A helpful guide to who's been naughty and nice

By GottaLaff

The L.A. Times has their own idea of who gets (not clean) coal and who gets a generic gift card. Here is their list, in part:

Nice: Houston, which recently became the biggest U.S. city to elect an openly gay mayor. Annise Parker has two adopted children with her partner of 19 years, Kathy Hubbard, though unlike Tiger Woods and Elin Nordegren they aren't legally allowed to marry.

Naugthy: Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.), a vacuum for oil industry political contributions whose nonsensical denials of climate-change science in the face of vanishing ice sheets and decaying coral reefs make him Earth's Public Enemy No. 1. [...]

Naughty: The voters of Maine, who overruled the state Legislature and voted to take away the right of gays and lesbians to marry.

Nice: The Washington, D.C., City Council, which voted this month to legalize same-sex marriage over the objections of dozens of religious leaders. [...]

Naughty: The U.S. Catholic Bishops, whose insistence on antiabortion language in the Senate's massive healthcare bill threatened to derail legislation that promises to fulfill a long-standing ambition of, yes, the U.S. Catholic Bishops, who have traditionally been strong supporters of broadened healthcare coverage. Now that makes a whole a lot of sense, doesn't it? [...]

Naughty: The U.S. government, for seeking to sell oil and gas leases that would have permitted drilling on more than 110,000 pristine acres of public land in Utah, including some of America's most beautiful and environmentally sensitive red-rock desert. [...]

Naughty: The Obama Justice Department, for demanding that the case of five men who were allegedly kidnapped by the CIA and subsequently tortured be thrown out of court because pursuing it might require disclosure of supposedly vital American secrets.

Nice: The three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which ordered that the case go forward, rightly stating that to thwart a trial would "perversely encourage the president to classify politically embarrassing information simply to place it beyond the reach of the judicial process." [...]

Naughty: Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.), who breached congressional protocol (a phrase becoming increasingly oxymoronic) by shouting, "You lie!" at President Obama during a presidential address to Congress in September on healthcare reform.

Nice: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), whose dogged efforts to herd the cats in his own party into backing a filibuster-proof, 60-vote majority on the health reform bill have been admirable.

More here.

Have anyone to add? Feel free to leave your own Naughties and Nices in Comments.

An inaugural gift for some strangers

WASHINGTON: At the JW Marriott Hotel, $1 million will buy you 300 hotel rooms, $200,000 worth of food and private access to a tented, heated balcony overlooking the parade route of President-elect Barack Obama's inauguration.

Earl Stafford is buying it all - and giving it away to strangers.

Stafford, a Virginia businessman, plans to invite disadvantaged people, wounded soldiers and others to the prime location on Pennsylvania Avenue. He is calling it the "People's Inaugural Project," inviting those who would never otherwise have a chance to wear tuxedos or satin dresses to the president's swearing in.

"We believe it is important to include those who are less fortunate, because like Barack Obama, we, too, believe in the American dream," Stafford said Thursday.