As if you needed another reason not to shop there:

Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, has decided to curb its support of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) organizations after conservative Christian groups threatened a boycott, and after some of its own employees expressed disapproval.

The move comes a year after Wal-Mart had put on a gay-friendly smile…

…Some members of [Wal-Mart Pride] had hoped that Wal-Mart would by now have taken a major step towards workplace equality by offering health care benefits to the domestic partners of its GLBT employees. More than half of FORTUNE 500 companies do so.

The lesson here may be that it’s hard to find a middle ground when it comes to gay rights in the workplace. A company either believes in workplace equality for all, and is willing to stand up and say so, or it doesn’t.

It’s pretty clear where Wal-Mart stands.

Read on at CNN.

Massachusetts legislators today voted to continue to undermine and destroy straight marriages. All across the Commonwealth, straight married couples are still reeling from the blow that will surely drive their families further toward collapse.

At least I can take comfort that my own rep, “Democrat” Paul Casey, has defended truth and goodness against the godless sodomites:

Paul C. Casey   Rep.PaulCasey@hou.state.ma.us   (617) 722-2380   Y

Okay, who wants to join me in supporting an opponent for the primaries?

Seems like we hear about an awful lot of threats to American Democracy these days. What’s sad is that we don’t hear about all of them. One of the big ones that you don’t hear about so much is Congressional Redistricting.

For the last year, I’ve been working on a project in conjunction with the Game Innovation Lab at USC to create a serious game exploring the issue of Congressional Redistricting, how it works, how it doesn’t work, and what can be done to fix it. The goal of this game is twofold: one, to demonstrate in a quick, easy, and engaging manner, what the issues associated with the Redistricting system are, and two, to provide interested players with a social forum in which they can discuss these issues, contact their congresspeople, and organize to help promote reform measures.

If you’ve got a few minutes, and want to know more, take a look at the site: The Redistricting Game. If you like it, tell your friends.

The BBC and CBS5.com are reporting that an Air Force lab proposed

…to create a hormone bomb that could purportedly turn enemy soldiers into homosexuals and make them more interested in sex than fighting.

Pentagon officials on Friday confirmed to CBS 5 that military leaders had considered, and then subsquently rejected, building the so-called “Gay Bomb.”

Edward Hammond, of Berkeley’s Sunshine Project, had used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain a copy of the proposal from the Air Force’s Wright Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio.

As part of a military effort to develop non-lethal weapons, the proposal suggested, “One distasteful but completely non-lethal example would be strong aphrodisiacs, especially if the chemical also caused homosexual behavior.”

The documents show the Air Force lab asked for $7.5 million to develop such a chemical weapon.

“The Ohio Air Force lab proposed that a bomb be developed that contained a chemical that would cause enemy soliders to become gay, and to have their units break down because all their soldiers became irresistably attractive to one another,” Hammond said after reviwing the documents.

“The Gavel of Liberty Falls Again” by Scott Horton (Harper’s Magazine)

This stunningly good article is largely focused on Edmund Burke, who I apparently need to read a lot more about. In this quote he is railing against the attempts to suspend the writ of habeas corpus in England in the late 1700′s. The entire article is utterly worth reading. (Emphasis below is mine.)

I therefore could never reconcile myself to the bill I send you, which is expressly provided to remove all inconveniences from the establishment of a mode of trial which has ever appeared to me most unjust and most unconstitutional. Far from removing the difficulties which impede the execution of so mischievous a project, I would heap new difficulties upon it, if it were in my power. All the ancient, honest, juridical principles and institutions of England are so many clogs to check and retard the headlong course of violence and oppression. They were invented for this one good purpose, that what was not just should not be convenient. Convinced of this, I would leave things as I found them. The old, cool-headed, general law is as good as any deviation dictated by present heat.

– Edmund Burke

8 out of 10 GOP candidates say they’re in favor of torture to keep America “safe”. Just remember that when you consider what our current GOP administration considers acceptable:

Two young sons of Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the suspected mastermind of the September 11 attacks, are being used by the CIA to force their father to talk

Yousef al-Khalid, nine, and his brother, Abed al-Khalid, seven, were taken into custody in Pakistan in September…

Their father, Mohammed, 37, is being interrogated at the Bagram US military base in Afghanistan. He is being held in solitary confinement and subjected to “stress and duress” interrogation.

He has been told that his sons are being held and is being encouraged to divulge future attacks against the West and the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden.

Nine and seven.

Read on, if you have the stomach for facing what the land of the free has become.

(thanks to Anise for the pointer)