Clark says Dean asked him to be his VP in September; Joe Trippi says Dean didn’t. Doesn’t really matter. But Clark also said a run as VP probably isn’t “in the cards.”

I offer no thoughts on whether that will change if Dean goes on to win the nomination, but there it is.

Full Disclosure: Yes, I am. And yes, I purposefully call opponents of gay marriage “anti-marriage,” instead of making the distinction, because I think it’s distasteful and Orwellian that a remarkable little bit of doubletalk like the “Defense of Marriage Act” is still just humbly acquiesced to in 2003. I’m kind of a radical on this point, I understand that.

This is bad news.

I won’t say I didn’t see it coming, but it’s bad news, nevertheless.

By and large, Americans pretty much don’t like the prospect of same-sex marriages, and a larger number than had been thought (a significant majority, in fact) favor a Constitutional amendment banning it.

I’m still rather cavalier about the prospect of an anti-marriage amendment making it through the long process of ratification, but it’s not impossible. Once such an amendment made its way through Congress (which it easily might), it would go out to all 50 states. If the amendment fails in one house of Congress in at least 13 states, it fails, period.

Those seem like pretty good odds. But we can’t forget that 37 states have passed Defense of Marriage Acts prohibiting same-sex marriage.

And even though we knew this was coming, the article itself is interesting, frightening, and sort of weird.

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This is, in fact, what I am talking ’bout.

One, yo.

In The Washington Post today, Tom Cruise gives more credence to my impression of him as frightening and Napoleonic. He says when he encounters libelous remarks about him in the press, he instructs his lawyer to: “Just sue. Just do it. Sue, sue, sue. Do it. Go, go, go, go.” Yikes.

Check out Fimoculous.com’s bevy of best-of lists, featuring Poynter Online’s own Book Babes, among others (Via MetaFilter, again). I guess this means we get to kick off our own Best-Of-2003 series.

I’ll start…

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Elves have their sexual needs, like all of us, apparently (completely safe for work). Only Tolkien suggests they were much more chaste than us humans. Unfortunately…

To disappoint slash writers everywhere, there were no clear statements of elf homosexuality. There weren

Something about this Wired article totally grabbed me. Well, the headline and deck hed are pretty arresting in combo, but then the article itself did this spectacular job of drawing me into this little dark room with these two scientists, poking at eggs under a microscope. Somehow, the writer gets away with using science jargon without turning me off. I read all the way through. I learned a bit, too. Now I’m all interested in seeing how these experiments turn out.

I haven’t seen any links to this fantastic William Saletan article, so I’m-a step in to fill that void.

Saletan humbly links back to his overconfident September 2000 prediction that GWB was “toast,” and then goes back to his earlier spot-on analysis of Bush’s whiz-bang political technique, and rounds up the whole thing by showing how Dean is employing that very same technique in his attack on Bush. Great stuff, and I’m not even a Sale-fan.

Take a look at that universal acclaim, baby.

The score will drop as more reviews come in, I’m sure. But will 11 reviews so far, that’s still pretty damn impressive.

Robin and I already have our tickets. How about you?

Mr. John Edwards also gave his foreign policy speech today. Thankfully, instead of posting the whole, high-fallutin’-rhetoric-having speech on his website, he presented it in a nutritious little bite-size five-part morsel. But Edwards’ and Dean’s ideas are basically parallel. His five planks, in brief:

1) Global Nuclear Compact: Everyone get together and non-proliferate!

2) UN Resolution: Criminalize terrorism-sponsoring and nuke-developing countries.

3) Secure Loose Nukes: Triple the amount we spend on threat reduction programs. To do this, we’d severely cut back our own nuke-developing efforts.

4) Homeland Intelligence Agency: This new government wing would take over the terrorist-tracking duties of the FBI. We’d also hire more intelligence folks.

5) Non-Proliferation Director: A new high-level administration position.

Dean’s outline was broader; he includes more money for non-proliferation efforts and assorted goodies like $30 billion to combat AIDS. But where does he plan to get these billions from? Edwards’ plan may be more realistic.

Of course, if the Dems lose Congress, neither plan will have much traction now, will it?