Dirac Angestun Gesept

A reservist in Iraq explains why you should vote. Not how, why.

Read this.

San Francisco is going to a ranked-choice voting system (instant runoff), according to this AP wire story.

Good for them!

Bad for AP, which did a “you forgot Poland”:

• “San Francisco is the first U.S. city where a multiple-choice system is being tried on a grand scale.” Well, except for Cambridge, which has been using the similar Single Transferable Vote system for years for the City Council and School Committee; there are no other city elected offices.
• “If no candidate secures a majority of first-place votes outright, the results will be retabulated to include the second and third picks until a winner can be declared — a process that could take weeks.” It didn’t take weeks even when Cambridge did hand-counts!

I’d be interested to hear from any San Francisco folks about how this works out, how they feel about it, etc.

Representative Edward Markey (D-MA) has sponsored H.R.5296, a bill to allow members of the armed forces who are wounded in combat to continue to receive their combat pay and similar bonuses during their recovery.

Sounds like the sort of thing that the “Support Our Troops” GOP should be all for, right?

Here’s the cosponsor list, with my addition of their party affiliations:

Rep Baca, Joe [CA-43] - 10/8/2004 [D] Rep Delahunt, William D. [MA-10] - 10/8/2004 [D] Rep Evans, Lane [IL-17] - 10/8/2004 [D] Rep Filner, Bob [CA-51] - 10/8/2004 [D] Rep Frank, Barney [MA-4] - 10/8/2004 [D] Rep Gutierrez, Luis V. [IL-4] - 10/8/2004 [D] Rep Hoeffel, Joseph M. [PA-13] - 10/8/2004 [D] Rep Kildee, Dale E. [MI-5] - 10/8/2004 [D] Rep Larsen, Rick [WA-2] - 10/8/2004 [D] Rep Majette, Denise L. [GA-4] - 10/8/2004 [D] Rep Maloney, Carolyn B. [NY-14] - 10/8/2004 [D] Rep McDermott, Jim [WA-7] - 10/8/2004 [D] Rep McGovern, James P. [MA-3] - 10/8/2004 [D] Rep Tierney, John F. [MA-6] - 10/8/2004 [D] Rep Van Hollen, Chris [MD-8] - 10/8/2004 [D] Rep Wexler, Robert [FL-19] - 10/8/2004 [D]

Bill status? Referred to not one but two committees.

Compare to the fact that George W. Bush has not had to veto any bills during his entire administration. Note that this means that, as Peter Canellos puts it, “he’s working so closely with leaders of Congress that little has gone through without his preapproval.”

If he really wants to help support our troops, this bill will clear committee in no time, with plenty of GOP co-sponsors. Anyone want to bet that will happen?

Allowing same-sex marriages will not make more people gay.

There’s only one governmental action that can make more people gay: reinstating the draft.

Imagine how many people will discover their new sexual orientation when that happens!

In an op-ed for the New York Times, Scott Dadich compares compares the Bush-Cheney and Kerry-Edwards logos with a graphic designer’s eye, including comments on the typography.

A typical Kerry logo displays the same inconsistency that his opponents accuse him of. A steady visual message requires the consistent use of the same font over and over again. On a typical drive to work, I encounter no fewer than five typefaces used in as many different Kerry-Edwards logos.

Fun for type geeks.

Justice Ian Binnie, of the Canadian Supreme Court, in response to arguments by opponents of same-sex marriage, had a lovely rejoinder.

One lawyer said marriage pre-dates the constitution. “This is not a creature of statute.” Justice Ian Binnie pointed out that the divine right of kings had been around for a long time. “Why is it that the divine right of kings has to give way to constitutional change but marriage doesn’t?”

We went to see Tying the Knot today. It does a very good job of showing the price real couples pay for the lack of civil marriage rights, counters the usual arguments against (including a point-by-point comparison between anti-miscegenation arguments and the current anti-same-sex-marriage arguments), and includes discussion of the history of marriage and how it’s not the “immutable institution” that the anti folks like to pretend it is.

I encourage anyone in areas where it’s showing this week to see this movie, especially if you (or someone you can convince to come along) is on the fence on this issue. I hope that it can get the visibility it deserves and show people why this is an important civil rights issue.

Info on showings.

The “compassionate conservatives” in the Republican-controlled Congress want to be able to deport people, on suspicion alone (in other words, at Ashcroft’s whim) to countries that will torture them, unless of course the prospective deportee can manage to prove that they’ll be tortured.

Obsidian Wings has the details on this work toward legalizing torture here.

Anyone else think this might be a little more important than one news organization and their issues with memos?

Buyers get holiday from sales tax on Saturday

The money quote from this Globe article:

”Any purchase that would be worth the savings in sales tax would be a large-ticket item, and that savings is not going to factor into my buying decision,” said Regina Caggiano of Woburn. ”Large-ticket items are not impulse buys. You determine if you need it, why you want it, how much you want to spend — and then you go to New Hampshire to get it.”

So the net effect will be to depress gas sales and New Hampshire retail this weekend, I guess.

These three appeared side-by-side in my RSS reader, and the juxtaposition just required a blog entry.

Choir chief fired for backing gay marriage

Or, according to the pastor, for claiming that half the congregation agreed with him. In any case, not a First Amendment case per se, but a freedom of speech issue.

Man defends spreading manure at gay parade

According to Wesley Bono, dumping cow manure in front of a gay couple’s home and spreading it along two city streets is just exercising his First Amendment right to protest.

Husband arrested for murder of his missing wife

A shining advertisement for the folks who want to restrict marriage only to opposite-sex couples, since only such a restriction could prevent anti-family activities like lying about enrolling in medical school.