Hillary's the one

By Infidel753 

Hillary Clinton is now officially in the 2016 Presidential race, and will almost certainly be the Democratic nominee. And we're lucky to have her. She can do the job, she can do the job right -- and, critically, she can get the job. She can beat the Republicans.

[I mean no disrespect by adopting the common habit of referring to Hillary Clinton by her first name. Given that Bill Clinton remains a prominent figure, just calling her "Clinton" would be ambiguous, and her own campaign is called "Hillary for America".]

Here's Charles Pierce (found via Progressive Eruptions) explaining what's at stake: 

If she is elected, she unequivocally will accept the science of anthropogenic climate change and treat it as a crisis. This cannot be said of any of the Republican candidates, real or potential. 

If she is elected, she unequivocally will support marriage equality, and oppose discrimination against our fellow citizens based on sexual orientation or gender identity. This cannot be said of any of the Republican candidates, real or potential. 

If she is elected, she will not destroy the Affordable Care Act, an article of faith among all the Republican candidates, real or potential. 

If she is elected, and despite her closeness to certain Wall Street interests, she will not destroy the Dodd-Frank reforms, another article of faith among all the Republican candidates, real or potential.

[...] 

To get elected, she does not have to wink at state's rights, up to and including incidents of armed resistance. 

To get elected, she does not have to equivocate on the science behind the theory of evolution as does any Republican candidate who seeks the votes of Republicans in Iowa. 

To get elected, she does not have to peddle the snake oil of supply-side economics, nor does she have to peddle scare stories about the oncoming caliphate, nor does she have to create bogeymen about jackboots coming to steal your guns.

That is to say, Hillary thinks and functions in the real world as opposed to being committed to dangerously-delusional policies. I'd add that she won't put any more theocratic nutcases like Scalia on the Supreme Court. And she will build on the progress Obama and Rouhani have made on bringing Iran out of isolation to the point where it has a stake in the international system, and will continue working with amenable Middle Eastern groups and governments to fight violent extremism, as opposed to the Republican strategy of "when in doubt, bomb and invade and hope for the best."

Read more »

SCOTUS says not all religions are equal

By Frank Moraes

Last week, with the unanimous decisions, I thought, "Oh God! That was probably done to make the coming highly controversial 5-4 decisions more acceptable." That looks like it is the case. I assume that it is John Roberts who decides when decisions are released. And it should dispel any idea that you may have that the Supreme Court is anything but an extremely political organization. The most upsetting decisions today was Burwell v Hobby Lobby.

In it, by a 5-4 majority, the Court found that "closely held" companies that are owned by religious people have a right to not provide birth control as part of their employee healthcare coverage.

If you look at the logic of the case, this really should be applied to everything. The Jehovah's Witnesses do not believe in blood transfusions. By the logic of this decision, a Jehovah's Witnesses employer ought to be able to withhold blood transfusions from the insurance coverage offered to their employees. But that's not what this decision (pdf) finds. Alito's decision even says, "This decision concerns only the contraceptive mandate and should not be understood to hold that all insurance-coverage mandates, eg, for vaccinations or blood transfusions, must necessarily fall if they conflict with an employer's religious beliefs." In Kennedy's concurrence, he begins, "At the outset it should be said that the Court's opinion does not have the breadth and sweep ascribed to it by the respectful and powerful dissent."

The question is, "Why?" There really is no reason. What seems to have been done is that the Supreme Court wanted to allow Christian conservatives to make their stand against birth control and so they worked back from that. It reminds me above all of Bush v Gore. In that case, the Court found that George W Bush's due process rights were being violated, but it was only George W Bush's rights who were being violated and if a similar case ever came up, Bush v Gore could not be used as a precedent. Just like in that case, in Burwell v Hobby Lobby, the Court majority is doing what can only be call judicial legislation. It just created a law that more or less says, "Closely held religious companies have the right to discriminate against their female employees with regard to the existing law that says that all insurance policies must include contraceptive coverage." This is not "judging"; this is not calling balls and strikes; this is legislating, pure and simple.

