Lawrence O'Donnell's Brutal Parody Of Newt Gingrich's Affair Apology Interview (VIDEO)

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Haven't posted here in a LONG time, but wanted to capture this before it disappeared from the news blogs.

Glenn Beck-Laden

Taking Down NOM's Prop 8 Lies

Comedy Central Weighs-in After Prop 8 Reversed

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AND JUST IN FROM THE WINGNUT FACTION (and not at all surprising or unexpected), Four Times Married Drug Addict [Limbaugh] Objects To Overturn Of Proposition 8 (via Joe.My.God.) and Thrice-Married Serial Adulterer Newt Gingrich Is OUTRAGED About Prop 8 (via Joe.My.God.)

Restore some sanity, Jon!

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Guess Who Still Opposes Gay Marriage?

From the Left: If you guessed Maggie Gallagher, Tony Perkins, Rick Warren, Pat Robertson, Joyce Meyer, Billy Graham, Rush Limbaugh, Laura Schlessinger, Michael Savage, Sarah Palin, and John McCain, well, you would be partially correct.

Less than 24 hours after a Federal judge overturned Proposition 8, California’s gay marriage ban, President Obama dispatched White House spokesman David Axelrod to reassure the president’s Christian-base that while Mr. Obama opposed Proposition 8 as “divisive and mean spirited,” and he will “continue to promote equality,” just not equality that includes marriage equality.

Axelrod told MSNBC today:

“The president does oppose same-sex marriage, but he supports equality for gay and lesbian couples, and benefits and other issues, and that has been effectuated in Federal agencies under his control.”

Got that?

Sadly, overturning Proposition 8 did not change the president’s narrow mindedness on same-sex marriage, and frankly, I didn’t think it would and, I don’t fault him.

So I hope President Obama won’t fault me in 2012 when he asks for my time, money and vote in his bid for reelection and I am forced to decline his request. I’m through with the president’s fence straddling on LGBT rights. Especially, on the fundamental right of marriage equality.

LSB: Sadly, Mr. President, you can't count on me anymore either. The hypocrisy is staggering and intolerable. I'll be searching for a new candidate for the White House job in 2012.

Wiesenthal center opposes building mosque near Ground Zero because 'it's a cemetery,' but ok with Jewish museum on top of Muslim cemetery

John Aravosis, AmericaBlog.com: I'm neither Jewish nor Arab. And if anything, I've often tilted towards Israel in the Arab-Israeli conflict. But this debate over the mosque near Ground Zero sickens me. And what sickens me even more is civil rights groups siding with the likes of Newt Gingrich. Not only has the ADL come out against the mosque, because allegedly it might make people uncomfortable, but now the Wiesenthal Center is opposing the mosque too.

In a move one might call supremely ironic, the Wiesenthal Center opposes building the mosque near Ground Zero because, it now claims, the former site of the World Trade Center "is a cemetery." The irony comes from the fact that the Wiesenthal Center is currently building a new "Museum of Tolerance" in Jerusalem on top of an old Muslim cemetery, in spite of the complaints of Muslims who have family members buried there.

[F]ifteen of the oldest families in Jerusalem filed a case before the United Nations in Geneva and held news conferences there, also in Los Angeles and Jerusalem. Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University has members of his family buried there and calls it further desecration of a cemetry that they have been nibbling away at for over three decades, despite many protests. "the fact that it was desecrated in the ’60s doesn’t mean that it’s right to desecrate it further. What happened in the 1960s was that part of the cemetery was paved over for this parking lot. What they have now done is to dig down and disinter four layers, according to the chief archaeologist for the Israeli Archaeological Authority, four layers of graves."

Yes, a Jewish tolerance museum built on top of dead Muslims. Think that makes anyone uncomfortable?

Oh, and it's not like the museum is about promoting tolerance between Jews and Muslims. It's about promoting tolerance between Jews.

So, to summarize. Mosque near cemetery, bad. Jewish museum on top of cemetery, good.

Entire story, sick.

