Your 700-billion-dollar bailout money will NOT be used
to buy troubled assets.  So-said Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, today.  
Paulson called the struggling auto industry CRITICALLY important,
but stepped around questions about whether the Big Three automakers
will be bailed out, an idea Democrats are really pushing.

Republican governors are gathering in Miami this week to look to their party's future.  Alaska Governor Sarah Palin will be there. 
Texas Governor Rick Perry says Palin will be treated
like a returning hero, when she arrives.

Same-sex couples in Connecticut now can legally get married. 
A New Haven superior court judge signed an order today making it possible
for those couples to obtain marriage licenses. 

This brings to a close a four-year legal battle in that state
over gay marriage.

Connecticut and Massachusetts are the only states in the country
where same-sex marriage is legal.

America’s Catholic bishops are drawing a battle line
with President Elect Obama.

They’ve issued a statement saying they’ll work with him
on other social issues, but will oppose him to the fullest,
in his support of abortion rights.

USA Today says the bishops are worried about Obama’s campaign pledge
to sign a Freedom-of-Choice Act, if Congress were to pass one.

The battle’s already begun, on the campus of Montclair State University in Clifton New Jersey.  Someone left a used condom on the doorknob
at the campus ministry office.

Police there say they consider it a bias-crime—
an attack on Catholic values.

No-one’s been arrested...but they do have some DNA.

Police in Sweden have busted-up a bestiality ring.

They targeted 30 zoophiles from across the country...
who were meeting regularly to film their encounters with dogs, goats,
and other four-footed creatures.

But, because there is no law against bestiality in Sweden,
no-one’s been arrested.

One of the group’s outed members says his dog provoked it,
by making herself available while she was in heat. 

He says he always understood that no means no,
and backed out when she wasn’t into it.

In other sex-news today...

An Ohio teacher who accidentally showed two seconds of video,
featuring a woman giving that special favor, is back in the classroom.

Because he turned himself in, he’s been taken off suspension...
but now has ten letters of reprimand in his personnel file.

And a couple on a crowded train from Liverpool to London was arrested yesterday, after a guard watching security video,
saw the woman perform an act on her male partner.

The woman’s been released on bail. 

The 49 year old businessman is facing charges of “unacceptable behavior.”