Dave Weigel makes a point no one should ever forget: Why was King so unpopular in 1966? You could read Taylor Branch or Rick Perlstein, and it is Friday, so you might have the time. The short version: In 1965 and 1966, King started working on housing in northern states, starting in Chicago. The 1966 Gallup poll here was taken around the time of the disastrous Marquette Park march, which King credited for the ugliest crowd of counter-protesters he'd ever seen. (We can read some hyperbole into that if we like.) He was starting in on his anti-war activism. He had moved on from the causes of Southern integration and voting rights to the far more volcanic issues of housing and red-lining and economic redistribution -- he became, fully, a man of the left. King's subsequent political sainthood has very little to do with his post-Nobel Prize activism. It's left for guys like Cornel West to dig that up; to everyone else, King's "dream" was some easily-appropriated stuff about color-blindness...

Texas Governor Rick Perry has joined the other two top-tier Republican presidential candidates, Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and Minnesota Representative Michele Bachmann, in signing the National Organization for Marriage's Pledge to "appoint a presidential commission to investigate harassment of traditional marriage supporters," support an anti-marriage-equality amendment to the Constitution, and overturn same-sex marriage in the District so it can be put to a citywide referendum in defiance of local human-rights laws. The "investigate harassment of traditional marriage supporters" plank comes from the difficulty NOM has had keeping its donors secret. See, NOM believes, like Sarah Palin, that the First Amendment gives them the freedom to say what they want without criticism. The Supreme Court ruled 8-1 against NOM's efforts to keep their donors anonymous, with Justice Antonin Scalia writing that "there are laws against threats and intimidation; and harsh criticism, short...

That's the basic conclusion of a challenge to the Voting Rights Act by the state of Arizona, which is seeking to overturn the law as unconstitutional. Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act mandates that certain jurisdictions with a history of racial problems have their election changes subject to "preclearance" by the Justice Department. The lawsuit may be unique in its frank use of Tenth Amendment language to argue implicitly that the VRA was unconstitutional even when it was first passed by Congress, when it was meant to ensure that black people were able to excercize their right to vote. The lawsuit declares that "such heavy handed intrusion on state sovereignty exceeds Congress’s authority under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments." So even when black people were being murdered in the South for trying to exercise their right to vote, the Voting Rights Act was an unconstitutional infringement on "states' rights." The last challenge to Section 5 didn't go so far -- it merely argued...

Ghadafi loves Condi. Five years later, the Jena Six move on . Nomination oversights may be Obama's biggest sin. Feminists against fun?

Alyssa Rosenberg has some further thoughts on the Manic Pixie Dream Girl character archetype: He and I were talking about this a little bit a couple of days ago, and while I think it’s pretty clear why MPDGs are a fantasy for men, I also think the archetype has some utility for women. After decades of makeover scenes and unrealistic physical and behavioral expectations, there’s something kind of appealing about being told that the fantasy isn’t the Herve Leger bandage dress and the body that goes with it, it’s the quirky cardigan; that it’s not about having to fix yourself, it’s about someone else has to do the transformative work and all you have to do is help. I don’t necessarily think it’s a good trade, and I don’t actually think it makes for fully fleshed-out characters or exceptionally interesting movies, but I understand why it might feel worth it. I think this is one of the key differences between the Magic Negro and the MPDG. No one consciously wants to be the Magic Negro. But...

The Civil Rights Division has announced that it's charging an Oregon man with allegedly setting a mosque in Corvallis on fire. The larger context here is that the mosque was attended by Mohamud Osman Mohamud, the 19-year old who was arrested in a plot to bomb a Portland Christmas tree that was in actuality a sting set up by the FBI. In response to a fake terror plot that was never going to take place, someone decided it was time to execute a real one. UPDATE: The suspect, Cody Crawford, reportedly said this: "You look like Obama. You are a Muslim like him. Jihad goes both ways. Christians can jihad too," a court document quotes Crawford as telling a McMinnville officer after his Dec. 14 arrest on a charge unrelated to the firebombing." So not just a mere hate crime, but possibly another anti-Muslim ideologue who, like alleged Oslo terrorist Anders Breivik, embraces the concept of holy war between Christians and Muslims. Just from the "Christian" side.

Just saying : What comes after Gaddafi’s fall is much more important, and much more uncertain. Now it should be said that Obama’s strategy means that one of the key factors in the emergence of suicide terrorism — a foreign occupying military, typically of a different religious background than the occupied — isn’t present in Libya. But because Gaddafi essentially built Libyan society around himself, the rebels will have to start almost from scratch in constructing a new Libya. And it’s far from a safe bet that the one that will emerge will be the kind of democratic, pluralistic state that would be ideal. The rebels were united by a desire to oust Gaddafi, they’re less united in their vision for what Libyan society should be. Whatever ultimately happens, it’s far too early to declare the intervention in Libya “successful.” What we can say is that months after the president initiated a war without Congress’ approval, one he said would last “weeks, not months,” the most straightforward...