Happy Valentine’s Day, hearts and flowers for all! (Sorry about the double dose of Cheneys.)

Kiss The Girl from The Little Mermaid and Bella Notte from Lady And The Tramp.

The biggest problem with 21st Century Conservatism isn’t so much that so many 21st Century are running around like absolute morons. No, the problem is that they are proud to be running around like absolute morons. Examples, of course, abound. But few spectacles illustrate the point more luridly than the Utah House of Representatives deciding to, essentially, stick an ostrich feather up its collective ass and wiggle it around in what it fondly imagines to be an insulting manner at Science.

We can learn something from how China is reacting to the recession — with quick and massive stimulus that is succeeding in creating jobs and growth.

The year was 2003, and in March it was the dot.com bust. Today we can look back in horror at U.S. investors buying into nothing more than creative business plans in droves, burying technological adventurers in millions. At the time, venture capital was desperately seeking any promising startup with a website to plunge investor funds into.

Among all the other reporting on Rahm’s central position on issues best left to the Attorney General, it appears he’s trying to craft a deal with Lindsey Graham on where and how to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

Remind me. Didn’t Rove and the Bush White House get in trouble for this kind of tampering with DOJ issues?

In an interview in the summer of 1965, McGeorge Bundy, who as Lyndon Johnson’s national security adviser was an architect of the major U.S. escalation in Vietnam then just getting under way, was asked how the actual conduct of American diplomatic affairs differed from his perception of it when he was a dean at Harvard. Bundy replied that the first thing that stood out was “the powerful place of domestic politics in the formulation of foreign policies.”

It’s not a statement that should surprise, and yet it does. It surprises because presidents and their senior aides so seldom make this admission on the record. Sometimes they’re reluctant to admit even to themselves that their decisions in foreign affairs could be affected by cynical partisan maneuvering, by legislative agendas, by election-year imperatives, by careerism. Instead they rush to proclaim fidelity to that favorite adage of politicians first articulated by Daniel Webster during the War of 1812: “Even our party divisions, acrimonious as they are, cease at the water’s edge.”

If we do see a jobs bill from the Senate, the main component (accounting for 87% of the spending at this point) would be the Schumer-Hatch job creation tax credit. This would give businesses a break on their half of payroll taxes (6.2% of salary) for every worker they hire in 2010 who has been unemployed at least 60 days. It would also offer incentives – $1000, I believe – for every year the employee remains with the company beyond 2010. The projected cost is $13 billion dollars.

If it wants to win this argument, doesn’t the Obama administration have to make an argument about why the military commissions are inappropriate for the 9/11 conspirators?

Last summer, the New Hampshire legislature approved a Marriage Equality law and the governor signed it. The law took effect on January 1, 2010.

Even before the law took effect, there were moves to repeal it.