In San Francisco today at the Gay Pride event, Elizabeth Edwards endorsed gay marriage:

"I don't know why someone else's marriage has anything to do with me," Mrs. Edwards said at a news conference before the parade started. "I'm completely comfortable with gay marriage."

John Edwards supports civil unions but not gay marriage. Why? According to Elizabeth,

He has a deeply held belief against any form of discrimination, but that's up against his being raised in the 1950s in a rural southern town."

I don't like that excuse. He seems to have broken the chains of the rest of his southern taboos, why not this one?

This is ugly:

Newly released files from the lynching of two black couples more than 60 years ago contain a disturbing revelation: The FBI investigated suspicions that a three-term governor of Georgia [Eugene Talmadge] sanctioned the murders to sway rural white voters during a tough election campaign. ...

"I'm not surprised ... historians over the years have concluded the violently racist tone of his 1946 campaign may have been indirectly responsible for the violence that came at Moore's Ford," said Robert Pratt, a University of Georgia history professor who has studied the case. "It's fair to say he's one of the most virulently racist governors the state has ever had." ...

Today, Talmage is remembered with a statue on the grounds of the Capitol. His name is also on the steel bridge spanning Savannah's harbor.

100 immigrants (and bloggers and videographers) departed Union Station yesterday on an Amtrak train bound for Washington. The tour is called "Dreams Across America". Along the way the immigrants will tell their story.

On June 13th, 100 dreamers will travel by train all across America to tell the stories of their American dream. You can follow them and their journeys. More important, you can tell the world your own immigrant story, or your parents’, or grandparents’, right here, in text, or by video.

I think this is such a great idea. Here's more:

The NNIRR (National Network for Immigrant & Refugee Rights (NNIR) today asks people to urge their senators to defeat the Senate's proposed immigration bill, S.1348, the THE BORDER SECURITY AND IMMIGRATION REFORM ACT OF 2007. I received this from the group by e-mail:

Tell the Senators that we want fair and just immigration reform that provides real legalization, expands opportunities for legal residency and family reunification; ensures labor rights for all; and respects civil liberties and due process. We oppose a new guest worker program, border militarization and the undermining of civil liberties.

You can call 1-202-224-3121 and ask for your senators or contact them online.

I agree. I don't think this bill can be fixed. Not enough carrot, too much stick.

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Kudos to the town of New Haven Connecticut:

City officials approved a plan Monday to offer illegal immigrants identification cards that would let them open bank accounts and use other services that may be unavailable without driver's licenses or state-issued IDs.

Supporters say the program, approved by the Board of Aldermen and believed to be the first of its kind in the nation, will help safeguard the city's estimated 15,000 illegal immigrants. If they can open bank accounts, immigrants will be less likely to carry large amounts of cash, a practice that makes them easy targets for robbers.

The funding for the cards will come from a private foundation. It's not the first time New Haven has extended help to the undocumented:

New Haven, a city of about 125,000 and home to Yale University, already offers federal tax help to immigrants and prohibits police from asking about their immigration status.

In this article from Charleston, WV, with accompanying video from local TV news, a pizza delivery driver was stopped for no seatbelt at a seatbelt checkpoint and marijuana was found.

A Putam County man was arrested after city police said they found more than two pounds of marijuana his car during a seatbelt checkpoint.

Roger Lee Caldwell, 25, was arrested in Friday when police said they discovered the marijuana inside several pizza delivery bags, according to a release from the department.

Caldwell worked as a pizza delivery employee for a local pizza establishment, but police did not say which one.

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What does it take to get the NYPD to obey court orders? So far, it's taken a $100,000 settlement and the threat of a contempt finding.

In 1992, a federal judge found a law prohibiting loitering “for the purpose of begging” unconstitutional and enjoined its enforcement in New York City. The decision was upheld on appeal, but that hasn't stopped officers from illegally arresting hundreds of people for violating the law. Some have been arrested repeatedly, and some prosecutors have tried to bring charges under the unconstitutional law.

