Okay, Michele Bachmann, we get it. You are against gay marriage. You've said it. Your husband treats homosexuality as if it were tuberculosis and yet still calls gays barbarians who need to be educated. You don't think the homosexuals should exist or have equal rights. Message received.
But seriously - what's with all the pledges? This isn't a frat party. It's still called the Grand Old one. Can't you just repeat yourself endlessly with identical talking points over and over again without having to always be signing something? Come on.
Anyway, yet another anti-gay marriage pledge was signed by candidates Bachmann and (of course) Rick Santorum. No preamble saying slavery was better for black children this time. Mitt Romney did sign this one because...well...he needs to play down the Mormon thing and look like he's against the wrong kind of Americans. It's very important to his party.
Here are the key points of the National Organization for Marriage (NOM!) pledge from Mother Jones:
Support and send to the states a federal marriage amendment defining marriage as one man and one woman,
Defend DOMA [the Defense of Marriage Act] in court,
Appoint judges and an attorney general who will respect the original meaning of the Constitution,
Appoint a presidential commission to investigate harassment of traditional marriage supporters,
Support legislation that would return to the people of D.C. their right to vote for marriage.
My favorite is the implication that people who "support traditional marriage" have been the ones harassed. Poor traditional marriage supporters - they've been bullied. They can't help it, they were born that way. Don't worry, it gets better. If history proves anything the thing with "traditional marriage" is that it changes all the time (see: miscegenation laws).
That popping sound you hear is the heads of NRA loyalists exploding from massive cognitive dissonance, all because of the release this week of a video showing a spokesman for Al Qaeda, Adam Gadahn, urging would-be jihadis to go out and stock up on as many guns as they can get their hands on -- through the gun-show loophole:
America is absolutely awash with easily obtainable firearms. You can go down to a gun show at the local convention center and come away with a fully automatic assault rifle, without a background check, and most likely without having to show an identification card. So what are you waiting for?
At gun shows buyers can purchase guns from private sellers without passing a background check. An investigation by the City of New York showed that even buyers that identified themselves as people who "probably couldn't pass a background check" were able to purchase guns at gun shows. The investigation also showed the wide variety of guns available at gun shows.
In addition, people on terrorist watch lists are not forbidden from purchasing guns and many have done just that. Gadahn's instructions come in the wake of Associated Press reporting that showed that more than 200 people with suspected terrorist ties bought guns legally in the United States last year. Following the AP report Representative Mike Quigley introduced an amendment to the Patriot Act that would give the Attorney General the authority to block gun sales to individuals on terror watch lists. The amendment was voted down.
Six plaintiffs recently filed a lawsuit in Maricopa County (Phoenix) alleging recently relaxed ballot handling rules ensure a lax chain of control over ballot papers in direct violation of Arizona law. Coupled with unapproved software installed on multiple election department computers, and it creates what the citizen watchdog group AUDIT AZ calls an "interlock." "This makes manipulation of vote counting easy and thus leaves elections vulnerable to undetectable fraud."
In reading the lawsuit, the "unapproved software" is a real eye-opener:
Defendants have installed software on their secure vote processing electronic systems for the specific purpose of communicating critical vote totals over the Internet over cellular communication networks (“cellular modems” or a “tethered cellphone”), in violation of the state-standard procedures manual at section “Election Management System Security” on page 87, items 6 and 7.
This is worse than what I've seen in the past with other voting machines and systems. First, there is no requirement for poll worker certification of the tapes, then observers are ordered not to observe the central tabulator systems, and finally, they intend to transmit the results via unauthorized software on the Internet via tethered cell phones?
Finally, Maricopa County plans to report election totals without segregating mail-in, precinct and provisional totals so that there's no clear audit trail if the count is questioned or a recount is necessary.
Judge Walker has opened the door for same-sex marriage, but with a bit of a twist. The stay will remain in effect until August 18th to give the proponents of Prop 8 an opportunity to appeal to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
That's not surprising, but what does surprise me is the lengthy discussion of whether those same Prop 8 proponents even have standing to file such an appeal.
