Mitt Romney and Rick Perry get into at the CNN debate on October 18 and the crowd was not a fan.

This video is unreal. Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush debate who is nicer to immigrants at a 1980 presidential debate hosted by the League of Women Voters.

Hat tip to the National Day Laborer Organizing Network for unearthing this clip.

Joe Biden, appearing on The View today, reacted to members of the audience booing Stephen Hill, a gay U.S. Army soldier, at the last Republican presidential debate.

How much do you want to bet Rick Perry was hoping for a death penalty question just so he could hear some cheers?

The Environmental Protect Agency is frequently the recipient of many “abolish” threats at GOP presidential debates and candidate events. It is an agency — not a federal department, Herman Cain — that finds itself “under siege” from White House aspirants and a hostile Congress.

The Environmental Protection Agency is “under siege” from a Congress bent on cutting its budget and blunting its responsibilites to science, two former Enviornmental Protection Agency directors who served under Republican presidents wrote in a Washington Post op-ed Friday.

“Today the agency President Richard Nixon created in response to the public outcry over visible air pollution and flammable rivers is under siege,” Christine Todd Whitman, EPA administrator under George W. Bush, and William D. Ruckelshaus, administrator under Nixon and Reagan, wrote.

“[W]e have observed firsthand rapid changes in scientific knowledge concerning the dangers posed by particular pollutants, including lead additives in gasoline, benzene and the impact of contaminants on our drinking-water supply. In each of these cases, the authority of our major environmental statutes was essential to protect public health and the most vulnerable members of our society, even in the face of remaining scientific debate.”

Whitman and Ruckelshaus also took aim at Republican efforts to defund the EPA, a move they said would “impede its ability to protect our air and water.”

Richard Nixon stands beside William Ruckelhaus, the EPA's first administrator, as he is sworn in.

Whether it is questioning the validity of evidence supporting climate change or outright inventing “Obama’s EPA” boogeymen for policies put in motion by the Bush administration, Republicans love to cast the EPA as a problem child.

It wasn’t always this way. There was a time when conservation was part of the Republican ethos. Richard Nixon, no liberal by any means, created the EPA in 1970 with bipartisan support.

Those days are long gone.

Ronald Reagan, while serving as Governor of California, was a “serial tax raiser.”

As governor of California, Reagan “signed into law the largest tax increase in the history of any state up till then.” Meanwhile,state spending nearly doubled. As president, Reagan “raised taxes in seven of his eight years in office,” including four times in just two years. As former GOP Senator Alan Simpson, who called Reagan “a dear friend,” told NPR, “Ronald Reagan raised taxes 11 times in his administration — I was there.” “Reagan was never afraid to raise taxes,” said historian Douglas Brinkley, who edited Reagan’s memoir. Reagan the anti-tax zealot is “false mythology,” Brinkley said.

However, today’s Republicans wouldn’t only “boo” Reagan’s mixed record on taxes but on a series of other issues.

In 1986, Reagan granted amnesty to undocumented immigrants under the Immigration Reform and Control Act.

As the nation’s attention turns back to the fractured debate over immigration, it might be helpful to remember that in 1986, Ronald Reagan signed a sweeping immigration reform bill into law. It was sold as a crackdown: There would be tighter security at the Mexican border, and employers would face strict penalties for hiring undocumented workers.

But the bill also made any immigrant who’d entered the country before 1982 eligible for amnesty — a word not usually associated with the father of modern conservatism. [...]

Peter Robinson, a former Reagan speechwriter, agrees. “It was in Ronald Reagan’s bones — it was part of his understanding of America — that the country was fundamentally open to those who wanted to join us here.”

Reagan said as much himself in a televised debate with Democratic presidential nominee Walter Mondale in 1984.

“I believe in the idea of amnesty for those who have put down roots and lived here, even though sometime back they may have entered illegally,” he said.

The debt ballooned during Reagan’s presidency.

And while Reagan somewhat slowed the marginal rate of growth in the budget, it continued to increase during his time in office. So did the debt, skyrocketing from $700 billion to $3 trillion. Then there’s the fact that after first pushing to cut Social Security benefits – and being stymied by Congress – Reagan in 1983 agreed to a $165 billion bailout of the program. He also massively expanded the Pentagon budget.

Stephen Hill, a gay soldier serving in Iraq with the U.S. Army, submitted a question about “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” to the Republican presidential debate, hosted by FOX News/Google, via YouTube.

The crowd proceeded to “boo” the soldier.

We must have missed the fine print on those bumper stickers from the 2004 campaign. They actually read: “Support (some of) the Troops!”