Sex and Santorum

By Paul Krugman, The New York Times

04 January 12

he race for the Republican presidential nomination has been an edifying spectacle. No, really: we are learning a lot of things that we might not have if it had been a simple Romney coronation. Until he rose in the polls, Ron Paul was seen by many liberals as an almost cuddly figure, a nice antiwar guy with some quirky ideas about gold; we've learned a bit since.

Now Rick Santorum, whose frankness gives us an education in what "moral values" is really about, at least for a significant number of people:

Santorum has long opposed the Supreme Court's 1965 ruling "that invalidated a Connecticut law banning contraception" and has also pledged to completely defund federal funding for contraception if elected president. As he told CaffeinatedThoughts.com editor Shane Vander Hart in October, "One of the things I will talk about, that no president has talked about before, is I think the dangers of contraception in this country," the former Pennsylvania senator explained. "It's not okay. It's a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be."

Beautifying America

ndy Rosenthal, our editorial page editor, notes that Mitt Romney likes to quote from "America the Beautiful", and tells us something I for one didn't know:

The lyrics were written in 1894 by the Massachusetts poet Katharine Lee Bates, an ardent feminist and lesbian who was deeply disillusioned by the greed and excess of the Gilded Age.

Her original third verse was an expression of that anger:

America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
Till selfish gain no longer stain
The banner of the free!