From WFSB in Hartford, Connecticut:

EAST HAVEN, CT (WFSB) -

Hundreds of tacos were delivered to East Haven mayor Joseph Maturo's office Thursday afternoon.

The delivery was courtesy of Reform Immigration for America in protest to Maturo's statement that he "might have tacos" as way to improve relations with the city's Latino community.

Maturo made the comment just hours after four East Haven police officers were arrested by federal agents on charges they harassed and targeted Latinos in the city.

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In response to Burr Deming's Gay Marriage Opponent from Missouri

Those of us of a certain age grew up in an anti-gay environment so pervasive it never occurred to anyone that it was anti-gay. Gay rights were not considered controversial then. They were not considered at all.

When the issue was eventually raised, the response of many was the equivalent of sputtering incoherence. Of course the rankest perversion should segregated from the rest of society. How could anyone challenge such a basic idea?

- Burr Deming, January 26, 2012

I have never heard an intelligent argument for restricting the rights of gays to marry. They are all fraught with named fallacies and other explanations that defy reason and common sense.

This issue, in a very few years, will become tantamount to the slavery discussion, the right of white males to suppress women’s rights discussion, to the rights to decide what color one’s skin must be in order to cast a vote in America discussion.

Those who stay with the far right and continue to embrace obvious discrimination for this reason or that, will leave documented records of shame behind.

Robert Bork opposed the Civil Rights Act denouncing it as "an unwanted intrusion on the right of individuals to choose with whom to associate." He openly declared that barbers should not lose their rights to put up “Whites Only” signs in the Aryan windows of their own establishments.

You can still make a weak argument defending Bork’s stance today, but notice, I did not say “defending Associate Supreme Court Justice Bork’s stance.”

Those who openly embrace prejudice of any kind should be careful of the footprints they leave. Some of those trails will still be there for all to see, long after the oppression of gays is no longer considered enlightened and has otherwise vanished. We will remember the horror of a backward generation. And to remind us we will have the written words of traditional conservatives, sources of pride when written, and opinions they will wish to keep in the closet, but it will be too late, once the matter is settled. The information age will carry their message forward and show it to the next the generation: the general public, potential employers, their children, and whatever on-looking God they happen to embrace.

If I am wrong, just remember this: no one was ever shamed for renouncing prejudice.

John Myste also writes for his own site, where no one is shamed for renouncing prejudice. Please visit John Myste Responds

In response to Burr Deming's Gay Marriage Opponent from Missouri

Eventually, the argument against tolerance of gays was lost. The struggle turned to gay marriage. The astonished indignation at the very idea still spawns a stream of incoherence. It's hard for opponents to get past the how-dare-you stage into any sort of cogent presentation.

- Burr Deming, January 26, 2012

It is my humble opinion that the government really should not be involved in issuing or denying marriage licenses to ANYONE. It should be left up to houses of faith to marry folks, even when some various Christian faiths have found a way to justify the marrying of homosexual couples somewhere in the scriptures or their traditions. For those good folk that don’t proclaim a faith, I suppose a civil union can be enacted just like any other legal contract would be.

My personal take on the issue is that in this day and age many folks may argue the point with pseudo-legalities and pop-culture attitudes towards the subject, but that doesn't in any way change the FACT that marriage is supposed to be a sacrament, and as such in my Catholic faith it is one that can ONLY be fulfilled by the union of one woman and one man together under God. It is a matter of natural law and God's law.

To misappropriate the term “marriage” for such non-sacramental unions only further cheapens the meaning of the word and further deteriorates our language.

People can decry my backwardness or unenlightened thinking on the topic if they wish, but the fact of the matter is that marriage was intended for procreation and the perpetuation of our species in the most stable form possible. To broaden the term “marriage” to include any other iterations of involved people in the ceremony is to invalidate the meaning of the word and the sacrament that the word describes.

T. Paine occasionally contributes to FairAndUNbalanced.com in valiant but hopeless attempts to catch up with and correct Burr Deming's various liberal errors.

