Earlier in this decade, in the heat of the debate over gay marriage in Massachusetts, Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) predicted that once marriages actually started happening, opponents would realize it just wasn't that big a deal (a very big deal of course to those getting married, but not a big deal in terms of the sky falling down or Western Civilization coming to an end) and it would simply fade away as a political issue. And five years on, that's what seems to be happening.

What would Movement Conservatism be without the self-pity?

In what seem to be the very good reviews for the new Star Trek movie, there's been discussion of a scene that perhaps alludes to our current public discussion of torture. Juliet Lapidos has a nice piece up at Slate on an episode for Star Trek TNG that focused on the power, degradation and ineffectiveness of the practice.

(It's a good episode; have to crack out that DVD.)

President Obama will be among Washington society tonight, for the White House Correspondents' Dinner. That and other political news in today's TPMDC Saturday Roundup.

We dug up this 1986 CBS News report on the court nomination of now-Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL). The piece ran just after the Judiciary Committee rejected his nomination.

Can it really be true that the list of Americans who will appear on the Sunday shows this weekend is David Petraeus, Dick Cheney, Newt Gingrich and John McCain?

I guess it really is a center-right nation.

Going to war against Obama's money-saving student loan reform plan.

Full-size video at TPMtv.com.

Are AIGers giving generous terms to counter-party banks in exchange for cushy jobs to come?

Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ) on the latest developments (or lack thereof) in the effort to repeal the military's 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' policy.

Nancy Pelosi reaffirms that she only received one briefing, in 2002, on "enhanced interrogation techniques" -- and asserts that the CIA itself isn't standing behind the accuracy of its own documents that on their face seem to contradict her.

Over at TPMmuckraker we've been digging into these public pension investment scandals in which an overlapping group of players have been scamming (or perhaps better to say, skimming) money out of public pension plans in several states. So we got curious why something very similar seemed to be going on in Illinois but with a very distinct group of villains. The upshot seems to be that Chicago and Illinois had enough native grown corruption just not to need any help from outside -- or to let outsiders take their cut.

Last night Rachel Maddow interviewed one of the military Arabic language translators who was booted out of Army after publicly saying he's gay.

Is a breach between the Obama and Netanyahu governments on the horizon? I asked this question to a senior Israeli government official recently and was told -- not that convincingly, I thought -- that it wasn't in the cards because the two governments don't fundamentally disagree on the big questions. But MJ Rosenberg comes at the question from a different angle -- pointing out that the US government virtually always gets what it wants when a popular US president puts down his foot. This is an important read -- and really shows that it comes down to what Obama wants and what he'll demand.

When it's another country doing it.

There's a lively debate today about which if any Democrats knew about various torture practices on a relatively contemporaneous basis. And we're going to have reporting today from TPMmuckraker about what certain documents do or don't mean. Speaking for myself though I'd be very surprised if the key Democrats at the time weren't briefed on a lot of this stuff. And to the extent that they didn't know the details, that it might have been not wanting to know rather than having been kept in the dark.

If it turns out that the Democrats in leadership were really kept wholly in the dark about this stuff, that'd be nice to know, I guess. I'd like to think they're not compromised. But expecting or hoping for that strikes me as a recipe for disappointment and eventual special pleading in their defense.

To me, though, this is precisely why we need some version of a Truth Commission, probably one that at least on first blush is not about assigning blame or recommending punishment but simply finding out, in as disinterested a manner as possible, just what happened and who knew and okayed it.

I just think we're fooling ourselves if we don't see that many, many people -- even a lot of the "good guys" were and are compromised by what happened.

Cheney: Stay radical, Republicans, stay radical. That and that day's other political news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.

Full-size video at TPMtv.com.

This week at TPMCafe Book Club Michelle Goldberg is discussing her new book The Means of Reproduction: Sex, Power and the Future of the World. Joining her in the discussion are Katha Pollitt, Helen Epstein, Deepali Gaur Singh, Gloria Feldt and Lauren Berlant.