I'm very proud that searching Google for "Thomas Friedman idiot" brings up one of my posts near the top.

Courtesy of Atrios, I see that he is still an idiot. Here are excerpts from two of his columns, 11 days apart:

August 20, 2003, NYT
No Time to Lose in Iraq

"Everyone has advice now for the U.S.: bring in U.N. peacekeepers, bring in the French. They're all wrong. There are only two things we need: more Americans out back and more Iraqis out front."

August 31, 2003, NYT
Policy Lobotomy Needed

"Our Iraq strategy needs an emergency policy lobotomy. President Bush needs to shift to a more U.N.-friendly approach, with more emphasis on the Iraqi Army (the only force that can effectively protect religious sites in Iraq and separate the parties), and with more input from Secretary of State Colin Powell and less from the "we know everything and everyone else is stupid" civilian team running the Pentagon.

There is no question that we would benefit from a new U.N. mandate that puts U.S. forces in Iraq under a stronger U.N. umbrella."

I recommend sending an email to letters@nytimes.com and asking them about this.

Congratulations to Matt from To The Point! He's quoted in the latest Washington Monthly, in an article on Wesley Clark. He and Simon are doing some great writing, so go read them.

OK. I have to say it: I told Matt he should have a blog the first time I met him.

I love this quote, lifted from the header of Idols of the Marketplace:

If there is anybody in this land who thoroughly believes that the meek shall inherit the earth, they have not often let their presence be known. -- W.E.B. DuBois

I have to admit I hadn't heard of this before, but Greg Allen just pointed me to Greencine, the "little guy/gal" alternative to the ever-growing Netflix.

GreenCine carries a select collection of over 10,000 titles, with an accent on indie, art house, classics, foreign, documentary, anime and Asian cinema. You can check out three titles at a time, with no due dates, no late fees...and we pay the postage! Hang on to them as long as you like. Return one...we send you the next one on your list. Only $21.95 a month, flat fee, with a portion of proceeds benefiting film arts organizations.

I suspect the member reviews are more useful to me than those on Netflix, which tends to get plenty of "Why is this film so boring -- no action!" comments on a lot of interesting indie films.

Hmm... What about my 310-disc queue on Netflix?

All on one handy page, courtesy of Wage Slave: The George W. Bush Scorecard of Evil

Buried in this article in the NY Times, Bush 'Compassion' Agenda: A Liability in '04?, is this nice little quote from Joshua B. Bolten, White House budget director and formerly Mr. Bush's chief domestic policy adviser.

"Even the president is not omnipotent," Mr. Bolten said of the House opposition to the AmeriCorps money. "Would that he were. He often says that life would be a lot easier if it were a dictatorship. But it's not, and he's glad it's a democracy."

Often?

[via Tom Tomorrow]

I don't completely hide who I am on this blog, but my real name doesn't appear anywhere on it, since I don't want it to be too easy to use Google to find it via my real name.

Searching on my real name now brings up Bloggy in the top 10 results. Interesting search algorithms they got working over there at Google...

I don't understand this administration. They have plenty of money to spend on speechwriters and marketers, and we still get stuff like this, from Bush's speech to the American Legion on Tuesday:

He did not repeat his administration's prewar assertions that Mr. Hussein had ties to Al Qaeda, but made a general argument about the threat from those who hate, among others, "Christians and Jews and every Muslim who does not share their narrow and violent vision."

India just had two bombs go off in Bombay that killed 51 people and injured over 150. They are the worlds largest democracy, and allegedly an ally. The odds are pretty good that most of those people were not Christian, Jewish, or Muslim, but I guess our glorious leader can't wrap is head around yet another religion, particularly one that's not one of the big three monotheistic ones. It also is "off message" to talk about any culpability from Pakistan, our partner in the War on Terror. Pakistan is also believed to have supplied nuclear technology to Iran and North Korea. Cognitive dissonance, anyone?

Mr. Flight Suit also used the speech as an excuse to taunt Al Quaeda and other terrorists for not having hit U.S. soil directly lately:

He made the case that failing to take the fight to terrorists wherever they are would expose the United States to attacks at home. "Our military is confronting terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan and in other places so our people will not have to confront terrorist violence in New York or St. Louis or Los Angeles," he said.

So we're safer because we're battling people overseas, including the mysterious "elsewhere"? I doubt it.

