You expect a Democratic attorney general to make Republicans unhappy, which Holder has, on several fronts. He was even held in contempt of Congress by House Republicans over the “Fast and Furious” gun operation – after which he insisted it was no skin off his back: “For me to really be affected by what happened, I’d have to have respect for the people who voted in that way. And I didn’t, so it didn’t have a huge impact on me.”

The problem is, Holder has also disappointed and made a lot of Democrats angry – both by his actions and, worse, his inactions. After Sept. 11, then-President George W. Bush personally approved the use of torture and massive phone snooping without approval of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, both of which were illegal acts. Where was Eric Holder? Missing in action. Following the Sept. 11 attacks, Holder even defended the controversial “extreme rendition” program adopted by the Bush administration, which reportedly shipped suspected terrorists to countries where they could be legally tortured.

In 2008, Wall Street bankers brought this nation to the brink of economic collapse and robbed Americans of trillions of dollars in savings through the marketing of investments they knew to be worthless. Some of them clearly broke the law, yet not one has been charged, prosecuted or sent to prison. Where was Eric Holder? Missing in action. It’s probably the biggest white-collar crime in history, yet Holder reacted as if nobody on Wall Street did anything wrong.

In 2011, more than 30 states enacted some form of voter-suppression law – from requiring photo ID to cutting back on early voting – thereby making it more difficult for people to vote. Such actions were a blatant violation of the Voting Rights Act, not to mention the Constitution. Where was Eric Holder? Again, with few exceptions, notably South Carolina and Florida, he was missing in action.

Yet somehow Holder found time to continue the aimless prosecution of former Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C. – a case that produced nothing but a pointless replay of his sexual peccadilloes, yet cost taxpayers millions and ended in a mistrial. He found time to shut down dozens of medical marijuana clinics in California and warn residents of Washington and Colorado that he’d continue to enforce federal anti-pot laws, even after voters in those two states approved the recreational use of marijuana.

Most grievously, his Department of Justice also found time to raid the phone records of the Associated Press, a wholesale assault on the First Amendment. And they did so in violation of the department’s own guidelines, which require that Justice, instead of engaging in a two-month fishing expedition, first notify any reporter or news organizations of its request for phone records and then narrow the search to the specific dates or calls in question. Even though Holder recused himself from the actual investigation of AP, it happened on his watch and under his policies.

Now we learn that the Justice Department used the same tactics in 2009, in yet another leak investigation, against James Rosen of Fox News. In Rosen’s case, the Department seized his personal emails, tracked his traffic in and out of federal buildings and even branded him a “criminal co-conspirator” – merely for doing his job!

And, while Republicans have been deliberately slow to confirm Obama’s judicial nominees, the DOJ’s been slow to submit nominations. As of April, 62 out of 85 vacancies on federal district and circuit courts had no nominees.

Granted, Eric Holder has done some good things, like no longer defending the Defense of Marriage Act and attempting to try terrorist suspects in federal courts, here in the United States. But the bad or inadequate far outweighs the good. Holder has overstayed his welcome.

It doesn’t have to get ugly. There’s no need for Holder to be fired. He can simply be encouraged to step down with the classic spin: “I’ve decided to spend more time with my family.” After all, they haven’t seen enough of him lately. And we’ve seen far too much.

First, there were accusations of a “cover-up” in the aftermath of the bombing of our mission in Benghazi, Libya. Then came reports that the IRS was conducting a partisan witch-hunt against the tea party. Topping it all off was news of the Justice Department’s seizing phone records of Associated Press reporters. And hovering over all three was the perennial Washington parlor game: “What did the president know, and when did he know it?”

Obama haters could hardly contain their glee. Mike Huckabee predicted that Benghazi would drive President Obama out of office. Sen. James Inhofe whispered the “I” word. Soon joined by Michele Bachmann. John Boehner demanded that unnamed IRS agents be arrested and sent to jail, presumably without a trial. And House Republicans scheduled multiple hearings on each controversy.

How disappointing for them when the week ended and two out of three scandals had all but disappeared. Only one was left: the Justice Department’s heavy-handed invasion of AP. As part of a criminal investigation into who leaked information about a successful intelligence operation to thwart the blowing up of an airliner headed from Yemen to the United States, DOJ subpoenaed the records of 20 phone lines at the AP, used by more than 100 reporters and editors, for April and May 2012.

