This is an open thread. Post what you like, when you like it, and don’t let nobody tell you otherwise. Self-linking is a joy unto the blog.
- My favorite post this week was the awesome photo gallery, compiled by Liss at Shakesville, of female farmers around the world. Check it out.
- 25 Key Principles For Immigration Policy Reform
- What is “disability”?
- Video of fire-breathing, in slow motion. I eventually got bored, but before I reached that point I was enthralled.
- Marlee Matlin is creating a well-placed stink about the lack of captioning available for online video. There’s a relevant “Alas” post about this here.
- Intelligent anti-gay conservatives find discussing gay marriage painful, because they know they have no argument. Somehow, my heart isn’t bleeding for Ross. (Via The American Scene.) Be sure to read David Link’s response, too.
- Anatomy of a Slur: David Link (again!) on anti-gay ads in Maine.
- Global warming is a threat to national security
- Paying attention to how citizens in Muslim countries view the US
- End Fat Talk. Please, please end it.
- Amazing images of pollution in China.
- Graduating during a recession has big, long-lasing negative consequences. “If you’re graduating from college this spring, you’ll be sitting around at the age of thirty-five still suffering from the fact that Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe, Ben Nelson, and Kent Conrad decided to make the stimulus bill stingier in order to better bolster their credentials as preening centrists.”
- Video — the biggest gathering of bats in the world. I loved the final two shots of the bats.
- A collection of links to scholars arguing for and against smaller class sizes. The upshot seems to be that smaller class sizes make the biggest difference for young kids and in schools serving “underprivileged” populations.
- Afghanistan is just not that important.
- FWD/Forward describes a really amazingly offensive episode of Torchwood.
- FedEx and UPS pay the post office to deliver their packages to rural areas.
- Whoopsie, we destroyed all hope of a functioning government:
“The supply-siders are to a large extent responsible for this mess, myself included. We opened Pandora’s Box when we got the Republican Party to abandon the balanced budget as its signature economic policy and adopt tax cuts as its raison d’être. In particular, the idea that tax cuts will “starve the beast” and automatically shrink the size of government is extremely pernicious.Indeed, by destroying the balanced budget constraint, starve-the-beast theory actually opened the flood gates of spending. As I explained in a recent column, a key reason why deficits restrained spending in the past is because they led to politically unpopular tax increases. But if, as Republicans now maintain, taxes must never be increased at any time for any reason then there is never any political cost to raising spending and cutting taxes at the same time, as the Bush 43 administration and a Republican Congress did year after year.”
- Another stunning photo gallery, this time of Diwali celebrations around the world.
- “I’m so tired of stories that take place in the same three neighborhoods in New York or LA. I’m tired of young white people and their love problems. I’m tired of FBI agents.”
- Farmer grows pumpkins with human faces. (In 1938.) Creepy.
#6, Why am I unsurprised that Conor’s comment section devolved into everyone else arguing with SDG, who is apparently convinced that any acceptance of one type of previously despised sexuality must lead to the acceptance of other previously despised sexualities, because since he cannot comprehend any moral difference between same-sex attraction and a desire to exploit children sexually, no one else can either?
However, I think you’re a little too quickly triumphalist with regard to Douthat. He isn’t saying that he “has no argument”; he’s saying that his secular arguments are based on abstract and long-term concepts like “institutional support for reproduction,” that in front of the average American voter will not have the visceral appeal of “but we LOOOVE each other.” He’s quite correct on that point.
Of course, including in marriage some additional wanna-be-married couples who can’t reproduce using their only their own bodies (same-sex couples), to all the other couples who can’t (opposite-sex couples including persons infertile at the time of marriage) or won’t (opposite-sex couples who choose not to have biological children), is not going to make a damn bit of difference to how Americans understand marriage in our law and society, which isn’t as an institution existing solely for the support of children, but rather as for the mutual support of two adults who may or may not also support children together.
So I think Douthat’s one secular argument is crap, but he does have it and it’s persuasive to a great many people who apparently think my (totally heterosexual!) marriage is worthless because we’re opting for adoption. Only if you’re going to knock out some babies made solely of your and your partner’s genes is your marriage worthwhile. Folks like Chief Justice Roberts and his wife whose two children are adopted, or Clarence Thomas and his second wife who took in and raised his grand-nephew and had no bio-children, aren’t really married and don’t have real families, no matter how supportive of each other the spouses are, or how loving and thoughtful they are in child-rearing.
