I have 9 extra invites to the beta version of Windows Live Messenger (MSN Messenger 8.0). If you would like one, just drop me an email.

**UPDATE**

Sorry, all gone! More when they become available.

**UPDATE**

And now I have 7 more…

**UPDATE**

All gone again.

Regarding Alberto Gonzalez from a commenter at Towleroad:

Him and Condoleeza Rice are really living up to their “house slave” reputations (FYI, my Black friends named Condoleeza a house slave, not me) I prefer to call Gonzalez a wetback with a 401K.

Lovely.

Says Debra Burlingame in another gret op-ed, this time in the NY Post.

February 6, 2006 — DO you remember Rick Rescorla? He was the Morgan Stanley security chief who persistently warned Port Authority officials before the first World Trade Center bombing that the Twin Towers were vulnerable to terrorist attack. They didn’t listen.
After six people died in the 1993 bombing, Rescorla repeatedly drilled employees on evacuation procedures. On 9/11, after the first jet slammed into Tower One at 8:46 a.m., he ignored the official order to send his workforce back to their desks in the south tower.

“Everything above where that plane hit is going to collapse,” he told a friend over the phone. “I’m getting my people the [expletive] out of here.”

The 62-year-old Vietnam veteran grabbed a bullhorn and led hundreds of people out of the building, singing “God Bless America” to keep them from losing their nerve, going back again and again for stragglers.

He’s credited with evacuating 2,700 people, but did not save himself.

Listening to members of Congress argue about the National Security Agency (NSA) terrorist-surveillance program brought Rescorla to mind. What would he think about all the dry legal arguments concerning the president’s authority for intercepting al Qaeda conversations?

I think the decorated war hero would say, “If it’ll it save my people, do it.”

Of course, the NY Times would stop to ask whether or not Al-Qaeda’s “rights” were being violated.

**UPDATED**

And well, will you look at this? Coincidence with the NY Times story? I think not.

Oh lordy. Today must be laugh-your-ass-off Friday.

Some fun “facts” about my home state. And personally, we never owned any livestock.

And for good measure: The Texas State Song

**UPDATE**

23 basic rules for driving in Texas. Uh, honey, you were wondering where I got it from - well, there you go.

With some Muslims up-in-arms over a couple of editorial cartoons, Jeff at Beautiful Atrocities proposes a new international holiday in their honor. Sure looks like a winner to me.

Good news. Not great news (that would have been Shadegg), but good news nonetheless. If I never hear the name Tom DeLay again it will be too soon.

Beth at My Vast Right Wing Conspiracy turned the blog over to Beulah Mae yesterday for White Trash Wednesdays and BOY did BEULAH MAE have some thoughts on Michael Rogers.

I posted this in the comments section at Towle Road in response to being called an “Uncle Tom” by one of the visitors to that site. It may seem silly, but the point needs to be made.

I am 35 and have been out since I was 20. Was does it say to you that in 15 years the most intolerant and hateful things that have ever been said to me did not come from Republicans speaking about the fact that I was gay but from Democrats speaking about the fact I am a Republican?

What does it say to you that my Republican parents and Republican sisters and their Republican husbands flew half-way across the country to spend Christmas with their Republican son/brother and his Republican partner and his Republican parents after never having met them or any person that I have ever dated?

What does it say to you that my Republican father, the same man that 15 years ago said I was mentally ill and needed help and that he would never accept his gay son hugged my partner at the airport when we dropped them off and said, “next year is at our house” and left me a note saying “We had a GREAT time”?

It says to me that people like Jimmyboyo (see comments section) haven’t got the first clue what true acceptance, tolerance and diversity really mean and that they are angy - angry at those that refuse to accept them and angy at those they percieve to be the cause.

“They will never accept you” - True, some will not, no more than people like Jimmyboyo will accept the opinion of a gay Republican. But the people that truly matter in my life already have and maybe, in the end, that is what is missing from the lives of people so appalled with those of us that refuse to simply toe the party line because we’re gay and it is expected.

To them I say get the mirror out and take a good, long look. Your problem isn’t with gay Republicans, the religious right, or anyone else; the problem lies in the image staring back at you in that mirror.