The Justice Department’s raid of AP phone records is nothing less than a totally unjustified, wholesale trashing of the First Amendment. DOJ violated its own guidelines by failing to notify the AP of its action or narrowing the scope of its subpoena. It has also offered no explanation how, by reporting this story, which the administration itself was poised to released, the AP in any way jeopardized our national security. This is the one real scandal, which demands more attention and answers. Not so with Benghazi or the IRS.

As I wrote last week, the flap over Benghazi is nothing but a poorly disguised effort by panicked Republicans to prevent Hillary Clinton from running for president in 2016. John Boehner may be obsessed with Benghazi, but this car has run out of gas.

The scandal that received the most attention, the IRS and the tea party, is a lot more complicated than it first appears. True, there is no defending the IRS targeting members of either party. But there is also no defending the fact that far too many political groups today enjoy tax-exempt status simply because they disguise themselves as “social welfare” organizations.

Republicans try to paint the latest IRS flap as a new, Obama-inspired, Nixonian conspiracy aimed at conservatives. Nonsense. In fact, this problem dates back to 1959, when Congress passed a law defining 501(c)4, or tax-exempt, organizations as those which operate “exclusively for purposes beneficial to the community as a whole.” That same year, however, the IRS adopted regulations awarding tax-exempt status to organizations only “primarily” engaged in social welfare. Ever since, using that loose definition – primary, not exclusive – they have granted tax-exempt status to groups that spend up to 49 percent of their funds on political activities. And the agency refused to rescind tax privileges for those that spend far more.

For example, the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington complained to the IRS about the American Action Network, a 501(c)4, headed by former Republican Sen. Norm Coleman, which spent 66.8 percent of its total spending from July 2009 through June 2011 on politics. The IRS did nothing.

So it’s important to understand. The issue of appropriate tax-exempt status goes way back. It was made worse by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which spawned a new wave of political organizations: the overwhelming majority, tea party chapters, of which more than 300 filed for tax-exempt status. IRS staffers decided to focus exclusively on them. Even though none of the tea party applications was denied, that concentration on the right was wrong. But it’s a case of bureaucratic bungling, not some vast left-wing conspiracy.

A new head of the IRS is a good start. Congress should next establish tough new standards for the IRS to follow in granting tax-exempt status. Then maybe Congress can get to work on a real scandal: gun violence in America.

No doubt about it. Not Queen Elizabeth, Angela Merkel or Oprah Winfrey. The most powerful woman on the planet is former first lady, former senator from New York, former presidential candidate, former secretary of state, now recluse of Chappaqua, Hillary Clinton. She’s so powerful Republicans staged a sham congressional hearing this week to try to stop her from running for president in 2016.

Wednesday’s hearing before the House Government Oversight Committee was billed as an opportunity to learn new facts about the attack on our mission in Benghazi, Libya. Nonsense. We learned nothing new. All we heard were three witnesses, egged on by House Republicans, implying that Clinton was somehow responsible for the murder of four Americans or the subsequent cover-up. Or both.

To anybody but the most rabid anti-Clintonite, such charges are absurd: long alleged and oft debunked. But they’re part of a determined Republican campaign to politicize Benghazi – which began the night of the attacks, before we even learned of the death of Ambassador Chris Stevens, when Mitt Romney blamed the Obama administration for “sympathizing with those who waged the attacks.” This week’s hearing was only the latest installment.

Its political purpose was telegraphed days before the hearing opened. Failed presidential candidate Mike Huckabee declared Benghazi “more serious than Watergate” and predicted it would drive President Obama from the White House. Fired-by-Fox commentator Dick Morris laid blame for Benghazi squarely on Obama and Clinton, thereby “ruining one presidency and possibly preventing another.” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who warned “the dam is about to break on Benghazi,” stopped whining long enough to admit to the New York Times that criticizing the president is “good politics” for Republicans. And Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa predicted that the hearing would be “damaging” to Clinton.

Actually, Issa had already revealed his hand. Last month, he released a report accusing Clinton of “personally” signing an April 2012 cable turning down a request from then-Libyan Ambassador Gene Cretz for more security. But Issa ended up with egg on his face when the State Department pointed out that every State Department cable from Washington, even routine birthday greetings, carry the secretary’s automatic signature. Issa was further embarrassed when the New York Times pointed out that he had “personally” voted with House Republicans to cut half a billion dollars out of embassy security funding in 2011 and 2012.

