• SENATE APPROVES GAY HATE CRIMES/WAR BILL: The Senate finally approved after 10 billion years a measure to include gay people and all sorts of wacky gender hybrids under the “hate crimes umbrella,” as part of a massive massive war/death/killing Defense Appropriations bill. Now gays can get married! [NYT]

• HEY GAYS, HERE’S A ‘BIG VICTORY’ FOR YOU: HA: “WASHINGTON — An administration official says President Barack Obama plans to nominate an openly gay lawyer as the United States’ ambassador to New Zealand and American Samoa.” Ooh, big important job there! Even George W. Bush’s first openly gay ambassador appointee was for Romania, which is somehow gutsier. They have so many homophobic vampires there, just really dangerous. [AP]

Did you dress as Professor Dumbledore or a sneering Bank Goblin for yesterday’s midnight release party of the “new” Ted Kennedy memoir? What? You went as Gandalf? HE’S NOT EVEN *IN* THIS BOOK YOU IDIOT. But yes: Ted Kennedy’s new book is out today, and every journalist and blogger is reading it in bed, looking for the hottest blockquotes. The best excerpt we’ve seen thus far is one involving Sen. Robert Byrd, who was invited, along with Kennedy and other powerful humans, to the White House early on in Clinton’s presidency for their first meeting about gays in the military. Robert Byrd had concerns, but only because he thought they were discussing whether blacks should be allowed in the military. No no no, that wasn’t why. It had something to do with… rape, in Ancient Rome? MORE »

Mark Sanford has admitted to a lot of sketchy behavior and pretty much constant lies about everything, and he is a weeping emo douche, but there’s one thing Mark Sanford wants you to know: HE DID NOT START THE RUMOR THAT HIS HATED RIVAL, LT. GOV. ANDRE BAUER, IS A BIG FAG. Somebody else must’ve done that. Still, “Andre Bauer” is such a gay name we don’t really need Mark Sanford to clue in the blogs, about that. [Palmetto Scoop]

La Jolla hotel developer Doug Manchester put up $125,000 to collect signatures for Prop 8, California’s absurd anti-gay-marriage initiative intended to overturn Caifornia’s legal gay marriages just to ruin people’s lives, because why not, wingnuts is special. But now richie-rich Mr. Manchester, who previously claimed he was bankrolling the Prop 8 signature effort because of his deep love of being married to a lady, has cruelly dumped his wife of 43 years and is cold trying to ruin her lifestyle! MORE »

Today, the LG-BLT crowd is finally happy with the breeder Barack Obama, because he has awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to an alive lesbian (Billie Jean King) and a dead gay man (Harvey Milk) along with many sundry black people from both Africa and (maybe?) the United States. Also: Stephen Hawking, a known scientist/god-hater and Englishman, and Ted Kennedy, a liberal. Full list after the jump! MORE »

Ha, wingnuts, good luck getting Republican senators and congressmen to vote for their own fiery destruction! UPDATE: Yes, it was sent out three days after the Senate F-22 vote. [Newsmax email]

As Sarah Palin proved to a disgusted nation, you don’t need to know how to write or even read to get a book deal in End Times America. All you need to be is a disgraced former beauty contestant who hates the same fruits and coloreds as Red State America, where illiteracy is no barrier to buying, say, a Glenn Beck book at the Wal-Mart. What do you call a dumb bigot with big hair, high heels and a few pounds of makeup? How about America’s Next Top Author? MORE »

Here is our old op-ed friend David Brooks, who has turned a lovely shade of Holiday Orange, talking about the sexy night when some old Republican senator was just putting the moves on anybody within old-man groping distance … even David Brooks! MORE »

Like most people, South Carolina Lieutenant Governor André Bauer is potentially gay. The evidence is overwhelming, about him being gay. Most obviously, nice accent aigu there, gay guy! And he’s not even married. He’s so hot and powerful and yet not married to a woman! What is up with that. So when Mark Sanford resigns for having sex with a lady, will South Carolina have its first gay governor, André? No, according to the Frenchman himself. None of this. MORE »

Oklahoma state Rep. Sally Kern is famous for hating the Gays this one time, on YouTube, last year. In a hilarious recorded message to supporters, she claimed that the Gay Cancer was going to kill everyone, making the Gays “the biggest threat our nation has, even more so than terrorism or Islam.” And then everyone kept calling her son gay, which he denied, although he was “affiliated with the Des Moines School of Metaphysics,” which means: gay as the dickens. But this is all old news. The new news is that Ms. Rep. Kern has introduced a delightful new bill into her legislative chamber! MORE »