And so New Hampshire comes one step closer to becoming the first state in the nation to institute civil unions for gay couples without direct order or threat from a state court. Marriage-like benefits are soon to be available to all citizens of New England states. Let’s party!

But, seriously, is this really an argument against gay marriage?:

Nevertheless, opponents of same-sex marriage look at what is going on in New England and express growing concern. “The more states that do this, the less radical and more plausible the idea may appear in others,” said Peter Sprigg, vice president for policy at the Family Research Council.

So the more states that adopt gay marriage, the more people may realize it’s actually, like, totally not a big deal? The horror!

My favorite part of the whole thing:

In fact, in strongly libertarian New Hampshire, a new bill that would make it the last state in the union to adopt a mandatory seat-belt law has generated far more controversy, political experts say.

It’s New Hampshire, baby!

UPDATE: This was pretty interesting:

In February, Rhode Island’s attorney general issued a landmark ruling that opened the door for residents there to legally marry in Massachusetts, effectively making it the second state to recognize same-sex marriage.

I didnt even hear about this! Battle won, controversy over, stick a fork in it, gay marriage is here.

While the Democratic debate last night came off as unsurprisingly uneventful, there was at least one question that got some attention today. Moderator Brian Williams had asked:

If, God forbid, a thousand times, while we were gathered here tonight, we learned that two American cities had been hit simultaneously by terrorists and we further learned beyond the shadow of a doubt it had been the work of al Qaeda, how would you change the U.S. military stance overseas as a result?

Over at National Review, Byron York apparently found Obama’s response too timid in its promise to use military force, while Clinton was more on the money (a view the Clinton camp is apparently advancing as well).

For clarification and context, Obama had said:

Well, first thing we’d have to do is make sure that we’ve got an effective emergency response, something that this administration failed to do when we had a hurricane in New Orleans…

The second thing is to make sure that we’ve got good intelligence, A, to find out that we don’t have other threats and attacks potentially out there; and B, to find out do we have any intelligence on who might have carried it out so that we can take some action to dismantle that network.

Senator Clinton responded:

I think a president must move as swiftly as is prudent to retaliate. If we are attacked and we can determine who was behind that attack, and if there were nations that supported or gave material aid to those who attacked us, I believe we should quickly respond.

I think the main issue with Obama’s response is that he (and Clinton, too, I suppose) answered the question assuming Williams was looking for the immediate presidential response. Obama elaborated and specified (not too light on those details, Barry!) insisting he’d: A) make sure we had an adequate emergency response to the victims, B) make sure there weren’t other potential attacks on the horizon, and then C) set-out to dismantle the terrorist network that planned and executed the attacks. Clinton, on the other hand, simply responded “I’d bomb some motherfuckers.”

But she wouldn’t. There was nearly a month long wait between 9/11 and Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, and that was back six years ago, when there actually was a country that “supported and gave material aid” to al-Qaeda. Nowadays there really aren’t any motherfuckers left to blow-up—ok, motherfuckers there may be, but no motherfucker-supporting nations with easily defined targets, and you don’t bomb motherfuckers one by one. No bombings were orchestrated after the July 2005 attacks on the London subway system and this is why—there really isn’t anybody left on which to drop some effing bombs, cowboy.

Obama’s response accurately and honestly described what a US president, any US president, be they Republican or Democrat (looking at you, Rudy) would do in the immediate aftermath of that terrible hypothetical; they’d deploy help and assistance to those who were attacked, they’d make sure there weren’t any other impending threats, then they’d go get the dudes who made the attack possible and take them out.

The long-lasting repercussions of a terrorist attack on an administration policy would obviously vary drastically from president to president (and perhaps this is the question Williams was really trying to ask), but the immediate response would almost universally be the same.

I refuse to concede that President Bush doesn’t have a true ideological heir in the current Republican field when you have Rudy Giuliani running around saying bullshit like this:

“I listen a little to the Democrats and if one of them gets elected, we are going on defense,” Giuliani continued. “We will wave the white flag on Iraq. We will cut back on the Patriot Act, electronic surveillance, interrogation and we will be back to our pre-Sept. 11 attitude of defense.”

He added: “The Democrats do not understand the full nature and scope of the terrorist war against us.”

After his speech to the Rockingham County Lincoln Day Dinner, I asked him about his statements and Giuliani said flatly: “America will safer with a Republican president.”

…

“This war ends when they stop coming here to kill us!” Giuliani said. “Never ever again will this country ever be on defense waiting for (terrorists) to attack us if I have anything to say about it. And make no mistake, the Democrats want to put us back on defense!”

