Political Attacks on Gays Will Continue

Right wing radicals make clear they're going to fight tooth and nail to roll back the modest advances on rights that gays and lesbians have achieved at the state level. And of course they're winning at the state level, when you look at the flurry of laws that have passed in the last year and the lack of moral leadership by the left, true conservatives, the truly religious or just decent folk.
 
The sad item buried deep in the story: Kerry's office didn't return calls asking whether he supports or opposes attempts to deny gays equal marriage rights at the state level. Surely they were ready for that question? But he has no good answer because he's been so wishy-washy on the issue.
 
NOTE FROM JOHN: Kerry's response should be simple.   It's none of the federal government's business what state governments do within the realm of their own jurisdiction.  This isn't a nanny state.  That applies all the more when talking about marriage, which has traditionally been a state issue - the president has no business sticking his nose in.  If George Bush truly believed in states' rights he'd let states attend to their own business and only get involved when an issue becomes a federal matter.  As for why Kerry gave an opinion on the Massachusetts state constitutional amendment?  He's still the Senator from Massachusetts so it was appropriate for him to comment on politics in his own home state.
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I Hate Gays More Than You

According to USA Today (July 16, 2004), Colorado is the sight of a lovely fight between Senate hopefuls Bob Schaffer and Peter Coors (yes, of THAT Coors family). Coors filed a complaint with the Federal Elections Commission over an ad by Colorado Conservative Voters that says Coors promotes gay rights. 
 
The hell I do, implies Coors, despite the fact that while he was an executive at his family's brewery and it would aid the bottom line, the company backed benefits for gay workers and reached out to the gay community. The complaint is that the ad is an illegal contribution.
 
But who cares? Both candidates supported the constitutional amendment that would have attacked gays and turned 30 million Americans into second class citizens. And never forget who helped Coors reach out to the gay community: Mary "Flip Flop" Cheney.
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Jerry Falwell Accused of Breaking Tax Rule

Falwell's always been so fixated on sodomy, this will hopefully give him a chance to learn about it up close and personal real soon. Read the rest of this post...

Proof that FOX News is a Republican propaganda organ

From David Brock's MediaMatters.org. An outrageous collection of internal memos from FOX prove that the station exists to promote Republican propaganda. Even though we all knew it was true, it's still outrageous. Read the rest of this post...

Bush lied, Giuliani covered up, massive NYC asbestos levels following 9/11

What part of this story doesn't scream bloody murder? Bush outright LIED to everyone in NYC about the quality of the air following 9/11. In his zeal to falsely convince everyone that everything was ok, he sent Lord knows how many policemen, firemen, and other emergency workers and volunteers into harm's way, guaranteeing that many will come down with God knows what in 20 years, because Bush wanted everyone to "feel good."

This is also a major indictment of Giuliani. He knew the results of the tests, he knew the EPA was outright LYING about the results, and yet he said nothing. And these guys have the NERVE to hold their convention in NYC? They should be greeted by thousands of protesters wearing gas masks and tuxedos.
 
From the NY Post:

An Environmental Protection Agency memo claims city and federal officials concealed data that showed lower Manhattan air was clouded with asbestos after the World Trade Center collapse.

And officials sat on the alarming information even as they told the public it was safe to return downtown, the internal memo says.

Testing by the city Department of Environmental Protection showed the air downtown had more than double the level of asbestos considered safe for humans, claimed federal EPA environmental scientist Cate Jenkins, who supplied the memo to The Post.

The data, which Jenkins says she culled from state records, appear damning.

On the day after the attack, the memo claims, city test results from the corner of Centre and Chambers streets and from the corner of Spruce and Gold streets showed asbestos concentration at about twice the level considered safe by the EPA.

The city did not release this information to the public, Jenkins says.

The next day, Sept. 13, city tests were "overloaded" with asbestos in the air — so much that the lab could not conclude precise amounts — along Church Street.

Again, the information was withheld, the memo claims.

When the city published the test results for the weeks following 9/11 on its Web site in February 2002, there were 17 instances where the data was either understated or left blank, Jenkins asserts in her report.

"New York City could wiggle out of the [claim of] concealment, because they weren't making any explicit statements about data at the time," Jenkins told The Post. "But the EPA can't wiggle out of this. They said the air was safe at the same time they were coordinating data with the city."

To drive her point home, Jenkins compares statements made by the EPA on the same day test data was showing dangerous levels of asbestos.

On Sept. 18, then-EPA administrator Christie Whitman said the public in lower Manhattan was not being exposed to "excessive levels of asbestos."

That same day, city testing data, some of which was later made public, showed asbestos levels 50 percent higher and more above what her agency considers safe, the memo states.

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Heather may have 2 mommies, but Hatch has 3 great-grand-mommies

GayAmerican.org notes that Orrin Hatch, a Mormon and staunch supporter of the Gay Bashing Amendment, comes from a family of polygamists. Not surprising, as this was accepted practice among Mormons once up on a time, and to Mormons polygamy was part of their RELIGION.

The thing that I find strange is that Hatch and Mass. Governor Mitt Romney (who is also a Mormon), both, according to this article in the Salt Lake Tribune, think that it was just for the Supreme Court to intervene and uphold laws banning polygamy since the court felt that polygamy was in fact NOT an exercise in freedom of religion.

Now think about that. Orrin Hatch and Mitt Romney think it is okay for the Supreme Court to intervene and overrule how a religion defines marriage when a religion defines marriage as polygamy, but it's wrong for the Supreme Court to intervene and overrule how the religious right and other conservative religions define marriage when a religion defines marriage as solely a man and a woman.

So which one is it Orrin and Mitt - is it the role of the Supreme Court to decide what is and isn't marriage, even over the objections of any religion?

'I come from a culture where at one time polygamy was a religious belief and was practiced by a small percentage of people in my faith,' said Hatch, explaining that his great-grandfather Jeremiah had three wives and 30 children.

'Those were days when they lived this principle because they believed it to be a spiritual principle, they believed it was important to bring as many children into the world as they could, among other things.'

But Hatch said those beliefs were put aside when the U.S. Supreme Court in 1879 upheld a Utah Territorial Supreme Court verdict against polygamist George Reynolds, the personal secretary to LDS President Brigham Young. The nation's highest court ruled that polygamy was not an exercise of religious freedom and that government had legitimate authority to determine whether plural marriage or monogamy would be the law.

'When that came down, the Supreme Court case outlawing plural marriage, basically my faith did away with plural marriage, and I have to say no one would argue that it should ever come back,' Hatch said.

US Commission on Civil Rights demands investigation of 2004 Florida voter reg. fiasco

Cold day in hell before we see this investigation:

Members of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights called on the Justice Department on Thursday to investigate possible voting-rights violations in Florida's troubled effort to purge felons from its voter registration lists.

At a hearing on the state's effort to use a list of 48,000 suspected felons to trim voter rolls, the civil rights commission's chairman, Mary Frances Berry, also urged the newly created federal Election Assistance Commission, which is distributing millions of dollars to the states for voting improvements, to consider withholding Florida's share....

On Saturday, the Florida secretary of state, Glenda Hood, suspended the state's felon effort, citing a methodological flaw that virtually guaranteed that voters who registered as Hispanics would not be purged, while thousands of blacks might be.