Hank Kalet

Anyone who thinks today’s U.S. Senate vote on a proposed constitutional amendment is the last word on the issue is sadly mistaken.

Cultural conservatives are prepared to go to the mat on this, while the GOP leadership sees it as a way to distract its conservative base from the Bush administration’s incompetence in Iraq and failed economic policies at home.

So, while the amendment is dead in the Senate for the rest of the year, it will make an appearance in the House and in an array of election races through November. Ugh.

Seven Republican moderates, by the way, who have been holding the president’s bag — in confirming Judge Alito, for instance — showed a bit of spine today, which could/should be seen as good news, though they remain unreliable and far from independent.

Well, it’s finally over, this ugly, dirty little campaign.

Some quick thoughts:

I knew it was going to be close when I saw that there were at least as many Debra Johnson for mayor signs on local lawns as there were Frank Gambatese signs.

And I knew it would be ugly when Ms. Johnson came to us to explain her work problems, an obvious attempt to get in front of an issue that was likely to dog her campaign. Having watched campaigning around here for 16 years, I knew the Democrats would use whatever they could to maintain the status quo (this is something that both parties have engaged in over the years).

And I knew that we’d all breath a sigh of relief when it was over. It is over — whew.

Another legend lost. Preston was a man who should have been a bigger star, with his funky vocal phrasing and electric piano — in some ways, he was ahead of his time.

The Boston Globe, in its editorial today, offers the best rejoinder to the nonsense being spouted by the president and the social conservatives on marriage.

Gay marriage is not the threat, as the editorial says:

Gay marriage isn’t a real threat. In Massachusetts, married gay couples are not masterminding terrorist bombings. They are not refining weapons-grade uranium nor are they running up federal budget deficits. Married gay couples are not monitoring their fellow Americans’ phone calls and e-mails. They haven’t cut Medicaid. And they didn’t put that doughnut hole in the middle of Medicare’s new prescription drug program.

I would add that gays looking to get married in New Jersey have not manufactured the budget crisis or underfunded the state pension system. Gay couples are not keeping American troops in Iraq when they should be on their way home or polluting the ocean and driving up car insurance rates.

But you get the picture.

The South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press

Perhaps something will come of this. The fact is — as we wrote in an editorial last week — the state cannot continue on its present course without a change in the way we raise and spend money. We cannot continue draining our collective wallets without having some kind of plan that will allow us to better control where the money goes, better ensure that it will go where it is needed and that it comes from the people who can best afford it. We can’t.

The South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press