Homophobes in Maine claim gay marriage will cause straight people to commit adultery

It's bizarre. But it does show how twisted - and sexually screwed up - the religious right is. Who knew that so many religious right leaders were just aching to cheat on their spouses.

How does your neighbor’s same-sex marriage undermine your marriage?

Traditional societies depend on shared morals. Unfortunately, in modern times, democracies have traded absolute truths and collective morality for personal freedom.

Legal recognition for openly non-monogamous gay unions would effectively destroy the taboo on adultery. The result is a continual downfall of families and society.

Stanley Kurtz, a research fellow at Stanford University explains: “What we need to understand — but do not — is that gay marriage will undermine the structure of taboos that continue to protect heterosexual marriage — and will do so far more profoundly than either the elimination of sodomy laws, or the general sexual loosening of the past thirty years. Above all, marriage is protected by the ethos of monogamy — and by the associated taboo against adultery. The real danger of gay marriage is that it will undermine the taboo on adultery, thereby destroying the final bastion protecting marriage: the ethos of monogamy.”

Note how the bigots assume that gay marriages are per se non-monogamous, and that straight marriage are. It's the same argument the religious right's racist forefathers used to try to ban inter-racial marriages and support slavery, among other things (i.e., black men are lustful animals, they're not like you and me).

It really is fascinating, however, how quickly the religious right has pivoted from arguing that gays don't deserve civil rights because we're all sexbots, to now arguing that if gays are given incentives to be monogamous, straights will become sexbots.

Basically, they got nothin'. Read the rest of this post...

Ted Olson, better known as the devil, is now better than our president on gay marriage

Now I've seen everything.

Ted Olson. Also known as George Bush's Solicitor General. Also known as the guy who represented George Bush at the Supreme Court in the Bush v. Gore case. Also known as Mr. Burns. The man is pure evil. And he's now representing a gay couple in a legal challenge in federal court to overturn Prop 8.

Just called Joe. We're both speechless.

It's difficult to explain in words how much each of us loathes Ted Olson. Of course, not any more. But you get the picture. It doesn't get any more conservative and nasty than Ted Olson. And now he's supporting gay marriage. And not just supporting it, but putting his legal muscle behind it.

First off, thank you Mr. Olson. Seriously. And to our readers, this just goes to show you that even I can be fooled into thinking that some people are too far gone. As I've written on this blog many a time: Don't write people off, and don't mock people who reach out to the enemy. You'd be surprised what sometimes happens when you treat even bad guys with a modicum of decency.

Secondly, Ted Freaking Olson is now better on gay marriage than our president - than most of our party. Well, to be fair, let me be precise - Ted Olsen is now better on gay marriage than our president claims publicly to be.

At what point will President Obama realize that the year is 2009 and not 1993? America has become accustomed, inured, and possibly even bored with all the gay rights victories of the past five years. They just don't care any more. And I mean that in a good way. Gay marriage is bursting across the land and the American people have shrugged. They just don't care. So why does our president? Why do he and his advisers seem to be treating gay people and their issues as, at best, an embarrassing inconvenience?

Some realpolitik Iago has our President's ear. He's clearly convinced Obama that gays are the third rail, to be avoided at all costs. It's unfortunate. Not only did Obama openly campaign as a friend to the gay community, and iterate numerous clear-cut promises to act on behalf of our civil rights, but forget the politics for a moment. We're talking about people's lives. We're talking about millions of Americans. We're talking about a President who claimed - pretended? - to care about us. Who claimed to be different.

Not looking so different any more. Read the rest of this post...

House prices tumble in first quarter

The recovery might not be quite as close as advertised by the cheerleaders. Maybe they can slow down and wait for things to settle first before talking about a new bubble. Reuters:

Prices of U.S. single-family homes in March fell 18.7 percent from a year earlier, while prices in the first quarter dropped at a record pace, according to the Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices released on Tuesday.

