During hearings on new energy legislation today Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn) attempted to discredit Al Gore by alleging—through her constituents—that the former Vice President was profiting from the climate crisis. After laughing with the audience through much her remarks, Gore repudiated the allegations saying “If you believe the reason I have been working on this issue for 30 years is because of greed… You don’t know me.” Watch.

Blackburn and Michelle Bachman must be cut from the same cloth. I say we torture these folks by putting them on the beach and watching them scream for help as the water levels rise. Oh wait a minute… that’s not torture. They’ve said so themselves. Sorry.

The Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act, sometimes referred to as the Matthew Shepard Act, made significant progress today passing 15-12 in the House Judiciary Committee, despite GOP members efforts to ammend the bill with frivolous amendments and gutting the “gender identity” language from the bill entirely.

Rea Carey, executive director of the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF), praised the committee vote in the Washington Blade:

“Laws ultimately reflect a nation’s values, and this legislation, once passed, will send a strong message that America rejects all forms of hate violence, including bias-motivated crimes against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people,” she said. “This committee vote marks the beginning of the end of a long-fought battle.”

There was protracted discussion in committee Wednesday and Thursday of several amendments to the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act. The measure is intended, among other things, to allow the Justice Department to assist in the prosecution of hate crimes committed against LGBT people that result in death or serious injury.

Amendments offered by the committee’s Republican members, though, sought to include unborn children, military members and pregnant women in the measure. Another proposed amendment sought to strip passages regarding “gender identity” from the bill. The amendments were voted down.

The bill may come up for a vote on the House floor as early as next week.

Hate crimes legislation has languished under Republican leadership since 1997, even after the death of Matthew Shepard, a college student who was murdered in 1998 for being gay. But now with a Democratic Congress and President the bill has a legitimate chance of becoming law.

Recently, Matthew’s mom Judy Shepard made an impassioned plea for the bill’s passage. Watch.

For more information visit http://www.FightHateNow.org.

Thanks to a private clemency bill introduced by Senator Diane Feinstein, Shirley Tan will thankfully be able remain with her partner Jay Mercado and their twin sons, at least until the Senate decides if it wants to address the bill, which could take up to 21 months, or through the end of this Congress in 2010. This grants a much larger window of opportunity for the Uniting American Family Act (UAFA) to pass which would allow binational couples to sponsor their same-sex partners, and allow Tan to legally stay in this country.

From Tan’s attorney Melanie Nathan…

Today Senator Feinstein introduced a very rare private bill on behalf of Shirley Tan; Shirley will not have to leave the USA for now and hopefully never. The essence of its introduction is that Tan does not have to leave the USA on May 10th, in terms of the voluntary order issued by DHS. This enables her to stay in the USA, legally, until the private bill passes ( a rare occurrence)- and if it does not come up for a vote then she can stay for the duration of this Congress’s session, which has approximately a year and nine months left. However Shirleys ultimate saviour will be UAFA and nothing else!

…

A great big thanks from the Tan-Mercado family to Rep. Speier and her amazing staff as well as Sen. Feinstein and her staff, all of whom showed extraordinary care and diligence through the process. A special mention to the organizations that lent their support. Marriage Equality, Immigration Equality, Out4Immigration, Love Exiles and all the Media that remained so patient and supportive. Sen Boxer is sponsoring UAFA and we now hope that Sen. Feinstein will do the same as many many others are in as bad a predicament as Shirley Tan has been.

…

When I spoke to Jay today she was crying with joy and said the whole family including the boys were absolutely overwhelmed with emotion. The news was conveyed to her directly by Senator Feinstein’s office. It has been a long and arduous process and so a very special thank you goes to Attorney Phyllis Beech, San Francisco and Fresno. I will write more later – but now I have to call and tell everyone the good news.

More at Melanie Nathan’s blog.

It’s been difficult these past few days with the blog and all—more on that tomorrow—and I’ve almost let Earth Day pass me by without so much as a sidelong glance. But I’m reminded just now of one of the Earth’s most passionate advocates who unfortunately is no longer with us, who called this world ‘a pale blue dot.” I am of course referring to Carl Sagan, the well-known astronomer and bestselling author of Cosmos: A Personal Voyage. In his followup A Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space, there is an eloquent passage where he describes the view of Earth from beyond Saturn, as seen through the lens of the Voyager 1 space probe.

The piece, set to music and video below, reminds us that our planet is little more than a point of light in vast, encompassing cosmos… but it is our “point of light,” and it’s the only one we’ve got. Perhaps the implied message is that we better take care of this place we call Earth, because if we don’t, no one else in the universe will even notice… when we are gone.

I know you’ll probably be reading this the day after Earth Day, but this will still be just as important and definitely worth the time.

I’ll close with another quote from Carl Sagan, as relevant today as it was almost 30 years ago…

“Our own planet is only a tiny part of the vast cosmic tapestry, a starry fabric of worlds yet untold. Those worlds in space are as countless as all the grains of sand on all the beaches of the Earth. Each of those worlds is as real as ours. In every one of them, there’s a succession of incidents, events, occurrences which influence its future. Countless worlds, numberless moments, an immensity of space and time. And our small planet, at this moment, here we face a critical branch-point in the history. What we do with our world, right now, will propagate down through the centuries and powerfully affect the destiny of our descendants. It is well within our power to destroy our civilization, and perhaps our species as well. If we capitulate to superstition, or greed, or stupidity we can plunge our world into a darkness deeper than time between the collapse of classical civilization and the Italian Renaissance. But, we are also capable of using our compassion and our intelligence, our technology and our wealth, to make an abundant and meaningful life for every inhabitant of this planet. To enhance enormously our understanding of the Universe, and to carry us to the stars.”

Happy, belated, Earth Day.