Ground Zero Mosque Opponents Must Not Have Heard About Muslims At The Pentagon. From Jason Linkins at HuffingtonPost.com: One of the best ways of demonstrating that the frantic slavering over "Ground Zero mosques" is nothing but a ridiculous display of pearl-clutchery is to point out that the proposed Cordoba House would actually be the second mosque in the vicinity of "Ground Zero." But over at Salon, Justin Elliott does me one better by unearthing this 2007 Washington Times article:

Navy imam Chaplain Abuhena M. Saifulislam lifted his voice to God as he called to prayer more than 100 Department of Defense employees Monday at a celebration of Ramadan at the Pentagon.

God is most great, sang the lieutenant commander and Islamic leader, in Arabic, as iftar -- the end of the daily fast began.

Uniformed military personnel, civilians and family members faced Mecca and knelt on adorned prayer rugs chanting their prayers in quiet invocation to Allah.

When it comes to Muslims praying at Ground Zero, it doesn't get much Ground Zeroier than that! As Elliott observes:

Yes, Muslims have infiltrated the Pentagon for their nefarious, prayerful purposes -- daring to practice their religion inside the building where 184 people died on Sept. 11, 2001. They haven't even had the sensitivity to move two blocks, let alone a mile, away from that sacred site.

Oh, my stars and garters! These Muslims at the Pentagon probably even have security clearances! (Because they are Department of Defense employees who protect America from al Qaeda death cultists, I'm guessing.)

Fox News Legal Analyst Calls For Indictments Of Dubya And Cheney

Joe.My.God.: Retired New Jersey Superior Court judge and current Fox News legal analyst Andrew Napolitano says that Dubya and Dick Cheney should be indicted for violations of habeas corpus.

LSB: Looks like somebody over at FAUX-News forgot to read the script... or maybe he's looking for the unemployment line! (Another lazy liberal look to suck off the teet of the working man? Because that $700/week can keep him in a lifestyle that... oh, who am I kidding?) Been saying these same things myself for years, but it is only a fantasy - a fantasy, that is, that doesn't keep your feet warm at night. Oh, well, it is still a nice fantasy.

Seven Things Republicans Were FOR Before They Were AGAINST Them

Jill Lawrence, PoliticsDaily.com: I happened to be in the room the day John Kerry said he had voted for a war funding bill before he voted against it. Republicans appropriated the sentence (uttered at a 2004 town hall for veterans in Huntington, W.Va.) and used it to paint Kerry as a flip-flopper. Six years later, it's a better fit for the GOP than it ever was for him.

So many Republicans have changed their ideas on so many major issues that it's hard to keep up. With the return of Congress this week, two of those issues – campaign finance disclosure and climate change – could play out in the Senate over the next month.

What accounts for the shifts? Evolving principles? Pressure from the right? Political Strategy 101, block Democrats and President Obama so they'll fail and look bad? Maybe a slightly more subtle approach -- find fatal flaws in a compromise that under other circumstances (say if a Republican president wanted it passed) you would support, on the theory that the perfect shouldn't be the enemy of the halfway decent or the baby step forward? All of the above? Here are seven reversals that hold clues:

1. Financial disclosure. Prominent Republicans have often made the case that transparency – not limits on campaign spending or contributions -- is the best antidote to corruption. "Republicans are in favor of disclosure," said Sen. Mitch McConnell on NBC's Meet The Press in 2000. Seven years later, on the same program, House GOP leader John Boehner declared: "Sunlight is the best disinfectant."

But Boehner voted no last month on the DISCLOSE Act, which requires corporations, unions and some other groups to disclose more information about their campaign activities. It also imposes new restrictions on campaign spending by foreign firms, large government contractors and companies that get taxpayer bailouts. Boehner has said the bill favors some groups over others and would "shred the Constitution." McConnell agrees.

"There clearly has been a change of heart," Ellen Miller, co-founder and executive director of The Sunlight Foundation, told me. She said Republicans are following the lead of the conservative majority on the Supreme Court, which has held that limits on spending are tantamount to limits on free speech. The result, she said, is a "knee-jerk political reaction to any attempts to disclose or regulate in any fashion the raising and spending of political money."

2. Cap-and-trade. Smithsonian magazine last year traced the history of cap-and-trade to a 1980s meeting of the minds between free-market conservatives and "renegade environmentalists." Their idea was to let companies buy and sell the right to pollute. The first Bush administration used such a system to reduce sulfur dioxide emissions from power plants, in order to reduce acid rain. Emissions trading, as it was called then, was seen from the start as a model for dealing with the larger problem of carbon emissions that contribute to global warming.