On a month-over-month basis, the index of 20 metropolitan areas fell 2.2 percent in March from February, S&P; said in a statement.

Price drops on both a month-over-month and year-over-year basis were worse than expectations based on a Reuters survey of economists.

Read the rest of this post...

GOP congressmen worry that Sotomayor's ethnicity might make her ineligible for the Supreme Court

GOP members of Congress Inhofe and Smith do have a point. I mean, do we really want Sotomayor yelling "Lucy I'm home!" every time she arrives at an oral argument?

(Somewhere that 20% just dropped to 19.) Read the rest of this post...

Consumer confidence jumps

Record high increases like this are always welcome news. The general feeling seems to be that while it may not be great, the worst is behind us. Whether that is real will take a few months but it's not unreasonable.

The Conference Board, an industry group, said its index of consumer attitudes jumped to 54.9 in May from a revised 40.8 in April, the biggest one-month jump since April 2003.

The consensus forecast was for the index to rise to 42.

Read the rest of this post...

White House Spokesman Robert Gibbs on Prop 8

I suppose he could have done worse.

Read the rest of this post...

Bush's torture lawyer, John Yoo, who is facing an ethics investigation, trashed Sotomayor today

Last week, the American Enterprise Institute provided the forum for Dick Cheney to give his creepy and disturbing speech espousing the virtues of torture. Today, over at the the American Enterprise Institute's blog, one of the architects of the Bush/Cheney torture policy, lawyer John Yoo, launched an attack on Sonia Sotomayor:

Conservatives should defend the Supreme Court as a place where cases are decided by a faithful application of the Constitution, not personal politics, backgrounds, and feelings. Republican senators will have to conduct thorough questioning in the confirmation hearings to make sure that she will not be a results-oriented voter, voting her emotions and politics rather than the law. One worrying sign is Sotomayor’s vote to uphold the affirmative action program in New Haven, CT, where the city threw out a written test for firefighter promotions when it did not pass the right number of blacks and Hispanics. Senators should ask her whether her vote in that case, which is under challenge right now in the Supreme Court (where I signed an amicus brief for the Claremont Center on Constitutional Jurisprudence), was the product of her “empathy” rather than the correct reading of the Constitution.

An attack from Yoo should pretty much guarantee Sotomayor's nomination. Yoo is facing an effort to have him disbarred for his advocacy of torture. And, Yoo is the subject of an ethics investigation at the Department of Justice, which he's desperately trying to have altered. So, let's just say, his legal credentials are already suspect, at best.

But, just for fun, read what the hypocrite Yoo said about Clarence Thomas. For a right-wing conservative, the personal story matters:

Justice Thomas speaks from personal knowledge when he says: "So-called 'benign' discrimination teaches many that because of chronic and apparently immutable handicaps, minorities cannot compete with them without their patronizing indulgence." He argued that "these programs stamp minorities with a badge of inferiority and may cause them to develop dependencies or to adopt an attitude that they are 'entitled' to preferences."

By forswearing the role of coalition builder or swing voter -- a position happily occupied by Justice Anthony Kennedy -- Justice Thomas has used his opinions to highlight how the latest social theories sometimes hurt those they are said to help. Because he both respects grass-roots democracy and knows more about poverty than most people do, he dissented vigorously from the court's 1999 decision to strike down a local law prohibiting loitering in an effort to reduce inner-city gang activity. "Gangs fill the daily lives of many of our poorest and most vulnerable citizens with a terror that the court does not give sufficient consideration, often relegating them to the status of prisoners in their own homes."

Expect a lot of this kind of hypocrisy from the Republicans and their minions over the next couple months -- aided and abetted by the traditional media, for example, Politico. Read the rest of this post...

Rush wants Sotomayor to fail as nominee -- and still wants Obama to fail as President

The leader of the GOP is foaming at the mouth today over the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor. Rush, of course, still wants Obama to fail. And, no surprise, he wants Sotomayor's nomination to fail, too. We can (and should) mock him, but this will influence how Senate Republicans handle the nomination. They work for Rush.

