Hands down, the year’s most provocative and interesting Super Bowl commercial, from Clint Eastwood.

This year for the first time, you can watch the Super Bowl online at NBC Sports. It requires Microsoft Silverlight, and has a neat picture-in-picture feature that lets you switch between different camera views, including an aerial view of the field.

The game starts at 6pm ET, so in the meantime here’s the Volkswagen Super Bowl ad…

The Las Vegas Sun reports that voter turnout for the Nevada caucuses was very low, despite the Republican Party’s constant fear-mongering and attacks on President Obama.

Something’s going wrong with the GOP strategy of demonization and Tea Party ultra-conservatism; I suspect the toxic atmosphere of the far right is beginning to turn off center right Republicans, and that could spell big trouble for the GOP in the general election.

Mitt Romney’s easy victory in Nevada’s Republican presidential caucuses might, in the long run, be less important than the fact that a surprising number of Republicans who could have participated Saturday chose to stay home.

Republicans’ disappointing turnout foreshadows difficulty energizing GOP voters in Nevada, a key swing state in November’s general election.

Turnout was unlikely to match 2008, when 44,000 Republicans participated in Nevada’s caucuses. Complete figures were not released by the state party as of 10 p.m. Saturday, an indication of a lackluster showing.

“It was less than what we had planned for,” Clark County caucus Director Michael Chamberlain said on KNPR.

Republican turnout in Washoe County, Nevada’s second largest, was 8 percent, well below the 20 percent some had predicted.

“We expected more. Obviously we hoped for more,” David Buell, chairman of the Washoe County Republican Party, said.

Here’s an open thread to keep up on news from the Nevada GOP caucuses, in which Mitt Romney is expected to thoroughly trounce Newt “Poor Kids Make Great Janitors” Gingrich.

Ron “I Can’t Help It If White Supremacists Dig Me” Paul, for some reason, seems confident that he’ll beat Gingrich for second place.

If you’re on Twitter, statewide vote totals are being tweeted by @NVGOP…

Live results:

Anti-Muslim hate group leader Pamela Geller has seized on the murder of a 20-year old Muslim woman in Michigan, labeled it an “honor killing,” and is now planning to hold a “conference” using the murdered woman’s name — against the wishes of the woman’s family, and even though both the family and the prosecutor in the case say it was the act of an abusive stepfather, not an “honor killing” at all. And to make it even more disgusting, Geller is calling her hatefest a “human rights conference.”

It’s hard to imagine someone so twisted and dysfunctional that they’d intrude on a family’s grief over a murdered child, and use the victim’s name against the family’s wishes. But Geller is defiantly determined to exploit this murder for all the bigoted hatred she can wring out of it: Slain Woman’s Name on ‘Human Rights’ Conference Upsets Her Family.

Jessica’s murder made international headlines. She left Minnesota to escape an allegedly physically and mentally abusive stepfather, but in April of 2011, her stepfather, Rahim Alfatlawi, drove from Minnesota to her grandmother’s Warren home and shot her in the head.

Her family calls it an awful tragedy, but others are calling it an honor killing.

“We know that this is a practice under Islamic law. The honor killing is the final act. People know very little of the terror … that these girls live under,” said Pamela Geller.

She is the head of Stop the Islamization of America. Geller is hosting a conference on the anniversary of Jessica’s death in Dearborn. It’s called the Jessica Mokdad Human Rights Conference.

“We cannot sanction this gendercide. We cannot sanction the diminishment and dehumanization of women. We must speak up,” Geller said.

We asked Jessica’s stepmother, Cassandra Mokdad, whether her murder was an honor killing. “Absolutely it was not,” she said. She told us this disgusting act had nothing to do with Islam, a religion she said Jessica practiced proudly.

“It was nothing about religion or anything. It was just about a sick human being,” Mohammed Mokdad said.

“He wanted to have a relationship with Jessica as more than her stepfather. He wanted to have a more romantic relationship with her,” Cassandra Mokdad explained.

“She’s using Jessica as her poster child for anti-Islam.” Even the Macomb County Prosecutor on the case said Alfatlawi murdered Jessica because he was obsessed with her, not the religion, and Jessica’s family wants her name taken off the conference.

“She’s using Jessica as her poster child for anti-Islam,” said Cassandra Mokdad.

“What gulls me is that there is this prohibition on discussing it and the ideology that inspires honor killings,” Geller explained.

