It has been a momentous week, with the resignation (read: "firing") of a cabinet secretary, a presidential speech on America's foreign and military policy, and the announcement of a timetable to bring home the remaining troops in Afghanistan. Plus all the usual Washington squabbling. But one story risks being buried among all this other newsworthy stuff, and that is the vote which happened late last night in the House of Representatives. Because, with a healthy bipartisan majority, they just voted to end the war on medical marijuana forever. If the Senate follows their lead, this could be one of the biggest turning points in ending the federal War On Weed altogether. In other words, it is a momentous event.

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Before we begin, our sincere condolences to the George W. Bush family for the loss of former White House pet Miss Beazley, who died this week. As always, we are strictly non-partisan in our love for "First Dogs" and "First Cats," because we feel the president's (any president's) humanity can only be improved by having a pet to play with on occasion (the photo of Bush with Miss Beazley which accompanies that article shows exactly what we're talking about). As Harry Truman famously put it: "If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog." Our thoughts are with the Bush family in their time of loss.

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As has been noted, at times art imitates life and at other times life imitates art. This is one of those latter times, when what was purported to be a "Women and Colorado's Future" debate among Republican gubernatorial candidates seemed like nothing more than a Saturday Night Live sketch ridiculing the awfulness of the Republicans' continuing failure to reach out to women voters in any meaningful way. And that is actually the most polite thing I can bring myself to say about it: it seemed like satire, but (sadly) it wasn't.

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The Senate race in Montana is going to a be a tough one, that's for sure. Democrats currently hold the seat, but this is one state where Republicans have a clear shot at an upset this November. Senator John Walsh has just released a rather amazing television ad, though, which is the best pushback on the "personhood" concept I think I've ever seen. Because it features a rape victim telling her own story.

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Karl Rove successfully manipulated the entire news media this week, so we are going to play along today. Rove's specialty is to take what could be considered a reasonable idea, and then twist it beyond recognition while dragging it through the swampiest mud he can dream up. Well, that's admittedly a terrible (and mixed) metaphor, but I think you get the general idea.

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The Senate quietly made history on Wednesday night when it confirmed Diane Humetewa as a federal judge -- the first Native American woman to ever hold such a post.

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Since I did not lose a family member on 9/11, though, I do not even feel qualified to take a personal position on the issue. I simply do not know how I would feel if those unidentified remains contained fragments of one of my own loved ones, to put this another way. So I do not write today to stake out a firm position on the movement of the 9/11 remains this weekend, just to be perfectly clear up front. I'd rather try to make a larger point on the shift in what is considered proper for museums to study and display.

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What was even more noticeable was what Republicans shifted to instead: Benghazi! Or, more accurately: "Benghazi! Benghazi! Benghazi!" Yes, the Republicans are doubling down on holding yet another investigation -- in the hopes that this time an actual scandal will emerge, somehow. Also, to tarnish Hillary Clinton (always a worthy motive in Republicanland). Watch for this Benghazi frenzy to play out all summer long, since Republicans quite obviously have nothing positive to offer the voters this year.

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Today's article title is meant as commentary on the media's overreactions to the first big round of primary election results (announced last night), and not any sort of supportive call to arms. Just to be clear up front, in case anyone was expecting a very different sort of article. It really should read "The Tea Party Is Dead / Long Live The Tea Party," since it represents a clear dichotomy in how pundits reacted to the primary results. Since the Tea Party candidates didn't do very well (and even that's putting it charitably) in this first big round of primaries, many are now proclaiming total victory for the Establishment Republican faction of the Republican Party, and an absolute rout of the Tea Party faction. The second way of interpreting the results warns that rumors of the Tea Party's death are premature, and that what really happened was that the Tea Party's takeover bid for the entire Republican Party is now a complete success. The Tea Party won, this way of thinking goes, because they have now become the Republican Party.

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Paying handsome salaries for full-time religious officials in both houses of Congress is nothing short of an anachronism. Any member of Congress seeking spiritual guidance has many modern methods to communicate with the religious leaders of their choice, without taxpayers having to foot the bill for it. So while the argument rages over opening prayers, my question is a more practical one: why are we still paying these guys to morally instruct our legislators?

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