Douthat’s oh-so-complex secular argument basically is:
If Gamete A + Gamete B =/= Child C, then no marriage for A and B, the persons rearing C.
Re: #10, I totally agree with the basic sentiment expressed. It reminds me of doing the parody show in law school my first semester, and being in the women’s dressing room with so many of my classmates — women who had decided, based on a $150k+ investment, that they were going to be making a living on their brains and not their appearances — who were complaining about how they looked. These women were apologizing for their bodies while they were changing clothes!
It was bothering me so much that I finally spoke up (and I’m not normally someone who feels comfortable interrupting an established social dynamic like that, especially as a “newbie”) and said, “For the rest of the show, could we make this a body-hatred-free zone?” That was semi-effective in shushing it, but someone later asked me, “Is this like a feminist thing for you?” and I said honestly, “No, it’s that I could go on longer than any of you if we start listing off what’s wrong with our bodies, and I’d end up missing my cues.”
However, hearing Jill say that what she once was looking for was to be 5’10” and 110 lbs. — which even the coarse BMI calculators put far into “underweight” territory — makes me so glad I didn’t grow up or go to school where she did (I think she went to law school at NYU, which is downtown Manhattan and has lots of models and celebrities in the area). We’re all subject to a national media’s images, but at least I didn’t have to see many women in the flesh who looked like the post-Photoshopped pictures.
Women: the patriarchy needs your support!
It’s a longish rant about how most women — yes, even you — are active supporters of the patriarchy.
Don’t dis your own people: how important it is not to denigrate people of your own race. This could also be extended to your own country, your own social class, or to your own village/town/suburb.
Just pointing out that there is no such thing as “opposite” sex. Male and female are not opposites. The prefixes homo- and hetero- are better than “same” and “opposite” in that they imply “same” and “not-same” rather than same and opposite.
With regards to #2, Rep. Gutierrez says:
Who is this “our” that Rep. Gutierrez refers to? He was elected by American citizens to represent them. He was not elected to represent aliens (illegal or resident). Who does he then believe he was elected to represent?
Rep. Gutierrez is in Congress due to the Illinois General Assembly’s having created what is arguably the most egregious example of gerrymandering in the U.S. Congress for the sole purpose of providing a majority-Hispanic district that will elect a Democrat to Congress. Perhaps it is understandable, then, that he seems to think that he’s in Congress to represent an ethnicity or a foreign country rather than Americans.
The Census will be conducted in 2010, and the results thereof will be used in 2011 to re-apportion Representatives to the States and re-district the Congressional districts in them. That process is in dire need of reform. Specifically, a process needs to be put in place that takes the control of drawing district boundaries out of the hands of political parties as much as possible, and that also provides that districts must be as compact as possible. I don’t mean that there should never be minority-majority districts; you’re still going to have those, especially in urban areas. I have no problem with that. But something like Illinois’ 4th Congressional District should never happen. American Representatives are in Congress to represent Americans. They are not there primarily to represent races, ethnicities or nationalities.
Comments on some of their 25 points:
First off we have to recognize that Migra Matters takes the self-serving and maliciously misleading deceit of conflating all immigrants together – illegal, resident, and citizens. There is a big difference why and how the three different groups came to America and what they do when they get here. In the case of illegal aliens from Mexico (Migra Matters pretty much concentrates on that particular subset of illegal aliens), the major reason why people come here is because of the incredible level of state-sponsored corruption and crime that allows an oligarchy to dominate their economy. Blaming the U.S. for that is absurd. Mexico needs to clean up their own house, and Mexican citizens, not American ones, are responsible for taking on that job and doing it.
The author seems to be under the misapprehension that the purpose of immigration law is to benefit aspiring immigrants, not the United States.
See above. The author seems to be proposing that the vast majority of people who decide that they want to come to America should be able to do so. How this is in the interests of a country that has high unemployment escapes me.
I have repeatedly advocated that when the ICE parades a group of illegal aliens out of a workplace in handcuffs the CEO and the head of HR of that company should be leading the parade. But I suspect that there’s another agenda here.
Given that there are already numerous immigrants who are perfectly eligible to vote, I can only surmise that the author is seriouly proposing that resident and illegal aliens be given the right to vote.
