The problem, of course, is that Mr. Santorum is a serious contender for the Republican presidential nomination. That makes him a legitimate subject of scorn and ridicule, despite his unfortunate intellectual shortcomings.

Mr. Santorum recently announced that the hallowed American idea of separating church and state makes him want to “throw up.” Luckily there is medication available for that particular ailment. More worrisome than Mr. Santorum’s delicate digestive system is his thought process. He criticized John F. Kennedy’s famous 1960 speech to Baptist ministers in Houston, a speech in which JFK declared that there must be no religious test for public office in the United States. There was a time—oh, about a month or so ago —when Kennedy’s argument was considered an accepted fact. No longer, or at least not in Mr. Santorum’s odd little world.

Mr. Santorum is entitled to his religious beliefs. The problem is that he wishes to impose those beliefs on all of us. He does not believe in contraception; therefore, in his America, there will be no contraception. How long before he announces that he will restrict his Cabinet to those who share his religious beliefs? (Somebody ought to ask him that question.)

It is a sad commentary on the state of the Republican Party that Mr. Santorum has emerged as a legitimate candidate for its highest honor. It is equally sad that New York Republicans have been silent while Mr. Santorum demands that we tear down the wall separating church and state. New York, more than most places, understands the importance of tolerance. Mr. Santorum may be the most intolerant voice in American politics today. It’s time for other Republicans to call him out.

Frankly, this critique is hardly new, as far as it goes. But Mr. Santorum actually goes further in his assaults on modern life. He has attacked the very idea of birth control, an issue that many Americans probably regard as having been settled 50 years ago.

Ordinarily, Mr. Santorum’s views could be dismissed as those of a crank. The problem is, it’s becoming clear that his growing numbers of supporters apparently agree with his implicit contention that contraception should be outlawed—in the name of Christianity.

Mr. Santorum, to his credit, hasn’t tried to hide this knuckle-dragging world view. “Many of the Christian faith have said … contraception is O.K.,” the former senator said last fall. “It’s not O.K. It’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.” With some pride, Mr. Santorum noted that “no president has talked about” the evils of birth control. Well, he’s right about that.

What started as a debate over abortion rights a generation ago—a debate in which principled people can and do have reasonable differences—has deteriorated into the spectacle confronting us now, when a major presidential candidate can argue not simply that abortion is wrong, but that birth control is “not O.K.”  If a candidate made such a declaration even a decade ago, he or she would have been dismissed as a laughing stock. But the intolerance of the religious right has become only more stringent in this, the second decade of the 21^st century. It is fair to argue, as many liberals and Democrats should, that the religious right is determined to criminalize contraception. Yes, they’re coming after your birth control.

At long last, has it really come to this? It is one thing for a religious organization to demand an exemption to health-care insurance mandates regarding abortion services or access to contraception. But when a presidential contender argues that birth control is “not O.K.,” it’s time to check the calendar to make sure that it really is 2012.

This debate has no place in presidential politics. How horrifying that it is actually taking place.

Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, in Nevada for the Republican primary caucuses, has scheduled a mysterious press conference in Las Vegas later tonight. Active candidates typically hold a rally regardless of voting results; Mr. Gingrich's presser has prompted The New York Times to report via its political blog The Caucus that "rumors have been flying" in Nevada that Mr. Gingrich will cease his run for the presidency.

Those rumors may be unfounded--embedded journalists following the campaign have already a received preliminary schedule of appearances Mr. Gingrich will make in upcoming caucus states such as Colorado and Ohio.

Casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson, a major donor to a Super PAC supporting the Gingrich campaign, is based in Las Vegas as well, so Gingrich could simply be acknowledging a major donor's support. The upshot is no one really knows what the former Speaker is up to, which is perhaps just the way he likes it.

UPDATE: In his press conference after Mitt Romney was declared winner of the Nevada caucuses, Mr. Gingrich declared he was the only real conservative seeking the nomination and definitely still in the running.

[NYTimes.com]

Old friends at their umpteenth reunion these past few months.

