Uber-homophobe, 44-year-old Nebraska AG, Jon Bruning, has cancer

Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning, who once compared marriage equality to a man wanting to marry a chair or his pet and who had legislation introduced making it a felony for a person diagnosed with HIV to sneeze in the direction of a cop, will have eight inches of his colon removed today in an effort to arrest his cancer. The Omaha World-Herald says he will be hospitalized for four to seven days but intends to continue to seek reelection in 2014.

Bruning said he had visited a doctor before Thanksgiving after choking on some food. He suspected acid reflux, a disease in which stomach acids churn up into the esophagus, but the physician suggested he also undergo a colonoscopy.

Below: video of Bruning insinuating that an opponent, former Nebraska Attorney General Don Stenberg (in 2012's GOP Nebraska Senate primary that both lost to Deb Fischer) was a pedophile. Stenberg's campaign twitter bot had asked to "follow" Bruning's 14-year-old daughter. At the time Bruning's own campaign twitter account was also following at least one 16-year-old girl.

Nebraska's Oscar buzz may be more than hype; film got 7 SAG and Golden Globe nominations this week

Nebraska wasn't octogenarian June Squibb's first Alexander Payne rodeo; she played Jack Nicholson's wife in About Schmidt. Payne kept the Winnebago used in that movie and the entire cast took a road trip in it from Wyoming to Lincoln, Nebraska. More in AKSARBENT about Nebraska here.

 

Below are the SAG and Golden Globe categories in which Nebraska has been nominated for awards:

Screen Actor's Guild (SAG):

Male Actor, Lead: Bruce Dern, Nebraska

Female Actor, Supporting: June Squibb, Nebraska

Hollywood Foreign Press Association (Golden Globes):

Best motion picture, musical or comedy: Nebraska

Best actor in a motion picture, musical or comedy: Bruce Dern - Nebraska

Best supporting Actress in a motion picture: June Squibb - Nebraska

Best Director – motion picture: Alexander Payne - Nebraska

Best Screenplay – motion picture: Bob Nelson - Nebraska

'Family Values' Papillion Sen. Jim Smith is state chairmain of ALEC, a group planning monthly fees on homeowners who buy solar panels; ALEC called an 'institutionalization of corruption'

Left: Nebraska ALEC chairman, Jim Smith, District 14, Papillion;
right: solar installers; Oncor via Flickr

Jim Smith is the Dist. 14 Unicameral senator from Papillion who campaigned on a family values platform, then performed as a corporate values legislator. He is also the state chairman of ALEC, a 40-year-old organization funded by right-wing Koch Bros. billionaires to get "model legislation" (drafted by corporate lobbyists) passed in state legislatures. ALEC ran interference for apartheid in the 1980s.
     In 2012, Smith introduced legislation (LB1161) to make eminent domain condemnation of Nebraska farms and ranches easier for foreign oil corporations, then deferred to TransCanada lawyers when asked detailed questions about the bill he supposedly wrote. He also took a luxurious, expense-paid Alberta to tour of TransCanada operations, but failed to file a disclosure reporting the junket, possibly committing a class IV felony.
     As the state chairman of ALEC, part of Jim Smith's responsibilities to ALEC will be to introduce new "model legislation" which will levy fees on homeowners who install their own solar panels.
     The Guardian interviewed John Eick, the legislative analyst for Alec's energy, environment and agriculture program:

     Eick told the Guardian the group would be looking closely in the coming year at how individual homeowners with solar panels are compensated for feeding surplus electricity back into the grid.
     "This is an issue we are going to be exploring," Eick said. He said Alec wanted to lower the rate electricity companies pay homeowners for direct power generation – and maybe even charge homeowners for feeding power into the grid.
     "As it stands now, those direct generation customers are essentially freeriders on the system. They are not paying for the infrastructure they are using. In effect, all the other non direct generation customers are being penalised," he said.
     Eick dismissed the suggestion that individuals who buy and install home-based solar panels had made such investments. "How are they going to get that electricity from their solar panel to somebody else's house?" he said. "They should be paying to distribute the surplus electricity."

Lisa Graves, of the Center for Media and Democracy, commenting on recent Wikileaks documents exposing ALEC's dubious behavior over the last 40 years:

"I think the documents illustrate quite conclusively what we've been saying all along: that ALEC is one of the biggest pay-to-play operations in the country. I think it's an institutionalization of corruption."

