Today, the Ninth Circuit (the federal court in whose jurisdiction California falls) published its decision upholding the prior ruling that stated that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional. Of course, this is a bit of a “duh” moment, but it’s still good news. What follows is, I hope, an English translation of the decision for the lay-person. [...]

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The above photo is mine, from a Prop 8 protest. I post it because of my description: “I got a little freaked out at one point when I realized the cop to protester ratio was pretty dang high.” This defined the police action last night against #OccupyLA Many police officers must experience a powerful tension [...]

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Many of us have mixed feelings about Occupy Wall Street. I personally get excited at any signs of life in America’s normally apathetic citizenry, but have been confused and maybe a bit turned off by the festival atmosphere and the initial incoherence of the movement and its participants. We expect sound bytes: where’s the political [...]

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I’m slowly training Facebook ads that anything in the category “weight loss”, “traditionally female jobs”, or “baby anything” is “offensive”. Confused, it has now been showing me only martial arts and legal-related stuff. So I guess this falls under “legal-related stuff”…or it’s figured out that I’m a sucker for “random jewelry”. Either way, Facebook ads [...]

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This is a guest post from CatGirl. It’s a write up of her experience so far at the FCNL Annual Meeting in Washington, DC. I plan on writing up something later–maybe Monday. She’s much more on the ball than I am! You can follow my twitter feed, as I try to tweet the conference. Without [...]

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I’m generally supportive of President Obama, and I am definitely in favor of universal health coverage for Americans. But I’m not sure I agree with him when he says: Second, we’ve estimated that most of this plan can be paid for by finding savings within the existing health care system, a system that is currently [...]

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“On The Pier” (taken on 9/11/01) is Creative Commons licensed by *Hiro. July 2nd, 2001 is Mind on Fire’s birthday. The birthing process was painful, since I hand-coded the site and put much more effort into the design and scripty goodness than I do now. Here’s kind of what it looked like on July 23rd [...]

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I’ve seen a lot of political debate recently on FaceBook. Sometimes the discussion is civil and even enlightening, but more often than not it begins with unconsidered slogans and degenerates into ad hominem attacks. (I don’t have problems with slogans and witticisms as a starting point, but people need to be ready to defend or [...]

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Discrimination against gays persists, democratic protests are trampled in Iran, Kim Jong Il keeps flashing the nuclear bird at the US, but all this pales in significance when compare to the most important news of last week: The White House Beer Summit: The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c White [...]

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I catch about one of the President’s weekly addresses each month, and half the time I’m distracted from his message by the skill of his delivery. His messages are clear, precise, and accessible. They actually make sense and sound like they’re being spoken by someone intelligent, who in turn respects your ability to reason. I [...]

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