The Benghazi attack had already been the subject of 10 congressional hearings. The latest provided no new facts, but two new allegations, neither of which holds water. Greg Hicks, deputy to murdered Ambassador Stevens, testified that his request for fighter jets had been turned down by the Pentagon. Had they arrived on the scene, Hicks insisted, they might have prevented the carnage, which is highly unlikely. Earlier, former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta pointed out that because the nearest jets, stationed at Italy’s Aviano Air Base, were not on standby that evening, it would have taken at least nine hours to round up the crews and deploy them. Meanwhile, tankers necessary to refuel the jets were based in England. Mission impossible.

Mark Thompson, acting deputy assistant secretary for counterterrorism, complained that his request for elite U.S. Special Forces was also turned down by the Pentagon. But, again, Panetta previously testified they could not reach the scene until the following morning and that officers had serious “Black Hawk down” concerns about sending more Americans into a situation about which they still knew very little. Note that both decisions were made by Leon Panetta, yet all the blame’s being dumped on Hillary Clinton. But, of course, nobody expects Panetta to run for president in 2016.

Not surprisingly, House Republicans completely ignore the Benghazi investigation conducted immediately after the attacks by the Accountability Review Board. Headed by former Ambassador Thomas Pickering and former Joint Chiefs Chairman Michael Mullen, the ARB slammed the State Department for not doing a better job of protecting our embassies and made 29 recommendations to improve security. It also placed blame for the killings where it belongs: on the terrorists, not Hillary Clinton.

Rather than focus on what improvements need to be made, however, Chairman Issa promises even more hearings on Benghazi. But he’ll have to wait at least two weeks. Eric Cantor’s already scheduled a vote in the House next week to repeal Obamacare – for the 34th time! Do you see a pattern here?

But, as true as they may be, American politicians can no longer make those charges. Because the worst human rights violator in Cuba today is not the Castro regime – it’s us. It’s the U.S. government at our prison at the United States Naval Station Guantanamo Bay; first, under George W. Bush, and now, under Barack Obama.

There is simply no way to defend what we as a nation are doing at Guantanamo on what is, under international law, American soil. Consider: Eighty-six prisoners, more than half the 166 inmates still at Gitmo, were found to have no connection to terrorist activity and have been cleared to leave, but are still being held indefinitely. The remaining 80 prisoners have been held in prison for up to 12 years, with no charges filed against them and no opportunity to defend themselves. Making matters even more serious, 130 prisoners have now joined a hunger strike that began in early February and which the Pentagon at first denied was taking place. Twenty-one of them are being force-fed. And the Pentagon just flew in a new team of 40 doctors to Guantanamo to help keep them alive – not so much to prevent their deaths as to save the United States from a monumental embarrassment.

On top of that, Slate this week published excerpts from a declassified manuscript obtained from one prisoner, “The Guantanamo Memoirs of Mohamedou Ould Slahi,” in which Slahi describes being tortured for months by American investigators at Gitmo. Lt. Col. Stuart Couch, the Marine attorney assigned to prosecute him, withdrew from the case when he discovered Slahi had been tortured. Slahi was later cleared of any link to terrorism, but remains in prison.

As the president made clear at his news conference this week, the problems with Gitmo have not escaped his attention: “I think it is critical for us to understand that Guantanamo is not necessary to keep America safe,” he said. “It is expensive. It is inefficient. It hurts us in terms of our international standing. It lessons cooperation with our allies on counterterrorism efforts. It is a recruitment tool for extremists. It needs to be closed.”

Strong words, indeed. Unfortunately, the president’s actions do not match his rhetoric. True, he signed an executive order to shut down Guantanamo by the end of his first year in the White House. Yet, he’s also signed defense authorization bills that bar the use of federal funds for transferring prisoners to U.S. soil and place restrictions on their release to a foreign country. And, four years later, Gitmo remains open. True, during his first two years, he reduced the prison population from 242 to 173. Yet, few prisoners have been released since then, and the president seldom mentioned Guantanamo again – until this week.

