Edit: My car entered the intersection a half a second AFTER the light turned red.

I enjoyed your MM article, William.

Suggestion: People who live in the same geographical area and are interested in writing about their communities should use this site to network. Going to all the city council and school board meetings would be burdensome for one person, esp. since she or he is doing it for free. But if a group of people coordinated their efforts, they could cover a lot of ground and not run the risk of getting burnt out after a few months.

LGBT is such an ugly acronym, in my opinion. I can never get myself to use it. I also think it confers a false solidarity among these groups. Let's be honest about male domination in our society: if gay men were granted the sexual prerogatives that men in Classical Greek times had, sexual orientation would be a non-issue. (On second thought, maybe this is too pessimistic, but there is a grain of truth to it). I guess I could use gays and lesbians to be more inclusive, but for me the term lesbians feels too sexualized. "Lesbianism" plays such a big role in pornography. The "male gaze" in this regard acts as a kind of veil that hides the experience of real lesbians. What about the term queer? It's a good word. It's a fun word to say. It has a good mouth feel, as it were. Do you think it is culturally acceptable for non-homosexuals to use the term?

Even though the above argument has the threadbare quality of a talk radio staple, which it is, it does point to a fundamental problem with the argument that gay marriage is a civil right. At the end of the day, advocates for gay marriage are asking society to expand the notion of marriage to include gay relationships. Since gay relationships have become weaved into the fabric of our society, it seems, from my point of view, utterly uncharitable not to grant gay relationships the official sanction that gay men and women are asking for. However, a very tiny majority of Californians don't see things this way, thus here we are. That said, I believe Prop 8 is an unjust law because it enshrines into the state constitution a view of an issue that is in the process of evolving. The people who devised prop 8 know this. Prop 8 is tantamount to a scorched earth policy of retreating soldiers. Gay marriage is marching forward, and they can't stop it, so they are just going to make things as difficult as they can in the meantime.

Here's an interesting bit of news: "In a bold move that takes a new approach to achieving marriage equality, two attorneys who argued opposing sides of the 2000 Bush v. Gore lawsuit before the U.S. Supreme Court have filed a challenge to Proposition 8 in federal court, The Advocate has learned. Theodore B. Olson, the U.S. solicitor general from 2001 to 2004 under President George W. Bush, and David Boies, a high-profile trial lawyer who argued on behalf of former vice president Al Gore, filed the suit May 22 in U.S. district court on behalf of two California gay couples." Full story: http://www.advocate.com/news_detail_ektid86253.asp It's noteworthy that traditional ideological fault lines don't always apply to this issue.

I have to say: what's so wrong with hate? Hate keeps me warm. It keeps me motivated. Anyway I think hate is probably less a reason for people's negative reaction to gays than the "yuck factor." Haven't you ever hung around rednecks before? All their homophobic jokes are about hairy men kissing. By all means, people should get over their childish reactions to other people's sex lives, but the problem with prop 8, imho, is that it is unjust, not that it is hateful.

Unless you are a total hermit, your image is captured on CCTV cameras at least once a day. The difference here is that private businesses own the cameras, not the government. I'd support the city using CCTV cameras as long as a) the video footage was streamed live on the internet for all to see and b) went immediately into the public domain.

"It's crazy to see a 'liberal' state speak out so vehemently against equality issues." California has gotten a lot bluer in the last decade, which means that California leans Democratic in state and federal elections, but most Democrats holding high office won't actually support gay marriage. Obama, for instance, was against gay marriage. California does have its liberal enclaves, but you've got to remember California is still a stronghold for sun-belt conservativism. We gave America Ronald Reagan after all. As I like to say: when you get right down to it, California is a rope stretched between Disneyland and Hearst Castle--a rope over an abyss.

"The Gay/Left agenda is to teach homosexuality to children." Do you mean teach tolerance towards homosexuals at school? In real life, issues of sexuality don't come up at school until kids are on the verge of puberty. I don't see how the issue of gay marriage will have any influence on sex education policy. You might argue that legalizing gay marriage will have an effect on the broader culture, which in turn will eventually filter down to sex ed policy, but the proposition that gay marriage advocates have a hidden agenda to teach kids that homosexuality is normal or mainstream seems to me a lot like paranoid propaganda. According to opinion polls, it is young people who are on the leading edge of gay acceptance. For young people, gays are like the internet. They have a hard time imagining a time when there was no internet or gay people living together openly. They have grown up in a culture where gays are out of the closet and most people don't expend much effort repressing this fact. Kids don't need to be tricked into thinking gayness is a normal expression of human sexuality, because there is always at least one gay dude on America Idol. Gayness is normal to them already.

great photos

Good to see some local sports coverage.

I used to be staunchly pro gun control, and while I'm still in favor of most of the regulations we impose on the selling of guns I don't lose any sleep when the NRA wins a legal battle. Having watched the 4th Amendment get curtailed and "worked around" by Executive fiat while the leaders in the Democratic party -- my party -- collaborated with the NSA on warrantless wiretapping, I have to say that I have begun to sympathize with pro gun people who get spooked whenever anyone wants to monkey around with their 2nd Amendment rights. More to the issue of the article, I appreciate that many people would like to see background checks and waiting periods done away with, but assuming that those laws are going to remain in place for the time being, will fingerprinting and logging the purchase of ammo really affect law-abiding gun owners that much? I understand the principled argument against it: get off gun-owners backs! But are there practical consequences that I, as some one who has never bought a gun, am missing?

WB, I like your analysis, but I have a question about more recent history of K street. Do you think the "holes" in development were the result of forces beyond anyone's control? Or do you think redevelopment efforts crowded out (by driving up rents or something) businesses that would have otherwise taken root? I'm just curious about your off the cuff opinion.

I'll never remember to bring it up, but I did enjoy arguing with you. Thanks.

I'm trying to get my head around what you are trying to communicate to me. So you're saying something like, "It's too early in the month to say whether the weather is unseasonable, because May typically gets at least one storm a year, hence the 0.5 average." (I would say the mean rainfall would give us a better idea of what is typical, but nevertheless...) So if we get another storm at the end of the month, then THAT storm would be unseasonable. I'm saying that Friday's storm has already surpassed the monthly average, so that in itself would qualify it as being unseasonable. But again, semantics.

I took a quick look around the web. According to http://countrystudies.us/united-states/weather/California/sacramento.htm, May gets an average of 0.3 an inch of rain. It is the forth driest month of the year. June, July and August see less rain. Now I guess it is a matter of semantics as to whether a record storm in the forth driest month of the year counts as unseasonable, but I'm sticking by adjective.

From the Bee (http://www.sacbee.com/latest/story/1828786.html): : "A storm that moved into the Sacramento region late Friday morning set a new May Day rainfall record for the city of Sacramento. Felix Garcia, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Sacramento, said 0.65 inches of rain fell in the capital city, topping the previous record of 0.59 inches on May 1, 1905."

A link got lost in the shuffle, but for those two geeks still with me "the typical Fabaceae form" is the shape of flowers on, for instance, lupins and peas. here is a diagram: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wisteria_sinensis_nobackground_labels.jpg

JG et al, check out this bloggingheads: http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/19358?in=40:04&out=46:51