We were back from a little Independence Day break and ready to sweat out another summer edition of The Agenda with Joe Solmonese last night on XM Satellite Radio.

We kicked off the show with the news of the day and a little legislative update with the Human Rights Campaign’s own Lara Schwartz. She’s HRC’s legal director and chief legislative counsel and gave us the skinny on the hate crimes bill, surgeon general nominee and Office of Special Counsel hearings.

Former New Jersey Gov. Jim McGreevey made international headlines in 2004 when he announced that he is gay — making him the first (and so far only) openly gay U.S. governor. He was our guest to talk about life after coming out as well as the spiritual journey that is leading him to enter seminary in the fall.

We thought we’d give a nod to the season and what says summer more than lesbian surfers? The gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender network Logo has a new series, Curl Girls, focusing on a group of women with a passion for surfing, and one of them — Michele Fleury — was our guest. Then we took on another summer pastime with Gordon Greisman — writer and executive producer of a new ESPN miniseries about baseball in New York. The Bronx is Burning premiered last night at 10 p.m. Eastern.

There’s always a healthy dose of politics on our Agenda so to get our fix last night, we welcomed back Mary Ann Akers who writes the wildly popular Washington Post blog The Sleuth. She gave us the political rundown from her insider’s perspective. Listen in.

Finally, a GLBT community hero left Congress last week and we thought it was a significant moment to sit down for a chat. Co-host Mary Breslauer brought us an interview she had with now former Rep. Marty Meehan who was the lead sponsor of the bill to repeal the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. Listen to his congressional memories.

It was a great holiday week edition of The Agenda with Joe Solmonese last night. We had something for everyone — from romance novels to political web video to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender human rights around the world.

Kicking off the show, we talked to Lee Badgett of the Williams Institute. She is the lead author of a new report on bias in the workplace — an important topic with Congress set to take up the Employment Non-Discrimination Act in the coming months. Listen here.

We took a turn from there to welcome author Jacki Collins — queen of the Hollywood romance novel. Her new book out last week, Drop Dead Beautiful, is sure to be on many beach reading lists. She talked about the new book, some of its gay characters and her personal love of gay men. Hear from her in parts one and two.

Switching gears again… Scott Long, the director of the LGBT Rights Project for Human Rights Watch, was a return guest on The Agenda. Now that pride month has wrapped up, he gave us the highs and lows from around the world from Moscow to Bucharest to São Paulo.

We’re very tech-savvy here at The Agenda so we just had to have William Sledd, creator of the popular video blog Ask a Gay Man. William just signed on with the TV network Bravo to star in their new online venture OutZoneTV.com.

But web video isn’t all fun and games; there are some serious political uses. No one knows that world better than veteran political consultant Will Robinson. He’s a partner at The New Media Firm and joined us in-studio to talk about how Internet technology is changing the face of modern politics. Enjoy this fascinating conversation here.

Finally, playwright Carol Lynn Pearson joined us to discuss her play that has been getting rave reviews. Facing East opened earlier this year in Salt Lake City, had a great run off-Broadway and is going to San Francisco in August. Carol Lynn discussed the powerful message in her story of a Mormon couple dealing with the suicide of their gay son.