures. When it comes to topics such as the likely impact of the Snowden leaks, the influence of affiliation-signalling is presumably vastly worse, since there's so much we still don't know and perhaps never could.

This is all especially relevant in the rancorous world of op-ed columns and online commentary, which is systematically biased against expression of the kind of ambivalent stances that Ian Leslie writes about in Slate today. (Ambivalence is to be distinguished here from centrist "moderation", which gets a huge amount of column inches.)

Yes, I'm inclined to believe that the world will be a significantly better place for Snowden's revelations. But it's worth never forgetting that my views on the matter – along with everyone else's – aren't simple and straightforward responses to the available facts. Even if they are rather more grounded in reality than the anti-journalistic witterings of Peter King.

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Republican congressman says pregnancy rates from rape 'are very low' as lawmakers debate nationwide ban after 20 weeks

The House of Represenatives is girding itself for another wrenching debate on abortion after a House panel on Wednesday approved legislation that would ban almost all abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy.

The vote came after the bill's sponsor, Arizona Republican Trent Franks, generated another controversy during the committee debate when, in response to a Democratic amendment making an exception to the abortion ban in cases of rape and incest, he stated that incidences of rape resulting in pregnancy "are very low".

Democrats were quick to call the claim "astonishing" and compared the remarks to the claim by former congressman Todd Akin's that the female body was capable of stopping pregnancies in the case of "legitimate rape".

Several recent court decisions have struck down similar state laws, and the GOP-backed bill has little future in the Democratic-led Senate, but the measure will give House conservatives a rare chance to reaffirm their social issue credentials.

The bill, named the "Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act," was approved by the House judiciary committee on a party-line 20-12 vote and could get a vote in the full House as early as next week.

House Republican leaders, concentrating on budgetary and jobs bills and investigating administration scandals, have largely avoided contentious social issues such as abortion, but anti-abortion conservatives have been spurred by the recent conviction of a Philadelphia abortion provider, Dr Kermit Gosnell, for killing three babies born alive at his clinic.

"The terrifying facts uncovered during the course of the trial ... and successive reports of similar atrocities committed across the country, remind us how an atmosphere of insensitivity can lead to horrific brutality," said the committee chairman, Bob Goodlatte.

Franks and others argued that there is evidence – a contention Democrats say is unproven – that foetuses can feel pain after five months, justifying a ban on later abortions.

Representative Zoe Lofgren said Franks's statement on rape was "astonishing", and Democrats quickly compared it to the statement of Todd Akin, whose campaign for a Senate seat in Missouri collapsed last year after he stated that the female body was capable of stopping pregnancies in the case of "legitimate rape".

Franks later said that what he intended to say was that later-term abortions, such as those banned under his bill, were rarely the result of rapes.

A federal court in May overturned a 20-week abortion ban in Arizona, saying that the law violated a woman's right to terminate a pregnancy before a foetus is viable. Viability is generally considered to start at 24 weeks.

Some nine other states have enacted similar bans and have faced court challenges.

The National Right to Life Committee said the other state laws and the Franks bill were based on an NRLC model drawing on evidence that the unborn have the capacity to experience pain. It noted that the 20-week post-fertilisation age used in these measures is equivalent to 22 weeks of pregnancy under a widely employed dating system.

The leaders of the House Pro-Choice Caucus, Louise Slaughter and Diana DeGette, both Democrats, said that at a time when voters wanted Congress to concentrate on jobs and the economy, "the House majority has instead once again decided to reignite its war on women".

Democrats pointed out that all 22 Republicans on the judiciary committee were men.

The bill does provide for an exception to save a pregnant woman whose life is endangered by a physical illness arising from the pregnancy, but Republicans rejected Democratic amendments to expand those exceptions to include rape, incest or non-pregnancy-related illnesses.