For years, many liberals have tried to reconcile the notion of abortion and why, for instance, at 19 weeks the procedure was legal, but at 20 it wasn't. We may have supported it, but we weren't comfortable. Maybe Alan Simpson, who is usually crazier than a 6-year-old at Chuck E. Cheese, was right about how it's an issue on which men shouldn't even have a vote. But what we have discovered--and suspected all along--was that for those in the pro-life camp, the issue wasn't just about choice. It was part of a larger agenda, an agenda that included control. It was about contraception; it was about sex; it was about women with hyphenated last names; it encompassed everything from block grants, to tax cuts for the rich, to de-funding Medicare and Social Security, to a lemmings-like adherence to the 10th Amendment; mostly, it was about an America and a Democracy the GOP only wanted to share if you had the money, were Christian (or at least acceded to its domain over the country), and drank from the Kool-Aid.  

The GOP is a a CPAC convention away from issuing Hijabs to women and NBC's David Gregory is still giving Santorum the last word. Come November, the best outcome will not be that Obama wins, but that this virulent strain in American politics loses.

Considering how the GOP thinks the president's decision to cover women's reproductive systems in institutions associated with the Catholic Church is a war on religion, where was its outrage when Pastor John Hagee called Catholicism “the whore of Babylon,” "a cult" and “a godless theology of hate”? Rick Santorum, who is running for president to purify us, the unwashed rudderless masses, from a life unmoored from church teachings that only he, alone, accurately articulates, never accused the pastor of intolerance or leading us all to the guillotine. Why was he silent, anyway--too many non-Catholic votes down South he might need ... couldn't get the words "San Francisco" or "liberals" or "humanists" into a tirade when the bile was coming from a minister in San Antonio, Texas? It's not like Santorum, specifically, and Republicans, generally, couldn't hear Hagee--many were standing right behind that fat pile of intolerance, begging for his endorsement.

Watching what's going on in CPAC this week, especially the pandering by the two frontrunners to an audience that demands the pandering, I am losing count at how many times I have smacked myself in the head with my own palm. Choosing between Romney and Santorum is like deciding which faith healer should be cast deeper into hell. The first (Santorum) really believes the laying of hands will root out evil; the other (Romney) knows it's a sham but does it anyway. For the life of me, I don't know which one is scarier.

Being Super Bowl Sunday and the welcome end to football season, a request: considering The Big East--Big EAST--has now accepted Boise State (Idaho), Air Force (Colorado), Houston and SMU (Texas) into its fold, would the conference please change its name. It's as cynical as it is hypocritical as it is greedy as it is geographically moronic.

Here's a phone call I imagine occurred about four milliseconds after Donald Trump endorsed Mitt Romney.

Newt: Donald, what gives?

Trump: You know, I--

Newt: Hold on, you gaseous piece of mutton. I agreed to participate in that sham, that "Let's watch THE TRUMP parade his pouty Slovenian wife around" thing you called a debate and you treat me like a pool boy in one of those casinos you used to own who forgot to bring you a Fresca. You endorse Romney? Romney!? He makes YOU look sincere. Next to him, you're a deep thinker; next to him, you're almost half the stud you think you--

Trump: Newt, your jealousy is unbecoming ... of me and my life. Your wives are lateral moves. At least I marry up (Christ, Marla now looks like Ivanna); so tell me: you wouldn't like to take Melania to a budget meeting and have her blow you on the break between the Medicare and Foreign Affairs mark-up?

Newt: SHHHH! What are you, crazy? Callista's listening in on the extension. 

Newt: (covering phone) It's nothing, honey. Just Trump showing off in front of the NBC guys. Let Sheldon in, would you? Hide the shellfish. 

Newt: (into phone) You're a putz. 

Trump: So, what, you're Jewish now? And believe me, I live among them in West Palm. I know what I'm talking about. The Jews love me.

Newt: What do you call Adelson?

Trump: A gonnif. But send him my love.