She said this conference will happen and the name won’t be changed.

“We’re definitely going to have this conference and it will not be stopped. Their directing their barbs at me. I didn’t kill Jessica. I’m trying to save the next girl. They should be helping me save the next girl,” said Geller.

“Absolutely I’ll go. I won’t let her sit there and misuse Jessica’s name, and I will let her know exactly how I feel,” Cassandra Mokdad told us.

But wait — the story gets even more repellent, because Geller and her followers bullied and harassed the management of the Hyatt Regency in Dearborn, Michigan into giving her a conference room for free to hold this ugly hatefest, after they canceled a previous Geller hatefest. Unbelievable.

Here’s a page with contact info for the Dearborn Hyatt, if you’d like to let the management know how you feel about this disgusting event: Detroit Metro Hotel - Detroit Michigan Hotels - Hyatt Regency Dearborn. They backed down and tried to appease Geller, and as a result she’s now using their facilities to exploit a murdered woman’s name to spread hatred.

Tonight’s insanity break is a spectacular showcase for the capabilities of the video camera in the iPhone 4S.

The ideological bent of Komen Foundation public policy VP Karen Handel really becomes clear in this 2010 interview with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on the topic of gay marriage and adoption, in which she says she favors outlawing gay adoptions: Handel Says Gay Parents Not as ‘Legitimate’ as Hetero Ones.

Q: Do you view committed gay relationships as being less legitimate than committed heterosexual relationships?

A: As a Christian, I view relationships and marriage as being between a man and a woman.

Q: But what about the legitimacy of the relationship? Do you have any gay friends? Do you know gay couples?

A: Of course I do. Are we going to spend our whole day talking on this issue?

Q: I want to know how you feel about this.

A: I’ve been very clear. And you know, as a Christian, marriage is between a man and a woman. I do not think that gay relationships are — they are not what God intended. And that’s just my viewpoint on it. Others might disagree with that. But I would also hope that if you look at what is happening in our state, we’ve got issues we need to be focused on in Georgia . We have a constitutional amendment against gay marriage. And it’s something that I supported wholeheartedly. We have that, and let’s get dealing with the other issues that we also need to deal with in Georgia. And the press can help with that. (Laughs).

Q: Frequently, folks in the Legislature kind of threaten to — there are always rumblings in the Legislature that they may outlaw gay adoptions. You’re against gay adoption.

A: I am against gay adoption. But remember — I mean, if there is legislation on that, certainly I will follow that and look at it. But in the end, ultimately courts are going to be the ones to have to make the decision on that and it’s always in the best interests of the child. Do I think that gay parents is in the best interest of the child? No. But we do have our court system that deals with many and most of those issues.

Q: Would you favor outlawing gay adoptions?

A: Yeah, I would consider that, absolutely.

Q: Do you know any gay couples with children?

A: Not that I’m aware of.

Q: So you think gay couples are less qualified to function as parents than straight couples?

A: I think that for a child to be in a household — in a family in a household with a situation where the parents are not married, as in one man and one woman, is not the best household for a child.

Q: Is it better or worse than a single parent household?

A: Doug, I’m really trying to be straightforward with you but I’m not going to debate all the nuances. I’ve made it abundantly clear that I think that marriage is between a man and a woman. And that’s what I believe, and I don’t know what more you would like me to add to that.

Q: I guess I want to know why you think gay parents aren’t as legitimate as heterosexual parents.

A: Because I don’t.

(h/t: Alan Colmes.)

Komen Foundation CEO Karen Brinker may have denied that their decision to stop funding Planned Parenthood had anything to do with politics, but the religious right activists who’ve been waging a campaign against Planned Parenthood certainly think otherwise — and today they’re freaking over the Komen Foundation’s apparent reversal: Religious Right Reacts to Komen’s Latest Statement With Confusion, Anger and Warnings of God’s Wrath.

Mona Charen of the National Review Online lamented that “it’s extremely disappointing that Komen has caved” but “it’s hardly surprising given the onslaught they’ve endured over the course of the last few days,” and NRO’s Daniel Foster charged Planned Parenthood with “gangsterism.” Of course, just days prior Kathryn Jean Lopez on NRO hailed Komen’s initial decision as a major victory, noting “this Komen-Planned Parenthood relationship has long been a target of pro-life activists.”

