Senator Frist: Favors Constitutional Amendment to Ban "Gay Marriage"

Senator Frist: Favors Constitutional Amendment to Ban "Gay Marriage"

Here's where I stand. Gay couples should have the same rights and privileges as heterosexual couples. The problem is that the government does not recognize homosexual unions. So they do not have the opportunity to have a state sanctioned partnership or union.

I also think that heterosexual couples who are not married should not have the same privileges as married couples. Not because I think that there is anything immoral or unholy or evil about it, but because married couples make a legal partnership that is hard to undo. Two people living together without a legal bond can decide to split at any time.

So we should allow homosexual couples to make a legal commitment, call it a marriage or a union or a partnership or whatever. But if they do that then the partner should be able to get health insurance just as a spouse or to make medical decisions and, yes, be able to sue for divorce.

I'm Back

I took a few days off. I had a wedding on Saturday and I went to a Minor League baseball game yesterday.

I love Minor League baseball. We are lucky in Central Pennsylvania to have three AA teams, 1 AAA team, and a Class A Short Season team all within a a drive of a few hours at most. It is less expensive to spend the day at the ballbpark than it is to go to the movies.

Supreme Court: Sex is Legal

The Supreme Court has ruled that is legal for adults to have sex in a private residence. It is the 21st century and we are still debating whether the state can legislate private sexual practices between or among adults. Rehnquist, Scalia, and Thomas still want the state outlaw certain "deviant" sexual practices.

What's up with Dr Dean?

I was a bit disappointed in Governor Dean's "performance" over the weekend. At the Sunday's Rainbow/PUSH Coalition Democratic Presidential Forum he came across as arrogant and easily flustered. The same goes for his Meet the Press appearance. On paper his positions look good but after seeing him live I have doubts that he could win against Bush.

I was impressed by Kucinich. Sure he looks kind of nerdy and even unpresidential but I have read his postion papers on his website and he seemed more committed and at ease than Dean when answering questions. Al Sharpton scored more points with me than Dean did.

And this is a bit early but I'll put it out there. I have been watching Senate hearings on C-SPAN and I have been impressed with Senator Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas. Does anyone else think that she might be a good running mate for the eventual Democratic nominee.

She is a fiscally conservative, socially moderate woman from the South. That seems like a pretty good combination for a VP candidate.

Quote of the Day:

I'll never understand why someone might pay to wear a corporate logo. To me, all such shirts read "All my other clothes are dirty" or "Until which time, if ever, I develop a personality of my own, this t-shirt has offered to speak on my behalf." -- David Sedaris

Site of the day:

New Messengers

I happened to see some of Nightline on Thursday night. They had a two part show called "The Messengers" about teenaged boys competing in an evangelical preaching contest. They had footage of one tall skinny white boy "witnessing" to a young black woman in front of her tarpaper shack. He was on one side of a fence quoting bible verses to her on the other side. Then he asked her to pray with him and she timidly repeated his words.

I don't really get this "witnessing," but I am subjected it to it quite often. Do these people get points for talking to people about their version of christianity? Do they get even more points for converts? Didn't Jesus say:

And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly. - Matthew 6:5-6

So I ask these people to listen to Jesus and go into their closets to pray. :)

N.H. teens wins preaching contest, gets TV appearance By Associated Press

CONCORD - At 16, Isaiah Lewis has mastered the cadences of public speaking, the rise and fall, the calculated pacing, the dramatic pause, and he has a command of fire and brimstone.

Lewis has used it all to become the 2003 national evangelistic preaching champion, and get chosen to appear on ABC’s "Nightline," which is chronicling the national competition in a program Thursday and Friday nights.

He won the title in April at the championships at Bob Jones University in South Carolina.
[read more]

For my christian readers:

Bible passage of the day:


Luke 18 : 9-14

And he spake this parable unto certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others:

Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican.

The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican.

I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess.

And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner.

I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.

