I write about gay news. Alot. It’s actually my job.

This morning I came across this website, which a bunch of people from Maine set up to counter the pending marriage bill that is about to make its way through the state’s legislative system.

Here’s the message on their front page:

Yeah, it’s not about fairness. Let’s eschew fairness.

Well, if legislators decided to stop working on the basis of fairness of all people, we would have

• institutionalized racial segregation
• women and poor men, especially those of color, couldn’t vote
• discriminatory pay practices
• no interracial marriage
• say bye bye to those wheelchair ramps: no ADA

So basically, doing what’s right is ALSO doing what’s fair. It makes me so angry and sad that we allow groups like this to separate the two concepts.

Monica Goodling testifying before Congress

This past week, the woman who was fired by the DOJ when they thought she was a lesbian, was hired back on to fill her old position permanently. Leslie Hagen’s firing in 2007 was the impetus for a full scale investigation into the DOJ for discriminatory hiring practices. It turned out that the selection process, in part conducted by DOJ’s White House Liaison Monica Goodling, was incredibly biased against anyone who showed any signs of being a non-Bushie. That automatically included gay people, and those who were involved in cases that fought sex or race discrimination.

Goodling was a go-getter from the start, as president of Messiah College’s student association and editor in chief of the year book as an undergrad. Before that, she was a life guard. No kidding. After graduating from Messiah and then Regent University with a law degree and a master’s in public policy, she was hired as a researcher on the 2000 Bush campaign.

A Washington Post profile on Goodling that came out a little bit after story broke about the firings paints her to be a very dogmatic, loyal person, in a way that almost makes me sad. Almost.

One unnamed Republican operative said that young staffers like Goodling, especially those who rode in on the GWB wave of 2000, were completely unprepared for the Democrat’s mid-term victory in 2006 (um, I don’t understand exactly why…). They were not ready to deal with the fact that Democrats would want to take action once they made their way back into the seats of power in Congress.

She strikes me as a driven, natural leader, while still having a sort of pie-in-the-sky outlook. Her strict loyalty to her party (which she shouldn’t have exercised in her work life, if she worked at the Justice Department), and her religious beliefs eventually made her too emotionally invested to be a rational leader. I mean, even the way she interviewed prospective DOJ employees was like she was interviewing possible chairpersons for the George W. Bush fan club:

• Tell us about your political philosophy. There are different groups of conservatives, by way of example: Social Conservative, Fiscal Conservative, Law & Order Republican.

• Aside from the President, give us an example of someone currently or recently in public service who you admire.

• Why are you a Republican?

And my personal favorite:

• [W]hat is it about George W. Bush that makes you want to serve him?

Goodness, she was like the Stepford Wife of the Bush Administration. Dammit, she was so conservative that she had drapes ordered to cover statues in the DOJ’s Great Hall because they featured…breasts. Drapes!!!

The more I learn about Monica Goodling, the more sad her story seems to be (while still being highly entertaining, of course). You can tell that she believed deeply in her cause — neoconism, right-wing justice, and her main squeeze, George W. Bush. If only her passion was used and for good.

Ugh. I used to like Mike Huckabee as a person (didn’t agree much with his politics), but the more I see him punditizing on television and trying to rationalize his intolerance for others, the less I respect him. And Ann Coulter is just a horrific human being, who instills a worry in me that people, deep down, are simply vitriolic and hateful.

Even if Huckabee said, “well, OK, maybe LGBT folk shouldn’t get fired for their sexual orientation,” it shouldn’t be a big effing deal.

Thousands of voters in at least 6 swing states have been blocked from registering to vote, or even removed from the voter rolls. According to the NYT, Michigan and Colorado are removing people from the rolls within 90 days of the election, which is illegal unless the person died, have moved out of state, or have been declared unfit to vote (so, convicted or committed).

Indiana, Nevada, North Carolina, and Ohio are using Social Security info to verify voter applications. Alabama, and Georgia are using Social Security records to screen registration applications. Louisiana has removed thousands of voters after the federal deadline.

Although much attention this year has been focused on the millions of new voters added to the rolls by the by the candidacy of Barack Obama, there has been far less notice given to the number of voters being dropped from those same rolls.

States have been trying to follow the Help America Vote Act of 2002 and remove the names of voters who should no longer be listed; but for every voter added to the rolls in the past two months in some states, election officials have removed two, a review of the records shows.

According to fivethirtyeight, here are the numbers on the swingstates as of today (their likelihood of leaning toward either candidate):

Ohio (20 EC votes): 76% Obama

Nevada (5 EC votes): 73% Obama

Colorado (9 EC votes): 86% Obama

Florida (27 EC Votes):71% Obama

Indiana (11 EC Votes): 59% Obama

North Carolina (15 EC votes): 64% Obama

Missouri (11 EC Votes): 58% Obama

via Rod 2.0

Monica Goodling is probably an excellent example of why nepotism, and discriminatory hiring practices really end up screwing you over in the long run. Not only is she out of a job, but she’s also the face of the Department of Justice’s criminal offense by hiring people who don’t exactly mesh with the Bush Administration’s agenda. According to the report that the DOJ released yesterday (PDF), Goodling had quite a tactic for researching job candidates via Lexis (a legal search engine).

[First name of a candidate]! and pre/2 [last name of a candidate] w/7 bush or gore or republican! or democrat! or charg! or accus! or criticiz! or blam! or defend! or iran contra or clinton or spotted owl or florida recount or sex! or controvers! or racis! or fraud! or investigat! or bankrupt! or layoff! or downsiz! or PNTR or NAFTA or outsourc! or indict! or enron or kerry or iraq or wmd! or arrest! or intox! or fired or sex! or racis! or intox! or slur! or arrest! or fired or controvers! or abortion! or gay! or homosexual! or gun! or firearm!

Then of course there were the asinine questions that were actually asked in job interviews (!!)

Tell us about your political philosophy. There are different groups of conservatives, by way of example: Social Conservative, Fiscal Conservative, Law & Order Republican.

[W]hat is it about George W. Bush that makes you want to serve him?

Aside from the President, give us an example of someone currently or recently in public service who you admire.

Why are you a Republican?

I’m sure she flagged others who went to such high-profile conservative/Christian schools such as Regent University, or Messiah College, both of which she is a graduate.