Actually, that’s a good thing from my viewpoint. It’ll help keep people from taking this seriously.
This is America. We have a society rooted in the cultures of the various groups of people that founded it and that serves our needs. It’s up to immigrants to adjust to our cultural realities. If they find our culture unsuitable they should reconsider coming here.
True. A misdemeanor should not carry a punishment comparable to a felony. My solution, in these days of terrorism and post-9/11? Make crossing the border illegally a felony.
Another example of malicious deceit. A few seconds’ worth of effort allows one to find immigration statistics revealing that during the Bush Administration, which I select because supposedly that administration was “anti-immigrant”, around 9 million people immigrated legally into the U.S. and achieved legal resident alien status – about 30% more than immigrated in during the Clinton Administration. No one of any significance is proposing that our borders be closed to immigration – only to illegal aliens.
Who is this “our” that Rep. Gutierrez refers to? He was elected by American citizens to represent them. He was not elected to represent aliens (illegal or resident). Who does he then believe he was elected to represent?
Wow, RonF, you live in a very small bubble. There are American citizens who have family members who are aliens, both illegal and resident. My cousin is a natural-born citizen of the U.S. (and Texas ;-), but both of his parents are resident aliens who maintained their citizenship in their nation of birth. American families are not made up of citizen-only and alien-only blocks. If you are a natural-born citizen with one or more parents who were illegal immigrants, Rep. Gutierrez is talking about keeping your family together.
I hope that all the Republicans who agree with you, Ron, are similarly unashamed to express their opinions, loudly and in public.
—Myca
Re: #10 – what is it with models having to be size 2 or 4, anyway? Or size 0? Why do fashion houses do this?
Wow, RonF, you live in a very small bubble. There are American citizens who have family members who are aliens, both illegal and resident.
I’m well aware of this. Living in the Chicago I have met a lot of such families, including a number of my wife’s relatives. But Migra Matters is advocating for illegal aliens, and that’s the context of Rep. Gutierrez’s remarks.
My cousin is a natural-born citizen of the U.S. (and Texas ;-), but both of his parents are resident aliens who maintained their citizenship in their nation of birth.
Given that they are resident aliens, there’s no problem with keeping that family together. On that basis, by definition that’s not the issue that Rep. Gutierrez is addressing.
American families are not made up of citizen-only and alien-only blocks.
A family that contains both citizens and aliens is not just an American family – it’s a Mexican family as well. Why then is it solely an American problem? Their problem is of their own making, clearly forseeable, and deliberately in violation of American law. It’s up to the people responsible for the problem to solve it. Violation of American law should not result in being rewarded by the U.S. Congress. Let them move back to Mexico – if Mexico will permit the immigration of their American citizen members.
If you are a natural-born citizen with one or more parents who were illegal immigrants, Rep. Gutierrez is talking about keeping your family together.
American law is not preventing them from keeping their familiy together. It’s preventing them from keeping it together in America. They gave up the privilege of benefiting from American law when they decided to violate it.
Myca:
I hope that all the Republicans who agree with you, Ron, are similarly unashamed to express their opinions, loudly and in public.
What about the Democrats who have opinions on such matters that oppose these 25 points? For example: according to a Rasmussen poll 61% of Democrats favor surprise raids at places of employment to catch and deport illegal aliens. When it comes to non-federal law enforcement officers enforcing immigration law, 73% of all voters believe that police should automatically check the immigration status of people they pull over for traffic violations. Rasmussen doesn’t give the breakout for the latter, but if the difference between Republican and Democrats is similar to the breakdown of what percentages of each party’s voters favor raids, it’s going to be > 60%.
So do you favor Democratic voters speaking their minds on this as well? Or only if they agree with you?
Oh, I think all racists and xenophobes should out themselves. It makes voting much easier.
And looking at the demographics from the last election, Hispanic voters agree.
—Myca
American law is not preventing them from keeping their familiy together. It’s preventing them from keeping it together in America. They gave up the privilege of benefiting from American law when they decided to violate it.
Where do you propose the family be kept together, then? Are you saying the brunt should be on every other country in the world to accept American-born U.S. citizens if those citizens were born to people who hold citizenship anywhere other than the U.S.? Your response comes across as very NIMBY.
Ron:
My representative represents my interests. So if I am personally interested in preserving Sudanese lives, then my rep should take that into account even though the residents of Sudan are not US citizens.
