So after Obama’s gay rights speech on Sunday, this LGBT White House person suggested that maybe everyone would try hitching a repeal of DADT to Joe Lieberman, a grape that rolled under a couch like 50 years ago and in the interim transformed into a malign raisin and also, somehow, a Senator from Connecticut. Why Lieberman? Um. MORE »

Haha, Steve King, a Republican congressman from Iowa, did a really funny impression of misunderstood hyperbole last night on wingnut radio! He goes: The problem with the “slippery slope” argument—i.e., if the gays are allowed to marry other gays, there is absolutely nothing stopping them from marrying their own gay parents!!—is not that it’s hilariously overwrought, which it is, it’s that it has not been taken far enough. MORE »

Uh oh, Bill Clinton went to “AIPAC for libtards” yesterday, and what did his audience do immediately? Get up and yell about all of those terrible laws against gay people he signed during his presidency: Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and the Defense of Marriage Act, the “Gog and Magog” of 1990s federal gay people legislation. First Bill calls the gay shouter (he must be gay, otherwise why would he care about gay rights?) a wingnut, and then explains his rationale for signing those wretched things. Bill Clinton speaks so well that we believe every single word he says! (?) [Slog]

There is a little bit of fine print in the Gay American Bylaws stating that donors to Republican candidates will be expelled immediately from one or both elite organizations. Thus Jonathan Crutchley, a McCain contributor and chairman of the gay pickup site Manhunt, had to resign his position on the board lest he be forcibly turned heterosexual and spend the rest of his life wearing ill-fitting shirts from LL Bean. Meanwhile, John McCain returned Crutchley’s donation in order to avoid the Gay Taint. [Towleroad/Boston Herald]

You know, we can’t even tell what’s a stupid parody or what’s a stupid sincere YouTube statement of idiocy these days, so here you go, a YouTube thing uploaded today, so this pretty much negates the nine superdelegates Barack Obama picked up today. (Hilz got one.) [YouTube]

Many, many gay homosexuals are angry about North Carolina Governor Mike Easley saying Hillary Clinton made Rocky Balboa look like a pansy. How dare this historic friend of the gays sit idly by while her surrogate throws around these hateful smear words? And how many agujeros de la gloria will Chelsea have to service at The Endup to win back the affections of her mother’s old pals? MORE »

House leadership today was forced to drop language from the Defense Department authorization bill that would have made sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or disability protected categories under the current federal hate crimes law. While the stand-alone hate crimes bill supposedly enjoys wide support from Democrats and moderate Republicans in the House (and was, in fact, added to the bill by the Senate), the fight to include the language failed because many liberal Dems always vote against authorizing the Department of Defense (and wouldn’t change their votes) and because many conservative Dems and Republicans didn’t support the legislation and/or its inclusion in the defense bill. Although the bill supposedly has all this broad support (which one would think would make it easy to pass), there’s no word when or if the House will vote on it. Pelosi says, that she’s “strongly committed” to the bill, though, so I’m sure it will be really soon. [CNN]

Every week, I answer your questions about how laws get made and why they probably shouldn’t. If you have a question about the dirty business of doing business in Washington, ask me.

This week: How lobbyists stay employed, why hookers are more expensive than getting everyone drunk and screwing, and target-rich environments. MORE »

* Administration official confirms that Bush ordered the declassification of select prewar intelligence in response to public skepticism; Bush “may have played only a peripheral role in the release of the classified material and was uninformed about the specifics –like the effort to dispatch [Scooter Libby] to discuss the [National Intelligence Estimate] with reporters.” [NYT]
* Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) calls for “detailed explanation” of “what Vice President Cheney did, what the president said to him, and an explanation from the president as to what he said so that it can be evaluated.” [WP, USAT]
* 500,000 march in Dallas to support immigrants’ rights; protests planned today in over 100 cities. [NYT, USAT]
* House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) is not satisfied with Bush’s immigration plan: “I’m for securing the borders and enforcing the laws. Until we do that, if you try to create a guest-worker program, all you’re doing is inviting more illegal immigration.” [WP]
* Christian Coalition, weighed down by “trail of debt” that tops $2m, has lost credibility and influence. [WP]
* Tomorrow’s special election to replace Rep. Randy Cunningham (R-Calif.) is seen as a “bellwether for races across the nation”; a win by Democrat Francine Busby “would be the political equivalent of a tectonic shift,” says expert. [WP]
* 200 gay families plan on attending White House Easter Egg Roll. Laura Bush’s press secretary states the rules: “No more than two adults per group, and at least one child under the age of 8.” [NYT]
* McCain is now in the “heart of the Bush dynasty.” [USAT]
* Three-star Marine Corps general calls for Rumsfeld to resign: “I now regret that I did not more openly challenge those who were determined to invade a country whose actions were peripheral to the real threat –Al Qaeda.” [NYT]