With the presidential campaigns in full swing and many stories drained dry, the media has spent many weeks speculating over who main contenders John McCain and Barack Obama will pick as their running mates.

Though both have remained relatively tight-lipped on specifics, Obama and McCain have both thrown out names here and there, but few are more intriguing than Tom Ridge.

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Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee reiterated his archaic views on abortion and gay marriage yesterday on CNN.

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Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama sat down the Pat "Rudy Lover" Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network last week to talk about two controversial political issues" abortion and gay marriage.

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Pundits have been pondering what will become of Pat Robertson now that he's endorsed abortion-allowing, gay loving Rudy Giuliani.

They got at least part of answer today after anti-abortion activist and Operation Rescue founder Randall Terry took aim at Robertson - among others.

Note his clever take on NYC's current mayor, Michael Bloomberg.

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MSNBC's Chris Matthews played Hardball with Pat Roberton's Rudy Giuliani endorsement last night.

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Anti-gay marriage activist Mary Ann Glendon may be getting a new gig.

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It was a meeting of the closed minds in Washington this weekend.

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Good news for the gays!

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America hardly has a monopoly on crazy Evangelicals.

Jamaica's Bishop Herro Blair used Sunday's services to warn politicians - including PM Portia Simpson Miller and unabashedly homophobic opposition leader Bruce Golding, who were both in attendance - that he and his brethren will be watching their move as general election campaigns resume after a month break, "Our cameras are on zoom lens and we are going to listen to the speeches as of Tuesday."

Watching and listening? That's some serious shit.

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Senator Sam Brownback rivals Michael Savage's savage stupidity this weekend when he spoke at the National Catholic Men's Conference. The Republican presidential candidate claims true politicians rule with their faith, defended his pro-life stance, and, yes, insisted gays should remain second-class citizens.

Brownback also talked about keeping marriage between a man and a woman, saying nations that have allowed same-sex marriages were engaging in bad social experiments, with bad results.

He also encouraged married couples to stay together, saying unspecified studies have shown that if couples weather hard times for five years, their marriages tend to last. After five years, "people are happier than those who have had a divorce," Brownback said.

Wasn't democracy at one point a social experiment? Also, we'd like to hear about these so-called "bad results"? Are their droughts? Have cities been overrun by locusts? Do demons spring up from hell and devour children? Or is he just trying to scare people straight to the voting booth.

It's no surprise to see correlations between a state's legislation concerning abortion and its laws concerning gay rights. New analysis from the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and two other advocacy groups that looked at 25 different laws – ranging from recognition of same-sex unions to accessibility to emergency contraception – put New Mexico and New York on the top of the list, while Ohio and South Dakota shared the bottom spot.

Not surprisingly, the conservative legislator Sen. Lee Schoenbeck (R-, S.D.), congratulated himself, calling the results as “a badge of honor.”

Rankings look at gay rights, abortion rights [AP]

&bull The Moroccan government sentenced thirteen men to prison for "producing gay pornographic films" and "inciting prostitution" on the internet. In a country filled with architecture shaped like penises, we find this a bit surprising.

Three of the men received sentectes of six years each; one of the men is a French citizen, who received a one year sentence. (The group's total prison sentences total thirty years.)

The majority of the defendants (the models)…aged between 18 and 20, these impoverished Moroccans found themselves involved in a very dirty adventure, risking their reputation for a very insignificant sum of money and a promise of immigration to France.

The name of the site has not been released, and the Moroccan government blocked access to the site. We can't imagine that life in a Moroccan prison is anything like what we see in those prison-porn movies, either. Yuck.

&bull Speaking of politics you'd find in a Third World country: unbeknownst to most gay people, abortion is NOW ILLEGAL in South Dakota, and legislators are pushing to pass similar bans in several other states, including Mississippi. The goal is to bring a case to the Supreme Court, which will most likely overturn Roe vs. Wade. Although now that sodomy is legal again, it was only a matter of time before people got itchy for another sex law to fight.

Make a porno, go to prison [Moroccan Times]