GOP-led House takes a new shot at gay marriage

Hmm. Interesting.

From MSNBC:

WASHINGTON - The Republican-led House voted Thursday to prevent federal courts from ordering states to recognize gay marriages sanctioned by other states.

Congress wants to strip jurisdiction from the courts? Have they ever done that before? Can they do that? My uneducated guess is that it's not meant as serious legislation, just a way of getting on the record.

Tempest in a teapot

Amplification on the very strange Linda Ronstadt story of recent days, from the Las Vegas Review-Journal (registration required):

Some concertgoers took issue with the Aladdin's accounts of angry patrons tearing down posters and throwing drink cups.

'I was so stunned to read in the newspaper that anyone had a negative reaction,' said KLAS-TV, Channel 8, news anchor Paula Francis. 'Everyone who was leaving when I was leaving was just thrilled. They thought it was a good concert.'

Of course, it's good that they have a quote from someone who attended the concert, but why would they quote a presumably prominent employee of a competing news gathering organization?

Nonetheless, I guess all is not as the extremely cursory reports that made it into the national media would have you believe. From this story, it seems clear that Ronstadt has no love for the Aladdin historically. I also gather from the story that Ronstadt's been dedicating "Desperado" to Michael Moore during the whole tour, and the reporter seemed to take her comment "I keep hoping that if I'm annoying enough to them, they won't hire me back," as a joke (though maybe with some serious intent).

And nobody asked me, but to expel Ronstadt from the hotel without even allowing her to return to her suite seems needlessly petty–if that's not a tautology–or worse.

Box turtles?

Senator John Cornyn of Texas on gay marriage, in a speech to the Heritage Foundation:

"It does not affect your daily life very much if your neighbor marries a box turtle. But that does not mean it is right. . . . Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife."

[Note: Cornyn's office says that this remark appeared in the written text of the speech but wasn't included in the speech as delivered.]

Golly, what is this thing some people have about animals? It's a persistent theme in the rhetoric of gay-marriage opponents, and it's just a teeny bit unnerving. And of course, there's a fallacy inherent in comparing relationships between legal persons and relationships between a legal person and something else.

At least Cornyn isn't quite claiming that gay marriage necessarily leads to box-turtle marriage.

Somebody else has crappy documentation, too.

From JohnEklund.com, verbiage from a foosball table assembly guide: "'Happily insert slot A into screw B using socket in toe.'"

Several entries later, Eklund coins the word "underexaggerate." Which is one of those terms like "unscented deodorant" that kinda makes my head hurt to think about.

Ooh, right, that is so going to work...

From CNN.com: UN takes aim at spam epidemic. "The United Nations is aiming to bring a 'modern day epidemic' of junk e-mail under control within the next two years by standardizing legislation around the world to make it easier to prosecute, a leading expert said Tuesday."