Charity suggestions

Most of us are about to get a fairly hefty check from the government as an "economic stimulus." Personally, I think they money could have been better spent on, say, a major public works project in New Orleans, but hey, you work with the economy you have, not the one you'd have had if Gore had been elected you wish you had.

So my options are pretty much: save it, spend it, or give it away. I could save it, sure. Spending it means basically buying stuff made in China. So I'm thinking about giving a big chunk of it away, but I'm not sure where to. Can anyone suggest any worthy charities?

On the other hand, I'm also thinking about buying a Wii.

UPDATE: I guess I should have said some of the charities I had in mind already. My list now includes: Human Rights Campaign, Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, The Wounded Warriors Project, America's Second Harvest, Planned Parenthood, Electronic Frontier Foundation, ACLU, the Democratic National Committee, and probably one or two others I can't think of right now. I think two or three, at most, is what I need to decide on. Thanks for your suggestions.

Calm down, the queer sky is not falling

Glenn Greenwald has an insightful-as-usual post up about the California gay marriage ruling. He basically points out that the CA Supreme Court's recent ruling basically requiring CA's civil unions to be now made equal marriages is fully in accordance with CA law and the state constitution. His points are:

1. As the court found, this ruling must be based on California law and the California Constitution, not whether or not you think gay marriage in CA should or should not be legal
2. This ruling is not in violation of the "will of the people." He points out that the CA legislature has, not once, but twice approved a gay marriage bill vetoed by the governor, who said that the issue must be settled by the CA Supreme Court.
3. The ruling doesn't legalize gay marriage. It just says that separate-but-equal civil unions are unconstitutional.
4. Lastly, he predicts all sort of ignorant and hystical political overreaction to this ruling from the right-wingnuts.

So, let's look for the hysteria.

World Nut Daily quoting some hate-filled preacher:

Now activist judges are overruling the will of the people...

Of course, to get to the really good stuff, you have to head over to Free Republic:

Queerly beloved in the land of fruit, nuts and cereal.

Sodom, Gomorrah and Kalifornia too!

I’d say the odds of the Next “ Big One “ just shot off the charts..

We need a Federal Marriage Amendment to the Constitution to end this judicial tyranny.

I’m going to marry my gun and take it everywhere I go.

And that's not the bad stuff. These people really have a fascination with bestiality and incest:

And now you can marry the Sheep of your choice, because to prohibit such would of course be a violation of your right to Equal Protection of the Laws.

There is no argument for gay marriage that does not equally support marriage between two people who are already related by blood.

If the legislature now strikes “between a man and a woman” and does not replace it with something like “between one human and another” things will get interesting.

remember their argum,ent is they love each other ... well you can love a sheep

so by that logic marriage could be anything people marrying animals, as what as happened elsewhere in the world namely India [WTF?] we can have more than one wife or husband Kids as young 5 could get married

That's from the first 100 postings on Free Republic. There are over five hundred more. Republicans disgust me. I'm going to go shower now.

Our Brave New World x3

The things that are happening around us, in our names, are just becoming too numerous to even pay attention to. So here are just three things I think are important enough you should pay attention to:

1) On being ashamed of one's country at Balkanization: An innocent Italian man is disappeared into our new immigration obliettes.

2) Attempt at Show Trials--US Military--And Why it Failed also at Balkinization: The (a?) Chief Prosecutor of the Guantanamo military tribunals had to resign in protest at the political maneuvering and manipulation of the process. The judge had to remove one of the Legal Advisors from the case and ordered the DoD not to persecute any of the prosecuters for objecting to his manipulations.

3) Lastly, Glenn Greenwald links to a briefing given to the Pentagon's TV military analysts about abuses witnessed by the FBI at Guantanamo:

In GTMO, that translated into ... strip search[es] for control measures and he was forced to perform dog tricks on a leash.

Christ. What the fuck is this country coming to?

It's only a matter of time

Just how long do you think it will be before some preacher somewhere attributes the Myanmar cyclone and the Chinese earthquake to some sin or another, or the fact that those countries are not primarily Christian? I give it maybe a week.

Weird emails

I occasionally get misdirected emails. My name is a combination of a fairly common first and last one, so people often mistype what they meant and get me. This is one of the weirder ones I've gotten lately.

To: me
Subject: AK-47

This is X, if you dont have my email address. So im starting to think about accesorizing my AK. When you come home before graduation can you help me take it apart and clean everything on it? I havent even done that yet. I know and can see that there are not very many parts to it but I dont know much about it and dont want to screw anything up on it.

I just hope me posting this email doesn't make him angry. After all, I know he's armed.