President Obama blames Republicans in Congress for preventing him from closing Guantanamo. And, to a certain extent, he’s right. They did pass a series of measures limiting his ability to transfer prisoners out of the facility. And they did shoot down his plans to establish a new prison and military tribunal in an unused, secure, state prison in Illinois. But Obama can’t blame it all on Republicans. He is the president. And he has executive options on Guantanamo he has so far, for whatever reason, failed to use.

Carlos Warner, an attorney with the Federal Public Defender of the Northern District of Ohio, who represents 11 Guantanamo prisoners, points out that the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act, which Obama signed, also allows the president to transfer individuals if it’s in the national security interest of the United States, which he clearly reaffirmed this week. Or Obama could just transfer or release prisoners from Gitmo – and let Republicans sue him.

After all, Obama himself said at Tuesday’s news conference: “The notion that we’re going to continue to keep over 100 individuals in a no-man’s land in perpetuity … who have not been tried, that is contrary to who we are, it is contrary to our interests, and it needs to stop.” He’s right. It does need to stop. And Obama needs to stop blaming Republicans and start using the powers of the presidency to shut down Guantanamo and get rid of this national disgrace.

It’s just too bad they got together for such an inauspicious occasion: dedication of the George W. Bush Presidential Center. I hate to be a party-pooper, but there are two things wrong with that. One, we don’t need another presidential library. The landscape’s already cluttered with 13 of them.

There’s no George Washington Library. No John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, or James Madison Library. Yet, ever since FDR, we’ve bought into the rule that every president, good, bad, or blah, has to have his own egocentric, brick-and-mortar building – instead of building one new Smithsonian Presidential Library to house the papers of every former president.

Second thing wrong: For the next week or so, everybody’s going to feel obliged to say nice things about President Bush. On his arrival in Texas, even President Obama, who repeatedly blasted “the failed policies of George W. Bush” and his “dumb” war in Iraq during his 2012 re-election campaign, praised him as someone “concerned about all people in America, not just those who voted Republican.” The Wall Street Journal trumpeted that Bush’s approval rating is up since he left office. In the National Journal, Ron Fournier challenged all Americans: “Go Ahead, Admit It: George W. Bush is a Good Man.”

Well, I’ll make a deal with Mr. Fournier: I’ll admit that George Bush is a good man – if he’ll admit that George Bush was a lousy president! I met President Bush a couple of times. He was always kind to me. He liked to joke around. He would have been fun to have a beer with, if only he’d have a beer. But that doesn’t change the fact that his presidency was a disaster.

Yes, as WSJ reports, Bush’s image has improved since 2008: from 31 percent favorable when he left office to 35 percent today. Hardly a cause for celebration. And the reason it’s not higher is because Americans have not forgotten his record. It’s too recent and too painful.

We’ve not forgotten that George Bush inherited a $236 billion surplus from Bill Clinton, but immediately squandered it with two rounds of tax cuts for the wealthiest of Americans that put us back to deficit spending. We’ve not forgotten the ban on embryonic stem cell research. We’ve not forgotten the fact that George Bush launched two deficit-financed wars – a justified war in Afghanistan and an illegal war in Iraq, based on lies about weapons of mass destruction – which, together with the tax cuts, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, will account for almost half of the $20 trillion debt the nation will owe by 2019.

We’ve not forgotten the wave of illegal phone taps at home and illegal waterboarding abroad that followed September 11. Indeed, how could we forget? A two-year, nonpartisan review by the Constitution Project, a legal research and advocacy group, published this week concluded that “it is indisputable that the United States engaged in the practice of torture” in the years immediately following September 11. Not only that, they also reported “no firm or persuasive evidence” that torture provided any information that could not have been obtained more readily by other, legal, methods.

We’ve not forgotten the slow and inadequate response to Hurricane Katrina, a direct result of Bush budget cuts to FEMA. Nor have we forgotten the crash of 2008, which brought this nation to the brink of financial disaster and resulted in the loss of 8 million jobs. In fact, we’re still trying to recover from it.

Of course, George W. Bush also did some good things. He tried to soften the image of the Republican Party by steering it toward a policy of “compassionate conservatism.” He was the first to put forth a plan for comprehensive immigration reform, a plan almost identical to the one President Obama proposes today, and a plan Bush’s fellow Republicans rejected to their own misfortune. And, unlike his former vice president, President Bush has set a model for former occupants of the Oval Office by staying on the sidelines and out of the headlines.