But Republicans now tar cap-and-trade as a job-killing "cap-and-tax" system. Rep. Mark Kirk of Illinois, running for the Senate, renounced his vote in favor of cap-and-trade in the House last year. Sen. John McCain of Arizona co-authored a pioneering cap-and-trade bill and introduced it in 2003, 2005 and 2007, then did an about-face last year. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina stepped in to help write an ambitious economy-wide cap-and-trade bill, but he too has walked away. Some Democrats are now aiming to cap carbon emissions from utilities only, and even that could be a heavy lift.

3. Immigration. McCain, Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy and President George W. Bush were the prime movers of comprehensive immigration reform in 2006. But Kennedy died, Bush left office and McCain has become a hard-liner as he fights a primary challenge from the right. The 2006 bill strengthened border security but also laid out a path to earned citizenship for some 12 million illegal immigrants already in the country. Obama said in a speech this month that "under the pressures of partisanship and election-year politics, many of the 11 Republican senators who voted for reform in the past have now backed away from their previous support."

The 11 Republicans who supported the 2006 bill and are still in the Senate are McCain, McConnell, Graham, Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, Richard Lugar of Indiana, Bob Bennett of Utah, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Olympia Snowe of Maine, Sam Brownback of Kansas and George Voinovich of Ohio. Obama had a message for them: "Without bipartisan support, as we had just a few years ago, we cannot solve this problem. Reform that brings accountability to our immigration system cannot pass without Republican votes. That is the political and mathematical reality."

4. Deficit spending. Republicans in the Senate have been holding up passage of emergency unemployment benefits for weeks because they want to offset the spending with budget cuts elsewhere. They are also loath to help states cope with rising Medicaid costs or avert mass layoffs of teachers, police and other employees, unless the money to offset the costs is found somewhere else. This call for discipline is a stark contrast to GOP actions during the Bush administration, when two wars, $1.3 billion in tax cuts and a major expansion of Medicare were financed with deficit spending (aka borrowing money).

Many Republicans now say they were wrong. But their timing suggests a double standard (okay to pay for Bush's priorities with borrowed money, but not Obama's). And the battle they have chosen to fight is puzzling. Even deficit hawks say that with more than 15 million unemployed, they're not worried about spending $34 billion for a benefits extension that's temporary and badly needed. As Robert Bixby, president of the anti-deficit Concord Coalition, memorably told The Boston Globe, "I just feel like unemployment benefits wandered onto the wrong street corner at the wrong time, and now they are getting mugged."

5. Bipartisan deficit-reduction commission established by Congress. This reversal early this year involved six Republican co-sponsors of such a commission who voted against their own Senate bill. The six were McCain, Brownback, Mike Crapo of Idaho, John Ensign of Nevada, Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas and James Inhofe of Oklahoma. McConnell had once supported the idea, but he too voted against it. The bill required an up-or-down vote on the commission recommendations. McConnell and others said they feared the panel might suggest raising taxes.

Obama quickly formed a bipartisan commission by using an executive order, and the hope is that Congress will adopt its consensus proposals. Co-chairman Alan Simpson, a former Republican senator from Wyoming, said it was "the saddest thing" to see "no" votes from senators who had fought for the congressional commission for years. "What was the purpose of that?" he asked at a bipartisan forum Sunday with several dozen governors. "As far as I can discern, it was to stick it to the president."

6. Individual insurance mandate. Conservatives and Republicans once favored a requirement that all or most people buy basic health insurance. Like cap-and-trade, it was conceived by free-market conservatives as a way to avoid harming the private sector. It also fit with conservative views of personal responsibility and the immorality of freeloading. In 1993, Republicans pushed it as an alternative to an employer mandate. Stuart Butler, a domestic policy expert at the Heritage Foundation, described the individual mandate in 2003 as a necessary part of a "social contract." Republican Mitt Romney signed a health law with a mandate in 2006, when he was governor of Massachusetts.

Now, however, Republican governors and attorneys general are suing the federal government over the individual mandate in the new health law, saying it is unconstitutional. Romney says the federal government has no right to impose such a plan on all states. Butler told me that experience in the last seven years with the federal employee health benefits system and with auto-enrollment (you're enrolled at work or school unless you opt out) suggests the requirement is not necessary to achieve a stable health insurance system with broadly shared risks. Obama's campaign position was similar, but health experts later changed his mind.

