Hey, what are you doing today?

Is it voting? Because if it’s not, and you live in Iowa, you’re letting these people run the judicial branch. I know they look nice, but they are complete pricks. Consider: the pleasant young couple above chose to make their wedding, the symbol of their love, a symbol of their opposition to other people’s love. Was your wedding a public celebration of your commitment to letting gay dudes and lesbians marry one another? Therein lies the problem. Even though many of us—maybe even most of us—either support gay marriage or don’t care enough either way to try to make a law about it, the small number of us who have been commanded by a 6,000 year-old book* to stop gay people everywhere we can find them are way, way more fired up. Case in point: Bob Vander Plaats, who since losing his bid for governor has organized a statewide campaign to recall Iowa Supreme Court Justices for their decision in Varnum v Brien.

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Tea Party wants to repeal 17th amendment

Dog demands bag of M&Ms.

As the actual policy agenda of the Tea Party slowly condenses—like fog on a mirror held up to Joe McCarthy’s unconscious mouth—opposition to the 17th amendment is emerging as a bizarrely signature issue. If you’re like me, your visceral position on this matter can best be described as, “the what?” The 17th amendment provides for the direct, popular election of US Senators. Prior to 1913, Senators were chosen by state legislators, on the theory that the higher house of Congress would thereby be made more deliberative and less responsive to the whims of the mob. Ironic that, since at least two Republican congressional candidates swept to primary victories by Tea Party support—Steve Stivers in Ohio and Vaughan Ward in Idaho—have recently changed their position on the issue so as to appear less, um, insane. In the annals of things to say that will endear you to undecided voters, pledging to reduce the number of things they get to vote on ranks low. So we come to our usual Tea Party question: Why?

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