This makes me really, really, really, really mad (and yes, I am republishing it in its entirety):

The federal deficit hit a record for October as the new budget year began where the old one ended: with the government awash in red ink.

Economists worry that if such deficits continue it could push up interest rates, further dragging on the fragile economic recovery.

The Treasury Department said Thursday that the deficit for October totaled $176.4 billion, even higher than the $150 billion imbalance that economists expected.

The deficit for the 2009 budget year, which ended on Sept. 30, set an all-time record in dollar terms of $1.42 trillion. That was $958 billion above the 2008 deficit, the previous record holder.

October was the 13th straight month to show a monthly deficit — another record. It was the fifth-largest monthly deficit ever.

The imbalance came mostly from lower receipts of individual and corporate taxes. Receipts were $135.3 billion, a 17.9 percent drop from last October.

Spending dipped 2.7 percent to $311.7 billion. Last October's outlays were inflated by the $33 billion spent on the first round of financial bailouts at the peak of the financial crisis.

The Obama administration expects this year's deficit to reach $1.5 trillion. That would make it the third straight record annual deficit.

In relation to the overall economy, the 2009 deficit was 9.9 percent of the gross domestic product. That was the highest level since the World War II-era deficit hit 21.5 percent of GDP in 1945....

Well, this just totally blows:

An opponent of same-sex marriage, Governor Carcieri has vetoed bill that would have added "domestic partners'' to the list of people authorized by law to make funeral arrangements for each other.

In his veto message, Republican Carcieri said: "This bill represents a disturbing trend over the past few years of the incremental erosion of the principles surrounding traditional marriage, which is not the preferred way to approach this issue.

"If the General Assembly believes it would like to address the issue of domestic partnerships, it should place the issue on the ballot and let the people of the state of Rhode Island decide.''

The bill, also sponsored by state Sen. Rhoda Perry and state Rep. David Segal, would add "domestic partners'' to the list, in current law, of people who can legally make arrangements for a deceased person's funeral, cremation or burial to include domestic partners if the deceased person left no pre-arranged funeral contract.

I can respect those who say that they oppose the legalization of gay marriage and/or civil unions, and especially where their objection relates fundamentally to it being done by judges, as opposed to legislatures. This method of legalization may conform with the dictates of state constitutions and do much to advance liberty, but it is not democratic....

The political blogs and cable news talkers are a-chatter about the NJ-Gov, NY-23 and VA-Gov races, so while they carry on (and I predict Republican victories in at least NY-23 and VA-Gov, with a decent shot at a win in NJ), I figured I'd do a quick post on two other items for libertarianish types to watch tomorrow night: The results of ballot initiatives relating to, respectively, same-sex marriage in Maine and domestic partnerships in Washington. Maine's Question 1 asks people if they want to scrap the state's same-sex marriage law (so a "yes" is the anti-gay-marriage side). In Washington, Referendum 71 asks people to give a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down to the state's current domestic partnership law (a thumbs-down would, of course, mean a walk-back of state recognition of same-sex partnerships). So, taken from the Liz Mair, pro-legal-recognition-of-same-sex-relationships standpoint, the result we hope to see is "no" in Maine and "yes" in Washington. Got that? Good......