The conservatives on the bench are not idiots. They know that they can't just say, "If an employer is religious, he doesn't have to follow any law that goes against his conscience." That would allow religions they don't like to gain more power. Rastafarian employers might claim that all of their employees ingest cannabis. But even those Jehovah's Witnesses: they can't be allowed to sully the important legislative work being done by the conservative Christians on the Court: creating a special theocracy for their religion and their religion alone.

Ginsburg's dissent is kind of amazing. Alito spent most of his decision arguing that the finding was minor. He said it wasn't a broad decision. Kennedy backed him up. They were using a scalpel, for God's sake! She brooks no such fantasy. Ginsburg goes right at the blood transfusion issue. She notes that this case doesn't apply to blood transfusions and other silly religious complaints against modernity, but that it also doesn't rule them out. The courts, apparently, are just supposed to deal with them as they come up. The majority decision certainly makes a Jehovah's Witnesses employer's contention that he shouldn't have to provide coverage for blood transfusions reasonable, even if it doesn't state that such exceptions should be made.

Read more »

Only for Christians

By Capt. Fogg

You can laugh a bit and console yourself that it doesn't matter all that much if an Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice tells us the first Amendment only applies to Christians -- maybe even if you are like me, not a Christian. It's only Alabama, right?

They didn't bring the Koran over on the pilgrim ship, the Mayflower,

Justice Roy Moore announced to the mob at the Pastor for Life Luncheon. Maybe you'll remember that Jefferson owned one however and that he wasn't shy about warning us of religious tyranny. Maybe you'll remember Moore as the former justice who was removed from office for fighting to erect the Ten Commandments in the courthouse, but like that tumor you thought the chemo got rid of he came back two years later singing the same tune:

Let's get real. Let's learn our history. Let's stop playing games.

I would agree with that, but as we know, to the religious right, history is baked fresh every morning. The English colonists brought slaves, white and black, and Moore's ideological ancestors fought like hell to keep them, Bibles in hand.

Buddha didn't create us. Mohammad didn't create us. It's the god of the Holy Scriptures,

said Moore with the authority not granted him by anyone in particular, and grossly misrepresenting Jefferson and Madison and the U.S. Supreme Court with a stream of non sequitur he insisted that freedom of religion is only for Christians.

A newly-released video shows him expounding all this and worse in Jackson, Mississippi last January to a group called Pro-Life Mississippi. Of course it's hardly a game he's asking us to end, it's secular democracy, the pride of the age of Reason and Humanism, and like a stag at bay it's destined to be torn to ribbons and its head displayed on some courthouse wall. For nothing in our Constitution is as important, as hallowed by the blood of patriots, as the cracks, the loopholes, the weak spots that may just allow traitors and secessionist sons of the Confederacy to eviscerate it, hang it from its heels, bleed it and gut it like an animal to be sacrificed to his tyrannical, bloody-handed God.

Read more »

In public prayer case, the Supreme Court strikes another blow against American democracy

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The right-wing Republican majority on the Supreme Court has once again struck a blow against the very essence of American democracy, against the very idea of America itself.

When it's not handing democracy to the rich, effectively disenfranchising everyone else, or claiming that racial discrimination is no longer a problem, to name but two of its more prominent right-wing efforts of late, the Roberts Court, dominated by ideologues like Scalia but with the somewhat more pragmatic Kennedy often voting with the conservative majority, is tearing down the separation of church and state, that fundamental principle that guided the Founders and that is as essential as ever given fundamentalist efforts to theocratize America in stark contrast to its founding principles. And this effort was on display again today:

The Supreme Court on Monday ruled that a town in upstate New York did not violate the Constitution by starting its public meetings with a prayer from a "chaplain of the month" who was almost always Christian.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the majority in a 5-to-4 decision that divided the court's more conservative members from its liberal ones, said the prayers were merely ceremonial. They were neither unduly sectarian nor likely to make members of other faiths feel unwelcome.

"Ceremonial prayer," he wrote, "is but a recognition that, since this nation was founded and until the present day, many Americans deem that their own existence must be understood by precepts far beyond that authority of government to alter or define."

In dissent, Justice Elena Kagan said the town's practices could not be reconciled "with the First Amendment's promise that every citizen, irrespective of her religion, owns an equal share of her government."

