Current events

Haven't had a "juxtaposition of the day" for a while, so let's do one with pictures.

Often when a gay rights issue comes up, critics will say gays are asking for special rights but gays will insist they want only rights equal to everyone else's. The evidence is usually mixed, so we have to decide for ourselves. If gays are guaranteed the right not to be discriminated against in unemployment, is that the same right everyone has to be judged only on their qualifications? Or is that a special right not guaranteed to, say, white heterosexual men?

"The strange times we live in" department:

SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS) – Smoking anything other than medically-prescribed marijuana at San Francisco street fairs, festivals and other outdoor events held on city property would be banned under new legislation before the Board of Supervisors.

How should we define the middle class? By ignoring President Obama and Mitt Romney for starters:

Holy cow, what a shock  -- John Roberts is more popular among liberals than among conservatives:

If you want to confess your guilt without having to suffer the consequences of your actions, what're ya goona do? Put it in your obituary, of course:

Val Patterson’s obituary begins like many others. The cancer victim began by thanking his loving family and explaining his love for life, before stating that he lived by several mottoes.

Amen!

Both parties have equally participated in abandoning the limited role of the federal government," says Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma), whose new book, The Debt Bomb: A Bold Plan to Stop Washington from Bankrupting Our Economy, argues that Republicans and Democrats together have brought the U.S. to the brink of fiscal calamity.

Well, if they work against Walmart, guess they're good to go against the government's secret brainwave experiments:

Louisville Metro Police say a man used aluminum foil to try to smuggle stolen DVDs past the anti-theft scanners at Walmart.

Here's a real heated-argument starter:

NCAA president Mark Emmert spoke with Tavis Smiley of PBS and delivered a harsh assessment of school officials in the wake of the Freeh Report delivered last week.

Kitty Wells has died. She wasn't just a singer but a pioneer and a honked-off woman who got even with a song. I love that kind of music -- Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama" takedown of Neil Young's "Southern Man" comes to mind. Wells' first and biggest hit "It wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels" falls into the same category: