It always worries me when these hoodlums get religion.

I was reminded of that line of dialogue, spoken by Humphrey Bogart playing DA Martin Ferguson in Raoul Walsh's "The Enforcer," when I heard "The Hammer" say this in response to Bush's call for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage:

"This is so important we're not going to take a knee-jerk reaction to this," Delay said. "We are going to look at our options and we are going to be deliberative about what solutions we may suggest."

Of knees and jerks. The blogosphere is alive with the sound of snickering. And questions. I think Atrios, Josh Marshall and lots of others have it right. There's panic in the WH and the Boy Genius is grasping at anything within reach, the rest of the GOP be damned.

But this should backfire on Bush as well. My guess is that most voters are closer to Kerry's position than that "Uniter Not a Divider" guy. That is, most are a bit uneasy with the idea of gay marriage -- not withstanding all the nice pictures of brides in white coming out of 'frisco -- but are okay with civil unions. The amendment being proposed -- even though the media is too busy to actually read it -- pretty clearly bans such unions.

Via Tapped, Publius goes further. It reminds him of the reaction of Northern Whigs to the Fugitive Slave Act. Northerners may have found slavery distasteful, but that happened in places like Alabama. But when they were forced to become tacitly implicit in slavery, when a slave was grabbed in Boston and a mob intervened to save him, it took a military deployment to beat back the mob and send the slave south. This enraged otherwise indifferent Northerners and turned them into rabid abolitionists.

An imperfect analogy, but an interesting one.

Karl Rove has lost his touch. Or bet his reputation on the wrong horse.

Along those same lines, it appears that there's fear in the WH that the sudden quiet on the AWOL front means only one thing -- there's even more devastating attacks to come. This time on Cheney, for whom Vietnam "wasn't in his plans," or something like that.

Also on Brad DeLong's site: Republican corruption is now a matter of public policy.

*****

Bronx Banter has been running a series of really informative Yankee previews this week. Today provides a great comparison of Derek Jeter and Bernie Williams and makes a case for the latter deserving to enter the pantheon.