Stronger Together: Gay Marriage - 2012 Democratic National Convention Video

Stronger Together: Women's Health - 2012 Democratic National Convention Video

Progress for the People: Education - 2012 Democratic National Convention Video

Sandra Fluke's complete Speech before the DNC (VIDEO)

"We’ve also seen another future we could choose. First of all, we’d have the right to choose. It’s an America in which no one can charge us more than men for the exact same health insurance; in which no one can deny us affordable access to the cancer screenings that could save our lives; in which we decide when to start our families. An America in which our president, when he hears a young woman has been verbally attacked, thinks of his daughters—not his delegates or donors—and stands with all women. And strangers come together, reach out and lift her up. And then, instead of trying to silence her, you invite me here—and give me a microphone—to amplify our voice. That’s the difference."

Kirsten Gillibrand and Kamala Harris talk women in politics (VIDEO)

Watch More Than Two Dozen Women to Take Stage on Day One of DNC on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.

Mitch McConnell waves the white flag on the Missouri Senate Seat...

Just because he's giving up on it, doesn't mean we stop fighting:

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said that Republicans can withstand losing the Missouri Senate race, where the party has cut off support for Rep. Todd Akin in his challenge to Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill, in the wake of Akin's false comment about "legitimate rape" not leading to pregnancy.

"We can take the Senate without Missouri," McConnell USA TODAY. "It'd be a lot easier to take it with Missouri."

ICYMI: @MichaelEDyson ripping the skin off Anti-Gay Black Preachers (VIDEO)

Metaphorically speaking, of course. But if anyone's deserved a rhetorical thrashing, it's been black preachers.

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So basically, Mitt Romney was pretty much a dick in prep school. (VIDEO)

So is this is who you want for your President?

Mitt Romney returned from a three-week spring break in 1965 to resume his studies as a high school senior at the prestigious Cranbrook School. Back on the handsome campus, studded with Tudor brick buildings and manicured fields, he spotted something he thought did not belong at a school where the boys wore ties and carried briefcases. John Lauber, a soft-spoken new student one year behind Romney, was perpetually teased for his nonconformity and presumed homosexuality. Now he was walking around the all-boys school with bleached-blond hair that draped over one eye, and Romney wasn’t having it.

“He can’t look like that. That’s wrong. Just look at him!” an incensed Romney told Matthew Friedemann, his close friend in the Stevens Hall dorm, according to Friedemann’s recollection. Mitt, the teenaged son of Michigan Gov. George Romney, kept complaining about Lauber’s look, Friedemann recalled.

A few days later, Friedemann entered Stevens Hall off the school’s collegiate quad to find Romney marching out of his own room ahead of a prep school posse shouting about their plan to cut Lauber’s hair. Friedemann followed them to a nearby room where they came upon Lauber, tackled him and pinned him to the ground. As Lauber, his eyes filling with tears, screamed for help, Romney repeatedly clipped his hair with a pair of scissors.

The incident was recalled similarly by five students, who gave their accounts independently of one another. Four of them — Friedemann, now a dentist; Phillip Maxwell, a lawyer; Thomas Buford, a retired prosecutor; and David Seed, a retired principal — spoke on the record. Another former student who witnessed the incident asked not to be named. The men have differing political affiliations, although they mostly lean Democratic. Buford volunteered for Barack Obama’s campaign in 2008. Seed, a registered independent, has served as a Republican county chairman in Michigan. All of them said that politics in no way colored their recollections.

“It happened very quickly, and to this day it troubles me,” said Buford, the school’s wrestling champion, who said he joined Romney in restraining Lauber. Buford subsequently apologized to Lauber, who was “terrified,” he said. “What a senseless, stupid, idiotic thing to do.”

“It was a hack job,” recalled Maxwell, a childhood friend of Romney who was in the dorm room when the incident occurred. “It was vicious.”

“He was just easy pickins,” said Friedemann, then the student prefect, or student authority leader of Stevens Hall, expressing remorse about his failure to stop it.

The incident transpired in a flash, and Friedemann said Romney then led his cheering schoolmates back to his bay-windowed room in Stevens Hall.

