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*test

Alive! This one deserves so many more votes.

thanks so much for the promote. one of my favorites.

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Many brilliant choices here. For a far less brilliant choice, but your best shot at DIY rockabilly sci fi shambles (with good musical numbers), please check out The American Astronaut.

*promote

thanks very much! I love this one.

Oh no! In exactly seven months, someone must try again . . .

power upvote! nice find . . .

There is no moral outrage from the RNC because their candidate voted against the Federal Defense of Marriage Act in 1997. Unlike Bill Clinton, I could add.

If Bush were running again, Choggie would be assigned as his speechwriter for this particular issue and Fox News would be in full wedge-issue Chicken Little mode.

http://www.slate.com/id/2191500

This article sums up the problems with the "direct democracy" theory (or the idea that the will of the people is paramount) is a very funny way, particularly the first paragraph.

And California still has the option of amending its own Constitution to prohibit the reading offered by the majority in this case. And re-amending it when another majority takes hold, and re-amending . . .

In my view, the California Supremes both made the right call and fulfilled the role of a judiciary which is not merely to read the polls on a social issue, determine the majority view, and protect the majority. The facts of this case are no different than the facts of earlier miscegenation cases. The Mildred Loving case did not lead to polygamy and dogs and cats marrying each other. Southern Virginians in wide majorities also believed that a black person marrying a white person would lead to Sodom, Gomorrah, and biracial people becoming President (even Southern Virginians are right some of the time).

I have never seen an argument that convinces me that a man marrying a man or a woman marrying a woman harms civil society. No advanced criminal statistics, no economic indicators of commodity prices plunging due to gay people forming families, no social indicators of degraded schools and poor music in church. There are no compelling rational arguments against permitting two homosexual people in love to be recognized as a family by the State.

I have seen plenty of irrational arguments -- ad hominems, mentions of Greece and Sparta, empty slippery slopes, hell . . . Choggie's whole thread here. But we should try the best we can to avoid organizing society on the basis of irrational arguments. If the Bush Administration has taught us nothing else, it has taught us this.

*beg

Oh, good. Alex Jones has a new telenovela to promote.

Here is what the hypothesis of CIA/Cheney/high-powered scientists murdering Ms. Palfrey doesn't quite solve. Every member of the defense team has seem the client list, every member of the prosecution has seen the client list, Judge Reggie Walton has seen the client list, Larry Flynt has likely gotten his hands on the client list (he's good).

However, if it keeps Alex Jones on the air, and it diverts attention from the argument concerning whether a person should be able to run a business facilitating commercial sex between two parties without the onus of being incarcerated for 4-6 years, then I am willing to suspend my disbelief and enjoy the bedtime story.