Daily Archives: April 18, 2009

My Home State Shows Up Texas: Gay Marriage Bill Unveiled by African American Governor

As expected, New York Gov. David Paterson (D) unveiled legislation Thursday morning to allow same-sex couples to marry in the Empire State.

Standing beside New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg (R), openly gay Council Speaker Christine Quinn (D) and state leaders and union leaders, Paterson said “Marriage equality is about basic civil rights and freedom. That is why we stand together today to embrace civil rights for every New Yorker.”

Paterson’s bill would amend the domestic relations law allowing civil marriages between same-sex couples, and he called on the Legislature to approve the bill.

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Where have all the ducklings gone??

Or, more exactly, where are they all going to go during the next two or three months?

I’m sitting here between a large frozen lake and a small “pond” (connected to the lake with a channel) that has patches of open water on it. (The melting on the pond is probably because the bioactivity at the bottom of the pond increases water temperature.) There is a pair of mallards on the pond, and I expect that in a few weeks there will be two or three mallards and three or for mergansers, all females, and each with between six and 12 or so ducklings. These 60 ducklings will initially hang out only with their mothers, but as time goes by the mothers will overlap their feeding territories and night time roosts, and the ducklings will start to form a creche. It is even possible for a multispecies creche to form.
Continue reading Where have all the ducklings gone??

An important deduction regarding the Minnesota Senate recount

Eric Black of MinnPost Dot Com has made an interesting observation. Last week the three judge panel charged with hearing Norm Coleman’s “Election Contest” (that’s a thing … an election contest is a kind of suit claiming that an election did not go properly) finished their job. They ruled against some of Coleman’s claims, but they did count extra ballots as Colman had insisted. That addition of new ballots — all absentee ballots — resulted in Franken’s lead growing.

From that ruling, the plaintiff has ten days to file an appeal to the Minnesota Supreme Court. The appeal itself is a simple form. This is the sort of thing that would be ready in advance to hand over to the court right after the final ruling of the case being finished.

But, Norm Coleman has not yet filed the appeal.

There are several possible reasons for this unusual behavior, including:

Continue reading An important deduction regarding the Minnesota Senate recount

Tennessee (Texas like) = McCarthyistic Anti-Gay Book Banning

As many as 107 Tennessee public school districts could be illegally preventing students from accessing online information about lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues, according to a letter to sent to school officials by the American Civil Liberties Union.

The letter demands that Knox County Schools, Metro Nashville Public Schools, and the Tennessee Schools Cooperative unblock the Internet filtering category designated “LGBT” so that students can access political and educational information about LGBT issues on school computers.

read about it here