"Before the Civil War, Southerners in Congress blocked progressive legislation like the Homestead Act, the Pacific Railroad Act and the Morrill Act for land-grant colleges. They haven't been much better since they got back into the Union, although back then they were Democrats and now they're Republicans.

Without the South, we'd probably enjoy decent passenger rail service, improved public education and single-payer health insurance. Our federal taxes would be lower, as many of the old Confederate states enjoy substantial subsidies.

Mississippi, for instance, collects $2.02 from the federal government for every dollar it pays in federal taxes. It's $1.78 for Louisiana, $1.65 for Alabama and $1.51 for Virginia. Meanwhile New Jersey residents get but 61 cents back for every dollar they pay to the feds. It's 68 cents in Connecticut. 71 cents in New Hampshire and 82 cents in Colorado.

Read more: Quillen: A theory for Presidents Day - The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/quillen/ci_19983335#ixzz1mwPqenn6

Of course she hasn't sounded like this for years, but what a voice.

Obama Punks the GOP on Contraception

By Amanda Marcotte

 | Posted Friday, Feb. 10, 2012, at 1:04 PM ET

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Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and President Obama

Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images

After two solid weeks of Republicans rapidly escalating attacks on contraception access under the banner of "religous freedom," Obama finally announced what the White House is proposing an accomodation of religiously affiliated employers who don't want to offer birth control coverage as part of their insurance plans. In those situations, the insurance companies will have to reach out directly to employees and offer contraception coverage for free, without going through the employer. Insurance companies are down with the plan, because as Matt Yglesias explained at Moneybox, contraception actually saves insurance companies money, since it's cheaper than abortion and far cheaper than childbirth. Because the insurance companies have to reach out to employees directly, there's very little danger of women not getting coverage because they are unaware they're eligible.

That's the nitty-gritty. 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. (As Dana Goldstein reported in 2010, before the religious liberty gambit was brought up, the Catholic bishops were just demanding that women be denied access and told to abstain from sex instead.) With the fig leaf of religious liberty removed, Republicans are in a bad situation. They can either drop this and slink away knowing they've been punked, or they can double down. But in order to do so, they'll have to be more blatantly anti-contraception, a politically toxic move in a country where 99% of women have used contraception.

My guess is that they'll take their knocks and go home, but a lot of the damage has already been done. Romney was provoked repeatedly to go on the record saying negative things about contraception. Sure, it was in the frame of concern about religious liberty, but as this incident fades into memory, what most people will remember is that Republicans picked a fight with Obama over contraception coverage and lost. This also gave Obama a chance to highlight this benefit and take full credit for it. Obama needs young female voters to turn out at the polls in November, and hijacking two weeks of the news cycle to send the message that he's going to get you your birth control for free is a big win for him in that department. I expect to see some ads in the fall showing Romney saying hostile things about contraception and health care reform, with the message that free birth control is going away if he's elected. It's all so perfect that I'm inclined to think this was Obama's plan all along. 

Well played, Sir.

Not my favorite arrangement of the anthem, but her vocals are undeniably amazing and yet effortless.

This is what the long arc of the moral universe bending toward justice looks like.

For realz.

Too right.

LOL! And that might even be him in drag in the dance line!

Love this image of the Queen & Prince Philip, taken in 1968.

OMFG.

I'm envisioning a fab drinking game.

The Susan G. Komen Foundation announced today that they will continue to support breast cancer screenings at Planned Parenthood and even went so far as to apologize for their abrupt decision this week to cut off funding.

An unprecedented 71.3 percent of incoming college students indicated that same-sex couples should have the right to legal marital status, compared with 64.9 percent in 2009, a remarkable 6.4 percentage-point increase over a two-year period. While support for same-sex marriage is highest among female students and those who identify as liberal, a significant amount of conservative students (42.8 percent) and an increasing number of male students (64.1 percent in 2011 vs. 56.7 percent in 2009) expressed support for this issue.

From the article: "Police have arrested a man in Patagonia who was stealing a massive chunk of ice to sell as designer cubes for cocktails. How the hell do you steal a glacier, anyway?"

The RC plans shaped liked humans had to have freaked some Gotham-ites out!

Having lived in the Hoosier State for a lot of years, I'm fairly confident this was an accident.