Friday Funday: Kudos And Berries

We've often said, over the years, that too few people get credit for the good things they do in life, while others skip out on their fair share of blame for the bad things that are done. So from time to time, for many years now, we've occasionally given credit and kudos to those who've earned them, while doling out the proper share of raspberries and blame to those who may not have been properly dinged.

Today is one of those days, where both will handed out here.

First, the blame, where both houses of Congress and the President should receive some shame for their part in the failure to avert the sequester today - though House Republicans and Speaker Boehner carry the majority of the blame. Unless something on the order of fishes and loaves happens at some point, as of 11:59PM today, the austerity monster will begin dining on an American economy just beginning to come back to life.

Congress also should receive some kudos though, for finally reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act. Not only did the legislation pass both the House and Senate by wide margins. Senate Democrats also fixed parts of the bill surrounding LGBT and Native American issues, that had previously been ignored.

The Senate in particular deserves some positive credit, on both sides of the aisle. Even though Senate Republicans played games with Chuck Hagel's nomination for seven weeks, they confirmed his appointment this week and Hagel was sworn in. They also confirmed Jack Lew, who was sworn in as the new Secretary of the Treasury on Thursday.

There is one specific member of the media we want to give thanks to this week, Justin Green, of The Daily Beast. While he and our staffer Shawn joust regularly on Twitter, his recommendations for sensible, conservative commentaries are often good, and we certainly think they've helped add a better depth to the aggregated news stories we provide along with our daily extended edition, and in our archives.

Sadly, many of Justin's colleagues - who are also our colleagues in the Beltway media - get a huge raspberry for their pointless obsession over the last few days about Bob Woodward. Specifically, coming in for a huge wallop of shame, should be Politico. They not only blew up the whole faked fiasco about the White House threatening Mr. Woodward in the first place, they also now have tried to shoot it down that story was effectively a fabricated hoax - which is a lot easier for Politico to do when they blew up the story in the first place. There's a reason the public barely trusts the media these days - and part of that reason is sophomoric garbage like this.

To end on a positive note, since it is Friday, we wanted to give a special thanks and kudos to President Obama, for officially urging the Supreme Court to strike down California's same sex marriage ban. We also wanted to give credit to all the famous and infamous Republicans and conservatives, including Clint Eastwood, who signed the friend of the court brief that supports legalizing same sex marriage in California - the same thing President Obama is in favor of.

People are just people, no matter who they love. If someone is lucky enough to find real love, strong enough to make them want to sign a legal contract about it, we surely won't stand in their way.

Life's too short and far too important to fight over who someone else falls in love with.