For this, we give him due credit. But that doesn’t change the facts: George Bush is a nice man, but he was still a mediocre president.

In the spring of 1968, I walked into the McCarthy for President office in San Francisco and signed up as a volunteer. That was my first taste of politics and I’ve been involved in politics ever since, both as practitioner and observer. I’ve managed local, statewide and national campaigns, raised money for candidates, served as Democratic state chair of California and run for statewide office. I’ve made my living as a political commentator on radio and television in Los Angeles, San Francisco and nationwide.

Throughout those years, I’ve experienced a lot of joy, but also a lot of disappointment. Candidates I supported lost their elections. Politicians I helped elect soon forgot who their friends were. Causes I passionately believed in failed in the legislature or on the ballot. Yet, through it all, I never lost my faith in the political system. I always knew, and preached, that things would eventually work out for the best. I remained a believer.

Until now. Until this week’s shameful vote in the United States Senate on gun safety. I’m no longer a believer. I’ve lost my faith in our political system. I’ve given up on politics. And I’ve given up on Congress. Because if they can’t get this right, they can’t get anything right.

There is simply no excuse – none! – for voting against extending criminal background checks to cover all gun purchases. Indeed, the arguments made by opponents of the Manchin-Toomey compromise bill don’t even pass the laugh test. How, for example, can anybody say he supports background checks at gun dealers, just not at gun shows? Really? In other words, it’s not OK for criminals to buy guns at licensed dealers, but it is OK for them to buy guns at gun shows or over the Internet. Give me a break.

In the biggest lie of all, other senators insist that expanded background checks will lead to some Big Brother gun registry that will in turn lead to federal agents seizing everyone’s guns. Baloney. Again, no such gun registry has been created to date, even though criminal background checks have been required of gun dealers since 1994. Not only that, both existing law and the Manchin-Toomey bill specifically prohibit storage and retrieval of personal data gathered in background checks. Manchin and Toomey make it a federal crime.

In the end, there are only three reasons why senators voted against common sense gun safety measures. One, they were born without a backbone. Two, they’re owned lock, stock and barrel by the NRA. Three, they don’t care. They don’t care about the American people. They don’t care about the victims of Columbine, Aurora or Virginia Tech. They don’t care about Gabby Giffords. They don’t care about 20 first-graders and six brave teachers from Sandy Hook Elementary School. They don’t care about doing the right thing. They only care about saving their own political skin.

In the end, the vote on the compromise proposal to expand background checks was 54-46, six short of the 60 votes necessary to break the filibuster. Democrats share some of the blame. Four Democrats – Max Baucus of Montana, Mark Begich of Alaska, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Mark Pryor of Arkansas – voted no. But most of the blame lies with the Republican Party. Even though four of them – John McCain of Arizona, Susan Collins of Maine, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania and Mark Kirk of Illinois – broke ranks and voted yes, Republicans as a block voted against background checks. In fact, Buzzfeed reports, six Republicans – Orrin Hatch, Mitch McConnell, Jeff Sessions, Richard Shelby, Mike Crapo and Chuck Grassley – who voted for universal background checks in 1999, when the NRA supported them, voted against background checks this week, now that the NRA opposes them.

As Wednesday’s vote was announced, the cry of “Shame on you!” resounded from the Senate gallery. It was the voice of Tucson hero Patricia Maisch, who grabbed a loaded magazine clip out of Jared Loughner’s hands as he tried to reload. In that dramatic moment, she showed more sense and courage than the entire Senate. We might as well send them all home.

But now the two senators share a bigger honor. In the long-lost, problem-solving spirit of the U.S. Senate, the Democrat from West Virginia and the Republican from Pennsylvania have come together to forge a compromise on background checks that promises to break the logjam against any reasonable gun safety legislation.

Granted, expanded background checks are only one element of what’s needed to stem gun violence. But Jonathan Lowy, director of the Legal Action Project of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, told me it was, by far, the most important element. Yes, bans on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines are also critical. So is a crackdown on straw purchases. But if we did only one thing this year, said Lowy, universal background checks are the key. For a very simple reason. Because, under existing law, criminal background checks are only required for gun sales at licensed gun dealers. In a Jan. 16 speech on gun violence, President Obama claimed that “as many as 40 percent of all gun purchases are conducted without a background check” – which means that at gun shows, on the Internet, from classified newspaper ads, or over the back fence purchases are made with no prior check on the buyer.