Friedemann, guilt ridden, made a point of not talking about it with his friend and waited to see what form of discipline would befall Romney at the famously strict institution. Nothing happened.

Or this?

What Ric Grenell's departure from the Romney campaign tells us about Romney as a leader...

It tells us that he isn't much of one, and that his first instinct is always to make the problem go away, not to solve it.

From Andrew Sullivan:

Some actual reporting from yours truly. It seems clear from sources close to Grenell and reporters on the foreign policy beat that his turning point came last week. He'd been part of organizing a conference call to respond to Vice President Biden's foreign policy speech, now known best for the "big stick" remark. So some reporters were puzzled as to why Grenell, a week into his job as Romney's national security spokesman, was not introduced by name as part of the Romney team at the beginning of the call, and his voice completely absent from the conversation. Some even called and questioned him afterwards as to why he was absent. He wasn't absent. He was simply muzzled. For a job where you are supposed to maintain good relations with reporters, being silenced on a key conference call on your area of expertise is pretty damaging. Especially when you helped set it up.

Sources close to Grenell say that he was specifically told by those high up in the Romney campaign to stay silent on the call, even while he was on it. And this was not the only time he had been instructed to shut up. Their response to the far right fooferaw was simply to go silent, to keep Grenell off-stage and mute, and to wait till the storm passed. But the storm was not likely to pass if no one in the Romney camp was prepared to back Grenell up. Hence his dilemma. The obvious solution was simply to get Grenell out there doling out the neocon red meat - which would have immediately changed the subject and helped dispel base skepticism. Instead the terrified Romneyites shut him up without any actual plan for when he might subsequently be able to do his job. To my mind, it's a mark of his integrity that he decided to quit rather than be put in this absurd situation. And it's a mark of Romney's fundamental weakness within his own party that he could not back his spokesman against the Bryan Fischers and Matthew Francks.

The Daily Show: The War on Women...Jason Jones style (VIDEO)

I've fallen behind...badly. So I'm catching up with a couple of greatest hits...

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Rick Santorum...taken advantage of by a rich white man (VIDEO)

For shame, Mr. Santorum...for shame.

Rick Santorum Aborts Presidential Campaign from Ashley Judd

The complete Ed Show interview with Vice President Joe Biden (VIDEO)

Intro:

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Part 1:

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Part 2:

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Six seconds later...they'll get back to [us] on that... (VIDEO)

If you want to watch the star-studded Prop. 8 play, you can watch it here (VIDEO)

All two hours of it.

The President's Remarks before the HRC's Annual National Dinner (VIDEO)

The Lioness Program...

First caught this video on the Daily Beast this morning.  I'm sorry not to have seen it earlier.

For those of you who miss Al Franken's former Radio Show...

Great catch by Ryan J. Reilly over at Talking Points Memo. Al used to do this stuff on the air, and he was going against a tape of someone saying something.

This, is on the record, with the joker sitting right there in front of him.



Release. Rotation. Splash. Nothin' but net.

Hardall: Why the International Monetary Fund's Chief getting arrested matters (VIDEO)

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Missed Stories: Lara Logan's Interview on 60 Minutes (VIDEO)

One of the things President Obama mentioned in his speech about his long-form Birth Certificate, was the fact that the Media gets us all distracted on things (like his birth certificate) that we don't need to get distracted on.

Unfortunately, sometimes other, actually relevant events can swamp aside other, equally important stories.

One of those unfortunate circumstances took place during Sunday's announcement of the death of Osama Bin Laden. We lost track of Lara Logan's interview talking about her sexual assault while working on the Egyptian Uprising Story for CBS.

This is one of those instances for a woman in Ms. Logan's position, that's both hard and necessary. To have to relive that order is hard, but to share that experience with the world, on a major news telecast, is necessary because it helps chip away at the stigma that seems to still exist about these crimes. Still, she got up in front the camera, and broke that code of silence. I don't even know Ms. Logan, but I'm proud of her for doing this.

It's a damn shame that a proper discussion of what she said was swept aside. Well, at least here, you have a chance to see the interview in case you missed it:



And 60 Minutes Overtime:

President Obama signs Don't Ask-Don't Tell repeal (VIDEO)

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