Media Watch

I was in the empty lobby of a police precinct, unwittingly there just to rest a moment, to calm my anxiety and collect my thoughts. There was a faint sound of conversation in an adjacent office. "He was a white, middle-aged man on a bicycle..." were the first words I heard plainly. And it was a familiar female voice. It's true. Minutes earlier it had been me that was flying my bike down a crowded city street, possibly causing alarm and panic, whizzing past a lady that looked a lot like a blonde TV-cop -- who, in a predictably commanding tone, screamed out, "Stop and get back here right now!" She might not have been a cop, I thought. And even if she was who knows who she was screaming at? It felt like I was evading a cop. Things are moving fast. Time to get out of the area. Time to assess the situation, I thought, turning a corner, ditching the bike, and stepping into the first public building I came to. Alarmed myself now, realizing I was the subject o

So Friday SCOTUS nixed states' arbitrary restrictions on marriage, restoring civil rights owed to couples of like gender. And before day's end, the always sensational Rep. Steve King (R-Ia.) predictably argued that decision is oustside the court's purview, calling it "judicial fiat." Apparently they're members of the Grand Old Party, conservatives & libertarians, except when those principles conflict with a certain world view. You may remember '09 when the King scare machine reacted to Iowa's top-court ruling striking down this state's restriction on gay marriage, fearing that decision "turns immediately Iowa into a Mecca for same-sex marriage." He warned of "weekend [travel] packages being planned right now." And the fear language didn't stop there. "We'll be the Las Vegas of same-sex marriage for America if the legislature doesn't act now," King asserted. At the time he called on the Iowa Assembly