On Sunday, I made bread for the first time in, well, a month of Sundays. I think it can safely be said that I have emerged from my summer estivation, when I feel energetic enough to mix, knead, and bake bread by hand. The only measure I use is the two and a half cups of lukewarm water, and the premeasured packet of yeast. The rest is done by eye, and much more importantly, feel.

Most Americans can remember the first stanza or so of America's other national anthem, AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL. The spacious skies, the amber waves of grain, the fruited plain, and so on from sea to shining sea. Unlike the STAR-SPANGLED BANNER, its tune is easy enough that most people can actually sing it and hit all the notes. AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL was written by a woman named Katherine Lee Bates, inspired by the view from the top of Pike's Peak, a 14,000 odd ft. peak that overshadows Colorado Springs, Colorado. She was the daughter of a Congregationalist Minister; she herself was deeply religious but as an adult could find no home for her faith in any church. She was a prolific poet, and a professor of English at Wellesley, but other than this unofficial national anthem, her work and her name are forgotten.

(By The Dromedary Syndicate) Author, commentator, syndicated columnist, one time lobbyist litigator, and all-round Queen Bitch Ann Coulter can add another name to her many titles—Wife. An unnamed source close to the action has revealed the revered-by-the-rabid-right and the lassie-lefties-love-to-hate 55-year-old fascistanista and iconic infotainment artist wed celebrity ex-murder suspect O.J. Simpson in an unnoticed ceremony at a drive-thru chapel in Las Vegas, while on a drunken spree celebrating the success d’estime of her new book, Godless. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his escort of the evening, along for the ride in the rented mirror-windowed black SUV, served as best man and bridesmaid.

Final scene: Excerpts from the father's closing speech: (played by Spencer Tracy in the original) After some preliminary guessing games, at which I was never very good… it was explained to me by my daughter… that she intended to get married. And that her intended, whom I had never met, was a young woman… who happened a lesbian. I think it’s fair to say that I responded to this news in the same manner any normal father would respond to it… unless, of course, the father at the very same moment found out his daughter happened to be a lesbian too.

Those who oppose gay marriage say that legal and sacerdotal recognition of the abiding love between a man and a man or a woman and a woman somehow degrades marriage between a man and a woman, and even threatens the social order. I think love is outside and above the social order. If there is a higher law, love is that law. I think denying gay people the sacrament of marriage degrades heterosexual marriage. I think that the refusal and the legal legitimization of the refusal to recognize the union between two people of the same sex degrades any claim we have to being a free society, and threatens the institutions that protect all our freedoms. There’s nothing "civil" about it.