If you’re feeling withdrawal symptoms from reduced doses of Occupy Wall Street rabble-rousing (we hear they’re just hibernating), the success of last week’s SOPA blackout ought to cheer you up. Without going into the nitty-gritty of what this Stop Online Piracy Act was all about, let’s just say that the idea of blocking IP addresses and enforcing criminal laws for streaming copyrighted materials finally gave the Internet a reason to shut down for the day. While hundreds of kids complained that they couldn’t do their homework because Wikipedia was out protesting, the Congressmen behind SOPA withdrew their support within 24 hours of the January 18^th viral movement that was opposed by almost every major web service. If there’s one thing more powerful than an army of lobbyists, it’s an inbox full of angry Reddit users.

Not that we needed another reminder that we rely far too much on the Internet information, but when a deluge of reports started streaming in Saturday night that Penn State’s former football coach Joe Paterno had died of lung cancer, Twitter lit up like a Christmas tree plugged into a nuclear reactor. CBS and The Huffington Post also jumped the gun reporting the death of the beloved and controversial coach, who had been dismissed by the college swiftly last November after allegations of sexual abuse emerged against his assistant coach Jerry Sandusky. While Coach Paterno did indeed pass away, he died Sunday, not Saturday. Which just goes to show that you can’t believe everything you read. Or maybe you can, but give it 24 hours just to be sure.

One news item that we just flat-out refuse to believe is the separation of Seal and Heidi Klum. Those two were our inspiration, as much for their Halloween costumes as for their happy partnership. You’d think that after seven years together the couple would want to stay mum on the messy details, but Seal has a new album to promote and hit the talk-show circuit to discuss his heartache less than 24 hours after the announcement was made. Hey, Soul 2 isn’t going to sell itself! Unless, of course, the album is just 40 minutes of “Kiss from a Rose” covers. (Now that we think about it, that’s not a bad idea; we can almost hear Joanna Newsom plucking on her harp, followed by Randy Newman crooning about graying towers, eyes that emit light, graveyards, and whatever hell else that song was about.)

And of course the nominations for the 84^th annual Academy Awards are in, and what do you know? Transformers: Dark of the Moon was nominated for as many awards as Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life. Michael Bay’s third movie based on action figures also grossed over a billion dollars more than Malick’s meditation on life and death, but that’s to be expected. Robots sell: lush landscapes serving as metaphors for childhood don’t.

The nominations also fly in the face of theories espoused by the late Christopher Hitchens and former Letterman comedy booker Eddie Brill; it appears that women are, in fact, funny. Bridesmaids, last year’s frontrunner in the hysterical-to-watch but infuriating-to-talk-about category, snagged a Best Original Screenplay nod for Annie Mumolo and Kristen Wiig, and a Best Supporting Actress accolade for Melissa McCarthy. Hopefully these Oscar contenders don’t inspire another false dichotomy involving ovaries and funny bones ... or even worse, golf-claps for women triumphantly breaking through the gender barrier and being allowed to poop in sinks for laughs.

After all, isn’t it time we find something new to fight with our ideologically opposed families about? Certainly those Republican debates make for great conversation fodder. Newt Gingrich became a hero in South Carolina for refusing to answer John King’s question about his ex-wife’s claims that he asked for an open marriage while she was on her hospital bed, helping him to sweep up 40% of the votes in the state. (If only Mitt Romney could have someone leak to the press the existence of a few extra heretofore unknown wives; at this point it might help him pick up some extra points.) In other unsurprising news, Rick Santorum told Piers Morgan on Friday that he would urge his daughter not to get an abortion even if she was raped, and he’s predictably vehement about outlawing gay marriage. And Ron Paul, the only person on the stage with any military or medical experience, continues to have to fight to get a word in edgewise during questions about health or international relations.

It’s all sort of ridiculous, and dare we say funny. But not in a Bridesmaids sort of way. More a laugh-to-keep-from-crying sort of way. Just don’t bring up Heidi and Seal again, or we may lose it.