Those who couldn’t otherwise buy a gun are well aware of that huge loophole. Before the slaughter at Columbine High School, Eric Harris, one of the teenage killers, emailed his friends: “If we can save up about $200 real quick … we can go to the next gun show and find a private dealer and buy ourselves some bad-a– AB-10 machine pistols.” Closing that loophole, expanding background checks, is the most effective way to prevent criminals, the dangerously mentally ill, or others who shouldn’t have a dangerous weapon from buying one.

The Manchin-Toomey proposal isn’t perfect. While it would require background checks for all commercially advertised sales of guns, including gun shows, newspapers, magazines and the Internet, it would not require checks for unadvertised gun transfers, like from one family member to another. But, because there are so few of those sales, the bill is still a vast improvement over the status quo and as close to “universal” background checks as we’re likely to get.

Most importantly, the Manchin-Toomey plan destroys every phony argument the NRA has raised against expanded background checks. They say they don’t work. Nonsense. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, between March 1994, when background checks were required as part of the Brady Act, and December 2008, they prevented 1.8 million criminals and other prohibited purchasers from buying a gun. In 2010 alone, the FBI and state law enforcement denied firearm purchases to 153,000 people.

The NRA says Congress should leave it up to states. That’s a road to nowhere. Since 1994, according to the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, only six states have imposed universal background checks on all firearms sales at gun shows. Thirty-three states have done nothing. The rest are somewhere in between.

Next argument: Having to go through a background check takes too much time and costs too much money. Not true. Since 1998, the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) has conducted 167 million background checks. They consist of one phone call. They cost nothing. And they take less than a minute.

Equally absurd is the NRA’s slippery slope argument that background checks will automatically lead to a national gun registry, which, of course, will lead to federal agents showing up at your door and taking away all your guns. Ain’t gonna happen. Background checks have been required at gun stores since 1994, and there’s no national gun registry. The NICS, in fact, prohibits retrieval and storage of personal information.

The Manchin-Toomey compromise almost guarantees that some form of gun safety legislation will pass the Senate. That’s the good news. The bad news is that it then moves to the House, where Speaker John Boehner’s a captive of the NRA. Asked by reporters if he could guarantee a vote on such vital legislation, Boehner would only say: “We’re going to wait and see what the Senate does.” Sadly, in Washington today, that passes for leadership.

Among reporters inside the Beltway, the latest narrative, repeated without qualification, is that the Obama administration is guilty of exaggerating the impact of the sequester. After all, those $1 trillion across-the-board cuts, $85 billion of which will happen this fiscal year, kicked in on March 1. They’ve been in place for more than a month now. And the sky hasn’t fallen. Trains are still running on time, Major League Baseball opened the season on schedule, and the lights still come on when you flip the switch. Only White House tours have been canceled. So what’s the big deal?

God forbid reporters pause long enough to do a little independent research before repeating that nonsense. If they did, they wouldn’t join the chorus. That narrative is dead wrong. For two reasons. First, nobody ever said the sequester ax would fall immediately, or all at one time. It takes a long time to bring a battleship to a dead stop. It takes a long time to shut down or even slow down a government agency.

Everybody knew the sequester cuts would begin gradually and deepen over the weeks and months ahead. One month already? As President Reagan might say, “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.” The worst is still to come.

But that “so what?” attitude is also wrong because, in fact, serious impacts of the sequester are already being felt in every state. Writing in the Huffington Post this week, Sam Stein and Amanda Terkel documented 100 examples of budget cuts already in place, including: 175 workers fired from the U.S. Army garrison in Rock Island, Ill.; 128 civilians fired from Arnold Air Force Base in Tullahoma, Tenn.; 1,600 health-care jobs in Hampton Roads, Va., left unfilled.

If they were lucky enough to hold onto their jobs, thousands of government workers have been forced to take a furlough, meaning one day a week without pay, or a 20 percent pay cut. They include 480 employees of the Office of Management and Budget, part of the White House staff; 60 employees at the Head Start program in Allegheny County, Pa.; and 280 workers at the Hancock Field Air National Guard Base in Syracuse, N.Y. In addition, the FAA has informed all 47,000 employees, including air traffic controllers, that they will be furloughed one or two days per pay period.

