• «We lost Walter Cronkite this week» (along with the last vestiges of American journalism).

• In Salt Lake City, the ‘Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints’, which had no problem blitzkrieging California and spending millions getting Prop H8 passed, is «extremely unhappy now that us queers are shoving back right in their own front yard» I say, “More Kiss-Ins in front of hateful churches! Amen.

• In San Francisco, the NTSB will investigate the crash of two Muni Metro light rail trains at West Portal station that «injured 48 on Saturday. I’ve ridden those trains and gone through that station many times; this was no surprise.

• In New York City, The Right Stuff’s Tom Wolfe writes, on the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing, that «NASA neglected to hire a philosopher and that the space program ended the moment Neil Armstrong set foot on the lunar surface». He posits that Werner von Braun was just such a philosopher, but, and this is the money quote, “Unfortunately, NASA couldn’t present as its spokesman and great philosopher a former high-ranking member of the Nazi Wehrmacht with a heavy German accent.” The program, he says, is doomed from the lack of a philosopher just at a time when it should be “building a bridge to the stars.”

• According to an internal report issued last year, the Justice Department — the federal department charged with protecting civil rights and civil liberties — under Alberto Gonzales, «blacklisted applicants for internships and honors programs based on their membership in LGBT or other “liberal” groups». “According to the Justice Department’s 2008 internal report, candidates to the Honors Program whose applications indicated liberal affiliations were rejected at a high rate, around 55 percent, as opposed to candidates who had conservative affiliations, who were rejected at a rate of about 18 percent.” Color me unsurprised.

It’s a mere 74 degrees in Music City. Happy mild summer Sunday!