Town officials in Greece, N.Y., near Rochester, said that members of all faiths, and atheists, were welcome to give the opening prayer. In practice, however, almost all of the chaplains were Christian. Some of their prayers were explicitly sectarian, with references, for instance, to "the saving sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross."

Kennedy's argument isn't entirely crazy, but it makes less and less sense as you consider that what is just "ceremonial" from one perspective may be theocratic and proselytizing on the other, and it's that other perspective that is very much at the core of activist conservative efforts to turn America into a (right-wing) Christianist state.

What's more, offering the opportunity to minority groups (in this case Jews or atheists, mostly) to have their own prayers recited doesn't fix the problem of effectively granting primacy to one religion in particular -- and the fact that the prayers themselves weren't necessarily welcoming, as when they tout the primacy of Christianity and indeed of certain strains of Christianity, only proves that point. Really, how is a non-Christian supposed to feel welcome when a government opens its proceedings with a prayer that refers to "the saving sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross"? Even if they wanted to offer their own prayer, how could non-Christians not feel excluded from their own government, from their own community, by their own fellow citizens?

No one is saying that organized religion, or spirituality generally, has no place in American life. While I personally abhor organized religion, what people choose to do in private, whatever "god" they choose to worship, is for the most part their own business, as long as no one gets hurt, as long as more fundamental rights are respected. But religion should have no place whatsoever in the public space except perhaps in some contexts when it is treated as history and anthropology -- it absolutely has no place where government, the self-governance of free and equal citizens, is considered. Just don't expect this deeply anti-American Supreme Court to defend what is fundamentally American.

Religious belief doesn't trump law

By Frank Moraes 

The United Church of Christ (UCC) has been performing same-sex marriages since 2005. So they decided to pursue a legal challenge to North Carolina's ban on same-sex marriages. They are arguing that the state is violating their freedom of religion. That is too delicious not to talk about.

But I think the case is very clear. People's rights to free expression do not trump laws. The Rastafarians believe very much that they should be allowed to ingest cannabis, but that has never stopped one of them from being imprisoned for that "crime." So I don't think that the UCC has a religious right that trumps North Carolina law. Of course, there may be details in the law that would push me in the UCC's direction. But as it stands, it seems pretty simple.

I am just being consistent here. I also think all of these religious based attacks on Obamacare should have been thrown scornfully out of court at the very beginning. And there are lots of similar cases, like where a Christian pharmacist claims he has the right not to fill prescriptions for birth control pills. The Rastafarians have a far better claim to their drug rights than do hobby stores who want to micromanage their employees' healthcare coverage.

But given all the time and efforts that conservative Christians have put into destroying Obamacare using such arguments, you would think that they would be in support of the UCC. After all, it is a matter of religious liberty. It shouldn't matter that it is in the name of a specific policy that they don't accept. But, of course, it does matter. North Carolina Values Coalition (NCVC) executive director Tami Fitzgerald said in a press release that because a majority of the voters in the state voted for the law, the UCC should have no rights. She then went on to talk about how she was the ultimate arbiter of what Christianity is and that the UCC is just wrong.

Of course, when Hobby Lobby was before the Supreme Court, Fitzgerald was firmly behind it, urging people to Pray for Hobby Lobby. But I'm sure that is not the only bit of hypocrisy that Fitzgerald and the NCVC have in store. Right now it is all about the fact that 61% of the electorate of North Carolina voted to ban same-sex marriage. As soon as the people become in favor of same-sex marriage, she will be using a different argument. And it won't be long. Last year, the people of North Carolina were against same-sex marriage by a tiny 45%-44% margin.

We'll see what happens to this case. I wouldn't be at all surprised if conservative judges find that a same-sex marriage ban did not violate the UCC's religious rights even while they find hitherto unknown religious rights of hobby stores. Luckily, the same-sex marriage issue will be resolved by the people very soon. 

(Cross-posted at Frankly Curious.)

The Koch brothers are about to become even more famous, and that's a good thing

By Richard K. Barry

In yesterday's New York Times, writers Jeremy W. Peters and Carl Hulse note that Democrats have begun to attack the Koch brothers with a tactic they successfully used against Mitt Romney in the 2102 campaign. This is to say that they are attacking the "brothers' sprawling business conglomerate as callous and indifferent to the lives of ordinary people while pursuing profit and power. "

By drawing public attention to layoffs by subsidiaries of Koch Industries across the country — a chemical plant in North Carolina, an oil refinery in Alaska, a lumber operation in Arkansas — Democrats are seeking to make villains of the reclusive billionaires, whose political organizations have spent more than $30 million on ads so far to help Republicans win control of the Senate.