Although retired from his own conservative site, he remains well known as an opinion leader in his own right.

From the Guardian:

Russian police don't take kindly to opposition protesters – even if they're 5cm high and made of plastic.

Police in the Siberian city of Barnaul have asked prosecutors to investigate the legality of a recent protest that saw dozens of small dolls – teddy bears, Lego men, South Park figurines – arranged to mimic a protest, complete with signs reading: "I'm for clean elections" and "A thief should sit in jail, not in the Kremlin".

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Those of us of a certain age grew up in an anti-gay environment so pervasive it never occurred to anyone that it was anti-gay. Gay rights were not considered controversial then. They were not considered at all.

When the issue was eventually raised, the response of many was the equivalent of sputtering incoherence. Of course the rankest perversion should segregated from the rest of society. How could anyone challenge such a basic idea?

Classic conservatism, the libertarian variety, eventually turned things around. Why can't everybody leave everybody the hell alone?

Anita Bryant helped in that first step. When Dade County in Florida passed a law against discrimination on account of sexual orientation, she went ballistic. She had been a prominent public figure, but not at all political. At least not until then. She was a fairly popular singer who had become the popular spokesperson for Florida Orange Juice.

What these people really want hidden behind obscure legal phrases, is the legal right to propose to our children that theirs is an acceptable alternate way of life. I will lead such a crusade to stop it as this country has not seen before.

More than any other person in my memory, I really do believe Anita Bryant did more to advance the then fledgling cause of gay rights. Late night show hosts made fun of her. Dana Carvey seemed to model the Church Lady after her on Saturday Night Live. Her contribution was not within the war of ideas. It was image. Her image was that of a stern, moralistic, and vaguely repulsive individual. She turned the popular view from that of normal people who happened to be against perversion to that of a strange bunch of prissy prudes. Anita Bryant dropped from sight after time spent on her struggle for moralism contributed to the destruction of her marriage. Her supporters could not tolerate being led by a divorced woman.

Eventually, the argument against tolerance of gays was lost. The struggle turned to gay marriage. The astonished indignation at the very idea still spawns a stream of incoherence. It's hard for opponents to get past the how-dare-you stage into any sort of cogent presentation. The arguments against marriage equality, such as they are, have coalesced into variations of:

• The majority is against it.

• Tradition is against it.

• God is against it.

• Yuk!

Occasionally, we'll see a creative new argument emerge from the fertile minds of opponents of equality. One prominent traditionalist suggested that gay sex is so good, it feels so much better than anything heterosexual, that the species will disappear if gay equality is allowed.

The arguments against equalities for gays are losing their appeal. In fact, they are inherently weak enough so that a prominent legal group hired by Republicans in Congress to argue the case before the Supreme Court finally gave up and resigned from the case.

The majoritarian reasoning seemed pretty strong at first, at least to those proposing it. But it suffered from the same fate as Mitt Romney's electability argument. It was circular logic. Voters should be against gay marriage because voters are against gay marriage.

Tradition was weakened by any knowledge of history. The "thousands of years of tradition" argument had to be circumscribed a little by the realization that the tradition had included polygamy, slavery, and patriarchal dominance that was effective ownership of women by men. Advances in civil rights had also contributed to the weakening of that approach. Appeals to tradition had been exhausted by over-exercise in the defense of slavery, segregation, the denial of voting rights, and the dilution of civil rights. If it was traditional to hurt people for no other reason than tradition, then tradition had to be wrong.

Extreme religious literalists brought up Leviticus, among other passages. The argument was discredited by theocracies that went from early European inquisition to more recent Ayatollah ruled lands of the Middle East. The fact that scripture also forbade the eating of shellfish, and promoted slavery and the execution of disobedient children became almost an afterthought as religious fanaticism brought down buildings and killed people in 2001.

But, with a growing majority of Americans favoring marriage equality, we still have fading resistance.

Last year, new Congressional Representative Vicky Hartzler, a Republican from here in Missouri, made her case against gay equality in marriage. She spoke to the Eagle Forum in Washington, DC.

