• SENATE APPROVES GAY HATE CRIMES/WAR BILL: The Senate finally approved after 10 billion years a measure to include gay people and all sorts of wacky gender hybrids under the “hate crimes umbrella,” as part of a massive massive war/death/killing Defense Appropriations bill. Now gays can get married! [NYT]

Al Franken is like the best Senator ever, maybe. Here he talking for seven minutes yesterday about his amendment to a defense appropriations bill that would defund KBR (Halliburton) or any other contractor that forces its employees to waive their rights to criminal or civil cases when they get abused or — as was the case of one KBR employee in Iraq — gang-raped by their co-workers. The amendment passed, 68-30! Thirty Republican males voted against it. They thought Al Franken was just being mean to Halliburton because of Dick Cheney and politics. DID YOU KNOW THAT AL FRANKEN USED TO BE A COMEDIAN, AND NOW HE’S A SENATOR? It’s true. [Think Progress]

New York Republican Rep. John McHugh, ranking GOP member of the House Armed Services Committee, wrote this thing for The Hill yesterday that very politely and professionally urged his fellow Republicans to hit Barack Obama hard over Iran, North Korea, the Defense budget, and various other foreign policy issues that the President is a chit-chatty pussy about. Barack Obama didn’t much care for these “tips,” so he kidnapped McHugh from his home last night and ordered him to become his new Secretary of the Army. And now play time’s over for John McHugh, for there will be no more of his fanciful “Help the Republican party!” schoolyard dalliances in The Hill, ever again. [NYT]

JESUS CHRIST Republicans get away with everything when it comes to Warring, hmm? Barack Obama and Bob Gates raised defense spending by 4%, or $20 billion, for the new budget, but made cuts to missile defense programs — that would exist only so Sarah Palin could pretend that she’s shooting down Putin’s flying dick from outer space — and killed $140 billion in F-22 RAPTOR DEATH PLANE contractor looting schemes. The “new money” will be focused on Iraq and Afghanistan. And yet this has all been parlayed rather easily, on the teevee, into, “Why is Barack Obama not giving the Pentagon a single dollar, and why does he want to lose more wars?” [Washington Monthly, TPM]

Well, this is alarming! An Israeli arms company made a video about its wonderful relationship with the Indian military, and the end product is … sort of indescribable. Watchy watchy, if you hate your life/freedom/tasteful things. [Wired]

Our nation’s Presidents have a long and glorious history of promising “bipartisan healing” and such when it comes to Cabinet appointments. They say they will appoint members of the opposition party to important positions and then they give some toothless middle-of-the-roader an invisible Cabinet post that nobody cares about. Remember Norman Mineta, the Democratic transportation secretary in the early George W. Bush years? No? That’s because he was completely boring and unimportant. (He did have an airport named after him, though! A terrible airport.) Our future President Barack Obama plans to follow in this grand tradition, with one Clintonesque twist: Just like Bill Clinton did, he’ll let a Republican have the high-profile job of Defense Secretary. MORE »