Similarly, if I am personally interested in expanding privileges or immunities available to illegal immigrants, then my representative would properly take my wishes into account. Even though it benefits noncitizens, just as with Sudan it gives me an indirect benefit and is therefore appropriate.
The trick is that in either case, there needs to be either a direct or indirect benefit to citizens, at least in my opinion. MM’s posts often ignore that point, and I disagree with MM on that subject. But for the limited issue you’re discussing, you are making that same mistake, because you are ignoring the indirect benefit to the representative’s voters.
Sure, I agree. but the question was “why do people in general get upset at the imposition of the ‘racist’ label?” And most people are not actively anti-racist.
If you limit it to “people who are trying to be or who care about being anti-racist” then it’s a different question and a different answer. It’s safe to say that the racial-epithet-on-road-sign guy does not particularly care about being anti-racist, though he may care about being not-racist.
Sailorman,
but the question was “why do people in general get upset at the imposition of the ‘racist’ label?”
Who was asking this question? The answer seems rather self-evident.
Not recommended if you’re eating or have just eaten: this turned my stomach.
@ no8
Models are basically human clothes horses. These designers feel that thinner bodies are felt to distract least from the cut and line of their clothes.
I’ll get to the above in a bit, but given that this is an open thread I’m soliciting comment on a story I’ve seen circulating for a bit in the right-wing blogosphere and on Fox News. It concerns another of President Obama’s appointees, Kevin Jennings, who was appointed his “Safe Schools Czar”.
As confirmed by a recent statement by Mr. Jennings,, back in 1988 while he was a teacher a 15-year-old boy told him that he was having sex with an older man. Jennings’ reaction was to sympathize and advise him to use a condom. Now, obviously there is a lot of opposition by certain groups to Jennings’ continued tenure in office due to his advocacy of homosexuality. But I don’t see how that overrides the fact that when faced with an example of statutory rape, his reaction was advise the victim to use a condom.
Tell me, what if this had been a Bush appointee and it was found that he had reacted to a similar revelation by advising a 15-year-old girl to use a condom in a relationship with an older man? Just how would you all have expressed your quite justifiable outrage?
Jennings both discussed this in a public presentation and wrote about it in a book he authored. At no point until this just recently became a controversy does it appear that he expressed any remorse over this. He has released a statement now saying that looking back 21 years ago he should have handled this difrerently, but 21 years ago statutory rape was still statutory rape and teachers were legally required to report it. The timing of his statement of remorse seems quite self-serving, especially given the number and kinds of ways that he’s discussed this incident previously.
Mr. Jennings may have a fine curriculum vitae and have authored some impressive sounding publications, but it seems to me that he’s missing the basic concepts of decency and protection of youth and the personal ability to act on them. The fact that his position is to ensure safe schools seems almost beyond irony. I don’t think he’s fit to hold the office he does. Yes, the opposition is being led in part by people who oppose President Obama’s overall agenda. So what? Is politics or advocacy of homosexuality THAT important?
I wonder how this possibly got past the Obama administration’s review process. It’s a damn good argument that this whole process of setting up more Czars than Russia had in the 19th century ought to be scrapped and that such appointees should be submittted, as intended by the Constitution, to the advise and consent of the Senate.
Oh, I think all racists and xenophobes should out themselves.
Well, Myca, let’s make this plain. Do you think I’m a racist and a xenophobe?
RonF,
I’m puzzled as to why you would claim the young man in question was 15, when your own Fox News source notes at the beginning of the article that he was actually 16 at the time of the incident. That was legal age to be sexually active in Mass., so the boy couldn’t have been the victim of statutory rape.
RonF @17 – This link should answer all your questions. For one thing, the student was actually 16, a legal adult. For another, the student, now an adult, has said he was not being abused. For a third, Jennings was struggling with being in the closet himself (a situation created by his now-detractors), rampant fear around the AIDS crisis (the solution to which was basically being presented to the public as “uh, use condoms?”), and terror of being a gay educator in a state with sodomy laws. For a fourth, he has now said he gave lousy advice due to a lack of training in how to handle the needs of LGBT students (something his detractors would prefer educators NOT be trained on, as they don’t even want the subject of homosexuality mentioned in school).
But there was no statutory situation.
The money quote from “Brewster,” the sudent, is this:
Were it not for Mr. Jennings’ courage and concern for my well-being at that time in my life, I doubt I’d be the proud gay man that I am today.