Her argument was not so much in defense of any traditional definition as it was for having any definition at all. She was responding to arguments that, as far as I can tell, are not being made. "Well, think about it. That starts you down the road to opening up licensure to basically meaning that the license would mean nothing." She brought up examples.

• Polygamy
  "If you just cared about somebody, have a committed relationship, why not allow one man and two women or three women to marry? There are a lot of people in this country that support polygamy. Wny not? They’re committed to each other. Why should you care? Why not allow group marriage? There are people out there who want that."

• Incest
  "Well, is that the best policy? Why not allow an uncle to marry his niece?"

• Pedophilia
  "Why not allow a 50-year-old man to marry a 12-year-old girl if they love each other and they’re committed?"

• Unconstitutional Infant Drivers
  "It’s not a right in the Constitution as far as that goes either. It’s not a right of… a 3 year old to be able to drive a car."

It was not a slippery slope Rick Santorum sort of argument. Anita Bryant famously went a little beyond most folks in her slippery slope imagination. "If gays are granted rights, next we’ll have to give rights to prostitutes and to people who sleep with St. Bernards and to nail biters."

Representative Hartzler does not seem to be arguing a man-on-dog or nail biting eventuality, although she did include, "So pretty soon if you don’t set parameters, you don’t have any parameters at all. The license means nothing, marriage means nothing." Still, hers is more a reductio argument. If you are going to defend this, why not apply the same argument to that?

The answer seems to have been established in the public mind. Each of the eventualities she mentions presents serious issues that gay marriage does not. If you oppose allowing children to make serious adult decisions, if you see health considerations in incest, and contractual exploitation inherent in multi-partner marriage, you can oppose polygamy, incest, and pedophilia and still be for gay rights to marriage. You can favor marriage equality for gays without any self-contradiction.

Vickey Hartzler is not entirely without opposition. County Prosecuting Attorney Teresa Hensley has announced for the Democratic nomination. Her website does not mention a position on gay rights. It could be she sees more pressing national problems in joblessness and the economy. But she does have a reputation of convicting child abusers. Presumably, that would answer one of Hartzler's objections to gay marriage.

"The government has set some parameters," says Representative Vickey Hartzler. Presumably, a more rational set of parameters is on the way.

[Correction: Quotation marks placed around ... you know ... quotes]

The three most important presentations of the post-apocalyptic Newt, the Newt of the latest resurrection, presented a contrast that did not become clear until the Obama State of the Union. Newt could have taken a winning lesson from Bob Burns. Not Robert Burns the poet. Rather, Bob Burns the early radio comedian. He was known through much of his career as the Arkansas Philosopher. Bing Crosby made him famous.

Newt's two debate performances in South Carolina, the exhibition matches that brought him unexpected victory in the state, were pugnacious, in-your-face. He was spoiling for a fight, ready for challenges to his ethics, an angry ex-wife, a financial history, and political condemnation. He turned it all around, spun it, and threw it in the face of several surprised journalists and one shocked and awed Mitt Romney.

The audience went wild.

In Florida, the contrast was palpable. The new king of the hill, the front runner, the winner in the making, was calm, collected, and master of the Ali shuffle in early rounds. Rope-a-dope was the new rule as Mitt flailed angrily, stumbling over his words. Newt won two debates in South Carolina by ... well ... winning. He was victorious in one debate in Florida by not losing. He won Tampa on points. It could have been a knockout.

But there was something missing. The next day, Newt himself supplied the answer. Reuters provides the account.

Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich, coming off one of his most subdued debate performances of the campaign, signaled on Tuesday he may skip future debates unless his supporters are given full license to clap, cheer and roar.

Yeah, that was it. CCR wasn't there. Television viewers in South Carolina hadn't needed prompting from expert commentary following each debate. The studio audience offered their own spontaneous instruction. We often take our cues from those around us, an effect put to use in countless situation comedies. What actor René Auberjonois once described sarcastically as "hilariously dysfunctional families" become palatable because of an audio signal that tells the audience what is funny.

