Kornacki wonders if he will risk the embarrassment of losing his home state for the chance to win up to 10 primaries with big evangelical segments in May and June. Jay Cost is more optimistic:
A win in Pennsylvania could in theory jumpstart his campaign, undo the tentative movement we saw toward Romney in Wisconsin tonight, and give Santorum a boost heading into the final leg of the contest. If that were to pan out, Santorum could argue – plausibly – that his late stage momentum gives him an equally strong moral claim to the nomination as Romney has. This is similar to what Ronald Reagan claimed against Gerald Ford in 1976 and Ted Kennedy against Jimmy Carter in 1980.
One thing I've learned from watching these things over the years is that once you get a taste of that kind of power, it's very hard to let go. But a comeback as Cost suggests seems wildly implausible to me.
Today on the Dish, Andrew gave a fullthroated defense of a radical and individualistic Christian sexual ethic (response here), flagged the current Pope's old account of an apolitical Jesus, confessed the difficulties this Lent has brought, and listened to more reader feedback here. He also explored how the GOP turned Obama into a more vocal liberal, noted another instance of rank Obama-hatred, profiledthe psychology behind the anger, found it in cartoon form, aired reader thoughs, and saw no Palin bump. We tracked Obama's rhetorical escalation as the primary gave way to the general, got bored of primary horserace coverage, located Romney's base of "moderate cynics," dubbed him "Mr. Generic Republic," went over the merits of Paul Ryan as Veep (again), examined how Jeffrey Toobin shaped the SCOUTUS CW, and rifled through Congress' full e-mailbox. Ad War Update here.
On another front, Andrew dove in to the newly released Bush-era State Department memo explaining that torture was, in fact, torture. We kept track of more arguments on Beinart and the settlements, explained why adoption was banned in many Muslim countries, and worried about the effect of food prices on global stability. The world appeared primed to buy American, casinos profited from good design, and dating sites sold their clients' info. Google previewed a future of impossibly awesome glasses, driverless cars appeared to be coming to a street near you, apps seemed like the future of books, but suicide prevention wasn't progressing. The reflections of a gay doctor appalled and readers half-defended the MPAA on Bully. We grounded the us-versus-them dynamic in human biology, wondered if being ethical in one way served as a release valve to act poorly in others, noted that it was socially acceptable to say you suck at math but not at reading, and peered into the psyche of Mad Men fans. Many things seemed legit, including cremation.
Ask Jonah Anything here, Hathos Alert here, Quote for the Day here, VFYW here, MHB here, and FOTD here.
Rod Dreher has written a response to my response. In the post, he writes
Andrew has taken Jesus’s radical message of forgiveness and turned it into a theological justification for sexual license.
In the comments section, he summarizes:
Andrew endorses Jesus’s radical call for renunciation of everything except the one thing Andrew himself is not prepared to renounce. And that is telling.
But that is not what I wrote. I wrote the following in plain English:
The notion that Jesus was a free love kinda guy is also preposterous, and I never wrote otherwise. His sexual radicalism is as extreme as his property radicalism (give away everything, including your home).
How is describing Jesus sexual radicalism, which involves "a level of grace that leaves sexual desire behind entirely" a theological justification for sexual license? At this point, I'd suggest, Rod is arguing with himself, not me.
[Re-posted from earlier today.] Rod Dreher takes issue with my Newsweekessay. Guess what his main focus is:
Jesus condemns lust. What is lust? How would Andrew Sullivan define lust? Jesus believes that “sexual immorality” is so serious that it’s the only legitimate reason for divorce. What could Jesus have meant by “sexual immorality” Clearly, unambiguously, Jesus believes in a right way of sexual conduct, and a wrong way — and condemns the wrong way in serious terms. It is completely untenable to say that Jesus was indifferent to sexual conduct. If we want to know more explicitly what kind of sexual conduct Jesus found to be trayf, we should consult his tradition’s teachings, found in the Hebrew Bible. Or you could trust the rabbi Paul, who was a contemporary of Jesus’s. If you really don’t want to know, because to know is to be responsible, and to be responsible is to have to change your life and die to yourself in ways you prefer not to, well, then you are fooling yourself. It’s as if the Rich Young Ruler went away from Jesus sorrowful, and then wrote an essay later saying that if we really knew Jesus, we would know that he really didn’t mean that one would have to sell all one’s possessions if one wants to have eternal life.
