Today on the Dish, Andrew stood in awe of the ongoing radicalization of Gingrich-ified GOP and evoked Henry Fairlie’s words on the “America of fear” to put a name to the madness. He returned to the case of Marcial Maciel as a critical indictment of the Vatican’s degradation and echoed Jay Rockefeller’s condemnation of America’s black sites-torture program. Later, Andrew checked in on the struggling case against marriage equality, looked up the history of the ❤, and delivered a list of thank yous to the people who made the new Dish transition possible.

In political coverage, Weigel sized up the Republicans’ Hagel hysteria, Larison scratched his head, Kaplan chided the Senate Armed Services Committee, and readers offered thoughts on the whole mess here. We continued to analyze the president’s pre-K proposition, Josh Barro proposed a better but unlikely substitute for boosting the minimum wage, and Tried to parse new signs of easing health care costs. Readers sounded off on Andrew’s aversion to ribbons-for-a-cause, Rabbi David Novak recalled the time the Pope came across ACT-UP, and the Tax Policy Center let us tally up the benefits of marriage. Later we debated whether Rubio is a rising star or mere placeholder as Wickman wondered if it’s possible to keep nuke tests on the DL.

In Valentine’s Day coverage, Liza Hix served up a host of spiteful V-day cards, Natasha Vargas-Cooper discovered the “demonic power of sex,” and we casually attempted to nail the meaning of love. Freddie asked for a subtler rom-com formula while Josh Freedman dumped his girl by the numbers. Elswhere, Daniel Estrin followed an Israeli matrimonial detective around Eastern Europe, as Natasha Lennard revealed the pain of proving it to the feds.

After we paged through the poetry of Robert Graves and James Merrill for the occasion, readers recoiled at the ranking of poets in general. After Katie Boo divulged her pleasure reading, readers offered more thoughts on the show COPS, a genre of its own. Cass Sunstein introduced some social mores to combat obesity, Brodie Smith breezed through the MHB, and we glanced out at West Hollywood for the VFYW.

–B.J.