Just in case you weren't already convinced Mitt Romney was an asshole...

The good and the really, really bad

From The Advocate, the good:

Record-breaking number of gay-friendly companies make HRC list

An unprecedented 195 high-profile U.S. businesses earned a perfect score in the Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s sixth annual Corporate Equality Index, which rates employers on their treatment of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender workers, clients, and investors. The number of companies receiving a 100% rating increased by 41% over last year, from 138 to 195, the organization announced Monday.

+1 to our hope for this country! (Unfortunately, you'll need to buy October's Advocate to get the actual list. -0.05.)

Remember those federal prosecutors who got fired? Ever wonder what happened to the ones who didn't?

Couresty of Dan Savage on the SLOG, the really awful:

A federal prosecutor from Florida was ordered held in custody Monday after he appeared in U.S. District Court in Detroit on a charge that he flew to Detroit intending to have sex with a 5-year-old girl...

According to the complaint, Atchison reassured the sheriff’s deputy who was posing as the child’s mother that he would not hurt the 5-year-old because he goes “slow and easy,” and “I’ve done it plenty.” ...

News of Atchison's arrest is "a shellshock" in Gulf Breeze, where Atchison was the president of a local youth recreation board and had been involved in coaching soccer, baseball and other sports, said Lt. Rich Hawthorne of the Gulf Breeze police.

-5,000,000 to hope.

Total: -4,999,999.5

Fun with civil unions

Most of my friends and family members just love Barack Obama. They think he's the most progressive candidate we have to offer. They're usually floored when I tell them that he doesn't support gay marriage. Well, in the Visible Vote 2008 special Democratic debate on gay rights, he and all the other Democratic candidates got to clarify their opinions.

What's new?

Well, Kucinich is for gay marriage. But that's neither a big surprise nor a great victory - Carol Moseley Braun was too, and look what happened to her.

Obama, Clinton and Edwards all support civil unions and use the exact same "logic."

"[Civil unions] wouldn't be a lesser thing, from my perspective," Obama said. "Semantics may be important to some. From my perspective, what I'm interested in is making sure that those legal rights are available to people."

I would have hoped that a man in a racial minority might be more sensitive to terminology and labels, but alas no. And we can see thanks to The Star Ledger that the whole civil unions thing isn't working out so well. Gay couples who got civil unions can't file their taxes jointly this year since they only just got unionized (or whatever the verb is). Of course, that's not the only way to look at it, which at least some judges realize:

While agreeing with the decision, Judge Edwin Stern filed a separate opinion expressing reservations about denying the couple's rights. A heterosexual couple living in New Jersey who were married in another state or nation before the end of 2006 would be allowed to file jointly, he noted.

In fact, the couple who sued (even though it meant they would pay more in taxes - you've gotta respect that) were already married! But it was in Canada, and so doesn't count in New Jersey. Why not? Because New Jersey has civil unions, not marriages! The New York Times also reported how New Jersey's unions weren't working so well. Right now it's a Times Select article you have to pay for, but rumor has it that they'll be doing away with that feature soon. Since you (probably) can't read it, here are some highlights. They require no comment from me, but if you don't feel like reading I'll just sum it up: civil unions are not equal to marriages.

Nickie Brazier called U.P.S., where she is a driver, to add Heather Aurand to her health insurance the day after their Feb. 22 civil union in New Jersey, knowing it would save them $340 a month. But U.P.S. said no. “They said it was because we’re not married,” Ms. Brazier recalled.

Dr. Kevin Slavin was able to sign his partner up for the health plan at the hospital where he specializes in pediatric infectious diseases but soon learned that both men’s benefits would be treated as taxable income — not the case for his married coworkers — and that his partner could not collect his pension if Dr. Slavin died.

...

Then there are cases like that of the lesbian who was told that she was likely to be denied coverage for a mammogram after she added her partner to her insurance. The insurance company changed the employee’s designation to male since there was no spot on its forms for “civil union spouse.”

...

As Thomas H. Prol, co-chairman of the New Jersey Bar Association’s committee on gay issues, put it, “The word’s starting to spread that civil unions aren’t working in the real world.”

...

Merissa Muench of Mount Olive, N.J., said her employer of seven years, a medical sterilization office where she is a technician, told her the company did not cover civil union partners.

“Civil union couples will most likely be treated as if they are single for purposes of qualifying for Medicaid, which can jeopardize the couple’s home if one partner needs nursing home care,” Mr. Hyland said.

Introduction, and a good-bye to the Yangtze River dolphin

Hello all, and welcome to my blog, It Should Be Common Knowledge. The goal of this blog will be to point out things, such as news items or just facts, that I feel ought to be commonly known. My friends are already fairly used to this, but I figured I might as well post my thoughts for the world to see. Please feel free to comment; I'll do my best to respond.

My first topic is ironic, given the beginning of this blog, and one I've seen very little of in the American press: the extinction of the Yangtze River dolphin.

R.I.P.

24,997,993 BCE to 2007 AD

As reported by the Daily Telegraph here,

The grey white, long-beaked animal is the world's first cetacean -the order of whales, dolphins and porpoises -to be made extinct by man...

The demise of the near-blind mammal also represents the first extinction of a large vertebrate (backboned animal) for more than 50 years, since overhunting claimed the Caribbean monk seal in the 1950s. A zoologist said it was a "shocking tragedy."

As Dr. Sam Turvey, the lead author of the paper that discovered the extinction, put it:

"The loss of such a unique and charismatic species is a shocking tragedy. The Yangtze River dolphin was a remarkable mammal that separated from all other species over 20m years ago.

"This extinction represents the disappearance of a complete branch of the evolutionary tree of life and emphasises that we have yet to take full responsibility in our role as guardians of the planet."

What made the Yangtze River dolphin so cool? Well, it was called the Goddess of the Yangtze and mentioned in myths. It also had a highly developed sonar that compensated for the murkiness of the water, which was effectively blinded by human traffic on the river.

Dr. Turvey highlights the fact that China needs to step up its conservation methods, but how much hope is there in the near future for animals in a country that just recently exported poisonous pet food?

If China wants to compete in a global market and raise themselves up to our standard of living, they're going to have to start ensuring that they keep not only their workers safe, but their wildlife too. And the world would be well-advised to encourage them where necessary, and help them as well, since China seems to be having a bit of trouble when it comes to planning ahead and avoiding disatrous unintended consequences.

(If they didn't, I wouldn't be afraid of buying cheap toothpaste.)