It appears that sufficient petitions have now been signed, allowing Colorado citizens to vote on a “personhood” amendment to their state constitution:

Abortion opponents turned in more than 46,000 signatures on Thursday, the second deadline for the ballot initiative. The group needs only about 15,700 of those signatures to be deemed valid for the abortion question to go to ballots this fall.

The amendment would give unborn fetuses human rights in the state constitution, setting up a likely conflict with the U.S. Constitution over a woman’s right to abortions.

A similar measure fared poorly in 2008, and supporters admit that getting the amendment passed this fall will be difficult.

Here it is, Rants! & Raves!, your weekly opportunity to sound off about the week past.

Remember the rules:

1. A Rave! is something that happened during the past week that you’re pleased about and is signified by the word “Rave!” and/or an appropriately peppy emoticon (see Website Help to learn how to use emoticons, aka “smileys”).
2. A Rant! is something that happened during the past week that you’re ticked off about and is signified by the word “Rant!” and/or an appropriately grumpy emoticon.
3. You may Rant! about something a person said, did, or wrote, but you may not Rant! about generally disliking a person. IOW, no personal attacks allowed.

Have fun!

Hello!

Random question of the day: If you had complete control over healthcare reform, what would you do with it?

My answer to yesterday’s question: When someone talks during a movie.

Remember: This is our daily (except for Sundays) open thread, where you can 1) answer my question, 2) talk about something else, or 3) say something truly encouraging to the commenter before you.

Click here for a look back at the news of the week, colorfully illustrated by some of the best editorial cartoonists in the business: Chip Bok, Steve Breen (winner of last year’s Pulitzer Prize), Steve Kelley, Michael Ramirez, and Gary Varvel.

This creative cadre of cartoonists offer a unique, colorful, often humorous, and sometimes poignant perspective of politics, the economy, world events, and more.

Americans are confused about the true nature of marriage “because we live in an era of big government,” said Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse, an economist who studies love and marriage and the founder of The Ruth Institute.

“Big government did not create marriage,” said Morse, who recently spoke to students at The King’s College in New York City, as part of the school’s Distinguished Visitors Series. “Government does not create marriage. Marriage is a natural reality that preexists the state.”

Morse has spent her career actively speaking against a declining understanding of lifelong, committed marriages in America. “The human is wired for community with others,” she said. “Christianity teaches us that man is not made to be alone. The human is made for love.”

Through her work, Morse strives to show Americans that civil society requires a traditional understanding of marriage. In fact, she said, “Statistically, the most dangerous situation for the child is to live with a cohabitating, single parent.”

Morse stressed that same-sex relationships are likewise unsuited to proper parenting, adding that different sexes are not interchangeable in a relationship. “A two-male couple is different from a two-female couple is different from a man-and-woman couple,” she said, pointing out that each mix has different properties, a fact that must be taken into account from the child’s perspective.

Expressing concern that a redefinition of marriage to include same-sex couples is “a step too far,” Morse said, “For the state to make a proclamation that mothers and fathers are intrinsically interchangeable and that nobody’s allowed to say otherwise, that’s not really true.”

According to Morse, marriage is a natural reality, which “every society has known.” To believe that government can give or take away marriage, she said, is “statist hubris.”

“Libertarian theory and conservative theory,” Morse said, “generally has been very weak in its understanding of civil society.” She added that though the proponents of these philosophies can speak about the free market or constitutional division of powers, “What we don’t understand is how the civil society functions on its own.”

Marriage creates a structure for civil society, Morse told students, because “when a man and a woman have a child together, what you’re asking is that they invest a long period of time cooperating in order to bring that child up into adulthood.”

Chris Ross is a student at The King’s College.

CNN’s international bureau chief Christiane Amanpour will be taking over ABC’s Sunday morning political talk show “This Week” starting in August of this year, Politico reports.

She will be taking over the vacant seat left by George Stephanopoulos, who left the show after an eight-year run for ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

Amanpour started working at CNN in 1983 as an assistant to the Foreign Desk and worked her way up to becoming a the chief international correspondent in 1992. She has traveled extensively, covering major crises in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Somalia, Rwanda and the Balkans. She began her own show on the news station in 2009 called “Amanpour.”

Under Stephanopoulos, a former Clinton adviser, “This Week” looked mainly at domestic and political news with appearance from Washington insiders.  Amanpour hopes to continue the tradition, but to also expand its international focus.  In a time when newspapers are cutting back on foreign bureaus, Amanpour hopes to “try to make foreign news less foreign,” she said.

“This Week” competes with other popular Sunday shows: NBC’s “Meet the Press” and CBS’s Face the Nation.”

Good morning!

Random question of the day: What is your biggest pet peeve?

Answer to yesterday’s question: Twitter, Facebook, and LOST forums.

Remember: This is our daily (except for Sundays) open thread, where you can 1) answer my question, 2) talk about something else, or 3) say something truly encouraging to the commenter before you.

As if we don’t already get enough of Google in our lives, now there are reports that the Internet giant is planning on crossing over to TV. That’s right–Google is teaming up with Sony and Intel to create a platform for viewers to use Web functions on their TV sets, The New York Times reports.

Google TV will be based on its Android operations system for smartphones and similarly have applications for viewers to use the Web on their TVs. Viewers will be able to pull up sites to watch videos on Youtube, play games or catch up with friends on Facebook or Twitter.

Other companies have already created set-top devices that stream Web content to TV sets, but so far the choices of sites are limited and none of the products have been popular enough to dominate this new field.

Google’s main motivation for Google TV is to “aggressively ensure that its services, in particular its search and advertising systems, play a central role” in the bringing of Web content to television sets, according to the Times.

So now true couch potatoes no longer have to get up to go to their computers or even turn on their laptops to surf the Web, they can do it all with just a click of the remote.

The multigenerational home is making a comeback as a record 49 million people share their homes with family members of other generations, according to a Pew study released Thursday.

This reverses an earlier trend where children grew up and moved out while grandparents moved to retirement homes.  The percent of the US population living in multigenerational homes between 1940 and 1980 dropped from 25 to 12 percent, and has now returned to 16 percent.

“The new growth, Pew says, is a byproduct of various factors — such as momentary high unemployment, mounting numbers of home foreclosures and demographic changes such as increased immigrants in the population and the rising median age of first marriage,” USA Today reports.

The biggest jump in multigenerational homes was between 2007 and 2008, implying that the economic recession played a large role in the trend’s reversal, as families moved back in together to save money on paying rent.

Same-sex couples have celebrated their ability to marry in the District of Columbia for two weeks, and now some gay couples are asking: How do I get a divorce?

Cathy Brennan says she “hopefully” wants to “get a divorce.”

Brennan and her soon-to-be-ex wife tied the knot in Vermont several years ago. They now live in Maryland. When their relationship soured, they could not divorce because their home state did not recognize same sex marriage.

This I had not thought of.

The legalization of same-sex marriage in D.C., and the Maryland attorney general’s decision to recognize in Maryland gay marriages performed elsewhere gives wed gay couples a legal way out.