Indians react to recriminalization of homosexuality in world's largest democracy

India's Supreme Court has reversed a ruling by the Delhi High Court in 2009. Now, only the national legislature can legalize gay sex. The decision revalidates a British Colonial law dating from the 1860's, stating that "whoever voluntarily has carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal" can be punished by up to 10 years in prison.

    At least 1500 species are said to engage in homosexual behavior.

     The AP reported that "in a rare alliance, the groups — including the All India Muslim Law Board, Christian groups and Hindu spiritual leaders — argued that gay sex is unnatural and that India should maintain the law."

Reaction from Human Rights Watch:

"The Supreme Court's ruling is a disappointing setback to human dignity, and the basic rights to privacy and non-discrimination," the group said in a statement. "But now the government should do what it should have done in the first place and seek to repeal section 377."

From CNN-IBM:

American Prospect rips NBC's Sochi house gays

Tvol, via Flickr

Nancy Goldstein concludes that "NBC's pinkwashing is working," thanks to the network's use of Johnny Weir and Thomas Roberts. She quotes Queer Nation's Duncan Osborne: “NBC’s strategy is to cast doubt that things are as bad in Russia as we say they are.”
     From her piece:

---

NBC has been dodging attempts from activists to hold them accountable since the laws were enacted. A letter from the gay lobbying group Human Rights Campaign’s president asking NBC to include news of Russia's human-rights violations alongside their standard Olympics coverage elicited a mealy-mouthed response from the network, which said it would “provide coverage of Russia's anti-gay laws if the controversial measures surface as an issue during the upcoming Winter Olympics.” As though the fact that Neo-Nazis keep luring gay men to hotel rooms by baiting them online, then kidnapping and torturing them and posting their videos online isn’t an issue at all so long as no queers are actually forced to drink their own urine in front of NBC’s cameras during the snowboarding finals.

---

Leslie Jordan: "I don't think I'm supposed to be in this commercial"

Jordan once shared a jail cell with Robert Downey Jr.

ACLU sponsoring a "My Big Gay Illegal Wedding" contest for couples in states prohibiting gay marriage next to states that don't (looks like Nebraskans qualify)

Cornhusker couples can enter here. From the New York Times:

...five couples from five states will win prizes like cash, assistance from a wedding planner and a trip to New York for an event, planned for March, styled like a wedding reception. The winning couples will be encouraged to return home and present to their governors in April “guest books” signed by visitors to the microsite that will double as petitions calling for marriage equality.

     Gay Nebraska couples are good at this. In 2011 a gay Lincoln couple and their friends freeped a Lincoln Journal wedding contest and won $20,000 in wedding swag.

(Via JMG)

USA Today: it's not just the NSA; local police use cell tower data dumps from compliant telcos as well as fake towers to collect data on thousands of innocent people

Click to enlarge. More USA Today charts here.

USA Today, in an extensive special investigative report, says that at least 25 PDs own Stingrays, suitcase-sized devices that costs $400,000 each and act as fake cell towers to function as a "men in the middle" devices to scoop up all cell traffic in an area.
     In Colorado, law enforcement authorities used a cell tower data dump to gather information about a missing girl, Jessica Ridgeway. 500 people were asked to submit DNA samples to the police, who eventually solved the crime with a tip.
     Authorities have refused to disclose how many people's records they combed through or what they subsequently did with that data.

Click to enlarge. More USA Today charts here.

     Thirty-six PDs questioned by USA Today refused to disclose whether they've used either cell tower dumps or Stingray surveillance, claiming that criminals or terrorists could use the information to thwart crime-fighting.

     Local and state police, from Florida to Alaska, are buying Stingrays with federal grants aimed at protecting cities from terror attacks, but using them for far broader police work.
     ...Typically used to hunt a single phone's location, the system intercepts data from all phones within a mile, or farther, depending on terrain and antennas.
     ...Initially developed for military and spy agencies, the Stingrays remain a guarded secret by law enforcement and the manufacturer, Harris Corp. of Melbourne, Fla. The company would not answer questions about the systems, referring reporters to police agencies. Most police aren't talking, either, partly because Harris requires buyers to sign a non-disclosure agreement.

