Go team blue!!!

It's hard not to be happy about the results of Tuesday's elections, almost a sweep for the blue team. But while many people bask in the glow of retaining governorships in New Jersey and Virginia, as well as the effective ending of the Terminator's political career (guess he'll be available for Kindergarten Cop II now) it was the stories below the fold that give me reason to smile.

In Dover PA. where the local school board recently attracted national attention by endorsing the pseudo science of "intelligent design" all eight members of said board who pushed the measure through were up for re-election. Republicans all, they lost in a landslide. Each and every one replaced by a Democrat who pledged to bring science back to our schools. Good news for all of us who do not believe that Adam and Eve rode dinosaurs to church.

In another resounding defeat for the psycho-Christians, the state of Maine voted overwhelmingly to retain the state civil rights statute that demanded that gays and lesbians be treated equally under the law. This law passed by the legislature several years ago was challenged by a number of churches (big surprise) who felt that gays and lesbians did not deserve any legal protection at all...how Christian of them. Anyway the good, sensible downeasters said "nup" to the measure and gay rights took another step forward.

It was not a clean sweep however, but even when the right wing wins they're still losers. Take what happened in the Lone Star State. A ballot measure to define marriage as being between a man and a woman passed. But in their haste to make sure that the rest of the world knew that Texas stood against all them homos they had actually put forward a resolution so poorly written that it not only bans gay marriage, but invalidates all heterosexual ones as well!! So anyone holding a marriage license from the state of Texas, guess what...according to the letter of the law (as read using a good conservative "strict interpretation") is now living in sin! Paging Rev. Dobson.

Despite the momentum gained by these by-elections it is still too early to say if this will lead to victory in the midterms in '06. We are still talking about the Democratic party, an orginazation adept at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.