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• In the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom praises the California Supreme Court's decision handed down Thursday in support of gay marriage. "The court's ruling affirms the very best of what California represents: our long-standing commitment to equality and justice."

• Does Barack Obama "really believe that Hezbollah is a normal social welfare agency seeking more government services for its followers?" questions David Brooks. "Does Obama believe that even the most intractable enemies can be pacified with diplomacy? What 'Lebanese consensus' can Hezbollah possibly be a part of? If Obama believes all this, he's not just a Jimmy Carter-style liberal. He's off in Noam Chomskyland."

• John Kass has jumped on the S-word bandwagon Obama has apparently started: "It's like this in most every American newsroom, guys using the S-word, guys boldly calling other guys 'sweetie,' now that" Obama "started the craze."

• With the headline "Hillary Is Too Boring to Be President", in the Wall Street Journal author Joe Queenan links one's ability to entertain the country with his or her ability to lead the country.

• "Democrats should rally around our nominee as soon as possible so the general election campaign can begin and the contrast between" John McCain "and the Democratic Party can be drawn for the American people," former DNC chairman Robert S. Strauss declares in the Washington Post.

• Michael Gerson compares Martin Luther King, Jr. to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright: "Some Obama supporters claimed that Wright's anger is really not so different from King's -- that both preachers represent a distinguished tradition of African American outrage.... King did not always bless America, but he staked his life on its deepest beliefs."

• In the Washington Post, James P. Rubin notices McCain's willingness to use "Nixon-style dirty campaign tactics. By charging recently that Hamas is rooting for an Obama victory, McCain tried to use guilt by association to suggest that Obama is weak on national security and won't stand up to terrorist organizations, or that, as Richard Nixon might have put it, Obama is soft on Israel."

• Eugene Robinson bids farewell to the Ronald Reagan era of politics, writing that "regardless of who takes the oath of office in January, the paradigm that reigned for nearly three decades -- the notion that government is useless, if not inherently evil -- is no longer operative."

• "The Democrats aren't the ones falling apart, the Republicans are," contends Peggy Noonan. "The Democrats can see daylight ahead. The Republicans? Busy dying. The brightest of them see no immediate light. They're frozen, not like a deer in the headlights but a deer in the darkness, his ears stiff at the sound."

• "In this spring of discontent, Republicans are turning on each other because even their best news is bad news," claims E.J. Dionne Jr.

• David Harsanyi agrees, adding, "It's about time members of the GOP stopped being enablers. And a decisive defeat in November would be the perfect start."

• "The state of the union is angry," argues Kimberly Strassel. "Citizens are furious about gas prices and health-care costs, broken schools and property taxes" and "their fury has bubbled as they've watched Washington obsess over itself -- dealing out earmarks, paying off constituencies, launching probes into political enemies. Accomplishing zip."

• Diana West thinks there's still time to criticize President Bush: "So long as" Bush "is commander-in-chief, there remains something mesmerizing about the way he seems to experience his momentous tenure virtually unscratched, even ungrazed, by his many brushes (collisions) with history."

• Charles Krauthammer explains what it would take to achieve peace in the Middle East. "On the day the Arabs -- and the Palestinians in particular -- make a collective decision to accept the Jewish state, there will be peace. Until that day, there will be nothing but war."

From The Editorial Boards...

• "Congress has approved a $307 billion farm bill that rewards rich farmers who do not need the help while doing virtually nothing to help the world’s hungry, who need all the help they can get," fumes the New York Times.

• The Washington Post concurs, calling the bill "the epitome of old-style Washington politics. A small number of farm-state senators from both parties demanded its most wasteful provisions. These members of the less-representative body leveraged their right to filibuster into billions of dollars for people who are better off than the average taxpayer."

• USA Today endeavors to find the culprit of soaring gas prices, offering insight as to who -- from the oil companies to environmentalists -- may be to blame.

• The Washington Times paints a horrendous picture for Israel's leader: "Everywhere he looks, embattled Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert sees potential disaster looming -- from the ominous consolidation of power by Hezbollah in Lebanon to terror from Gaza and the ever-present threat of a nuclear Iran."

• The Los Angeles Times applauds the California Supreme Court's ruling in favor of same-sex marriages, calling the decision "another step in that march toward equality; voters would do well to revel in this historic moment and let this decision stand."

• The State "Supreme Court was correct and courageous to ensure that this state-sanctioned institution, with all its rights and responsibilities, is available to all," cheers the San Francisco Chronicle. "Californians must be prepared to reject any attempt to take away this basic civil right that is endowed in the state Constitution."

• "It is preposterous, though, to let four judges decide this for a state of more than 36 million diverse individuals," the Wall Street Journal counters on same-sex marriage. "Most of all, the gay community wants social acceptance. It should look to what flowed from Roe v. Wade: unending bitterness. A wiser course in 21st-century America is to trust the democratic process."

• The Hill doesn't see much hope for the GOP. "Picking through the rubble of their electoral chances, Republicans can find one or two plausible ways to argue that their plight will not be as dire in the general election as it has been in the recent Mississippi, Illinois and Louisiana special elections."

• The Boston Globe acknowledges China has been more open than Myanmar, but says, "A better test of China's new transparency will be whether the government lets reporters investigate whether human failings, official or otherwise, contributed to thousands of deaths."

• "A respite for the polar bears, a disappointment for green lawyers and no apparent progress by a Bush administration in lonely denial about climate change," is what the Seattle Times has to say about the recent decision to declare the polar endangered.