Oh my god. Bush vs. Bush! From the daily show; must be seen. (Saw the link on Hit Or Miss)

Mentions the unfortunate "official disbanding of the democratic party," which I must have missed during the Blair scandal.

Gay Pride at Justice. Perhaps you already read yesterday's stories about the Department of Justice taking the unprecedented step of refusing to allow its employees to celebrate a gay pride day:Democrats and civil rights advocates condemned the Justice Department today for barring a gay... [Matthew Yglesias]

But, my god, what would a federal gay pride event be like?

 I moved to an apartment bang in the middle of the Castro, on Market St., at the beginning of the year. I'd been living for years on Stanford campus, when I was working on my dissertation, and then briefly in Redwood City. As the people I knew from Stanford moved away, followed by friends from the dot com boom years, I realized that I probably have to move to the city to maintain my sanity. Oddly, I didn't know--and still don't know--San Francisco all that well. I wanted to live somewhere I could walk out my door, go to a cafe and to a bookstore, and I found it. Of course, there are also the numerous gay bars nearby, some of them so close that I can yell out to people I know as they wait to go inside.

The Castro has needed a face lift for a long, long time; on foggy days, sometimes, the whole neighborhood seems to smell like a bar. But, hey, I'm in no hurry to move, and I find myself thinking that, hmm, I could slip out right now for *just one drink* and then come back to the stuff I'm working on...

 Sick of 'Buffy' Cultists? You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet. For seven years, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" attracted your scholarly theoryhead, your web geek uploading fan fiction, your cocktail party evangelist. By Emily Nussbaum. [New York Times: Arts]

Nussbaum has a nice observation about Spike:

"Fool For Love" reveals that as a human, Spike was a shy Victorian nerd, a wanna-be poet rejected by an upper-class lady he worshiped from afar. His tough guy accent is a working-class pose he adopted after he become a vampire. For all his Fonzie bravado, Spike is revealed to be as much of a wounded outsider as the rest of the characters.

This strikes me as a direct swipe at the piece is Salon ran, "Why Spike Ruined Buffy the Vampire Slayer," and I think she's right. In the Salon piece, Weinman argued that Spike was a "too-cool thug" who took the show's emphasis on the nerdy Scooby gang. But Spike clearly had more depth than that. (Ok, ok, I guess I'm a fanboy.)

Nussbaum also points out that a show has to die before the cult of the show can really take off. I was always a bit surprised that there didn’t appear to be a Buffy cult of some kind in the Castro—it’s never been shown in any of the bars, as far as I know. Maybe it will now…

Lobbying Starts as Groups Foresee Supreme Court Vacancy. An opening is expected on the court in the next several weeks, and full-scale political campaigns are beginning. By Robin Toner and Neil A. Lewis. [New York Times: NYT HomePage]

Bush has said that he wants a Scalia clone. God help us all.