It was largely discovered through the accidental efforts of Bob Burns on Bing Crosby's popular radio show in the mid-1940s. Bing grew tired of occasional production mistakes and the multiple daily broadcasts that were needed to fill different time zones with live radio. He looked for reliable recording mechanisms. During one pre-broadcast warmup by "the Arkansas Philosopher" Bob Burns entertained the studio audience with a few off color farm stories. Crosby ended up with some great experimental recordings that the bosses insisted not be used on air. Too racy.

So the studio sliced and diced them, much as Andrew Breitbart might today when targeting a potential smear victim. Bob Burns was spliced out, and only periods of laughter were left in. The laughter was then spliced into other recordings that were to be aired. Listeners at home were treated to the illusion of very strong audience reaction to mediocre scripting. Those at home laughed along. It must be funny. Listen to the studio audience.

In Tampa, NBC News moderator Brian Williams surprised everyone by warning the audience to keep their reactions to themselves. They pretty much obeyed the sit-on-your-hands orders. Williams must have a stronger face-to-face persona than is apparent on screen.

I have to wonder whether Newt dialed down, way down, his mad-as-hell-and-I'm-not-gonna-take-it-anymore approach in adapting to the new enforced mood of blankness. The only ambient sound during the debate was that of one hand clapping. No magic moments. No volcanic eruptions. No Guns of Navarone cannon fire. Just Newt brushing off Mitt as Mitt tried to mimic fierceness. No more Mister Nice Mitt. Bare knuckles. Taking the mitts off.

The Newt strategy of calm in the storm, strength through blessed assurance, was probably the best tactic. Let Mitt swing at him until exhausted. But it would have been more exciting with a more robust audience.

Watching Obama confront Congress with accompanying cheers, ovations, and closeup reactions, it struck me that he could have been as effective with a silent audience. Or no audience.

Maybe.

The President uses that environment of audience reaction. He clearly enjoys it. The former Speaker needs it to breathe.

Newt would for sure have done better with sound and fury in the background. The audience is his group debate partner. It is his Ride of the Valkyries. It serves as a reinforcement for Republican television viewers, those preparing to vote. Man, that Newt sure takes it to Obama. Listen to the hollering from the audience.

If Newt Gingrich finds a way to replay the grand Tampa episode of Mortal Kombat, he might consider the invention that came from the off-color stories of Bob Burns on the Bing Crosby show of the 1940s.

An audience might not even be necessary. Newt might get by with just a laugh track.

It has got to be infuriating, listening to irresponsible leftists as they play the success-baiting card. Those who pull themselves up by their bootstraps, or who seek to pass their achievements on to their children, find themselves vilified. It is bad enough when the instigators are non-achievers. When such critics are joined by those who just plain ought to know better, it must be galling.

Mitt Romney is among those stung by unexpected criticism. But he is not the only target. Those who have earned their way to the top have an understandable counter resentment toward those who articulate class resentment. And the frequent object of that wealthy resentment is the senatorial candidate who is among the most articulate of critics.

Elizabeth Warren seems never to have a bad moment. From the beginning, she has put perfect lyrics to the rumbling music of those who perceive a radical tilt against them in what has become a harsh economic struggle. In the viral video that has defined her in the popular mind, she begins by denying to the achievers, the job creators, unshared credit for what they have built.

You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear: you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did.

Then she goes further. The social contract is not simply to the benefit of those in need. It is to a future of achievement.

Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea? God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.

The frustration has to gnaw at conservative political messengers. The public not only doesn't seem to get that the accumulation of wealth benefits everyone, that those who produce should enjoy the results of their success without the disturbance. They also do not see the ironic fact that at least some of those who carp at the engines of success are the very beneficiaries of the system, direct beneficiaries.

