Archive for January, 2010
Shopping Attire
Just this week I was having lunch and a man came into the shop wearing unusual flannel trousers, green flannel that was printed with little figures of some sort that I couldn't quite make out but that might have been teddy bears. Well! I thought, that's unusual. I hadn't seen flannel trousers quite like these [...]
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Shalikashvili Calls for End of DADT
“Studies have shown that three-quarters of service members say they are personally comfortable around gays and lesbians. Two-thirds say they already know or suspect gay people in their units. This raises important questions about the assertion that openly gay service would impair the military. In fact, it shows that gays and lesbians in the military [...]
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NOH8
There has been some rejoicing on the side of equality (and some pursed-lipped tsk-tsking on the anti-equality side) since Cindy McCain came out in support of marriage equality and joined the "NOH8" campaign. I suppose it's gratifying to have a prominent Republican do the right thing, but how many gold stars must one dispense to [...]
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Sanders on his Move towards Equality
Jerry Sanders, mayor of San Diego, appeared this week as a witness for plaintiffs in Perry v. Schwarzenegger, and he's written about the experience and his own conversion to equality. The pull-quotes: "I realized that all opposition to same-sex marriage, including my own opposition, was grounded in prejudice." "When government tolerates discrimination against any class [...]
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Merkley on Republican Anti-Science "Political Stunts"
Today one of my Republican colleagues introduced a proposal to brazenly overturn sound scientific work done by our nation's leading public health experts and prohibit the Environment Protection Agency from doing its job to protect the health and welfare of the American people. This extremely damaging proposal is a political stunt designed to effectively strip [...]
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"Entirely under Priesthood Direction"
I took a few minutes today to glance through yesterday's trial transcript from Perry v. Schwarzenegger (transcript of the proceedings for Wednesday, 20 January 2010, of Perry v. Schwarzenegger (Volume 7, pages 1480–1741), and found a few things that caught my attention. You may recall that during the campaign last fall, accusations were made that [...]
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Spring Flowers at the Arboretum
Sometimes–okay, most times–spring can't come soon enough to suit me, so the arrival of crocuses, then daffodils, is always most welcome. When the daffodils appear I love to visit the US National Arboretum to take a walk in "Fern Valley" (where the daffodils used to be, but where one still sees a nice collection of [...]
Share on FacebookNathanson's Almost Testimony: Equality Popping up Everywhere
Today, I watched* a snippet of video deposition of one Paul Nathanson, who was to be called as a defense witness (i.e., supporting the anti-equality side of the argument) in Perry v. Schwarzenegger, until his name was withdrawn. The given reason for withdrawing his name, of course, was incredible fear of persecution at the hands [...]
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Professional Verbs
I was interested to discover that a number of things I have done professionally have no verbs. How did we ever get anything done? (Although, I also find it interesting that I've worked at times as an "engineer", whose professional noun is exactly the same as the verb of the professional activity, "to engineer".) It [...]
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Fiore's "Learn to Speak Tea Bag"
Well, gosh, word is (via Joe.My.God) that Mark Fiore's cartoon, "Learn to Speak Tea Bag", has caused some upset among conservative political extremists. Imagine! Is there, then, any better reason than that to do some viral spreading with this metaphorical blog sneeze? [YouTube link for those who don't see the embedded player.] Share on Facebook
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Olson & Boies talk to Maddow
So that I can locate it easily, here is the short segment of Rachel Maddow talking with Ted Olson and David Boies, Perry v. Schwarzenegger lawyers for plaintiffs. I have to admit that it thrills me to listen to Ted Olson say, "If you listen to these individuals and you hear our arguments, you are [...]
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Perry v. Schwarzenegger : A Note
Yesterday morning, in a federal courtroom in San Francisco, began the trial of the case Perry v. Schwarzenegger, widely known as the "gay-marriage trial". This is the lawsuit brought against the state of California, challenging the constitutionality of proposition 8, the sate constitutional amendment that outlawed same-gender marriages in that state when they were already [...]
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Death Metal Rooster
When 30 seconds of video makes me laugh this much, naturally I want to share the joy with all y'all who might not otherwise have this much fun today. Besides, it's my blog. [YouTube link for those who don't see the embedded player.] p.s. The music is original for this video. That is so cool. [...]
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More Popery
Creatures, including humans, "can be protected or endangered", the pope, 82, told the Vatican diplomatic corps in a traditional January address focusing mainly on environmental issues. "One such attack comes from laws or proposals which, in the name of fighting discrimination, strike at the biological basis of the difference between the sexes," he said, citing [...]
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He Doesn't Know
For example, one of the arguments that the anti-gay-marriage side has increasingly turned to outside the courtroom is that allowing same-sex marriage would hurt heterosexual marriage. At the pretrial hearing, Judge Walker kept asking Charles Cooper, the lawyer defending Proposition 8, how exactly it did so. “I’m asking you to tell me,” he said at [...]
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Friday Soirée IX: New Year's Supper
Okay, it clearly isn't a Friday night, but it also isn't the evening of New Year's Day when I was thinking about this program, either. I'm sure our imaginations can handle it. Hors d'Oeuvres — Astro-Weenie Christmas Tree If there's a concept that could use re-introducing for 2010, I think it's smart. That's smart as [...]
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"Perversion for Profit"
From about 1965, here is an hysterical "public-service" film which, today, seems reasonably amusing: "Perversion for Profit (Part I)". In it you will find out the "truth" about the perverting effects of pornography, particularly gay pornography with which, apparently, one glance turns the glancer into a twisted communist of some sort. It's worth keeping in [...]
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A Few Days Away
Gosh, take a few days without blogging and all sorts of things rush in to fill the void. One of those things is that I've been getting some of 2009's photographs processed and posted. The "few days away" was a little day trip we made. The two combine in this one post! Thomas Jefferson's Monticello [...]
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