Obviously, the parallel with Romney is that he was effectively painted as a Mr. Burns-type far more concerned with his own bottom line than with the well-being of his employees.

Some Republicans are claiming that the approach won't work, that taking shots at the Koch brothers will deplete resources and energy Democrats would be smarter to use elsewhere, presumably in efforts to challenge actual candidates.

For example, Tim Phillips, head of Americans for Prosperity, a pro-Republican political advocacy group, says that "Mitt Romney was the candidate for president of the United States...That's the big difference. David Koch (one of the two brothers) isn't running for anything. This just points to what bad shape they're in."

Okay. That's an interesting perspective.  But many voters tend to see shadowy influences pulling the strings of elected officials. And though the Supreme Court may have equated money with speech, many Americans understand that money buys things it shouldn't be able or allowed to buy. In light of recent Supreme Court decisions, which will have the effect of pouring even more money into the electoral process, I would not be so sure the Koch brothers will be an ineffective target for Democratic attacks. 

Perhaps the most important feeling to be exploited in politics is the feeling of powerlessness. The right has, albeit illegitimately, created and then exploited a sense of powerless among certain elements of the electorate when it comes to Obamacare. 

In contrast to Tim Phillip's argument, the fact that the Koch brothers aren't running for anything, but working in the shadows, is what makes then so salient an image of corruption in the process, and powerlessness for the electorate. 

Release the hounds. 

John Roberts' balls and strikes

By Frank Moraes

Balls and Strikes. That's what John Roberts said about being a judge. During his confirmation hearing, he said, "I will remember that it's my job to call balls and strikes and not to pitch or bat." At the time, I was appalled. Never in my life had I ever heard someone say such a nakedly dishonest thing during a confirmation hearing. It was pure rhetoric of the conservative variety. What he meant was, "I'm not like those liberal activist judges, I just apply the law." The only thing that could be worse than Roberts lying about this is if he is so delusional as to actually believe it.

It's been a bad couple of weeks. And this week's Supreme Court decision inMcCutcheon vs FEC was the worst of it. You can read my thoughts on the case in, Supreme Court Strikes Blow for Oligarchy. It isn't so much what it means on a practical level, because the truth is that our political system was already a mess. It's owned by the wealthy. If you have any question, just look at what happened to Proposition 37 in 2012. But the truth is that the Supreme Court could have decided to make a stand for democracy, but the conservatives rushed to the conclusion that the best thing is for us to have an oligarchy.

What the Supreme Court is really doing is deciding between competing interests. This is what the court should be doing. And McCutcheon provided an amazingly clear choice. On the one side, there are several hundred extremely rich people who already have undemocratic levels of political power. On the other side, you have well over 300 million people who have an interest in not having their democracy manipulated. Five of the justices felt the interests of the few hundred were most important. Four of the justices felt the interests of the entire nation were most important.

Read more »

The rise of American oligarchy: SCOTUS hands the rich even more control over "democracy"

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Another day at the Roberts Court, another massive setback for American democracy:

The Supreme Court on Wednesday continued its abolition of limits on election spending, striking down a decades-old cap on the total amount any individual can contribute to federal candidates in a two-year election cycle.

The ruling, issued near the start of a campaign season, will very likely increase the role money plays in American politics.

The 5-to-4 decision, with the court’s more conservative members in the majority, echoed Citizens United, the 2010 decision that struck down limits on independent campaign spending by corporations and unions.

More money, more control, less actual democracy.

As I tweeted earlier today:

We need Aristotle to explain to #SCOTUS majority + money-grubbing conservatives all that's wrong with oligarchy. Not that they give a shit.
— Michael Stickings (@mjwstickings) April 2, 2014

#SCOTUS decision in #McCutcheon means American democracy moves even closer to the Hobbesian state of nature. What Kochs et al. want.
— Michael Stickings (@mjwstickings) April 2, 2014

The Founders, however skeptical of democracy some of them may have been, would be appalled. So much for "We the People."

