The gay marriage crap again...it spreads....

As a California judge declined Friday to halt San Francisco from issuing marriage licenses to gay couples until more hearings are held, a county in New Mexico issued its first marriage licenses to same-sex couples....in Bernalillo, N.M., a rural town just north of Albuquerque, dozens of gay couples flocked to the Sandoval County Clerk's office after the clerk announced she would grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Clerk Victoria Dunlap, a Republican, said she decided to grant the licenses after the county attorney determined that New Mexico law is unclear on the issue. County Attorney David Mathews said state law defines marriage as a contract between parties but does not mention gender.

"It's going to be across the country and so we wanted to be ahead of the curve," Dunlap said

See, in New Mexico they're doing it right. There's no law against the marriages, so they're legal. And note this is a Republican doing it...where are those kinds elsewhere?

BTW: This would show exactly what the problem is with much of the arguement against. These people can yell "homosexuality is a sin!" all they want, it is irrelevant to the purpose of our government. If for some reason it were allowed to be treated as relevant, we'd be just that much closer to becoming a christian version of Iran. Is that what they really intend?

Rule #987124 of "running a backwards pseudo-nation": kiddie soldiers are somehow acceptable...

Thousands of children are still serving in military units across the country. The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has announced that it has made progress in demobilising child soldiers in Afghanistan, an initiative targeting an estimated 8,000 such children in the country. Over the last 23 years of conflict in Afghanistan, thousands of children have been used by warlords and fighting forces. And while hundreds of these have been identified, some 150 have been demobilised in four districts of the northern city of Konduz since the demobilisation programme began in early February.

Things like this are why I don't subscribe to cultural relativism. There are ways of telling what's working and what isn't in terms of social structure, if your life conditions are bad enough where you're selling off your kids to warlords a sensible person would recommend you scrap it, period.

By now you've heard that Nader is mulling running for president yet again. Would probably get the votes that would've went to Dean if he were still running (hilariously, his supporters have been saying on their "blog for america" that their first priority is...raising ALL taxes instead of just the politically expedient part -- if that isn't green non-thinking I dunno what is, nary a mention of national security at all).

No real point, just wanted to reiterate the nuttiness of Dean's fans. There goes pretty much any hope of the close-shave scenario...

And now, the moment that the media had been assuming would never happen: Dean quits campaign

Howard Dean abandoned his Democratic presidential bid on Wednesday, but the former Vermont governor urged his followers "to transform the Democratic Party and to change our country." "I am no longer actively pursuing the presidency," Dean told a crowd of cheering, flag-waving supporters. "We will, however, continue to build a new organization using our enormous grass-roots network to continue the effort to transform the Democratic Party and to change our country."

In other words, him and his fans are going to cause the Democrats to lose even more seats in congress. With assistance like that, who needs payback?

More on this gay marriage crap...here come the lawyers:

The city of San Francisco has issued more than 2,000 "marriage" licenses to homosexual couples over the past four days, an act of civil disobedience that attorneys for two traditional-values groups will seek to end in court today....One of the law firms appearing in court today will accuse San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and other city officials of "constitutional carnage and anarchy" for blatantly violating state law when he directed the county clerk to issue marriage licenses to homosexual couples....Tamara Lange, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, which will be defending San Francisco officials such as Mr. Newsom and county clerk Nancy Alfaro, said it is illegal to treat people differently because of their sex.

So far, this sounds like a rare point for the bible-thumpers: California state law (which was passed by referendum) says no gay marriage, San Francisco says to shove it, that's a violation regardless of whether or not the original law makes sense. Even though morally the merits are, in my opinion, somewhat in the favor of this sentiment, what matters is the letter of the law, and by that this is no different than what Roy Moore did in Alabama. You don't unilaterally invalidate things like that, it undermines what little is holding politicians & judges back from virtually unleashing the dogs.

If this spreads to other areas, those that are on the fence about gay rights'll end up sharply repelled. It practically would write the campaign slogans itself, Bush oughta be loving this...

Whaddayaknow...the tinfoil hat crowd was correct all along. Bush & Kerry are both distant relatives of Charlemagne.

Now what that has to do with Planet X I dunno...;^)

Politics 101: blame assigning...

This morning I ran across an article in Business Week (their website doesn't show it) describing how the Bush administration is trying to label 2001's economic downturn "the Clinton recession", claiming it started in October of 2000 rather than March '01.

Notice something wrong with this? I'll give you a moment to think about it...












If you understand basic economics, you know that booms & busts are rarely ever traceable beyond huge doubt to specific fiscal policies or administrations, so blaming it on Bush or Clinton was dumb for either side. Even if they were traceable, Bush's policy didn't go into effect until months had passed in his first year, and most of the tax cut that the Democrats lamented had been backloaded for long after 2001 was over.

In short: this segment of the economy fight is all interpretation, factually it's a wash.

But alas, with our current political culture the facts don't matter. Image is everything.

Got a couple changes to the links section:

-James Landrith now has his site added, as he's added mine to his. He's been in the news for awhile, and is actually on board with the FOIA lawsuit against the Justice Department calling for the release of the names of people detained since 9/11. Give a look...

-Anyone know what happened w/ QuasiPundit? I don't. Note that it's not there.

-another addition: Insults Unpunished, formerly known as the Neo-Libertarian News Portal (that's a term that's been adopted of sorts to describe Libertarians who happen to be foreign policy hawks). Interesting commentary.


Also, I've stumbled across a group currently going by the example of pro-freedom activism I mentioned in the "subvert it to save it" post: Buereaucrash.