Today's the big day I've been looking forward to and dreading at the same time -- the flipping gall bladder removal (cholecystectomy).

Effort to nix same-sex unions lacks torch carrier:
To make matters worse, Florida now has a governor that is in no position to champion heterosexual marriage, either.

Three years ago, when the initiative started, Florida had a married governor.

But now we have Charlie Crist, whose one marriage lasted for six months, and who, despite his good looks, position of power and occupancy of a big, empty mansion in Tallahassee, can't seem to land a steady girlfriend.

He's no help at all. And even though he signed a petition to support the same-sex-marriage ban while he was running for office, he says he's not interested in pushing the issue anymore.

'It's not something that moves me,' he said last week."

As the political season reaches its Iowa caucus climax, momentum is building for Sen. Chris Dodd to parlay his presidential campaign into a bid to challenge Sen. Harry Reid, D-NV, for Majority Leader.

Almost all of support for this effort now comes from the netroots, much of which favors such a move. But talk of Dodd making a run at the post has slowly crept into the corners of Capitol Hill as well. And in light of the Connecticut Democrat's successful filibuster threat this week over granting immunity to telecommunications firms that conducted warrantless surveillance, some in the progressive community see the framework for a potential shakeup."

McHenry: Falling for Fallin?
By Betsy Rothstein
December 18, 2007

Members of Congress waiting to be released for holiday recess can be such a rough crowd.

Late last week, lawmakers in the Cloak Room off the House floor were giving Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) a hard time, spreading the rumor that the unattached young lawmaker was engaged to Rep. Mary Fallin (R-Okla.). While their conservative roots match up, the pair is not engaged and not dating (at least not yet).

“Shhh … keep it a secret,” McHenry joked.

After explaining that the rumor started because both lawmakers are single, he added, “I would be honored. It would improve my reputation and probably do the opposite for hers.”

“Well, that’s pretty funny,” Fallin said, laughing. “There’s a slight problem. He’s much, much younger than me. He’s 32, no? And I’m in my 50s. He’s a sweet man. I don’t think it’s going to happen. I think it was boredom in the Cloak Room.”

Sen. Ethics Committee looking into Sen. Craig, but not Sen. Vitter

CREW filed a complaint with the Senate Ethics Committee against Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID)
asking for an investigation into whether the senator, who pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct
after attempting to engage an undercover officer in sexual activity in a men’s restroom in the
Minneapolis airport, violated the Senate rule prohibiting members from engaging in “improper
conduct which reflects upon the Senate.” Months earlier, CREW filed a complaint against Sen.
David Vitter (R-LA) asking for an investigation into whether he violated the Senate Rules of
Conduct by soliciting for prostitution. The ethics committee is investigating Sen. Craig, but not
Sen. Vitter.

Louisiana Rep. Jim McCrery, senior Republican on the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, told associates Friday he intends to retire rather than seek re-election in 2008. McCrery, 58, joins 17 other Republicans who are headed into voluntary retirement as the party struggles to adjust to its return to minority status in the 2006 elections.

You know who is a gay phony? Michael Savage.

I just read an old article in Salon about Michael Weiner (his real name) and it's one of the saddest things you'll ever read.

Mocked by his dad, rejected by his liberal friends, scorned by every university he applied to (for teaching positions) and racked by homosexual desires, Savage turned himself into this racist, xenophobic and homophobic monstrosity.

Congress has dropped legislation that would have expanded hate crime laws to include attacks on gays after it became clear the measure wouldn't pass the House, aides said Thursday."

Four gay men, willing to put their names in print and whose allegations can't be disproved, have come forward since news of U.S. Sen. Larry Craig's guilty plea. They say they had sex with Craig or that he made a sexual advance or that he paid them unusual attention.

They are telling their stories now because they are offended by Craig's denials, including his famous statement, 'I am not gay, I never have been gay.' Those words, spoken on live national TV on Aug. 28, are now memorialized on a just-released-for-Christmas Talking Senator Larry Craig Action Figure.

avid Phillips is a 42-year-old information technology consultant in Washington, D.C., who says Craig picked him up at a gay club in 1986 and that they subsequently had sex.

Mike Jones is a former prostitute who told the world he had sex with the Rev. Ted Haggard last year. The former Colorado Springs evangelist at first denied it but eventually confessed. Jones says Craig paid him for sex in late 2004 or early 2005.

Greg Ruth was a 24-year-old college Republican in 1981 when he says he was hit on by Craig at a Republican meeting in Coeur d'Alene.

Tom Russell, now 48, is a former Nampa resident who lives in Utah. Russell said his encounter with Craig occurred at Bogus Basin in the early 1980s."