You know, Neil Gaiman is right, it is amazing that this isn’t news:

So the U.S. Department of Education is declaring about 200 television programs inappropriate for closed-captioning and denying federal grant requests to make them accessible to the hearing-impaired.

Here’s the full list of disapproved shows. There doesn’t seem much rhyme or reason to it, but it’s nice to know deaf people will be protected from Judge Wapner’s Animal Court.

It’s interesting to hear conservatives phrase a constitutional ban on gay marriage as a “state’s rights” issue, since they’re effectively trying to prevent states from making that decision on their own. And could someone please explain what exactly is the difference between gay marriage and civil union?