And Elizabeth Warren is most definitely among those who have benefited. She is a millionaire several times over. A couple of months ago, Politico itemized some of the sources of her income: A healthy Harvard salary, substantial consultant fees, investments, property income, book advances, the list goes on. She is not among the most wealthy, but she brings in more than most folks can hope for. In 2009, her income was more than half a million dollars.

So the campaign staff of her Republican opponent, incumbent Massachusetts Senator, Republican Scott Brown, are understandably perplexed. And, as Mitt Romney has famously remarked, what is good for the goose is good for the gander.

Brown's campaign manager expressed a bit of that feeling in an email last week. Jim Barnett was responding to questions from Boston columnist Brian McGrory. Part of his message dealt with hypocrisy:

Professor Warren has a bad habit that is not uncommon among holier than thou elitists, namely engaging in the same sort of behavior that they look down on others for.

It is a recurrent theme among conservative supporters of the incumbent. They are mystified, and a little resentful, that she is not the target of the same sort of anger she channels toward the top 1%. How can she possibly be thought to speak for the other 99%?

The responses have a constant theme:

I don’t begrudge her own personal wealth. I begrudge her hypocrisy of trying to play the demagogue against those who have achieved and who have created wealth.

- Rick Manning, Americans for Limited Government

Her poll-tested campaign rhetoric simply doesn’t match reality as voters learn more about who Elizabeth Warren really is.

- Brian Walsh, National Republican Senatorial Committee

The easy dismissal of the Warren message reflects a basic assumption that seems to be held in common by conservative pundits, conservative blog writers, conservative politicians, conservative campaign managers, conservative contributors, and ... well ... conservatives. The conservative assumption is that all the Warren type rhetoric is simply window dressing. The real meaning is pure and simple class resentment bordering on an irresponsible call to war on wealth.

If a new French style revolution against the aristocracy is in the offing, albeit absent the executions, but still with Elizabeth Warren as Robespierre-in-the-making, then the hypocrisy charge is understandable.

The alternate possibility, the one unconsidered by her critics, is that the growing popular sense is at a somewhat different angle: that the chads are uniformly being counted toward the wealthy, that the playing field is tilted at a crazy imbalance, that the game itself is often rigged.

A reasonable case can be made that accelerating income disparity dates to the beginning of traceable policy changes rather than to accelerating merit of the upper part of the upper class of the uppermost of the upper income elites.

If the popular mood reflects a growing fury toward all who are wealthy, all who have pulled themselves up, all who have money in the bank and a mortgage paid, and plenty of food on the table, then the campaign against Elizabeth Warren will generate a torch and pitchfork march to her very own ornate door. She will lose any electoral contest as soon as voters learn of her own well-to-do economic status.

But if, instead, the hostility is toward what is seen as increasingly unfair rules of the road, if that anger is aimed at those who defend the unfairness, then conservative attacks against a wealthy critic of that very unfairness will fall to the ground as would the drops of a gentle spring rain as they bounce off the windows of Elizabeth Warren's spacious home.

My best guess is the second possibility. The conservative campaign against the person who may well become Senator Warren is misplaced, ineffective, and doomed.

Like so many things that ought to be true, it probably isn't. Still, it is the stuff of lore. No, not my prediction. We haven't gotten to that yet.

The story is that, through some accident, a misprint, a botched instruction, an edition of the Old farmer's Almanac carried an insane prediction of a horrible snowstorm in the middle of summer. In a freak meteorological event, the snowstorm actually happened, and a reputation for the phenomenal accuracy of the publication became cemented in the public mind.

The Old farmer's Almanac became a household necessity.

The locale varies. It is Boston, California, other places. The timeline goes all over. The earliest is 1780 (that would be Boston). The Snopes website, responsible for debunking many popular myths, took a swing at this one. They found an early reference in The Vermont Gazette of Bennington, from January 21 1823.

It is said that, while the celebrated veteran of the Type, Isaiah Thomas, was printing his Almanac for the year 1780, one of the boys asked him what he should put opposite of the 18th of July, Mr. T. being engaged, replied, "any thing, any thing," the boy returned to the office and set rain hail and snow. The country was all amazement -- the day arrived when it actually rained, hailed and snowed violently. From that time Thomas' Almanacs were in great demand.

