National

Among all the points in the budget that President Obama is releasing this week, none is getting as much attention as his cuts to Social Security and Medicare. His proposal, which is part of a larger plan to ditch his favored policies for those that could stand a chance of passing a hostile House, will slow down the growth of entitlement programs by lowering the cost-of-living adjustments in the future. In 2011, these two programs cost $1.2 trillion, and the cost will increase in the years to come.

So after two days of arguments before the Supreme Court, what are the prospects for legalization of same-sex marriage across the United States if not in Minnesota? The best guess right now is that there are not five votes to strike down all bans on same-sex marriage across the country but that instead potential inaction by the Supreme Court may be one of the best things to happen for those who support the right of gays and lesbians to wed.

Perhaps the effort on the right to make the second war with Iraq appear to be some sort of success is just a visceral refusal to acknowledge having brought about the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people while being very wrong about 911, WMDs, the reception we’d receive, pretty much everything. Certainly having neocons mark the anniversary with a panel of the guilty talking about how great they were lends a sense of deliberateness to the efforts to spin the war as a success, or at least claim it ended well as a result of “the surge." Whether it’s deliberate or just a reaction isn’t really the thing to be concerned about however. They’re trying to spin history. The story they hope is remembered is the war went poorly at first, but then the neocons came up with their brilliant “surge” and all came out OK. Can they really cover up one of the biggest blunders in US history? Yes. It’s been done before, after another contender for biggest blunder.