Catblogging! Action and Inaction Shots!

After a bit of a hiatus (I've been out of town at conferences the past 2 weekends, and it's been crazy busy even without the traveling), one action shot and one not-at-all-action shot of the kitties!

Tista crawls under the covers with me at night. Sometimes he stays there after I've gotten up...












Gramsci, meanwhile, is all about defying gravity, as the heaviest cat of the household who also jumps the highest. (He can jump on top of a 4.5-ft-high box that's currently in our den!) And he loves loves loves Da Bird...

Recognition

A gay rights pioneer is being honored:

The Washington, D.C., home regarded as the epicenter of the city’s gay rights movement is being designated a historic landmark.

The home belongs to 83-year-old Franklin E. Kameny, who is considered the “father of gay activism” by the Historic Preservation Review Board.

Kameny fought in World War II, earned a doctorate and then moved to D.C. to work as an astronomer. But he was fired by the Army Map Service in 1957 for being gay.

In 1961, Kameny argued to the U.S. Supreme Court that a federal policy calling homosexuals a security risk was “no less odious than discrimination based upon religious or racial grounds.” It was the first civil rights claim in a U.S. court based on sexual orientation.

What Is Wrong with These People?

Seriously:

Just before President Obama was inaugurated, hate radio host Rush Limbaugh declared, “I hope he fails.” Though some Republicans have distanced themselves from Limbaugh’s sentiment, conservatives at CPAC have fully embraced it.

In an interview with ThinkProgress today, radio host Mark Levin and former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) added their voices to the chorus of conservatives hoping for Obama’s failure:

TP: What do you think about what Rush said about, I mean, do you hope, should we hope that President Obama fails?

LEVIN: Yes.

TP: Yes?

SANTORUM: If…absolutely we hope that his policies fail.

“I believe his policies will fail, I don’t know, but I hope they fail,” added Santorum.

Decadence!

Americans are decadent, so why not use that fact to prop up government funds?

In his 11 years in the Washington Legislature, Representative Mark Miloscia says he has supported all manner of methods to fill the state’s coffers, including increasing fees on property owners to help the homeless and taxes on alcohol and cigarettes, most of which, he said, passed “without a peep.”

And so it was last month that Mr. Miloscia, a Democrat, decided he might try to “find a new tax source” — pornography.

The response, however, was a turn-off.

“People came down on me like a ton of bricks,” said Mr. Miloscia, who proposed an 18.5 percent sales tax on items like sex toys and adult magazines. “I didn’t quite understand. Apparently porn is right up there with Mom and apple pie.”

Mr. Miloscia’s proposal died at the committee level, but he is far from the only legislator floating unorthodox ideas as more than two-thirds of the states face budget shortfalls.

“The most common phrase you hear from the states is, ‘Everything is on the table,’ ” said Arturo Perez, a fiscal analyst with National Conference of State Legislatures, who predicted the worst financial year for states since the end of World War II.

Nowhere is that more true than California, where Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, a freshman from San Francisco, made a proposal intended to increase revenue, and, no doubt, appetite: legalizing and taxing marijuana, a major — if technically illegal — crop in the state. “We’re all jonesing now for money,” Mr. Ammiano said. “And there’s this enormous industry out there.”