What's so vexing about this whole Miss California story is that while it appears to be almost the very definition of "infotainment," it actually contains within it one of the more important topics in our current discourse. It's almost like we've become so stupid as a nation that the only way we can really bring the debate about gay marriage to the center of public consciousness is through the vacuous rantings of an android made from bleach and silicon. And while iconic portraitist Perez Hilton and perpetual cynosure Donald Trump only are the thumbs on the fluff side of the scale here, even the revelation that she posed for boobie pictures can't obscure the fact that there's a larger issue in play. Thank God a serious public figure has finally weighed in. READ MORE

Attorney Mark Levy, a former deputy assistant attorney general in the Clinton administration, killed himself yesterday. Earlier in the week Levy had learned that he was to be one of the 24 attorneys in his firm to be laid off; his 20-year-old son found "a note in his home saying he loved his family and instructing his wife on how to handle finances and other matters." This is, of course, a tragedy for the Levy family which I do not want to diminish, but let's also remember: If this had happened nine years ago his name would have been added to The Clinton Body Count. With all the disappointments of Bill Clinton's presidency, it's easy to forget the sheer grotesquery of those arrayed against him, be they true believers like the idiot who put this list together in the first place, or cynical operators like the Wall Street Journal editorial page. I think we got so used to the constant drumbeat of bizarre conspiracy theories that after a while we were inclined to ignore how absolutely poisonous they were, but it's important to recall that they were more than just white noise: They were an organized attempt by the political opposition to destroy a president who they did not like. Something to remember over the next, say, 1361 days.