Digestible News

There's a better option for the mid-afternoon blahs.




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The so-called marriage protection act passed the House. Let's make sure it dies, fast, in the Senate (though don't bet on it: all it will take is a simple majority).

Here's the core of it:

No court created by Act of Congress shall have any jurisdiction, and the Supreme Court shall have no appellate jurisdiction, to hear or decide any question pertaining to the interpretation of, or the validity under the Constitution of, section 1738C or this section.

In other words, if this turkey gets past the Senate, no Federal Court will be able to hear matters concerning the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act -- at least until this idiotic piece of legislation is itself rule unconstitutional.

This is driving me nuts.

Funny thing, there would be no need to tell the courts they can't consider a matter of constitutionality -- if they didn't know perfectly well that they the law they don't want them to consider would never pass constitutional muster.

So much for liberty and justice for all.

[UPDATE: Josh Chafetz at Oxblog agrees that this thing is totally unconstitutional. Referring to the article III language used to justify this bill, Josh explains: "But the exceptions and regulations language is clearly talking only about the Supreme Court's appellate jurisdiction. Congress cannot strip jurisdiction over a federal question from the federal judiciary as a whole."]







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Mark Morford offers up his perspective on election-season political tactics "that will make Sun Tzu's 'Art of War' look like a cupcake cookbook."

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Via Seeing the Forest, we find this gem.


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It had to happen:

Two Toronto women who were among the first same-sex couples to marry in Canada are now seeking what may be the first Canadian same-sex divorce.

The women married on June 18, 2003, a week after a landmark court decision legalized same-sex marriage in Ontario, Canada's most populous province. They had been together for nearly 10 years, but separated after five days of marriage.

Oh well.

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From the Villiage Voice:

We've been watching the wrong game.

With attention focused on the doomed constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, the media, general public, and gay rights supporters are overlooking a more lively threat: H.R. 3313, the so-called Marriage Protection Act.

The constitutional amendment was merely an opportunity for conservative members of Congress to throw red meat to the base. Opponents of same-sex marriage knew the amendment wouldn't pass, so they crafted a fallback plan: the Marriage Protection Act, which says federal courts may not hear cases from gay couples challenging the eight-year-old federal law that prohibits them from marrying. If the bill passes, many states will refuse to recognize the marriage of a gay couple hitched in another state. Under today's rules, the couple could bring suit in federal court, asking that the Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, be ruled unconstitutional. If the Marriage Protection Act becomes law, no federal court could take the case.

Read the rest.

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Stephen Sestanovich has an op-ed in this morning’s Times, wherein he argues that “Bush was right” to put the “burden of proof” on Saddam Hussein. To make his argument work, however, he relies on a weak analogy and ignores inconvenient details. (Could there be a pattern here?)

He starts by bringing up an incident that occurred during the Clinton administration, when rumors of Yeltsin’s death preceded a planned visit to Moscow. The argument is that this is an example of when it is appropriate to “shift the burden of proof to the other guy.” In that case, it was, for one simple reason: Yeltsin could easily disprove the rumors simply by showing up alive.

To apply this thinking to Iraq, you would have to imagine that there was some equally unequivocal stroke by which Saddam Hussein could have proven the absence of WMD -- essentially a negative proposition. There wasn’t.

Further, you have to ignore the fact that processes were underway that might have brought real clarity to the matter (it’s telling that he makes no mention of David Kay, or of the inspections that were taking place and were ultimately cancelled during the run-up to the war), and ignore that fact that the Administration treated every failure to find evidence as evidence of dissembling – even as inspections were repeatedly failing to find weapons where we thought they were.

Finally, by arguing about burden of proof, Mr. Sestanovich is merely distracting us from the more critical question, which is what is the standard of proof required to lead a nation to war.

I could go on, but you see the point: like the Administration itself, he blithely ignores evidence that doesn’t fit his argument, and likes to keep us focused on anything but the real issue.

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Via The Hamster, Jim Norton deconstructs the latest White House Press Briefing.


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...Dairy Queen joins the ever-widening ranks of companies eager to turn your afternooon pick-me-up into a caloric nightmare, with (I'm not making this up) the MooLatte™.



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...though apparently, the West Virginia.

When West Virgina native Private Lynndie England first made it into the news, this quote made the Daily Mirror:

Colleen Kesner, a local in her home town, said: "To the country boys here, if you're a different nationality, a different race, you're sub-human. That's the way that girls like Lynndie are raised.

