Moment of Silence.

In a both expected and sudden move, the California Supreme Court ruled the gay-marriage ban there unconstitutional. For a long time, California banned gay marriage under Proposition 22, a voter referendum on the March 2000 ballot. It passed overwhelmingly, with just over 60% of the vote. So, for the past eight years, gay marriage has been illegal. ( Read more... )

Jamie Leigh Jones is suing, or at least attempting to sue, Halliburton and KBR for her gruesome rape, attack and coverup. While this blog doesn't blanch from being graphic when necessary, this one hit particularly close to home for some, so this warning. The descriptions might get a little blunt in places.

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It appears last night's midnightranter provoked some responses. Firstly, anonymous responses are fine, they really are. IP logging isn't turned on for a reason, mostly because people should feel free to post whatever they want and not feel threatened that should they say the wrong thing, someone is going to track them down and do terrible things. That said, when ( Read more... )

Just as the Democratic primaries were threatening to dominate all the political headlines, the Republicans managed to make some noise at their Nevada state convention. Now, this isn't getting nearly as much attention as it should. What happened, in a nutshell, was at the state Republican convention, there were a lot of supporters for Ron Paul and ( Read more... )

In this era of needed troops and falling recruitment rates, the American has had to resort to other means to fill necessary gaps. Enlistments bonuses have gone up, recruiters are scammier than ever and recruitments standards have been lowered. This has been going on for years and is really part of standard practice, and all of it makes sense. We're ( Read more... )

In what can usually be ascribed to a slow news day, CNN has dramatically increased their coverage of autism. They even made a special section for it. Except that it's not just some random slow news day, today was Autism Awareness Day (which I didn't know until I was writing this blog). For too long, autism was ignored or seen as just a ( Read more... )

In yet another example of the Government Accountability Office (or GAO) being one of the best and most vicious agencies in the American government, a report about exactly how much money the Pentagon is wasting on countless programs and just how bad those programs are for the US military. One of the programs was the replacement for Marine One, the ( Read more... )

Sorry for lack of rants, managed to pull a couple of muscles ranting. I'm just that good. But, tonight, we marked the sad anniversary and grim milestones that 5 years of American war in Iraq and 4000 American soldiers killed in Iraq. That doesn't count other coalition deaths, Iraqi civilian deaths, nor does it include exactly how many terrorists we ( Read more... )

There was once a term, eminence grise, meaning wise, powerful one behind the throne. It was meant that someone who had experience would serve as a level head and be an effective adviser to those coming after him or her. This was the assumed position of Geraldine Ferraro in the Clinton campaign. She was on the finance committee of the Clinton ( Read more... )