Read the rest of this post...

Fascinating footnote 48

My friend, gay journalist Rex Wockner, noticed the following in footnote 48 of the Prop 8 decision:

48 We have no occasion in this case to determine whether same-sex couples who were lawfully married in another jurisdiction prior to the adoption of Proposition 8, but whose marriages were not formally recognized in California prior to that date, are entitled to have their marriages recognized in California at this time. None of the petitioners before us in these cases falls within this category, and in the absence of briefing by a party or parties whose rights would be affected by such a determination, we conclude it would be inappropriate to address that issue in these proceedings.

Read the rest of this post...

In the long run, we may have just scored a victory in California

Today the California Supreme Court upheld Prop 8, a ballot initiative that made it illegal to marry gay couples. But the court did something else. They let stand the marriages of 18,000 gay couples who tied the knot before Prop 8 became law. I believe that those marriages may, in the long run, make gay marriage inevitable in California.

Sexual orientation already enjoys equal status with gender and race in California discrimination law, and, as the LA Times notes, today's court decision doesn't change that:

Even with the court upholding Proposition 8, a key portion of the court's May 15, 2008, decision remains intact. Sexual orientation will continue to receive the strongest constitutional protection possible when California courts consider cases of alleged discrimination. The California Supreme Court is the only state high court in the nation to have elevated sexual orientation to the status of race and gender in weighing discrimination claims.

The fact that 18,000 gay marriages will remain on the books means that, eventually, another case will go to the California Supreme Court, questioning the constitutionality of laws banning gay marriage, and the court will have to consider why those 18,000 marriages have not destroyed traditional marriage as we know it. In other words, the ongoing existence of these marriages, with no demonstrable harm being caused by their existence, will call into question, if not outright destroy, the bigots' argument for why the state has an interest in banning gays from getting married. In more colloquial terms, no harm no foul.

Yes, the decision is disappointing, but it wasn't unexpected. What is now clear is that those 18,000 gay marriages will remain the law of the land in California. And those 18,000 gay couples should now be able to get California state benefits that straight married couples get. All of that will eventually, I believe, lead California courts to rule that the sky has not fallen - there is no valid reason for not protecting gay couples equally under the law.

And those 18,000 couples will help prove, in states across the land, that the existence of gay marriages do not somehow cause bigots like Tony Perkins and Jim Inhofe to suddenly want to get divorced and shack up with a guy. Read the rest of this post...

CA Supreme Court upheld Prop. 8 - 18,000 gay marriages still valid

Breaking via CNN, the California Supreme Court upheld the results of Prop. 8, which banned same-sex marriages. However, the decision also ruled that the 18,000 same-sex marriages conducted in California last year remain valid.

UPDATE at 1:14 PM from the Los Angeles Times:

The California Supreme Court today upheld Proposition 8's ban on same-sex marriage but also ruled that gay couples who wed before the election will continue to be married under state law.

The decision virtually ensures another fight at the ballot box over marriage rights for gays. Gay rights activists say they may ask voters to repeal the marriage ban as early as next year, and opponents have pledged to fight any such effort. Proposition 8 passed with 52% of the vote.

Although the court split 6-1 on the constitutionality of Proposition 8, the justices were unanimous in deciding to keep intact the marriages of as many as 18,000 gay couples who exchanged vows before the election. The marriages began last June, after a 4-3 state high court ruling striking down the marriage ban last May.

In an opinion written by Chief Justice Ronald M. George, the state high court ruled today that the November initiative was not an illegal constitutional revision, as gay rights lawyers contended, nor unconstitutional because it took away an inalienable right, as Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown argued.

Only Justice Carlos R. Moreno, the court's sole Democrat, wanted Proposition 8 struck down as an illegal constitutional revision.

