by Chris Bodenner

Santorum secures the hat trick:

[Colorado] was the real shocker. Even as recent polls had showed Santorum gaining in Minnesota, Romney had retained a big lead in the mountain state. When the actual voting began, though, Santorum defeated him heavily in rural counties rich with evangelical voters. The pivotal result came from the Colorado Springs area, where the conservative group Focus on the Family is based. After running neck-and-neck with Romney all night, Santorum ended up defeating him by more than five points. (Santorum 40.2 per cent; Romney 34.9 per cent; Gingrich 12.8 per cent; Paul 11.8 percent.)

Some perspective:

Mitt Romney took [Colorado] with 60 percent of the vote in 2008 — two days before ending his presidential bid. He chose to hold his results-watching rally in Denver, a sign of confidence, but he wound up delivering his remarks to the crowd long before most of the results rolled in. While none of the state’s 36 delegates are actually assigned as a result of tonight’s caucuses, some level of voter preference generally carries over to the district and state conventions, where delegates are selected.

Regardless of the delegate count, last night gave Rick real traction:

[T]o Romney's chagrin, Santorum's largely symbolic victories Tuesday will bring him grassroots enthusiasm and money. And Santorum already has at least one wealthy benefactor willing to give big money to a super PAC supporting him. As Santorum spoke, billionaire investor and businessman Foster Friess stood behind him, reminding those who noticed of the $331,000 he gave the Red, White and Blue Fund even before Santorum narrowly beat Romney in Iowa on Jan. 3. Santorum's big wins also injects real importance and potential for great political theater at a large gathering of conservative activists [CPAC] in Washington on Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

More on Mitt's crappy night here.

The Gingrich campaign debuts a fun new "varmint hunter" website and this ad:

It appears that the Romney campaign quietly launched an extensive direct mail campaign in Minnesota over the weekend. Alexander Burns reports: 

On Saturday, [former Minnesota Republican Party Chairman Ron] Carey said, he received a pro-Romney mailer that showed the candidate with his “head bowed in prayer,” describing the former Massachusetts governor as “the strongest Republican to beat Obama and protect our values.” The same day, he got an anti-Gingrich mail piece with the branding, “Old dog, Newt tricks,” that spotlighted a ripped-from-the-archives Roll Call headline: “Gingrich quits.” The anti-Santorum piece arrived Monday, going after the former senator for his record on earmarks and telling voters: “Rick Santorum can’t change Washington.” Romney, on the other hand, was described as the “true fiscal conservative” in the race.

The pro-Romney PAC Restore Our Future looks ahead to Ohio, where early voting starts this week. Meanwhile, the RNC turns the tables on the empathy gap: 

Lastly, Roger Ailes, Joe Trippi, Mike Murphy and Pete Snyder rank the top ten "game-changing" political ads of all time. Previous Ad War Updates here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

Santorum has been declared the winner in Missouri and Minnesota. In Minnesota, Romney is currently trailing Santorum by almost 30 points and Ron Paul (!) is ahead of Romney by 10. Santorum is also ahead in Colorado, but very few votes have come in thus far. Josh Marshall finds no silver lining for Mitt: 

Absent crushing spending and a week or so to focus on a single state, Romney seems to have a really rough time. That’s bad, especially in the Midwest where a Republican candidate has to run strong. And especially when he’s faltering in national polls versus President Obama.

Nate Silver, who is live-blogging the results, believes that Romney could still prevail in Colorado. He wonders whether Santorum's strong showing can propel him past Gingrich nationally:

If Mr. Romney is having a poor night, Newt Gingrich is having an even worse one - he was not even on the ballot in Missouri and he is running in dead last in Minnesota. Most polls of Republican voters have shown Mr. Santorum with stronger favorability ratings than Mr. Gingrich. Mr. Gingrich was doing slightly better in national polls, and in most of the recent states. But this may have been because voters thought that Mr. Gingrich was more viable than Mr. Santorum, even if they liked Mr. Santorum better.

John Hinderaker uses low turnout to diminish Santorum's victories:

So tomorrow’s news reports will say it was a big win for Rick Santorum. The numbers, however, are so low as to be laughable: if the vote-per-precinct ratio holds up, a total of 65,000 people will have participated in the GOP caucuses [in Minnesota]. This compares with 1,275,409 Minnesotans who voted for John McCain in 2008, so something like 5% of Minnesota’s Republican voters participated tonight. That is hardly enough to give Santorum a ringing mandate, but, on the other hand, that’s how democracy works. You have to show up.

by Zack Beauchamp

Today on the Dish, Chris worried about the aftershocks of the Komen war during an election year and lowered the curtain on the Dish's operating procedure while I tried to nail down the atheist/theist divide, didn't buy that Russia's veto over Syria was payback for Qaddafi, and argued that Ron Paul wasn't a fair test of libertarianism's appeal among young GOPers given his serious weaknesses on social issues. We profiled the crazy, irrelevant Missouri primary, hunted for Romneymaniacs, counseled Romney to speak up about his Mormonism, noted the distinctly non-dead "Not Romney" vote, saw more problems with women for Gingrich, told Newt to drop out, pooh-poohed the Santorum surge, marked Obama's turn towards SuperPACs, shined a light on the field's misperception of Reagan, and ferreted out some of the press' own biases in covering the race

On the "Prop 8 is unconstitutional" front, we posted the 9th Circuit's ruling against Proposition 8, corralled a few reax to the decision, spotlighted to pop-culture's influence on the ruling, and wondered if the Supreme Court might refuse to hear it. Rich people dominated marriage, single people had it rough, Charles Murray's definition of American "closemindedness" about values was odd, our prison system horrified, and the Komen debate continued. Israel wasn't slouching toward theocracy, France's election mattered, global censorship went private, and the war debate had gatekeepers. MIA's middle finger got overblown, Clint Eastwood declared it "Halftime in America" at halftime, doping found a defender, and vegetarianism was almost certainly better for animals than eating meat (and yes, Chris, that video was definitely gross. You got me.) Moore Award here, AAA here, VFYW here, MHB here, and FOTD here.

(Photo: Same-sex couple Breana Hansen (L) and Monica Chacon kiss as they celebrate outside of San Francisco City Hall on February 7, 2012 in San Francisco, California. By Justin Sullivan/Getty Images.)

by Maisie Allison

The Onion recently reported on "Romneymania." Jay Cost takes a closer look at the actual Romney coalition: 

[H]is coalition in 2012 is a hybrid of the McCain ’08 and Romney ’08 vote. This is a virtually unbeatable coalition, if he can maintain it. Romney has basically situated himself exactly in the middle of the GOP electorate: a plurality of his voters are somewhat conservative, with the remaining sampling from the moderates and the very conservatives. To defeat this coalition, an opponent would have to either steal some of his very conservative voters or cobble together a coalition that includes the far left and the far right of the electorate. Either would be a very difficult task to accomplish. 