7. Medicare spending curbs. Democrats have financed their new health law in part by planning on nearly $500 billion in Medicare savings over the next 10 years. The proposal provoked months of attacks from Republicans. That was a dizzying role reversal from the days when Republicans used to recommend the same types of reductions in future Medicare spending (and had to play defense against attacks from Obama and other Democrats, now having their own role reversal).

In 1995, for instance, Republicans proposed cutting $270 billion over seven years. In 1997, McConnell and McCain were among the Republicans voting for a Balanced Budget Act that cut Medicare by $115 billion over five years. And in his 2008 presidential campaign, McCain proposed combined Medicare and Medicaid cuts of $1.3 trillion over 10 years. Yet last year, as he neared a re-election campaign in a state full of retirees, McCain led the fight against the Democrats' plans to trim Medicare.

Seven issues, scores of lawmakers, an epidemic of head-slapping and re-thinking that corresponds to Obama's tenure and the rise of the Tea Party movement. Coincidence? Doubtful. Principles are in the mix, for sure, but nobody should mistake where they are sitting in the car. That would be the back seat, with politics at the wheel.

Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ): Extend Bush Tax Cuts For Wealthy Even If They Add To Deficit

Sam Stein, HuffingtonPost.com: Top Senate Republican Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) insisted on Sunday that Congress should extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans regardless of their impact on the deficit, even as he and other Republicans are blocking unemployment insurance extensions over deficit concerns. [LSB: Emphasis added]

"[Y]ou should never raise taxes in order to cut taxes," said the Arizona Senator during an appearance on Fox News Sunday. "Surely Congress has the authority, and it would be right to -- if we decide we want to cut taxes to spur the economy, not to have to raise taxes in order to offset those costs. You do need to offset the cost of increased spending, and that's what Republicans object to. But you should never have to offset cost of a deliberate decision to reduce tax rates on Americans."

White House aides immediately seized on the comments. Press Secretary Robert Gibbs wrote on Twitter, "Kyl says wealthy need big Bush tax cuts while middle class families are on their own to fend for themselves as a result of Bush economy."

In private, administration officials say that the framing of the argument couldn't be more advantageous: "It's cutting taxes for the wealthy and letting the unemployed to fend for themselves," said one White House ally.

"If all of this has a familiar ring to it, it's because unpaid for tax cuts for the rich at the expense of working people is the same backward policy Republicans used to put the nation in this hole, and it's the same policy they promise to return to if put in a position of power again," added Hari Sevugan, press secretary for the Democratic National Committee.



Asked to expand on his tweets, Gibbs declined comment, save to clarify that "the question [host Chris] Wallace specifically asked Kyl was [about] the upper end of the Bush tax cuts (above $250,000)."

But the politics already are fairly obvious. For the past few months, congressional Republicans have demanded that any additional spending be offset by budget cuts or revenue increases elsewhere. Also on Sunday, White House senior adviser David Axelrod blamed deficit concerns for the difficulty in finding a 60th vote in the Senate for unemployment benefits even though, as of Friday, 2.1 million people have not received checks that they were expecting in June.

And yet, Kyl is now suggesting that the same budget rules shouldn't apply with respect to tax cuts for the wealthy, which are set to expire unless Congress acts to renew them. As Steve Benen at the Washington Monthly notes:

It's quite a message to Americans: Republicans believe $30 billion for unemployment benefits don't even deserve a vote because the money would be added to the deficit, but Republicans also believe that adding the cost of $678 billion in tax cuts for the wealthy to the deficit is just fine.

The chart below shows the deficit impact of the Bush tax cuts over the next decade.

GOP Agenda To Be Shaped By Lobbyists: Least Surprising News Ever

Jason Linkins, HuffingtonPost.com: Just over a week ago, MSNBC's Joe Scarborough touched off a mini-media firestorm when he discussed how often Republicans on Capitol Hill tell him that House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio; bobble-head at left) "is not a hard worker," and is "disengaged," and "does not have a work ethic."

