President Obama is in the news this week, for voluntarily giving up five percent of his yearly pay, to show solidarity with federal workers who will be adversely financially affected by the sequester cuts. This will save the American taxpayer $20,000. This may be a drop in the bucket, so I thought I'd offer up a suggestion as to how to save a lot more money, on a permanent basis: abolish the offices of the two congressional chaplains.

Both the House of Representatives and the Senate spend a lot of money on hiring a spiritual leader. I do not argue that these positions should be abolished on constitutional grounds, but rather for budgetary reasons. And I certainly won't quibble over which of the favorite three target categories for budget-cutting these chaplains should fall under -- waste, fraud, or abuse -- to avoid diversionary theological arguments.

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Back Down To Earth

Before we get to this month's depressing news for Obama fans, we've got a few quick program notes. The Obama Poll Watch site is in the process of updating to reflect the new reality of Obama's second term, and this month we've managed to convert all the "Obama versus previous presidents" charts to more easily show two presidential terms on the same chart. Unfortunately, this meant we didn't have time to clean out the data section at the bottom of this column (by creating a static page for "Obama first term statistics"), so you'll have to put up with a mountain of data for one more month, sorry.

OK, with that out of the way, let's have a look at March's polling. President Obama lost almost all the ground he had gained late in the 2012 election season, and his numbers fell back to where he was roughly six months ago. This isn't as bad as some media have made it out to be, since it may represent Obama's true natural level of support. But we're getting ahead of ourselves, let's take a look at this month's chart:

[Click on graph to see larger-scale version.]

March, 2013

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The sharper-eyed among you may have noticed that yesterday was supposed to be Obama Poll Watch day, where we offer up our monthly musings on the state of Barack Obama's public job approval rating. Well, since yesterday was a rather auspicious date on the calendar, we decided to push the poll-watching to Wednesday. Also, because we're still working on the charts.

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I realize it is April Fool's Day, but I resisted the urge to write a prank column today. Because, instead, it is also the beginning of Baseball Metaphor Season! Yes, it is indeed "opening day" for the proper use of baseball terminology, no matter the subject at hand. Which is why I went for the headline I did, instead of something like "Rubio Waiting In The Wings" or "Rubio Enters Center Ring" or some such. But enough of this navel-gazing out in left field (ahem, sorry), let's just get on with it.

Senator Marco Rubio, Cuban-American from Florida, is now officially "on deck." He is idly swinging a practice bat back and forth, in anticipation of his first real major-league performance. This moment, it should be noted, has taken a long time to get here. Rubio was elected to the Senate, after all, in the Great Tea Party Shellacking Of 2010. He's had over two years in the Senate now but has yet to put his stamp of approval on any comprehensive immigration legislation, even though he treats it as his own private issue within the Republican Party. Rubio enjoys being seen as "working hard" on some sort of legislative breakthrough on immigration, but up until now, that breakthrough has never actually happened. There's a good reason for that, and the reason is that his fellow Tea Party Republicans (mostly over in the House) are quite content to have Marco Rubio "working hard" on an immigration bill, but they're never going to support anything he actually comes up with. By supporting Rubio "working hard" on the issue, they can conveniently do nothing and (they hope) defuse the issue among the voters.

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While it certainly was (quoting the Flintstones theme) a "gay old time" in Washington this week, I have already spent the whole week on the subject, so I'm really only going to mention it in passing. I did run a column from last December this week where I predicted the outcome of both cases at the Supreme Court, if you're interested in grading my predictions -- and I might point out that it seems that many other pundits have now come around to this way of thinking, especially after watching the oral arguments.

But while we were all court-watching, there was some other political news happening this week. We start off with an embarrassing item. Now, I'm as big a Star Trek fan as the next guy, but hearing that the I.R.S. spent $60,000 on a Star Trek spoof training video was a bit much even for me. Sure, that's not just "peanuts" when it comes to federal budgeting, it's in fact "one grain of salt on one single peanut." But still, guys, it's like you're painting a target on yourselves (right before tax season, to make it worse) saying: "Oh, please cut our budget... pretty please?!"

The strangest thing to us is if we were asked to list "federal agencies you might expect to make a Star Trek spoof video," the I.R.S. would be way way down on our personal list. I mean, number one would probably be the folks over at N.A.S.A., wouldn't you think?

Moving right along, President Barack Obama did one very smart thing this week. He appointed the first woman to ever head the Secret Service. This was a smart move because the agency quite obviously has some "macho" problems (such as hotel visits from prostitutes, for instance) that need fixing. Naming a woman to head the agency sends a clear signal that it is time for the agency to reform itself and set only the highest standards for their agents, both on and off the job. This is one of the nation's elite law enforcement groups, and we think it's high time for a woman to be in charge of it.

The big news towards the end of the week was "stupid things Republicans say," of course, but we're saving most of that for the "Talking Points" part of the program. The biggest fray was over a Congressman from Alaska who apparently grew up in Central California in a time where bigotry was acceptable. Now, this isn't that damning a thing, since many folks grew up where various strains of bigotry were acceptable in polite society. The big difference is, most of us have realized that such bigotry was, in fact, wrong and demeaning and mean-spirited if not downright evil. Most of us have also realized that using the same terminology that was bandied about by some folks in the past is no longer acceptable in any way shape or form, here in 2013.

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I realize I'm spending all week on the subject of marriage, but I do feel that we're at a pivotal point in what has been called "the civil rights battle of our generation," which fully deserves the attention it has been getting. I also realize that this is the second "re-run" article this week, but I felt both deserved to be presented again in the midst of the discussions over gay marriage.

