Short Takes:

The NSA is building the country's biggest spy data center in UTAH

Robert Reich's Mitt Romney fable

A history of Cornelius Crane (Chevy) Chase's obnoxious behavior; 14th-generation WASP New York performer called a "starched heap of mitochondria"

Mudflats has an interesting and exhaustive rumination on Anchorage's chaotic municipal election, which seems to have been gamed by conservatives to defeat the LGBT protection initiative, Prop 5, except that bond issues passed — which rarely happens in Alaska when the conservative base is aroused. Hmmm
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Towleroad spotlights Outsports' most recent post, which wonders why NU continues to allow assistant football coach Ron Brown to foster a team environment hostile gay players. (17th item or you can cut to the chase here.)

Carl Siciliano, Executive Director of Ali Forney Center, an LGBT shelter for homeless gay kids, responds to intimidating letter by New York City starchbishop Cardinal Dolan

Democrats ask House Speaker John Boehner to back off his ‘Direct Assault’ on gay veterans

Minneapolis Catholic school conducts mandatory seniors-only assembly designed to influence upcoming vote to deny Minnesota gay couples marriage, civil unions and domestic partnerships. After equating gay marriage to bestiality, speakers get so much pushback from disgusted students that they end the assembly early. Priest was sent by Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis, headed by the infamous Archbishop John Clayton Nienstedt, who in 2010 mailed 400,000 DVDs proclaiming the sins of same-sex marriage. Nienstedt has banned gay prayer services, “refused the Eucharist to students wearing rainbow buttons,” and has publicly banned  “open dissension” from his priests on matters related to same-sex marriage.

Iowa's GOP Rep. Steve King was the National Organization for Marriage's go-to guy according to secret memos released by Maine court during inquiry into NOM's refusal to comply with campaign disclosure laws there. Other memos outlined covert schemes to pit gays against blacks and $120,000 budgeted to find people willing to denounce their gay parents on camera. Des Moines Register: With the help of King, the marriage group “robo-called the entire state – more than 250,000 households” to ask Iowans to call their legislators and to see “if we could call back and ask them for money.”