It is a sad, very sad, fact that snopes found no instance of a summer snowstorm that corresponded to a Farmer's Almanac prediction that they were able to document. Doesn't mean they didn't miss a snowfall or an issue. But they are pretty thorough.

A shame, really. Especially since it would have made a really good introduction to a retrospective analysis of the collapse of the Romney campaign. No, not George in 1968. Rather his son, the self-described street person who, in Horatio Alger style, raised himself by his bootstraps and sheer dint of true capitalistic mindset.

The moral of the story would have been this: If you make enough predictions, you're bound to hit one. Witness Nostradamus, although that predictor of catastrophe had the foresight from his gift of prophesy to make his forecasts more obscure than snowstorms on specific dates. Still, it is possible that Hitler had a sister named Hister.

The real, actual, satisfactual story of the Romney collapse is not that Mitt is not likable. He isn't, but those whose analysis includes that are way off, although the writing is very very good.

It isn't about the expanded role of money due to a wayward Supreme Court. That happened (and the writing is superb), but the real story lies elsewhere.

No, it's not about how Newt's grandiosity was not exploited by Romney or about how Romney took over Virginia through strange electoral rules, entertaining and well written though that might be. It won't be the deliberate disfranchisement of legitimate voters by Republican legislators.

Okay, okay. All those bits of analysis came from one source. But there are others besides me. A quick glance at Taegan Goddard has enough examples to forestall any further work at research.

John Heilemann talks about a coming meltdown of the GOP establishment as it considers a hobbesian choice between an unelectable Mitt and an unelectable Newt, with disastrous effects downline on the ballot. Politico speculates that Newt's momentum and Romney's lack of personality may overcome money and organization. Michael Steele believes conservatives want to hold up a final victor until their collective voice is heard.

Jonathan Chait thinks Newt might make it a contest if he can get enough money. Andrew Sullivan thinks Republicans "are just not into" Romney and he happens to be a truly awful candidate. Brad Phillips wonders if maybe Newt is doing Romney a favor, getting his ex-wife to keep Bain out of the headlines until Romney can claim the nomination.

All right in their little ways. But all miss the real deal.

The true story of the Republican primary campaign will not have been that Romney was beaten. Romney's only hope has been to stay balanced on the razor's edge long enough, keeping his opponents dividing the predominant opposition of the party base itself toward anything the spelling of which begins with "Mitt". He could not maintain that delicate equilibrium for long. The edge has turned into a pin, and Mitt Romney is left sitting with no place to put his feet.

The contest has always been between those who wanted to carry the torch that would light the kindling beneath the stake to which the "moderate" is tied. It looks now like Newt is the winner of that primary, the only real primary. We'll know for sure when Santorum sinks beneath the waves.

I didn't know which member of the extreme conservative wing would win. But I predicted the victory way back before anyone announced.

That makes me the winning prognosticator, right?

Introduction, Traditional Service, January 22, 2012
St. Mark's United Methodist Church in Florissant, MO

 Every member of the human family 
 has known pain. 
 We have all walked 
 through the valley of shadows. 
 We have lived times of unspoken despair. 
 
 But we are lifted. 
 Every day we experience God’s love. 
 And we have learned of the irreducible value 
 that is hidden deep in us, 
 and in every human soul. 
 
 In a world of darkness, 
 we carry a beacon of Truth. 
 To every child of God, 
 we bring the message of Jesus. 
 
 You are worth dying for. 
 God is worth living for. 
 
 We know pain. 
 We also know love. 
 We are each a descendant of Abraham. 
 We cannot help but become a light to the world. 