Because Prop 8 was an amendment to the state Constitution, the Attorney General and Governor are the parties with standing to appeal Judge Walker's ruling. However, Jerry Brown and Arnold Schwarzenegger both declined to do so. At the trial, the original proponents were allowed to present their case instead of Brown and Schwarzenegger, but after the judge ruled, responsibility for appeal bounced back to the state.
Brown and Schwarzenegger argued that the stay should be lifted and marriages allowed immediately. What Judge Walker has done with this short extension of the stay is to allow the Prop 8 proponents to argue: a) that they have standing to appeal; and b) that the stay should be made permanent.
Judge Walker seems to think they don't have standing. Key conclusion:
Because proponents make no argument that they -- as opposed to the state defendants or plaintiffs -- will be irreparably injured absent a stay, proponents have not given the court any basis to exercise its discretion to grant a stay.
Bottom line: This is moving toward the Supreme Court. The real question is what will happen in the interim.
Chris Geidner has a quick analysis with key points. Maddow also reacts. The LA Times reports that Prop 8 proponents plan an immediate appeal.
Update #2: According to Right Wing Watch, the American Family Association is considering the possibility of dropping any challenge to Prop 8 in order to save bans on same-sex marriage in other states.
Once you get into the world of intelligence, anything is possible, including the idea that this agent may be lying to divert us from something else.(It doesn't help that British authorities have classified the details of UN weapons expert David Kelly's death for 70 years.) Because of this and so many other unanswered questions about Kelly's death, this is a very interesting development for those of us who believe the evidence for invading Iraq was fabricated:
The mystery over the death of David Kelly took a further twist last night after a former KGB officer said he had evidence that the scientist did not commit suicide.
Boris Karpichkov, who worked as a Russian spy for 15 years before fleeing to Britain, has sent a dossier to Attorney General Dominic Grieve in which he claims to relay information from an ‘MI5 agent’ that Dr Kelly had been ‘exterminated’.
His move comes amid increasing calls from within the Coalition Government for a full, independent investigation into Dr Kelly’s death.
Mr Grieve has indicated that he is ‘concerned’ by the growing scepticism among experts about the official version of events.
Dr Kelly was found dead in woods near his Oxfordshire home in July 2003, after the Government exposed him as the source of a BBC report questioning Tony Blair’s case for war in Iraq.
There was no full coroner’s inquest – instead, Lord Hutton chaired a public inquiry which concluded Dr Kelly died from loss of blood after slashing his left wrist with a blunt garden pruning knife.
A number of doctors have since come forward to say that the incision could not have caused his death.
Mr Karpichkov, who sought political asylum in the UK in 1998 and now has British nationality, says he met the ‘agent’, Peter Everett, on dozens of occasions while carrying out work for Mr Everett’s company Group Global Intelligence Services, which hiredex-MI5 operatives for corporate detective work and infiltration.
In the document sent to Mr Grieve, Mr Karpichkov says that during one of their meetings, two days after Dr Kelly’s body was found, Mr Everett told him that Dr Kelly had been ‘exterminated’ for his ‘reckless behaviour’.
Mr Karpichkov, who says that Mr Everett indicated that he was an ‘active field operative’ for MI5, writes: ‘He told me that it was extremely uncomfortable, inconsistent and unusual for Dr Kelly to slash his arm in the way he did. He would have lost some blood, but it would not have been fatal.
‘He also claimed that it was not a coincidence that Special Branch officers were the ones who first appeared on the scene – they moved Dr Kelly’s body to another location, changed the original position of his corpse and took away incriminating evidence.
‘He added that the scene where Dr Kelly’s body was found was carefully arranged and completely “washed out”, including the destruction of all fingerprints. When I asked who was behind his death, he [Mr Everett] answered indirectly, saying the “competing firm”, which I took to mean MI6.’
The Washington Post published this two weeks ago, but unless he releases something today, Attorney General Eric Holder has missed the deadline, condemning thousands more to sexual assault in prison:
"RAPE IS VIOLENT, destructive, and a crime -- no less so when the victim is incarcerated." These were the opening words of a report delivered to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. last June by the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission. By law, the attorney general was given one year to consider the report's recommendations and issue standards to reduce the scourge of sexual violence in the nation's prisons. The Justice Department is about to miss its June 23 deadline -- and probably by a shamefully wide margin.
