Happy New Year to all. Belated thanks to Amanda Calblog for her very creative Secret Santa gift. It consists of a Steinkrug by CafePress featuring my now-infamous Evel Knxrlq photo. I’ll add a pic of the stein when I get a chance, which probably won’t be until sometime next year. Thanks also to my other Secret Santa who (inadvertently?) sent me a $25 gift certificate for eBay.

Don’t miss Patterico’s dog training or Zombyboy’s predictions for the upcoming year. See you in 2004.

My principal objection to gay “marriage,” aside from the fact that it asks society to redefine a millennia-old concept to suit the whims of a vocal minority, is that marriage involves a bundle of rights and responsibilities, each of which has been debated separately by legislatures over the years, and each of which should be debated separately if any new marriage-like-thing were created for gays, swingers, polygamists, confirmed bachelors, or any other groups whose relationships differ materially from that of the traditional, one man, one woman relationship. So rather than pushing gay “marriage,” I say scrap that issue, enact a more sensible version of the federal marriage amendment to keep it from spreading beyond the states that actually want it, and let the rest of us debate the pros and cons of the specific “marriage” benefits gays believe they ought to enjoy, one issue at a time.

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As an American, it’s easy to hate Vicente Fox for his relentless efforts to obtain benefits for undocumented illegal aliens in the U.S. which his own country would never offer to its own illegal immigrants. Criticize him early and often for that. Still, we should also give credit where credit is due. If he’s acted like an insolent little bastard toward us, he’s been a much bigger bastard to Fidel Castro. It’s too bad that the same cannot be said for the rest of the free world.

Sgt. Hook reached his 50K target before I got off my lazy butt and linked to him, but what the hell. Go visit him anyway, and wish him Godspeed in Afghanistan.

I’m not even going to repeat the search terms this perv used on Dogpile to find my site. Yecch.

Alain Hertoghe, a journalist in France, recently wrote a book titled La Guerre a Outrances, or “The War of Outrages,” that was critical of the French media’s biased coverage of the war in Iraq. His newspaper, La Croix, responded to these concerns by establishing new procedures to ensure more balanced coverage in the future firing him.

UPDATE: Bill Quick thinks the U.S. media is just as bad. I’m not sure they’re quite that bad when it comes to Iraq, although they certainly are that bad on other issues.

Until I read this, I had never heard of this moron. I wish I still hadn’t.

Daniel Weintraub offers a fine defense of the much-maligned Wal-Mart.

VK offers a sweet deal for the blogger who can design her blog’s new skin. As you can tell by the really creative graphic layout of damnum absque injuria, I am definitely not the blogger to offer this service. Perhaps you are?

After making such a big deal of my own Blogiversary a few weeks back, I completely neglected Justene’s, which was yesterday. Stop by Casa de Calblog and wish her a happy un-Blogiversary today.