Vienna Teng: "City Hall" -- a celebration of same-sex marriage

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Now would be a good time to post a clip of the wonderful Vienna Teng performing "City Hall," a pre-Prop 8 celebration of same-sex marriage.

It's off Vienna's 2006 album Dreaming Through the Noise (her best, in my view), and here she is performing the song at the famous Sun Studio in Nashville.

Some of the lyrics:

Outside, they're handing out
Donuts and pizza pies
For the folks in pairs in the folding chairs
My baby's lookin' so damned pretty
With those anxious eyes
Rain-speckled hair
And my ring to wear

Ten years waiting for this moment of fate
When we say the words and sign our names
If they take it away again someday
This beautiful thing won't change

Oh, me and my baby driving down
To a hilly seaside town in the rainfall
Oh, me and my baby stand in line
You've never seen a sight so fine
As the love that's gonna shine

At City Hall

The bigots are trying to take it away, even after this past week's historic Supreme Court rulings, but the country has changed, public opinion is on our side, and we're not going to let them take it away. Period.

Love shall prevail.

The bigots will stop at nothing (updated)

By Michael J.W. Stickings 

UPDATE: Fail.

**********

From the L.A. Times:

ProtectMarriage, the sponsors of Proposition 8, filed an emergency petition to the U.S. Supreme Court on Saturday to stop same-sex marriages from continuing in California.

The petition says the decision by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to permit weddings starting Friday afternoon was "premature."

It's Justice Kennedy, who of course wrote the majority opinion that struck down the Defense of Marriage Act, who will rule on this petition, as he is responsible for the 9th Circuit Court. Tom Goldstein of SCOTUSblog explains:

The application argues that the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Proposition 8 case is not yet "final," so the stay must remain in place. The Supreme Court ordinarily does not issue its formally binding ruling – known as the "judgment" – in a case from a federal court of appeals until 25 days after it releases its "opinion." Because the Court issued its opinion in the Proposition 8 case on June 26, it would by default not issue the judgment until Monday, July 22. (The 25th day is July 21, a Sunday.) The principal point of that delay is to permit the losing party to prepare and submit a petition for rehearing to the Justices, though such petitions are as a practical matter never granted.

So basically, the bigots behind Prop 8 want more time to prepare to continue to fight for their bigotry, and to "delay the inevitable," as Goldstein writes. In any event, Goldstein thinks this emergency petition will "likely" fail, for a variety of pretty solid reasons.

What's clear, though, is that the bigots are desperate, and will stop at nothing. So extreme is their bigotry.

Anti-bullying

By Mustang Bobby

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) responded to the Supreme Court's ruling on DOMA by standing up against bullying... of bigots.

My hope is that those of us who believe in the sanctity and uniqueness of traditional marriage will continue to argue for its protection in a way that is respectful to the millions of American sons and daughters who are gay. It is also my hope that those who argue for the redefinition of marriage to include same-sex marriage will refrain from assailing the millions of Americans who disagree with them as bigots.

So there you have a bully begging not to be bullied for being a bigoted bully.

After DOMA, the fight for marriage equality moves to the states

By Mustang Bobby 

Florida Gov. Rick Scott on the repeal of DOMA:

Look, I've been married since I was 19. I believe in traditional marriage.

This was, in his lizard-brain reaction, his way of saying that the repeal has no impact on the laws of Florida and its constitutional amendment passed in 2008 banning same-sex marriage.

But Mr. Scott is predicting the next battle for marriage equality. The fact that he is (we assume) happily married doesn't mean anything other than there is connubial bliss in the Scott household, and his marriage doesn't have any bearing on the people next door. Equal rights is not a zero-sum game. Granting marriage equality to a gay couple doesn't take it away from the straight people. (Please don't let's rehash the slippery slope argument of man-on-dog marriages. That will only happen when a dog has the ability to comprehend and accept the terms of a contract. Dogs may rule, but that's not a part of the deal.)

The fact that DOMA is now dead means that states that do not recognize all marriages no longer have much of a leg to stand on in denying spousal benefits when a married couple named Fred and Paul from Massachusetts relocates to Palmetto Bay, Florida. And in a way, Justice Antonin Scalia, in his rant against the ruling, predicted the next shoe to drop. Marriage equality at the state level is coming up next.

