The verdict is, inexplicably, involuntary manslaughter in the Oakland Bay Area Rapid Transit subway execution of young Oscar Grant by cop.

• The BP Oil disaster, Day 80.
• Oh noes! My traditional marriage is undermined!
• Leave the rich and powerful alllooooone.
• Sideways is not the right direction, Mr. President.
• Kabuki Democracy (h/t Digby.)
• A pregnancy that results from a rape? Lemonade.

Everything is good news for Republicans

David Allan Coe — The Rodeo Song set to scenes from Buster Keaton films (totally NSFW audio).

Maybe writer’s block isn’t a problem as much as it is a symptom, something that simply needs some attention of a different kind. What about you? Do you get writer’s block? What do you do about it?

About half of Californians support Prop. 19 to legalize and regulate marijuana, but only a tiny percentage of the state’s House Reps do, according to Huffington Post. Three of 53 publicly say they support Prop. 19. What’s going on with the others?

You have this weekend to find your same-sex partner and enter the contest at The Today Show. You spoke up alongside GLAAD — and NBC listened!

GLAAD thanks you for speaking out about NBC Today Show’s "Modern Wedding Contest." This afternoon after GLAAD met with NBC executives and shared our community’s concerns, the network agreed to open the contest to same-sex couples.

The announcement comes a week after GLAAD learned that the contest had excluded gay and lesbian people. Good As You blog first alerted us to the problem after discovering the contest’s application included only "bride" and "groom" as options for applicants to choose.

In the wake of Blanche Lincoln’s surprise victory in the runoff election for the Democratic nomination of Arkansas’ Senate seat, top officials in the White House and Senate derided labor unions as “absolute idiots,” and “Washington special interests” who “flushed $10 million down the toilet” for supporting challenger Bill Halter. DSCC Chair Bob Menendez even had the gall to say he expects labor’s “support, you know, financially” in “all of our races across the country.”

It seems Menendez will get his wish. Sam Stein reports that labor unions plan to step up – you know, financially – for Democratic candidates across the country in 2010 to help stem the tide of a massive influx of corporate cash this cycle.

Hopeful words from this week’s U.S.-Israeli summit are in conflict with decades of meaningless lip service to “peace process.”

It looks like some wingnut welfare group asked professional serious economist Arthur Laffer to write something about how making the poor less poor is bad for America because if you give a helping hand to people who are out of work it is just like repeatedly punching productive job-holding members of society in the face.