We have a good number of same-sex couples living here in the town of Ulysses. There’s a reason for that. These couples settle here because they recognize that our community is a relatively welcoming place. Their presence here is a compliment to the character of our town.

Our state Senator George Winner, however, is preparing to respond to that compliment with an insult. Senator Winner is preparing to vote to deprive same-sex couples of their right to equal protection under the law.

I’m heterosexual. I’ve got a wife and three great kids. It was pretty easy for me to make a family (once I convinced my wife that marrying me would be an okay idea). No one in the government tried to stop me from getting married, or told me that my wife and I weren’t the right kind of people for each other. Yet, that’s just what Senator George Winner is doing.

Senator Winner is taking the power in government that he has been granted, and he’s abusing it in order to interfere in the private lives of his constituents. He’s using the power of government to declare which couples are worthy of getting married, and which ones aren’t, based on his personal opinion.

Some people may try to confuse this issue by saying that it’s about religious liberty, but they’re just plain wrong. Nothing in the proposed state legislation would interfere with the choice of some churches to only marry heterosexual couples. I emphasize the word some, because the truth that opponents of marriage equality try to obscure is that many churches belong to religious traditions that believe in the sanctity of same-sex marriage.

My church, the First Unitarian Society of Ithaca, is one of them. That church, along with another Unitarian Universalist church in Elmira, are also located within George Winner’s senate district. By opposing the marriage equality legislation that will probably be voted upon in the New York State Senate this month, George Winner is interfering with the First Amendment right of the members of these churches to exert their religious freedom through participation in rituals of same-sex marriage. Senator Winner is opposing religious liberty, not defending it.

George Winner also isn’t defending any families here in the 53rd district. He’s attacking the rights of families – including children. After all, marriage equality isn’t just an issue of the rights of the same-sex couples who live here in Trumansburg and Ulysses. Also at issue are the rights of the children that these couple are raising among us. These children are friends of children raised by heterosexual couples, but they don’t have the same protection of having parents who are able to become legally bonded through marriage. These children are made the victims of society’s prejudice against their parents. George Winner is stoking that prejudice.

Senator Winner has the freedom to hold whatever prejudices he chooses. He does not, however, have the right to deprive his constituents of their constitutional right to equal protection under the law, just because he doesn’t like them. At its base, the issue is really that simple: You don’t have to like same-sex couples, but you do have to honor their rights.

In the United States, we have a Constitution, and a system of laws based upon the ideal of equality and impartiality, for the purpose of ensuring that unpopular minorities are protected. It is true that the marriage equality legislation to be voted upon in the New York State Senate grants special rights to same-sex couples, but only to the extent that we are all granted rights that are special. Our American system of rights for all is unquestionably outstanding.

What it comes down to is that when we allow our friends and neighbors to be deprived of equal rights, we are all living inequality. The persistence of legally-sanctioned discrimination against same-sex couples is an attack against the system that protects the rights of us all. We all suffer when that system is weakened.

I love my country and its constitutional values too much to watch them erode under the force of petty prejudices. I respect my friends here in Trumansburg and Ulysses too much to stand by in silence while their equal status in our community is denied.

They are local. They make it a local issue for me.

Visit the following resources to get involved in the effort to get Senator George Winner to change his mind before the vote:

- Marriage NY
- Marriage Equality New York
- New York Marriage Equality News Blog

The FISA Amendments Act is plainly in violation of the fourth amendment to the Constitution, part of the Bill of Rights. This legislation is an attack on our American freedom.

The FISA Amendments Act also provides retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that helped George W. Bush spy on millions of Americans’ personal communications. Why is that important? Retroactive immunity keeps lawsuits against the telecom corporations out of the courtroom, and thus prevents information about President Bush’s spying program from becoming public. Even Congress still does not know how far Bush went with his electronic spying.

Let me summarize: The FISA Amendments Act is a thoroughly bad idea. It opens the door to government abuse of power, and critically compromises our rights as American citizens.

What are our senators, Charles Schumer and Hillary Clinton, likely to do? Will they vote against the FISA Amendments Act?

I can’t tell you. That’s because Senators Clinton and Schumer refuse to say what they’ll do.

I called their offices a few minutes ago. Senator Clinton’s aide only would say that Hillary Clinton opposes retroactive immunity. She wouldn’t say whether Senator Clinton would actually vote against the FISA Amendments Act or whether Senator Clinton opposes the other abusive elements of the law.

When I called Senator Schumer’s office, I was told that Senator Schumer will not comment about what he intends to do about the FISA Amendments Act.

Senators Russ Feingold and Christopher Dodd have announced their plan to filibuster the FISA Amendments Act. Will Schumer and Clinton join them or leave them hanging?

We’re residents of New York state, not Alabama or Wyoming. We deserve senators who will take the lead in representing our state’s progressive values, and not just sit on the fence.

Please call our senators as soon as possible, before the FISA Amendments Act comes up for a vote, and tell them how you’d like them to vote on this legislation, and the attempt to filibuster.

Senator Hillary Clinton: (202) 224-4451
Senator Charles Schumer: (202) 224-6542

If you call Arcuri’s office (202-225-3665), you will be told by the aide who answers the telephone that Congressman Arcuri does not support retroactive immunity for telecommunications corporations. You will be told that H.R. 6304 is a “compromise” bill that does not offer retroactive telecom immunity.

When you are told this by the aide who answers the telephone, ask the aide if he has actually read H.R. 6304. The aide I talked to admitted that he has not read the bill.