Maple Ave (Digimon) / Meredith Allen

I haven't had much time to post lately, because I've been working on my new biz for hosting artist web sites. The working name for the project is "ArtCat", but there's nothing corporate to show you yet.

I have the beta version of the first artist site up -- Meredith Allen. I wasn't completely ready to launch, but something big was about to happen! Meredith's photo on the homepage appeared this week in the September 1st issue of the New Yorker, as the illustration for a Dave Eggers story titled Measuring the Jump.

News Flash! It's now on the New Yorker home page.

If any of you can link to her site or mention it in your weblogs, I would really apppreciate it. I'm trying to get it to show up in Google so that people seeing her image in the New Yorker will end up at Meredith's site.

The site will have more content, images, plus some design changes over the next days and weeks. Her site is the test case for my new system, and I'm still working out some things.

I can't recommend The current situation -- my take on it from silipups highly enough. It is a brilliant summary of the current situation.

Rick Hooper died as he lived — trying to bring peace in the Middle East. (Photo by Robert Zash)

I have already written about the death of Sergio Vieira de Mello in the bombing of U.N. headquarters in Iraq. From the NY Blade comes the story of the death of Rick Hooper, an openly gay U.N. employee who was fluent in Arabic and had worked on missions in the Gaza Strip and Iraq.

Rick Hooper, a New Yorker who worked on peacekeeping missions for the United Nations, died on Tuesday, August 19, in the explosion of the U.N.’s headquarters in Baghdad.

Hooper, 40, lived in Spanish Harlem, where he had moved three years ago with his then-lover, photographer Robert Zash. The two were together for nearly five years before breaking up last December.

...

Once he began working for the U.N., he was quickly promoted as chief of staff to the undersecretary general for political affairs. Hooper, who spoke and wrote Arabic fluently (in addition to a working knowledge of French, German, Norwegian and Czech), became a confidant of U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, whom he advised on Mideast issues and for whom he wrote several speeches on the issue.

He was in Baghdad to replace temporarily the assistant to Annan’s envoy to Iraq, Vieira de Mello. Hooper had planned on being there for two weeks before heading to Palestine for a long-delayed vacation.

...

He attended the University of California at Santa Cruz and graduated from Stevenson College (part of California’s public university system) in 1985. He spent a semester at Birzeit University on the West Bank, where he learned Arabic, and Nimes, France.

He received a Fulbright Scholarship to study at the University of Damascus. He also studied at the Center for American Studies Abroad at the American University in Cairo. He received a master’s degree in international diplomacy from Georgetown University. During his last semester at Georgetown he also worked in New York for the Lawyer’s Committee for Human Rights on Palestinian issues.

He immediately started working for the U.N. in the Gaza Strip. “He was such an incredible supporter of peace,” Zash said. “In the Gaza Strip during Desert Storm, he refused to wear a gas mask. During curfews, he would drive around in a U.N. vehicle so people knew there was a U.N. presence.”

I've had it with Bloomberg. He no longer deserves the benefit of the doubt.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg says President George W. Bush shouldn't be blamed if the Environmental Protection Agency downplayed the seriousness of airborne pollution after the Sept. 11 attacks.

The report, by the agency's inspector general, concludes that the White House influenced the EPA to minimize air-quality concerns. "I know the president and I think he's a very honest guy," Bloomberg said before Sunday's Pakistani Independence Day parade. "It would never occur to me not to trust him."

Oops. I just realized I had a couple of blackout photos I never posted:

Sexy traffic director on Fifth Avenue

Bill Cunningham of the NY Times "On the Street" feature taking photos on Fifth Avenue

I can't believe this isn't a bigger story in all of the news outlets! Thanks to Newsday, increasingly one of the best papers covering NYC and the evil Bush regime, we learn that the White House pressured the EPA to say the air quality was fine in lower Manhattan after 9/11 when it apparently wasn't, or at a minimum they had no evidence that it was safe. Re-opening Wall Street was more important than protecting the health of New Yorkers.

In the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center, the White House instructed the Environmental Protection Agency to give the public misleading information, telling New Yorkers it was safe to breathe when reliable information on air quality was not available.

...

"When the EPA made a September 18 announcement that the air was 'safe' to breathe, it did not have sufficient data and analyses to make such a blanket statement," the report says. "Furthermore, The White House Council on Environmental Quality influenced ... the information that EPA communicated to the public through its early press releases when it convinced EPA to add reassuring statements and delete cautionary ones."

