Republican Alabama lawmaker Gerald Allen says homosexuality is an unacceptable lifestyle. As CBS News Correspondent Mark Strassmann reports, under his bill, public school libraries could no longer buy new copies of plays or books by gay authors, or about gay characters.

"I don't look at it as censorship," says State Representative Gerald Allen. "I look at it as protecting the hearts and souls and minds of our children."

Books by any gay author would have to go: Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote and Gore Vidal. Alice Walker's novel "The Color Purple" has lesbian characters.

Allen originally wanted to ban even some Shakespeare. After criticism, he narrowed his bill to exempt the classics, although he still can't define what a classic is. Also exempted now Alabama's public and college libraries.

Librarian Donna Schremser fears the "thought police," would be patrolling her shelves.

"And so the idea that we would have a pristine collection that represents one political view, one religioius view, that's not a library,'' says Schremser.

"I think it's an absolutely absurd bill," says Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center.

First Amendment advocates say the ban clearly does amount to censorship.

"It's a Nazi book burning," says Potok. "You know, it's a remarkable piece of work."

But in book after book, Allen reads what he calls the "homosexual agenda,"
and he's alarmed.

"It's not healthy for America, it doesn't fit what we stand for," says Allen. "And they will do whatever it takes to reach their goal."

He says he sees this as a line in the sand.

In Alabama's legislature, the reviews of Allen's bill are still out on whether to lower this curtain for good.

Editor's Note: When the time for the vote in the legislature came there were not enough state legislators present for the vote, so the measure died automatically.

The rules were approved in January by the Republican-led House after Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas was admonished by the ethics panel on three separate matters in 2004.

Republicans on the committee said they would open an investigation of DeLay's handling of overseas trips and gifts as soon as the impasse over the rules is broken, the Post said.

... The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the package was certain to include a reversal of the rule that would automatically dismiss an ethics complaint after 45 days if the committee is deadlocked, according to the report.

A House Republican aide told the newspaper the automatic-dismissal rule was "the rule that is most commonly believed to be designed to protect Tom DeLay" and that it was "impossible to win the communications battle" on it.

Hyde Admits Impeachment Payback

22 April 2005

Let’s see. It cost $60 million in taxpayer’s money. Tarnished the Democratic Party and Al Gore during the 2000 election, and since. Distracted the country from Al Qaeda leading to the deaths of 3000 people.

For a 20 year old payback. Because they had to stand for something???

Video At Link

"Andy Shaw: Was it payback?

Hyde: "I can't say it wasn't, but I also thought that the Republican party should stand for something, and if we walked away from this, no matter how difficult, we could be accused of shirking our duty, our responsibility.”

Mr. Soros was the guest speaker at the regular Wednesday morning strategy meeting led by Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, at ATR's offices on L Street.

Mr. Soros' appearance was a surprise. Those in attendance greeted him politely, with some offering to work with him on issues on which they could find common ground -- such as preserving civil and personal liberties.

"He, in turn, praised them for the "tremendous energy and enthusiasm" they showed for their various causes, most of which he had "fundamental disagreements" with, he said."

According to the Miami Herald, which has covered the case more thoroughly than any other outlet, "each rehabilitation facility treated her with aggressive physical, recreational, speech and language therapy, moving her arms and legs, trying to rouse her with scents. But according to court filings, Terri was not responsive to neurological or swallowing tests."...

..."She suffered from bile stones and kidney stones, according to court papers, and had to have her gallbladder removed. She has 'drop foot,' where her foot twists downward, and the ensuing pressure resulted in the amputation of her left little toe. She frequently developed urinary tract infections, diarrhea and vaginitis. Several cysts were removed from her neck. Several times, her feeding tube got infected.

Hey ass hole [sic]. Tom Delay happens to be my congresman [sic] and I am happy with the job he does for me and my district. Why don’t you get the F@&* out of our district and leave us alone. Better yet, come speak to me personally and I will show you what I think of you.

Kevin Cole
Pealrand [sic], TX

According to the Chicago Sun-Times, just prior to the public opening of "Axis of Evil, the Secret History of Sin" at Columbia College's Glass Curtain Gallery, the agents arrived and took pictures of some of the art pieces -- including "Patriot Act," showing President Bush on a mock 37-cent stamp with a revolver pointed at his head. (See the Sun-Times link for the visual.)

The agents reportedly inquired as to what the artists "meant by their work" -- perhaps taking care of due diligence while also dispensing with the cost of the audio tour. But what came next starts to look more reflective of the aforementioned work's title, and how expression of dissent is treated in America under the Bush administration. According to the Sun-Times, the agents also wanted museum director CarolAnn Brown to turn over the names and phone numbers of all the artists. And, she said, they wanted to hear from the exhibit's curator, Michael Hernandez deLuna, within 24 hours.

