The Hollywood Liberal

Vermont Lesbian Couple Sues Reception Venue For Discriminating Due To ?Personal Feelings?
A Vermont same-sex couple represented by the ACLU is suing the Wildflower Inn for refusing to allow them to have their wedding reception there in blatant violation of the state’s nearly 20-year-old nondiscrimination laws. Under Vermont law, only privately owned inns with five or fewer rooms are exempted from public accommodation protections based on sexual […]

Kate Baker and Ming Linsley

A Vermont same-sex couple represented by the ACLU is suing the Wildflower Inn for refusing to allow them to have their wedding reception there in blatant violation of the state’s nearly 20-year-old nondiscrimination laws. Under Vermont law, only privately owned inns with five or fewer rooms are exempted from public accommodation protections based on sexual orientation; the Wildflower Inn has 24 rooms. It is also not a religious institution or even a religiously-affiliated business.

Shortly after Kate Baker and Ming Linsley got engaged, Ming’s mother Channie began investigating venues for the wedding and reception. She had an amiable phone call with the Wildflower Inn’s Meeting and Events Director, in which she disclosed there was not a “bride and groom,” but two brides. Shortly after the call, she received an email with the subject “I have bad news”:

After our conversation, I checked in with my Innkeepers and unfortunately due to their personal feelings, they do not host gay receptions at our facility.

Baker and Linsley are not suing for monetary damages, but merely for an injunction against the Inn’s discriminatory practices. The Wildflower Inn responded to the suit this week on its Facebook page:

The Wildflower Inn is a small family owned and operated country inn. We are a devout practicing Catholic family who believes in the sanctity of marriage between one man and one woman. We have never refused rooms or dining or employment to gays or lesbians.

Opponents of marriage equality often take umbrage at lawsuits like this one, claiming that the defendants’ religious freedoms are being challenged. Two examples that are commonly referenced are a New Mexico wedding photographer who refused to take pictures of a same-sex wedding and a New Jersey Methodist boardwalk pavilion that refused to host civil union ceremonies; the anti-gay Alliance Defense Fund defended in both cases. In this new suit, Vermont’s laws are quite clear about what constitutes discrimination and as a large public business, Wildflower Inn is out of compliance by this rejection of service.

Kate, Ming, and Channie discuss the suit (PDF) in a video from the ACLU. Watch it:

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TSA introduces software that uses less-revealing body scanner images

Those blurry but revealing airport body scanner images that caused a public uproar last year are being replaced by a gray, cookie-cutter image of the human form.

After six months of testing at three airports, including Reagan National, the Transportation Security Administration said Wednesday that the new software would be installed on 241 units at 41 airports that use millimeter wave technology .

Software for an equal number of units that use backscatter technology is still being developed, the TSA said. Both work by bouncing X-rays or radio waves off skin or concealed objects.

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Poll: Romney still ahead, but with big vulnerabilities in quest for GOP nod

Mitt Romney leads the wide-open contest for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. But a new Washington Post-ABC News poll underscores his vulnerabilities as a front-runner, as well as Sarah Palin’s lingering power to shake up the race if she decides to run.

The former Massachusetts governor again tops the field, with Palin second and Rep. Michele Bachmann (Minn.) third. Without Palin, Bachmann moves to second, and Rep. Ron Paul (Tex.) runs third, the only other candidate to score in double digits.

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Documents outline alleged funneling of Pakistani funds to U.S. candidates

In September 2004, Rep. Joe Pitts (R-Pa.) received $2,000 from Zaheer Ahmad, who was active with a nonprofit Washington group known as the Kashmiri American Council.

The FBI now says that Ahmad was an unregistered agent of the government of Pakistan, whose role included funneling money to U.S. politicians. He is listed in the group’s records as a conduit for donations to lawmakers including Pitts, the FBI says.

The episode shows how Pakistan’s spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence, allegedly sought to influence Kashmir policy in Washington over the past 20 years, according to federal court documents filed in Northern Virginia this week. The FBI estimates that the foreign intelligence agency poured at least $4 million into campaign contributions, public relations campaigns and other efforts during that time.

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The Evil of Rupert Murdoch
Roger Simon, Politico
I first and last talked to Rupert Murdoch in late 1983 or early 1984, when he bought my newspaper in Chicago.I say it was “my” newspaper not because I owned it — far greedier people than even me owned it — but because it was my first extended job, and I had come to love it. I was writing four columns a week, my picture was on the side of newspaper trucks and on newspaper boxes. I was paid well. My wife also worked at the Sun-Times, and we were looking for our first house.

Debt Ceiling Delusions

Ann Romney to Make Solo Debut on Campaign Trail
Erin McPike, RCP
Mitt Romney's wife, Ann, will hold her first solo campaign events of the election cycle today and Thursday in South Carolina, a sign that her husband's campaign is reassessing its approach to the first-in-the-South primary state.Ann Romney will lunch with Low Country Republican groups in Blufton, S.C., today, and then head to Charleston for a tea with a Republican women's organization. She'll stay in the Palmetto State for another day to greet voters breakfasting at a Myrtle Beach restaurant on Thursday morning.Romney himself has spent just one day in South Carolina so far…

Power and the Press
James Taranto, Wall Street Journal
On this side of the Atlantic, most of the commentary about the News of the World phone-hacking scandal has consisted in an outpouring of left-wing ressentiment against News Corp.'s American properties, which have nothing to do with the scandal, for not hewing to the liberal-left pieties of the so-called mainstream media.The best distillation of this attitude came from The New Yorker's Hendrik Hertzberg last week: “In terms of its net impact on human welfare, News of the World has been the least evil of Rupert Murdoch's three-cornered Axis of Evil, the other two being the…