On the morning of Sept. 12, according to the report, the office of then-Administrator of the EPA Christie Whitman issued a memo: "All statements to the media should be cleared through the NSC [National Security Council in the White House] before they are released." The 165-page report compares excerpts from EPA draft statements to the final versions, including these:

The draft statement contained a warning from EPA scientists that homes and businesses near Ground Zero should be cleaned by professionals. Instead, the public was told to follow instructions from New York City officials.

...

A warning on the importance of safely handling Ground Zero cleanup, due to lead and asbestos exposure, was changed to say that some contaminants had been noted downtown but "the general public should be very reassured by initial sampling."

The report also notes examples when EPA officials claimed conditions were safe when no scientific support was available.

Kenneth Millican, top, of Rising Pond, Ga., and Jerry Layne of Chattanooga, Tenn., hold signs as they join dozens of other demonstrating in front of the State Judicial Building in Montgomery, Ala., Wednesday, Aug. 20, 2003. Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore has said he will defy a federal court order to remove a Ten Commandments monument from public view, prompting some arrests on Wednesday by those who refused to leave the buiding. (AP Photo/Dave Martin)

Go right now and read Anees's post titled For newcomers to this blog. I agree 100% with what he has to say on the issue, and I find it horrifying to see that people think he might support suicide bombers just because he is Palestinian. Frankly, the only violent talk I'm seeing out of people in the blogopshere is coming from the anti-Palestinan/pro-occupation people. Witness this lovely excerpt, courtesy of Letter from Gotham, in which an allegedly college-education person says about Anees:

... if we can stand the weather -- both part of the Howl! Festival -- and free:

• Way the F**k off Broadway

  2:00 - 4:00 PM
  Tompkins Square Park Bandshell, 7th and Ave. A

  Featuring appearances by Heather Woodbury, XAR, Mike Albo, Julie Atlas Muz, Pat Harper, Lissa Moore, Lady Finger, Wau-Wau Sisters, Polly Mormon & The Wives, Gecko, Big Mike, Moe Kelly, Dan Green, Missy Galore, Rev Jen, Porno Jim & Faceboy.

  Hosted by Penny Arcade & Murray Hill



• Wigstock returns to Tompkins Square Park!

  5:00 - 7:00pm

  So far the lineup includes:

  Lypsinka
  Taboo!
  Sweetie
  The Girls from Lips
  Sugga Pie Cocoa
  Murray Hill, and The Dazzle Dancers

From Rush and Malloy of The Daily News:

'Debate' vs. Coulter-geist

Tough-talking Ann Coulter wouldn't say a word last night.

At the last minute, the conservative pundit canceled her appearance opposite best-selling "Big Lies" author Joe Conason on CNBC's "Kudlow & Cramer" - this after having programmers change the debate to fit her schedule.

One might think the roundtable, which featured Wall Streeter James Cramer and Reaganite Lawrence Kudlow, would be a breeze for Coulter. Could she have been afraid of facing Conason, whose book presents evidence that her arguments are ill-researched and calls her lifestyle hypocritical?

Coulter didn't answer our E-mail.

Meanwhile, we hear fellow right-wing tough guy Bill O'Reilly won't even let Conason on his show. (The Fox News Channel star - fingered by Matt Drudge as the instigator of Fox News' much-derided lawsuit against Al Franken's "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right" - wouldn't comment.)

and you have Time Warner Cable, I wouldn't get it. For an extra $10/month, they've introduced a Digital Video Recorder. We just got ours, and it's pretty cool. I'm using it to tape Deutsche Welle each morning for German practice.

I posted something a couple of days ago in which I said I was very disappointed to see so little coverge of the U.S. killing journalists like Mazen Dana in the blogosphere. Yesterday, the Boston Globe had a pretty fierce editorial, A cameraman killed, which I'll excerpt (emphasis mine):

WITH AMERICAN soldiers being killed almost daily in Iraq, nervousness among the occupying forces is understandable. But there is no excuse for US troops gunning down a TV cameraman doing his job, as happened to a prize-winning Reuters newsman on Sunday.

Despite the fact that Mazen Dana, 43, a father of four, had received permission from a US military official to film on the site, where other newsmen were also working, soldiers on two approaching tanks thought he might be an Iraqi guerrilla and his camera a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, according to reports. They shot first and attempted resuscitation later, unsuccessfully.

Eighteen journalists have died in Iraq from hostile fire and accidents. Five have been killed by the US military.

...