Justice Joyce L. Kennard, who voted with the majority last year to give gays marriage rights, joined George and the court's four other justices in voting to uphold Proposition 8.

The case for overturning the initiative was widely viewed as a long shot. Gay rights lawyers had no solid legal precedent on their side, and some of the court's earlier holdings on constitutional revisions mildly undercut their arguments.

But gay marriage advocates captured a wide array of support in the case, with civil rights groups, legal scholars and even some churches urging the court to overturn the measure. Supporters of the measure included many churches and religious organizations.

Read the rest of this post...

The squeaky wheel gets the Obama

From First Read via Taegan Goddard:

As we've mentioned before, Latino groups have been grumbling somewhat about their representation (or lack thereof) in the Obama administration...

There are two Latinos in the Cabinet. There were almost three, until Bill Richardson had to withdraw. I'll give the Latinos credit - they know how to play the game. You don't get your way, especially with this administration, unless you never cede ground, ever. It's a lesson that the gay community, which doesn't have any cabinet appointees (or much of anything else for that matter), and other interest groups (including the health care reform gang) should take to heart. The squeaky wheel gets the Obama. Read the rest of this post...

At first blush, it's a brilliant choice

Chris Cillizza at the Washington Post notes what's most important about today's Supreme Court nomination:

Republican strategists have fretted openly that if their party can't find a way to make Hispanics a swing group electorally -- as President George W. Bush did in 2004 when he won 44 percent of the Latino vote -- they may find themselves in a permanent minority status. Bridging that gap between the GOP and the Hispanic community just got a lot more difficult.

It's a brilliant move by the Obama people. A very strategic, calculated move. A woman and, more importantly, a Latina.

Now let's see how well the Obama people, notoriously less than interested in working with others to achieve their goals, run this campaign. The stimulus battle was a disaster until Obama snatched victory from the jaws of the defeat - up until things went horribly wrong, there wasn't much interest in having "outsiders" help (for example, the Obama team never asked the blogs to help at all, even when things did go wrong). Gitmo is another example. Obama makes a grand gesture, about closing Gitmo, but no one does the leg work to turn the President's policy into law, so the Senate decimates Obama's proposal. Will the same thing that happened during the campaign happen during this nomination battle? Namely, that the Obama people, far too often, like to go it alone, thinking they don't need friends and allies to achieve their goals.

Time will tell. Read the rest of this post...

Remember, Republicans are viscerally opposed to filibustering judicial nominees

Media Matters Action Network has compiled videos of various top Republicans saying that filibustering judicial nominees is unconstitutional. Let's see if they still feel that way. Here's GOP leader Mitch McConnell:



MMAN has a lot more videos, check them out at DemocracyOrHypocrisy.org Read the rest of this post...

Get ready for an onslaught of right wing attacks on Sotomayor -- aided and abetted by the traditional media

Media Matters has been following the anti-Sotomayor whisper campaign that began shortly after her name was first mentioned. No surprise, but most of the pundits dutifully regurgitated the falsehoods. In early May, Politico's Mike Allen was already on t.v. giving us the rundown on the GOP's talking points.

This is going to be a battle. The right wingers are geared up and well funded. And, they've got their friends in the traditional media already spewing their rhetoric. Keep in mind that cable news wants this to be a battle. It's good for ratings. (And, let's face it, most of the very high paid media types in D.C. have absolutely no capacity to understand Sotomayor's amazing life story.) Today, however, as much as CNN is trying to stir the pot, their Republican analyst, Ed Rollins, said this will turn out to be a "brilliant choice."

Conservatives have been laying the groundwork for a couple of weeks, even though we didn't even have a nominee -- and, as noted, indoctrinating the talking heads. The attacks have already started:

Conservative groups reacted with sharp criticism on Tuesday morning. “Judge Sotomayor is a liberal judicial activist of the first order who thinks her own personal political agenda is more important than the law as written,” said Wendy E. Long, counsel to the Judicial Confirmation Network. “She thinks that judges should dictate policy, and that one’s sex, race, and ethnicity ought to affect the decisions one renders from the bench.”