Register for the MoveOn.org PAC Primary

Anyone who has not registered for Tuesday's online primary at MoveOn.org should do it now. They have letters from each of the candidates here.

Read the articles below for details.

Register Here

from: washingtonpost.com



Democratic Hopefuls to Vie for Early Endorsement

By Brian Faler

Saturday, June 14, 2003; Page A09

The left-leaning advocacy group Moveon.org will hold its first online presidential primary later this month, a contest that could have a significant impact if any of the nine Democratic presidential candidates is able to seize the group's endorsement.

The group will endorse, direct volunteers and raise money -- including holding an "urgent" fundraiser in time for the Federal Election Commission's June 30 deadline -- for whomever is able to win at least 50 percent of its members' votes. If none of the candidates reaches that threshold -- and it may be difficult, given the size of the field -- the group will put off announcing its endorsement until this summer.

It is an unusually early contest; most outside groups wait for a front-runner to emerge before even considering announcing their preferences.

"Ordinary people, at the grass roots, often stand back until a lot of this is decided -- and it doesn't make a lot of sense," said Wes Boyd, the group's president, explaining its decision. "Why not play as much as the folks who attend the rubber chicken dinners play?"
[read more]





Democrats' Online Appeal

By Harold Meyerson

Wednesday, June 18, 2003; Page A25

As revolutions go, this one began with remarkably little fanfare.

Last Thursday MoveOn.org sent out an e-mail to its members -- all 1.4 million of them -- asking if they'd like to take part in an online Democratic presidential primary later this month. Candidates would answer questions that MoveOn put to them, and if one of them managed to pull a majority of the members' votes, the organization would endorse him.

This is no straw poll: MoveOn does real politics. Founded by some Silicon Valley entrepreneurs as a way for liberals and others to electronically register their rage at the impeachment lunacy of 1998, MoveOn has already become a force in American politics. It has coordinated its members to lobby Congress on a host of issues, was a center of opposition to the Iraqi war, and has proved itself as a source of grass-roots campaign contributions ($4.1 million in 2002) to progressive candidates.
[read more]

There is apparently no hope for some of us...

Shyness has a root in brain that long endures, study finds

By Paul Recer, Associated Press, 6/20/2003

WASHINGTON -- A shy child may learn to be more outgoing, but a study suggests that shy temperament may be inherited and that a brain marker for it does not change with age.

In the study, which appears this week in the journal Science, researchers conducted brain scans on 22-year-olds and found that those who had been classified 20 years before as inhibited or shy children had a distinctive reaction in their brains when confronted with novel images.

People who as toddlers had been judged to be inhibited showed in the scans that the amygdala structure in the brain responded much more actively to unexpected sights than was the case with subjects who as children had been judged to be more outgoing, said Jerome Kagan, professor of psychology at Harvard University.

''That is support for the notion that the reason they were shy, timid, and reserved when they were 2 years old is because they had an excitable amygdala,'' said Kagan.
[read more]

This day in history...

Ah yes, the good old days. McCarthyism, segregation, the government killing people for something that they didn't do...

Activists Mark 1953 Rosenberg Execution

By JIM FITZGERALD, Associated Press Writer

OSSINING, N.Y. -- Pete Seeger was in New York City's Union Square in 1953 along with 5,000 other supporters of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg as the hour of the couple's execution drew near.

"We were waiting and hoping Eisenhower would give a last-minute reprieve," says Seeger, now 84. "We learned that wouldn't happen, and then a great sigh, a great wail went up from the crowd when the time came and we knew they'd been executed."

On the 50th anniversary of the execution Thursday, Seeger, Susan Sarandon, Harry Belafonte and other show business activists will appear at a benefit for the Rosenberg Fund for Children, which assists children of people imprisoned, attacked or fired for taking a public stand.

Robert Meeropol, the Rosenbergs' younger son, who runs the fund, calls it his "constructive revenge."