It is only natural that such organizations -- and newspaper editorials -- react with outrage when colleagues are killed on the job. But these killings raise a broader question of whether the coalition rules of engagement are too aggressive with all civilians. Reports of excessive force against Iraqis mount: US soldiers even killed two Iraqi policemen they mistook for criminals recently. Such actions inflame local passions, making it all the harder for occupying forces to keep the peace.

There is also a Salon article -- worth watching a free ad to read -- on how some journalists feel they are being targeted deliberately.

"From the eyewitness accounts, it appears that Dana was fired on without warning," wrote the Committee to Protect Journalists in an open letter to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. "He was filming in an area where no hostilities were taking place, raising questions about whether U.S. troops acted recklessly in targeting him."

Larry Nussbaum has three cool photos, taken from Hoboken, of NYC Blackout 2003.

I will send James, but I might be working. Tomorrow night is the Howl Festival's opening night party at Angel Orensanz Foundation on Norfolk Street, 7-11pm.

My cable modem finally came back at 3pm yesterday, so I've been working frantically to try to catch up with missed work -- I work from home.

One thing I noticed while looking around some weblogs: I was disturbed that so few people seemed to be talking about the death of Mazen Dana, the Reuters cameraman, at the hands of U.S. soldiers. It barely showed up on the main blogs I read. Here is a link to the Committee to Protect Journalists, who are continuing to cover this, plus the lousy "investigation" our government made of the attack on the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad -- which housed journalists covering the war. Two cameramen were killed when we shelled the hotel.

The other thing I wanted to bring up was how saddened I am by the bombing in Baghdad of the U.N. headquarters. Our country went in and toppled a regime without adequate planning, and is trying to have an occupation "on the cheap." We've plunged Iraq into chaos and anarchy, with no end in sight. Sergio Vieira de Mello, the UN's special representative in Iraq, was killed in the bombing. He was a man with a great career, having served as the head of the U.N.'s operations in East Timor. He guided that country from being a rebellious Indonesian province to an independent country with democratic elections. His expertise would have been invaluable during the creation of what the Bush regime allegedly wants to happen in Iraq -- a democracy.

I love the NY Times. In yesterday's paper, Elisabeth Bumiller's article on Bush and the blackout was headlined Bush Doesn't Let Blackout Upset Lunch With Troops. The headline is disappointing, it should have been "Bush attends $1 million fundraiser during blackout", but at least she got in these items:

But unlike the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, when news of another New York catastrophe sent Mr. Bush on an odyssey on Air Force One, today he continued his lunch and went ahead with plans to attend a $1 million political fund-raiser here this evening.

...

So after more than four and a half hours of White House silence, Mr. Bush made what was intended to be a reassuring statement to a small group of reporters at the Grand Hyatt hotel here.

"One thing I think I can say for certain is that this was not a terrorist act," Mr. Bush said.

____

I'm not posting much, because I AM STILL ON DIAL-UP 24 HOURS AFTER POWER WAS RESTORED TO MY NEIGHBORHOOD THANKS TO TIME WARNER CABLE/ROAD RUNNER. All they can say is that I'm "in the queue" to have something done internally by their IT department. The email I sent to support bounced back to me. Nice.

The lovely and talented Anees is back -- with a bang -- from his blog break:

silipups: Suckers!

Quick! Go see the George W. Bush Air National Guard action figure on eBay before they take it down.

Why wait until the redesign of Mount Rushmore?

Now you can own a piece of American history; the Texas Air National Guard George W Bush Action Figure.

This figure probably stands 14" in height, and is exactly as the future Leader of the Western World(tm) appeared during his service defending our Nation's borders from Mexicans and Bahamians.

Comes with detailed uniform (as imagined by base commander), sealed discharge papers, Coors Light keg, and "licensed to chug" bumper sticker.

Now you can have George in your home every day, even after November 2004!

This fully pose-able action figure of the Commander in Chief is likely correct down to the slightest detail. Our highly skilled Chinese craftspeople have been in the action figure industry for years, and trained under a generous re-education program. They make the best, most desirable action figures in the Free Market, or die tryin'!

Winning bidder will be notified of upcoming GWBANG accessories; pile of dried branches, action pretzel, overstuffed bags with "$" printed on them, blindfold, bible with real, highlighted passages, and earplugs.

The winning bidder will also receive TWO bonus gifts: the George W. Bush "Afternoon of September 11th 2001" tennis ensemble, and a genuine “First Lady Laura Bush Serving Sandwiches at a VA Hospital” action figure!

