we have a bill that will TAKE AWAY partner benefits to same sex couples. This has already been through committee and sent on. I hope you agree the legislature should micromanage university health care policies and that they have a much better idea what benefits will help the universities in their mission. You'll also agree, of course, that black is white; but I hope you get my point. Fair is fair; and, if I'm understanding this bill fully, it will also eliminate benefits for what are essentially common law spouses---folk who live together but don't go through a marriage ceremony. Now, if I were gay and this bill actually got passed but they were allowing for common law married couples to have insurance I would change my spouse's name to his/her initials and let the state figure out whether they are really married or not. This is a purely political ploy toward the right wing; and it really irritates me. To read what the University of Kentucky student paper has to say about it go here:

Link 

You can read the SOTU speech at this site:

From Think Progress

LINK

Then why would she not only deliberately break the intent of the rules of the DP and then expect to lead the DP? See what Talking Points Memo has to say about it:

Link

It is very appropriate to the Democratic presidential primary and talks about both sides. It's also very funny.

link

Why Barack HUSSEIN Obama should be the Democratic choice for president. It isn't just that he's more electable; but that he isn't nationally divisive like the Clintons. Republicans and even some conservative Democrats will not vote for the wife of "the adulterer" who perjured himself. Others will realize that no matter how conservative Barack will turn out to be in real life, he's still got the backs of the poor more than the Clintons.

Read this article http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/coffeehouse/2008/jan/20/role_reversal

Why did Hillary cry? Was it abuse from Edwards during the debate...being tired from long days of campaigning...that people didn't like her as much as Obama? Maureen Dowd has some words about this subject at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/09/opinion/08dowd.html?th&emc=th

Barack Obama's public appearances in Iowa and New Hampshire since winning the Iowa caucuses Thursday have presented Americans with the living image of something we have not seen for a very long time. As much as Obama has distanced himself from the partisanship which emerged out of the tumultuous 1960s, he cannot help but remind us also of the very best that we inherit from that great era of progressive change. Watching and listening to him since Thursday, I can't help being reminded of Sam Cooke's great civil rights anthem, "A Change is Gonna Come." While the presumptive other leading Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton, speaks like a manager in the pragmatic, calculated language of the 1980s and '90s, Obama comes across like an idealistic breath of fresh air from the era of Martin Luther King and the Kennedy brothers. Clinton appeals to voters' timid desires for a "safe" choice, promising to be the most effective bureaucrat and listing all the things she as national mommy will do for us if elected president. Obama appeals to our courage, promising to walk side-by-side and hand-in-hand with America into a new era, focusing not on himself but on us and on what we are accomplishing today by joining him. In his speeches Obama has been compared both with Dr. King and with Bobby Kennedy; and the prospect of an America with the Obamas as First Family begs comparison with the Camelot of John F. and Jackie Kennedy: A new Camelot for a new century. At the same time, Obama promises to finish the unfinished work of that era, efforts cut short by assassins' bullets and by a resurgent conservative movement bent on taking America back to the 1950s. For the world, Obama will put a new face on the United States - a face as different as can be from the angry and arrogant face of Bush/Cheney, as different as can be from the slick, managerial face of the Clintons, and not at all unlike those American faces for which the world mourned in 1963 and 1968: Americans for whom avenues, boulevards, parks, plazas, and monuments in cities around the world today are named. If Obama is inspiring support not only here in America but around the world, maybe it is because he reminds us all of a better America: an America the world largely did not hate, but deeply respected and admired. This was an America that put men on the moon as an accomplishment for all of humanity, and that in putting Obama in the White House will be making another "giant leap for mankind." Images are important, and with Obama as president the world will see a very different image of America from that it has grown to hate over the past seven years, an image of the future that clearly echoes also the best of our past. Beyond mere images, Obama clearly possesses the ability to unite a majority of Americans along a progressive path despite our political differences. As a left-wing Democrat, I find Obama's positions on certain issues far too conservative, and President Obama can count on my taking issue with him in these regards; in the meantime, he has my vote. At least in Iowa, many conservative independents and even former Republicans who find him far too liberal appear to have decided likewise. After all, as Obama reminds us in his speeches, the future for America and the world is not about him, but about us. Barack Obama can, should, and will be the next President of the United States.

http://www.mceades.com