The execution of the Rosenbergs in the electric chair at Sing Sing on June 19, 1953, ended one of the most sensational cases of the McCarthy era. It was the first execution of civilians for espionage in U.S. history.
[read more]

Mr. Vedder does NPR

I was surprised to hear an interview with Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder on NPR's Morning Edition this morning.

Go to NPR site to listen.

She's back!

Dirty window or the mother of God? We report...you decide...

Thousands Flock to Milton to View Apparition

(Milton, MA-AP) -- Is it the Virgin Mary, or just condensation? True believers say murky patches on a third-floor window at Milton Hospital look like a robed Madonna, standing on a craggy rock.

Word of the vision has been spreading through media and word-of-mouth, drawing more than 25-thousand believers and gawkers to the hospital's nondescript brick wall. It's been turned it into an impromptu religious shrine.

Hospital officials say the seal broke in the window five years ago, but only recently did people begin seeing the apparition. A woman who works across the hall from where the image appeared says it used to just look like a dirty window. [read more]

Notice at the bottom of the news report they give driving directions to the hospital. The more people that show up the bigger the story for them.

If I'm not back in an hour...

...send help. I am replacing a hard drive and it should not take long but I have a feeling that I will screw up something. Right now I have the original 7.5 GB drive and a 15 GB drive. I remember thinking when I added the 15GB drive that I would never fill up that much space. I was wrong. Anyhow I picked up a 160GB drive yesterday...we'll see what happens.

Off I go...

'Living Legend' Harry Kalas on ESPN Wed. night game

This week's installment of ESPN's Living Legends series on Wednesday Night Baseball features my favorite broadcaster--Harry Kalas, voice of the Phillies and NFL Films (and Strohman Rolls and Campbell's Chunky Soup). The rest of the country will get to hear his deep relaxing voice doing what he does best--calling a Phillies baseball game.

So if you get a chance to watch some of it you really should. That is if you appreciate weird things in life like classic baseball broadcasters. Well I do, I'm sure that there are others out there.

Health update...

Well I feel a little better. I went to the doctor today and he gave me some medicine for my ear/dizziness/headache thing. He also thinks that I am still nuts so while I am going off of Paxil he started me on Zoloft. So I will see how the side effects are with that.

Still alive...

Sorry for the lack of posts lately...I have been a bit under the weather since Saturday. I am coming off of some medicine and that may be the reason but I get dizzy everytime I move.

I hope to be back on top of things in the next day or so.

Until then visit some of the friends on my Blogroll.
<~~~

Quote of the Day:

"We ought not to be the last industrialized country in the world to guarantee health insurance to all our citizens."

      --Gov. Howard Dean, M.D.

...and for you christians

Bible Verse of the Day:

Matthew 25:31-40
...'Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.'

Site of the Day

ourfounder.com

[Listening to: BBC World Service - BBC - (00:00)]

Raindrops...

It has been raining here for about a month and I am ready for some sunshine. Anyhow, I was looking out the window and a baby robin was hopping around under a tree. I watched as he moved around and an occasional big raindrop would make its way through the tree and land on the robin's head. Each time he would look around to see what was attacking him. Ahhh yes, thirty seconds of amusement for me on a rainy day.

[Listening to: Rue St. Vincent - Yves Montand - Rushmore Soundtrack (03:22)]

"Attack of the Savage Weiner"

Michael Weiner, aka Michael Savage, has filed a lawsuit against the owners of several websites including TakeBacktheMedia.com, www.savagestupidity.com, and www.michaelsavagesucks.com. The racist "Savage" claims that these sites suppressed his freedom of speech by supporting a boycott of the sponsors of his syndicated radio show on Talk Radio Network Inc. and that they had spread "false and malicious" information about him (by quoting him).

Give me a break! If you spout hate on a daily basis and rely on advertisers to pay for your airtime you have to live with it. Why any company would want its product associated with a hate monger is beyond me. No one is trying to prevent this guy from saying what he wants, but he should be prepared to live with the consequences.