Supplies are limited; don't let yours disappear!

GOD BLESS AMERICA!

[via TBOGG]

The first annual Howl! Festival happens August 20-26 in the East Village. Check out the web site, plus James's recommendation. One of the highlights: Wigstock returns to Tompkins Square Park on Saturday, August 23rd, from 5:00-7:00pm!

I.F. Stone once said the Washinton Post was exciting to read "because you never know on what page you would find a page-one story."

Why was this in the Business Section of the New York Times yesterday?

The Bechtel Group, one of the world's biggest engineering and construction companies, has dropped out of the running for a contract to rebuild the Iraqi oil industry, as other competitors have begun to conclude that the bidding process favors the one company already working in Iraq, Halliburton.

After the United States Army Corps of Engineers quietly selected Halliburton in the spring to perform early repairs of the Iraqi oil business in the aftermath of the war, other companies and members of Congress protested that the work should have been awarded through competitive bidding.

...

Preliminary plans for a new contract, which industry executives had thought might total $1 billion, were announced late in June by the Corps of Engineers. The bidding was meant, in part, to introduce competition and a sense of fairness into the lucrative Iraqi reconstruction market, an executive with a major engineering concern said. Like many industry executives, he would speak only on condition of anonymity because his company does not want to jeopardize its chances for future government contracts.

But in the last month, the corps, which is overseeing the reconstruction efforts, has specified a timetable for the work that effectively means that the value of any contract companies other than Halliburton could win would be worth only about $176 million, according to Corps of Engineers documents and executives in the engineering and construction business.

Earlier this week, Bechtel cited the timetable as its reason for dropping out of the bidding. The company now plans to deal directly with the Iraqi oil ministry for future reconstruction work, a spokesman, Howard N. Menaker, said.

...

Working in Iraq has helped turn around Halliburton's financial performance, its second-quarter results showed. The company made a profit of $26 million, in contrast to a loss of $498 million in the period a year earlier. The company stated that 9 percent, or $324 million, of its second-quarter revenue of $3.6 billion came from its work in Iraq.

Your money at work, good Catholics:

This is an April 2002 file photo showing the mansion-style residence formerly lived in by the archbishops of Boston. Newly installed Archbishop Sean O'Malley has decided to live in the rectory of cathedral of the Holy Cross instead of the mansion.(AP Photo/Michael Dwyer,file)

Boston Archdiocese Offers $55M Settlement

The BBC's Jane Standley, in New York, says it is believed at least 1,000 children could have been abused over a period of more than 60 years.

--

Updated: The NY Times article today (August 9) uses an image which only shows the side of the mansion, making it look much smaller -- even though they say the photo was taken for the Times. What's up with that?

Q Thank you, sir. Since taking office you signed into law three major tax cuts -- two of which have had plenty of time to take effect, the third of which, as you pointed out earlier, is taking effect now. Yet, the unemployment rate has continued rising. We now have more evidence of a massive budget deficit that taxpayers are going to be paying off for years or decades to come; the economy continues to shed jobs. What evidence can you point to that tax cuts, at least of the variety that you have supported, are really working to help this economy? And do you need to be thinking about some other approach?

THE PRESIDENT: Yes. No, to answer the last part of your question. First of all, let me -- just a quick history, recent history. The stock market started to decline in March of 2000. Then the first quarter of 2001 was a recession. And then we got attacked in 9/11. And then corporate scandals started to bubble up to the surface, which created a -- a lack of confidence in the system. And then we had the drumbeat to war. Remember on our TV screens -- I'm not suggesting which network did this -- but it said, "March to War," every day from last summer until the spring -- "March to War, March to War." That's not a very conducive environment for people to take risk, when they hear, "March to War" all the time.

-- President Bush press conference, July 30, 2003

Very cool tool! If you find yourself editing HTML, or just having trouble fixing formatting problems in your blog posts, you have to get Mozilla and installl the pnhtoolbar.

It lets you do cool stuff like outline all of the block elements -- "why is that indented there?!", view cookies, disable style sheets, enable a different style sheet, etc.

I'm reading a great book at the moment: Roger Shattuck's The Banquet Years, about the origins of the avant garde in France in the period from the 1880s to the beginning of World War I. It's the era of Rousseau, Alfred Jarry, Apollinaire, and near the end, Picasso and Gertrude Stein. After I finish it I intend to re-read Stein's The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, since it describes events around this time. Powell's has just put up Edmund Wilson's 1933 review of the book on its web site. Go check it out.

