Here’s your weekly round-up of good news. Have a great weekend!
• House Democrats make history: white men no longer comprise the majority of the House Democratic caucus. The 113th Congress also has the first Hindu and Buddhist to ever serve in either the House or Senate in our nation’s history, the first Asian American woman elected to the Senate, the first openly gay person elected to the Senate and the first openly bisexual member of Congress. And they’re all Democrats. Watch and weep, Republicans. This is “real America.”
• You won’t want to miss this amazing story of what happened when two gay men were harassed while waiting in line to buy pizza at an Ohio food truck.
• Marriage equality bills have been introduced in both Rhode Island state legislative chambers.
• Score another victory for the gay agenda: anti-marriage equality activist and conservative writer Maggie Gallagher has terminated her tenure as a syndicated columnist. Gallagher first came to our attention when in 2002-2003 she was paid over $40,000 by the Bush Administration to promote its abstinence-only and marriage policies in her columns, payments she never bothered to tell her readers.
• The Church of England will allow gay clergy to be promoted to the position of bishop.
• The state of Georgia is building tunnels beneath State Route 96 for bear crossings.
• California’s Pinnacles National Monument is poised to become the nation’s 59th national park.
• Deepwater Horizon owner TransOcean will pay $1.4 billion in civil and criminal fines after pleading guilty to violating the Clean Water Act.
• Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was finally discharged from the hospital. Still waiting for the apology from all of those right-wing pundits who claimed Clinton simply had “Benghazi flu.”
• Sale of products tested on animals officially became illegal in Israel.
• Being moderately overweight may not be the health risk doctors once thought it was.
• North Carolina Gov. Bev Pardue has issued a pardon of innocence for the Wilmington 10.
• Tuition at private colleges increased by the smallest percentage in 40 years.
• Republican U.S. Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona has come out against the NRA’s “guns in schools” idea.
• Wind power tax credits were renewed as part of the “fiscal cliff” deal.
• There’s a comet coming in November 2013.
• Mexico City tries out the cash-for-guns program.
Good News, Tennessee Edition:
• This is good news by default: Tennessee executions have been halted because the state’s supply of drugs used in lethal injection has been confiscated.
• The Senate confirmed four new TVA board members, including former Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mike McWherter. The bad news: Sens. Alexander and Corker refused to renominate Marilyn Brown, an energy efficiency expert. I guess energy efficiency isn’t a conservative principle. Shocker.
This week’s video is some hilarious fear porn from 1999 broadcast on CBN — the Christian Broadcast News. That’s Pat Robertson’s “news” network, and it’s hilarious. Looks like they’ve been scaring the bejeezus out of the rubes for years:
Southern Beale 
That’s the best thing a state highway dept’s done for bears since Vermont put up those pictograph signs telling Ursine Americans where the buffets (trash cans) are.
I notice that the “expert” interviewed by the newsies was an IT guy who was prolly selling the “fix” to whoever they could scare into buying it.