[Listening to: BBC World Service - BBC - (00:00)]

I was happy to see that Poppy Bush is progressive enough to belong to a religion that is not afraid to elect an openly gay man as bishop. Dubya was born an Episcopalian but is now rejoicing that he is a Methodist.

Anglicans pick openly gay man to be bishop


STAFF, WIRE REPORT- Lexington Herald-Leader

A Lexington native has been elected the first openly gay bishop in the worldwide Anglican Communion, a step likely to set off fierce debate in the United States and England and deepen the disaffection of the more conservative Anglican churches in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

The Rev. Canon V. Gene Robinson, 56, was voted Saturday as the bishop-coadjutor, or bishop-elect, in the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire.

Robinson, who has been an assistant to the current bishop for 16 years, was elected on the second ballot from a field of four candidates. The election was at St. Paul's Church in Concord, N.H
[read more]

"I want the folks to see me sitting in the same kind of seat they sit in, eating the same popcorn, peeing in the same urinal."
-George W. Bush

[Listening to: Auschwitz - Latcho Drom - Latcho Drom Soundtrack (01:59)]

Fair and Balanced Reporting

I saw two reports about Hillary Clinton signing copies of her book Living History at a Manhattan bookstore. CNN reported that people started lining up at 9pm last night to get one of the 250 wristbands that would get them in to get their books signed. FoxNews was outside the same bookstore and said that only 250 people showed up and then showed footage of Howard Stern at the same bookstore ten years ago when 10,000 people showed up and they "had to close Fifth Avenue." "We Report. You Decide."

The Fox "reporter" also had two people who had just come out of the book store with their signed copies of the book. He asked them how much of the book was truthful, "50%, 70%, 80%?" Then he ended with "don't buy the book, stay home and keep the TV on." Fair and Balanced? Hmmmmm.

[Listening to: Travelling Riverside Blues - Led Zeppelin - (05:10)]

Dinner parties suck...

I had a dinner party that I could not get out of last night. I hate dinner parties, unless it is me (and guest) and another couple. Last night there were about ten of us there and a few were mean, rich old women.

I really hate making small talk for the sake of making small talk. If I find someone interesting I can talk for hours, but "where are from?...what do you study?...plans for the summer?...blah blah blah..." just is excrutiatingly painful.

Well I made it through, thanks to Klonopin and a couple of beers. I know that's not a good combination but if I would not have taken the Klonopin first I would have been shaking and I can't pass up a good beer.

So anyhow, I hope that is the last one for a while.

[Listening to: The Needle and The Damage Done - Neil Young - Frisco (boot) (02:51)]

Word of the Day:

fascism

noun [U] 
a political system based on a very powerful leader, state control of social and economic life, and extreme pride in country and race, with no expression of political disagreement allowed 

[Listening to: www.wbur.org - Boston University - (03:05:00)]

More Lies...

If a Democrat was President and doing this the Republican Congress would be holding impeachment hearings right now.

U.S. Secret Report Raises Questions Over Iraqi Weapons

Fri June 6, 2003 10:47 AM ET

By Sue Pleming
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - As the Bush administration was pushing last fall for a war against Iraq because of alleged weapons of mass destruction, a defense department report said it did not have enough "reliable information" Iraq was amassing these weapons, a defense official said on Friday.

News of the classified September 2002 report by the Defense Intelligence Agency has added to claims the White House and Pentagon slanted U.S. intelligence on Baghdad's alleged weapons program to justify the war against Iraq.

"What this report is saying is that there's not enough reliable information to move things into the category of things we know (about WMDs in Iraq)," said a defense official of the report, a summary of which was leaked to U.S. media this week.
[read more]

[Listening to: BBC World Service - BBC - (00:00)]

TERROR! EVIL-DOERS! TERROR!