I finally met Cory Arcangel and heard him perform with his sister Jamie. We got to see from home videos from their childhood, when they had a goth-ish/death metal band called "Insectiside". They did two songs live -- very cool stuff. Another highlight was a video of Jamie as a child, complete with knee pads and other 80s accoutrements, dancing to Vanilla Ice's, "Ice Ice Baby". There! Now you have that damn song running through your head too!

James already did all of the research and made nice links, so go see his post and photos.

--

Updated:

Here are some more photos -- link via Tom Moody.

The NY Times printed a letter today which talked about activists complaining that the cure for AIDS is too expensive, or being promoted too heavily. Did we find a cure and no one told me?

AIDS Is Not a Glamorous Disease (5 Letters)

To the Editor:

In the mid-1980's, the complaint was that a cure for AIDS was not being developed quickly enough. In the mid-90's, the complaint was that the cure was too expensive. Now Harvey Fierstein (Op-Ed, July 31) argues that the cure is promoted too aggressively. What are pharmaceutical companies to do? The wonder is that they have invested any money at all in trying to find a cure for an infection so "completely avoidable."

I am grateful that these companies have taken the financial risk and discovered treatments, however imperfect. Let them advertise any way they choose. The only people who believe that advertising can cause people to engage in risky behavior are the ad men themselves.

TED S. LEVY
Weston, Conn., July 31, 2003

Letter to the editor may be to letters@nytimes.com.

Pandagon follows the Gay Marriage And Kids debate to its logical conclusions.

Check out Free Williamsburg's article on the Chunkathalon.

I've deleted a few weblogs from my links page. I realized that some people I know actually link to A Small Victory, which is one of the more popular right-wing blogs it seems, despite her racism towards anyone who isn't Christian or Jewish. She's the kind of person who says racism or anti-semitism offends her, and then gladly keeps comments which talk about how Arabs are the scum of the earth and how the world would be better off if the Palestinians were all killed -- example.

Anyone linking to sites such as that one is now gone from the list.

I think I'll be staying inside, catching up with my Netflix queue. This is the current forecast on Yahoo! Weather:

Ayleen from the Portland Crew has posted some images from Chunkathalon 2003, including one you will not want to miss of Zach...

The Bush Administration's Top 40 Lies About War and Terrorism

Adam Felber asks us for help to save his marriage, which is threatened by the thought of it being a club that gay people might be allowed to join.

• See Phantom Arch show at White Columns -- today (August 2 until 6pm) is the last day
• See the Summer of HTML Tour concert at TEAM Gallery -- Sunday, August 3rd; 7:30pm-10pm

I posted a version of this in the comments on a friend's web log:

I think the thing people need to realize is that the people that end up at Harvey Milk are, as the administrators put it, ones "with a history." These are generally kids that have reached the point of being physically hurt, kicked out of their homes, etc. These aren't kids with a lot of options. In a perfect world we wouldn't need such schools, but to say that it is the duty of these vulnerable kids to change the world while those of us who are more privileged wait for a more pure solution is offensive. I am reminded of the idea that it is not the job of the oppressed to educate their oppressors.

Go read James's post on the subject. I think it's one of the best things he has ever written for his weblog.

For some statistics on gay youth and education, check out this PFLAG page.

--

Updated: Also see Steve Gilliard's post at Daily Kos.

Not only does Ireland allow homos to march in their St. Patrick's Day parades (unlike the one in NYC), the Irish government is now warning priests that they are subject to prosecution if they distribute the Vatican's anti-gay marriage document:

(Dublin) Priests and bishops are being warned by the Irish government that they face charges if they distribute the Vatican's denouncement of gay marriage.

The Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) said Friday that priests who quote sections of the document, hand it out, or send it to politicians or other citizens could be prosecuted under Ireland's strict incitement to hatred legislation.

The 12 page document released this week in seven languages describes gay marriage as "evil" and says "legal recognition of homosexual unions or placing them on the same level as marriage would mean not only the approval of deviant behavior." It also says that "Allowing children to be adopted by persons living in such unions would actually mean doing violence to these children.

That reminds me of something else. This document is coming from the Vatican's "Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith". I think all articles referring to this office need to refer to its previous name: The Roman Inquisition.

Larry Flynt wants to replace Davis as governor of California.