The Obama team already knew that Sotomayor would face right wing attacks, but the president picked her anyway. Good for him.

The President wants this nomination confirmed by the August recess. The Senate Republicans will want to drag it out as a way to rally their troops. The Democrats in the Senate had better deliver. Read the rest of this post...

On Sotomayor, a compelling life story for Sup. Ct. nominee

Huffington Post had already compiled a short bio of Sonia Sotomayor:

A Puerto Rican woman with 16 years of court experience who currently sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, Sotomayor is a graduate of Yale Law and an editor of the Yale Law Review. She shares a biographical footnote with Souter: they both were appointed by George H. W. Bush -- Sotomayor to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in 1992. Sotomayor was elevated to the appeals court by President Clinton.

Sotomayor spent five years as a prosecutor with the Manhattan District Attorney before going into private practice as a commercial litigator. During that time she also served on the board of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, the New York City Campaign Finance Board, and State of New York Mortgage Agency, where she helped provide mortgage insurance coverage to low-income housing and AIDS hospices.

She left for the U.S. District Court in 1992. At the time, Sotomayor told the New York Times that she was inspired to become a judge by an episode of "Perry Mason."

The AP has some additional details:

Sonia Sotomayor's path to the pinnacle of the legal profession began in the 1960s at a Bronx housing project just a couple blocks from Yankee Stadium, where she and her family dealt with one struggle after another.

She suffered juvenile diabetes that forced her to start insulin injections at age 8. Her father died the next year, leaving her to be raised by her mother -- a nurse at a methadone clinic who always kept a pot of rice and beans on the stove. The parents had immigrated from Puerto Rico.

And, I keep hearing something about stopping the baseball strike, which is apparently something that endeared her to baseball fans. Read the rest of this post...

AP: Obama chose Sonia Sotomayor

MSNBC is reporting, via AP, that Obama will nominate Sonia Sotomayor, who currently serves on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, as his Supreme Court nominee. Joe Scarborough thinks Sotomayor is the most liberal of the possible picks.



Read the rest of this post...

Obama will announce Supreme Court nominee at 10:15 AM

This just broke a few minutes ago. MSNBC and the Washington Post are both reporting that Obama will tell us who he's picked as his first Supreme Court nominee this morning at 10:15 AM Eastern. Sounds like NBC got the scoop:

President Barack Obama will name his nominee to replace Supreme Court Justice David Souter at 10:15 am ET on Monday, an adviser told NBC News.

CNN just announced this news, too.

Earlier today, CBS News posted this brief backgrounder on potential choices:

The Supreme Court selection process is expected to be intense, even though the White House and Senate are controlled by Democrats:

# Appeals Judge Diane Wood may be asked why she upheld an injunction barring anti-abortion protesters from blockading abortion clinics, in a case brought by the National Organization for Women.

# Former Harvard Law School Dean Elena Kagan would likely face questions over her objections to campus military recruiters, stemming from her disagreement with U.S. policy on gays serving in the military.

# U.S. Appeals Judge Sonia Sotomayor could be forced to explain siding with the city of New Haven, Conn., in a reverse discrimination case brought by white firefighters.

# Georgia Supreme Court Chief Justice Leah Ward Sears may face scrutiny from all sides on gay-rights issues. She ruled with the court in throwing out Georgia's hate-crimes law in 2004 as "unconstitutionally vague"; reinstating Georgia's gay marriage ban in 2006; declining to hear an appeal from a biological mother who wanted to terminate the parental rights of her former lesbian partner in 2007, a move viewed as a victory by gay-rights advocates; and tossing out Georgia's anti-sodomy law.

CNN also mentioned the Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano. Read the rest of this post...

Tuesday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

This is a four-day week, but it's going to be jam packed.

We're probably going to find out who Obama will nominate to the Supreme Court this week. There was a rumor it could happen today, but no sign of that, yet.

