Terrific Tuesday Tidings: Progressives not for Paul, Stephen Colbert, and Men Can Stop Rape

It's Tuesday and that means it's time for my ongoing quest to become a more positive person. Here are the news stories that made me happy this week:

• I've been considering writing a piece about how stupid and offensive otherwise liberal and progressive people supporting Ron Paul is, but essayist Tim Wise beat me to it and it is a thing of beauty.

• Just because I haven't written about the Wisconsin protests and organizing in a while doesn't mean it's not still going on.  Indeed they've just collected enough signatures to force a recall election of State Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald.

• You may have heard that Stephen Colbert has thrown his hat into the ring as a protest candidate in South Carolina and was even polling pretty well.  But unfortunately it was too late to get his name on the ballot and South Carolina does not allow write-in votes, so that's the end of it right?  Wrong.  He and his totally uncoordinated SuperPAC are telling South Carolina supporters to vote for Herman Cain, whose name still IS on the ballot.  Oh ya, and if you happen to be a Democrat or Independent living in South Carolina, they have an open primary system, so you should go vote the way your heart tells you to.

• Mitt Romney and the Republican establishment may be desperately trying to shut down his primary opponents attacks on his record at Bain Capital as attacks on 'free enterprise', the Obama campaign just wants you to know, that faulty reasoning may work in the primary, but it's not going to work in the general: "But this is just an attempt to evade legitimate scrutiny of the record on which he says he’s running. 'Free enterprise' isn’t running for President, Mitt Romney is. And voters deserve straight answers about his record, so they can know how his perspective would influence his decisions and actions if he were President of the United States."

• Finally, I have previously criticized anti-rape campaigns that have focused exclusively on what women can do to prevent rape as both buying into the 'blame the victim' frame and insulting to men for implying we can't help ourselves if women are dressed provocatively.  So what does a more well rounded campaign look like?