Police essentially ignored a second order to stop enforcing the law issued in June 2005.

It was only after the plaintiffs — half a dozen people who were unlawfully arrested or charged for panhandling or loitering — asked in December [2006] that the department be held in contempt that the Police Department “turned their behavior around,” Judge Scheindlin wrote.

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31 year old attorney and tuberculosis patient Andrew Speaker is now in Denver at National Jewish Hospital. His life for the forseeable future won't be pleasant.

He'll likely spend several weeks in a drab hospital room with a high-tech vent and an ultraviolet light that kills bacteria as it is sucked out of the room. His only view of the outdoors will be the wall of a building, a patch of grass, and some patio tables and chairs on the ground below. He will be allowed to have visitors, but they must wear face masks, doctors said.

....Normally, patients with similar diagnoses — Speaker is believed to have a low level of TB in his system — would be allowed to leave the room while in the hospital. But doctors plan to keep him in the room for the immediate future until they can preform more tests, officials said.

Sounds like jail.

[Cross posted at Firedoglake]

With ten dead in Iraq today and five Britons kidnapped, I was looking for some good news to write about. I didn't find it. And in what seems like a page out of a science-fiction novel, I found this: U.S. Isolates Traveler Infected with Super-TB.

The United States has isolated a man who may have exposed fellow passengers on two transatlantic flights to a strain of tuberculosis that is extremely hard to treat, officials said on Tuesday. It was the first time the federal government has issued such an isolation order since at least 1963, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. CDC Director Dr. Julie Gerberding said authorities were trying to notify passengers who traveled aboard Air France 385 from Atlanta to Paris on May 13 and back to the United States from Prague on Czech Air Flight 0104 on May 24.

It caught my attention immediately because while flipping channels this weekend, I happened upon the tv premiere of the movie Pandemic on the Hallmark Channel. It was about the quarantining of passengers arriving at LAX from Australia after a young man died en route. They suspected he had bird flu, but whatever he had, there was no vaccine.

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Berkeley, CA, which has a reputation for being politically correct, is now engaging in the ridiculous.

It passed an ordinance criminalizing smoking on city streets. Why? To be able to arrest the homeless. They figure the homeless are most likely smokers, just like drug addicts and prostitutes.

As Mayor Tom Bates sees it, the alcoholics, meth addicts and the like who make up a good portion of the homeless population on Shattuck Avenue downtown and Telegraph Avenue on the south side of the UC Berkeley campus "almost always smoke." And because smoking bans are the hot ticket these days for California cities, why not meld the two as part of a "comprehensive package" for dealing with the street problem that Bates says "has gone over the top"?

In this case, vagrants could be cited for taking a drag on the town's main drags.

To finance the effort, the city will raise parking rates $.50 an hour.

The Senate has reached a deal with the White House on immigration reform.

The proposed agreement would allow illegal immigrants to come forward and obtain a "Z visa" and — after paying fees and a $5,000 fine and returning to their home countries — ultimately get on track for permanent residency, which could take between eight and 13 years.

They could come forward right away to claim a probationary card that would let them live and work legally in the U.S., but could not begin the path to permanent residency or citizenship until border security improvements and a high-tech worker identification program were completed.

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Arivaca, Arizona is making a big stink over proposed surveillance towers planned for the Mexican Border. They liken it to Big Brother.

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency is installing a network of nine towers with ground radar and night vision cameras to monitor a 28-mile (45-km) stretch of border near Arivaca, southwest of Tucson.

It is the first trial for the communications and technology arm of the government's Secure Border Initiative announced in 2005. Dubbed "SBInet," authorities say it will be extended across some 6,000 miles of the Mexican and Canadian borders in segments in coming years.

The town's population of 1,500 is very upset. They say the entire town will be under surveillance. I think they are right. They cost a bundle too.

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