The article below is from almost six years ago, and was one of the most successful Huffington Post articles I've ever written. It got over 800 comments (which set a record for me) but sadly, during a software upgrade, all of these comments disappeared from their site.

One thing I was taken to task over in these original comments was for even considering polygamy rights in a serious vein without adequately addressing how gay marriage foes had used the issue against gay marriage advocates. I saw a discussion last night on television, in fact, where a gay marriage foe repeatedly brought up polygamy in a discussion about the Supreme Court cases argued this week. There is really one reason for doing this in such a fashion, and that is to link polygamy and gay marriage in the public mind, and by doing so raise the "ick" reaction as high as possible. Gay marriage proponents disavow any such linkage, in no uncertain terms. They're fighting their own battles, and they don't want to have someone else's dragged into the ring, which is understandable.

As I said yesterday, though, I was behind the political curve on fully supporting the push for gay marriage. Perhaps I wrote the following article as a reaction to this, in an attempt to get out in front of the next marriage rights issue. But no matter my motivation, I still feel the issue is going to arise eventually, and I feel it is worth examining your own stance on the issue in much the same way we've all been examining our stance on gay marriage for the past few decades. A few of the article's details are a bit out of date now (it was written during Mitt Romney's first run at the presidency), but the core questions remain the same. And I think this week is a perfect time to revisit this question, personally.

Originally published May 30, 2007

Do you support the concept of gay marriage?

That used to be an unimaginable question. Not "unimaginable" in a negative sense, but "unimaginable" in the original, neutral definition of the word: "unable to be imagined," or "not imaginable." The concept of two people of the same sex being married wasn't even raised in the American conscience until the 1990s (or perhaps late 1980s -- I haven't researched the actual date, this is from my own recollection). After that point, of course, the idea has grown in prominence in the American political debate, both pro and con.

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If public polling can be believed, over half of the American public now supports the concept of gay marriage, or "full marriage equality," as it is now more properly called. For the overwhelming majority of those who now support the idea, this position has come after personal introspection and a change in thinking. As President Obama put it, we've all had to "evolve" on the question of letting gay Americans get married, for the most part. While I tend to shy away from relating personal stories in the political columns that I write, I thought today would be a good day to do so, on this particular subject (I've already written this week on how I think America has truly reached the political tipping point on gay marriage, and to reiterate my predictions on how the Supreme Court will rule on the two cases it is now hearing). For me personally, my recent journey didn't involve a lot of change of heart over gay rights, but over political strategy. And I'd just like to start off by saying I was on the wrong side of the argument. I was wrong -- and not so very many years ago -- on the advisability of pushing hard for the right of gays to marry.

My conversion to the cause of supporting gay rights (in general) happened much earlier, I should mention. This doesn't excuse my previous stance on gay marriage -- in fact, it makes it somewhat worse. But I'm getting ahead of myself. I'll start at the beginning, instead.

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[Program Note: Every so often, I am able to re-run a column not just because of laziness or other obligations, but because what I said earlier is still so germane to the current debate and because I find I have not changed my position one whit since the original was published. In yesterday's column, I examined the likely path forward for gay marriage independent of what the Supreme Court may or may not do. Today, as the first gay marriage case has now been argued and we are all waiting for the second one tomorrow, I would like to present once again my predictions of how the Court will act. In the intervening four months, I haven't seen anything to change my mind, or my predictions.]

Originally published December 11, 2012

The news that the Supreme Court will be taking up two important gay marriage cases was expected, but nonetheless created a burst of commentary. But I can't help but wonder if people are getting the cases slightly backwards. In short, I think the Defense Of Marriage Act (DOMA) case is going to prove to be more important than the Proposition 8 case from California.

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No matter what the Supreme Court decides, after hearing this week's arguments, I think America has reached the tipping point on the subject of gay marriage. I say that because I think that gay marriage is going to win, in the end -- even if the Supreme Court ducks the issue this year. As civil rights battles go, the country has moved extraordinarily fast to where we find ourselves now: the point of no return. Victory for gay rights activists is not assured this time around, but it should now be seen as almost inevitable. Which makes this a very historic point in American progress.

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Welcome to the 250th Friday Talking Points column!

If we had had our act together, we could have run some "looking back" or "best of" nostalgia today, but we in fact do not have our act together, and so we'll just have to muddle along with the usual weekly thing.

A lot happened last week, but most of the action took place over in Republicanland. Senator Rob Portman announced that -- after having thought the matter over for a mere two years after his son came out to him -- he would now support gay marriage. I suppose that's a little too snarky, though, especially since Hillary Clinton also announced her support this week. Better late than never, one supposes....

The sequester was set in stone for the next six months, so America is now going to learn what "budget cutting" really means. Paul Ryan doubled down on the slash-and-burn budgeting, and the House passed his budget for the next fiscal year, while the Senate is expected to pass a Democratic budget shortly. Neither will make it into law, but the conference committee should be interesting -- keep an eye on who gets named to that committee, as the membership will be crucial to shape any sort of deal.

Reince Priebus, chair of the Republican National Committee, put out an "autopsy" of the rotting corpse of the Republican Party's 2012 campaign. This led me this week to write one of the few columns where the title becomes obvious long before I figure out what to say in the text. Because, as has been pointed out before, when you remove the vowels from Reince's name, you are left with: "RNC PR BS," which summed up the contents of the "autopsy" perfectly. The continuing civil war within the Republican Party shows no signs of abating any time soon, so it'll be fun to watch for months to come, folks! Next up on the Republican battlefield: immigration reform. Watch the fur fly!

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