I have read the bill, and the assertion that it does not offer retroactive legal immunity for telecommunications corporations is laughable. But, I’m not a lawyer, so maybe you shouldn’t take my word for it. Consider what Senator Russ Feingold, who knows how to read a piece of legislation, has to say about the bill:

“The proposed FISA deal is not a compromise; it is a capitulation. The House and Senate should not be taking up this bill, which effectively guarantees immunity for telecom companies alleged to have participated in the President’s illegal program, and which fails to protect the privacy of law-abiding Americans at home.”

Or, you could take the word of attorney Kevin Bankston, who works for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Bankston has read the legislation, and he concludes,

“Whatever gloss might be put on it, the so-called ‘compromise’ on immunity is anything but: the current proposal is the exact same blanket immunity that the Senate passed in February and that the House rejected in March, only with a few new bells and whistles so that political spinsters can claim that it actually provides meaningful court review.”

Political spinsters – that’s what we’re getting in the office of Congressman Michael Arcuri. They’re counting on you to not read the legislation for yourself. Maybe Representative Arcuri himself hasn’t even read the FISA Amendments Act. He admitted that he didn’t bother reading the Military Commissions Act before approving it.

You can choose to go along with the political spin offered by Arcuri’s staff, or you can be one of the few Americans who has read the FISA Amendments Act. I don’t expect many people to bother to read it. I don’t expect many people to care that much. I don’t expect many Democrats to question Arcuri, and make this a campaign issue. We’ll hear the same old claims that it’s somehow our duty to support Arcuri because he carries the name of Democrat, and for most Democrats, that will be a good enough argument.

We are not living in an age of idealism. Congressman Arcuri knows that, and that’s why he’s confident that he won’t lose much support on account of his vote for Bush’s spying bill today.

You get to decide whether you’re willing to go along with that, and confirm Arcuri’s sad judgment of the character of our citizens.

We disagree on plenty of things, but one thing I’ve recognized among all Democrats in the town of Ulysses is that they value free and open debate. Yet, on a significant piece of legislation that will be voted on in the U.S. House of Representatives today, there will not be free and open debate.

That’s because our Representative in Washington D.C., Representative Michael Arcuri, put forward H.RES.1285 yesterday. H.RES.1285 is a resolution to set the rules for debate for another bill – H.R. 6304, the FISA Amendments Act.

Congressman Arcuri’s resolution limited the debate on the FISA Amendments Act to just one hour, with the debate under the control of the chairman and ranking Republican member of the House Judiciary Committee. Both of these people support the legislation.

Why should you care? Isn’t this all just technical legislative boring stuff?

No. H.R. 6304, the FISA Amendments Act, does some very unboring things, as you’ll see if you actually take the time to read the proposed law, instead of just accepting the CNN 30-second summary.

Here’s what you’d find if you read the entire proposed law (not just the headers and summaries):

- The law allows the White House to conduct electronic spying against whomever it wants, including Americans in the United States who are not suspected of any crime, without any search warrant or meaningful court oversight. This includes:
A. Reading your email
B. Tracking your movements if you have a GPS device or cell phone
C. Keeping records of which web sites you visit
D. Listening to your phone calls
- The law allows the White House to order physical searches of Americans’ homes, places of work, and persons without any search warrant
- The same official who has authority to conduct the searches, the Attorney General of the United States, also has the sole authority to certify that the searches have been done properly, in accordance with the law. No one else in Congress or in any court will have the power to contradict the Attorney General’s self-certification.

Whether you agree or disagree with these provisions of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, it ought to be very clear that important and substantial issues are involved – issues that cannot possibly be properly addressed in a one-hour debate.

Mike Arcuri’s resolution to limit debate of this bill to one hour looks like an attempt to prevent meaningful discussion and review by members of Congress. It is a resolution that is against the values of open government and free debate that we Ulysses Democrats value.

The involvement of Congressman Arcuri in the effort to rush the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 through Congress without the opportunity for sufficient public debate is profoundly disappointing, and tarnishes his image at the very time when he is beginning his first re-election campaign.

When we have a lame duck President in George W. Bush, there is no excuse for this kind of spineless lack of resistance to the worst parts of the Bush agenda. Democrats were elected to a majority in Congress for a reason – it was to change the culture of Washington, D.C., not to go along with the flow as Congressman Arcuri is doing.

You can call Congressman Arcuri’s D.C. office at 202-225-3665.

That’s an odd rallying cry for the small number of people in Ulysses who had been dedicated Water District Five supporters. It’s odd, because Water District Five never has been alive.

Water District Five has been nothing but a series of proposals, without the backing of the our elected representative government. A few individual politicians supported one or the other of these proposals, but never was a Water District Five proposal passed all the way through the village and town boards in such a way that the project was made “alive”.

Water District Five never had enough support to make it truly come into being. If anything, you might call it a legislative embryo – an unborn thing produced by strange fertilizations of anti-regulation ideologues and opportunistic landowners.

Or, given the increasingly grotesque permutations that Water District 5 went through as that small group of die-hard supporters tried to raise it from the dead, you might call Water District 5 a legislative zombie. So, although Water District Five was never truly alive, it certainly could be regarded as a member of the undead.

Keep Water District Five alive? When I see a slogan like that, I don’t get angry so much as sad for the person who went through the effort to write it out. The person who wrote that message had been fed a bunch of hopes and dreams by people who hyped the non-existent project up to such proportions that the graffiti artist had really come to believe that it was anything other than pipe dreams.

It’s all about chocolate – made on the premises. The storefront isn’t large, but what’s there fills the small size quite well.

I’m happy to say that the my mother and mother-in-law took the occasion of discovering the shop last month of getting a chocolate box with Easter goodies inside for me – unnecessary, but delicious. According to the business’s web site, their best sellers are their Star Wars chocolates.

Life’s So Sweet is where last year’s Sweet Shop used to be, next to the Aceto Stiles Gallery, across the street from Ron Don’s. If you haven’t been, you’re missing something sweet.