Out of curiosity, Jason Cherkis checks in with several of Romney's enthusiastic small donors. 

(Photo: The Fisher family looks on as former Massachusetts Gov. and Republican candidate for president Mitt Romney speaks during a campaign rally at the Elko Regional Airport on February 3, 2012 in Elko, Nevada. By Justin Sullivan/Getty Images.)

Steve Walt worries that regime change in Libya created intransigence over Syria:

[W]hat if the Libyan precedent is one of the reasons why Russia and China aren't playing ball today? They supported Resolution 1973 back in 2011, and then watched NATO and a few others make a mockery of multilateralism in the quest to topple Qaddafi. The Syrian tragedy is pay-back time, and neither Beijing nor Moscow want to be party to another effort at Western-sponsored "regime change."

Eric Voeten counters:

What is not credible ... is that the Russians couldn’t have foreseen that resolution 1973 essentially authorized regime change. While the Russians now insist that any resolution on Syria is neutral on the domestic conflict, resolution 1973 actively takes sides and condemns the Libyan regime. It allows France, the UK, and the US to use force to protect civilian populated areas under threat of attack, specifically mentioning Benghazi where the uprising was at its most intense. This is clearly a resolution that was designed to aid the Libyan rebels in their struggle against the government. 

Voeten concludes that Libya may have affected Russia's thinking at the margin given that it saw very little benefit from Qaddafi's downfall. I doubt this in and of itself would have been enough to guarantee the Russian veto of the relatively toothless Syrian resolution - it could always, for example, have used support on the Syrian issue to wring concessions from the West if supporting Syria wasn't important to Moscow. However, since Russia does stand to be hurt if Assad falls (as Paul Bonicelli detailed yesterday) in ways that it wasn't in Libya, Putin's government was already invested in propping up the Syrian regime. The consequences of Qaddafi's fall were icing on a pre-baked cake.

by Maisie Allison

On the 101st anniversary of the Gipper's birthday yesterday, Haley Barbour informed the Republican candidates that Reagan was no "purist." Michael Crowley elaborates on this point. One important example:  

Today, most Republicans insist that Bill Clinton emboldened al-Qaeda by not retaliating more forcefully to terror events like the 2000 USS Cole bombing and the first World Trade Center attack. But when a suicide bomber killed hundreds of U.S. Marines in their Beirut barracks, Reagan yanked America’s military out of Lebanon–and didn’t retaliate (prompting complaints from Republican hawks even then.) He fretted about basing a counter-strike on murky intelligence and the possibility for civilian casualties. Imagine how Gingrich would respond if Obama tried an excuse like that.

Related Dish coverage here and here. 

(Photo: Dozens of televisions display a political advertisement with the image of former President Ronald Reagan at the American furniture electronics and appliances store December 27, 2011 in Urbandale, Iowa. By Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.)

Socialist Francois Hollande has a huge lead over Sarkozy in the latter's reelection race. Walter Russell Mead worries about the implications for the global economy:

Hollande wants a new basic treaty to govern Franco-German relations and has attacked the Merkel-Sarkozy agreements on the euro. He is a far more anti-bank, anti-finance candidate than Sarkozy and wants a much more expansionary fiscal policy for the EU as a whole. Hollande is probably lying about some of this; the US isn’t the only country where politicians will say anything to get the job and then do whatever it takes to keep it even if that means breaking their campaign pledges. But his election will throw a monkey wrench into Europe’s plans to cope with the euro crisis at a time when the world still wonders whether the Europeans can get their act together.

by Chris Bodenner

Karen Handel, the Komen executive behind its decision to nix funding to Planned Parenthood, resigned today - and went straight to Fox News:

Handel told [Megyn] Kelly that it is "absurd" to suggest she was the main force behind the foundation’s altered funding policy, adding that policy changes were carefully vetted. "Last time I checked," she continued, "private, non-profit organizations have a right and a responsibility to be able to set the highest standards in criteria on their own, without interference, let alone the level of vicious attacks and coercion that’s occurred by Planned Parenthood. It’s simply outrageous."

No surprise that Handel refused a severence package, which would have kept her from talking about the controversy in public. Weigel envisions her Palin-esque future as Fox contributor, bestselling author, and White House aspirant. One of the reasons Handel isn't already a governor is because she wasn't perceived as pro-life enough during her 2010 campaign:

[Gubernatorial opponent Nathan] Deal repeatedly attacked Handel over a 2005 vote she took while serving on a metro Atlanta county commission to give more than $400,000 to Planned Parenthood, though not for abortion services. The Georgia affiliate of Planned Parenthood said the money went to a downtown clinic for services such as cervical cancer screenings, testing for sexually transmitted diseases and birth controls.

Ta-Nehisi strikes the right chord on Handel's departure. And Balloon Juice doesn't realize that her exit will only empower her. Expect a big Facebook post from Sarah Palin, who endorsed Handel in 2010 and who never passes up a good culture war. What's even more troubling is that the abortion issue reaches another flashpoint just as Super PACs are getting ready to rumble for the general election. Will we see versions of this awful ad from 2008 that basically accused Barack Obama of leaving babies on the floor to die? If the nominee is Romney - a Republican with less-than-credible pro-life credentials - it's easy to see conservative Super PACs wanting to sharpen a contrast with Obama along those lines.

Previous coverage of the Komen controversy here, here, here, here and here.

Fabio Rojas thinks the Paul candidacy won't end up changing the GOP much:

Paul had a surge in Iowa in December, but dropped to third on election day behind one of the most understaffed and underfunded campaigners, Rick Santorum. Paul has yet to win a state and he is now polling behind Gingrich...One might argue that the libertarian [ideology] may have a bright future within the GOP, but it is hard for me to believe that the young libertarians who are fueling the Paul campaign today can outnumber the social conservatives of tomorrow.

