Warner's opponent, David Dreier, is a man who, according to Congressional Quarterly, has voted with George W. 93.6% of the time. He rode to power on the Reagan wave and has had nothing but underfunded and under-organized challengers since; which is why he's not been defeated.

A new anti-gay offensive has been launched against Democratic North Carolina state senator and U.S. Senate candidate Kay Hagan. Campaign literature produced by the North Carolina Republican Party has been mailed to households in the state, PageOneQ has learned.

A new mailer in support of incumbent Sen. Elizabeth Dole claims that Hagan's agenda, with the help of "liberal judges," will be to advance a "radical homosexual agenda" which includes same-sex marriage, removing "Under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance, and forcing the Boy Scouts to accept gay and atheist troop leaders.

Hagan's opposition to an anti-gay amendment is the focus of the mailer. "Across America," it reads, "liberal judges are overturning state laws banning gay marriage. In North Carolina a state constitutional amendment is needed to protect traditional marriage and prevent liberal judges from imposing their gay marriage agenda on the state."

A letter found in the [University of Kentucky] Library Department of Special Collections of a request from a former U.S. Senator to the then commanding general of Fort Knox created conflicting stories Thursday about the military record of Republican U. S. Sen. Mitch McConnell.

The letter was found in the personal letters of U.S. Sen. John Sherman Cooper, a Republican from Kentucky. It was written to Maj. Gen. A. D. Surles, commanding general of Fort Knox. McConnell served as an intern in Cooper's Washington, D.C. office in summer of 1964. He was in boot camp at Ft. Knox and a member of the 100th Division of the U.S. Army Reserve.

Dr. Mike Minix, with the department of ophthalmology at the UK Med Center, explained that optic neuritis usually affects individuals 15-45 years of age.

According to Minix, the condition can usually be treated with steroids. "Within three-four weeks of having the condition, individuals will usually have their eyesight return to 20-20 vision or normal vision."

This same type of treatment would have been prescribed in 1967, although advancements have been made in the treatment of this eye condition, he said.

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"Elections should be about informed choices. He's obviously not proud of his record, Sen. McConnell isn't, or he would have shown it by now," Stumbo said. "Something isn't correct about it that might cause a lot of people, including veterans, to take a second look at him."

McConnell enlisted in the Army Reserve in July 1967 at the height of the Vietnam War but received a medical discharge after less than six months for an eye condition called optic neuritis, according to limited information that has been made public.

The train-wreck sentences, the whistlings in the pipes, the alarming and bewildered handhold phrases—"My friends"—to get him through the next 10 seconds. I haven't felt such pity for anyone since the late Adm. James Stockdale humiliated himself as Ross Perot's running mate. And I am sorry to have to say it, but Stockdale had also distinguished himself in America's most disastrous and shameful war, and it didn't qualify him then and it doesn't qualify McCain now.

* * *

With McCain, the 'experience' is subject to sharply diminishing returns, as is the rest of him, and with Palin the very word itself is a sick joke. One only wishes that the election could be over now and a proper and dignified verdict rendered, so as to spare democracy and civility the degradation to which they look like being subjected in the remaining days of a low, dishonest campaign.

In 2003, the same year “Eden’s Curve” was produced, Goode earmarked $150,000 in federal taxpayer funds to Danville’s North Theatre.

The Danville Register & Bee at the time questioned Goode’s perceived favoritism with these projects because Duncan and Goode’s wife Lucy are both on the board of the North Theatre.

In 2003, Duncan told the Register & Bee he didn’t see any conflict with the earmarked dollars. “I don’t even know how a question of a conflict even arises,” he said."

Virgil Goode
Anti-gay Congressman

Who knew that Linwood Duncan, the unassuming press secretary for Rep. Virgil Goode (R-Va.), has been dabbling in acting on the side and turns up with a bit part in the new movie “Eden’s Curve”?

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Duncan has played everyone from Sherlock Holmes to Sir Thomas More in dozens of shows in the D.C. and Charlottesville, Va., areas. He was approached by a longtime friend, Jerry Meadors, screenwriter and producer for “Eden’s Curve.”

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1. What exactly are the personal relationships between Virgil Goode, Linwood Duncan and Jerry Meadors?
2. How was this earmark connected to Linwood Duncan’s acting break?
3. How does Virgil Goode square his condemnation of gay and lesbian Americans while helping to make Eden’s Curve?
4. How many other films exploring gay issues has Virgil Goode been involved with?
5. Can we gain access to the records that document how the $150,000 earmark was spent?

Though he actively opposes any rights for homosexuals, a film exploring homosexuality, thanks Congressman Virgil Goode in the credits.
A 2003 film that has been described as a gay coming of age story at a posh Virginia college involves Goode’s press secretary Linwood Duncan and Jerry Meadors, director of a project Goode has supported with Federal dollars in the past. In the closing credits, the film thanks Goode himself.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Tim Mahoney, married with a child, declined to say Monday whether he had carried on an affair with a former aide and paid to keep her quiet, then called for an investigation by the House ethics committee into his own conduct.

