This Week's Re-warmed Leftovers

Here are some items that I didn't get around to posting earlier:

1) Gold, Myrrh and Franken-sense.

We have cause for optimism. The Minnesota canvassing board met on Friday morning to go over two issues regarding the Senate recount. The first was regarding the 133 votes that went missing in a heavily Franken precinct. The board ruled to include the original 133 votes as the official tally, rather than throw out the votes entirely because of a clerical mishandling. This prevents Franken from losing a net 46 votes. The second ruling, which is potentially more important, is that the board is recommending (but not requiring) counties count absentee ballots that may have been thrown out erroneously. This is a big win for Franken because he did much better than Coleman in the total absentee vote. This is not to say that he'll necessarily gain votes if a portion of the thousands of absentee votes in question are counted, but it is a very high likelihood that he will. Not surprisingly, the Coleman camp has begun legal proceedings to block the counties from doing this.

2) Bringin' Home the Bacon

The Smithfield plant in Tar Heel voted on Thursday to unionize. The union won by less than 200 votes, 2041 to 1879. This is a very big deal for labor organizing in the state. There's a lot that can be written in detail about the 15-year history that led up to this pivotal vote, the coercion that took place to prevent it from happening, and the implications that it has for unionizing labor around the state. Birdonawire will be writing a blog post on this subject shortly.

3) Obama-juana

Obama's transition team has set up a cool new feature on the change.gov website, called Open for Questions, where anyone can ask a question to Barack Obama or vote on questions asked by other people. The top questions will then be answered by the President-elect. It's a great way to use the Internet to connect the incoming administration with the teaming masses. However, as one could expect, there are some risks in taking user-generated questions. The voting period for the first edition of Open for Questions ended on Friday at noon with over 10,000 questions submitted. This is the question that ended up in first place:

"Will you consider legalizing marijuana so that the government can regulate it, tax it, put age limits on it, and create millions of new jobs and create a billion dollar industry right here in the U.S.?"

This is what I would refer to as the "legalize it and tax the shit out of it" plan. You can draw some interesting parallels with the end of prohibition during the Great Depression and ending the illegality of marijuana in these sour economic times. Should be interesting to see how Obama responds to this question. Hopefully seeing this one at the top of the list doesn't discourage the new administration from keeping this tool going in the future.

4) More bad news for people that like shrimp cocktail

A commenter on Daily Kos came up with an interesting way to think about the Prop 8 debate. If the US to were to abide by the Bible as the final say in how to define what the rules of marriage are, then these stipulations would officially be on the books too:

A. Marriage in the United States shall consist of a union between one man and one or more women. (Gen 29:17-28; II Sam 3:2-5)

B. Marriage shall not impede a man's right to take concubines in addition to his wife or wives. (II Sam 5:13; I Kings 11:3; II Chron 11:21)

C. A marriage shall be considered valid only if the wife is a virgin. If the wife is not a virgin, she shall be executed. (Deut 22:13-21)

D. Marriage of a believer and a non-believer shall be forbidden. (Gen 24:3; Num 25:1-9; Ezra 9:12; Neh 10:30)

E. Since marriage is for life, neither this Constitution nor the constitution of any State, nor any state or federal law, shall be construed to permit divorce. (Deut 22:19; Mark 10:9)

F. If a married man dies without children, his brother shall marry the widow. If he refuses to marry his brother's widow or deliberately does not give her children, he shall pay a fine of one shoe and be otherwise punished in a manner to be determined by law. (Gen 38:6-10; Deut 25:5-10)

G. In lieu of marriage, if there are no acceptable men in your town, it is required that you get your dad drunk and have sex with him (even if he had previously offered you up as a sex toy to men young and old), tag-teaming with any sisters you may have. Of course, this rule applies only if you are female. (Gen 19:31-36)

5) The Hurdy Gurdy Man

Not really a leftover, as it was announced yesterday, but Obama will tap the commissioner of the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development, Shaun Donovan, as the next HUD secretary. Donovan has been in the Bloomberg administration since 2004. Here's a great anecdote about how Donovan foresaw many of the current problems with the mortage market that we're now enduring, way back in 2004. The key quote in the story is this:

And, unlike many Clinton-era housing officials, the 42-year-old financing expert never subscribed to the prevailing (and deeply misguided) belief that low-income homeownership was the panacea for all the nation's housing ills.