Right Wing Legal Group Helps Palin With Troopergate

Hello friends, I'm sort of back up and running after the move. I think it all went rather smoothly. The house seems to be coming together. And one of these days I'll stop feeling so exhausted!

Two items came my way yesterday I'd like to share. The first is the cartoon I found on Joe.My.God

The second is a report from Kyle at Right Wing Watch.

Right-Wing Legal Group Comes to Palin’s Defense

The AP reports that “five Republican state lawmakers filed suit Tuesday to end the bipartisan investigation into Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's” role in the “Troopergate” scandal and buried near the bottom of the article is this little tidbit of information:

"There is no nonpartisan reason to complete this investigation until after the election," said Anchorage attorney Kevin G. Clarkson. "We just want to take the politics out of it and bring fairness back into it."

Clarkson said he and a nonprofit legal firm in Texas, Liberty Legal Institute, were donating their work on the suit.

If the name of Clarkson sounds familiar, it’s because he showed up in a post from a few weeks ago explaining how, back in 2006, he personally assured Focus on the Family that Palin shared their views – and he’d know since he was providing legal counsel to her on the Alaska Supreme Court’s ruling regarding benefits for partners of state employees:

Clarkson explained that it was a convoluted process that led to the veto. Acting as legal counsel, Clarkson advised Palin to veto the bill that he said, because of confusing legislative machinations and existing court challenges, would've had the opposite effect and locked in benefits for all couples.

Clarkson said he had to explain the whole decision to Focus on the Family to put minds at ease.

Clarkson appears to be something of a free-lance right-wing lawyer, as in the earlier article he was listed as affiliated with the Alliance Defense Fund and is now listed as working with the Liberty Legal Institute, which just so happens to be run by Kelly Shackelford who was an early backer of Mike Huckabee and was recently hobnobbing with Tony Perkins, Gary Bauer and James Dobson on Dobson’s radio program where they cooed over Palin and Shackelford detailed his role in drafting “the strongest pro-life platform ever in the history of the [Republican] party."

A Virtual Pie In Anita Bryant's Face

A Florida circuit court judge has declared the 31-year-old law banning gay adoption as unconstitutional. This law was the result of Anita Bryant's vicious slur campaign against GLBT people.

The law also brought a big fat pie to Bryant's face as well as the Florida orange juice boycott because Bryant was the spokesperson for the Florida Orange Grower's Association.

The boycott was also the beginning of the end of Bryant's career.

The Miami Herald reports, A Monroe Circuit Court judge has ruled Florida's 31-year-old gay adoption ban ''unconstitutional'' in an order that allows an openly gay Key West foster parent to adopt a teenage boy he has raised since 2001.

Declaring the adoption to be in the boy's ''best interest,'' Circuit Judge David J. Audlin Jr. said the Florida law forbidding gay people from adopting children is contrary to the state Constitution because it singles out a group for punishment.

Florida is one of only two states -- the other is Mississippi -- that forbids gay people from adopting.

Circuit judges in Florida have found the statute unconstitutional twice before, both in 1991, but both challenges stalled. A Miami case expected to be heard next month may provide an additional challenge to the law.


And since schadenfreude seems to be appropriate today, here's something for your enjoyment.

The 50 Greatest Gay Movies

AfterElton.com has published the results of its survey about favorite gay-themed moves.
Brokeback Mountain tops the list with Beautiful Thing coming in 2nd.

I haven't seen 3 of the top 10, Shelter, Trick, and Broken Hearts Club. I guess it's time to get to the rental shop!

It's a good article with summaries of each of the films. Here are the top 10.

1. Brokeback Mountain
2. Beautiful Thing
3. Shelter
4. Latter Days
5. Maurice
6. Trick
7. Get Real
8. Big Eden
9. The Broken Hearts Club
10. The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert

Two Must-Read Sarah Palin Articles

Sirus OutQ talk host Michelangelo Signorile has put up two absolute must-read blog posts about Sarah Palin.

The first is about her attempt to ban some books from a public library and then her subsequent attempt to fire the librarian who refused. Do not miss the letter from a woman who helped defend the librarian.

The second is about her church its anti-Semitic "Jews for Jesus" activities as well as its advocacy of the so-called "reparative therapy" to change sexual orientation. He has a video of Palin preaching to the church as well.

He had quite a week covering the Republican Convention. There are lots of other interesting entries in his blog regarding some of the wingnuts he managed to interview. One can only hope that other journalists would call them on the lies like Michelangelo does.