"Tormenting Iraqis, to their mind, would be no different from shooting a turkey."

Or, apparently, torturing chickens:

An animal rights group has released a videotape showing slaughterhouse workers with a KFC Corp. supplier [in Moorefield, W. Va.]jumping on live chickens and slamming them into walls, apparently for fun, a newspaper reported Tuesday.

Sheez.

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In the current New Yorker, Adam Gopnik ruminates on the pedicab & the ever-widening gap between the wealthy few and everyone else:

The pedicab may merely suggest rather than entirely embody the new America of puller and pulled, but it is a sharp symbol of a new reality. It even evokes new metaphors. For instance, the thing about George W. Bush is not that he was born on third base and thinks he hit a triple. It is that he has been in a bicycle taxi all his life but has not yet bothered to notice that someone else is pedalling.

Go read.

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American gun laws are a source of wonder, as David Sedaris has noted ("I've
heard, for example, that the blind can legally hunt in both Texas and
Michigan. They must be accompanied by a sighted companion, but still,
it seems a bit risky.").

So I was not altogether surprised when I ran across this:

On July 2, Fairfax County police received a 911 call from a Champps
restaurant in Reston. Six men are seated at a table, the caller said.
They're all armed.

...

Turns out, packing a pistol in public is perfectly legal in Virginia.
And three times in the last month, including at Champps on Sunset Hills
Road, residents have been spotted out and about in the county, with
guns strapped to their hips, exercising that right.

It get's weirder:

Virginia law 18.2-287.4 expressly prohibits "carrying loaded firearms in public areas."

But the second paragraph of the law defines firearms only as any
semiautomatic weapon that holds more than 20 rounds or a shotgun that
holds more than seven rounds -- assault rifles, mostly, Van Cleave
said. Regular six-shooters or pistols with nine- or 10-shot magazines
are not "firearms" under this Virginia law.

Comforting, isn't it?

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Casseroles are good for you. No word yet on the protective value of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup.


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From the Hill:

Realizing that a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage faces little chance of passing soon, if ever, House Republicans yesterday discussed alternative approaches, including stripping federal courts of jurisdiction over the issue, passing a federal law to define marriage and using the appropriations process to ban gay marriage in Washington.

Jurisdiction-stripping has already made it past the House Judiciary committee. Not that denying people their rights, and their legal recourse, is anthing new for these folks... |

It feels good. At the end of the day, the Republicans couldn’t even summon a bare majority – when sixty votes were needed – to even allow the measure to a vote.

It’s especially gratifying that even some Republicans (Snowe, McCain, and four others) had the courage to stand up for fairness and common sense.

But don’t expect proponents of the amendment to shut up about it. And don’t expect them to stop pretending that they are “protecting marriage.” They’re not: they’re just pandering to bigotry, and the religious extremists who put them in office, as they always have.

What disappoints me is that the Democrats have done such a poor job of countering that central meme, that preventing same-sex couples from sharing in the civil and legal “incidents” of marriage somehow “protects” anyone. It doesn’t.

What this is about is fear.

The notions advanced by the Right – that same-sex marriage will “undermine the family” or some such silliness – are all, in the end, to expressions of fear. There is not, nor will there be, any solid evidence to support these claims.

What is clear, and unequivocal, is that denying same-sex couples the rights of marriage causes real harm.

What is remarkable is how few Democrats seem to be willing to tackle the misleading framing advanced by the right – and move the question back to the one of fairness that has gone before the courts.

The judges in Massachusetts were never asked whether they were “for” or “against” same-sex marriage – or whether they disapproved or approved. Those are personal matters that are rightly beyond the reach of the law.

They were asked to rule on a matter of fairness. Is it fair, in a country that values individual autonomy, under a constitution that explicitly requires that each of its citizens be treated equally, to deny to same sex couples the civil and legal protections that married opposite-sex couples take for granted?

The courts concluded that it wasn’t.

At this point, the Right will no doubt try to paint opponents of the amendment as “opposed” to traditional marriage – which is arrant nonsense. Sadly, the Democrats are likely to continue the tap-dance and take cover under a phony states’ rights banner – when what they are really for is a proud tradition of fairness and equality under the law.

It is sad that they should let the issue become so clouded, when the merits are so clear.



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