Finally, some good news:

New Hampshire will become the next state to grant civil unions; Gov. John Lynch signed the bill into law yesterday. From the NY Times: “New Hampshire becomes the fourth state to allow same-sex civil unions, joining Vermont, Connecticut and New Jersey, and the first to do so without a court order or a pending lawsuit.” Oh man, Oregon, you just got totally harshed. I guess this is what happens when you call your civil unions domestic partnerships—the Times forgets you exist.

Dr. Jack Kevorkian was released from prison today after serving eight years for helping a terminally ill patient commit suicide. Dr. Death could always move to Oregon, where Death With Dignity is legal. Sadly, Life Without Dignity is also still legal.

Police drummer Stewart Copeland rips into his own band after their first reunion gig. “This is unbelievably lame,” Copeland wrote of Wednesday’s show at the GM Place arena. “We are the mighty Police and we are totally at sea.” Actually, dude, your band’s always been unbelievably lame—The Clash for soccer moms.

Scooter Libby is scheduled to be sentenced next week, and while prosecutors are seeking a three-year prison sentence, power brokers have come out in force to protect one of their own. The judge in the case has received 150 letters from “former White House and State Department officials and military commanders,” friends and colleagues, all of whom think Libby should merely get probation for lying about the Valarie Plame leak.

Longtime Bush adviser Dan Bartlett is resigning from the White House “for personal reasons,” which hopefully means “to spend more time with federal prosecutors.” Before joining the White House, Bartlett worked for—ha ha—Karl Rove and Company.

Ever wonder where Bush & Co. got the idea to torture all those prisoners in Guantanamo and in secret prisons in Europe? Turns out, it was from the Soviets—or at least what the U.S. feared the Soviets would do to captured American soldiers. “U.S. interrogation policy involves a grab-bag of outmoded techniques, many dating from the 1950s, that ignore lessons learned from law enforcement and lack cultural sensitivity to Arab and other foreign prisoners. The kind of insensitivity, critics might now add, that we once assumed only our worst enemies would show their foreign prisoners.” When do we get to impeach Bush?