My daughter tells me via her Facebook page that she just won Employee of the Month at the Missoulian. Good for her. That’s more than her dad ever managed to do.

Long article from The American Prospect on spending in the Montana Senate race.

Did you see in the Gazette (sorry, hoarding links) that Republican gubernatorial candidate Neil Livingstone described himself as “blue collar”? Here’s his bio. If his collar is blue, it must be because he got ink on it while tightening his tie.

A weekly update on one public radio story each Thursday that is more interesting, enlightening and useful than everything heard on all of talk radio that day:

This week it was a scholar who said that to really understand what is going on in Russia (and the former republics) you have to read Russian literature. I have often made the same point myself, though not often out loud. He proceeded to demonstrate by showing how Gogol’s “The Government Inspector” explains Putin’s Russia, how Chekov’s “The Cherry Orchard” explains the Ukraine, and how Dostoevsky’s “The Brothers Karamazov” explains Georgia.

Too much to repeat here, but I was most struck by his explanation: Because Russia has generally lacked the sort of vigorous political give and take that goes on in Western democracies, citizens turn for understanding instead to the great writers, who, often working in isolation, ferret out insights that are too powerful to ignore. Good stuff.

Overheard while delivering papers:

“He said, ‘Lexie, why are you naked?’

“And she said, ‘Dad, I’m naked because I took my clothes off.’”

After Barack Obama endorsed gay marriage this week, I expected Thursday talk radio to be overflowing with the news. I was only half right.

Mick Huckabee sounded downright hurt about the development, so much so that he had on Rick Santorum, who always sounds slightly annoyed, making it hard to tell when he is really annoyed. But Huckabee seemed to be the real deal. His argument, such as it was, seemed to be that Obama would unfairly get credit from the left-wing media for his position, even though:

1. It didn’t substantively change anything.

2. It was politically opportunistic.

3. It was unscriptural.

I think he was right on all three points, but I don’t see that any of them matter much. With respect to point one, Huckabee found Obama hypocritical because he has gotten himself involved fighting for healthcare and against Arizona’s immigration laws but not for gay marriage. But whatever one might think about the healthcare bill, there is no question that healthcare involves interstate commerce, and the federal government can regulate interstate commerce. So Obama may be stretching the rules, but he isn’t writing a whole new rule book. Nor is there any question that the federal government has the power to control international borders, so while you may disagree with the government’s position you can’t really argue that it can’t take a stand.

But there is no constitutional authority that allows the federal government to regulate marriage. Some conservatives think Obama already had gone too far by taking a position that the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional, which I suspect it is. But until Congress passes legislation that passes constitutional muster, or until the Supreme Court rules that gays have a constitutional right to marry, it’s hard to see how Obama has the power to do much more than he already has done.

On point two, sure. How could he not have taken political considerations into account? Hannity tried to nail Obama as a flip-flopper on this, in an effort to inoculate Romney, but Romney went from the left of Kennedy on this issue to calling for a constitutional amendment to block gay marriage. Obama may have meandered back and forth, but his general direction has been consistently in favor of gay rights on a wide spectrum of issues. Whether the latest move was pure calculation, or whether he was nosed into it by Biden, I don’t profess to know. But there isn’t much doubt that he would have gotten there eventually no matter what.

On point three, I do think a scriptural case can be made against homosexual activity. That’s OK with me because I don’t think government should be run according to Scripture. But it ought to be uncomfortable territory for Rush Limbaugh, who was calling Obama’s position a “scam.” I think I could make just as strong a scriptural case against serial monogamy of the sort that Limbaugh practices (four marriages and counting) as I could against gay marriage, and I know I could make as strong a biblical case against gluttony, an area where his hands are not especially clean.

I was prepared for a couple of more rounds of gay marriage bashing in the afternoon, but the Washington Post in the meantime reported that Romney and friends had roughed up a guy in high school they may have suspected was gay. This suddenly became the topic of the day.

Michael Smerconish sounded genuinely conflicted about this. On one hand, we all do stupid things in high school, including him (and me, I might add); on the other hand, Smerconish had never done anything quite as a bad as Romney was accused of doing. Also, it was pretty clear to Smerconish that Romney was lying when he said he didn’t remember (and didn’t deny) the incident. I agree. I can think of only two reasons why you would forget something like that: 1. You were seriously under the influence of drugs at the time. 2. You did so many things just as bad that they all blur together in your head.