     Harris Corporation's newest surveillance product is Hailstorm.
     The company has, in at least one case, recommended that authorities use Hailstorm in conjunction with software made by Nebraska-based surveillance company Pen-Link. The Pen-Link software appears to enable authorities using Hailstorm to communicate directly with cell phone carriers over the Internet, possibly to help coordinate the surveillance of targeted individuals.
     Pen-Link brags that its analytical software enables "drilling down through today’s extensive data sets to reveal relationships that might otherwise go undetected."
     Senator Edward Markey has proposed legislation requiring police agencies to report regularly on their collection of cellphone call data and forcing them to get warrants before they collecting bulk records from cellphone transmission towers.

Skip the piety, Carrie; take acting lessons

Vlad "the imperiler" Putin liquidates 72-year-old Russian news agency; installs notorious homophobe, TV host Dmitry Kiselyov, to run replacement

CNN reports that RIA Novosti's replacement will be called Rossiya Segodnya ("Russia Today") and points "toward a tightening of state control" of the country's media.
     The man who will run RIA Novosti's replacement, contro­versial TV host Dmitry Kiselyov, was "recently embroiled in a scandal over antigay remarks" — which was reported by RIA Novosti.
     From Pink News:

     In an interview with  Ekho Moskvy radio station, Dmitriy Kiselyov was asked by a reporter whether he was aware of recent incidents, such as one during which a gay man was raped with a beer bottle and murdered, after admitting he was gay.
     He responded: “Our [Russian] problem with homosexuals is that they behave in a provocative, victim like way. They deliberately provoke situations, so that they become victims. Nobody prevents them from loving each other the way they want to. They are aggressively foisting minority’s values on majority. It is likely that society would counteract this. Naturally, right? In various ways, including brutal ones. Since they are brutally foisting this [on others]. Wanna fight? Get it, then. So what?”

From RIA Novosti's website, which is still up:

     ...News agency RIA Novosti and the state-owned Voice of Russia radio will be scrapped and absorbed into a new media conglomerate called Rossiya Segodnya, according to a decree signed by President Vladimir Putin.
     The move is the latest in a series of shifts in Russia’s news landscape, which appear to point toward a tightening of state control in the already heavily regulated media sector.
     In a separate decree published Monday, the Kremlin appointed Dmitry Kiselyov, a prominent Russian television presenter and media manager recently embroiled in a scandal over anti-gay remarks, to head Rossiya Segodnya.
     Head of the presidential administration Sergei Ivanov said the changes were about saving money and making state media more effective. 
     “Russia has its own independent politics and strongly defends its national interests: it’s difficult to explain this to the world but we can do this, and we must do this,” Ivanov told reporters.
     The direct translation of Rossiya Segodnya is Russia Today, but the new body will apparently be separate from RT, the Kremlin-funded English-language television channel originally known as Russia Today.
     RT head Margarita Simonyan told Russian news website Lenta.ru on Monday that she only found out about the decree from news reports.
     The changes, including legislative amendments, must be carried out by the government within three months, according to the Kremlin. Rossiya Segodnya will be located in the current RIA Novosti building in downtown Moscow, the decree said.
     ...Last month Gazprom-Media, which is closely linked to state-run gas giant Gazprom, bought control of Russian media company Profmedia from Russian billionaire Vladimir Potanin. In October, Mikhail Lesin, a former Kremlin advisor, was appointed to head Gazprom-Media.

Here's today's full-page newspaper ad by eight Internet giants urging a shorter leash on the NSA

Not a single baby bell or wireless telecom has publicly stood up for the privacy rights of its customers against NSA mass surveillance, as have Google, Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo and Facebook.
     Interesting, ain't it?
     (AKSARBENT would be remiss if it didn't point out that for several of these companies, especially Facebook and Microsoft, complaining about the NSA compromising their customers' privacy is a lot like a germ complaining about disease.)

Good calves only aid a TED talk if you drop your pants

Looks like the National Organization for Marriage's effort to bully its most tenacious critic isn't working

Fred Karger just sent out another press release about the D.C. antigay political pressure group that helped Bob Vander Plaats oust three supreme court justices in Iowa before the Iowa Bar Association fought back, defeating an effort to evict a fourth judge, in 2012. The press release is under the video, below.