Perched amid a stark landscape of sagebrush and expansive brown fields, long silver barns that hold 4,000 cows are linked like barracks in some covert operation. I drive down a narrow, cracked road toward the dairy's main office and pass open-air sheds about 20 feet away, where cows laze in crowded pens atop the brown hardpan of the Idaho desert. Just outside the milking barn, more cows are jammed into an outdoor corral. Amid clumps of dirt and snow, they are lined up, their bodies touching.

In recent weeks, as revelations of Horizon's farming practices have come to light, a collection of consumer groups and organic dairy farmers have erupted in protest. Horizon and similar dairies are capitalizing on the boom in organic foods, they say, but diluting the true meaning of the term. Contrary to genuine organic practices, which entail raising cows on open pastures, where the animals feed on grass, experts say that a substantial percentage of cows at farms like Horizon's are confined to pens, fed a diet of proteins and grains, and produce milk that, while free of hormones, is not as healthy as it could be.

Here's a classic example: During the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Dworkin quarreled with feminists who did not consider Bill Clinton's sexual encounters with the White House intern to be sufficiently exploitative to merit impeachment. A principled, reasonable argument could be made that Clinton's behavior was unethical, but Dworkin was never about reason. "What needs to be asked," she told a British journalist, "is, was the cigar lit?"

The statement (it seems too sensationalistic to be called a quip) is pure Dworkin: a ghoulishly creative melodramatic flourish that has little bearing on the matter at hand. Clinton may have acted sleazily, with a callous disregard for the emotional consequences of his actions on a young woman who was too naive and eager-to-please to grasp them herself, but no one suspects or has accused him of sadistically torturing her. Yet Dworkin was never able to enter into a conversation about morality unless the stakes were escalated to the stratosphere. The everyday realm where most of us commit our minor sins against, and injuries to, each other didn't really interest her. She only cared for the Grand Guignol.

Dworkin came out of and contributed to a subculture of feminism that specialized in this kind of irresponsible overstatement. A certain style developed: Throw out a handful of lurid, grisly anecdotes as if they amounted to an indictment of an entire class of people (usually men), who, if the worst of them can be shown to be guilty of such outrages, must all be equally responsible for them. The shock will soften your audience up enough to keep them from asking just how typical such atrocities really are and how widely condoned. Yes, they do happen, but like the handful of kidnapped little girls during the summer of 2002, such horrors can be made to seem epidemic when they're actually a rarity. Meanwhile, the much less exciting, if far more common, troubles of women who are simply trying to feed their children on inadequate wages, or get a decent job, fall by the wayside.

How Do You Define Perverse?

...the Vatican's decision to let Cardinal Bernard Law lead a funeral Mass for Pope John Paul in Rome has prompted outrage back home, where the ousted Boston archbishop is seen as a symbol of a pedophile priest scandal.

Victims of sexual abuse by Roman Catholic clergymen were particularly harsh in their reaction, saying the decision to give Law a prominent role in the pomp and circumstance surrounding the pope's death came as a slap in the face.

"I find it personally very insulting and one more instance of how the Roman Catholic hierarchy protects and promotes even the most egregious among them," said Ann Hagan Webb, a regional coordinator of the group Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests.

"He (Law) protected priests at the expense of children over and over and over again, and this symbolically says: 'We don't care about these children; we'd rather honor him,"' Hagan Webb, a clergy abuse victim herself, told Reuters.

Law resurfaced in American media this week following the pope's death, granting a lengthy interview to ABC News and being photographed at numerous public events.

"From the moment Law appeared on ABC, we have received an overwhelming number of e-mails and phone calls, for the most part from people very much upset by Law's visibility," said Suzanne Morse of the Catholic laity group Voice of the Faithful, which grew out of the scandal.

...on the April 6 edition of The Radio Factor, O'Reilly accused DeLay of "exploit[ing] the system":

O'REILLY: All right, how about this Tom DeLay? Paying his wife and daughter $500,000? Wow! What a guy! Congressman from Texas. Very powerful in the House of Representatives, obviously. Got some 'splainin' to do, Tom. ... you Republicans out there, you guys gotta obey the rules. And dancing around the rules, just because you didn't break 'em -- still, a half-million dollars to your wife and daughter -- since 2001 is it? Whoa! So anyway, not a good day for Tom DeLay -- that rhymes. Now, I can't understand guys like DeLay who want to exploit the system.