Boehner's spokesman Michael "Not To Be Confused With The Other Michael Steele" Steel, shot back by pointing out how hard Boehner worked at partying hard, with mega-donors (and successfully so: raising $117,000 per event).

All of which raised the question as to how hard Boehner was willing to work to actually craft a policy agenda for the GOP to maybe run on, in 2010. Well, as it turns out, that's precisely the area where all the disengagement and lack of a work ethic comes into play. But never fear! Boehner has outsourced this responsibility to heroic lobbyists, who will create the agenda for him, just as they do for everybody!

Per Roll Call:

House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Rep. Peter Roskam (R-Ill.) have invited senior Republican lobbyists and top officials from several large trade groups to the Capitol next week to provide their suggestions for a new GOP agenda.

The meeting is part of the House leaders' initiative called America Speaking Out, which is intended to draw broad input to create a new policy agenda for the party to launch in the fall.

An e-mail invitation sent to more than 20 trade representatives and obtained by Roll Call summoned guests to Boehner's second-floor office on July 16 "to discuss House Republican efforts to produce a new policy agenda with a small group of trade association leaders."

As ThinkProgress points out, this is all pretty much par for the course:

As the Wonk Room's Pat Garofalo has documented, congressional Republicans have "organized a pow-wow with lobbyists in order to devise a strategy" for nearly every piece of major legislation over the past year, from health care reform, to Wall Street reform, to climate change, to a jobs bill.

LSB: SSDD. Isn't it this kind of bobble-headed thinking that got us into some of the financial troubles we're in already? Haven't we learned that a separate watchdog on some of these institutions is a good thing?

BREAKING: Section 3 of DOMA found unconstitutional, violates equal protection

Denise Lavoie, HuffingtonPost.com: A U.S. judge in Boston has ruled that a federal gay marriage ban is unconstitutional because it interferes with the right of a state to define marriage.

U.S. District Judge Joseph Tauro on Thursday ruled in favor of gay couples' rights in two separate challenges to the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, known as DOMA.

The state had argued the law denied benefits such as Medicaid to gay married couples in Massachusetts, where same-sex unions have been legal since 2004.

Tauro agreed, and said the act forces Massachusetts to discriminate against its own citizens.

"The federal government, by enacting and enforcing DOMA, plainly encroaches upon the firmly entrenched province of the state, and in doing so, offends the Tenth Amendment. For that reason, the statute is invalid," Tauro wrote in a ruling in a lawsuit filed by Attorney General Martha Coakley.

Ruling in a separate case filed by Gays & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders, Tauro found that DOMA violates the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution.

"We've maintained from the very beginning that there was absolutely no basis for this law treating one class of married Massachusetts couples different from everybody else and the court has recognized that," said Gary Buseck, GLAD's legal director.

The Justice Department argued the federal government has the right to set eligibility requirements for federal benefits – including requiring that those benefits only go to couples in marriages between a man and a woman.

The law was enacted by Congress in 1996 when it appeared Hawaii would soon legalize same-sex marriage and opponents worried that other states would be forced to recognize such marriages. The lawsuit challenges only the portion of the law that prevents the federal government from affording pension and other benefits to same-sex couples.

Since then, five states and the District of Columbia have legalized gay marriage.

Joe Sudbay, AmericaBlog.com: Historic day for LGBT equality. Finally. We needed a win for a change.

A Federal District Court Judge in Massachusetts ruled in two DOMA cases today. In Gill v. OPM, brought by GLAD, the judge ruled:

In the wake of DOMA, it is only sexual orientation that differentiates a married couple entitled to federal marriage-based benefits from one not so entitled. And this court can conceive of no way in which such a difference might be relevant to the provision of the benefits at issue. By premising eligibility for these benefits on marital status in the first instance, the federal government signals to this court that the relevant distinction to be drawn is between married individuals and unmarried individuals. To further divide the class of married individuals into those with spouses of the same sex and those with spouses of the opposite sex is to create a distinction without meaning. And where, as here, “there is no reason to believe that the disadvantaged class is different, in relevant respects” from a similarly situated class, this court may conclude that it is only irrational prejudice that motivates the challenged classification. As irrational prejudice plainly never constitutes a legitimate government interest, this court must hold that Section 3 of DOMA as applied to Plaintiffs violates the equal protection principles embodied in the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

In a case brought by the Attorney General of Massachusetts, the Judge found that Section 3 of DOMA violated the Tenth Amendment.