IRS Charges Filed Against NOM
Appears to Have Used 82% of Its Charitable Fund for Politics
from Fred Karger-RightsEqualRights.com
WASHINGTON, DC -- On November 25, 2013 I received another threatening and harassing letter via certified mail from the law firm representing the National Organization for Marriage (NOM). The two page letter dated November 1, 2013 (see below) demanded that I save every paper or electronic file, all data, voicemails, e-mails, attachments, file drawers, hard drives, floppy disks, telephone logs, calendars, offline storage, and the list goes on and on that may relate to NOM's lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service (Case No. 1:113-cv-1225).
     Let me be clear, I had absolutely no knowledge about the release of NOM's 2008 tax return in question that the Internal Revenue Service may or may not have sent to someone. While I continually pressure NOM to obey state and federal laws and file its federal tax returns on time, I learned of the release of NOM's 2008 tax returns just like everyone else, when it was posted on various web sites in the spring of last year.

Serious Complaint Field Against NOM on 2012 Taxes
     But to save NOM and its attorneys the trouble, there is one very interesting document that I have just received; an IRS form 13909 filed by David C, Hart of Florida.
     Mr. Hart recently filed this "Tax-Exempt Organization Complaint (Referral) Form" (see below and attached) charging NOM's charitable arm with a possible, and very serious violation of the tax code, on its 2012 federal tax return of its a 501(c)3 - the National Organization for Marriage Education Fund.
     In his request for an investigation of the National Organization for Marriage Education Fund, Mr. Hart discovered and stated in his filing that "82% of total revenues seem to have gone to the affiliated 501(c)4, National Organization for Marriage EIN 26-0240498. The top six donors have combined donations slightly lower than the amount involved. Those donations should be DISALLOWED as tax deductible."
     Mr. Hart breaks down the $4,175,151 that NOM spent from its charitable operation on politics which is not allowed. It appears that NOM may have conspired with its largest donors to provide tax deductible funds for its charitable arm and then give that money to its 501(c)4 operation to fight its various political battles around the country.

NBC punted on notorious Sound of Music dialog line

In the film, Mother Abbess/Superior Peggy Wood* (in her last cinema role) famously asked Julie Andrews: "What is it you can't face?" — and came close, but not too close to pronouncing "can't" in a way that evoked a well-known four-letter word with a different vowel and no apostrophe, which would have changed the line to a hilarious, "What is it you c*ntface?"
     Because of this, funloving (i.e., gay) musical theatre aficionados breathlessly awaited the pronunciation of the line in the NBC live version by Audra McDonald, only to discover that in the killjoy TV version, the contraction was cut, in favor of the word "cannot."
     Bummer.
_______________
*Peggy Wood's singing in the film was dubbed by Margery McKay.

Sarah Palin annoyed at NYC: 'I don't think you can shoot anything. I mean, isn't the mayor around here trying to ban everything?'

Source

She was in a New York Fox News television studio helping Bill O'Reilly gin up more Christer paranoia about the alleged atheist war on Christmas when she bemoaned her inability to gun down wildlife in the area, which she sometimes does in Alaska from a helicopter (go to the 3:58 mark.) Palin especially likes to shoot mooses meese moose.

Beau McCoy dares other NE GOP gov. candidates to be as homophobic as he and Heineman are in denying same sex spousal benefits

Via Don Walton of the Lincoln Journal-Star comes the news that Beau McCoy is now challenging other GOP governor candidates to stoop to his level of homophobica by challenging them to oppose state employee benefits to legally married (in other states, obviously) gay couples.

     "Make no mistake," the Omaha state senator said, "every time same-sex couples get the same recognition as a married couple, the Nebraska Constitution and the will of Nebraskans gets undermined."

     McCoy's statement followed the Douglas County Board's 6-1 decision, earlier this week, to grant county employee benefits to employees legally married to same sex spouses. In it, McCoy commended Gov. Dave Heineman, who has repeatedly proven his animus to gay Nebraskans.

     "Gov. Dave Heineman has stood up against all efforts to undermine marriage in Nebraska and hasn't allowed state employee health insurance benefits to be extended to couples not legally married in our state," McCoy said.
     "As governor, I will not allow the institution of marriage or our constitution to be attacked by expanding state benefits to state employees in same-sex relationships who get married in other states."

     The homeschooled McCoy, who has "philosophical" issues with overwhelming scientific evidence that global warming is both man-made and accelerating, tried to ban gay rights ordinances in Nebraska during the 2011-2012 legislative session but failed.

