If You Build It, They Will Come.

670 miles of the Border Fence are due to be completed by the end of the year.

Guess who's probably essential to meeting that deadline?

Shocking News Headline of the Day...

...from today's New York Times:

Gay Couples Find Marriage Is a Mixed Bag

The lede:

Four years after Massachusetts became the first state to allow gay couples to marry, there have been blissful unions, painful divorces and everything in between...

It's part one of a groundbreaking investigate series that shows how different gay people are from the rest of us. A friend in the media forwarded me the titles of the other articles in the series:

Gallup Poll: Some Gay People Don't Like their Jobs

Gay Airline Passengers Annoyed about Fees to Check Luggage

Gay Drivers Don't Like Paying Higher Gas Prices

Gay Fans Annoyed at Six-Month Wait for Second Half of Final Season of Battlestar Galactica.

Some Hillary Supporters Might Vote for McCain

Slate's XX Factor explains their reasoning:

The decision to defect to McCain has nothing to do with Hillary as a woman or Obama's personality. They like Obama enough as a person, but they think he's an empty suit—rhetoric with little record behind it. Even if they agree more with Obama's positions, it seems risky to put such an inexperienced person in the White House...

I can see their point. Can you imagine a president with only a few years in Congress under his belt, whose political experience is mostly from serving in the Illinois state legislature?



It boggles the mind.

Through the Looking Glass

This headline from the good people at Reuters:

Baptists reluctantly embrace "liberal" McCain

The article included this choice quote Fairfield, Texas churchgoer Jodie Sanders: "It's basically a choice between a liberal and an ultra-liberal."

Apparently what damns McCain in Baptist eyes is his support for finding ways that microscopic pieces of tissue can be used to cure cancer and Parkinson's diseases. We can't have that, can we? Oh--and let's not forget immigration reform. The McCain-Kennedy Immigration Reform bill was pretty scary stuff: I mean, my God--amnesty for people who have committed the heinous crime of working in this country, building our houses and harvesting the food we eat? Madness. And let's not forget the bill included a section entitled Relief for Children and Widows. I can see why churchgoers would be against that.

But seriously, the Southern Baptist Convention is a denomination that has been on the wrong side of every major social and political issue since 1845. It was actually founded to be on the wrong side of a social issue: slavery. Ever since--African-American rights, workers' rights, womens' rights--the SBC has chosen (with a consistency bordering on perverse genius) the politically regressive and ethically wrong side of every possible political conflict. Quite a record for a church.

I suppose veering from such a straight and narrow path is all it takes to make a liberal these days.