In case you needed a dose of depressing news today, here’s some for you: Research site Floating Sheep’s built a map of homophobia, racism, and ableism across the United States in the form of geotagged tweets. It’s about as horrifying as you’d expect, and this doesn’t even include accidental or comedic references to any of this stuff. This map is only straight-up intentional instances of hate.

This all stems back to an earlier Floating Sheep project where they connected President Obama with racial slurs, but this time they’ve really outdone themselves. How do they know this data is only representative of intentional hate? They had a group of Humboldt State University students sort through them all and discard any that weren’t considered derogatory. Floating Sheep’s detailed all their methodology here, and it’s a fascinating and recommended read.

The map itself gets pretty granular, letting you highlight only certain specific slurs or kinds of discrimination. It goes from “some hate” to “most hate” with light blue being the former and bright red being the latter. The gray everywhere else just means there wasn’t any geotagged tweets for whatever specific discrimination is currently being presented.

This obviously isn’t representative of all discrimination on Twitter since not every tweet gets geotagged, but it’s illuminating nonetheless.

The Republican Party’s post-2012 introspection has focused principally on America’s growing Hispanic population and how the GOP can capture larger percentages of the Hispanic vote, but Republicans aren’t sitting back on their heels when it comes to other groups that conservatives have traditionally struggled with.

African-Americans turned out at the polls at much higher rates in 2008 and 2012 than in previous elections. As Jamelle Bouie writes, President Obama’s vote margin in Ohio “can be explained solely by higher black turnout.” And while it’s possible that this could be due to the historic nature of President Obama’s candidacy, the Republican National Committee sounds like they’re treating increased participation in the political process by the black community as a permanent trend.

This week, the RNC brought Amani Council on board to be Director of African American Communications. “It’s a new position,” Council tells Townhall. “I’m not filling anyone’s shoes. I’m basically going out to get African-Americans engaged on a level which they haven’t been in a really long time.”

Who could make a free-throw after just finding out they have a long lost sibling?

Alabama attorney Jim Porter will be the new president of the National Rifle Association, CNN confirmed Wednesday.

Porter is set to take over for outgoing president David Keene on Monday, when his two-year term expires. The leadership change coincides with the NRA's annual meeting, which kicks off Thursday in Houston, Texas.

"At this stage in the NRA's history, Jim Porter will be the perfect match for president," Keene told the Washington Times' Emily Miller, who first reported the news. "As we are likely to win most of the legislative battles in Congress, we will have to move to courts to undo the restrictions placed on gun owners’ rights in New York, Connecticut, Maryland and Colorado."

Ron Paul, the former Republican congressman from Texas, penned a piece on libertarian writer Lew Rockwell‘s website today about the “military-style occupation” that took place in Boston following the bombing. Criticizing the “unprecedented move,” Paul suggested that occupation was as frightening — and perhaps more — than the attack itself.

The “forced lockdown,” “militarized police riding tanks,” and “door-to-door armed searches without warrant” were not, as Paul wrote, from “a military coup in a far off banana republic.” The scene took place in Boston after the recent attack — a taste of martial law.