• Ben Affleck's Congressman character in State of Play was based on his friendship with New York Congressman Anthony Weiner, except for the part about boning a young staffer. Weiner's dating Clintonite Huma Abedin. [NY Times]

• Obviously, there were no Jezebel readers in attendance at the Time 100 Most Influential Dinner the other night, because Nate Silver was spotted all by himself. [Women's Wear Daily]
• If Arlen Specter had been there, he and Nate could have bonded, because Specter doesn't have too many friends himself these days. [NY Times]
• California Congressman Henry Waxman is learning to be careful what he wishes for: despite ousting Michigan Congressman and car company water-carrier John Dingell from atop the Energy Committee, he's still not going to get the really liberal climate change bill he screwed over Dingell to push through. [Politico]
• American politicans are, by the way, really sorry about killing all those Afghan people. [MSNBC]
• Defense Secretary Robert Gates promises we won't be sending any troops into Pakistan, except for the ones we'll never acknowledge were there. (Related: A bunch of veterans who served in Cambodia and Laos were heard laughing ruefully.) [Time]
• The LGBT community is pressing Obama to do something on LGBT issues other than just pay lip service to them. [NY Times]
• Nancy Pelosi isn't ready to take on a repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act to allow same sex couples who legally marry to get federal recognition. [Politico]
• Republicans are all about "states rights" and "let the people decide" until, that is, the people decide that same sex couples ought to get married. [Plum Line]
• The new head Republican on the Judiciary Committee, Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, said that he could vote for a LGB (but, one assumes, not T) Supreme Court nominee, but South Dakota Senator John Thune would prefer to be allowed to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, except in the case of Larry Craig. [Huffington Post]
• Virginia Congressman, racist, bribe-taker and wife-beater Jim Moran wants to ban Viagra from the pre-10 pm airwaves so as not to be reminded of yet another one of his flaws. [CNN]

Jindal's commission is intended "to propose programs, policies, incentives and curriculum regarding marriage and family by collecting and analyzing data on the social and personal effects of marriage and child-bearing within the state of Louisiana." Which sounds like it could be okay, I guess, until you look, as Bilerico's Steve Ralls did, at who is sitting on the Commission.

Among those who have been appointed by Jindal to serve on the Commission are Tony Perkins (who hails from Baton Rouge), the president of the anti-gay advocacy group known as The Family Research Council . . . Gene Mills, executive director of the far-right Louisiana Family Forum . . . Mike Johnson, senior legal counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund . . . and numerous members of the clergy. All, Jindal has said, "have significant academic and/or professional expertise" on issues of marriage and family.

And each has a long history of spouting anti-gay rhetoric, too.

Jindal, as Ralls notes, already rolled back a previous executive order banning discrimination against state employees and contractors based on sexual orientation, so he's not exactly gay-friendly. With the new focus by the conservative movement on the supposed damage that will be done to children by merely seeing two people of the same sex in love, you can expect Jindal's commission to push for legislation or policy to limit gay adoption and push an anti-same-sex marriage agenda, which he's probably make a cornerstone of his 2012 campaign. But, you know, maybe he's just trying to stave off another Hurricane Katrina by driving out teh gheyz as John McCain's buddy John Hagee suggested?

Ah, discrimination! The true Real American value.

Jindal's Latest Attack on Louisiana's Families [The Bilerico Project]

Related: Adoption Ban Targets Gay Couples, Critics Say [LA Times]
Some Hateful, Radical Ministers — White Evangelicals — Are Acceptable [Salon]

• Oprah Winfrey is talking her show on the road to D.C. during the Inauguration. Let the speculation begin about which members of the new Administration will be appearing. [Access Hollywood]
• Congress is going to pass a law to reduce the salary of the Secretary of State to block Republican efforts to keep Hillary Clinton from serving on Constitutional grounds. So much for pay equity in an Obama Administration. [Talking Points Memo]
• Al Franken says he's pulled ahead of Norm Coleman in the Minnesota Senate race. [Politico]