Beyonce wearing Babyonce. (Getty)

How can you tell 2012 has begun with a bang? Just log onto Twitter: the hot topics since Jan. 1 are a Venn diagram of American life—from pop culture to politics, to sports and even race relations. It’s beginning to feel an awful lot like looking into a microcosm not too dissimilar to those sea monkey kits we cried enough about to have Mom and Dad buy one, only to have it sitting in garage next to whatever Santa had brought us the year before. In fact, Twitter has morphed into This American Life. Well, again, for sea monkeys. At least there’s a community spirit in the barrage of 140-character thought bubblettes: it’s one of the few times that you’ll find New Yorkers venturing outside their insular world and joining in the national dialogue ­… even if it’s only online and it turns out that our sea monkeys are just brine shrimp with great marketing.

So here was your week on Twitter.

Sunday night (New Year’s Day), 60 percent of your social network updates were composed of armchair commentary on the Giants-Cowboys game, while the remaining 40 percent debated whether Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich would win the Iowa caucus. (Here’s a scary fact: Tim Tebow had the second most tweets per second about his 80-yard overtime touchdown pass, with 9,420 messages going up almost simultaneously.) Then whatever percentage of people who didn’t care about football or politics traded gossip about whether or not Beyoncé had secretly given birth already.

Monday evening was a 50-50 split between up-to-the-nanosecond reactions to the Iowa polls and equally fervent up-to-the-nanosecond reactions to The Bachelor.

Wednesday saw Twittersphere explode with the triple-whammy of dark-horse Rick Santorum tying for first place in Iowa and two celebrities activating (or in one case, reactivating) their accounts. Kanye West, who quit the social networking service several months back, hopped back on to give the world the gift of whatever crazy thing popped into his head. For example, iPhones! “Instead of kicking kids out of schools for using there iPhones … why not promote it? Allow kids to use search engines to do test … like the real WORLD!!! Give kids the amount of test they would have in a year in one day but they have to get everything perfect …” Steve Jobs in iHeaven, are you listening?

Joy to the world’s satirists, who now have that much more material to work with. Also joining Twitter on humpday was media mogul Rupert Murdoch, who quickly amassed 100,000 followers in one day (but chose to follow only six people himself, one of whom was The Observer’s editor, who was promptly unfollowed the following day—possibly because Mr. Murdoch didn’t like being direct messaged questions by curious journalists). Currently his list counts him following four of his own publications, former Village Voice intern Esther Zuckerman, Mark Pincus, Radiolab’s Jad Aumrad, economist Nouriel Roubini, Peggy Noonan, Eric Cantor, Jack Dorsey, a director of MOBY as well as the accounts for AllThingsD and the conservative group Ricochet. Sea monkeys, all around. But maybe Mr. Murdoch is just in a shopping mood and looking to buy a possibly overvalued social networking platform. Again. (Remember MySpace? Barely? Us, neither.)

Thursday Nick Cannon tweeted that his kidneys were shutting down and he was going to the hospital. Jon Huntsman tried to win voters Obama-style by using “new media,’ creating a user account and hashtags for #jonhuntsman, but he really needs to update his social media strategists, since his use of the service could actually be considered spam in the eyes of the all-mighty Twitter. (That’s the beauty of the Twitter policy: it doesn’t matter if you’re selling a free iPad or four years in office. If you’re bothering account members while they’re trying to discuss Downtown Abbey’s latest episode, you’re out of there.)

Saturday, of course, was officially Beyoncé Baby Day, when, for several hours, we all believed the child’s name to be Ivy Blue Carter. Thankfully, Gwyneth Paltrow took to Twitter and corrected us: It was Blue Ivy, Twitter. Phew, thanks for clearing that up! Then Alec Baldwin pulled a Kanye and returned to his 140-character fan base just in time to promote the 30 Rock premiere this week.
And then it was Sunday again, a clean slate where we can look forward to a whole new week of Bachelor commentary, Tim Tebow touchdowns, outrage over Rick Santorum’s latest round of homophobic statements and hashtags for #stuffgirlssay.

God bless America, the Internet and sea monkeys.