Today in Talking Points: Special Valentine’s Day edition

A special Valentine’s Day edition of Today in Talking Points:

• Washington state Governor Christine Gregoire signed marriage equality into law on Monday. The Evergreen State is the seventh to recognize and allow gay marriage.
• The Washington Secretary of State’s Office has revised its designation of the ballot referendum against marriage equality after mistakenly assigning it a number already used.
• Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum faced protests as he denounced Washington’s marriage equality law during an appearance in Tacoma.
• New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is next up in the gay marriage debate. He intends to veto a bill establishing gay marriage in the Garden State, despite public opinion in favor.
• Abbie Goldberg and Katherine A. Kuvalanka published an article on marriage equality for the Journal of Marriage and Family. Much of the February issue of JMF is dedicated to considering marriage.
• Columnist and poet Michael Kindt considers one of the studies published in the February JMF, about marriage and cohabitation.
• What is more romantic on Valentine’s Day than rape? Well, okay, that might seem a bit crude, but FOX News commentator Liz Trotta is suffering the slings and arrows of politics and general decency after arguing that women entering the military should expect to be sexually assaulted.
• Meanwhile, in Uganda, one Simon Lokodo, the Minister for Ethics and Integrity, raided a gay rights workshop in Entebbe. Workshop organizer Kasha Jacqueline Nabagesera reportedly escaped the raid and is still at large. Ugandan MPs are once again trying to increase legal penalties for being homosexual, though the death penalty is expected to be dropped from the bill.
• Two Catholic priests in Colombia are dead after allegedly hiring their own hitmen. Reports suggest one of the priests had contracted HIV, but relatives insist that the murders were part of an armed roberry, and Frs. Richard Piffano and Rafael Reatiga were not involved in a homosexual relationship.

The obvious question: What is an ‘honest rape’?

Sometimes it’s the little things. Like Ron Paul’s recent appearance on CNN’s Piers Morgan Tonight:

MORGAN: Here’s the dilemma, and it’s one I put to Rick Santorum very recently. I was surprised by his answer, although I sort of understood from his belief point of view that he would come up with this.

But it’s a dilemma that I am going to put to you. You have two daughters. You have many granddaughters. If one of them was raped—and I accept it’s a very unlikely thing to happen. But if they were, would you honestly look at them in the eye and say they had to have that child if they were impregnated?

PAUL: No. If it’s an honest rape, that individual should go immediately to the emergency room. I would give them a shot of estrogen or give them—

MORGAN: You would allow them to abort the baby?

PAUL: It is absolutely in limbo, because an hour after intercourse or a day afterwards, there is no legal or medical problem. If you talk about somebody coming in and they say, well, I was raped and I’m seven months pregnant and I don’t want to have anything to do with it, it’s a little bit different story.

But somebody arriving in an emergency room saying, I have just been raped and there is no chemical—there’s no medical and there’s no legal evidence of a pregnancy—

MORGAN: Life doesn’t begin at conception?

PAUL: Life does begin at conception.

So a question arises, and perhaps someone can help me out, here: What is an “honest rape”?

Anyone?

Please?

Asking the obvious question

Could someone please explain to me the following?

• How is it that a known serial adulterer being accused of asking his second wife, with whom he was cheating on his first wife, to open the relationship so that he could continue to bang the woman who eventually became his third wife, can reliably count the scandal as an asset among allegedly conservative family values voters?

What the hell is happening to American conservatives? I generally speculate something about neurotic tensions at the breaking point, but my conservative neighbors think that an unspeakably evil form of character assassination.

Just what is going on in Republican America?

The Secretary of Labor sez … well, okay, a former Secretary of Labor. But, yeah. A really smart guy, you know. Econ professor. That sort of thing.

Robert Reich explains the truth about the economy, or something like that. I mean, you know, whatever. But, still, you have seen it, right?

Republicans and Jobs (part 3)

Jim Morin states the obvious:

Jim Morin on the politics of employment; Miami Herald, August 11, 2011

Here is her spout ….

If there is one thing Americans should remember after this debt ceiling debate is over—accepting, of course, that we won’t remember anything important—it ought to be this bizarre yet apt cartoon from Rainer Hachfeld, via Cagle Post:

The magic of Herman Cain

To what degree is the maxim true, that there is no such thing as bad press? Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain may well be putting it to the test.

Recent days have witnessed what might be the official beginning of the public discourse debate about Herman Cain’s outlook on Islam and Muslims. The Hermanator has already challenged conventional wisdom by arguing that because of his race—i.e., black—we should vote for him because he takes the race card off the table against Obama. And then he went on to prove his point by arguing that President Obama is not a strong black man. When pressed, he acknowledged that he felt President Obama is not really a black man.

So there are plenty who have been watching with interest as Cain has repeatedly challenged conventional wisdom in terms of religious identity politics. Perhaps it comes down to the notion that Herman Cain is simply not going to win the GOP nomination, and it really does seem a safe bet.