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New Hampshire became just the fourth state in the nation to allow same-sex civil unions after the state Senate passed a bill today. Democratic Gov. John Lynch has said that he intends to sign it into law, which would allow the civil unions to begin in 2008.

New Hampshire joins New Jersey, Connecticut, and Vermont as the only states to approve the civil unions. Nearby Massachusetts is the only state to allow same-sex marriages, although the Rhode Island attorney general ruled earlier this year that the state’s residents can legally pursue same-sex marriage in Massachusetts. New York governor Eliot Spitzer also announced plans to push a same-sex marriage bill through the state legislature. In the states of Washington, California, and Maine, same-sex domestic partnerships have been given varying degrees of legal legitimacy as well, while Oregon plans to follow suit in the near future.
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Even as scandal continues to swirl around Alberto Gonzales and his cronies, the Department of Justice is pushing forward with an aggressive, highly controversial agenda to limit the rights of Guantanamo detainees. The New York Times reported today that the DOJ has filed a petition with a federal appeals court seeking to limit the number of contacts between defense attorneys and Guantanamo inmates. In addition, the filing also seeks to restrict access by defense attorneys to secret evidence that is being used against the detainees.

According to the Times, the DOJ petition makes the claim, “There is no right on the part of counsel to [have] access to detained aliens on a secure military base in a foreign country.” “Under the proposal, filed this month in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit,” says the paper, “the government would limit lawyers to three visits with an existing client at Guantánamo; there is now no limit. It would permit only a single visit with a detainee to have him authorize a lawyer to handle his case. And it would permit a team of intelligence officers and military lawyers not involved in a detainee’s case to read mail sent to him by his lawyer.”
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According to the Washington Post, Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine is considering an executive order that would require information about a prospective gun buyer’s mental health to be added to the background data that weapons sellers use. In the aftermath of the Virginia Tech shootings, it appears that lawmakers and politicians on both sides of the aisle are willing to restrict weapons sales to keep them out of the hands of the mentally ill.

Says the Post: “A court had found [Seung Hui] Cho to be dangerously mentally ill, but that information was not available in the computer systems used by the outlets that sold Cho the guns. Kaine’s proposal would ensure that such mental health information be in the database.”
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