Further cuts: Airport towers shut down in 149 smaller airports, including Frederick, Md., and Lewiston, Idaho; air shows canceled in Rapid City, S.D., Cleveland, Ohio, and Louisville, Ky.; Head Start staff and/or students cut in Cincinnati, Ohio, Laramie, Wyo., Morris County, N.J., Rio Grande Valley, Texas, and Bethlehem, Pa. The towns of Columbus and Franklin, Ind., held a lottery to determine which kids would stay in their Head Start programs and which ones would be dumped.

If White House reporters are unaware of any adverse impacts of the sequester, the bad news hasn’t been lost on local media. The Sun-Sentinel in Palm Beach County, Fla., reports: “Needy senior citizens won’t get breakfast and poor children won’t get rides to preschool” under new budget cuts. WPRI News in East Providence, R.I., broke the story of 8,000 Rhode Islanders faced with a 12 percent, or average $46 per week, cut in federal unemployment benefits.

These cuts could not come at a worse time. The Census Bureau reports that nearly 50 million people – one of out of every six Americans – now live in poverty, defined as $23,201 per year for a family of four. More than 20 percent of American kids live in poverty. Yet every federal program designed to help the poor – Head Start, food stamps, low-income housing and Medicaid, among others – will be severely cut back under the sequester.

Also this week, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel warned that the sequester has already undermined our military readiness. “The sequester cut, because it falls heavily on operations and modernization accounts,” he explained, “is already having a disruptive and potentially damaging impact on the readiness of the force.”

Outside the Beltway, the evidence is in. The sequester is already inflicting real pain on real people in the real world. Too bad so many White House reporters don’t live in the real world.

Consider. It was only nine years ago that anti-gay marriage initiatives were on the ballot in 11 states. Every one of them passed. In 2008, Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton did not support same-sex marriage. One year ago, you could find a unicorn on the Washington Mall easier than you could find a politician of either party who supported marriage equality. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., was a rare exception. Today, Democratic politicians are tripping all over themselves to get on board – starting with President Obama himself.

In the last week, seven senators have announced a change in position on same-sex marriage, from opposition to support: Republican Rob Portman, Democrats Jay Rockefeller, Mark Begich, Mark Warner, Claire McCaskill, Jon Tester and Kay Hagan. It’s likely more will by the time you read this. Why? Because, a year ago, especially for Democrats, it was considered political suicide to endorse marriage equality. Today, it’s political suicide not to.

How disappointing, then, to see nine Supreme Court justices waffle on the issue. Sure, they were uniformly strong in questioning the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1996. But that’s easy. The Obama administration won’t enforce the law. Rand Paul said it violates states’ rights. Even Clinton admits it was a mistake. Everybody knows DOMA is doomed. And that’s a big deal, because overturning DOMA will extend to gay couples in the nine states plus the District of Columbia that recognize same-sex marriage more than 1,000 advantages, including Social Security survivor benefits, now enjoyed by heterosexual couples under federal law.

It was on the second marriage equality case before them, California’s Proposition 8, that the justices signaled a lack of moral courage. In their oral arguments, rather than focus on the merits of the issue before them, six justices spent most of their time complaining about why the case was before them at all. Why do we have to deal with this issue now? What’s the rush? After all, cried Justice Alito, gay marriage is “newer than cell phones or the Internet.” Oh, stop whining and do your job.

If, as expected, the Court does nothing more than reject Prop. 8 on procedural grounds, thereby making same-sex marriage legal again in California, but not in all 50 states, it will miss its historic opportunity to resolve the dominant civil rights issue of our time and set this country in a proud, new direction. Under the 14th Amendment, there’s simply no justification for denying any American “equal protection of the laws,” which explains the laughable argument against marriage equality presented to the Court.

Appearing for Prop. 8 supporters, attorney Charles Cooper mainly argued that gay couples should not be allowed to marry because they’re biologically incapable of fulfilling the primary purpose of marriage, which is procreation. Oh, really? What about straight couples who get married and never have children? Should they be required to divorce? Have kids or else? And what about a man and woman beyond child-bearing age? Should they be allowed to get married at all?

