It's one of the staples of international human rights dialogue that British conservatives are very little like American conservatives because they are more concerned with government efficiency than in cutting basic social services to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy, and that (most of all) they are not invasive, bigoted prudes.

But David Cameron is changing the Conservative Party's image, one kiss at a time:

British prime minister David Cameron wants to restrict same-sex kisses on television to late-night adult viewing hours.

The Sun reports that Cameron, the Conservative leader who attended the royal wedding last week, supports a ban on same-sex kisses during the "pre-watershed" viewing hours before 9 p.m. An independent review may recommend the restriction.

There's strong evidence that Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri supervised activities of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula from 1998 until his capture in 2002, and that he played some role in the October 2000 bombing of the U.S.S. Cole. But there is also strong evidence that the U.S. case against him is based largely on coerced confessions that are evidentially worthless and would not hold up in a civilian court, which is presumably why he is being tried under the military tribunal system. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.

Al-Nashiri was tortured at the infamous CIA "black ops" site at the Stare Kiejutsky Intelligence Training Base in Poland, and Polish officials are investigating to determine whether members of their government may have been complicit in human rights abuses. The U.S. government is, of course, conducting no such investigation. As the ACLU put it:

There is every reason to be concerned that this administration, like the last, is using the military commissions process because it permits a far greater degree of censorship of the prisoner's account of torture than a federal court would allow. In the military commissions, every word the prisoner says to his lawyer -- specifically, accounts of past torture or conditions of confinement -- can be excluded from the trial ...

[T]orturous acts against al-Nashiri earned him "victim status" in Poland ... And since much of the torture of Al-Nashiri was done by the CIA in the black site in Poland, and Polish prosecutors have instituted a high-level investigation into the complicity of their officials, the robust European enforcement of human rights laws could potentially become a concern.

But if the military commission moves fast enough, the prosecution in Poland won't be a problem for the U.S. We'll just execute the evidence.

Related: American Torture

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker (R) had long held that anti-union legislation that restrict collective bargaining rights of state employees, regardless of their status vis-a-vis labor rights, are necessary for budgetary reasons. On Thursday, under harsh questioning from Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), he admitted that this was not entirely true:

KUCINICH: Let me ask you about some of the specific provisions in your proposals to strip collective bargaining rights. First, your proposal would require unions to hold annual votes to continue representing their own members. Can you please explain to me and members of this committee how much money this provision saves for your state budget?

WALKER: That and a number of other provisions we put in because if you're going to ask, if you're going to put in place a change like that, we wanted to make sure we protected the workers of our state, so they got value out of that. [...]

KUCINICH: Would you answer the question? How much money does it save, Governor?

WALKER: It doesn't save any.

Walker used the budget argument long enough to get his proposal passed--but, now that he has done so, is able to admit that it is not a fiscally conservative proposal, but rather a cynically political one.

Yeah, you read that right. Public Policy Polling's study of the 2011 Mississippi gubernatorial race found that a plurality (46%) of Mississippi Republicans want to ban interracial marriage, a minority (40%) want to keep it legal, and a small percentage (14%) are actually undecided.

Mississippi's law banning interracial marriage was rendered unenforceable when the Supreme Court handed down its ruling in Loving v. Virginia (1967), establishing that marriage is a civil right protected by the U.S. Constitution.

Mississippi has been in the news a great deal lately as Governor Haley Barbour refused to distance himself from a Sons of Confederate Veterans proposal that would honor a founding member of the KKK with a state commemorative license plate. His likely successor, incumbent lieutenant governor and GOP gubernatorial frontrunner Phil Bryant, rose to prominence by fabricating numbers that targeted undocumented immigrants as the source of Mississippi's budget woes. His current campaign is based on his opposition to the Voting Rights Act and his current proposal to hold two consecutive legislative elections rather than concede new majority-black districts as a result of the 2010 census.

As a native Mississippian, I do feel the need to point out that there are fewer Republicans than Democrats in Mississippi, and that the state has both the nation's highest per-capita black population (37%) and the nation's largest Legislative Black Caucus. This means that Mississippi is polarized on civil rights, largely on racial lines. The lesson of 2011 is that Mississippi has further to go on this issue than most of us had realized, that the stereotype of Mississippi as a racist, backwards state has a very strong basis in reality, and that those of us in Mississippi who support civil rights must be prepared to work harder, and make more enemies within the white establishment, if we're going to change the status quo.

Related: Civil Liberties in Mississippi