One Town’s War on Gay Teens (Sabrina Rubin Erdely) from Rolling Stone Magazine
"In Michele Bachmann's home district, evangelicals have created an extreme anti-gay climate. After a rash of suicides, the kids are fighting back."
In the Contraception Furor, the Loud Voices of a Few Threaten Revolutionary Gains of All U.S. Women (Lisa Miller) from the Washington Post
"By conflating abortion and contraception in their rhetoric, and putting both in their sights, the ideologues in this new war are rolling back decades of medical and social progress and reverting to an era when all gynecological and obstetrical matters were yucky and bad — what my grandfather used to call “female trouble.” In an editorial this week in the Washington Examiner, Republican hopeful Rick Santorum used the words “abortion,” “contraceptive” and “sterilization” in the same sentence, as if they were interchangeable..."
Birth Control May Now be Wedge Issue Against GOP (Greg Sargent) from the Washington Post
"At his press conference this morning announcing the new shift in contraception policy, Obama said: “I understand that some folks in Washington may want to treat this as another political wedge issue. But it shouldn’t be.” The irony is that after this announcement, this very well may become a wedge issue — against Republicans."
Obama Birth Control Compromise Defuses Religion Issue (Dana Goldstein) from the Daily Beast
"The president made a common sense compromise—but the flare-up reveals an absurdity of America’s health-care system, where a woman’s boss is involved with her sex life."
The White House’s Convenient Contraception Controversy (Aaron Blake) from the Washington Post
"The White House’s decision to force Catholic hospitals to dispense emergency contraception was a hot topic at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Thursday. And that’s probably AOK with the Obama campaign."
Obama Punks the GOP on Contraception (Amanda Marcotte) from Slate
"The fun part of this is that Obama just pulled a fast one on Republicans. He drew this out for two weeks, letting Republicans work themselves into a frenzy of anti-contraception rhetoric, all thinly disguised as concern for religious liberty, and then created a compromise that addressed their purported concerns but without actually reducing women's access to contraception, which is what this has always been about. "
A Birth-Control Compromise Could Divide the Right (Irin Carmon) from Salon
"Obama's birth control move may have satisfied most sides -- and revealed the truth about the bishops' opposition."
Senate Dems Grow Optimistic About Obama Chances in 2012 from The Hill
"Senate Democrats are optimistic about President Obama’s chances of re-election and think he may have coattails this November. Just six months ago Democrats were worried Obama was on his way to a defeat that might also cost Democrats their majority in the Senate."
Those Mudslinging Republicans (Doyle McManus) from the Los Angeles Times
"At this point, the GOP looks more like a collection of warring tribes than a cohesive political force. Fiscal conservatives don't have much use for social conservatives. ... The long and relentlessly negative campaign is making all the GOP candidates less likable to independent voters, who will probably determine the outcome of this fall's general election."
Even At CPAC Conservatives Seem Despondent About 2012 Choices from Talking Points Memo
"The incredibly divisive Republican presidential primary has taken its toll on the mood at this year’s conference. Conversations with attendees tell the same story: none of the candidates has them all that stoked about the next 10 months."
Mitt Romney's Struggles Take Republican Angst To New Heights (Jon Ward) from the Huffington Post
"The angst within the Republican Party about Mitt Romney's candidacy has risen to such levels that some of the most experienced, influential members of the party are still talking about a late entry into the GOP primary."
I think you would have to be a heartless fiend to not have moments where you'd pity Romney and his team -- if for nothing else than the TENS OF MILLIONS of dollars they've spent trying to convince cranky GOP voters that they really ARE enraged and that they really DO hate that socialist-fascist in the White House, here knowing that once the nomination is secured they will have to run for the political center to have any chance of winning in November.
Rasmussen Tracking: Obama With A Ten Point Lead Over Romney from Talking Points Memo
"The Rasmussen tracking poll of a possible matchup between President Obama and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney shows Obama with a ten point lead in their polling."
The Crowd Pleaser (David Brooks) from the New York Times
"Mitt Romney seems to be trying to please everybody but has ended up pleasing few. Just what David Riesman would have called an other-directed man."
What the Self-Manufacturing of Romney Hath Produced (Charles P. Pierce) from Esquire Magazine
"The transformation is now complete. Willard Romney, my former governor, the man who campaigned here for the Senate and lost, and who campaigned for governor here and won, has fashioned himself into the most carefully manufactured fake in the recent history of American politics."
The First Principles of Rick Santorum (Molly Worthen) from the New York Times
"One dismissive reviewer of Santorum’s 2005 book, “It Takes a Family,” wrote in The Philadelphia Inquirer that Santorum is “one of the finest minds of the thirteenth century.” (An opponent once said the same of that other provocative Catholic conservative, William F. Buckley, Jr.) This is no insult: it is the heart of Santorum’s appeal to conservative evangelicals...."
Newt Gingrich Rips GOP Establishment at CPAC Conference (Howard Kurtz) from the Daily Beast
"Gingrich strikes a revolutionary tone at CPAC conference. Howard Kurtz on the stark contrast with Romney’s attempt to romance the right."
WORLD WAR I NUGGET11
Archaeologists Find the Bodies of 21 Tragic World War One German Soldiers in Perfectly Preserved Trenches Where They were Buried Alive by an Allied Shell from the Daily Mail [of the UK]
"The bodies of 21 German soldiers entombed in a perfectly preserved World War One shelter have been discovered 94 years after they were killed. The men were part of a larger group of 34 who were buried alive when a huge Allied shell exploded above the tunnel in 1918, causing it to cave in."
MEDIEVAL INVADER NUGGET!!
Invaders: Destroying Baghdad (Ian Frazier) from the New Yorker
"I wondered how a world figure like Hulagu could be so well known, apparently, in the far reaches of Asia, and the opposite of that here. I also wondered, in terms of simple fact, if it could be accurate to say that Cheney and Powell were worse than he."
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