Lady Gaga — Born This Way, from the 53rd Annual Grammy Awards.

Chaz Bono will appear on the upcoming season of Dancing with the Stars, which is super cool. What’s not cool are some of the comments at ABC.com’s page announcing Season 13: Narrow minded folks are all het up over Chaz having undergone gender transition, and they are going on about the “gay agenda.” Oh puhleeeze.

President Obama has requested a joint session of Congress to address them on the issue of jobs creation. The time he chose for this speech is September 7th at 8 pm, which happens to be the exact same time as the next Republican Presidential primary debate.

There’s at least a plausible case to be made with this announcement that the Administration is focused on jobs, and considering the weak employment figures, it’s high time. But we shouldn’t throw all regulatory reviews out in the exchange.

The US has no problem with pressuring, even meddling in a country’s affairs, if only to get the outcome it desires—whatever will be best for US interests. Yet, it knows that it must consider all the variables, stick to talking points and not apply too much or too little pressure in order to achieve success in getting whatever the US wants from a country’s government.

It’s interesting to see the 2010 U.S. Census data sliced and diced to get a clearer picture of the changes going on in the U.S. For the fundies who still see Americans as a nuclear family – two opposite-sex married parents with 2.5 kids — they are longing for something that simply doesn’t exist in greater numbers than non-traditional families.

And on the subject of divorce, well, talk about w-r-o-n-g.

One of the world’s leading climate scientists, Michael Mann of Penn State, has been vindicated by the National Science Foundation. Almost no one noticed.

Tom Miller’s feewings are huwt. He doesn’t like how he’s being portrayed by those who have actually taken a look at how he’s been handling the 50-state “investigation” on foreclosure fraud. And he’s having his top deputy defend him to major media.

In a remarkable turn of events, the Department of Justice has elected to file a writ of mandamus to prevent Judge John Facciola from allowing Dan Choi to offer a “selective prosecution” or “vindictive prosecution” defense. The government elected to pursue federal charges against Choi and 12 others for chaining themselves to the White House fence on November 15, 2010 to protest Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

In the short period of time since Texas Governor Rick Perry officially joined the Republican President primary, every major polling operation has found him with a significant lead in their nationwide surveys.