Why Aztec Rex Can Win Peace in Iraq

• What I'm Watching/Listening To/Reading:
• Pretty good season finale for "C.S.I.:". Nice reference back to the pilot episode. I won't ruin the ending, but I thought the way it would end was fairly apparent with the way they led up to it.
• Checked out the Inside Out EP, No Spiritual Surrender, that my friend Dan (a link to his blog is on the left) burned for me. Inside Out was the first band of Rage Against The Machine frontman Zack De La Rocha. It's standard LA hardcore, sort of like you'd hear on Metallica's Kill 'Em All (without the blistering riffs on songs like "Seek And Destroy" or "The Four Horsemen"), but the guitars are a little cleaner than you might hear on most thrash metal. Obviously, it's not quite as interesting as anything featuring Tom Morello. De La Rocha mostly just screams, but he attempts to sing a little. He can't really carry a tune, but that's not why we love him. I like the story from their wikipedia page about how, before they broke up, they were about to record an album called Rage Against The Machine.
• It also drives home, to some extent, how ground-breaking Ride The Lightning was. Metallica could have been just a better-than-average thrash band (especially with Mustaine gone), but their infusion of a little punk here and a little melody there revolutionized heavy metal.
• Aztec Rex!!!
• Random Thoughts/Links:
• This potential referendum in Colorado is just awesome. Awesome. Best line from an e-mail I saw on a blog: "Does this mean I can apply for Social Security nine months earlier?"
• You know I love Mike Huckabee, but this wasn't exactly appropriate.
• Daily Rant:

Check out this article on the history of anti-miscegenation laws in the United States. Key quote for me:

As Reconstruction collapsed in the late 1870s, legislators, policymakers, and, above all, judges began to marshal the arguments they needed to justify the reinstatement--and subsequent expansion--of miscegenation law. Here are four of the arguments they used:
1) First, judges claimed that marriage belonged under the control of the states rather than the federal government.
2) Second, they began to define and label all interracial relationships (even longstanding, deeply committed ones) as illicit sex rather than marriage.
3) Third, they insisted that interracial marriage was contrary to God's will, and
4) Fourth, they declared, over and over again, that interracial marriage was somehow "unnatural."

Sixty years ago, in 1948, the California Supreme Court (imagine that!) found these laws unconstitutional. In 1967, a similar decision came down from the U.S. Supreme Court. Alabama, however, incredibly waited until 2000 to strike the anti-miscegenation portion of their Constitution. It's so hard to believe that it took that long for something that we take for granted to become legal. Sixty years from now, people will be saying the same thing about the march to legality for gay marriage. Will history judge those that stand against it the same way that we judge those that stood against interracial marriage? The answer is most likely a soul-searching yes.