Month: May 2006

In between saving us all from hell-fire, Senator Rick Santorum has been extremely cosy with lobbyists; and they have been remarkably generous to him. In fact, Santorum has the honor of being the senator with the most money donated to his campaigns by lobbyists of various sorts. Money quote:

Looking at those four election cycles from 1998 through 2004, Public Citizen found that the Pa. Republican had raked in $1,163,560 from registered lobbyists – $838,133 from individuals, and $325,427 from their political action committees.
That puts Santorum in an elite club. Only four members have raised more than $1 million from lobbyists during that period — the one who raked in the most, former Democratic Senate Leader Tom Daschle, with $1,687,721, was booted out of office by South Dakota voters in 2004.

The only thing worse than the Christianists’ sanctimony is their graft. In the current election cycle, Santorum is still the Number One lobbyist favorite. Runner-up? Hillary. Why am I not surprised?

I’m not a fan of peering into other people’s relationships. I’m of the view that only the people in the relationship really understand it, and often they don’t. Still, no marriage has generated as much political and cultural buzz over the years as the Clintons’ – and they have all but insisted we analyze it. My question re: 2008 – do we really want to go back there? There are all sorts of reasons to oppose Hillary for the Democratic nomination: her transparent opportunism, her polarizing effect on the country, the money she will raise for the Christianist right, her likely loss, etc. But the prospect of revisiting the gruesome details of Bill’s private life for another election cycle, let alone a term in office, is just too hideous to contemplate. When you recall what he got up to as president, can you imagine the attention-seeking shenanigans he’d pursue if he were First Husband? They love their psycho-drama. And they’re entitled to it. Just leave us out of it this time, ok?

Phoenix, Arizona, afternoon, during a dust storm. Keep ’em coming.

The International Herald Tribune has another, more comprehensive survey of what the new search features reveal. Money quote:

While Google emphasizes that its efforts to protect individuals’ privacy, the new site does nothing to protect the collective privacy of nations, if such a thing exists – the right of the British to conceal that they look up "handcuffs" most often, or the right of China’s leaders to hide that Mandarin ranks second only to English as the language used to look up "democracy," or the right of other officials to hide that Arabic-speaking users rarely look up "democracy."

The Saudis, meanwhile, are obsessed with gay sex. No surprise there.

(Hat tip: GayBlog.)

Sunnyvale, California, 6:52 pm.

A reader writes:

More with those window views! – maybe a weekly feature? There’s something about having the worldwide anonymous online world get placed – can’t put it into words, but it makes me happy.

Certainly not a weekly feature. But I agree. This online world can get pretty abstract. It’s good to add some sense of somewhere. I should apologize for the fact that, simply because of the hundreds of photos I’ve received, I can only publish a fraction unless I surrender the whole site to the slide-show. My aim is to post five a day through the weekend.

Republican candidates increasingly try to insulate themselves from the president.

His own, of course.

One of the interesting developments in the battle for marriage equality has been the increasing involvement of religious groups – in favor of the reform. Many churches and synagogues now have same-sex commitment ceremonies; and many people of faith believe that gay couples are just as deserving of God’s love as straight couples. Money quote from a related story in the NYT today:

"When one group is singled out for discrimination, it’s not long before other groups will be singled out, too," said Rabbi Craig Axler of Congregation Beth Or in Maple Glen, Pa. "It’s the first time we see the Constitution in danger of enshrining discrimination against one party, one class, and to remain silent as a Jew is unconscionable."

It’s no coincidence, I think, that Jews remain the ethnic group most supportive of gay dignity and equality.

"The Da Vinci Code is fiction. In real life, a multi-year cover-up at the highest levels of the Roman Catholic Church of horrible crimes by the leader of a major religious order affiliated with reactionary politics simply couldn’t happen. Could it?" – Mark Kleiman, yesterday.

I notice that, like many pieces of news that help expose the rotten core of theoconservatism, National Review has yet to mention that one of its favorite Catholic prelates, Father Maciel, protected by their favorite pope, John Paul II, has just been acknowledged as a sexual abuser – by the Vatican. At least Neuhaus felt the need to say something.