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Rand Paul thinks dog marriage is next

By Frank Moraes 

As you all know, I have major problems with real libertarians -- to a large extent because most of them have a good understanding of the problems of governing and I don't see why they don't recognize their very clear blind spots. But people who claim to be libertarians who don't understand the philosophy and just throw the word around because it sounds cooler than "conservative" are another matter. I hate them.

The most prominent pretend libertarian is Rand Paul. This doesn't mean that I don't agree with him from time to time. Hell, I agree with Rick Santorum now and then. One nice thing about real libertarians is that you can usually predict where they stand on any given issue. But not so with Paul. He is anti-abortion, for example. Now I understand that some libertarians are anti-abortion. But I don't get it. A 16-cell zygote has equal human rights to the mother? Really?!

But there are many more clear examples. He isn't, for example, in favor of drug legalization -- just cannabis. Now, I'm all for legalizing cannabis. But at this point, the argument isn't the libertarian one that people should be allowed to make their own choices. It is the (true) conservative argument that cannabis is no more dangerous than other legal drugs. At least Paul's father, Ron Paul, acts like a true libertarian in this regard.

And now, Rand Paul is making the media rounds to complain about the Supreme Court's overturning the Defense of Marriage Act. He was on Glenn Beck's show (another pretend libertarian) warning that same-sex marriage would lead to polygamy. I actually agree with him that this ought to lead to polygamy. I'm very much a libertarian on this issue: people should be able to enter whatever contracts they want with each other. But Paul brought this up as a note of caution: polygamy is bad.[1] This is clearly not a man who believes that people's lives are their own.


Read more »

Chris Christie hates DOMA ruling, reveals abject ignorance of American constitutionalism

By Michael J.W. Stickings

As you may have heard, sometime Republican superstar Chris Christie, the bullying blowhard (and media-friendly) governor of New Jersey, isn't terribly impressed with the Supreme Court for striking down the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).

The ruling is an "example of judicial supremacy," he said yesterday. "I don't think the ruling was appropriate," he opined. "I think it was wrong."

He criticized the justices, or at least five of them, for replacing "the judgment of a Republican Congress and a Democratic president" with "their own judgment," adding: "I thought that Justice Kennedy's opinion was, in many respects, incredibly insulting to those people, 340-some members of Congress who voted for the Defense of Marriage Act, and Bill Clinton."

Okay, we already knew Christie was a bigot -- yes, if you're against same-sex marriage, that's what you are, period. But what he showed with these comments is that he's an ignorant fool as well, with little regard for the checks, balances, and the rule of law.

Does he really have so little understanding of the Constitution, the history of the Supreme Court, and the concept of judicial review, particularly as established early on with Marbury v. Madison, one of the country's defining cases? 

This is what, in essence, the U.S. Supreme Court does. It rules on the constitutionality of federal laws, providing a check on the other two branches of government. And what it said on Wednesday is that DOMA is unconstitutional. It had every right to do so. It's in the fucking Constitution.

Read more »

DOMA never had a chance

By Mustang Bobby 

It's easy to say that the Defense of Marriage Act was doomed from the outset and that its demise yesterday was inevitable. Passed in the heat of the election campaign of 1996 and foisted as a knee-jerk reaction to the possibility that Hawaii was about to legalize same-sex marriage (this was before the Aloha State was considered an "exotic" place to be from), it had a relatively short life span; a little under 17 years.

For a while it looked like it was carved in stone. The full weight of the federal government, in all its intricacies of laws, orders, rules, and codes, was behind the denial of spousal benefits of marriages between two people who shared similar genitalia. And once a federal law is in place, it is very hard to extract the tentacles.

But its doom was ordained by its own existence. Born in a fit of pique and panic, it begged for states to pass marriage equality, or at the very least civil unions, and once they did, DOMA -- an assault on the Equal Protection clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments anyway -- became moot.  Equal rights to married couples granted by states such as Massachusetts or New York were being denied by the federal government, and that put DOMA on the path to invalidation.

