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The trial challenging the legality of California’s Proposition 8 began earlier this week to massive protests outside the San Francisco courtroom.  For those living under rocks, Proposition 8 overturned legalized same-sex marriage in California with 52% of the popular vote in a 2008 ballot initiative.

The gay rights movement was disappointed and splintered.  The debate has raged quite openly about whether or not Californians should gird for another vote in the upcoming years or appeal the vote as illegal, constitutionally invalid.  The working assumption is that gay marriage will be legal, as it so obviously should be, sometime in the future.  The question is which path is better?  The courts or the people?

Despite the dismay of some in the gay community, the courts have officially been pursued setting up a monumental fight to likely be held at the …

BuzzFeed compiled a great list of the 50 best protest signs of 2009 and they are utterly amazing. Powerful, poignant, hilarious, and absurd–definitely check the list out: http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/the-50-best-protest-signs-of-2009/

Also, I had the opportunity to speak with #28  (the Arrested Development sign above) and ask him a few questions:

Me: “How did you decide to make that sign?”

#28: “I made the sign at the Toys R Us that I work at, and the idea just came to me after brainstorming at the customer service desk.”

Me: “So it was very spontaneous…”

#28: “I partied the night before so in that picture I am in the clothes I slept in, and I’m totally unshowered and disgusting.”

Me: “In general, how do you feel about goofy protest signs?”

#28: “In general I guess from …

Harry Reid’s “health” “care” “reform” “bill” passed a procedural hurdle on Saturday with the 60 (and only 60) votes it needed. The decisive vote ended up being Senator Mary Landrieu, “Democrat” from Louisiana, and it came only after Senate Democrats bribed her with between $100 and $300 million of money for her constituents. It was a shakedown, pure and simple and shameful.

WaPo’s Dana Milbank’s got all the gory details here.

We here at Politicology are big fans of the United States Senate–procedural logjam that it is, we think the country benefits from its (really, really) slow, methodical structure. But there is unquestionably a dark side to a 60 vote threshold.

House Appropriations Committee chair David Obey (D-Wisc), with an assist from Senator Carl Levin, wants a “war surtax” to pay for any troop increase in Afghanistan. His logic isn’t terrible:
“If we have to pay for the health care bill, we should pay for the war as well … by having a war surtax,” Obey told ABC News in an interview that aired Monday. “The problem in this country with this issue is that the only people that has to sacrifice are military families and they’ve had to go to the well again and again and again and again, and everybody else is blithely unaffected by the war.”
The surtax would start at about 1 percent for low income earners and increase to about 5 percent for people making …

This piece in the WaPo is one of several I’ve seen since 2008 in which the head of a major financial institution pairs a mea (sorta) culpa for the financial collapse with some conscientious advice on how to make things better next time around. No doubt some savvy marketing agency realized it’d be a good idea for Americans to see the multi-millionaire masters of the universe atop the biggest investment banks as, at their root, no different than ordinary, average op-ed writers for the Washington Post.

Anyway, this one’s sort of interesting. Written by JP Morgan Chase’s CEO Jamie Dimon, its central argument is that the way to get rid of the “too big to fail” culture is not by capping growth on firms–it’s by letting failing firms, no matter …

I think it’s fair to say that most of the worryworts of this country have spent so much time biting their fingernails over the prospects of global climate change and spiraling health care costs that they have ignored the impending Global Zombie Apocalypse.

Not so for an intrepid group of Canadian researchers at the University of Ottawa and Carleton University, who mathematically modeled a potential zombie attack and published their findings here.

The upshot of the research is as simple as it is serious:
“We show that only quick, aggressive attacks can stave off the doomsday scenario: the collapse of society as zombies overtake us all.”
Which makes Zombie infestation, primarily, a problem of international public policy. Which is why Daniel Drezner took the time to blog about the very subject at Foreign Policy.

Levi Johnston may be posing for Playgirl–90 percent of whose audience is gay males, btw–but it’s going to be all tasteful like.

“I’m not gonna just go out there and get naked,” said Levi, who is going to just go out there and get naked, in an interview with CBS’s Early Show.

Watch CBS News Videos Online

Meanwhile, Sarah Palin is hoppin’ mad about Johnston’s accusation that she repeatedly referred to her youngest child Trig (who has Down Syndrome) as “retarded”.
“We, like many, are appalled at the inflammatory statements being made or implied. Trig is our ‘blessed little angel’ who knows it and is lovingly called that every day of his life. Even the thought that anyone would refer to Trig by any disparaging name is sickening …

Gallup polls are showing an increase in the number of Americans who consider themselves “conservative. So far in 2009, 40 percent of Americans call themselves conservative–thats up 3 percent from the previous two years, when Dubya kind of gave conservatism a bad name.

This is vintage Stewart (sadly an increasingly rare sight) taking on John McCain’s deceptively named “Internet Freedom Act of 2009″, which would give telecom companies the power to narrow bandwith for lower-paying customers. I dig the comparison “Larry Craig’s No Handjobs for Me, Thanks, Act of 2006.”

The concept of “net neutrality” is something you’ll be reading about more and more, including here on Ology.com. Stay tuned kids.

Jon Stewart Blasts McCain’s New Bill
Posted to New York Magazine on October 27, 2009…

It is the week before Halloween, so if ever the long-dead public option were to rise, as it were, from the grave, it would be now.

And yet I must admit I am wholly surprised that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has elected to include a watered down public option in the health care bill he brings to the Senate floor.

As Klein points out, the new public option–which includes a state opt-out provision–is rather conservative, and in that way is a compromise of a compromise. That is, the public option itself is a compromise by those liberals who favored a single payer system. But the axis along which the compromise has occurred is fortunate. Rather than watering down the public option in ways that would make it …

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