Sound of Music pickup lines

NBC should have trained its cameras on a singalong Sound of Music screening and saved itself a bunch of money without sacrificing any entertainment value.
     Seriously, AKSARBENT wishes Pauline Kael, who got herself fired from McCalls for trashing the film of the Sound of Music, were still alive to see this thing.
     Walmart is the principal sponsor, with Sound of Music-themed ads. Boy did Kraft miss the boat. It could have sold a lot of Velveeta during this broadcast.
     Speaking of boat, here is AKSARBENT's humble addition to the hashtag #soundofmusicpickuplines:

     More distinguished contributions:

President Obama on the death of Nelson Mandela

JMG's roundup of statements from HRC, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and Lambda Legal remind us that during Mandela's presidency of South Africa, it became (despite disapprovingly popular opinion) the first nation on earth to constitutionally outlaw discrimination based on sexual orientation, a degree of legal protection, Lambda Legal pointedly noted, that still does not exist in the USA.

Mexican thieves who jacked truck loaded with Colbalt 60 radioactive medical waste, then opened containers, have just days to live

HGTV Curb Appeal carpenter/cohost dies at 38 in San Francisco after motorcycle/car collision

     On a memorial facebook page, Beckwith's girlfriend, Yulia Korneeva wrote, “My love: so kind, so bright, adventurous and strong. You are loved by so many good people! I wish you could stay with us for way longer.”
     Beckwith started a home improvement company, BB Design Build, on Castro Street, in 2001. 

Bloomberg defends NYPD's 'Stop and Kiss' program

Towleroad says a lot of people (who obviously have never heard of the Onion) think this is for real.

Omaha's Douglas County votes 6-1 to extend benefits to same sex spouses over Clare Duda's emphatically gesticulated opposition

Duda, grasping at straws, seized on the Family Medical Leave Act, in which he alleged Douglas County would exceed the federal government's largesse.
     Meanwhile, Omaha's gay-hostile mayor, Jean Stothert, is now taking a break from fighting the Fire Department to fighting the police department (dishonestly) over the issue of same-sex spousal benefits. From the World-Herald's coverage of the Douglas County Board change: 

     Blue Cross already covers same-sex spouses who live in a state that recognizes their marriage. It announced recently that for groups fully insured through Blue Cross, same-­sex spouses who are legally married will be covered, regardless of whether they live in a state that recognizes their union.
     That will be the default definition for self-insured groups that contract with Blue Cross for claim administration, unless policyholders opt out before Jan. 1.
     Sarpy County, which has a policy with Blue Cross, is deferring to the insurer with respect to defining “spouse,” said Karen Buche, the county human resources director.

People for the American Way exposes ALEC's six categories of gays: blatant, secret lifer, desperate, adjusted, bisexual and situational

From PAW, which recently exposed documents from the Koch Brothers-funded American Legislative Exchange Council, which produces "model" legislation written by corporate lobbyists for passage in state legislatures by compliant lawmakers:

     ALEC classified all gay people into six categories: “the blatant, the secret lifer, the desperate, the adjusted, the bisexual and the situational.” The “blatant” gay person was "obvious and ‘limp-wristed’”; the “adjusted” would “try to conduct a ‘conventional’ gay marriage”; and so on.  Yet no matter what category a gay person fell into, ALEC argued, the most dominant practice within “the homosexual world is pedophilia, the fetish for young children.” This tendency, the group claimed, was the product of the fact that “the homosexual cannot reproduce themselves biologically, so they must recruit the young.”
     ALEC lamented that the federal government funded AIDS research and allocated tax money to countering the AIDS epidemic.  The group discouraged states from passing anti-discrimination laws because, according to one ALEC newsletter from April 1984, such legislation “might jeopardize public health in restaurants, dental offices, and other areas because of the communicable disease AIDS.”
     ...Today, decades later, ALEC has stopped referring to homosexuality as “an abomination” in its literature, yet the organization continues to push legislation and policy ideas founded on the notion of exclusion – policies that protect the “liberties” of corporations rather than those of individual Americans.

Watchdog reports $520K in dark money contributions to liberal group but it gets millions in dark money from conservatives

Watchdog.org recently exposed $520k in dark money contributions to a liberal media group — but didn't mention that the Franklin Center, the conservative organization behind various state Watchdog publications, including Nebraska Watchdog, got 80% of its grant money from a conservative dark money group called Donors Trust.
     That sum totaled almost twenty times the dark money contributions that Watchdog was so concernstipated about a liberal media group receiving.
     From Mother Jones:

One of the biggest winners to emerge from the hundreds of pages of DonorsTrust tax documents is the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity, a Virginia-based nonprofit that trains conservative and libertarian think tanks to do investigative journalism, funds right-leaning news outlets, and hires reporters for those outlets. The Franklin Center received $9.2 million from DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund, which accounted for nearly $8 of every $10 in grant money received by the Franklin Center in 2012. (The Franklin Center did not respond to multiple requests for comment.)