What is especially ironic is that all of the arguments against DOMA are deeply conservative and traditional right wing talking points, ranging from big government intrusion into the lives of citizens to the hatred of the Internal Revenue Service and its big-footing of the tax code. The plaintiff in the case that brought DOMA to the Supreme Court wasn’t looking for the federal government to bless her wedding; she wanted to be treated fairly by the tax collector. How hard is that for a Republican to understand and sympathize with?

From the day DOMA was signed into law by President Clinton (who must acknowledge his own chutzpah for championing the ruling yesterday), I believed it would be thrown out. That does not lessen the joy and satisfaction that I left yesterday morning when the ruling came down. If anything, it affirms my belief in the law and the inevitability of marriage equality, even if I am still single. (Hope springs eternal.)

And we are one step closer to putting an end to an adjective-enhanced society, such as "gay marriage" or "lesbian couple." We're just people.

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

SCOTUS rulings on DOMA and Prop 8: A great day for gay rights, equality, and America's noblest ideals

By Michael J.W. Stickings

(photo from the San Francisco Chronicle)

Wednesday, June 26, 2013 was quite the day:

Well, a really good, and potentially historic, day for gay rights, equality, and the ideals to which America professes to aspire.
— Michael Stickings (@mjwstickings) June 26, 2013

No, not a perfect day in these terms:

-- SCOTUS's Prop 8 ruling was based on standing, not on the merits of the case, and so not in and of itself a validation of same-sex marriage. The lower court ruling against Prop 8 stands, meaning that same-sex marriage is now legal in California, but this has no impact on other states.

-- SCOTUS did find the odious DOMA unconstitutional in that it violates the Fifth Amendment, and this is a much greater victory, but state laws against same-sex marriage remain in place and states are not required to recognize same-sex marriages from other states.

The hope is that the argument against DOMA -- "deprivation of the liberty of the person protected by the Fifth Amendment," Justice Kennedy wrote for the majority -- ultimately applies in some form to states as well.

But here's also a sense that the Roberts Court as currently constituted may simply want to move on from this. It didn't block progress, and didn't pull a Dred Scott (issuing a terrible ruling that will be widely ridiculed in future). It struck down a federal law as many lower courts had done, and it stayed out, more or less, of a state matter. Sure, we know where Scalia, Alito, and Thomas stand on the matter, but as a whole SCOTUS, perhaps rather predictably, fell short of making a sweeping decision and sent the matter back to the states to deal with. Which is to say, it took a generally conservative view of federalism and waved progress along without interfering too much, nudging it back on the right track.

In any event, these two rulings add up to a major, historic victory for same-sex marriage and, more broadly, as I tweeted, for the ideals to which America professes to aspire.

With so much of the political landscape dominated by Republican extremism, obstructionism, and scandalmongering, with so little being done to address America's problems (including its culture of rampant gun violence), with President Obama pushing an old-fashioned moderate Republican agenda instead of progressive change (we can believe in), and with so much recent attention on the NSA and the growing surveillance state, and the erosion of civil liberties that that entails, I must say I had lost a great deal of whatever hope and optimism I had left, which wasn't much but still something to cling to.

No, the world didn't change yesterday, but for once things seemed to get a whole lot better.

**********

Here, from TPM via Mustang Bobby, is the day, a great day, in 100 seconds:

The Supreme Court's obliteration of the Voting Rights Act spurs the Republican assault on voting rights

By Michael J.W. Stickings

If you care about democracy, and equality, and fairness, and justice, if you're just a good and decent person who cares about your fellow human beings and think that they, like you, should be treated with respect and dignity, that their voice, like yours, matters and should be heard, then this is one of the scariest political headlines you'll ever encounter:

Republicans Across The South Promise Quick Action After SCOTUS Ruling

And what Republicans are planning, along the lines of what they've been doing, is pretty scary shit too:

Across the South, Republicans are working to take advantage of a new political landscape after a divided U.S. Supreme Court freed all or part of 15 states, many of them in the old Confederacy, from having to ask Washington's permission before changing election procedures in jurisdictions with histories of discrimination.

