I think the New Jersey Supreme Court got it right when they said, “The issue is not about the transformation of the traditional definition of marriage, but about the unequal dispensation of benefits and privileges to one of two similarly situated classes of people.”  Call it what you will even if you won’t call it marriage, but it’s imperative that the same rights and privileges be extended to gay couples.  I really don’t understand why that’s so difficult to comprehend.  Oh, and the money quote:

Denying committed same-sex couples the financial and social benefits and privileges given to their married heterosexual counterparts bears no substantial relationship to a legitimate governmental purpose. The Court holds that under the equal protection guarantee of Article I, Paragraph 1 of the New Jersey Constitution, committed same-sex couples must be afforded on equal terms the same rights and benefits enjoyed by opposite-sex couples under the civil marriage statutes. The name to be given to the statutory scheme that provides full rights and benefits to same-sex couples, whether marriage or some other term, is a matter left to the democratic process.

This is so completely bizarre that I had to look at it several times before realizing it was a real news story.  “Families and tourists in a London park were left shocked when a pelican picked up and swallowed a pigeon. The unusual wildlife spectacle in St James’s Park was caught on camera by photographer Cathal McNaughton. He said the Eastern White pelican had the unfortunate pigeon in its beak for more than 20 minutes before swallowing it whole.”  Yes, there’s a photograph.  Um, okay…  There are plenty of pelicans here at the lake where I live and I can’t honestly say I’ve ever seen one eat anything other than fish.  Ever.  Ever ever.

Iceland decided to break the global moratorium on whaling, so they chose to kill an endangered fin whale to prove they were serious about it.  That’s one country I’ll never visit or support (ha! like that’s a major threat to them, right?).

And more disgusting wildlife news: “Hippopotamuses are being butchered by the hundreds inside a Central African wildlife reserve, conservation groups report. An aerial census conducted yesterday put the hippo population in Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) at 629. This represents a 98 percent crash in numbers since the 1970s, when there were some 30,000 animals, according to the Frankfurt Zoological Society based in Germany, which carried out the census. In recent weeks about 400 hippos have been slain, according to Emmanuel de Merode, head of the Africa Conservation Fund based in Kenya.”  They’ll all be gone soon.

That California Vietnamese immigrant running for office is really one solid piece of work.  He now says he won’t quit the race even if he’s charged with a crime.  In the meantime, he wants an investigation into what sparked the probe in the first place.  Um, I’m thinking that would be an illegal mailer that attempted to interfere with an election, and that is, um, a crime.

I think I predicted this.  “Several governments around the world have tried to rebut criticism of how they handle detainees by claiming they are only following the U.S. example in fighting terrorism, the U.N. special rapporteur on torture said Monday. Manfred Nowak said that when he criticizes governments for their questionable treatment of detainees, they respond by telling him that if the United States does something, it must be all right.”