Troops Rally For Regime Change Battle
By Don Hazen and Tai Moses, AlterNet
March 5, 2004
Super Tuesday was John Kerry's Rubicon. The furious, but not so fast general presidential contest began, in all its excessive glory and gore. While George W. Bush made his disingenuous congratulatory phone call to Kerry on Tuesday, the president's campaign was working to churn out the beginning of millions of dollars of television and radio ads that will try to negatively define John Kerry for swing voters in a number of key states. Kerry, for his part, didn't hesitate to set the tenor of his campaign – his victory speech ripped Bush on health care, jobs and national security, and charged the administration with having "the most inept, reckless, and ideological foreign policy in modern history."


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A legal look at Oregon's move
Constitution, rulings back equal protection
John M. Hubbell, Chronicle Staff Writer Friday, March 5, 2004
Portland, Ore. -- Maverick county commissioners who suddenly authorized same-sex marriages here this week might be the most obvious people for Oregon's gay newlyweds to thank. But as couples continued to ring the Multnomah County building Thursday to be wed, state legal experts said their biggest allies may end up being the state's constitutional framers who long ago rejected the idea of a tiered society on the forming frontier.


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Chambers says Bruning has radical agenda
BY HENRY J. CORDES
State Sen. Ernie Chambers on Thursday accused Attorney General Jon Bruning of politicizing his office with his testimony before Congress in support of a ban on same-sex marriage. Chambers said Bruning backed an "extremist, radical, discriminatory political agenda" with his testimony Wednesday before a Senate subcommittee on the need for a constitutional amendment barring gay marriage. "The rest of the country is entitled to believe that his lame-brained simpletonness represents the state of Nebraska," the Omaha state senator said. "Who is to say (same-sex couples) are not entitled to the thrill of marriage and the agony of divorce?" Bruning and Dave Bydalek, the director of a pro-family organization, rejected suggestions that the attorney general's testimony was extremist.


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No Mayor, But New Paltz Gay Weds Continue
Mar 6, 2004 2:04 pm US/Eastern
(New Paltz, NY) New Paltz Mayor Jason West may have postponed his plans to marry more same-sex couples, but that hasn't stopped such weddings from taking place in his village. About two dozen same-sex couples gathered under a packed tent in a private parking lot on the village's Main Street Saturday to be married by local Unitarian


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NYC Mayor: Gay Couples Merit Equal Rights
By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS
Associated Press Writer
Originally published March 6, 2004, 5:53 PM EST
NEW YORK -- The mayor of the nation's largest city says same-sex couples deserve the same rights in civil unions that straight couples enjoy in marriage, but he will continue to enforce New York state's ban on gay marriage.