Archbishop Desmond Tutu wrote movingly and powerfully about the wave of anti-gay hate that is sweeping his continent of Africa. His words, though, bring to mind the very same attitudes in many of our American religious and political leaders. If only there was an American Nobel Peace Prize laureate who spoke like Tutu. Wait — there is. If only there were two.

Chris Van Hollen (D-MA) sent out memo today, effectively saying the House will vote on the Senate health care bill in one week–on March 19th or 20th. Scheduling the vote would seem to indicate that the House Democratic leadership believes that they have the votes to pass the bill, even without dealing with Stupak’s gang.

Look at the sort of people Michael Chertoff thinks are terrorists or at least their fellow travelers: Keith Ellison, Arianna Huffington, and Kos. And, just for grins, Janet Napolitano. Meanwhile, quite a few home-grown right-wing terrorists have, unlike Keith Ellison, Arianna Huffington, and Markos Moulitsas, done things a good deal more sinister that merely using their First Amendment rights — but you’ll never hear about them on the evening news.

Time to Spring Forward!

Featuring music of Museum of Bellas Artes and We Are The World.

For some reason, a program that enjoys the support of overwhelming majorities of Democrats, independents, or Americans as a whole—slice it any way you like—has become synonymous with “hot potato.” No one wants to be the one who has to take the blame for killing it—but, bizarrely, absurdly, maddeningly, no one wants to be the one that gets the credit for passing it, either.

By now most of you have probably heard about Constance McMillen, the lesbian student who wanted to take her girlfriend to the prom, and her high school’s Solomon-like solution to this embarrassing dilemma:

David Brooks has been searching forever for a realistic, reasonable moderate Republican to keep the nation securely anchored in the comfortable middle of Brooks’ centrist cocoon, and in Barack Obama, he’s apparently found his man.

Glenn Beck’s rant last week wasn’t an attack on Christians in general, but part of a conversation between Roman Catholic bishops and their potential political allies in evangelical and LDS circles, saying “If you want to ally yourself with the LDS and evangelicals, you better clean up your own house first and deal with all those lefty peace-and-justice priests. We don’t need allies like that.”

Sign the petition — tell Congress to choose students over banks.