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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Ten years ago this week, America went to war in Iraq for the second time. Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11, but that certainly didn't stop us from invading. Jingoism ran high in the supposedly-liberal press, and only a few voices were raised against the war in Congress. But plenty of others have been rehashing the whole run-up to the Iraq War, and plenty have been busy this week pointing out all the mistakes that were made along the way. I leave all that to others, though, for now. Instead, what I am left thinking ten years after the initial invasion is how badly America's record is when it comes to cleaning up afterwards.

Every time America involves herself in wars in smallish foreign countries, the reconstruction effort is always an afterthought, and is always carried out on a very ad hoc basis. Even the Marshall Plan -- the most successful of all such efforts -- was also thrown together from scratch. Why not, instead, create some sort of "Department of Nation-Building" at the federal level? The phrase does have a lot of negative connotations -- nation-building isn't seen in a very good light these days, but this is precisely why the idea is needed. America hasn't been very successful at nation-building efforts because we enter into each one from scratch, with no real knowledge base of what works and what doesn't.

Imagine America fighting in some future conflict halfway around the world. When the "shock and awe" is over and the occupation of the country is begun, instead of being led by people who have no clue what they are doing, experts would take over and direct reconstruction efforts. Imagine people whose whole lives and careers are centered on creating the nuts and bolts of new societies from the rubble of war or other disaster, and imagine such expertise ready and available to be called on to hit the ground running after some pacification effort or another.

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Republican National Committee chair Reince Priebus is in the news this week, for his "autopsy" report on the Republican Party in the 2012 election. Priebus and a few other hardy Republican souls took months to examine what went wrong for the party, and what should be done to set things right for the next time around. Their prescription for change, unfortunately, is to change how their message is delivered rather than to change much in the way of Republican policies. I'm certainly not the first to point this out, but this idea works out to exactly the same as what you are left with when you remove the vowels from the national party chairman's name: RNC PR BS.

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OK, a few program notes to get to, first. I realize that this column is a day late, and there may be those among you harboring hangovers today who don't want to remember anything at all about yesterday, but even having said all of that, there are two main reasons I'm re-running this column today.

The first is that I am busy with other duties today involving helping my wife out in an important business meeting, and so I will be traveling all day. Meaning I had to have some sort of column which would appear here on schedule while we're busy elsewhere. In fact, I'm not certain a new column will appear Tuesday, either (or possibly much later than usual), so fair warning on tomorrow's schedule.

The second reason is the amusing one (to me, at least). Because now, whenever anyone goes to Wikipedia to read about Saint Patrick, the column below is cited, under the "Saint Patrick banishes all snakes from Ireland" section. Which makes it rather definitive, in the literal sense. I've never been a Wikipedia editor, so I have no idea how this happened, but there it is.

In any case, it's a fun column, so I hope you'll enjoy it, and I hope everyone had a wonderful time yesterday. As the Irish say: "May the road rise to meet you. May the wind always be at your back. And may you find yourself in Heaven a half an hour before the Devil knows you're dead."

[Originally published March 17, 2010]

First off, Beannachtaí na Féile Pádraig!

For our non-Gaelic-speaking readers, Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

Saint Patrick, patron saint of Ireland, lived in the fifth century A.D., and he came to Ireland as a proselytizer for Christianity. That is about the sum total of the known, verifiable facts about Patrick. The rest is myth. Since such mythologizing began only a few hundred years after his death (which happened on March 17, by the way), these myths of Patrick are much more widely known than the thin shreds of his real history (which are limited to two surviving letters written by Patrick in Latin). Besides, it's much more fun to sit around telling these tales over a pint of Guinness than to dig up actual facts. Even if the tales are pure blarney.

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Welcome to the Ides of March, now known as the day after "Pi Day." If you need to look up either of those references, may I humbly suggest that your pop-cultural education may not be quite wide enough. The Wides of March? Maybe I'm just being too snarky -- yet another of the Snides of March, perhaps.

