Roxborough Has a New Church

According to the Review, it's called St Miriam's of the Catholic Apostolic Church of Antioch, and they are sharing space with the Reconstructionist Mishkan Shalom Congregation at Shurs Lane and Freeland Ave. The fact that neither congregation is preoccupied with abusing gay and lesbian folks is welcome news.

Gavin Newsom Was Right!

It looks like California is going to become the second state in the nation to treat all of its citizens equally under the law. Unless, of course, the apartheid-loving, psycho-Nazi-Jesus-freaks who have appointed themselves arbiters of morality for our entire nation gather enough signatures to put a special referendum on the ballot to nullify the court's decision and then convince enough of their neighbors to vote for it. Governor Schwarzenegger has vowed to uphold the ruling. If he ever had any chance of winning Cali in the general election, John McCain would have shit his pants.

Raging Bigots Stifled By One Courageous Pennsylvania Senator

At the behest of Republican Rasputin-wannabes such as Karl Rove, Pennsylvania, not unlike many other "swing" states, has recently been subjected to repeated efforts by Christian extremists (who receive much of their funding from forces outside the commonwealth) to ratify a constitutional amendment that would relegate our law-abiding and tax-paying gay and lesbian citizens to permanent second-class citizenship by denying them legal recognition of any marriages, civil unions, or domestic partnerships they might choose to form. Before any constitutional amendment, even bigoted and Nazi-apartheid-like amendments such as this one, can be put to the citizens of Pennsylvania in a referendum, it must be passed by both houses of the legislature in two consecutive sessions with reconciled language. Last session, the House and Senate each passed very different versions and then did nothing to reconcile the versions, putting the Christian extremist bigots back at square one. This session, the extremist forces managed to convince one bigoted freshman lawmaker to re-introduce the failed legislation.

They didn't anticipate the reaction they would receive from Senator Vince Fumo this time around. No one did. Fumo has always believed that gay and lesbian people deserve equal treatment under the law. Now that he's announced he's retiring because of health issues and an ongoing corruption investigation, he apparently feels more free to really say what's on his mind. During testimony before his committee, Fumo informed one Christian extremist who happened to be African American and was speaking in favor of the amendment that Fumo's more conservative colleagues in the Senate would certainly vote to re-legalize black slavery if they could do it on a secret ballot. People pretended to be shocked, but anyone who knows upstate Pennsylvania (anywhere besides Philadelphia and its adjacent suburban counties), knows that Fumo was telling the sad truth, not committing hyperbole as the Daily diplomatically asserts in this op-ed.

After the slavery revelation failed to derail the legislation (which would be surprising almost anywhere besides Pennsylvania), Fumo attached an amendment to the amendment so that it would also outlaw most heterosexual divorces. Up to that point in the debate, the bigots kept asserting that they were not bigots, and all they wanted to do was to protect the institution of marriage. However, when they were faced with the prospect of legislation that might actually preserve a few marriages (on legal paper at least) but would do nothing to subjugate gay and lesbian citizens, they turned around and went home as very unhappy and unfulfilled bigots. The amendment was promptly tabled. The next time it could possibly come up for debate would be after the 2008 presidential election.

Thanks to the infinite fuck-ups and abuses of the Bush-Cheney junta, our beloved country is in a sorry state. It's nice to know (and it gives me hope that we may re-establish democracy on a national level very soon) they don't always get their way.

What Happens to Bush-Cheney Junta Cronies Who Actually Do the Right Thing?

They get fired almost politely.

Condoleezza Liezzalot Is a Big Fat Liar [And Her Pants Are On Fire]

You know you're doing a bad job when Jimmy Carter, however politely and indirectly, calls you a liar [or by implication an incompetent tool who isn't completely informed about one of the most important issues facing the government department she is supposed to be leading].

Here's Why You Might Not Have Seen Many Hillary Canvassers

As part of its election issue coverage, Citypaper has included narratives from undercover reporters they sent to volunteer for the local offices of the Clinton and Obama campaigns. My favorite part was the answer the reporter volunteering for Clinton got when he asked to canvass in West Philly: "We avoid areas where there are security concerns." [DOES THAT INCLUDE IRAQ???, to whence Senator Clinton voted with the Bush-Cheney junta either cynically, willfully ignorantly, or implausibly naïvely to deploy hundreds of thousands of our troops with probably disastrous global consequences.] I wonder if they considered the possibility of being sued à la Food Lion? Don't the Clintons know a lot of trial lawyers? I'm just happy we're not discussing more important issues...

Retirement Home Located for Dick Cheney

It will imbue to the concept of assisted living with new and pregnant meaning.