Another U.S. Attorney General who’s willing to look the other way on torture.

While I’m still disappointed that there was never any furor in Congress over now former Attorney Gen. Alberto Gonzales’ refusal to say that torture is always illegal/wrong, I am quite happy that he has finally resigned. Good riddance.

It’s a long shot, but I would love to see him start talking more candidly about his and the White House’s abuses of power now that he is no longer under their employ. I won’t get my hopes up though.

Ex-SoCal councilwoman could be deported

(from the Associated Press)

LOS ANGELES - All of her life, Zoila Meyer believed she was an American. She even won election to the City Council of Adelanto. But now she is facing a threat of deportation for illegally voting, because she never became a citizen after being brought to this country from Cuba when she was 1 year old.

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I neglected to mention that I made a trip down to the DMV a few weeks ago. Because my Texas driver’s license was still valid, all I had to do was pass a written test. I didn’t figure California’s traffic laws were very different, or that the test would actually be difficult, so I looked over a few practice tests before having a go at the real thing.

Want to know how you’d do on the written exam for a Class C California driver’s license? See for yourself.

After thirty-six questions, I felt like I had guessed incorrectly on too many of them. You can only miss five or six and still pass. I was sure I missed more than that. For example, one question asked about the blood alcohol content limit. My choices were something like:
a) .1
b) .08
c) .05
d) .01

I was pretty sure Texas’ limit is .08. If anything, I figured California would be a bit tougher than Texas, so I thought maybe I should guess .05. Still, my instinct said to go with .08, so I did.

Anyway, I took my test back to the desk and the woman at the counter scored it. I was nervous. She wasn’t marking anything, but I wasn’t sure if they marked wrong answers or not.

Finally she put a “100″ on the top, congratulated me, and said, “That’s one for the refridgerator.” She was right about that, but I didn’t think anyone would care at my house, so I hung it from Tara’s fridge. I’ve gotten lots of compliments.

I got my actual license in the mail about a week later, which is really, really fast for a DMV. Seems like it took about a month in Texas. By the way, my Texas driver’s license is no longer valid.

I also got my voter registration card, which means I can vote in the elections on November 7. I’ll be able to vote for or against Arnold Schwarzeneggar, which is a pretty novel thing I’d say. I’ll be able to vote in a ton of other elections as well, and I really have no clue who to vote for. I’ve tried giving myself a crash course, but I have a lot of catching up to do.

Today in the mail, there was an official California voter information guide. It’s a hundred and ninety pages, people. I’m not sure what I’ll do with it.

Speaking of democracy, the Weekly Poll appears to be a huge success. An overwhelming eleven of you voted, with seven votes going to the winner, “Oh my gosh, I just peed my pants.” Because of the popularity of the poll, I’ve decided to continue and give it its own page on the site. There will be a new poll each Wednesday. If your candidate didn’t win last time, get out the vote and try again this week. The prompt is in the sidebar.

It’ll be interesting to see if President Bush’s approval ratings (now at a mere 29 percent) plummet after he disrupts Oprah’s Legends Ball and the season finale of Grey’s Anatomy in order to hold a televised speech on immigration this Monday night.