Gay marriage takes effect today in Iowa. In fact, here's a look at the couple possessing the state's first same-sex marriage license, who were planning to get married within the hour.

Many people have commented on the importance of Iowa's decision as a cultural and geographic marker of America's heartland. For a graphic representation, see below. Up until the decision on April 3 which takes effect today, the gay marriage movement in the US had been a distinctly coastal phenomenon:

In a must-read piece from the weekend, Wes Allison of the St. Petersburg Times headed back to Scranton to take the pulse of the blue collar that was in many ways the epicenter of the 2008 presidential cycle:

SCRANTON, Pa. — Pat McMullen is sipping a cocktail in a cozy booth inside Pat McMullen's Irish pub just east of downtown, an easy stop after work to talk politics.

"I didn't think he'd be good," McMullen is saying.

"No, you didn't," his wife, Margaret, affirms.

"I wasn't on the bandwagon," McMullen says. "He came from nowhere. A lot of people told me, This guy's going to be the one. I said, I dunno."

Yet, like many of their neighbors, McMullen, 62, reluctantly voted for Barack Obama in November, setting aside concerns that he lacked substance and experience because he just couldn't vote for the Republican, not after the past eight years.

Now, as Obama finishes his first 100 days in office, the McMullens and many other former Obama skeptics in this working-class town in northeastern Pennsylvania consider themselves fans, won over by young president's willingness to explain his ideas to the American people, and the simple fact that he appears to be trying his best to right the listing U.S. economy — even if they have little to show for his efforts so far.

Allison goes on to report that there is concern among many in Scranton that Obama is trying to do too much, but also that "there is little evidence the attacks by conservative commentators and Republican politicians that Obama is driving the nation to socialism are sticking."

A new FOX News poll (April 22-23, 900 RV, +/- 3%) finds President Obama with a 62% job approval rating, up 4 points from three weeks ago. Obama now has a 61.8% RCP Average job approval rating.

In Congress, the poll finds Democrats with a 50%/40% approval/disapproval rating and Republicans at 36%/52%. Democrats lead 46%-33% in the generic congressional vote.

Asked whether they were satisfied with the way things are going in the country, 46% now say they are at least somewhat satisfied, up 26 points from January. And 69% say they are satisfied with what Obama has accomplished during his first 100 days in office.

Americans were asked their one-word impression of Barack Obama as he nears his 100th day in office. Above are the top ten words respondents cited. The size of a word is based on how often it was said.

Top three words cited: intelligent, good and socialist. Intelligent has led both the February and April lists.

One-word answers are hardly the metric by which to gauge a president. But they do give a sense of those words floating around the American mind.

Consider the word "inexperienced." In September 2008, it was far and away the first choice of the public. By February, it ranked 5th. Today, it ranks 7th.

The rise of the word "socialist" is also notable. In September 2008, socialist ranked 19th. By February,  it ranked 8th. Today, socialist ranks 3rd.

More voters select socialist to describe Obama than: liberal, great, confident, inexperienced or honest. That increase may reflect large government spending out of Washington. But keep the echo chamber in mind. In recent months, Republicans have settled on the word "socialist" to critically describe Obama.

Meanwhile, when it comes to discussing Obama, "change" is receding from the public lexicon. Today, twice as many Americans cite "socialist" as cite the word "change." Change ranks 11th. In February, change ranked 2nd.

This visual barometer is based on data from the Pew Research Center's latest report.

Former two-term governor Jerry Brown leads a potential Democratic primary field with 31% of the vote, according to a new poll by Tulchin Research. Brown currently serves as state attorney general, and also is a former secretary of state.

Tested against Brown were San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Lt. Gov. John Garamendi, and Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell.

Brown 31
Newsom 16
Villaraigosa 12
Garamendi 11
O'Connell 6
Undecided 20

Garamendi announced this week he is instead seeking a soon-to-be vacant U.S. House seat in California's 10th District, which Rep. Ellen Tauscher is vacating to serve in the State Department.

In April, 1999, Tony Blair became the first Prime Minister of Britain ever to travel to Chicago. In a speech before the Economic Club, Blair wowed the crowd by putting forth a "Doctrine of the International Community" arguing passionately for military intervention to stop the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo with the declaration: "We are all internationalists now, whether we like it or not."

Almost 10 years to the day, Blair returned to Chicago on Wednesday night and delivered a noteworthy speech before the Chicago Council on Global Affairs in which he reflected on his 1999 address and the dramatic events of the intervening decade.

The speech was hardly covered at all in the U.S. or in Britain, but it is worth reading in full. Blair began by restating his case for an interventionist foreign policy:

My argument is that the case for the doctrine I advocated ten years ago, remains as strong now as it was then; and that what has really changed is the context in which the doctrine has to be applied. The struggle in which we are joined today is profound in its danger; requires engagement of a different and more comprehensive kind; and can only be won by the long haul. The context therefore is much tougher. But the principle is the same.

Blair was also quite direct about the nature of the threat - to the noticeable discomfort of some in the audience who heard the ongoing (though far more eloquent) echoes of George W. Bush.