After the high court announced its momentous ruling Tuesday, officials in Texas and Mississippi pledged to immediately implement laws requiring voters to show photo identification before getting a ballot. North Carolina Republicans promised they would quickly try to adopt a similar law. Florida now appears free to set its early voting hours however Gov. Rick Scott and the GOP Legislature please. And Georgia's most populous county likely will use county commission districts that Republican state legislators drew over the objections of local Democrats.

Voting rights, thy days are numbered. Except, of course, for those enjoyed by privileged Republicans.

A blow for bigotry: The Supreme Court demolishes the Voting Rights Act

By Michael J.W. Stickings

As you may have heard by now, the Supreme Court -- or, rather, the Supreme Court's right-wing majority, issued a ruling today that significantly undermines the efficacy of the Voting Rights Act:

The Supreme Court on Tuesday effectively struck down the heart of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 by a 5-to-4 vote, ruling that Congress had not provided adequate justification for subjecting nine states, mostly in the South, to federal oversight.

"In 1965, the states could be divided into two groups: those with a recent history of voting tests and low voter registration and turnout, and those without those characteristics," Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the majority. "Congress based its coverage formula on that distinction. Today the nation is no longer divided along those lines, yet the Voting Rights Act continues to treat it as if it were."

The court divided along ideological lines, and the two sides drew sharply different lessons from the history of the civil rights movement and gave very different accounts of whether racial minorities continue to face discrimination in voting. 

There was -- and remains -- good reason for such federal oversight.

What the Roberts-led majority is basically saying is that racial prejudice is a thing of the past ("the nation is no longer divided along those lines") and that the success in overcoming such prejudice means there's no longer a need for voting rights protections of the sort that were enacted back in the '60s as part of the broader civil rights movement.

Which is ridiculous.

Conservatives have been waging war on voting rights for a long time, by which I mean forever, and this is the blow they were waiting to strike.

Read more »

Terrorist watch list

By Mustang Bobby

John Yoo is one of those people who will go down in history as one of those benignly evil people who don’t actually do terrible things like commit torture or genocide themselves but enable those who do and defend them:

"Apparently the FBI interrogated the younger Tsarnaev for 16 hours," wrote torture memo author John Yoo at National Review. "And then, for reasons that are still unknown, the government read him his rights."

Yoo has never met a right he didn't want to ball up like a piece of paper and toss into a trash can in the name of national security. But despite being an attorney and professor at the prestigious University of California Berkeley School of Law, Yoo is either misleading his readers about why Tsarnaev was read his rights or unaware of a basic legal rule.

The judge appeared at the hospital because the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure state that suspects have to be brought before "a magistrate judge, or before a state or local judicial officer" and it must be done "without unnecessary delay." The Supreme Court has held that, absent exigent circumstances or the suspect waiving the right to go before a judge -- as wannabe Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad reportedly did -- a suspect has to appear before a judge within 48 hours of being apprehended. This is usually referred to in legal shorthand as "presentment," as in, "presentment before a judge."

He is also one of those people who tell us that our rights and the Constitution don't really matter if you're dead, and that the Founding Fathers certainly didn't intend to protect the rights of people who were indoctrinated by foreigners to blow us up. And he does it all without getting that faraway stare in his eyes or wearing a hat with teabags dangling from it.

He's the one who should be on the terrorist watch list.

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Ken Cuccinelli hates blow jobs

By Michael J.W. Stickings

From the Blade:

Virginia Attorney General Kenneth Cuccinelli has filed a petition with the 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Richmond asking the full 15-judge court to reconsider a decision by a three-judge panel last month that overturned the state's sodomy law.

The three-judge panel ruled 2-1 on March 12 that a section of Virginia's "Crimes Against Nature" statute that outlaws sodomy between consenting adults, gay or straight, is unconstitutional based on a U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2003 known as Lawrence v. Texas.

One assumes that Cuccinelli is motivated largely by anti-gay bigotry (they can kiss, but that's it... but not the genitals!), but of course a sodomy law covers other things as well, like, you know, blow jobs. (No word on what he might have against those.) Or maybe he's just sick and tired of Alice not putting out unless he goes down on her first. (I mean, sure, they have seven children, and maybe he owes her some tongue action, but come on, it's smelly down there, and it takes, like, forever!)

Whatever the case, he can go shove a large turnip up his ass. Which he has every right to do. It says so in the fucking Constitution.

More or less.