A SOMETIMES DISAPPOINTING DEMOCRACY. What a day. It's an "anniversary" of AIDS--just terrible. How said it is to think back on the Eighties, when Ronald Reagan's government failed miserably to take a positive leadership role on behalf of countless people ailing from the disease and the coldness and fear of much of society. Reflecting on that period, I don't think as much of the AIDS-stricken celebrities who've come to be identified with that period as much as I think of the people I knew who were sick and scared, probably not quite understanding what had happened to them and wondering what kind of world wouldn't rally to help them. Tim. Ken. Kevin. Dean. Doug. Ed. I didn't know any of them really, really well, but I know they all deserved much better.

Also today, the current president took a strong stand in favor of a constitutional amendment defining marriage as being between a man and a woman. This, in a country that never managed to pass the Equal Rights Amendment! You know, the one that states:

SECTION 1 - Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

SECTION 2 - The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

SECTION 3 - This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.

Can anyone reading the above believe that this amendment was ever controversial--and that it somehow failed to be ratified?

Anyway, back to our horrible current president--the one who managed to slip into the Oval Office in 2000 without securing the popular vote. The key state in that campaign turned out to be Florida, where, it seems, a bunch of dirty tricks were used to secure Bush's electoral victory. Four years later, the key state might well have been Ohio. John Kerry conceded that state's chaotic contest, but pollster Lou Harris is quoted as saying that "Ohio was as dirty an election as America has ever seen," in a Rolling Stone article, by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., that dissects the many creepy methods Republicans (especially current Ohio gubernatorial candidate Kenneth Blackwell) seem to have employed to keep their cronies George Bush and Dick Cheney in the Oval Office.

Why should this Rolling Stone article be taken very seriously? One word: Footnotes!

The Republican Party is due for a major spanking.

And DC citizens still deserve to have votes in Congress.

Thanks to Dan Radosh for the lead to the Rolling Stone article.