Can't remember if it was Woody Allen or Lily Tomlin who said, "No matter how cynical you are, it's never enough to keep up," but this GOP race, especially the spectacle of Romney's decline/ascent/decline/ascent, would have both Allen and Tomlin smacking themselves in the head, regardless of who actually said it. Romney ALWAYS was going to be the GOP nominee... ALWAYS was going to have spirited attacks against him that were going to be viewed, first, as a test of his mettle when they were launched and then proof that he had the requisite gonads when he repelled them... ALWAYS was going to be able to "thank" his opponents on the convention floor in Tampa (all of whom, including Gingrich, who will be there, locked arm-in-arm, covered in confetti and sanctimony) for waging a tough campaign that only made him and the case against Obama stronger... ALWAYS was going to be allowed to swat back claims of his religion and time with Bain and his millions as a an attempt to place the "class warfare" card ... ALWAYS was going to appear on the cover of TIME (wait for it), looking tan and fit, under some headline about "The Mitt Nobody Knows"--that his defeat of Gingrich or Cain or Perry or Bachman or Paul or Santorum or Trump (for Chrissakes!) is going to be characterized as anything other than thata foregone conclusion (does the GOP ever nominate someone who's not next in line?) is made worse by the fact that everyone, including Romney and the media and other candidates, knew it. 

This wasn't Kabuki Theatre; this was an industrial film.

How best to describe this? On a recent flight to Vegas, I apparently caused a minor emergency at security when my ... I'll get to that.

After getting through the scanner, I waited for the final "okay" to get my carry-on, when a TSA official, very professional, very polite, very embarrassed, said, "I think we have a problem."
"What is it?" I asked.
"Well, I can't really explain it to you, but if you wouldn't mind going through the scanner one more time, it would save us both a lot of time."
"Why?"
"Sir, if you look back at the screen, you'll see what I'm talking about?"
I did.
There, where--as the kids like to say--my package was supposed to be, was an ACTUAL PACKAGE---yellow, box-like, it looked ominous, almost cancerous ... almost like a triggering device.
"What's that?" I asked.
"That's the thing," he said, "probably nothing, probably just a matter of hiking up your pants a little, but I'm going to have to ask you--"
"It looks--"
"Yeah, I know what it looks like," he said. "So, please go through the scanner one more time and, please, hike up your pants. I'd rather not have to--
"I understand."
I pulled my pants up to just under my breasts; I looked like a retired Jew from Boca.

This time, no package.

"Thanks," I said to the official, as he gave me the okay to proceed.

"No, thank YOU."

An elderly woman from Omaha in a wheelchair shouldn't be required to strip for the TSA, nor should its officials wave on through olive-skinned man from Abbottabad who's carrying a hand-made clock. We all have stories about airport security, and yours aren't any more illustrative than mine. A TSA officer named Ted who walks around like he owns the airport is just as annoying as, say, a junior senator from Kentucky who thinks the United States is turning into a police state because Ted tells him to empty his pockets.

Speaking of, looking at the yellow box, hidden in my crotch, I would have tackled me faster than it took the Paul Family to issue a press release calling TSA officials useless gropers.

The South Carolina debate audience last night were like kids at a birthday party--excited and amazed and up on their haunches as the clown seemingly pulled the long list of scarves out of his mouth. The parents, though, the few chaperones who were invited, were the ones who noticed he left the place a mess and didn't make any of the African American children at the party a balloon animal.

Politics. It's like porn sometimes; it's addictive--literally. I access so many news sites, I'm embarrassed when Melissa comes in to the office and sees me, say, reading some Atlantic Monthly link on the Daily Beast. My urge is to click off quickly, as if she just caught me with my pants down, looking at Japanese twins on nothingbuttasians.com. 

To me, good political writing is like leaf blowing--all of a sudden, without the grass clippings and dried manure, I can see what's below me, what I'm standing on, what politicians tried to obfuscate. I read people like Charles Pierce of ESQUIRE and see writing so prescient, so lithe, so brilliantly succinct, it makes me want to do it. Thing is, Pierce stands on the high board and does a Forward 4 1/2 Somersault in the Tuck Position; I stand on the 3-foot board and do Cannonballs ... and then I want to give up the craft entirely and take up ceramics.  

When did we decide in this country that money could and should be made off of sickness and pain? When was it deemed okay for Blue Cross/Blue Shield and GlaxoSmithKline to make profits, for instance, on the care of children who have diabetes ... or leukemia?

What a peculiar strain in the American DNA--the willing acceptance of buffers between between patient and doctor. (Remember how Willi Cici in THE GODFATHER told the senate investigators, "Yeah, yeah, Corleone Family, we had a lot of buffers"?) That such a system is championed by Blue Cross/Blue Shield and GlaxoSmithKline is to be expected; that it's encouraged by every GOP candidate for president who stands behind a lectern is obscene. And speaking of THE GODFATHER, in Part II, when Senator Geary tried to shake down Michael Corleone for 5% of the gross from all the hotels in Vegas, we cringed at his smarminess and greed; yet, when insurance companies demand the same kind of kick-back from the care of sick little girls, we crow about having the best healthcare in the world.