Rojas is assuming that this year's crop of "libertarian" candidates are demonstrative of the actual strength of a libertarian contingent among younger generations. There's a decent chance 18-29ers sympathetic to libertarian ideas may be turned off by a state's rights fanatic with increasingly troubling ties to racist groups who talks about "honest rape" and appears exceedingly uncomfortable with gay rights and gay people. The real test for libertarianism will be when it gets a champion equipped to stand up for the ideology's social views as well its economic and international ones.

by Patrick Appel

Alyssa Rosenberg partially credits pop culture for making today's Prop 8 victory possible:

I think it’s no surprise in the post-Proposition 8 era, we’ve seen an explosion of pop culture depictions of gay California couples, whether it’s Mitch and Cam on Modern Family, to Jules and Nic in The Kids are All Right, to Brady and Cheeks on webseries Husbands. These characters deserve the right to marry because they’re citizens who ought to be entitled to the rights and responsibilities available to their straight counterparts. But these portrayals are also about establishing gay couples as part of a rich comedic and dramatic tradition of flawed people in the process of building more perfect unions.

Chart from TPM.

After attacking lax campaign finance laws, Obama is now welcoming Super PAC donations. Chait defends Obama against accusations of hypocrisy:

Obama ... isn’t arguing that a millionaire cutting a $10 million check to buy a slew of political ads is an inherently immoral act, like driving a car through a crowd of pedestrians. He’s arguing that it’s a bad system, like allowing Warren Buffett to pay a lower tax rate than his secretary. He wants to change the system. But that wouldn’t make it hypocritical for Buffett to operate within the system that exists, as opposed to the alternate system he advocates.

Jonathan Bernstein mostly agrees.

US President Barack Obama reacts as 14-year-old Joey Hudy of Phoenix, Arizona, launches a marshmallow from Hudy's "Extreme Marshmallow Cannon" during a tour of the White House Science Fair in the State Dining Room of the White House on February 7, 2012. Obama announced new policies to recruit and support science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) teacher programs, including requesting $80 million in his upcoming budget for teacher preparation, with the goal of training one million additional STEM students over the next decade. By Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images.

-- C.B.

In his new book, Charles Murray calls marriage "the fault line" between rich and poor. New research from the Hamilton Project identifies a strong correlation between income and marriage: 

While marriage rates have dropped as a whole over the last few decades, there’s been much a steeper decline in marriage among low-income Americans. Michael Greenstone and Adam Looney suggest that one reason for that drop is that labor-market changes that have altered marriage prospects for those trying to make ends meet, countering conservative claims that social norms and values are responsible for the trend. 

Catherine Rampell adds: 

Whatever the case, the concentration of marriage among the richest Americans is amplifying the increase in income inequality. Rich men are marrying rich women, creating doubly rich households for them and their children. And the poor are staying poor and alone.

by Chris Bodenner

A reader writes:

Your post from the HIV+ reader who is "sick and tired" of the "Pink Ribbon brigade" really resonates with me, as with many cancer patients. An unspoken grudge among many of us is that the so-called "big four" cancers (breast, lung, colon, prostate) soak up the vast majority of private donations, backed by powerful advocacy groups. However, roughly half of all people diagnosed have a relatively rare form of the disease. (Stats to back me up are available at Memorial Sloan Kettering [pdf].) As you can imagine, those of us who suffer from leukemia, myeloma, sarcoma, brain cancer, and other forms of the disease feel dramatically under-funded.

Another writes:

Like your fed-up HIV+ reader, I'm sick of the ribbons too.  But if I'm not mistaken, the first "message" ribbons (other than yellow ones around old oak trees) were red.  And they raised a lot of awareness about HIV and AIDS at a time when there wasn't much.

Another:

Thanks for the Komen coverage. Your Power of Pink post jumped out, in particular the snippet from Dreher. I couldn't help but think of [the above YouTube video]. Seinfeld clips don't get the love they deserve on the Internet ... their brilliance came too early.

Kenan Malik's long, thoughtful post on whether we need to believe in God is worth reading in full. But in short:

Much of the contemporary debate is about the consequences of religious belief. The so-called New Atheists, in particular, have been scathing in their attack on what they see as the wicked and malevolent social consequences of faith – from the harassment of gays to mass suicide bombings. I, too, am sceptical of the possibilities of God. And, while I do not think, as many do, that faith is, in and of itself, pernicious, I do believe that there are often social and moral problems that arise from religious belief. What I want to concentrate on today, however, is...the primary motivation for my atheism – I simply do not see the necessity for God.

This isn't enough - even if belief in God isn't necessary to make sense of the world, it could still be that we have some good reasons to believe in him besides scientific or logical proofs. A feeling of revelation or personal experience of a deity, perhaps. Malik's style of atheist argument, then, rests or falls on showing that even if you feel powerfully that you've experienced God, that's not actually a good reason to believe in him.

It's possible this points to the fundamental divide between (some) atheists and (some) believers: atheists only believe things they can justify logically or scientifically, but believers don't. These atheists don't claim that science disproves God; rather, their argument would boil down to "I'm not believing in God until you can give me a good reason rooted in standars I accept that I should." I'm curious to see if most people in either camp are willing to accept this characterization of their position.

Drive-by music-making:

More MHB hits from the band here, here, here, here and here.

Jim Burroway thinks so:

Judges working other cases are very unlikely to find anything in this ruling which applies to their cases. And when you think about it, that statement can apply to Supreme Court judges as well. Unless they’re just itching for controversy, it would be very easy for them to point out that there are no burning questions of national importance which require their attention. This decision appears tailor-made to allow the Supreme Court to duck this case altogether.

Earlier reax here.

Traverse City, Michigan, 11.55 am

A highlight from Charles Murray's new book:

Data can bear on policy issues, but many of our opinions about policy are grounded on premises about the nature of human life and human society that are beyond the reach of data. Try to think of any new data that would change your position on abortion, the death penalty, legalization of marijuana, same-sex marriage or the inheritance tax. If you cannot, you are not necessarily being unreasonable.

David Frum counters:

As a matter of fact, if you announce that there can exist no possible information that might change your mind about abortion, the death penalty, marijuana, same-sex marriage, and the inheritance tax, then yes you are an unreasonable person—or anyway, an unreasoning one. I've changed my mind about same-sex marriage as experience has dispelled my fears of the harms from same-sex marriage. If somebody could prove to me that marijuana was harmless or that legalization would not lead to an increase in marijuana use, I'd change my mind about marijuana legalization. And so on through the list.

Steven Taylor piles on. Frum further dismantles Murray's book in a later post.

by Patrick Appel

The court has a useful summary of the ruling here (pdf). Orin Kerr helps decode the legal argument:

Reinhardt decided that the Supreme Court wasn’t ready yet to embrace a full right to same-sex marriage, and that it was wiser to offer [Justice Anthony Kennedy] a narrow rationale based on Romer rather than a broad rationale based on Lawrence or Loving. So Reinhardt’s reasoning seems to be California-specific: He argues that Prop 8 took away rights provided by the California Supreme Court’s Marriage Cases, and that those who voted for Prop 8 acted out of animus towards or disapproval of gays, making Prop 8 unconstitutional under a Romer rationale regardless of whether same-sex marriage is constitutional in the general case.