UPDATE at 8:04 AM: NBC just reported the announcement will come later this morning. Via MSNBC, we're told the president will make his pick public at 10:15 a.m.

Today at 1 PM Eastern/10 AM Pacific, the California Supreme Court will issue its decision on the Prop. 8 appeal. I listened to the oral arguments and the Justices didn't seem inclined to overturn a vote of the people, even if that vote took away fundamental rights. The court will also determine if those 18,000 couples who got married when it was legal are still married. There are press conferences and rallies planned after the decision is announced.

I'm really, really sick of these Jon and Kate people. Never watched their stupid show. Never will. I don't want these people in my life. Stop putting them on my t.v....

Let's get it started.... Read the rest of this post...

Saudi Arabia forecasts $150 - $200 oil

This time, it looks very unlikely. Big Oil helped push a faltering economy over the edge with excessive prices and consumers have cut back. Fortunately, the US is starting to wake up to the importance of alternative energies unless you are a Republican and in that case you think more of this is great. Breaking ties with Big Oil is always so difficult, especially since Wall Street money isn't flowing quite as fast as it was a few years ago. Either way, this is wishful thinking by the Saudis.

Saudi Arabian Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi said the world was heading for a fresh spike after the current phase of faltering demand and lower prices, which reflected the global economic downturn rather than an indicator of things to come.

"We are maintaining our long-term focus rather than being swayed by the volatility of short-term conditions," he said in prepared remarks at the summit.

"However, if others do not begin to invest similarly in new capacity expansion projects, we could see within two-to-three years another price spike similar to or worse than what we witnessed in 2008."

Low prices and weak demand had discouraged investment in energy projects, with high development costs and tight credit markets compounding the problem, Naimi said.

Discouraged investment? What did they do with their profits from recent years? Read the rest of this post...

Weaknesses in regional and small banks

Not so surprisingly, the attention and the billions in bailout money has been focused on the largest banks. Many have been talking about a lack of cash to support the smaller banks as well as some of the problem examples around the country. The report next week should provide some additional information into how weak or strong they are. CNNMoney:

Next Wednesday, Wall Street will get a clearer sense of what kind of shape the industry is in when the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. publishes its first-quarter assessment of the industry. One closely-watched part of that report is the agency's so-called "problem bank" list.

As of the end of 2008, that number stood at 252 institutions and it is expected to have climbed even higher during the first three months of 2009.

So far this year, the government has closed 34 banks, including the FDIC's takeover and subsequent sale of Florida-based lender BankUnited (BKUNA) late Thursday to a group of private equity investors.

While only a fraction of the institutions on the problem bank list typically reach the point of failure, experts contend that regulators have been unable to shut down some "zombie" lenders, in part, because they are still scrambling to catch up with the variety of ills affecting the sector.

Read the rest of this post...

Berlusconi: I have never made a gaffe

Except maybe here, here, here or here. How do you say "Jesus complex" in Italian? CNN:

"I have never made any gaffes, not even one, every gaffe is invented by the newspapers," he said from his office in Palazzo Grazioli, his official Rome residence.

Speaking for more than an hour and clearly more confident than ever, Berlusconi said he now felt his job was a burden.

"I'm still doing everything that I'm doing with a great sense of sacrifice. I have to tell you I don't like it. Absolutely. I would rather be doing what I was doing before or doing something else now, " Berlusconi said. "I'm here because unfortunately right now Berlusconi is considered the only leader capable of holding the center-right together.

"On the opposite side, on the left, there isn't a credible or respectable leader, and so I think this is a cross I must bear and bear it I will with sacrifice for a while until the emergence of people capable of allowing me to go off to be a grandfather, which I would very much love to do," said Berlusconi.

If only the Italian right could find a "credible or respectable leader" as well. Forget the cross, pass me a bag because I suddenly feel sick to my stomach. Read the rest of this post...