Sarah Kiff at the Washington Post’s Wonkblog:

A majority of Catholics — 52 percent — … agree with the Obama administration’s decision to not exempt religious hospitals and universities from the provision. “Outside the political punditry, most Catholics agree with the administration on the issue,” says one Obama campaign official, explaining the view that this could be a political win.

And a lot of this likely isn’t about Catholic voters at all.

Rather, it may well be about the demographics that are most supportive of this particular health reform provision: young voters and women. In the PRRI poll, both groups register support above 60 percent for the provision.

No one but a cruel idiot or a heartless cyborg would force a dog to ride in kennel strapped to the top of a car for 12 hours, as Mitt Romney famously did in 1983. But a new report suggests that Mitt’s wife Ann may have lied to reporters about the ultimate fate of Seamus, the Irish Setter — reportedly according to her own sons:

Mitt Romney may not have told the whole truth about the scandalous tale of his Irish Setter, Seamus, being strapped to the roof of his car during a 12-hour family road trip to Canada. According to a trusted Politicker tipster, two of Mr. Romney’s sons had an off-record conversation with reporters where they revealed the dog ran away when they reached their destination on that infamous journey in 1983.

Mr. Romney’s wife, Ann, has previously said Seamus survived the trip and went on to live to a “ripe old age.” As of this writing, Mr. Romney’s campaign has not responded to multiple requests for comment on this story.

Last month, another aspect of this story came to light when it was reported that Seamus had violent attack of diarrhea while he was in the kennel. Romney’s response was to haul the dog down off the roof, hose him off and then, despite the fact that the dog was obviously terrified, sick and suffering, put him back in the kennel on the roof for the rest of the trip.

If Seamus really did run away from his captors when they finally let him out in Canada, it was a perfectly rational response.

Mitt is not a moderate, he’s not a liberal, he’s not a conservative. He’s a rich guy doing whatever he thinks he needs to do to claim the power that rich guys feel entitled to. And if that means saying one thing to these people and the opposite to others, so be it.

Addicting Info on Romney’s reaction to the decision by an appeals court that California’s Proposition 8, which outlawed same-sex marriage in the state, is unconstitutional:

Not long after the ruling was handed down, Mitt Romney, eager to pander to ultra conservative anti-gay hate groups, made a statement, condemning the decision.

[Romney's statement begins] “Today, unelected judges cast aside the will of the people of California who voted to protect traditional marriage. This decision does not end this fight, and I expect it to go to the Supreme Court. I believe marriage is between a man and a woman and, as president, I will protect traditional marriage and appoint judges who interpret the Constitution as it is written and not according to their own politics and prejudices.” [Romney's statement ends]

The problem with Mitt’s statement is that the judges did indeed correctly interpret the Constitution. Nowhere in the Constitution does it say anything about marriage. It does not say that straight couples are the only ones who can marry, nor does it say that homosexuals can’t get married. What the Constitution does say is that everyone has the right to personal liberty, privacy, and equality under the law. Laws that ban consenting adults from marrying violates the Equal Protection and Due Process clauses of the Constitution. In other words, the judges made the right call. So basically, Romney is promising to appoint judges who will consistently misinterpret the Constitution, which is similar to what Newt Gingrich has promised to do.

How ridiculous does your campaign pandering seem when even Jimmy Kimmel challenges your claims of American exceptionalism?

Here’s coverage of the announcement by the Los Angeles Times:

A federal appeals court Tuesday struck down California’s ban on same-sex marriage, clearing the way for the U.S. Supreme Court to rule on gay marriage as early as next year.

The 2-1 decision by a panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals found that Proposition 8, the 2008 ballot measure that limited marriage to one man and one woman, violated the U.S. Constitution. The architects of Prop. 8 have vowed to appeal.

The ruling was narrow and likely to be limited to California…

“Proposition 8 served no purpose, and had no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California,” the court said.

The ruling upheld a decision by retired Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn R. Walker, who struck down the ballot measure in 2010 after holding an unprecedented trial on the nature of sexual orientation and the history of marriage.

In a separate decision, the appeals court refused to invalidate Walker’s ruling on the grounds that he should have disclosed he was in a long term same-sex relationship. Walker, a Republican appointee who is openly gay, said after his ruling that he had been in a relationship with another man for 10 years. He has never said whether he and partner wished to marry.

ProtectMarriage, the backers of Proposition 8, can appeal Tuesday’s decision to a larger panel of the 9th Circuit or go directly to the U.S. Supreme Court. The high court is expected to be divided on the issue, and many legal scholars believe Justice Anthony Kennedy will be the deciding vote.

