On Thursday June 7th, the Senate Judiciary Committee will be voting on Judge Leslie Southwick as a nominee to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.  Judge Southwick is a conservative along the lines dear to Bush's heart: he believes homosexuality is a "choice" (one which should be punished by taking their children away from homosexuals), he believes that racial epithets are OK in the workplace, and he doesn't ever rule in favor of the poor or minorities.

Follow me over the jump for more details, and how to stop the nomination.

(Folks, I looked for this story before I posted, but didn't find it.  My profound apologies if someone else already wrote about it.)

We pride ourselves on our uniqueness in the San Francisco Bay Area.  We have an area of great natural beauty, two world-class universities, multitudes of high-tech and biotech companies, and a thriving arts scene, as well as a progressive attitude toward many things.  Still, it's the lack of major headlines that caught my eye this week, and made me smile because it wasn't big news.

On Friday, Theresa Sparks was elected president of the San Francisco Police Commission.  The local newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle, covered the story.  What is so incredible to me is not that San Francisco elected a woman who runs a sex-toy business to be the president of the Police Commission, nor yet that this is a transgendered woman, but that the combination wasn't enough to make anything like front page news.