Found on Line:
"Hymn of Promise" by Natalie Sleeth
Sung by TCCAT Choir
Taiwanese Christian Church Association in Toronto

From Tim O'Reilly at Google+:

I was pleased to see the measured tone of the White House response to the citizen petition about #SOPA and #PIPA

https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#/!/response/combating-online-piracy-while-protecting-open-and-innovative-internet

and yet I found myself profoundly disturbed by something that seems to me to go to the root of the problem in Washington: the failure to correctly diagnose the problem we are trying to solve, but instead to accept, seemingly uncritically, the claims of various interest groups. The offending paragraph is as follows:

"Let us be clear—online piracy is a real problem that harms the American economy, and threatens jobs for significant numbers of middle class workers and hurts some of our nation's most creative and innovative companies and entrepreneurs. It harms everyone from struggling artists to production crews, and from startup social media companies to large movie studios. While we are strongly committed to the vigorous enforcement of intellectual property rights, existing tools are not strong enough to root out the worst online pirates beyond our borders."

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From the Star Tribune, Minneapolis, MN:

Weeks after she was publicly ousted as Senate majority leader, Sen. Amy Koch has spent a lot of time in private, thinking about her future and even becoming a little defiant about the notion that her political career is over.

In fact, she says she may run for re-election.

Breaking her silence, Koch is defending her decision to stay in the Senate after a sex scandal with a subordinate threw her caucus into chaos over the holidays...

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• Just before Texas Governor Rick Perry fled the Presidential race, Manifesto Joe of Texas Blues watched as he vowed to stay to the bitter end, and put the eye rolling and sad, sad head shaking into creative print.

• Dave Dubya reveals his own amazement at Newt's contrasting private and public values Has to do with family values preaching.

• Michael John Scott, first among equals at Mad Mike's America, reacts to Newt's debate explosion on the same topic.

• Jack Jodell at THE SATURDAY AFTERNOON POST listens to the Romney campaign. Good news. He finds a coherent message. Bad news: He finds the message singularly unattractive.

• Max's Dad listens to the GOP debate so you don't have to. He delivers a series of pithy blow-by-blow observations.

• Infidel 753 listens to the same debate and waxes a poetic rant. Hilarious.

• Jerry Critter at Critter's Crap finds a perfect answer in a cartoon. He reveals God's reason for sending this year's Republican choices.

• The Heathen Republican has his own conservative predictions about the GOP race.

• Rumproast captures Chuck Todd worried about Colbert for unfair humor. He makes a mockery of Republicans and journalism. Uh. How to react? ..... Duh?

• Chuck Thinks Right finds a goofy celebrity rant about the GOP being all about wealthy white guys. So he posts a photo of a black conservative. Case closed. Some of his best friends, and all.

• Tommy Christopher of Mediaite fame pays attention, capturing what others may miss. The President of the United States begins to sing in credible imitation of Al Green, and Tommy captures the moment.

• Nancy Hanks at The Hankster finds evidence of a growing movement of independent voters in Utah and Iowa.

• James Wigderson doesn't like the proposed recall of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker but, unlike Rush, he is impressed with the number of signatures.

• Slant Right's John Houk, in a rare lapse into good sense, finds himself joining us unpatriotic liberal hippies in opposing SOPA and PIPA, the misguided overreach in idea piracy prevention that went to censorship. He celebrates the victory. Our own "For Your Consideration" posts her own entertaining research here.

• Lydia McGrew at What’s Wrong with the World opposes organ donation, even from dead people, but finds herself reacting strangely at unexpected discrimination in choosing recipients.

• PZ Myers, writing for Pharyngula, listens to religious folks, is guided to a scriptural passage, and feels a little tricked. Bummer. Could be he just fell in with the wrong crowd. Maybe a change of spiritual setting?

• Speaking of which: At a school gathering, at Why do we have to do this, Sir? our erstwhile spiritual leader finds his badge of semi-honor is not believed by his young classroom.

• Jeffrey Anderson at Jeff's Fancy Blog finds things to be looking up, with a new song with a new lyric about pride, fall, and redemption. Life's lessons. You can hear it here. Not bad.

• Vincent of A wayfarer's notes is back. Yaayyyy. He offers a literary mashup of song and story. A treat, as always.

via Hal Holbrook