Catholic Family and Human Rights Initiative (C-Fam) president Austin Ruse told LifeSiteNews called potentially successful effort to have the Komen foundation reverse their decision defunding Planned Parenthood a “mafia shakedown”:

Pro-life leaders say that the exact import of the statement is not yet clear, and that Komen seems to be asking for breathing room, possibly with the intention of caving in definitively to pro-abortion pressure.

Austin Ruse of C-Fam told LifeSiteNews.com Friday morning that, “The mafia shakedown tactics may have worked, but we’re not sure.”

Ruse advised that pro-lifers should “take a wait and see attitude” to discern whether the pro-abortion pushback against Komen would succeed.

Kristen Walker of Live Action called it a “terrible shame that Komen has caved in to political pressure from pro-abortion fanatics who demand obeisance to Planned Parenthood” and wondered what will happen to all the money people gave to Komen to reward them for dropping Planned Parenthood:

If raising money to cure breast cancer were their primary concern, they would not have reversed this decision. Their donations went up 100% in the short time since they announced the halting of grants to PP as pro-lifers who have refused to donate to Komen opened their wallets to thank them for their decision, happy to finally be able to give to their good work of fighting breast cancer with a clear conscience. I wonder if Komen has given any thought to the fact that those people gave money in good faith believing it wouldn’t be used to fund abortions. Will they refund that money? I guess we’ll see.

…

It is a terrible shame that Komen has caved in to political pressure from pro-abortion fanatics who demand obeisance to Planned Parenthood. It is a terrible shame they’re allowing PP and its followers to compromise their mission to cure breast cancer.

Evangelist Bill Keller warned that the latest move by the Komen foundation may well lead to “the wrath and punishment of God unleashed on this wicked nation at any moment”:

Keller said, “It only shows the level of spiritual decay in this nation when a private foundation who made a decision to stop giving money to the world’s largest abortion provider, Planned Parenthood, causes the media, politicians, and the supporters of killing babies to go into a wild frenzy. The Catholic Church has always stood for the sanctity of life, yet Catholics like Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry, Joe Biden, and MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, were livid that the Komen Foundation decided to stop giving a $250,000 annual grant to Planned Parenthood.”

…

Keller concluded, “You don’t have to be a Biblical scholar to know that we are on the verge of seeing the wrath and punishment of God unleashed on this wicked nation at any moment. Every 24 hours we slaughter approximately 4,000 innocent babies. Where is the outrage about that in the media, in the halls of Congress? Sadly, society doesn’t even give it a second thought and has fully embraced this ‘culture of death’ which hangs over this nation like a black cloud.”

Judging from the statement they released, Planned Parenthood seems to believe the Komen Foundation will restore their funding for breast cancer screening.

But is the Komen Foundation just spinning some more?

I just got off the phone with a Komen board member, and he confirmed that the announcement does not mean that Planned Parenthood is guaranteed future grants — a demand he said would be “unfair” to impose on Komen. He also said the job of the group’s controversial director, Nancy Brinker, is safe, as far as the board is concerned.

As some were quick to point out, the statement put out by Komen doesn’t really clarify whether Planned Parenthood will actually continue to get money from the group. The original rationale for barring Planned Parenthood was that it was under investigation (a witch-hunt probe undertaken by GOP Rep Cliff Stearns). Komen said today that the group would “amend the criteria to make clear that disqualifying investigations must be criminal and conclusive in nature and not political.”

Does that mean Planned Parenthood will get Komen grants in the future?

I asked Komen board member John Raffaelli to respond to those who are now saying that the announcement doesn’t necessarily constitute a reversal until Planned Parenthood actually sees more funding. He insisted it would be unfair to expect the group to commit to future grants.

“It would be highly unfair to ask us to commit to any organization that doesn’t go through a grant process that shows that the money we raise is used to carry out our mission,” Raffaelli told me. “We’re a humaniatrian organization. We have a mission. Tell me you can help carry out our mission and we will sit down at the table.”

Pushed on whether this means the new announcement wasn’t really a reversal, Raffaelli pushed back, arguing that Komen, in response to all the criticism, had removed politics from the grant-making process. “Is it really unclear that we’re changing the policy to address criticism?” he said.

Notice: Komen board member John Raffaelli is explicitly admitting that the decision to cut off Planned Parenthood was politically driven.

Also see:
Komen Founder Admitted in 2010 Memoir That Dropping PP Funding Would Be ‘Turning Our Backs’ on Poor Women