Kevin Drum asks an interesting question: what ever became of George W. Bush? Not so much literally—I've always assumed that he spends his days playing "Call of Duty: Black Ops" with bored Secret Service agents—but as a presence in our national life. It's partly because, as Kevin notes, his own party wants nothing to do with him, since most of his big projects turned out to be colossal failures. If Republicans don't want to talk about him, then we can't have an ongoing argument about his legacy, since one side of that argument changes the subject every time he comes up. But as Kevin says, "It's just sort of astonishing that a guy who was president only three years ago, and who loomed so large for both liberals and conservatives, has disappeared down the memory hole so completely. In the end, for all his swagger, he was a mile wide and an inch deep. Once he left the White House, it was as if his entire presidency had just been a bad dream."

In some ways, this is more remarkable on the liberal side than on the conservative side. To say George W. Bush loomed large is an understatement. In fact, he remade the entire American left.

Three days from now, in the hurricane-lashed hull of the Tampa Bay Times Forum, at the temporal cross coordinates of Congressman Todd Akin’s confession and the Republican Party’s communion, we’re finally going to see what’s truly mesmerized this white, middle-aged, male political conglomerate for the last two generations, and that’s the sexual freedom of women. The language has always been there, but until this presidential election it’s been lip service; next Monday, however, when the Republican platform is approved by the party’s convention, all the fear and loathing that women’s sexuality engenders will be splayed in the aisles before an electorate newly alerted to the party’s unforgiving position on abortion courtesy of Akin’s imprudence. The Akin vocabulary, and the platform’s, may be one of “abortion” and “rape,” but those words are symptoms of what really afflicts the party, which is the intolerable vision of women having sex on their own terms with impunity. This is what much of the anti-abortion movement detests and always has detested in the name of “life.”

As election season slides into its final stretch, some members of the punditocracy, from lack of sleep and abuse of caffeine, start to lose their minds. Or at least that’s the most generous explanation for how Kevin Williamson came to write—and the editors at National Review came to approve—a bizarre love letter to Mitt Romney that falls somewhere between a hagiography and a letter to Penthouse.

If you've ever read an article about a gay marriage ballot initiative, you've almost certainly seen an anti-marriage-equality advocate proclaim confidently that every time the question has been on the ballot, "traditional marriage" has won, and this time will be no different. That isn't precisely true—in 2006, Arizona voters rejected an initiative that would have banned both same-sex marriage and civil unions—but very nearly so. Ballot initiatives have banned same-sex marriage in 32 states over the last 15 years, so the "traditional" marriage side has some reason to gloat. But this fall, that run of success could come to a screeching halt. There are four marriage initiatives on the ballot in November, and at the moment it looks very possible, even likely, that on election night three more states will allow all their citizens to marry. We may well have reached an electoral turning point.

It has been a very good couple of years for advocates of gay rights. The military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy was repealed in 2011 (and the resulting catastrophe of morale predicted by conservatives failed to materialize, to no one's surprise). After a long period of "evolving," President Obama came out in support of marriage equality in May. This year's Democratic Party platform will for the first time include a provision pledging support for marriage equality. Nevertheless, 32 states still have discrimination written into their laws or state constitutions.

The entire Republican leadership wants Todd Akin to withdraw from the Missouri Senate race. There are several ways they can make their point to him. First, cut off his money supply. The National Republican Senatorial Committee has canceled a $5 million ad buy for him. Second, Akin is not well known statewide and now no established Republican will campaign with him. Third, they will deny him coveted slots at national events, such as next week's Republican National Convention.

Prior to 2008, one of the things you could count on in every presidential campaigning was subtle Republican attempts to imply that the Democratic candidate was wimpy, soft, maybe even girly. And if the Democrat was just a little bit light in the loafers then maybe that meant that if you voted for him, you were too.

Then came 2008, when the Republicans were faced with a candidate they couldn't quite make that argument about. Sure, their guy was a war hero, but that was 40 years ago, and now he just seemed like a grumpy old man. The Democrat, on the other hand, was young, black, and famously cool, hanging out with movie stars and almost never caught looking goofy or wearing a silly hat. Women swooned over him (remember "I've Got a Crush On Obama"?). To me, the moment that most exemplified the 2008 campaign was when Obama went to Kuwait to visit the troops, and met a few hundred of them in a gym. Someone brought out a basketball, and Obama, who played on his high school team, walked up to the three-point line and drained it on his first try to the cheers of the crowd. I always pictured the staff in McCain headquarters watching it on TV with pained expressions on their faces, somebody muttering, "Oh for Christ's sake" under his breath.

A lot has happened since then, but the idea that Obama is a cool customer remains endlessly maddening to conservatives, at least judging by the response I've gotten when I've written about this before. Which brings us to a rather remarkable article by Kevin Williamson in the National Review. You think Mitt Romney is an awkward, Ward Cleaver type about whom no one would ever make an "I've Got A Crush On Mitt" video? Au contraire, says Williamson. "What do women want?" he begins by asking. And the answer is, they want them some hot, steaming Mittster...

Consider the Detroit area, including suburbs like Sterling Heights, Grosse Pointe, and Warren, whose segregation presented such challenges to George when he was governor and then housing and urban development secretary.

Thirty percent of students in the Detroit area are now African American and 39 percent are “economically disadvantaged”—that is, eligible for free or subsidized lunches. In Detroit, 88 percent are African American and 85 percent lunch-eligible. Virtually all are from households with income of less than $22,000 a year for a family of four.