Rick Hasen concurs:

Judge Reinhardt wrote his opinion for an audience of one: Justice Kennedy.  This opinion is considerably narrower than Judge Walker’s opinion in the district court, and it relies very heavily on Romer v. Evans, an earlier gay rights case in which Justice Kennedy wrote the majority opinion. 

Lyle Denniston provides further analysis:

By fashioning what it considered to be a narrow ruling, the Circuit Court went some distance toward insulating its ruling from being overturned either by the en banc Circuit Court or by the Supreme Court.  However, because it assures a renewed right to marry in the nation’s most populous state, the ruling will be viewed at all levels of the court system as at least a partial assurance of equality to join in a revered social institution — one that many conservative observers believe to be under major stresses of modern life.

Rob Tisinai is disappointed that the ruling only applies to California:

An existing comprehensive domestic partnership law, and the removal of an existing right: These two key factors don’t apply to most states, and thus the reasoning behind the Court’s decision (and, by extension, the decision itself) doesn’t either.

Kevin Drum is echos:

[T]his ruling has no impact at all in states where same-sex couples don't already have all the rights of opposite-sex couples, and the court declined to make a broader ruling that might have addressed that. 

Full ruling here.

(Photo: Same-sex couple Breana Hansen (L) and Monica Chacon kiss as they celebrate outside of San Francisco City Hall on February 7, 2012 in San Francisco, California. By Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Missouri is holding a delegate-less primary today. As Jim Geraghty notes, Jon Huntsman, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, and Herman Cain will appear on the ballot, but Newt Gingrich will not. Chris Good explains what happened:

Gingrich ... made no attempt to qualify. The state party, meanwhile, didn’t even want the primary to happen. That’s because today’s vote won’t be the main event: Missouri will hold caucuses on March 17, where voters will begin the process of selecting and allocating delegates. Today’s primary is a vestige of state law that Missouri’s GOP-controlled legislature failed to change. Consequently, Rick Santorum is the only presidential candidate paying much attention today.

While all three contests today are non-binding, First Read insists that the horse-race matters: 

[T]hey have more projected delegates at stake -- a combined 76 (40 in Minnesota, 36 in Colorado, and zero in Missouri, whose delegates will be determined a later date) -- than all the combined delegates for Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. Second, they all occur in presidential battleground states. And third, they give Mitt Romney's challengers, particularly Rick Santorum, the opportunity to upset Romney. Indeed, if Santorum is going to make a serious move now, it's going to come in one of the caucus contests, where either a more conservative or better organized candidate can pull off a victory. Bottom line: It’s do-or-die time for Santorum, and he needs to win two of these three races (Minnesota and the beauty contest of Missouri) to keep his White House chances alive. 

by Zack Beauchamp

Nick Cohen thinks we've entered a new era of silencing:

[M]odern censorship does not conform to old models. It is a mistake to think of repression as repression by the state alone. In much of the world it still is, but in Britain, America and most of continental Europe the age of globalisation has done its work, and it is privatised rather than state forces that threaten freedom of speech. Editors are no longer frightened of politicians but of Islamist violence, oligarchs and CEOs. They worry about libel and the ability of the wealthy to bend the ear of their proprietors or withdraw advertising. But they are not frightened about leaking the secrets or criticising the actions of elected governments.

(Photo via tumblr user Causeican)

Frum advises Newt to drop out and hope for a Romney defeat:

If the GOP were to lose in 2012, the next cycle could be the most wide open since 1940. There would be no "runner-up" to claim the nomination next time, the way Romney claimed it in 2012 or John McCain in 2008 or Bob Dole in 1996 or George H.W .Bush in 1988. But a Gingrich who had won some primaries as a conservative alternative to Romney -- something neither Rick Perry nor Sarah Palin nor, by the way, Ron Paul or Rick Santorum will have done -- could plausibly claim leadership of the conservative wing of the Republican Party. Such a Gingrich could then credibly demand kowtowing and ring-kissing from everyone entering the huge 2016 field, especially since, by that point a year older than McCain was in 2008, he'd have difficulty mobilizing support for a second run of his own.

by Chris Bodenner

David Carr chronicles the success of the new and improved Buzzfeed, helmed by Ben Smith:

In a sense, [BF and HuffPo founder Jonah] Peretti is reverse-engineering the HuffPo formula. At The Huffington Post, he used search optimization to create a gaudy funhouse behind a serious front page. At BuzzFeed, the funhouse was the point of it all. The main headers on the home page told the story: “LOL,” “cute,” “win,” “fail,” “omg,” “geeky,” “trashy” and “wtf?” ... After a week in which Facebook announced an initial public offering that could end up in valuing it at $100 billion, it’s clear that the social Web — Facebook, Twitter and their ilk — will rival search — Google, Bing and their ilk — as a force for helping people find content. The average person’s Facebook feed, just like BuzzFeed, is a mix of the comical and the consequential, functioning as a kind of human-enabled RSS feed that belies the traditional architecture of media outlets.

The Dish has long been fed by a Google Reader filled with hundreds if not thousands of blogs, but in some ways our most efficient RSS feed has been our inbox. It receives about 400-500 emails a day, containing a vast number of obscure links that readers know Andrew will specifically like and post. In a way, we subscribe to our readership.

Earlier coverage of the new Buzzfeed and what it means for political blogs here.

(Image via BF)

PPP's polling suggests that Santorum could do very well tonight. Douthat doubts it will matter:

Because the voters of South Carolina gave Gingrich the crucial first crack at Romney, Santorum’s moment is almost certainly coming round too late.

Dan Amira is equally skeptical:

Tonight could give Santorum a huge boost in his quest to be Romney's leading Non-Threatening Yet Extremely Annoying Opponent.

More on the Santorum surge here.

The ruling:

10-16696 #398_Decision

Jacob Combs and Adam Bink explain what could come next:

The first issue on everyone’s minds is whether same-sex couples can wed immediately ... The answer is that it depends on whether a stay is issued in the case. After Judge Walker issued his decision, a stay on his ruling was also issued that kept Prop 8 in effect as a law until such time that another court struck it down, meaning California’s same-sex couples have not been able to wed since his ruling. If the 9th Circuit panel or another court body issues a stay, same-sex couples cannot wed. Many legal observers expect a stay ...