In his campaign for the presidency, Rep. Ron Paul insists that nothing is more important than reducing the size of government and making government less intrusive — except when it comes to the reproductive systems of American women.

When it comes to women’s bodies, Rep. Paul is all for big government. After all, somebody has to be in charge of ensuring that none of the 4 million pregnancies that occur each year in the United States are terminated illegally. There is no small-government solution for that.

Yesterday, Paul made his already contradictory position even more illogical by dividing pregnancies resulting from rapes into two categories — “honest” and, I guess, “bogus” rapes:

MORGAN: 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 –

Update: Here is the link to the original source.

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From left, Paul at the 2007 Values Voters debate with Don Black, of the neo-Nazi web site Stormfront, and his son, Derek Black

We’ve all wondered about the zealotry of Ron Paul followers and dismissed it as the idealistic naivete of his frequently young apostles. They call into radio shows and protest that their man isn’t being respected. They wave signs from freeway overpasses. They post on Facebook that, despite all evidence to the contrary, Paul still has a path to the White House. And they whisper to each other about a third party run.

But what if there is more to this devotion? What if, like the racist statements in Paul’s newsletters that appeared regularly and for years, it is exactly what it looks like?

Anonymous, the internet hacking group, is exposing close ties between Ron Paul’s campaign and neo-Nazis and white supremacists.

Members of the nationalist American Third Position Party (A3P), whose website was defaced by Anonymous, organised Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul’s meetings and campaigns, according emails hacked by the collective…

“According to these messages, Ron Paul has regularly met with many A3P members, even engaging in conference calls with their board of directors,” read a statement from Anonymous.

Paul is apparently unconcerned about these supporters’ views.

It also claims that Paul received financial support from other white power groups, such as the online hate forum Stormfront, founded by Don Black, a white supremacist. There is even a photograph of Paul with Black, a former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan and a current member of the American Nazi Party. Paul allegedly refused to return donations from Black and Stormfront. Black told The New York Times that Paul’s newsletter had inspired him to become a supporter.

Earning special scrutiny is Jamie Kelso, a major figure in the white power movement, and adminstrator of the web site, WhiteNewsNow.

Kelso, a former Scientologist and account owner of other German Nazi forums, became an active supporter of Paul in 2007. He was reportedly attracted to Paul because he believed the Republican’s followers would be receptive to his white supremacist views. He described Paul as “implicitly white” and started to actively organise Paul’s events.

“Let’s appreciate this big (Paul) audience that’s overwhelmingly white,” Kelso said in an interview with the Southern Poverty Law Center. “This is our audience, this is our public. These are our people. If we can’t persuade these people of the rightness of our cause, then we’re finished,” he said.

Kelso need not worry. The message seems to be getting through. People who hate Obama but don’t feel the need to explain why, and yet who are decidedly not among the 1% or 1% wannabes who support Romney and Gingrich are finding common ground with Paul, who is doing nothing to discourage their support and might even be encouraging it.

The web site Little Green Footballs is exploring this story, which was first reported on the British site, International Business Times. Follow the links in this post to find out more and decide if you think Paul’s relationships with racists can continue to be explained away.

Norquist

NORQUIST: Obama can sit there and let all the tax [cuts] lapse, and then the Republicans will have enough votes in the Senate in 2014 to impeach.

ThinkProgess suggests impeaching Pres. Obama because Congress let tax cuts expire would be tough sledding:

Norquist certainly revels in his power, but suggesting Republicans impeach the president over tax cuts is wildly outlandish. According to the Constitution, the president, vice president, or public officials can only be impeached for “treason, bribery, and other high crimes and misdemeanors.” Preserving a tax cut that gives more to the top 1 percent than the average income of the 99 percent hardly qualifies.

On the other hand, in 1998, under the leadership of GOP Speaker Newt Gingrich, Republicans impeached Pres. Bill Clinton because he lied in a deposition for civil lawsuit unrelated to his presidency about an extramarital affair.

By contrast, in 2007, Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi preemptively took impeachment of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney off the table, despite evidence that they and other top administration officials had lied to the public about their reasons for invading Iraq and then had engaged in war crimes by ordering the CIA and others to torture terror suspects.

While the impeachment of Clinton failed, it eventually produced a political success for Republicans in that it softened support for Clinton’s would-be successor, Vice President Al Gore. As a result, the vote in Florida in the 2000 election was so close that it enabled Bush, Gore’s opponent, to launch a legal challenge to the Florida count that ultimately led to his being appointed to the presidency by the Republican-controlled U.S. Supreme Court.

It is telling that, nine months out from the 2012 presidential election, that Norquist, one of the top tier of GOP power brokers, is already planning ahead in order to set up a a similar gambit for the second of half of Pres. Obama’s second term.