Sixty: Senate Democrats put together enough votes to open debate on health care reform. That doesn’t guarantee whatever bill the Senate comes up with will pass though.

Jesus Is Mean: An orthodox Catholic bishop has banned U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy from receiving communion—which is important to those guys—in Rhode Island. Because Kennedy’s pro-choice. And the bishop’s kind of a dick.

The Crazy Murder Trial is Back: Prosecutors in Italy are seeking a life sentence for Amanda Knox. They even backed up their case with some kind of crazy cartoon reenactment!

Mine Explosion in China: 92 people now dead, and 16 missing inside.

MLS Cup: They’ve sold 40,000 tickets so far for today’s championship game between the L.A. Galaxy and ridiculously named Real Salt Lake.

Smoking: Here’s who the CDC says is doing it. A lot of them seem to come from West Virginia.

Anyone Else Noticed This? The city’s been installing brown street signs. Here’s what it all means.

Iran: They want fuel for their nuclear facilities, and say any attack on them “will be crushed.”

Raising Awareness About Pedestrian Safety: Via a crowd of people prancing around downtown. It’s how SDOT is getting the word out about car-pedestrian collisions.

Oops: Washington State collects $21,000 in child support from a man who didn’t owe it. And offered him a $1.24 refund.

In case you need some dumbing down this morning:

And if that wasn’t enough glorious stupidity, part 2 is here.

19 replies on “The Morning News: Senate Votes to Consider Health Care, Conflict Over Church Cookies, and Street Signs are Brown”

  1. Patrick Kennedy can make his own communion with the following recipe:

    Get some bread and some red wine, make the sign of the cross and say: “Abra kadabra alakazam this bread and wine is the son of man.” and presto you have wonder bread.

  2. Call me simple, but I like that. Even not knowing quite what you mean, and aside from being briefly nicknamed Wonder Bread, I’m sure the 3 month long “backup man” scanning for bar chicks/thrills, who gave me that name, and who didn’t share my written propensity for run-on sentences, he didn’t mean harm by the joke, “Did you know Dean Martin was born in Seattle?” … “Well yeah, but he was ‘reared’ in Hollywood.”

  5. If someone is anti-smoking (which I lean toward), I suggest this new health bill continue the rise of programs (fitness, alternatives, breathing contests in schools if such a thing could be invented, support groups, etc) which have been occurring for a few years now. Everybody, right now go for a walk around the block.
    Or visit West Virginia like missionaries/condom suppliers in Africa and show by example. Something like this
    http://tribes.tribe.net/seattlequeerbike…
    can get some sort of security for a few days in reddish-neck land.

  10. So…Seattle is allegedly this soccer hotbed and they can only sell 40,000 tickets for the MLS championship game (and we know a lot of those are LA and Salt Lake fans)?

    Makes me think a lot of Sounders fans are just bandwagon-jumpers who go to games because it’s cool, not because they give a shit about the game.

  12. Mr. Catholic Bishop, how many abortions has Rep. Kennedy personally had? Huh? Then he’s probably good to go…How many abortions has Rep. Kennedy caused the need for? That’s private information between him, her, god, and his confessor, which does amount to a pretty big crowd so maybe you’re right after all.

  14. “Real Salt Lake” isn’t totally ridiculous. Mormons consider themselves “royal”, but in a way that they don’t want to admit to the rest of the country, which they have unspoken contempt for, and thus like the idea of couching the pride in a translation most people won’t notice the true meaning of.

  15. I welcome this bishop’s edict to deny communion to Republicans that support the death penalty.

    What… no Catholic bishops are barring Republican politicians from receiving Communion for going against church teachings? I can’t even begin to heap the proper amount of scorn on this asshole.

  16. I wonder if the priests who raped children were banned from preforming communion after the church transfered them to cover up their crime.

  17. @ 17, unless you’ve grown up Catholic then you have no idea how Catholics can have great, fundamental differences with the official line from Rome while remaining in the Church. Protestants change church affiliation on the slightest whim; Catholics stick with theirs through thick and thin.

    Naturally there are countless exceptions. I myself am agnostic and only go to church for weddings and funerals. I’ve quit, in other words. But my dad, a former seminarian, keeps on going despite being exactly the sort of Catholic that some Bishops threaten with excommunication and denial of communion.

    Of course, it’s all politics. All the American bishops, including RI’s, are doing is currying favor with Rome in the hopes of furthering their careers within the church. There are priests who will defy the bishop’s edict because, despite its top-down centralized structure, the Church has plenty of priests who flaunt the rules and rulings from on high on these matters.

  18. Yes, and I’ll also bet just about anything you’d care to bet that they’ll change their tune once that rather large donation from the Kennedy family that they’ve grown accustomed to having goes away.

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