An ebullient Republican Party Chairman Michael Steele asserted Wednesday that GOP victories in governors’ races in New Jersey and Virginia demonstrate “a transcendent party” on the move again. Democratic Party Chairman Timothy M. Kaine said that nothing about the election returns amounted to a repudiation of President Barack Obama.

As the health care debate rages on, both sides have become increasingly dramatic in their denunciations of the opposition. The left—horrified that it may have blown the perfect opportunity for stealth nationalization of American health care—has slipped into shrill ad hominem attacks, with prominent pundits such as Paul Krugman equating opponents of a public plan to fringe “birthers” who question the authenticity of Barack Obama’s birth certificate. The right, on the other hand, has sometimes stumbled into brazen hypocrisy while trying to stop what can reasonably be described as a government power grab. Why must conservatives exaggerate when they have so much right reason on their side?

Attempting to reach a different—and hopefully wider—audience for its annual fundraiser, the Chesterfield branch of the NAACP has lined up a nationally prominent speaker for its September Freedom Fund Banquet. The choice isn’t sitting well with some state leaders, in large part because it could put the group at risk of compromising its nonprofit status.

Lauren Cohen Bell, a political-science professor at Randolph-Macon College, says she often errs when making predictions, but not this time. As soon as she heard about Justice David H. Souter’s retirement, she said she thought Sonia Sotomayor would be President Barack Obama’s nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court. Bell worked on Sotomayor’s stalled nomination to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals throughout 1998, when Bell was a fellow on the Senate Judiciary Committee. The Republican-controlled Senate eventually confirmed Sotomayor.

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine put on his hat as Democratic National Committee chairman to defend the Obama administration in a Sunday-morning square-off with Republican counter part Michael Steele. During a joint interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,“ Kaine and Steele sparred over whether President Barack Obama, who supports abortion rights, should receive an honorary degree from the University of Notre Dame, an anti-abortion, Catholic institution, where he spoke yesterday.

Catholic politicians seem to be everywhere these days. In Virginia alone, the governor and attorney general are both Roman Catholic. On the national level, Catholic politicians seem to be spilling out of every tabernacle in town. This is not surprising given that 24.5 percent of Americans are Catholic. Except for brief interruptions, American Catholics have remained loyal to the Democratic Party since the days of mass Catholic immigration when the party was quick to dispense desperately needed jobs and cash to struggling families in return for votes.