News

None from me, sorry. It just occurred to me that it's been weeks since I commented on anything that's happened out in the world. I did a little blurb when Patrick Swayze died, but nothing else.



I wrote to my friend Chrissie weeks ago asking about the UK's United Healthcare system. I wanted something to compare to when I wrote about the ongoing debate here in the States about the proposed reforms to our healthcare system. I never got around to writing the piece, and the big Senate vote is supposed to take place tomorrow. I hope they pass a plan that includes a public option, but I'm not holding my breath.



Supposedly different bills are making their way through both houses of Congress regarding ENDA, but I haven't heard anything new on that front. To be completely honest, I'd rather have ENDA than public healthcare, but the public option would make my future life easier in the event that ENDA passes.



The President talked to the HRC this past weekend, but once again, he made no promises. I'm beginning to wonder what I saw in that man...



Roman Polanski is currently sitting in jail waiting to hear if he'll be extradited to the US. At first, I was in the "Free Polanski" crowd, but then I went back and researched his case. The whole incident makes my skin crawl. It makes me feel vaguely skeezy because I enjoyed some of his movies. Now I hope they throw him down a hole he can never crawl out of.



There's a story in the latest issue of Esquire about the ongoing story of John Demjanjuk. Mr. Demjanjuk is a Ukrainian immigrant who was a German POW during WWII, and may or may not have worked as a collaborator at one of the German death camps. His arrest in the 80s made international headlines, because the authorities said he was "Ivan the Terrible", a camp guard at Treblinka who inflicted all manner of horrors against the people who were being herded into the gas chambers. He was extradited to Israel, where the high profile trial found him guilty, convicted him and sentenced him to death by hanging. Then a piece of evidence appeared that proved conclusively that he wasn't at Treblinka at all, and he went free. Now he's sitting in a prison in Germany, awaiting trial as an accessory to the deaths of 27,900 people at Sobibor, where he may or may not have been one of the Wachmanner, some sort of a collaborator. He's 89, and his health is failing. He, I think, should go free.