Abortion-schmabortion. Gay marriage-splayfarriage. When we’re talking President Bush’s legacy, it’s all about torture, cronyism, blind hyper-partisanship, and an arrogantly authoritative governing philosophy. Rudy Giuliani’s got that locked up.

It’s genius! As the AP Reports:

Miss America can add crime fighter to her resume.

Lauren Nelson recently went undercover with police in New York for a sting targeting sexual predators.

Officers with Suffolk County’s computer crimes unit created an online profile of a 14-year-old girl that included photographs of Nelson as a teenager.

Forbidden sex! Young teenage girls! Naughty thoughts of Miss America as a sexually adventurous 14-year-old girl luring older men into her Long Island den of explicit sexual impropriety! And all in time for May sweeps?? It’s gold!

“The story was that they knew I was 14, and I told them I was cutting school to meet with them,” Nelson said. “I stood outside on the porch, and I would say, ‘Hi’ to them and wave them inside.”

Once she entered the home with the suspect, Nelson said, she left the room, and police and “America’s Most Wanted” host John Walsh confronted the suspect.

“That part was very scary, but the police were all over the place,” Nelson said. “I was nervous, of course, but it was a very controlled environment, very safe.”

I’m not sure any media sensation where the attempted sexual exploitation of children becomes a sure-fire, sexy ratings phenomenon can really be considered a “controlled environment.”

It’s becoming less and less frequent this election cycle, but I have to say I agree with McCain’s recent response to concerns over his rendition of “Bah Bah Bah, Bah Bomb Iran”:

“Please, I was talking to some of my old veterans friends,” he told reporters. “My response is, Lighten up and get a life.”

Some crazy dude at a campaign rally asks a potentially embarrassing, very angry question about the US sending an “airmail message to Tehran” and McCain responds by making a quick joke about the Beach Boys before going on to give a relatively sober answer about protecting our interests in the mid-east, Isreal in particular. The only thing reckless in the whole exchange is the crazy dude’s crazy question; McCain’s response made no reference to bombing Iran, thus directly contradicting the question’s premise, funny song notwithstanding.

Freaking out about this joke is the liberal equivalent of throwing a fit over John Edwards and his $400 haircut.

Potentially serious presidential candidate Tommy Thompson (not to be confused with that dude from Die Hard 2) has some interesting points on health care in George Will’s column this week:

In seven years, health care will, [Thompson] says, devour $4 trillion annually, which will be 21 percent of gross domestic product. It is, he argues, irrational to spend just 7 percent on prevention of sickness and 93 percent on treatment.

I’ll be the first to admit it’s pretty effing stupid, but, in a profit-driven health care system, it’s entirely rational.

Any free-market/capitalist system naturally favors increasing profits over, you know, not making money. A systematic emphasis on treatment yields years of continuous profits for health care providers—doctors and hospitals on up to pharmaceuticals—as sick people (and their insurance companies) need to pay big money just to stay healthy. Emphasizing prevention, on the other hand, not only prevents people from getting sick, it prevents them from paying health care companies. Not exactly in-keeping with that profit motive.

The only way to flip emphasis from treatment to prevention is to partially (if not fully) socialize the system, making health coverage a responsibility of the government, where the incentive will be reducing costs rather than boosting profits. Of course, without a profit-motive in place, we then run the risk of stifling the competitive drive for advancement in medicinal technology, a nice perk of the current system.

At the end of the day, that’s a trade-off I doubt Tommy T. will be willing to make, given the plaftorm of the party he’s running to lead. Call me skeptical.

My respect for the political acuity of John Edwards just got amped up a notch as he was somehow able to integrate recent revelations of a $400 haircut into a pretty compelling appeal to the working class:

“Everybody’s supposed to have a chance in the United States of America,” he said. “Why do we think people want to come here? That’s why they want to come here. They want to come here because people like me can come from nowhere, the son of a mill worker … and now be running for the president of the United States and pay $400 for a haircut.”

Now I doubt many blue collar workers are just holding out for that big break cause they really long for a good shampoo and a facial, but converting an embarrassing gaffe to a political boon doesn’t get much more impressive than this.

Although the story is (thankfully) not getting much heat in the mainstream press, a lot of chatter has been going on the past couple days regarding Barack Obama’s recent remarks at a campaign event on the day of the Virginia Tech Massacre—remarks in which the saintly Senator supposedly “compared” the massacre to the firing of Don Imus, the economic hardships of outsourcing, the loss of pension benefits, a lack of healthcare coverage, etc. Ben Smith got the ball rolling at Politico, Ann Coulter’s boyfriend picked it up on Slate, as did Isaac Chotiner at TNR, and of course Drudge shouted it out from the rooftops (although the mention no longer appears on the main page).