I've posted the decisions at AMERICAblogGay.com. In the Gill decision, the Judge concluded, "DOMA fails to pass constitutional muster even under the highly deferential rational basis test." That is a highly deferential test. So, there was no rational basis for the law.

The Judge included this explanation of Section 3 of DOMA:

At issue in this case is Section 3 of DOMA, which defines the terms “marriage” and “spouse,” for purposes of federal law, to include only the union of one man and one woman. In particular, it provides that:

In determining the meaning of any Act of Congress, or of any ruling, regulation, or
interpretation of the various administrative bureaus and agencies of the United States, the word “marriage” means only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife, and the word “spouse” refers only to a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or wife.

Today, we celebrate. But, this is only the beginning of the process. We'll have to find out if the Obama administration plans to appeal these rulings. (Note to Obama administration: Please don't.)

Mixner: Time Is Running Out and Five Suggestions For Change

David Mixner, DavidMixner.com: Even for the watered-down and questionably useful compromise on DADT, time is running out. Congress will come back in session and be on a fast track to recess as soon as possible in this volatile election year. With analysts like Charlie Cook predicting that the House of Representatives might go Republican, Democrats will be even more leery of taking on anything that smacks of risks. Once they adjourn for recess, my guess is that they will meet only briefly after Labor Day.

This much we know: ENDA is dead for this year and if you believe Congressman Jackie Spiers, it is dead for at least five years. The repeal of DOMA has seen almost no action. We were taken out of the healthcare legislation. Most likely we will be taken out of the Immigration Reform legislation in the name of 'a greater good.' DADT is increasingly looking grim with passage of even the compromise in question. The list of bad news can go on and on.

The only question that needs to be answered "Is this acceptable to us two years into the Obama term?" And if not, how do we change tactics or escalate our actions in order to not leave our freedom in the hands of those who have chosen not to battle for them? Here are some ideas to consider:

1. STOP ENABLING: Anyone who has been even near a recovery program knows that the worst action a friend can take to someone who can't seem to 'get it together' is to enable them by explaining away their actions. Tough love is required from the LGBT community toward the Democratic party. No more 'understanding' why they have put us on the back burner yet one more time. No more explaining by our national organizations why with 58 Democratic Senators, a Democratic House and a liberal Democratic President we have failed after all this time to move on the 'Big Three.' No more taking a tough line rhetorically and then telling them all is forgiven by giving them money, resources and praise. We have to stop giving them permission to hurt and disappoint us time and time again.

2. DEMAND STOP LOSS: The President has the power today to issue a 'stop-loss' order until a military report is issued and the process to officially end DADT is begun. After all, they all say it is a given that it is over so lets not destroy anyone else's lives or dreams because the political timing is not right.

3. JUSTICE AT JUSTICE DEPARTMENT: The Department of Justice has been a hostile place for the LGBT agenda. They have spent more time fighting our rights in court than defending them. While looking for ways to intervene in Arizona, they have not even attempted to be part of the Proposition 8 case. Surely, Attorney General Eric Holder can find ways to help with the vast organization he has at his disposal. His refusing to take a stand in Maine the week before the vote was unforgivable.

4. MAKE WAY FOR NEW WAYS: Clearly the 'pretty please lobbying' we have be doing is simply not working. Never will we have better margins in Congress than we have had the last two years and we are ending up with almost nothing. We need to embrace new groups, new ways, and new ideas. Failing institutions should be held accountable and those who are pushing for full equality should be celebrated and supported. Organizations like Get Equal and the new exciting Friend Factor offer alternative tactics to support our traditional ways of organizing and demanding full equality.

5. PRACTICE POLITICAL TOUGH LOVE: Every two years they throw the 'we are better than the other guys' and imply that if we don't support people in the Democratic party who haven't supported us then we will be the ones responsible for any conservative victory. Bull! It is their lack of courage, inability to lead and tepid inspiration that have created their own political fate. We must no longer support anyone who is not for full equality and that includes marriage equality. No longer support political committees that give money to those who vote against us. We must seek out those candidates who do support full equality (and there are a huge number these days) and give them our support. We also must be willing to support primaries in the future against those within the Democratic party who don't support us.