Ashcroft wants more power. Be afraid.
Here's the story from today's Wahington Post:

Ashcroft Wants Stronger Patriot Act

Expanded Death Penalty and Bond Changes Sought

By Susan Schmidt
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 6, 2003; Page A11

Attorney General John D. Ashcroft told Congress yesterday that he would like to strengthen the USA Patriot Act to allow capital punishment for all terrorist acts that result in fatalities and to prevent suspects accused of terrorism from being released on bond.

Three days after the Justice Department's inspector general suggested that law enforcement agencies had mistreated hundreds of immigrant detainees taken into custody after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Ashcroft asked Congress to tighten several Patriot Act provisions, calling them "weaknesses which terrorists could exploit."

Ashcroft testified before the House Judiciary Committee, where Republicans lauded his efforts and Democrats expressed tempered concerns about whether civil liberties were being trampled in the name of national security under the 19-month-old Patriot Act, which gave Justice far-reaching new powers to gather information and crack down on terrorists.
[read more at washingtonpost.com]

Opportunity missed...

I got home today and found two little pamphlets stuffed in my door. The Jehovah's Witnesses stopped while I was out. I look forward to their visit all year and they come while I'm not here. Well, I don't really look forward to it but I enjoy the screendoor debate.

A few years ago a young couple stopped by on a cold January day with their coatless 5 year old daughter. I would have engaged them in a longer debate but I refuse to let them in and I felt sorry for the kid that they were using to gain entry to people's homes.

I don't have a problem with them practicing their religion, I just have a problem with proselytization in general. Although telling people of other religions that they are instruments of the devil is somewhat misguided. And parading an innocent child around in the cold without a coat is just wrong.

[Listening to: God Save the Queen - The Sex Pistols - Never Mind the Bollocks Here's the Sex Pistols [Import Bonus Live] (03:19)]

More C-SPAN...

I know I am a C-SPAN geek but if you missed the Al Franken - Bill O'Reilly "discussion" here is a link to the video:

* Video * (1:29:19)

Franken's talk begins at about 27:30 and then the fun ensues.

In honor of Allen Ginsberg's birthday...

WHO RUNS AMERICA? -- Allen Ginsberg

Oil brown smog over Denver
Oil red dung colored smoke
level to level across the horizon
blue tainted sky above
Oil car smog gasoline
hazing red Denver's day
December bare trees
sticking up from housetop streets
Plane lands rumbling, planes rise over
radar wheels, black smoke
drifts from tailfins


Oil millions of cars speeding the cracked plains
Oil from Texas, Bahrein, Venezuela Mexico
Oil that turns General Motors
revs up Ford
lights up General Electric, oil that crackles
thru International Business Machine computers,
charges dynamos for ITT
sparks Western Electric
runs thru Amer Telephone & Telegraph wires
Oil that flows thru Exxon New Jersey hoses,
rings in Mobil gas tank cranks, rumbles
Chrysler engines
shoots thru Texaco pipelines
blackens ocean from broken Gulf tankers
spills onto Santa Barbara beaches from
Standard of California derricks offshore.


3 Dec 1974

Where Are Saddam & Osama?

CBSNews.com's Dick Meyer

Pardon me for beating a dead – or alive – horse, but what’s the deal with Saddam Hussein? Is he dead? Is he alive? If he’s alive, any hints about where he might be? Are we getting warmer? Colder?

And by the way, what about Osama bin Laden?

Asking the big, fat obvious questions appears to be a violation of civil etiquette in George Bush’s Emerald City, a place where Republican dreams really do come true -- lately.
[read more]

Book claims Jesus had homosexual relationship

BY RICHARD N. OSTLING Chicago Sun-Times

The campaign to have U.S. Protestant churches accept homosexuals has taken a radical new turn with a Chicago scholar's claim that Jesus not only approved same-sex relationships, but also was involved in one.

Many will find his claims of an actively homosexual Jesus ''blasphemous,'' admits Theodore W. Jennings Jr., author of The Man Jesus Loved: Homoerotic Narratives From the New Testament
[read more]

[Listening to: We're Going To Be Friends - The White Stripes - (02:21)]