This appears to be the offending passage:

There’s also another kind of violence though that we’re gonna have to think about. It’s not necessarily physical violence but that the violence that we perpetrate on each other in other ways. Last week, the big news, obviously, had to do with Imus and the verbal violence that was directed at young women who were role models for all of us, role models for my daughter.

…

There’s the violence of men and women who have worked all their lives and suddenly have the rug pulled out from under ‘em because their job has moved to another country. They’ve lost their job, they’ve lost their pension benefits, and they’ve lost their health care and they’re having to compete against their teenage children for jobs at the local fast food place paying $7 an hour.

Taken out of context like this, I can see how Obama’s comments may come across as bizarre or strained. But looking at the full transcript, and watching segments of the actual speech online, it’s clear the criticism is, at best, misguided.

The key passage in Obama’s remarks, the one that best contextualizes his discussion of “violence” and best conveys his thoughts on the tragedy, is actually quite moving:

[T]here’s a lot of different forms of violence in our society and so much of it is rooted in our incapacity to recognize ourselves in each other—to not understand that we are all connected that we are all connected, fundamentally, as a people…And that those who may not look like me, or talk like me, or worship the same god that I do, are nevertheless worthy of respect and dignity and a sense of common humanity.

I’m tired of pundits inferring supposed false “comparisons” in political remarks, as if looking for a connection between societal issues or concerns inevitably means you’ve equated the two (nevermind the fact that, when Obama actually does compare the events, he says the level of tragedy is, well, non-compareable).

Obama, in this speech, defined a certain societal ill—our incapacity to recognize ourselves in each other—and applied it to a number of political concerns (racism, economic insecurity, lack of health care, etc.) that “may not surface to the same level of the tragedy,” as he put it, but are nevertheless related in their cause.

The political punditry at large (as best exemplified by lazy analysts like Brendan Nyhan) seems to be under the impression that Obama’s tendency, and unique ability, to explain America’s problems through the use of broad themes is something that will hamper him during the upcoming primary, particularly with regards to blue-collar Democratic voters (a contention I just can’t understand). But watching a clearly shaken Obama address an attentive and appreciative audience in the midst of a national tragedy, nobody can doubt his sincerity.

Slate offers up a pretty stirring and incredibly fascinating look at the role of online social networking in yesterday’s tragedy:

MySpace holds a central position in this drama. This morning, it was noted on Fark.com that the shooter identified by police, Cho Seung-Hui, did not have a presence on MySpace—another sign of his outcast status. There’s a two-fold disappoinment at this fact. For the angry, no way to leave a flaming message (or worse). For the media, it’s as if his MySpace page would have held the key to his motive, as if the online life of college students is where they hide their true selves.

The article links to a number of facebook memorial pages created in memory of some of the victims, including this group for sophomore Caitlin Hammaren, the creator of which wrote this firm yet very gracious note directed at what appears to be a somewhat overaggressive press:

To those reporters who have been trying to contact me: I would love to help, however I have put this group up as a memorial to my neighbor and friend, Caitlin. I did not realize doing so would result in so much support, and it would be wrong of me to go any further with this and supply you guys with information and photos of Caitlin without the consent of her parents.

To those members who read this: if you want to talk to some of these reporters (look in discussion board) feel free to express any feelings or memories of Caitlin, I would just appreciate if you kept in mind her family. I do not know if even having this page would be ok with them, so until I talk to them, please do not share any personal information or anything that you would think might offend/upset her family. Thank you.

Another facebook memorial here, for freshman Emily Hilscher, which too included a rebuke of the press.

President Bush’s recent response to the Virginia Tech shootings makes me wish we had some sort of parliamentary/non-executive system wherein the Head of State is a separate office from the Head of Government.

President Bush, yesterday:

Schools should be places of safety and sanctuary and learning. When that sanctuary is violated, the impact is felt in every American classroom and every American community.

Today our nation grieves with those who have lost loved ones at Virginia Tech. We hold the victims in our hearts, we lift them up in our prayers, and we ask a loving God to comfort those who are suffering today.

How can someone so eloquent in the face of national grief be so utterly incompetent when it comes to actually running the country?

Despite overwhelmingly positive reviews, an endorsement from the greatest documentary filmmaker of all time, and an Academy Award nomination, I just couldn’t bear to get through this movie; I think we shut it down about 15 minutes in.

An even handed portrayal of contemporary American evangelicalism? Sure. Valuable insight into a potent American political movement? Looks like it. But any documentary featuring a woman whose only wish is for the christian youth of our country to be as God-crazed as the sons of suicide bombers and 9/11 hijackers isn’t one I’m going to be able to stomach.

“I’m rich now, just like you people!“