'BNSF does not get to judge what marriage is': railroad relents on gay spousal benefits after National Railway Labor Conference Governing Committee reaches railway accord following lawsuit

Basketball and Bill O'Reilly: a UP employee
on a company treadmill at the Omaha HQ

BNSF, a Berkshire-Hathaway company (HRC score: 0) headquartered in Ft. Worth, had refused to extend health benefits to legal spouses of gay employees, prompting a lawsuit. From the World-Herald:

Union employees of major U.S. railways will be able to get medical coverage for their same-sex spouses Jan. 1, a labor coalition said Wednesday, the day after a lawsuit over such benefits was filed against BNSF Railway...
     “The nation’s largest freight carriers will provide dependent health care coverage to eligible same-sex spouses of covered railroad employees effective Jan. 1, 2014,” the National Railway Labor Conference said. “While this is not a benefit required by law or under current collective bargaining agreements, the railroads agreed with labor to provide this benefit in light of recent changes allowing same-sex couples to access the same federal tax benefits provided to other married couples."

Everybody off the zombie bus from the pit of hell!

Russia Today reports on a 109 route bus in Omsk, Siberia which caught fire, but not before the driver kicked 30 passengers off (at a bus stop!) then himself disembarked before the zombie vehicle from the pit of hell crashed into a park fence.

Berkshire-Hathaway unit denied gay BNSF employees benefits in Washington State using same argument Jean Stothert did against Omaha cop union

(Via JMG)  Locomotive engineer Michael Hall and conductor Amie Garrand, of respectively, Pierce County and Vancouver have filed suit against against the railroad, owned by Warren Buffett's Berkshire-Hathaway, of Omaha (HRC score: 0), for refusing to add their legal same-sex spouses to their health plans. The railroad claims it cannot unilaterally change a collective bargaining agreement.

However, it wasn't clear why such discussions were necessary. An excerpt of health plan at issue, included as an exhibit to the lawsuit, says the husbands and wives of covered employees are dependents eligible for coverage. It makes no reference to whether those husbands and wives must be the opposite sex of the employee, and the company didn't immediately respond to an email asking why same-sex spouses wouldn't be covered under that language.

     Omaha Mayor Jean Stothert is using the same argument to deny spousal coverage to gay cops. Omaha's police union is not persuaded by her logic and will file a grievance.

Nebraska: CBS goes to Norfolk to interview Bruce Dern, whose rather patrician family disowned him

From CBS' Sunday Morning, which seems to have added to the Oscar buzz surrounding Dern's performance in Alexander Payne's Nebraska.

Did he ever tire of playing the wacko, psycho, terrorist?
     No, Dern said, "because they're just guys that live just beyond where the buses run. And that's the way I've always looked at it. I mean, who knows who's out there? I just know that they're out there!"
     The underbelly of society is exactly the opposite of his high society upbringing. He was born into old money in Winnetka, Illinois. His grandfather, George Dern, was governor of Utah, who later went on to become Secretary of War under FDR. 
     His great-uncle was Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Archibald MacLeish.
     When Dern dropped out of the University of Pennsylvania to pursue acting, his family largely disowned him.

No more big screen Panasonic plasma TVs after 2014

     Sigh. The company has confirmed rumors it will exit the market. Too bad. Home cinema connoisseurs have long worshipped at the altar of the company's beautiful plasma displays (like the limited edition beauty below) with their exquisite shadow detail, usually rendered as mud in lesser technology like LCD TVs or so-called LED TVs (really just LCD TVs backlit with LEDs rather than flourescent tubes.)
     Interestingly, as screen sizes increase, the quality of TV color rendition is falling. The best color and dynamic range is actually rendered on a (properly adjusted) tube television, but try getting a 60-inch tube TV (if you could find one) through your front door.
     Here's a video of Panasonic's last plasma gasp (the company line is going out with a bang, not a whimper) including an explanation of why the screen has the deepest blacks you can buy — the company sucked out all the air between the plasma and the glass screen during the manufacturing process.

Albuquerque's Coronado mall bans 14-year-old for a year; offense: getting punched in the head by homophobic attacker