And I don’t trust for one red hot minute that any of the detractors on Fox or in the right wing blogosphere actually care about the well-being of LGBT youth; they are simply intersted in running another smear campaign.
It’s a damn good argument that this whole process of setting up more Czars than Russia had in the 19th century ought to be scrapped and that such appointees should be submittted, as intended by the Constitution, to the advise and consent of the Senate.
Christ, this is such a stupid statement and I’m so tired of its iterations.
There are political appointees who do not face Senate confirmation in *every* Administration. One of my friends held a political position in the Bush Administration (he moved over when his law firm boss, Fred Fielding, became White House counsel), but he never had a Senate confirmation. If you require that every person who is not a civil service purely merit-based hire be confirmed by the Senate, you’ll have come up with a brilliant way either to infuriate Republican administrations (which hate hiring from the civil service because it tilts Democrat) or of preventing the Senate from getting anything else accomplished (which I suppose does fit with some conservatives’ political preferences).
Which part of the Constitution requires that every political appointee be appointed subject to the advice and consent of the Senate?
PG @15 – yes, it’s a horrifying story, and is devastating to the folks in Richmond and the Bay Area in general. It’s had me angry and depressed for days, especially given that a colleague of mine just had a struggle with a class of his wherein the female students wanted to argue that women should just “get over” sexism because it really isn’t that big a deal and if you complain about it, you’re just being a victim.
In light of recent conversations about gender, let me just note (sarcastically) that incidents like that happen to boys and men *all the time*, right?
Also, the Mercury News didn’t mention this detail, but the SF Chronicle identified the “appalled partygoer” who actually phoned in the crime as a woman.
Ron, here’s what the 16 (not 15) year old himself — now an adult, of course — says.
Quoted from Box Turtle Bulletin’s excellent debunking of this story.
I’m curious as to how you know that Jennings has never expressed any regret for how he handled that before recently. The reason this story is known is that Jennings has told it multiple times (usually changing identifying details, like names and ages), as an example of the bad old days, when gay students had no access to good advice and teachers weren’t given any training to know what to say. So I don’t think your claim — that Jennings has never shown regret before this year — is a reasonable interpretation of the story.
Maybe you shouldn’t trust that Fox news is telling you the whole, truthful story.
Jennings, by the way, has spent his career working to help gay youth, so that the situation in the story he tells — a gay student with no good, safe resources to turn to, and a teacher who has been given no training at all for dealing with a question like this — is now less likely to happen. I think that shows that he has a great moral character for this position. And so should you, or anyone else who feels compassion for sexual minority youth — a category that certainly doesn’t include the people who run FOX news, or most of the leadership of the Republican party.
Elusis @ 22,
Sadly, I’m too cynical to be surprised that a bunch of young men would gang-rape a woman, but I am still sheltered enough to have been surprised that the non-participants didn’t care until word filtered out to one woman at a party. I can’t stop wondering what was keeping all the prior people who knew of the crime from reporting it: assumption that other people already had reported? unwillingness to be in contact with the police? belief that it must be consensual sex and that a report to police would get the men unjustly arrested?
Like everyone else, I relate it back to Kitty Genovese, except I feel like people in NYC think those were the “bad old days” and that collectively the inhabitants of this city now have more faith that police will respond, and more commitment to catching violent criminals.
PG – my interpretation (which I guess will get more informed as we start to hear statements from those arrested?) was that at least some of the spectators were into it.
Maybe I shouldn’t have watched “The Accused” at such an impressionable age.
Jennings himself said multiple times that the kid was 15, a statement that I saw quoted in numerous outlets, not just Fox news. Since it was in his interest to not represent that he had condoned (or at least not reported) statutory rape, and since it’s pretty reasonable to presume that teachers know what age their students are, I took him at his word. In looking at the link that says that they looked up the actual records, it appears that he would have been 16 at the time. On that basis, then, I’ll retract that he’s guilty of covering up statutory rape. But I won’t apologize for believing what he said.
RonF,
I strongly recommend Amp’s comment @23, in which he points out that Jennings’s prior statements about this incident vary the details (presumably in order to preserve his former student’s confidentiality, which is an obligation under federal law) and were made to illustrate his point about how little training he was getting to help students with the kind of problems that this student was having. He was not in a deposition or on the stand or otherwise obligated to present a uniform, consistent, factually-perfect statement. He was presenting an anecdote to illustrate a point in which you have no apparent interest (that our schools do not support the needs of LGBT students).
