Free to Marry, Canada's Gays Say, 'Do I?' (NYTimes)

Rachel Hesson-Bolton, a 33-year-old driving instructor, said she was eager to be able to share the parenting responsibilities with her spouse, Katherine Hesson-Bolton, a 41-year-old fund-raiser, who recently gave birth to a boy with the help of a sperm bank. "I will be his mom, not his guardian," she said.

But Rachel said their marriage was more than about parenthood, adding: "I love the stability of our relationship. If there is one thing I can count on it's my family. We are so mainstream."

With her mohawk hairdo and her wedding band tattooed on her right biceps, Rachel looks anything but mainstream. The two are also an interracial couple who were married by a gay rabbi even though neither is Jewish. To Rachel, they also typify the melding of the married world with the gay and lesbian world.

    

Surprise, surprise, surprise! "Puzzled" (CalPundit)

"The Bush administration has been incompetent and arrogant throughout this entire effort. Their prewar conduct was seemingly designed to make sure the rest of the world was against us, they were criminally negligent in their postwar planning, and George Bush personally has shown immense cowardice by consistently refusing to prepare Congress and the American public for the real cost and length of the war. He's paying the price for that cowardice now, as he watches support for the reconstruction dwindle because its expense, length, and cost in lives is taking most people by surprise.

It's pretty obvious why liberals should oppose George Bush's reelection, but the fact is that conservatives ought to oppose him too. His incompetence and cowardice have betrayed the very things they claim to stand for."

    

Poverty's Root Cause: Time for an Israeli New Deal (Jerusalem Post)

"The key to forcing Netanyahu and the Treasury to become serious about dealing with unemployment is by applying pressure through the Likud central committee. This body holds the fate of Netanyahu's prime ministerial ambitions and has been inordinately dominated by building contractors, temporary worker agencies and importers of foreign workers."