Reax to follow. 

by Chris Bodenner

A reader writes:

This week's VFYW reminds me very strongly of where I lived and worked in the early 1990s - Muscat, Oman.  I lived in an apartment complex called Hatat House and the view to the east was of jagged hills arising out of the surrounding plain and the area, a neighborhood called Ruwi, was developed right up to the foot of those hills.  Sadly, this was before digital cameras and I have few pictures from that time, and Google Earth doesn't offer a lot of confirming evidence since Street View hasn't arrived there yet.

Another writes:

The sparse mountains look like Kurdistan, and the cement constructed houses are typical of the Kurdish autonomous region in Iraq.  The photographer could be in one of the new, Turkish-built apartment buildings.  The sliding door and small balcony are characteristic.  I'm gonna guess Sulaimania, though in truth this could probably be anywhere in the region.

Another:

Roxborough State Park, Colorado - or really close to that.  Never participated before and I don't have the cartographic acumen like so many of your readers, but I've biked enough around those great rocks to know them.

Another:

So I am watching the golf tournament and I see a shot of a mountain with some kind of odd observatory on the top of it. (Watching golf, in Carlin's words, is "like watching flies fuck", so I decided to check out your site and this may be the only time I will ever get one of these right.) I don't google, I don't get earth shots like the rest of the VFYW-philes, but I believe it's in Arizona. When I hit info on my TV they say this tournament is called the Phoenix Open, in Scottsdale. So there's my answer. I never do these contests, but if I'm a winner, I'd much rather have your book on the cannabis closet than the VFYW book.

Another:

Finally! One I can answer.

The mountain is definitely this one. And that makes it Monterrey, Mexico - not to be confused with Monterrey, California or Montreal (means the same thing - King's Mountain), Canada.

Another sends a photo of Monterrey, Mexico:

The contest photo is taken somewhere in south Monterrey. The angle of that photo the same as this one and must be from a building down the hill from where this was taken. But Tebow knows where.

Another:

My guess is that we're looking at the "Cerro de la Silla" (Mt. Saddle, roughly), just outside of the northern Mexican city of Monterrey, in the state of Nuevo Leon. I visited as a kid, haven't been back since, but I remember the locals being particularly proud of their landmark, and the sight and name of it stuck on me. A quick look its Wikipedia page and a Google Image search confirms it.

Another:

This must be a picture of the iconic Cerro de la Silla (translated as Saddleback Mountain). My mother spent the first 15 years of her life in Monterrey - the third largest and arguably the most prosperous city in all of México - before moving to the U.S. Unfortunately, I don't see myself visiting this place anytime soon, given the recent wave of drug violence that has overcome Northern Mexico.

A reporter writes:

I’ve been spending a lot of time in Monterrey because it’s become one of the bloodiest battlegrounds between the Zetas and what remains of the Gulf drug cartel.

Another reader:

I worked at the U.S. Consulate there from 2000-2002.  In those days you could walk the streets safely at any hour of the day or night.  I left not too long after the first drug-related killing.  It's a real shame how bad things are now.

Another:

I've been a long-time (silent) contestant, never wanting to respond lest I be embarrassed by my horrible guesses.  This time, in the midst of dissertation writing, I took my regular Dish break and much to my surprise found an iconic picture of El cerro de la silla, or the Hill of the Saddle in Monterrey. The city is known by many names to us Mexicans, and the most common is the "Sultan of the North," given the city's importance as a great manufacturing center and until the rise of Ciudad Juárez, the largest city in northern Mexico.  I've only been there once (2003 for a conference on Mexican, American and Canadian historians of Mexico), but I remember it well.

Unfortunately, it has become a hotbed of the drug war.  It used to be that the drug war was fought in the remote, rural regions of the country - that's why my parents and I left Michoacán over 20 years ago - but recently, as the violence has spread, the main target became the urban areas.

I think the view is from the hospitals in the Loma Alta area of Monterrey.  I am attaching a Google Earth image that gives a similar view of the hill.  I'd love to return to Monterrey soon, the cabrito (baby goat) is delicious.

Another:

I am a New Yorker who lived in Monterrey for a number of wonderful years not too long ago and I was so happy to see the photo in the Dish.  Actually, I will be making a trip back there in less than two weeks to see my husband, who must live there because we are a bi-national gay married couple living with the injustices of DOMA.  In Mexico, at least their federal government recognizes their own state-level gay marriages.

Another:

This one's too easy. (I'm from Mexico City.) I'm not good enough with Google maps to provide an exact location from where the shot was taken, but it's a clear view of the mountain's distinctive saddle-shaped peak.  The mountain itself is located in Guadalupe, but everyone considers it the symbol of Monterrey. There's a universally recognized Mexican corrido (a Mexican folk-song) that alludes directly to the famous mountain. I translated the lyrics:

I'm proud to be from the north of Mexico,

From the neighborhood of San Luisito

Because that's the site of Monterrey.

Of all towns, the most beloved

Because it's the most northern, oh yes,

The town where I was born.

And that's why I'm from the north

From that land of fantasy

Called Nuevo León

Beautiful land, always in my dreams

And that I carry deep within, o yes, 

Deep within my heart.
  

From the Cerro de la Silla

You can see the view

When dusk begins to fall

Of my beautiful and regal homeland

My homeland, which is called, oh yes,

The city of Monterrey.

Another:

It's the home of Primera division champions UANL Tigres and Monterrey. Tigres is also home to US national team defenser/midfielder Jonathan Bornstein, who some US fans blame for the 4-2 loss to Mexico in the 2011 Gold Cup.

Another:

I lived in Monterrey for six months in the late 1990s and saw this view every day. You can see the outline of the mountain on countless shirts, hats and posters. It's the third-largest city in Mexico and in many ways its most modern and American-looking city. Only four hours from San Antonio, I was shocked by how un-Mexican the city feels. At times, it feels like you were walking through the suburbs of Dallas or San Diego. With its ranch houses, its punk rockers, it's elite technology universities and a very bilingual, educated population, I dubbed it the Seattle of Mexico. I know the drug violence has likely reshaped the city I fell in love with a decade ago but it's a great visit that in better times, you can literally drive to from the US. I actually went there, taking a bus line direct from the Chicago Mexican neighborhood I lived in at the time. When it was time to return to Chicago, the bus line dropped me five blocks from my house. It took 24 hours and cost about $100 if I remember right.

Another sent the above photo. Another writes:

This one took no time at all to get the city, but quite a lot to guess the window. The mountain is the iconic Cerro de la Silla (Saddle Mountain), backdrop and symbol for the city of Monterrey, where I lived for five fascinating years in the '70s and '80s - and met my wife! But this is a heavily built-up area now, so there are many potential windows. The picture is taken from a fairly high viewpoint looking across the valley to the Cerro, suggesting somewhere in the Colonia las Brisas, which sits almost at the end of the long ridge or Loma larga that runs along the south end of the City.

