To encourage free expression and to celebrate Blasphemy Day 2009 (Sept. 30), the Center for Inquiry and its sister organization, the Council for Secular Humanism, are sponsoring a Blasphemy Contest.

No one. It’s all the same old guys who were in leadership with me, and those old guys aren’t the leaders the party needs.

— Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX), in an interview with Politics Daily, on who he sees as the party’s “up-and-comers.”

The FBI is investigating the hanging death of Bill Sparkman, 51, in rural Kentucky to determine if Sparkman, a census worker, was killed because he worked for the the U.S. government. His body was found hanging in a tree in a cemetery on Sept. 12 with the word “FED” scrawled across his chest.

The Heritage Foundation, which is oxymoronically characterized as a “conservative think tank,” is collecting email addresses via an online poll. To tell them what you think, click here.

The state of California is having a tough time making ends meet these days, but proposals to legalize and tax marijuana, which could generate over a billion dollars in new revenue every year, have generally met with skepticism, derision and/or political cowardice by the state’s elected leaders. Now legalization activists are taking matters in their own hands by attempting to put initiatives to legalize and tax marijuana on the ballot for the November elections next year.

From Will Ferrell and company at Funny or Die — the folks who brought you “Prop 8: The Musical” — comes this new parody of a political ad in support of the rights of hard-working, overpaid medical-insurance executives. Watch it, after the jump.

“First of all, I think it’s important to realize that I was actually black before the election.”

— Pres. Barack Obama, on a recent Letterman Show appearance, commenting on whether resistance to his administration is based in racism.*

*Editors’ note: Which it is.

All pornography is homosexual pornography.

— Michael Schwartz, Sen. Tom Coburn’s (R-OK) chief of staff, quoted in the Washington Independent, at the Values Voter Summit.

The best was Bush’s AIDS czar, Randall Tobias, who promoted abstinence as the best way to avoid HIV — but whose name was found on the DC Madam’s client list.

One of the perks of living in Los Angeles is that famous people whom you have never met will occasionally pick up your tab for your lunch. No kidding. It happens all the time. Why just last Thursday, for example, Drew Carey bought lunch for me and my friend, Judy Rozzelle, at Swingers, a diner on Beverly Blvd., in the Fairfax District.