Mahoney issued his statement hours after ABC News reported on its Web site that he had agreed to pay $121,000 in March to a former mistress and staff member after being threatened with a sexual harassment lawsuit. Mahoney said he would be vindicated.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi also called for an investigation.

The network, citing unnamed current and former Mahoney staff members, said the congressman began his affair with Patricia Allen, 50, in 2006 while he was campaigning for Congress, promising to return morals to Washington.

Mahoney won the race after former Republican U.S. Rep. Mark Foley resigned when it was revealed he sent lurid Internet messages to male teenage pages who had worked on Capitol Hill. Foley was cleared of criminal wrongdoing by state and federal authorities.

“If an outing happens in the forest and no one hears it, is it an outing?” wonders gay activist Mike Rogers. It’s a question that he and outing pioneer Michelangelo Signorile have been asking since September 22, when they outed Mark Buse, longtime Senate chief of staff to Republican presidential candidate John McCain. With the economy tanking, Sarah Palin on the attack, Lindsay Lohan “going lesbian” and Clay Aiken making the cover of People the day after the Buse revelation, you may not have heard about it. If you heard of Buse at all, it was likely for the $460,000 in lobbying fees he earned in 2003 and 2004 from troubled loan giant Freddie Mac (not to be confused with the more than $2 million McCain’s campaign manager, Rick Davis, received over the years for work he and his lobbying firm did for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as recently as August). On political Web sites ranging from Daily Kos, Eschaton and Firedoglake all the way to the gay-centered Towleroad, JoeMyGod and Pam’s House Blend, Buse has been Topic A — especially afterSignorile provided on-the-record quotes from an ex-lover of Buse’s, Brian Davis. Rogers even went to Buse’s Washington office to personally deliver the latest Roy Cohn Award for most harm done to the gay community by a gay man.

“Did the gay readers of my blog go, ‘Oh, my God, I live in D.C. and I can’t believe he’s gay’” Rogers asks. “No. But One News Now, an online news service that’s about as right wing as you can get, was quite upset, and they’re hardly the only ones.”

Patrick Sammon, president of the gay conservative Log Cabin Republicans (which decried the outing as “the politics of personal destruction”), sees things differently: “You can’t out someone who has been openly gay for many, many years. This is silly.”

But to Rogers, Busegate echoes the situation that no less a gay eminence than Oscar Wilde outlined in The Importance of Being Earnest, whose hero, Jack Worthing, dryly remarks, “Well, my name is Ernest in town and Jack in the country, and the cigarette case was given to me in the country.”

Dear Rep. David Dreier,

We, the undersigned, urge you to come out against Proposition 8, which would 'eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry' the person they love in California.

You have voted the right way in the past, so we think it's time for you come out against Prop 8 today. Please join us in taking the following pledge:

I pledge to vote No on Prop 8, a statewide ballot initiative that, if passed, 'eliminates the right of same sex couples to marry.'

Gay and lesbian couples deserve the same fundamental freedoms that all Californians enjoy. I pledge to vote No on any constitutional change that stands in the way of equality for all.

Following the lead of Governor Schwarzenegger and other Republicans, we urge you to vote No on Prop 8. Thank you for your consideration of this fundamentally important issue to Californians.

Sincerely,

1. Some people can dominate a 400 foot wide, 50 foot high stage with as much skill as they can dominate a television screen.

2. There are at least two smart people still related to Wall Street -- and they're both queer.

3. One way to influence the government is to be friends with that woman who runs the FDIC.

4. Yes! There are, aside from runway models, women who look unbelievably absolutely amazing in the most fabulous outfits on Project Runway.

5. One way to financial success? Get offered $800,000 to write a book, make it a NY Times best seller and follow it up with five more of the same!

Mike Rogers, a blogger who gained notoriety for outing closeted Republican officials, is spearheading a new initiative to support training and funding for the next wave of gay bloggers.

Rogers recently established the program, called the LGBT Bloggers & Citizen Journalist Initiative, with a $50,000 grant from philanthropist Jonathan Lewis.

Lewis is the son of Peter Lewis, one of the founders of Progressive Auto Insurance. Jonathan Lewis awards an annual scholarship through the Point Foundation’s National LGBT Scholarship Fund.

Rogers said the goal of the LGBT Bloggers & Citizen Journalist Initiative is to bring the online world together with traditional organizations that are sometimes lagging in the technology department.

Rogers said the initiative’s driving force is best encapsulated by a quote from Pam Spaulding, a lesbian blogger who writes at Pam’s House Blend: “You can ignore us, but we are journalists, we are activists, it’s all one now.

Rogers said that other progressive movements have been more effective in quickly disseminating their messages.