It’s revealing that for Rod, sex is the first thing that comes to mind after reading my essay. Which kinda proves my point- which is that in the grand scheme of Jesus’ teaching, sex is an extremely minor theme, while the current Catholic and evangelical leadership regards it as a central defining issue. But the notion that Jesus was a free love kinda guy is also preposterous, and I never wrote otherwise. His sexual radicalism is as extreme as his property radicalism (give away everything, including your home). Take the part of the Gospels Rod cites:
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell. “It has been said, ‘Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce.’. But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, makes her the victim of adultery, and anyone who marries a divorced woman commits adultery.
This is a remarkably radical passage – requiring us, if we take it literally, to dismember our bodies because they constantly present a temptation to forget God. My interpretation is that Jesus is warning against believing that because you obey certain religious rules, you are somehow holy. Inside you are probably not. Lust, greed, racism, fear, and tribalism – to take a few aspects of fallen human nature – are innate; and his call is for a total, deep renunication of all of them, not just obeying formal rules like a “certificate of divorce.” This is of a piece with Jesus’ insistence on interior, personal transformation – not just obedience to religious law. But in so far as this passage is about sex, it is a total impossibility. Not to feel involuntary sexual attraction is not to be human. The standard is impossible. I mean: try it. Try to have no sexual desires, feelings or moments of attraction. Not try to resist acting on them; but resist even thinking them. That’s Jesus’ standard. We all fail that standard. We are all therefore adulterers to different degrees. Any man who has ever had a chubby for someone not his wife is an adulterer. Every celibate priest is an adulterer. The Pope is an adulterer. Every Christian who has ever lived is an adulterer. This is Jesus’ radicalism at work, and it points, in my view, not to using government to police and repress sexual desire (as you see in large swathes of the Muslim world). And it does not point to church authorities using the repression of sex as a tool for real power over their flocks (which they then sometimes use for sexual abuse). It points to achieving a level of grace that leaves sexual desire behind entirely – a standard also familiar to other religious or philosophical traditions, like Buddhism. And recall Jesus’ response to an actual condemnation of an adulterer. She is about to be stoned. Does Jesus uphold the law he came to fulfill against the woman? No. He demands that those without sin cast the first stones. And he forgives the woman – while insisting she not sin again. Actually, he does more than forgive. He says:
Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.
This is the Christian model of sexual morality, it seems to me, as it is of morality in general. Jesus poses an impossible standard and then refuses to condemn an actual tangible human being who fails to reach it. Since we are all completely ridden with sin, we equally have no right to condemn anyone else, even if we are living the most upright lives according to the law. Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And in this classic scene in which religious authorities stand ready to deploy their power to punish sin, Jesus does something strange. He physically defuses the dynamic. She is cowering; they are threatening; they demand he uphold the law. What does he do? He sits on the ground and doodles in the dust. He is neither condemned nor condemner. He breaks that circle. He does not condemn. He forgives. So I am a sinner. So is Rod. We should leave the stones on the ground. But this debate is not about me and Rod anyway. It is about reclaiming the core message of Jesus against the distortions that every age imposes on it. And in so far as I am offering any argument as to how to live one’s life when the standard Jesus offered is literally impossible, it is merely to say it is hard, and would be cruel were it not for forgiveness. I have had good moments in this struggle and terrible, lasting failures. This Lent has forced me to consider my constant failures more than my intermittent moments of grace. That I confess. As a practical matter, I have not had the strength to live as Saint Francis, without possessions, without a home, without sex, without anything but a subsistence diet, reliant entirely on physical labor and begging on the streets as a last resort. I find the secular world fascinating, funny, engaging, enraging, joyful. And I have made compromises in my faith-life – just as our laws make compromises for the crooked timber we make up. That made writing this piece hard; and responding to it difficult. Because I am unworthy to deliver such a message. But if no broken being can speak to the truths he cannot always live up to and has often strayed from, then we would have a great deal of silence. We should not be comfortable with the compromises our fallen lives compound. But we have to live with them, and keep each one in proper perspective:
Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in a lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope.
Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith.