I think the actual picture was taken from this house at Huatulco 200, right next door to the radio towers. I’m guessing there’s a door on the right side of the house that looks out onto a balcony, surrounded by a beige wall similar to the ones that can be seen in the picture.

Another:

Foliage and geology look like the US southwest, but the built environment is wrong. After a couple of false starts (Turkey, Greece), I hit on Mexico and soon identified the mountain in the background as Cerro de la Silla (Saddle Hill), named for its saddle- shaped profile when viewed from parts of Monterrey, to the west. The fact that the profile of the mountain changes as you move around it made it fairly easy to identify a general corridor within which the photo had to have been taken: due west from the mountain, roughly following the street "Sendero Sur."

Picking the specific building, let alone window, proved to be much more difficult, and I'm not at al confident in my guess. The photo appears to have been taken from a considerable height, and there's a collection of high-rise apartments near the intersection of Lázaro Cárdenas and Alfonso Reyes that would be likely candidates; however, none of them appear to have balconies like the one in the contest photo. There's also an eight-story building at Lázaro Cárdenas and Sendero Sur that does have balconies, but the balconies have railings not seen in the contest photo and the building doesn't seem to be high enough to be able to see over the ridge line to the white facility on the hillside at the lower-left of the photo.

So, with much trepidation, I'm going to guess that the photo was taken from one of the upper floors of the new Connexity Tower just off Lázaro Cárdenas, and I'm just hoping there are balconies on the building that I haven't seen.

Another reader who guessed the Connexity Tower sent the above photo marked with the red circle. But only one reader this week nailed the exact location:

I immediately recognized the mountain as Cerro de La Silla which led me to Monterrey, Mexico. From there it got pretty difficult. It could be any number of houses below Privada San Pedro. The yellowish house at 5520 Verano shown to the right in this picture seems to have similar doors, from the back at least. A high-rise apartment also seemed like a good bet such as the Valle de Fundadores below this same location, but I couldn't see any doors. At some point I realized I was spending a ridiculous amount of time and decided I was close enough with the Verano house.

Details from the submitter:

The address is Plaza Verano 5520, Colonia Jardines del Paseo, Monterrey, NL. The main avenue below (out of frame) is Lazaro Cardenas (aka Las Torres) but is substantially lower in elevation. The next main avenue running parallel to Las Torres is Fundadores (higher in elevation but still much lower than the location).

(Archive)

by Zack Beauchamp

Gil Troy pushes back against the perception that the ultra-Orthodox are taking over Israeli society:

Statistical projections warning of haredi hordes overwhelming “normal” Israel stoke the media hysteria. But statistical trends are not historical facts. In researching his 2003 book Real Jews: Secular Versus Ultra-Orthodox: The Struggle for Jewish Identity in Israel, Professor [Noah] Efron traced these Chicken Little statistical warnings to the 1960s. “It has become a staple media trope,” Efron says, “with some predicting the tipping point in 10 years time, others seven, sometimes 15. It should have happened in 1970, then again, and again, but never did.” And while demographers insist that now the threat is real, the steady, underpublicized exit from the community may provide the counter that the million-person Russian immigration provided a decade ago. This attrition accounts for the mirror-image standoff. Haredi and non-haredi Israelis both feel embattled, threatened by the other, and abused by the other’s advantages.

(Photo: Ultra Orthodox Jewish children look from their school windows as hundreds of Ultra Orthodox Jews demonstrate in Jerusalem on January 15, 2012 following the arrest of six members of their community suspected of tax offenses. By Menahem Kahana/AFP/Getty Images.)

Alana Goodman argues that unleashing Callista Gingrich could help: 

While Gingrich’s advisers may think keeping Callista quiet will draw less attention to Newt’s infidelity, in fact, the exact opposite is probably true. Women see Callista trailing her husband around the country like a silent mannequin and find it instinctively off-putting: Why is he so uncomfortable with his wife taking a normal role in the campaign? What’s wrong with him? If Newt wants to understand his problem with women voters, he has to realize Callista’s odd silence plays a part in it.

Ariel Levy discussed Callista's "firm formality" in a recent profile. More on Gingrich's woman problem here. 

Question? askandrew@thedailybeast.com Video archive here.

In the wake of the 2010 Tour de France winner being stripped of his title for steroid use, Julian Savulescu calls on the cycling authorities to end their war on drugs:

If cycling is not to completely lose it’s spectacle and credibility, it is time to be realistic and relax the ban on doping. Safe doping – like blood doping up to a level where 50% of the blood is red blood cells – could be permitted. The substances that modern cyclists take are safe enough compared to the risks of professional sport. We should focus on monitoring athletes’ health rather than losing a war on doping.

by Maisie Allison

Randall Balmer wants him to embrace it: 

[C]onsult the example of Joseph Lieberman rather than John Kennedy. When Al Gore named Lieberman to the ticket in 2000, the senator from Connecticut faced a flurry of questions about his faith and, especially, his refusal to campaign on the Sabbath. Unlike Romney, Lieberman patiently answered the questions, declaring, for example, that he was an observant Jew, not an Orthodox Jew, and explaining the difference. Mitt Romney, however, continues to obfuscate on matters of faith. Until he opens up, he won’t be able to shirk the religion issue.

Erika Fry collects a substantial amount of evidence that political journalists are doing their damndest to keep the GOP primary going. Ed Kilgore thinks that's not the only bias at work in election coverage:

[H]orse-race enthusiasts are not the only poltical journalists with corrosive biases: others, particularly in Beltwayland, are smug purveyors of various Iron Laws of politics in which electoral outcomes are dictated by “insiders”—i.e., their sources—months or years in advance. So sometimes campaign coverage seems to be divided between those who breathlessly over-react to every twist and turn in polling numbers, and those who think none of it’s worth covering at all. Indeed, you sometimes see both tendencies in the same publication.

by Chris Bodenner

A reader quotes from the latest installment of the vegetarianism thread:

"Published figures suggest that, in Australia, producing wheat and other grains results in: at least 25 times more sentient animals being killed per kilogram of useable protein; more environmental damage; and a great deal more animal cruelty than does farming red meat." The problem with this is that it (like many things that try to use this as an argument against a vegetarian or vegan diet) is that it neglects to mention the fact that livestock farmers use more of those grains to feed their animals (the eventual red meat) than any vegetarian or vegan would ever consume. So in turning away from meat one might consume more grains directly, but less grain would still be used overall, and therefore the idea that the use of grain is contributing to more deaths overall is moot.

