Santorum, Perry, Bert and Ernie on gay marriage

As the Ames Iowa straw poll approaches and Texas Governor Rick Perry prepares to enter the presidential race, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum has decided the way to go is to slam Perry as being soft on gay marriage.

Perry used the state’s rights argument in declining to oppose New York’s legalization of gay marriage, and Santorum pounced, saying Perry is “doing things that will be destructive not just for the Republican Party, but for the country.”

Polls suggest the country is moving away from Santorum on this issue, but that doesen’t mean he won’t find a voting bloc in the GOP field. Not among that constituency, presumably is the 900 who’ve signed an online petition encouraging the producers of Sesame Street to have Bert and Ernie get married.

And the non-profit investigative outfit Pro-Publica has this interesting piece on Standard & Poors, which the Treasury Department says made a $2 trillion dollar error in its initial press release on the downgrade of American credit (S&P disputes this). Pro-Publica says S&P is trying to soften proposed regulations for the ratings agencies dealing with errors in their evaluations.