Perhaps Cooper doesn’t realize that many churches today no longer teach that having children is the No. 1 reason to get married. In his wonderful new book, “God Believes in Love,” Gene Robinson, Anglican bishop of New Hampshire, notes that the Episcopal Church prayer book puts the purpose of marriage in its proper perspective. Two people get married “for their mutual joy; for the help and comfort given one another in prosperity and adversity; and, when it is God’s will, for the procreation of children …” Note: Having kids comes third. And, even then, only “when it is God’s will.”

While regretting the apparent timidity of the Court, we can still take comfort in the fact that the American people are way ahead of the justices on this issue. In the latest Washington Post/ABC poll, 58 percent of Americans now support marriage equality. So, no matter how hard they try, the justices can’t turn back the clock. Same-sex marriage is here to stay. Next issue, please!

No doubt, the Republican Party’s in trouble. The big question is: How to save it? That question has Republicans in such a panic, they’re acting like Democrats: attacking each other, throwing fellow Republicans under the nearest bus and readily forming circular firing squads. It’s actually fun to watch.

Divisions within the GOP were in full evidence at last week’s CPAC conference. In a direct slap at John McCain and Mitt Romney, Rick Perry said Republicans might not have lost in 2008 and 2012, had they “actually nominated conservative candidates.” After Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., scoffed at critics and insisted “We don’t need a new idea,” Rand Paul took to the podium and described the Republican Party as “stale and moss-covered,” desperately in need of new ideas. And in a more colorful exchange, Sarah Palin blasted Karl Rove’s plan to form a new PAC to defeat extremist tea-party candidates in Republican primaries. Rove should either “buck up” and run for office himself, she told delegates, or “stay in the truck.” Rove fired back: “If I did run for office and win, I’d serve out my term. I wouldn’t leave office midterm.”

Tempers also flared on the Senate floor. Deriding Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Rep. Justin Amash, R-Mich., for being extreme right of the Republican Party, fellow Republican John McCain referred to them as “wacko birds.” He later apologized.

But the liveliest shootout was between the current and former chairmen of the Republican National Committee. Reince Priebus started it, accusing former Chairman Michael Steele of racking up large debts and overrunning both of the party’s credit cards. In response, Steele correctly pointed out that, unlike Priebus in 2012, he won his party’s big races in 2010. Priebus then pledged to rescue the party from Steele’s failed direction by adopting a 50-state strategy – at which point Steele, who in fact put his own 50-state strategy in place for 2009 and 2010, appeared to dismiss Priebus as “a numbnuts.”

The two chairmen were reacting to the “Growth and Opportunity Project,” a 98-page document released by the RNC this week assessing what went wrong in 2012 and how to fix it. The study was quickly dubbed by the media as an “autopsy,” which in itself speaks volumes. After all, you don’t conduct autopsies on people who are sick and expected to recover. You conduct autopsies on cold, dead bodies.

In many respects, the party’s self-criticism was surprisingly blunt. It included quotes from nationwide focus groups whose participants had left the Republican Party because they felt it had become too “scary, narrow-minded and out of touch” and came across as a party of “stuffy old men.” Young voters in particular, noted the report, “… are increasingly rolling their eyes at what the party represents.” And, perhaps more tellingly, “… many minorities wrongly think that Republicans do not like them or want them in the country.”

To correct some of the party’s problems, the study recommends, among other measures, a shorter presidential primary season, fewer primary debates and a $10 million outreach program to young people and minorities. All of which sounds good – except that, within days, leading Republicans demonstrated that nothing has changed. The day after the RNC report was published, President Obama nominated Thomas Perez as the next secretary of labor. Perez was immediately attacked by Sens. Jeff Sessions, David Vitter and others for his work to increase the minimum wage and improve the lot of immigrant workers. So much for outreach to Latinos. One day later, Chairman Priebus reaffirmed the Republican Party’s opposition to same-sex marriage – which, in the latest Washington Post poll, is supported by 81 percent of American voters 18 to 29. So much for outreach to young people.

There’s the problem. Preibus and others believe there’s nothing wrong with Republican policies, they just have to learn to deliver the message better. Whom do they think they’re kidding? It’s not just the delivery that’s wrong. It’s the message itself. They don’t just need a new pizza box. They need a new pizza.