Another agrees:

There may be a case to make that beef production results in less animal death ... in Australia.

Of course, in the United States, where the use of Concentrated Animal Feedlot Operations (CAFO) is much more widespread, far more of the average beef cow's life is spent in a feedlot, being fed soy and and corn, which is, as the article you link to points out, horribly inefficient. And that doesn't even touch most of our other common meat sources, like chicken, pork, and turkey.

If this was a debate between lovers of grass-fed beef pastured on marginal land and vegetarians, we'd have a debate. But most vegetarians criticize the farming system we have, not a hypothetically more human and less destructive one.

Another has numbers:

The majority of grain grown in the U.S. - something like 85% - if fed to livestock. Every pound of beef we produce consumed an additional 3-5 pounds of corn or wheat while in feedlots. Therefore, to make any sort of assertation about the environmental or animal-cruetly impacts of eating meat you have to take into consideration the damage associated with the amount of grain being fed to these animals. If we are talking about red meat, as your article does, the ratio of grain to beef becomes something near 20:1. The amount of damage done by meat farming, then, is compounded and ends up magnitudes of difference higher.

From Cornell: "The 7 billion livestock animals in the United States consume five times as much grain as is consumed directly by the entire American population." From Utah State University: "So, with the example above of 50 bushels of corn fed to a finished animal, now 4.67 pounds of corn were required for each 1 pound of beef. If you calculate the red meat yield from this and equate that to pounds of feed per pound of red meat yield, that conversion may approach as high as 20, especially using the 6 pounds for every 1 pound gain."

Some argue the system is stacked against them:

[Unmarried people] pay more for health and car insurance than married people do. They don’t get the same kind of tax breaks. Co-op boards, mortgage brokers, and landlords often pass them over. So do the employers with the power to promote them. ... “Married people had a supermajority of political power at the time the [current tax] rules were enacted,” [law professor Lily Kahng] notes. But today? “Single people continue to be marginalized even though they comprise close to half the adult U.S. population,” she says.

Earlier Dish on the rise of the unmarried here.

Karl Rove's least favorite Super Bowl commercial:

In response to Rove, Charles Blow recalls some recent history:

Chrysler nearly collapsed in late 2008 under private equity ownership. Bush agreed to a $4 billion bailout of the company. ...Trying to eschew Bush’s role in order to tarnish Obama’s results is fundamentally dishonest. Trying to put the bailouts or the loss solely on Obama is simply dishonest.

TNC doesn't understand the controversy:

I just watched the ad seconds ago, after reading about the Republican freak-out, which I have to say is bizarre. This is the exact sort of gauzy nationalism (to paraphrase Jonathan Chait) that corporations have put out for years and Republicans have, themselves, often alluded to. 

Amy Davidson thinks the ad breaks with other messages of American exceptionalism: 

We’ve often been asked to think of the time of our country’s life as a perpetual dawn—“morning in America,” as in Ronald Reagan’s ad. ... Reagan isn’t alone: Romney and Obama sometimes seem to be in a competition to describe the brightness of the coming American day. ...That’s what makes Eastwood’s ad so powerful. It doesn’t pretend that we’re dallying in an endless pre-game show, or that you can always tell the timekeeper to put a few seconds back on.

In a follow up to his article on prison, Adam Gopnik ponders the morality of mass incarceration:

The moral failings of advanced liberal societies, not least this one, tend to be slow-motion sins. We don’t stone the adulterer or hang the sodomite or massacre the restive inner-city residents. We allow the atmosphere to be filled with greenhouse gases; we allow the hypertrophic growth of inequality; we let the prison population grow to the size of a megalopolis. And the key is that there’s no particular moment when they happened, no single event to expose and decry. It’s the slow-motion violence of mass incarceration that enables it to elude our moral immune system. Prisons stop time. We need to find ways, from the outside, to accelerate our awareness.

Christopher Glazek's compelling article on crime behind bars, which Andrew linked to over the weekend, also deserves a wider audience. Here's another excerpt:

Progressives lament the growth of private prisons (prisons for profit). But it’s sadism, not avarice, that fuels the country’s prison crisis. Prisoners are not the victims of poor planning (as other progressive reformers have argued)—they are the victims of an ideological system that dehumanizes an entire class of human being and permits nearly infinite violence against it. As much as a physical space, prisons denote an ethical space, or, more precisely, a space where ordinary ethics are suspended. Bunk beds, in and of themselves, are not cruel and unusual. University dorms have bunk beds, too. What matters is what happens in those beds. In the dorm room, sex, typically consensual. In prisons, also sex, but often violent rape. 

Reihan has mixed feelings about Glazek's article. 

by Patrick Appel

Is alive and kicking:

Influential conservative blogger Erick Erickson said he would endorse the “sweet meteor of death” over any of the current GOP candidates, but would back the party’s eventual nominee in the general election against President Obama.

Erickson's full post is here. Allahpundit sympathizes:

Like Erickson, I’ll vote for the eventual nominee, but I can’t bring myself to choose one over the others because the feeling that they’re not our best is ever present. Deep down, I don’t think any of them are equal to the fiscal challenges ahead. How can I have a preference?

"I think the Komen story is important [because] we need scalps. The right scares the fuck out of the press (for example) because they got people at NPR fired recently, ended Dan Rather’s career a few years ago, etc. The left needs to scare people too. Nothing scares comfortable people more than the destructions of careers and organizations," - DougJarvus Green-Ellis, Balloon Juice, trying to milk what should be an apolitical protest for all it's worth.

by Zoë Pollock

Not according to Sasha Frere-Jones:

Unless somebody was handing out Xanax with the foam fingers, Lucas Oil Stadium was ringing with the music of profanities [Sunday] night. More to the point, television viewers were submitted to ad after ad that likened women—negatively—to sofas, cars, and candy. ... I say we get out of The Pretending To Be Moral game altogether and use the Internet for important things like posting pictures of cats looking at croissants and PDFs of sensitive government documents.

Peter J. Munson gets angry about civilian advocates for war. Steve Saideman thinks he is simply wrong:

[T]he idea that only folks with military experience should be able to advocate the use of military force is a very dangerous one.  One of the best things about post-World War II democracies is the rise of alternative sources of information about security issues.  It used to be that only the militaries, with some rare exceptions, seriously studied war, strategy and the rest.  Having more folks study it, even those who do not have any military experience is very much a net good.

