If you're slightly smarter than a fighting fish, or you're not Facebook friends with Bristol Palin, it's pretty easy to understand what's going on with Republicans and immigration: their base won't let them debate any bill that doesn't involve death camps. Short of that, there's no possible move they can make that won't piss off the Tea Party. German chess players have a word for not wanting to move, even though it's your turn, because all possible moves are worse than doing nothing. The word is "zugzwang."  

The medical journal Pediatrics just released the results of a study that looked at the question: does getting the HPV vaccine make young women feel free to engage in a six-month slut-a-thon?

It's Valentine's Day, and I cannot go on any longer living a lie. MSNBC...we need to talk. 

Whatever we had is not working any more. You're obviously interested in another man: Chris Christie. You're obsessed with him. So I wanted you to hear it from me first. I'm going to start seeing other news organizations. I'll miss what we had. It was a rocket ship ride. We were both passionate flaming liberals and we didn't care what the world thought of us. It was a glorious time. We finished each other's Sarah Palin jokes. But now we never talk about any of the things we used to talk about: global warming, gun control, poverty... All because Chris Christie came along and put you under his spell. 

There's a new stupid conservative argument making the rounds as President Obama and his socialist pal Pope Francis begin to focus on income inequality. 

While ordinary folks trade their privacy away for security, it's nice to know that there's one place in America that's getting more protection from prying eyes: Our factory farms. 

Suppose there was a single member of Congress who brought the tobacco industry to its knees, paved the way for less expensive generic drugs, expanded Medicaid to include all pregnant women and children, wrote the Clean Air Act, the Safe Water Drinking Act and much of Obamacare. Americans would know his name, right? No, 95% of people couldn't pick Henry Waxman out of a line-up. 

New Rule: Any congressman who calls for the drug testing of welfare recipients must be tested for drugs. And while we've got the little plastic cups out, let's also test House Republicans. Okay, we know they're not doing speed, but they're always saying such way-out crazy things about science and women and established fact, they must be on something. 

A lot has been said about Rand Paul, but not enough about the emerging evidence that he has a relationship with truth that is extremely casual, even by political standards. This fact is hidden by the shining intensity of Paul's libertarian-flavored "purity," but that purity is also the problem: This man will not let facts get in the way of his beliefs.

Lest we forget how shitty the right wing media is, Bill O'Reilly was given the chance to interview President Obama during the Super Bowl pre-game show. And it proved one thing: O'Reilly and Fox genuinely have no interest in what's going on in the country right now. They just want to pin some shit on President Blackenstein. Here are the topics he asked about:

While I enjoyed President Obama's State of the Union, the new documentary 'MITT' gives us a small taste of what a Romney address would sound like, based on the version of the election-night victory speech he never got to give:

Benghazi wasn't about ignoring too many threats and not providing enough security at our embassy. It was a White House cover-up where Obama's minions - or Obama himself! - ordered that the military stand down and let those people die, and then ordered that the talking points about Benghazi be changed to deny any involvement by Al Qaeda in an election year. Connect  the dots, people!

New Rule: You know your nation's got a smog problem when your number one morning TV show is the sunrise. In Beijing, China, the smog has gotten so bad that giant TV screens normally used for advertising have begun broadcasting sunrises, so the Chinese people can catch some virtual rays. Communist China's pollution is so bad it's visible from space. It looks like a giant spot on an X-ray. China is home to black rivers, dead lakes, and two types of groundwater: polluted and extra-crunchy super-chunk. Commuters have long been wearing surgical masks to work and now Chinese hotels have added fancy gas masks to the list of in-room guest amenities. 

President Obama wants to reduce NSA surveillance from three hops to two hops. Because more than three hops and you’re playing with it. Right now, the NSA “collects” information on terror suspects and anyone “three hops” from a terror suspect.

It got really cold over the holidays and Disney’s “Frozen” was a big hit at the box office, so global warming isn’t real.

Hey, remember the Bill of Rights? Sock hops? Hot rods? Flat tops? A warm hand job and a frosty malted at Pop’s? Those were the days. Remember when we used to debate whether the death penalty was “cruel and unusual punishment” – back before drones and torture? Well, there’s still one problem with the death penalty: We do it in public – unlike torture, natch – and it gives people the creeps when it goes wrong or takes a long time, like recently, when a guy who’d raped and stabbed a pregnant newlywed was executed in Ohio, and he took longer to die than Ariel Sharon.

Maybe you’ve heard, but California is a little short on water. As in, we’re already having wildfires. In January. Thankfully, help is on the way:

So now we know how the Republicans will push back on the Chris Christie scandal (even if it’s half-heartedly because of that one time Christie hugged Obama and cost us the glorious, eight-year reign of Mitt Romney): by saying “Bridgegate” is not nearly as bad as Benghazi. Or the IRS scandal. Or, if you’re really deranged, the birth certificate, the New Black Panthers, Fast and Furious, Solyndra, Pigford, anything Eric Holder ever did and that time Kathleen Sebelius violated the Hatch Act.

People think the biggest leap for Jesus Republicans is loving the Nazarene and napalm. This is a misunderstanding. There are plenty of perfectly sound theological reasons for an intellectual Christian to wage war. Ask Aquinas, or Augustine, or Bristol Palin. The real problem is worshipping motherhood as the sole reason for women to exist besides making nachos – while hating welfare. You can believe one or the other, but not both. Otherwise it’s like: We all agree everyone alive should be extruding offspring at all times / Hey, how the hell did all these kids get here?