AltBrothers

Matriarch of racially mixed marriages dies
U.S. Supreme Court overthrew bans after Mildred [and Richard] Loving challenged law

Interesting quotes:

“There can be no doubt that restricting the freedom to marry solely because of racial classifications violates the central meaning of the equal protection clause,” the court ruled in a unanimous decision.

“The law that threatened the Lovings with a year in jail was a vestige of a hateful, discriminatory past that could not stand in the face of the Lovings’ quiet dignity,” said Steven Shapiro, national legal director for the ACLU.

“We loved each other and got married,” she told The Washington Evening Star in 1965, when the case was pending. “We are not marrying the state. The law should allow a person to marry anyone he wants.”

“Mike Connery on why progressive leaders should stop lamenting ‘youth apathy’ and start engaging the most diverse, tolerant, generation in history.”

A must read interview at AlterNet: “Ignore the Youth Vote at Your Own Peril” is about more than just the 2008 Presidential Election, it’s about the future.

From The Brad Blog: ‘Daily Voting News’ for May 2, 2008

“Yesterday Cuyahoga Co announced that in preparation for a lawsuit against Diebold/Premier they were going to have their old DRE voting system inspected by Systest Labs. This is a clear conflict of interest because Systest is presently testing the new Premier Assure voting system for EAC certification. Today the news from Ohio is that Secretary of State Brunner wants to get rid of the requirement that voting systems used in Ohio must be federally tested against the voting systems standards and federally certified. She wants the state to hire a lab to do the work [is there any doubt which lab?] for the state and to the state’s standards. Today’s news was accompanied by a statement that Brunner wants to eliminate the need to have the equipment also meet federal standards for accuracy, security, and reliability. What the reporter, or more likely whomever he spoke with in Brunner’s office, does not understand is that accuracy is a mandate of federal law. HAVA dictates the accuracy of voting machines; not the voluntary voting system standards….”

“The White House was built by slave labor… It is going to be a black man to go into the White House for the first time in the history of the country.”

– The Rev. Fitzhugh Lyons, president of the Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance, in describing the 2008 Obama Presidential Campaign as “history-making.”

Note: Barack Obama is the son of a white American mother and black African father.

From “25 black ministers hope to generate Obama vote” - The Indianapolis Star

The Cliff Schecter blog announces that on May 2, 2008 some prominent Republicans will be coming out endorsing Barack Obama. This is major. http://agonist.org/schecter/?p=9525 What’s even more powerful is a comment to the announcement left by a “Kim” who describes one of the propsed endorsees:

“Prominent Indiana Republicans Endorsing Obama”
Kim, on May 2nd, 2008 at 7:38 am Said:

William Ruckelshaus is more than a former Nixon administration attorney. He was deputy Attorney General on the night of the “Saturday Night Massacre.”
When Attorney General Eliot Richardson resigned rather than fire Archibald Cox (who was the Special Prosecutor on Watergate) as ordered by President Nixon, the order then fell to Mr. Ruckelshaus to enforce. [Read more →]

Found this little handy web site to keep up with the number of people and organizations that have given their endorsement to Barack Obama. I’m really grateful for this Obama endorsement tracking service as sometimes they can’t be found in the MSM.

http://obamaendorsements.blogspot.com/

Edit April, 30, 2008: It seems that the Obama Endorsements site can’t keep up with the on-going endorsements! I’ll have to find one with a simple list that can keep current day-to-day.

And I can’t forget the most important endorsements of all - the ones made by you and me and the thousands of our friends in primaries and caucuses from the Atlantic to the Pacific.