The Romney camp preps Colorado voters for Tuesday's caucus:

Obama's team touts consistent jobs growth in a new web ad ("you might be surprised to hear the progress we've made"):

Having assailed Gingrich in Florida, look for Romney's campaign to take aim at Santorum this week. In other news, Newt's moneyman Sheldon Adelson may be jumping ship. 

Previous Ad War Updates here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

Today on the Dish, Patrick explained why he thought Romney had wrapped up the race and Chris was creeped out by Pete Hoekstra's "China took our jobs" Super Bowl ad. We questioned Romney's appeal in the Midwest, linked his campaign strategy firmly to the economy, noted Gingrich's money problems, were unsurprised by Newt's difficulties with women voters, smelled a Santorum surge in the offing, and wondered if Ron Paul's strategy was working out. GOP turnout continued to flag and movement conservatism faced a policy crisis. 

We offered two possible explanations for Russia and China's defense of Syria at the UN and examined if whether there was anything we could do to end Assad's murder spree. We also used some statistical magic to predict whether new Arab democracies would stay that way, found growing fear among Christian communities in majority-Muslim countries, and  worried about the Greek economic crisis.  The Super Bowl got some uncharacteristic play - the decision to let the TD in and the linebacker who caught the game-changing interception both saw the spotlight.

On the culture war front, the internet took credit for reversing Komen's decision to defund Planned Parenthood, readers blasted Komen's original decision, and the organization both crassly commercialized cancer (follow-up here) and took focus away from broader issues. A reader deepened the contraception and coercion debate, homophobia killed, economics complicated the abortion debate, and Obama caught some chutzpah-riffic flack. The stimulus promoted transparency, squirrel meat found a champion, lazy mornings helped your brain, and 3-D printing sounded awesome. Cool Ad here, Yglesias Nominee here, AAA here, Quote for the Day here, VFYW here, FOTD here, and MHB here.

(Photo: Chase Blackburn #93 of the New York Giants intercepts a pass intended for Rob Gronkowski #87 of the New England Patriots in the second half during Super Bowl XLVI at Lucas Oil Stadium on February 5, 2012 in Indianapolis, Indiana. By Ezra Shaw/Getty Images.)

by Patrick Appel

Ayaan Hirsi Ali fears for Christians in Muslim nations. Her thesis:

[A] fair-minded assessment of recent events and trends leads to the conclusion that the scale and severity of Islamophobia pales in comparison with the bloody Christophobia currently coursing through Muslim-majority nations from one end of the globe to the other. The conspiracy of silence surrounding this violent expression of religious intolerance has to stop. Nothing less than the fate of Christianity—and ultimately of all religious minorities—in the Islamic world is at stake.

A reader writes:

I missed Andrew's little note that he is not blogging this week, but I knew something was amiss the moment I saw TWO posts about the NFL in one day. Keep up the sports analysis. Love it.

To be fair, Andrew in his day was quite the pooh-stick player.

"Conservatives should want as many people as possible to live in institutions and social norms that promote stability, faithfulness and compassion. Marriage is an institution at the centre of society. It is because I value it so much that I want it to be extended. ... [It] is civilising, stabilising, a hugely important institution for bringing people together. But if marriage is fossilised and exclusive, that has only limited reach. [David Cameron's] attempt to enlarge and modernise the institution should not be seen as a threat to marriage but as its saviour," - Tim Montgomerie, Tory activist, editor and founder of the ConservativeHome blog and co-founder of the Conservative Christian Fellowship.

by Chris Bodenner

Marcy Wheeler shares her firsthand perspective:

[A]s a breast cancer survivor, I learned to hate the pink ribbons purportedly serving my interests. It may have been when Eureka developed an ad campaign around the pink ribbon. I was less than thrilled that Eureka tried to use my cancer as a reason to sell women more vacuum cleaners along with their stale gender stereotypes. But I think the moment when I most realized that the cancer industry was about turning breast cancer patients into profit centers came when I went to a Komen-funded Young Survival Coalition conference. The organization itself–focused on breast cancer resources for those diagnosed under the age of 40–was a godsend. But the conference insisted on calling us patients and survivors "customers."

More on the money-making here. The Dish also posted a similar takedown of Livestrong bracelets recently. A reader offers a qualified defense of Komen:

I've been reading all of the Komen stuff, and I couldn't agree more that it was a stupid decision that will have a negative impact. However, I have to write and say that the pink ribbon campaign has had a very profound influence on my 10-year-old son and his sports playing friends. They proudly wear pink socks, armbands, hats with ribbons - you name it - and when you ask them why, it's "to cure breast cancer."

How do I take this away? Or explain that this group is bad? There's no laughing or nervousness in saying "breast" out loud; they know it's a serious, life-threatening disease that could impact their moms or sisters. It's the most mature response from them you can get (a more mature response than most older men who think the word "breast" is verboten in public) and they mean it. My son wants this disease eradicated (he has said he wants to become a doctor to cure it, though sports doctor shows up in his choices too!), and his only awareness are from the sports leagues proudly wearing pink, his heroes wearing pink, and the maturity of his friends and families in talking about what wearing pink means.

Komen may have made a big mistake, but they must've done something right. My son knows nothing about the issue, and I won't be saying anything. To him, wearing pink means curing breast cancer, and it always will if we have our say.

Eric Voeten believes the Russian and Chinese vetoes were mostly about power:

What [China and Russia] were surprised and upset by was how Libya negatively affected their interests. It did not bog down NATO powers in a costly war and all the spoils of victory appear to be going to the NATO powers. China and Russia want to avoid a repeat of that. They also can get away with that because there is no credible threat at the moment that the West intends to take forceful action to end the violence.

Paul Bonicelli expands on that point:

For Russia, Syria's dictatorship is its last client left standing in the Middle East, both political and economic since Syria provides a warm seaport and buys Russian weaponry. To watch it fall means ceding the field largely to the U.S. and the EU, and losing revenue. The stakes are indeed high for Russia. For China, the best explanation is inertia; China defines its national interest -- apart from its freedom to engage in commerce wherever it can -- according to the principle of non-intervention. Its reaction to the Syria situation is like its reaction to every other such situation: everyone should mind his own business, we like things as they are. (That China seems to contradict itself when it comes to Filipino, Vietnamese, or Japanese territorial interests requires a little semantic gymnastics.)

A Waka crew (canoe crew) docks on Tii Beach during the Waitangi Day celebrations on February 6, 2012 in Waitangi, New Zealand. Waitangi Day is the national day of New Zealand, a public holiday held on February 6 to celebrate the signing of New Zealand's founding document, the Treaty of Waitang, in 1840. By Kenny Rodger/Getty Images.

-- C.B.