BTW, have you found the part of the Constitution that requires all political appointees to be hired only with the advice and consent of the Senate?
New topic: Amazon is now offering Sarah Palin’s book for $8.55. That’s so cheap, I’m tempted to buy a copy as a Christmas gift for my father-in-law, who is a huge Palin fan. A new hardcover for less than $9 is a bargain that’s hard to resist.
The product description is fascinating too: as part of her credentials as a “Main Street American woman,” they cite her being the “wife of a blue collar union man.” Does this mean unions are good now?
“Opponents derided her as a wide-eyed Pollyanna unprepared for national leadership.”
Who … who referred to Palin as a “wide-eyed Pollyanna”? I googled Pollyanna and Palin, and the first hits were all about contrasting the Pollyanna Obama to the Barracuda Palin. The only reference I’ve spotted in which anyone’s called Palin a Pollyanna was someone from her own party: “Ben Stevens, Ted Stevens’s son and the former president of the state Senate, once personally called Palin to tell her she was a ‘Pollyanna’ for her concerns over his ethics.”
PG, you asked about the czars. Here’s an article you might want to read.
Proponents of gay “marriage” go 0-31 with the voters.
Thanks for dropping by to gloat, Ron.
I take comfort from the belief that your grandchildren will be ashamed of your position, unless you lie to them about it. Maybe by then you’ll be smart enough to know that you should be ashamed of your position too.
Also, you don’t think Arizona counts?
Ron, please don’t use quotation marks around marriage when referring to gay marriage. If you need to use another term, do that, but the quotation marks are just being a dick about it.
I have a problem with the ‘people’ and ‘religions’ that believe their own ‘opinions’ are more important than the humanity and equality of others.
—Myca
I think the 31-0 statistic refers to the fact that there has been no successful proactive vote to add gay marriage to any state. Even mine.
There have been a lot of reactive votes to attempt to remove gay marriage through popular vote after it was added by either courts or legislatures.
Arizona, AFAIK, was a failed reactive vote: the bill proposed to make gay marriage illegal, it failed, and then it passed 2 years later. Apparently Arizona’s conservatives lost a reactive vote in 2006, but handily won it in 2008, making gay marriage illegal. I can’t find any recent news that suggests this was reversed in 2009 to restore gay marriage. (Was it? That’d be great news. If not, I don’t see that as a win for our side.)
Diversity educator and filmmaker Lee Mun Wah is putting together a book called “Let’s Get Real: What People of Color Can’t Say and Whites Won’t Ask.”
He’s got a series of questions for both POC and white people, and is asking for responses from anyone who cares to answer some or all of them. The deadline for responses is November 15th. Participants whose responses are selected for publication get a free, autographed copy of the book.
Info is here:
http://www.stirfryseminars.com/letsgetreal/
Edited to add: the website still shows the deadline for submissions as September 1, but I just got an email from Mun Wah saying it’s been extended to 11/15.
Ron, you are part of a long and proud tradition. Well … long, anyhow. As John Rogers explains,
LOL Activist judges and their interracial ‘marriage.’ ROFL.
—Myca
About Arizona. The 2006 amendment banned not just gay marriage but also domestic partnerships. In more liberal Southern Arizona, a lot of municipalities have registries and offer benefits to domestic partners of employees, though state agencies (including U of A and ASU) don’t. And, in a weird little twist, domestic partnership benefits are available to straight people too. I think there was a lawsuit (activist judges!) that forced the registries to be open to everyone, though I’m not sure. Most of the straight people that use it have some legal reason to not want to marry, like not losing survivor benefits that one party in the couple has.
Anyway, what happened was that there was a very vigorous no on 107 campaign that universally featured straight people who would be harmed by the end of domestic partner benefits. You couldn’t get the organized opposition to say the word “gay.” You never saw anybody gay in any of the no ads. It failed by a very narrow margin.
In 2008, they came back with a ban that was silent on the domestic partnership issue and won handily. The opposition was pretty weak, and again, they couldn’t bring themselves to say “gay,” instead going with “We already voted on this. That’s not fair.”
But yeah, Ron. That was an asshole move there @ 30.