• Bill Richardson didn't win any points with Barack Obama when he showed up at the presser announcing his appointment sans beard. [Washington Post, CNN]
• But could the Commerce Department just be a stepping stone on Bill Richardson's path to his beloved State Department? [Washington Independent]
• Barack Obama told all the ambassadors appointed by Bush to be out by January 20th.There's no word whether the ambassadors to India or Pakistan might be staying on. [Washington Post]
• By the way, the Mumbai terrorists were high as shit on coke and LSD the entire time they were killing people. [Boing Boing]
• Possibly also high as shit was Karl Rove, who told a roomful of New Yorkers that George Bush is totally not the worst President in modern history. [Washington Times]
• Eliot Spitzer will begin penning a finance-and-government column for Slate. It won't talk about financing high-end sex with prostitution while being in government. [New York Observer via Attackerman]
• The anti Prop 8 folks get every actor you've ever seen to act in a musical. [Funny Or Die]

• The fighting that began Wednesday in Mumbai is continuing today. Nearly 200 people have been confirmed dead so far, with almost 300 others injured. Militants are still fighting and holding (and killing) hostages in the Taj Mahal hotel and in a Jewish community center. [NY Times, Huffington Post, NY Times]
• Barack Obama has issued a statement condemning the attacks. [Washington Post]
• The Iraqi Parliament has passed the Status of Forces Agreement, which could have us out by 2010, but will have us out no later than 2012. [Washington Independent]
• In other news, former First Lady Barbara Bush has been moved out of the ICU following surgery to repair a perforated stomach ulcer. [CNN]

• The Vatican says that cell phones and the Internet are killing our souls. Fuck, seriously, is there anything fun you're allowed to do as a Catholic anymore? (Click through for a bonus picture of Pope Benedict in a funny, non-Pope hat.) [Telegraph]
• Iowa's Supreme Court will hear an equal protection challenge to its gay marriage ban, which may or may not invalidate the marriage of the 2 people who managed to get married in the 9 business hours the ban was struck down before the court issued a stay. [LA Times]
• The police have charged someone in the murder of Arkansas reporter Anne Pressley, who was beaten to death in her home last month. Despite the extreme level of violence that police initially said indicated it could be someone that knew and hated her, it turns out it was a random attack by a violent psycho named Curtis Lavelle Vance. [MSNBC]
• Mitchell Wade, the former defense contractor who bribed the shit out of former Congressman Duke Cunningham, apparently bribed other people and is singing like a canary. He's implicated at least 5 other thus-far-unnamed Congressmen and various other government officials. [Washington Post]
• The Congressional probe of all of Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charlie Rangel's (D-New York) shady business dealings will be done before the new Congress is sworn in, according to Nancy Pelosi. This means, in all likelihood, that he'll get a slap on the wrist and continue on as Chairman, which is how it always worked when the Republicans ran Congress that Pelosi promised to change when she came to power. [Washington Post]
• Now that Democrats have voted to keep Joe Lieberman in his position of power atop the Senator Homeland Security Committee, someone bothered to notice that he gave a bunch of money to Republican Senatorial candidates, too. [Washington Post]
• Jill Biden might keep teaching at a D.C.-area community college as Second Lady, which would make her the first Second Lady to carry on with a paying job after moving into the Vice Presidential Mansion. Also, she's probably cooler than you even thought she was. [Politico]
• And although Hillary Clinton hasn't officially been offered or officially accepted a gig as Secretary of State in the Obama Administration, let alone resigned her Senate seat, New York State Attorney General (and enormous asshole) Andrew Cuomo has already begun a whisper campaign to make himself the front runner in the race to be appointed to the seat. Earlier this year, Andrew Cuomo referred to Barack Obama with a racial slur, which his staff rushed to cover up and intimidate bloggers and reporters from covering, swearing that the racially-loaded term "shucking and jiving" was no such thing. Hopefully, someone reminds Governor David Patterson of this every time he gets a damn phone call encouraging him to appoint Andrew Cuomo to anything. [NY Times, Pam's House Blend]