Nothing we do, however virtuous, could be accomplished alone; therefore we must be saved by love.
No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the stand point of our friend or foe as it is from our own standpoint; therefore we must be saved by the final form of love, which is forgiveness.
Our love of sports, politics and religion all come down to our tribal instincts, according to E.O. Wilson:
Our bloody nature, it can now be argued in the context of modern biology, is ingrained because group-versus-group was a principal driving force that made us what we are. In prehistory, group selection lifted the hominids to heights of solidarity, to genius, to enterprise. And to fear. Each tribe knew with justification that if it was not armed and ready, its very existence was imperiled. Throughout history, the escalation of a large part of technology has had combat as its central purpose. Today, public support is best fired up by appeal to the emotions of deadly combat, over which the amygdala is grandmaster. We find ourselves in the battle to stem an oil spill, the fight to tame inflation, the war against cancer. Wherever there is an enemy, animate or inanimate, there must be a victory. Any excuse for a real war will do, so long as it is seen as necessary to protect the tribe.
(Photo: A Palestinian protester rolls a tire to burn, as a man throws stones towards Israeli soldiers on March 23, 2012, during a protest against the closure of a road during the second Intifada (began late September 2000) by Jewish settlers from the nearby settlement of Kadumim, in the West Bank village of Kfar Kadum. By Jaafar Ashtiyeh/AFP/Getty Images)
As conceived by Wynn and Thomas, the Bellagio’s casino represented a $1.6-billion bet on human psychology. The gamble paid off: the Bellagio generated the largest profits for a single property in Las Vegas history. And this income wasn’t a by-product of scale—the Bellagio was less than half the size of the MGM Grand—but a direct result of the way that Wynn’s guests spent money. Per guest room, the resort generated four times as much revenue as the Las Vegas average.
Thanks to deeply buried clauses that allow "affiliate sites" to share information, your personal profile may be sold to start-ups:
[E]very new dating site faces the same problem: finding souls to mate. Recruiting new customers is expensive; industry experts put the customer acquisition price at $1 to $5 per person. SaleDatingProfiles and its competitors BuyProfiles.com and DatingProfilesSale.com offer a shortcut.
They sell bulk packages of profiles that seem to include a fair number of actual singles alongside somewhat more questionable Russian beauties, Nigerian bankers and half-empty profiles, which sometimes sell for less than a dime a dozen. Betabeat emailed 208 men and women whose profiles are being sold on SaleDatingProfiles. Most didn’t reply; 35 emails bounced. Only five people responded, none of whom knew their profiles were for sale.
A chicken looks out from a cage during preparations for 2012 Sydney Royal Easter Show at the Sydney Showground on April 3, 2012. The annual event is Australia's largest, attracting around 900,000 visitors over the duration of the two-week agricultural show. By Mark Kolbe/Getty Images.
trespass against us. And in this classic scene in which religious authorities stand ready to deploy their power to punish sin, Jesus does something strange. He physically defuses the dynamic. She is cowering; they are threatening; they demand he uphold the law. What does he do? He sits on the ground and doodles in the dust. He is neither condemned nor condemner. He breaks that circle. He does not condemn. He forgives. So I am a sinner. So is Rod. We should leave the stones on the ground. But this debate is not about me and Rod anyway. It is about reclaiming the core message of Jesus against the distortions that every age imposes on it. And in so far as I am offering any argument as to how to live one’s life when the standard Jesus offered is literally impossible, it is merely to say it is hard, and would be cruel were it not for forgiveness. I have had good moments in this struggle and terrible, lasting failures. This Lent has forced me to consider my constant failures more than my intermittent moments of grace. That I confess. As a practical matter, I have not had the strength to live as Saint Francis, without possessions, without a home, without sex, without anything but a subsistence diet, reliant entirely on physical labor and begging on the streets as a last resort. I find the secular world fascinating, funny, engaging, enraging, joyful. And I have made compromises in my faith-life – just as our laws make compromises for the crooked timber we make up. That made writing this piece hard; and responding to it difficult. Because I am unworthy to deliver such a message. But if no broken being can speak to the truths he cannot always live up to and has often strayed from, then we would have a great deal of silence. We should not be comfortable with the compromises our fallen lives compound. But we have to live with them, and keep each one in 
The Dish 