Given the landscape of the Sunday morning talk shows and the obvious awkwardness of the moment, it is a bit chuckle-inducing that the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre chose, of all people, that journalistic pit bull David Gregory from the liberal NBC for his “exclusive interview,” rather than, say, Chris Wallace on Fox. Gregory, naturally, isn’t the least bit embarrassed, but instead has taken to twitter like a schoolgirl, asking hither and yon, “What should I ask him?” Too bad he doesn’t try this novel approach each week; the results could hardly be worse.

But you really have to set your drink down when LaPierre says, in advance, that he wants to focus on “mental health,” which is kind of like Saddam Hussein saying he wants to share decorating tips. No sentient being on earth would give a rat’s ass what either of these two have to say on their chosen topics except, well, David Gregory.

Now some of you might laugh and consider this a silly reason for Mitt’s loss. I disagree. This is a very important thing to note. It is so important that it was the subject of the mainstream political press just five short years ago during the last Presidential campaign. Only that time the person not wearing a flag pin was Sen. Barak Obama. On Oct 4th, 2007 the Drudge report ran the story, “Obama Drops American Flag Pin.” It was then picked up by the national main stream media.

The exact same thing should happen here with Romney and Paul not wearing flag pins.

Dan Schultz, known online to many as “pastordan” at Daily Kos and Streetprophets, has put together a challenging book: Changing the Script: An Authentically Faithful and Authentically Progressive Political Theology for the 21 Century.

The WaPo continues its institutional whitewash of its Pay2Play scandal.

I saw Dana Milbank hovering for a few minutes at the back of the panel I was speaking on at America’s Future Now yesterday. He fills his word quota for the day by concluding that there were fewer people at this year’s conference and therefore less passion, but anyone who lived through the Clinton years should have been able to predict that if a Democrat won the White House most