Critical Exponent

A cool site! that draws on blogs from all over the net…

Slate has a good piece debunking conservatives’ arguments that hate crime laws are an infringement on free speech:

The basis of hate-crime legislation is the enhancement of penalties for conduct that is already criminal.

As if we need further proof that some people miss the point of what religion can be about, Anglican leaders, meeting in Northern Ireland, have called on the US and Canadian Anglicans to withdraw from the Anglican Consultative Council until 2008, making these churches no longer full members of the Anglican family.

Here’s the clincher:

The Northern Ireland meeting had been meant as a chance to talk about a range of issues, including HIV/Aids and poverty, and it did spend some time doing so.

But most of it was taken up with debating the Windsor report, set up by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, to try to resolve the crisis over homosexuality in the church.

Now we know. What would Jesus do? He would spend valuable time deciding how to shun his fellow man rather than alleviating the hardships that affect the masses.

At a President’s Day party in Spartanburg County, SC, Mitt Romney once again spoke out against gay marriage: “It’s not right on paper. It’s not right in fact. “

The Boston Globe has something to say about this little road show:

If Romney thinks he can build a presidential candidacy by belittling his own constituents, he is likely misjudging the 6 million Americans he has already been elected to serve and the national audience he is now courting.

The Boston Globe reports:

Approximately 757 out of 9,488 soldiers discharged for being gay between fiscal years 1994 and 2003 were trained in “critical occupations, identified by [the Department of Defense] as those occupations worthy of selective reenlistment bonuses,” according to the report.

At the same time, the Government Accountability Office, attempting to put a price on the effects of the policy, concluded that the armed forces have spent about $95 million over the last decade “to recruit replacements for service members separated under this policy.” In addition, it estimated that approximately $95 million more was spent to train those replacements in the particular skill sets lost as a result.

No, really.

The New York Times recently reported on the contents of tapes of conversations with GWB made by Doug Wead, a liaison to evangelical leaders under GHWB.

Today, the Times reports that Wead is backtracking on his decision to release the tapes.

This New York Times editorial endorses the election reforms making their way through the US Senate.

Moveon.org has a petition urging Congress to act on this important issue. A letter from Moveon.org states

Last November, a paperless e-voting machine lost more than 4,000 votes in North Carolina, leaving a tight statewide race up in the air for months. Another mistakenly added nearly 4,000 votes to Bush’s total in Ohio. The solution for these electronic glitches is straightforward: e-voting machines should be equipped to print an ATM-like receipt for every voter. Voters can see their choices are recorded accurately on paper, and if there’s any question about the outcome, a recount can rely on these voter-verified paper ballots. Only then can we know an election was run fairly.

Last week, Senators Clinton (D-NY), Boxer (D-CA), Kerry (D-MA), and Lautenberg (D-NJ) introduced a far-reaching bill to require paper receipts, provide remedies for long lines, stop partisan election officials, and institute a national holiday for voting. Senators John Ensign (R-NV) and Harry Reid (D-NV) have introduced bipartisan legislation focused on voter-verified paper ballots. In the House, Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ) has introduced a bill to require paper ballots and audit electronic machines to make sure they’re counting properly. All these bills would ensure handicap accessible voting and all would vastly improve our election system.

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court will hear a case on whether the 1913 law used by officials to ban out-of-state couples from marrying should be allowed to stand.

In his new book, the tottering celibate head of a sexist institution, slow to accept human progress, that represses human sexuality while being involved in scandals of its own, has the gall to call gay marriage “Evil”:

“It is legitimate and necessary to ask oneself if this is not perhaps part of a new ideology of evil, perhaps more insidious and hidden, which attempts to pit human rights against the family and against man,” he writes.