Meet the New Boss: For an ambitious young House Republican, overseeing the District isn't a terrible gig. You get to tell 600,000 people what to do, without fear of retribution from any voting members of Congress, and without alienating your constituents back home, who don't particularly care what the federal government's doing to a bunch of Washingtonians. Which means Rep. Trey Gowdy of South Carolina could be a new star soon, as he was named today to head the subcommittee that watches D.C. affairs. He's no Jason Chaffetz, but who is? Gowdy's district is one of the most conservative in the Palmetto State, including Greenville and Spartanburg—two cities that don't have a whole lot in common with our own (Spartanburg has about 289,000 people, more than two-thirds of them white). Welcome, boss! -3

Obama Park: One surefire way to irritate Gowdy and the new Republican majority in Congress? Start naming things around town for President Obama. That seems to be what Councilmember Jim Graham has planned, as he reintroduced legislation today to name the park at 14th and Girard streets NW for the president. Graham first tried this in July 2009, a mere six months into Obama's term; then, it was technically illegal, thanks to a provision of the D.C. Code that bars naming things for living people. +1

Ex Post Facto: Don't be alarmed when you pick up Sunday's Kaplan Test Prep Supplement Washington Post. Much of which, if you're one of the dwindling number of locals who get home delivery service, will actually arrive on Saturday. The Post announced new features and formats for its Sunday sections today, including a tabloid-sized Style section that sounds an awful lot like another tabloid packed with information on pop culture and life in the District that you can find around town on Thursdays. But hey, if it means people are actually making money printing newspapers in Washington, we're all for it! +2

Gay Marriage Saved: The institution of same-sex marriage doesn't go back quite as long as the institution of opposite-sex marriage (or, as Carrie Prejean would put it, "opposite marriage"), but like all marriage these days, it, too, was under threat. The danger to D.C.'s same-sex marriages came from the Supreme Court. But fortunately, the court opted not to interfere with the District's marriage equality law today, refusing to take up an appeal by opponents of the law who sought to force a referendum on it. Score it as a rare win for basic fairness and justice. +3

Metro Back in Business: News that Metro's Red Line had trouble this morning shouldn't have surprised anyone; after all, there was an ice storm, and Metro is perfectly capable of having difficulty when it's warm and sunny. This time, an insulator burning on the tracks near Tenleytown slowed service, just in time for commuters arriving two hours later than usual to get stranded. By evening rush hour, things were working as normal again—which is to say, expect delays. -2

Yesterday's Needle rating: 51 Today's score: +1 Today's Needle rating: 52

Prejean is now acting as a spokesperson for the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), which is led by Maggie Gallagher, who has been defending Prejean from "tolerant types" since Boobiegate broke. Gallagher and I exchanged words in the lead-up to November's gay marriage referendums after I wrote something obnoxious about her at reason.com's Hit & Run blog. The exchange ended with Gallagher writing in an email, "It's nice to know you are just as intensely offensive to a person's face as as you are in print.  The voices of tolerance tend to be like that."

Which got me wondering: Since when did tolerance become ammunition for the right?

After all, tolerance in the public sphere was conceived as a way to prevent persecution of religious minorities (one recent example: anti-Semitism in the modern Muslim world). Christians are not a religious minority in the United States, and calling Prejean, Gallagher, and others nasty names isn't persecution–especially not on the grand scale of physical violence and economic duress that religious minorities continue to experience in nearly every country but the U.S.

Perhaps after watching academic leftists misuse "tolerance" to enact campus speech codes and pathologize conservative thought in the humanities and the social sciences, social conservatives felt justified turning the concept on its head to quiet those same leftists when they attacked Christians for arguing against gay marriage, stem cell research, and abortion. As a result, Prejean's original pronouncement (whether because it was solicited or simply by the magic of conservative thinking) was neither tolerant nor intolerant–essentially a pure, value-free expression of belief–but anyone who criticized her beliefs was labeled both tolerant (pro-gay) and intolerant (derisive toward dissenters)–i.e., a hypocrite. (I tip my hat to the social conservatives on this one. Gallagher and NOM are infuriatingly calm, if a little melodramatic. They seldom stray from their core message, except to chide tolerant liberals for being intolerant, and they picked a fantastic acronym for their organization.)

And yet, nobody has fire-bombed Carrie Prejean's house or NOM's headquarters. There has been no coordinated pogrom against members of the GLBT community in the wake of gay-marriage victories in Maine, Iowa, D.C., and other states. Even our accusations of intolerance are incredibly tolerant–we're making them in social forums.

Both sides, then, should forget about tolerating the other if it means diluting public discourse with hollow niceties. Social engineering, by its very nature, is an ugly business. Liberals shouldn't be reasonable, sensible, or amicable, because homophobia and theocracy are not reasonable, sensible, or amicable concepts. Nor should social conservatives stand by while apostates, heretics, and nonbelievers adulterate God's Happy Family formula.

Tolerance leads to obfuscation, double-talk, statistical manipulation, and outright omission–so let's keep this discussion hostile.

Turns out some mildly tawdry shots of Carrie Prejean from her modeling career have hit the web. Nothing with animals or appliances yet, though the photos reveal her blonde hair's fake, too. (Messing with God's work quite a bit, eh, Carrie?)

But then I also hit a link on the page for associated "Racy Photo Scandals" — I plead the Pete Townshend defense: "Research" — and was directed to a montage that featured Prejean, Miley Cyrus, Vanessa Hudgens....and Chris Cooley!

Ah, yes. Everybody's fave Redskin's foreskin was briefly visible on his website last season. By accident, of course.