I’m back from the swearing in and the parade.  I’ve taken a warm shower, but I’m still thawing out-I was standing in the cold from 4:45 am ’til 2, with only a 10 minute sit in the warming tent.  At one point, before the sun came up, I was contemplating how the PIC would compensate me if I had to have my frostbitten toes amputated.  It was all worth it, though.
The excitement in the air on the mall was palpable.  Early estimates are around 2 million people-they were stretched the …

It’s 3:30 in the morning, and I’m drinking coffee before I head down to the Lincoln Memorial.  In approximately eight hours, Barack Obama will take the oath of office and America will have our first black president.  It is nearly impossible not to feel a thrill as I write those words.  How fitting and how beautiful that the Inauguration is part of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day weekend, where we can be reminded of how far we’ve come.  The work is not done yet, but there is still a great …

HBO made it necessary for someone from the Obama side to speak up after the network shifted the blame of the exclusion of openly gay Bishop Gene Robinson from the telecast of the inaugural concert. 
Presidential Inaugural Committee communications director Josh Earnest got to do the speaking (and, yes, I got a mild chuckle out of having a communications guy named “Earnest”): 
“We had always intended and planned for Rt. Rev. Robinson’s invocation to be included in the televised portion of yesterday’s program. We regret the error in executing this plan – …

Large sections of the progressive community did not take well to Obama’s choice of Pastor Rick Warren for the inaugural invocation. It was then announced that Gene Robinson, an openly gay bishop, would be delivering an opening prayer before the inaugural concert at the Lincoln Memorial. A far smaller billing than Warren and it read like a weak attempt to throw the LGBT (and progressive at whole) community a very small bone. 
But Bishop Robinson’s inclusion was more minor than anyone had expected because his prayer was omitted from the television …

I’m not attending the inauguration (though my thanks to Acallidryas for the invitation to a place to stay if I had gone). Part of the reason I’m glad I’m not attending is Rick Warren. Obama’s choice of Warren for the invocation is not something I (or many other liberals) am going to overlook or forget about in the near future. It was, to put it crudely, a dick move.
Warren is against “abortion rights, gay rights, stem-cell research and euthanasia. In 2004, he described these issues as ‘nonnegotiable’ and ‘not even …