Things besides YearlyKos happened last week

...and I'm only beginning to figure that out. Here's a sample:

-As the Net Neutrality debate moves to the Senate, Josh Marshall is collecting votes, finding out where every Senator stands on the issue, and particularly S. 2917, the Byron Dorgan/Olympia Snowe Internet Freedom Preservation Act. Already he's learned that Inouye, Boxer, Clinton, Obama, Wyden, Kerry, Dodd, Lieberman, and Reid support the bill. I hope Marshall does for this what he did for the Social Security debate last year. Bottom line, there should not be a two-tiered Internet, a fast one for rich websites and a slow one for poor ones. This legislation would create online the same disparities that exist in the real world.

Craigslist founder Craig Newmark had a good op-ed on this, on CNN.

-There's a children's video game where Christian soldiers "convert or kill" citizens of New York while shouting "Praise the Lord." And as much as it's a byproduct of the eliminationist rhetoric of the far-right, it has extensive ties to "The Purpose-Driven Life" pastor Rick Warren and Left Behind creator Tim LaHaye. In facy, it's a real-time strategy version of the Left Behind series.

To be fair, the children that play the game CAN switch sides and be the forces of the AntiChrist and kill conservative Christians. I mean, it's not like they're TOTALLY nuts. As blogger Jonathan Huston says:

Comparisons to Grand Theft Auto and other such video game titles are irrelevant to this discussion. It is not the level of violence that is at issue, but the Christian supremacy. This game immerses children in an environment that copies present-day New York, and indoctrinates and rehearses children in the mass killing of New Yorkers. This is religious indoctrination that forms children's identities and teaches that they must be prepared to do a deadly deed to defend their creed. That message is unAmerican and unChristian; patriots and Christians alike should oppose this game.

-Forgot to post this from Vegas:



-Reading the conservative blogosphere opinion on the YearlyKos event, I'd say that they're missing the boat. This could be good for them, and anyone who wants to have citizens reclaim the political process. Unless they realize that if that happens, Democrats will prevail since the history of America is a history of movement towards progressivism and expansion of rights.

-Texas Democrats are trying to force Tom DeLay's name onto the November ballot.

The suit, filed in Travis County 126th District Court, seeks to undo an hours-old declaration by Republican Party Chair Tina Benkiser that DeLay is ineligible to run in the general election.

If DeLay doesn’t serve as the party’s candidate for Congressional District 22, then according to the Texas Election Code, no other candidate is allowed to replace him, the suit says.

DeLay, who won the primary, is trying to slink away on a technicality. There's no problem with calling him on that.

-3 inmates hang themselves at Guantanamo. This will happen with increasing regularity until the camp is closed. Which it ought to be, and everyone within ought to be charged with a crime if you want to maintain the rule of law in this country.

-"Gay marriage is the most important issue facing the country," says David Vitter, the Republican Senator from Louisiana, who represents the people of New Orleans.