OK, I'll stop. We'll get on instead with the normal chiding we do here on a weekly basis (must... not... repeat... subtitle phrase...). Speaking of chiding, New York City Mayor Bloomberg is fit to be... well... tied. No, really, I'll stop now -- I promise. Ginormous soda drinkers across the city are assumably rejoicing in the streets, now that a judge has struck down Bloomberg's "nanny-statist" law. Bloomberg vows to appeal. Will Gotham streets be held in the grip of the Sodameister? Will Batman and Robin save the day? Stay tuned, kiddies....

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Since it is indeed budget release week, we'd like to take the opportunity today to shine a spotlight on a budget which doesn't get the same amount of press as, say, what Paul Ryan's trying to peddle. While the Senate Democrats released their budget proposal yesterday, a group of Progressives in the House released their blueprint for a budget as well.

What follows is a one-page description of the "Back To Work" budget proposal, highlighting the general outline and key ideas. For further information on this budget proposal in much greater detail, the Congressional Progressive Caucus has a handy website where you can find all the nuts and bolts.

It's important to remember, as all of these budget plans appear, that nobody's budget proposal will be enacted as-is. These things are always subject to tinkering, politicking, and deal-making along the way. What we'd like to see is a lot more attention, and a lot more consideration -- by both the media and Democrats in general -- of the positive proposals contained within the Back To Work Budget. Which is why we're turning the rest of the column over to this rundown.

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The news today that the Catholic Church has a new pontiff, Francis I, has inspired me to write on a subject I rarely (if ever) tackle: religion. Because this is such a personal subject, I will also preface this by stating that I am not a member of the Catholic Church. I am in no way "telling the Church what to do" or trying to state unequivocally "what's best for Catholicism," because I would not presume to do such a thing, being an outsider. I don't presume in any way to know which reforms would better the institution and which would not. That is for Catholics to figure out, which is as it should be.

But while the Catholic world rejoices with the news of a new Pope, many voices are also being raised over the subject of modernization of Church dogma on various subjects. While, obviously, the child abuse sexual scandals are still a problem that has not entirely been dealt with (and which the new Pope will have to address in one way or another), these suggestions go beyond damage control or dealing with past sins within the Church. Innovative proposals are being spoken of on such issues as allowing priests to marry, allowing women into the priesthood, revising Church doctrine on birth control and/or abortion, and even addressing the status of gay people in a more modern light.

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While a goodly portion of what I choose to write about is pointing out the idiocies and foibles of our beloved elected officials, today I'd like to offer up some applause instead. Because it seems like we're getting back to how budget battles in Washington are supposed to be fought, and I believe that's a good thing. The fact that this puts me in agreement with Republicans is somewhat distasteful, of course, but in this instance they do indeed have a point.

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President Obama changed political gears last week, and decided to take a new direction in his dealings with Republicans in Congress. This "charm offensive" will either later be seen as a meaningless photo-op gesture, or a brilliant strategic maneuver on the political chessboard. Time will tell. That golf game with John Boehner didn't really gain Obama much, to put it another way. But the political winds are a-changin' in Washington (as they tend to do), and if Obama is really serious about developing personal relationships with those in the opposition party who might possibly be open to deal-cutting, this time around a charm offensive might bear some political fruit. Obama is attempting a bold plan to exploit the existing disarray in the Republican Party, and largely bypass the entire Republican congressional leadership. If it works (and even, possibly, if it fails), this will only serve to widen the chasms within the GOP right in time for the next election. That's some pretty juicy political fruit indeed.

But one key to achieving this success will be a sustained effort on Obama's part. Obama can't just have one dinner and a lunch or two and then drop the whole idea. The president is notorious for not really enjoying glad-handling members of Congress (from either party, actually) in the way that, say, a Bill Clinton enthusiastically embraced. But being president (especially with a divided Congress) pretty much requires a higher amount of back-slapping events than Obama has previously managed. He just needs to work on his follow-through a bit more, and invite these folks to dinner so many times they lose count and the news organizations lose interest in the photo-op side of the story.

If Obama can manage to keep up the charm offensive, he stands to gain big by doing so. It's really a win-win situation for Obama, when you examine possible outcomes. We're going to assume, for the sake of discussion here, that Obama is serious about this effort and that it isn't just going to wind up as a couple of weeks of photo ops for him, to be forgotten (or laughed at) later. If Obama keeps up the charm, he's got a medium-term chance for legislative success and a longer-term chance for political success.

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