Blair noted numerous examples of conflicts around the world before stating:

Of course the solution in each case will be in many respects different. But it is time to wrench ourselves out of a state of denial. There is one major factor in common. In each conflict there are those deeply engaged in it, who argue that they are fighting in the true name of Islam.

And here is the crucial point. This didn't start on 11th September 2001, or shortly before it. The roots aren't near the surface. It was in the 1970s that Pakistan's leadership decided to re-define itself through religious conviction. The storming of the Holy Mosque in Mecca took place years ago. Al Qaida began in earnest in the 1980s. In many Arab and Muslim nations, there was more tolerance and less religiosity in the 1960s, than today. The doctrinal roots of this growing movement can be traced even further back to the period in the late 19th and early 20th century where modernising and moderate clerics and thinkers were slowly but surely pushed aside by the hard-line dogma of those, whose cultural and theological credentials were often dubious, but whose appeal lay in the simplicity of the message : Islam, they say, lost its way; the reason was its departure from the true faith as stated immutably in the 7th century ; and the answer is to return to it and in doing so, vanquish Islam's foes, in the West and most especially within the ruling parties of the Islamic world itself. [snip]

And they have succeeded in one other sphere. They have successfully inculcated a sense of victimhood in the Islamic world, that stretches far beyond the extremes. So powerful has this become that it has severely warped the debate even in many parts of the non-Islamic world, where frequently commentators, while naturally condemning the terrorism, nevertheless imply that, to an extent, the West's foreign policy has helped 'cause' it.

President Obama's reaching out to the Muslim world at the start of a new American administration, is welcome, smart, and can play a big part in defeating the threat we face. It disarms those who want to say we made these enemies, that if we had been less confrontational they would have been different. It pulls potential moderates away from extremism.

But it will expose, too, the delusion of believing that there is any alternative to waging this struggle to its conclusion. The ideology we are fighting is not based on justice. That is a cause we can understand. And world-wide these groups are adept, certainly, at using causes that indeed are about justice, like Palestine. Their cause, at its core, however, is not about the pursuit of values that we can relate to; but in pursuit of values that directly contradict our way of life. They don't believe in democracy, equality or freedom. They will espouse, tactically, any of these values if necessary. But at heart what they want is a society and state run on their view of Islam. They are not pluralists. They are the antithesis of pluralism. And they don't think that only their own community or state should be like that. They think the world should be governed like that.

Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter (R) finds himself down 21 points to former Rep. Pat Toomey in a potential 2010 Republican primary, according to a new Rasmussen poll. Specter now has a 42%/55% favorability rating, while Toomey enjoys a 66%/19% rating.

Toomey 51
Specter 30
Someone else 9
Und 10

Toomey lost to Specter by a slim margin in the 2004 Senate primary, but in an on-camera interview with Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reporter Salena Zito, Toomey said things are different this time.

"It's a very different race," Toomey said. "I think the press has figured out that this time the outcome is going to be different."

"Let me assure you, I wasn't waiting around to do this. I had no intention of running again," he said. "And then all of a sudden I saw our federal government doing things that I never thought was possible."

A new poll from USA Today/Gallup shows 56% of Americans saying Obama is doing an "excellent" or "good job" as Presdient while 20% say he is doing a "terrible" or "poor" job and 23% say the new President is doing "just OK." The phrasing of this question is different from the standard "approve/disapprove" question, which was either not asked for this survey or is not being made available to the public right now.

14% say the best thing Obama has done thus far is to "improve relations with other countries," while an equal number say the worst thing he has done in his first 100 days is "give away too much in bailouts."

The White House released a list of Congressional members attending tonight's reception:

Democrats (30)
Rep. Mike Arcuri (D-NY)
Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR)
Rep. Robert Brady (D-PA)
Rep. Michael Capuano (D-MA)
Rep. Lacy Clay (D-MO)
Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN)
Rep. Jim Cooper (D-TN)
Rep. Kathy Dahlkemper (D-PA)
Rep. Peter Defazio (D-OR)
Rep. Steve Driehaus (D-OH)
Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN)
Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-CA)
Rep. Gabby Giffords (D-AZ)
Rep. Debbie Halvorson (D-IL)
Rep. Phil Hare (D-IL)
Rep. John Lewis (D-GA)
Rep. David Loebsack (D-IA)
Rep. Doris Matsui (D-CA)
Rep. Jerry McNerney (D-CA)
Rep. Ed Perlmutter (D-CO)
Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-ME)
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA)
Rep. Joe Sestak (D-PA)
Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA)
Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI)
Rep. Betty Sutton (D-OH)
Rep. John Tierney (D-MA)
Rep. Peter Visclosky (D-IN)
Rep. Tim Walz (D-MN)
Rep. John Yarmuth (D-KY)

Republicans (7)
Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-FL)
Rep. Joseph Cao (R-LA)
Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV)
Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ)
Rep. Leonard Lance (R-NJ)
Rep. Mary Bono Mack (R-CA)
Rep. Christopher Smith (R-NJ)

No big surprise in Gallup's latest survey of those who have  "great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in banks: