First ‘they’ were teachers. Then ‘they’ wanted to be on the bowling team. ‘They’ are fighting to be in the military. But now we find ‘they’ are in the judiciary! When will it end?
Clearly there has to be a new trial.
The biggest open secret in the landmark trial over same-sex marriage being heard in San Francisco is that the federal judge who will decide the case, Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker, is himself gay.
Many gay politicians in San Francisco and lawyers who have had dealings with Walker say the 65-year-old jurist, appointed to the bench by President George H.W. Bush in 1989, has never taken pains to disguise – or advertise – his orientation.
They also don’t believe it will influence how he rules on the case he’s now hearing – whether Proposition 8, the 2008 ballot measure approved by state voters to ban same-sex marriage, unconstitutionally discriminates against gays and lesbians.
“There is nothing about Walker as a judge to indicate that his sexual orientation, other than being an interesting factor, will in any way bias his view,” said Kate Kendell, head of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, which is supporting the lawsuit to overturn Prop. 8.
As evidence, she cites the judge’s conservative – albeit libertarian – reputation, and says, “There wasn’t anyone who thought (overturning Prop. 
was a cakewalk given his sexual orientation.”
As a huge Elvis fan, let me set the scene for you.
On the night of August 8, 1977 Elvis rented out Libertyland, a theme park in Memphis. The theme park was on land that was best known for years as the Mid-South Fairgrounds. It was there that Elvis often brought his famed ‘Memphis Mafia’ for fun and relaxation. In the park was his favorite roller coaster named the Zippin Pippin. The roller coaster had entertained him for decades. Much has been written over the years about his fondness for this ride. Since Elvis was not able to go about life in the same way most of us take for granted, he needed to rent out a theatre, bowling alley, or theme park for the chance to live life without the crush of the fans. That night it was reported he rode the coaster for two hours, and was in very good spirits. His next concert tour was to start in a little over a week, and the theme park was a way to unwind. In the early morning hours Elvis left the park and returned to Graceland. Though he would be seen in a car after a dentist visit days later, the night at the park was his last public appearance.
Now there is a very good chance that the Zippin Pippin will be moving to Beach Bay Amusement Park in Green Bay. I think that a grand idea. Mayor Jim Schmitt along with Green Bay’s parks director Bill Landvatter visited Memphis this week and explored more fully the best way to achieve this goal.
The reason there is any chance at all for Green Bay to secure this legendary roller coaster is that Libertyland is no longer an operating theme park. There is every desire by Memphis to remove the coaster, and a buyer earnestly is being sought. The cost of dismantling, moving, reassembling and re-engineering the Zippin Pippen is roughly $3 million. There is tremendous opportunity for Green Bay once this coaster has been purchased, and moved to Brown County. Schmitt is right when he asks, “Could you just see having Elvis Presley Day at Bay Beach?” I know citizens in Green Bay, and throughout Wisconsin applaud the efforts of Mayor Schmitt.
I also know Elvis would have one thing to say to Mayor Schmitt after hearing about the Zippin Pippin being saved.
”Thank you, thank you very much.”
Finally, let us see the roller coaster ride as Elvis would have viewed it, while it was in Memphis.
There will be plenty of push-back against Sarah Palin from all quarters. Especially after her display this past weekend at the Teabaggers Convention. Today the blow-back came from the daughter of Senator John McCain.
The world is upside down. Those who think guns are the answer to everything have a problem to resolve in Texas.
Lawmakers, some of whom regularly show up armed to the job, have to sort through an array of safety options. They range from prohibiting guns in the Capitol, making everyone who steps into the building go through a metal detector, to exempting those who have a license to carry a concealed weapon. Or lawmakers could stick with current safety procedures, which permit unfettered access to all areas of the Capitol when the legislature isn’t in session, effectively allowing access to people carrying guns. (What in hell is wrong with Texans?)
Gov. Rick Perry, a concealed-weapon licensee himself who was endorsed by the National Rifle Association in his bid for re-election, is of the view that lawful gun-carrying Texans deter criminals from drawing their weapons for fear of being outnumbered. “The last thing I want is for the Texas Capitol to turn into DFW Airport,” he said at a recent news conference.
The Texas Capitol, a pinkish-granite domed behemoth in downtown Austin, houses the offices of state legislators and the chambers where they make laws.When construction of the Capitol was finished in 1888, those who entered were subject to a law dating from the turbulent post Civil-War era that banned from practically all pubic establishments an assortment of weapons, including guns, sword-canes, spears, brass-knuckles, bowieknives “or any other kind of a knife manufactured and sold for the purpose of offense and defense.”
But in 1995, then-Gov. George W. Bush signed a bill that allowed anyone who was cleared by a background check and took a course, among other requirements, to carry a concealed weapon in a variety of places, including the Capitol. More recently however, a rule was put in place that requires visitors who want to witness lawmakers in action from the galleries to go through a metal detector.
After a successful launch of Space Shuttle Endeavour this morning comes the latest video of what happened to the Challenger 24 years ago. This video taken by an amateur is truly a testament to the disaster that took place. Gut-punch. I was working in radio that day and will never forget the wall-to-wall coverage we provided, or the sick feeling we felt when hearing and watching the dreadful news.
The chilling amateur footage was recorded by retired optometrist Jack Moss on his new home video camera on the morning of 28 January 1986.
The four-minute film captures the moment the shuttle exploded, 73 seconds after launch from Florida’s Kennedy Space Centre, killing all seven astronauts on board and setting Nasa’s manned spaceflight programme back years.
It is believed to be the only amateur film in existence of the world’s worst space disaster, recorded in an era before mobile phone cameras, when even home camcorders were rare.
More from Albany. There are some speculating that this could be more than a sex scandal, and might now include “a state deal he may be connected to.”
Governor David Paterson is talking privately with key Democratic leaders about his political future. Paterson campaign spokesman Richard Fife says the weekend calls were “routine re-election campaign calls.”
But a Democrat close to the situation said the meetings included discussions about whether Paterson would resign or announce he will not run because of the unsubstantiated claims in a whisper campaign surrounding the governor’s behavior.
There is a political hurricane brewing, and it is aimed at Albany. It seems to be only a matter of time before the counter-clockwise winds of scandal strip New York Governor Paterson of his dignity, and his power.
For starters, as we all know, there was no bombshell story about Governor Paterson in Sunday’s New York Times. (Many thought there would be such a story.) There is no above-the-fold headline in Monday’s edition. But the New York press is abuzz over a suspected sex scandal that ranges from the Governor “nuzzling” a woman other than his wife, to rumors of ’swinging’. Last week the story was gathering steam, and as of late Sunday there was added heat to the roiling mass of political turbulence. At some point this storm will have to make landfall in Albany.
Question is when will it arrive. The latest headline screamed out for attention late Sunday.
SOURCE: The NYT’s Big David Paterson Bombshell Will Break Soon, Governor’s Office Denies Resignation In Works
After that jolting headline there was a follow-up to the report.
We spoke with a member of Governor Paterson’s communications team who denies that the governor is planning to resign. The official confirmed that a New York Times story is in the works but says it will not run Monday.
Gawker got an on-the-record comment from Paterson’s deputy communications director Marissa Shoenstein, who said: “There is absolutely zero truth to these rumors. The governor is not resigning.”
One thing is certain, this is no mere tropical storm. Too many people at too high of journalistic levels are putting pieces together for this to be anything other than a Category Five political blow-out.
Stay tuned.
(Can anyone tell I have been reading a fantastic book about the 1900 hurricane that wiped out Galveston?)
This picture in today’s newsaper is a classic. Words are not needed.
Bill Schwartz on Tuesday fed his ballot into a ballot box at a polling place in the basement of a bungalow on North Rockwell. (Illinois Primary, 2010)
While listening to the morning news on WBBM (AM 780) before gettting out of bed this morning I heard Dave Ross provide the following concerning ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’ It was perfect…..better than coffee to start the day. And oohhh so true!
You know it’s Groundhog Day when the radio comes on with the same story you’ve heard for 17 years.
“The hearing comes some 17 years after Congress set the ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell’ policy.” -CBS reporter
Congress is still debating Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. But this time they might finally get it right.
Actually, the issue has never been whether gay soldiers can do the job – because they’ve been in the military for years, and there’s no study I’ve seen that shows “gay-soldier-equals-weak-soldier.”
The argument, for people who want to keep the policy, is that knowing the guy next to you is gay, hurts unit “cohesion” – because there’s a code of masculine honor that has no room for gayness.
But let’s think about that for a moment. The military is all about readiness, right? Soldiers must be ready to fight whenever the order comes down.
And we know that there are homosexuals in the military and that there always WILL be homosexuals in the military. We further know that those homosexuals have no problem fighting next to straight soldiers, because that’s what they’ve been doing.
But the theory behind “Don’t ask don’t tell” is that for some straight soldiers, finding out that the guy in the next bunk is gay will weaken the straight soldier’s will to fight.
That would mean that if there’s a weak link in the military – it’s those STRAIGHT soldiers. It means that an enemy could undermine American military readiness by looking up soldiers on Facebook and e-mailing them that their buddies are gay. Boy – don’t let THAT get out.
From the obituary page of the Sunday newspaper comes this reminder of how far we have come in the world of televison.
Frances Buss, who at the dawn of commercial television parlayed a job as a temporary receptionist into a pioneering career as a director whose work helped establish the talk show, the game show and the cooking show as television staples, died on Jan. 19 in Hendersonville, N.C. She was 92.
Ms. Buss was the prototype for Vanna White; she held props and kept score for television’s first regularly broadcast game show, “CBS Television Quiz.” She was the M.C. — or “femcee,” in the showbiz lingo of the time — for a series of instructional shows demonstrating first aid; she was a dancer on “The Country Dance,” a sort of antediluvian “American Bandstand.”
On Dec. 7, 1941, she rushed to the studio in the Grand Central Terminal building to help with the news broadcast of the attack on Pearl Harbor.
“We didn’t have a decent map of the Hawaiian Islands and the Pacific Basin,” she recalled in a 2007 interview with the Paley Center for Media (formerly the Museum of Television & Radio). “Those of us who could helped draw crude maps and letter place names so that Richard Hubbell, our newscaster, could go on the air.”
This is a classic television moment that made people laugh and cry all at once. From 1976…..