Hannity, of course, was not conflicted. He was in full Romney defense mode. His argument went something like this: Nothing happened. If anything happened, it wasn’t important. If something happened and it was important, it was reported inaccurately. If something happened and it was important and it was reported accurately, then did you know, by the way, that Obama admitted in his autobiography that he once shoved a girl?

My own take is the same as always on this sort of story: It is damaging to the extent that it matches what people already thought about the candidate involved. It hurt Dan Quayle to misspell “potato” because people already thought he was dumb. It didn’t hurt Obama to mispronounce “corps” because not even his enemies think he’s dumb, just evil.

So Romney will be hurt to the extent that the incident reinforces the notion that he is uncaring, insensitive and intolerant. Which means it could hurt him quite a bit. Hard to improve on this.

David Frum looks at the real risk takers in American business.

Pundits have the unenviable job of coming up with a new outrage every week, but even by pundit standards, last week’s imaginary outrage over Obama “spiking the football” about killing Osama bin Laden seemed a stretch.

Stretchiest of all was on Megan Kelly’s Fox show, where she assembled a panelist of Bush-era Republicans to make the point that one should not exploit national tragedies for political purposes. They were talking about 9-11, which was a national tragedy and should not have been exploited, although it was.

But the death of bin Laden was not a national tragedy. It was a national triumph, and people spike footballs every day when they triumph. Especially when the chief critic is on record saying he never would have called that play so deep in opposing territory. Did Romney agree with the top of the ticket back in 2008? Probably even Romney doesn’t know. Would Romney be criticizing Obama now if the Osama mission had failed? I think we all know the answer to that one.

But Obama was right before the election, and he was right to call for the raid, and it was a major reason why I voted for him. And I’m spiking my Nerf right now.

Earlier, I wrote a post about AP abandoning its opposition to “hopefully.” Then Ed Kemmick wrote a column about it for the Gazette (sorry, no link, I’m hoarding my Lee Enterprises hits). I started to write a blog post in response to Ed’s piece, but then the post transmogrified into an entire column.

I think I’m done now.

One thing I’ve noticed on those long Thursday delivery days is that Yellowstone Public Radio usually has at least one story that is more interesting all by itself than the sum total of everything on talk radio that day. Last week, it was a story about a study that found that hockey players wearing dark or colorful jerseys were more likely to get called for penalties than players in more subdued colors (sorry, when I’m bouncing in and out of the car 100 times a day to deliver papers, I miss crucial details, so I can’t tell you who made the study).

Various possible explanations were offered. One was that dark jerseys are more visible and offenses are more likely to be noted. Another was that because of our deep-seated human biases about colors (see Chapter 42 of “Moby-Dick,” which, as my brother likes to say, contains all secular knowledge) referees are more likely to call penalties on players in dark jerseys. Yet another is that because of our deep-seated human biases about colors (what, you haven’t read Chapter 42 yet?) players in dark jerseys are more aggressive and more likely to commit illegal acts.

This week the story was a feature on the growing popularity of hot sauce, which is now, apparently, a billion dollar a year industry. Again, various explanations were offered, but as a frequent consumer of spicy foods I was most drawn to the taste test, which included a sampling of Dave’s Insanity hot sauce.

As it happens, I once owned a bottle of Dave’s Insanity, a gift from my daughter. It claimed to be the hottest sauce on the planet, and I don’t doubt it, although I never tested the label’s claim that it also could be used to remove oil stains from driveways. I learned to eat it with great care, applied in tiny quantities with a toothpick, and became a bit addicted after a while.

But a little bit of Dave’s Insanity goes a long way, and eventually a white mold grew on the  surface of the sauce.  I didn’t eat any more after that, but I still kept the bottle in the refrigerator for several months, just out of sheer awe at the tenacity of a life form that, no matter how humble, could make a home in an environment that hostile.

One odd finding in the news report: A study (sorry, don’t know who) found that addiction to hot sauce is related to an interest in roller coasters and other safe but scary rides. Apparently, serious chili heads are thrill seekers. But I don’t fit that pattern. If I never ride another roller coaster in my life that will be fine with me, but I could go for a sip or two of Dave’s Insanity right now.