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Now Preacher Jones is saying
he just might play with matches anyway. It sure looks like Preacher Jones wants people to talk about Preacher Jones instead of the nice man in the book Preacher Jones says he likes.
In a suit brought by the Log Cabin Republicans in federal court in Southern California, Judge Virginia A Phillips has declared that the policy of the United State military known as Don't-Ask-Don't-Tell that bars gays and lesbians from service
violates the First Amendment and is thus unconstitutional. Judge Phillips will issue an injunction barring the Department of Defense from enforcing DADT, which is expected to be appealed by the government.
Via
Think Progress, a three-judge panel of the DC Appeals Court has
put a stay on Judge Royce Lamberth's preliminary injunction against all federally-funded stem cell research. This means that research will be allowed to continue while the court case makes its way through the process.
Last week, the US put the Tehrek-i-Taliban Pakistan on its official terrorist lists and
charged its leader, Hakimullah Mehsud, with something that was almost certainly not a crime. Oddly, though, DOJ did not charge Mehsud which actions they verbally alleged he committed that actually are a crime: conspiring with Faisal Shahzad in his attempted bombing of Times Square. I took from that that either DOJ knows Mehsud was not directly involved in the bombing (contrary to what they said publicly and Shahzad testified in court), or that they simply have no evidence of his involvement in spite of the reported cooperation of Faisal Shahzad.
Which is why I find it interesting that Pakistan
has said it will charge (but apparently has not yet done so) three men in connection with the Times Square bombing.
On a conference call about the small business bill today, Senators Jack Reed (D-RI) and Jeff Merkley (D-OR) both strongly supported the Bush tax cut plan put forward by the President, and rejected any proposal for extending the tax cuts at the high end. They also said that the votes look to be there for the small business package when it gets a vote next week, though anything else in the September work period would be very difficult.
An article in Thursday's Gainesville Sun states that Terry Jones (who just cancelled his planned burning of the Quran) owns a number of properties in the Gainesville area, but the article did not have financing information on the properties. I have searched the public records in Alachua County and found mortgage records that are a close match to the information the Sun produced on purchase records. In addition, I found mortgage records on the Dove World Outreach church property itself that show a large mortgage being taken out on the church property just 27 days before the first residential property was mortgaged in Jones' name. These records create the impression that Jones used the mortgage of church property to fuel the purchase of a large amount of residential property in his own name.
Some advice for Democrats about voter turnout this coming November.
Ben Nelson has come out for extending all the Bush tax cuts "until Nebraska’s and the nation’s economy is in better shape, and perhaps longer, because raising taxes in a weak economy could impair recovery." It's funny that he throws Nebraska in there, which is sitting on 5%. It's also funny that he calls the extension an action "to help the economy" like the stimulus package in 2009, even though this would merely be an extension of current tax rates, which aren't boosting the economy in any way.