The department will not say, but those following this issue closely estimate that the Justice Department is unlikely to take action until the end of this year. At that time, federal prisons will be obligated to adopt whatever standards Justice approves. State and local facilities will not be forced to embrace the measures for another year after that. In the meantime, more prisoners -- including juveniles -- will have been senselessly brutalized.
This is such a basic impulse of human decency, to keep prisoners from being sexually brutalized -- and the thing is, the report had solid bipartisan support. As far as I can tell, the only people who oppose it are the corrections officials, who don't want anyone looking over their shoulder while they ignore prisoners getting gang raped -- or molested by guards. So I don't have a clue why Holder hasn't acted.
Even the screwed-up people who believe prisoners deserve whatever happens might want to give some thought to the fact that prison rape happens frequently to innocent people who are being held in custody until they're released without charges. Maybe even those sick bastards might give some thought to the possibility of their 17-year-old kid being raped by an HIV-positive convict after their kid's held for DUI.
Because even in this Taser-lovin' America of ours, people might still see the injustice of inflicting a life sentence like HIV on someone who hasn't even been found guilty of a major crime.
Being raped at knifepoint was the worst thing I could ever imagine. The physical pain was devastating. But the emotional pain was even worse.
I reported the rape, and was sent into protective custody. But I wasn’t safe there either. They put all kinds of people in protective custody, including sexual predators. I was put in a cell with a rapist who had full-blown AIDS. Within two days, he forced me to give him oral sex and anally raped me. I yelled for the guard, but it was so loud in there, no one came to help me. I finally had to flood the cell to get a guard to come.
Because I was raped, I got labeled as a “faggot.” Everywhere I walked, everyone looked at me like I was a target. It opened the door for a lot of other predators. Even the administrators thought it was okay for a “faggot” to be raped. They said, ‘Oh, you must like it.’ I’m here to tell you that no one wants to be raped. No one likes being violently attacked.
I documented the abuse, I filed grievances, I followed all of the procedures to report what was happening to me, but no one cared. They just moved me from cell to cell. This went on for nine months. I went through nine months of torture – nine months of hell - that could have been avoided.
In August, I started bleeding really bad from the rectum. I didn’t want to go to the infirmary, because I was still so ashamed about what had happened to me, but I had to. They gave me a test, and that’s when I got the devastating news. I was HIV-positive.
After being convicted of a nonviolent securities offense, I was sent to FCI-Morgantown. Set at a former youth facility, Morgantown is a minimum security facility with no fence. Places like Morgantown are used for individuals with relatively no risk of violence, escape, or predatory behavior.
As an inmate at Morgantown, I witnessed corrections officials breaking the rules of the institution, and I reported them. Because of my reports, the prison officials retaliated against me by holding me in solitary segregation, by falsely accusing me of misconduct on charges that were later proven to be false, and finally, I suppose as a last resort, by transferring me to a higher-security facility in Milan, Michigan.
At the time, FCI-Milan was a facility often used for more unmanageable inmates in the mid-Atlantic region. It had a history of gang activity, large scale riots, violence, and predatory assaults.
I was being sent to a place known to be dangerous simply for speaking up. I was worried about what might happen to me there, but I honestly had no idea how bad it would turn out to be. I tried to protest the decision to transfer me, and I asked not to be housed in the dangerous dormitory-style housing at Milan. But I was placed in a double dormitory with about 150 inmates, dozens of blind spots, and only one officer on duty at any given time. It was here that my nightmare began. It was here that I was sexually assaulted by the same assailant, more times than I can even count.
via BlondeSense: Did anyone else see Ben Bradlee on Ted Koppel tonight? Koppel asked Bradlee what he thought of Pat Buchanan's comments that Deep Throat Mark Felt was not ...
Bradlee didn't even allow Koppel to finish.
Bradlee said, why should I see Buchanan or Gordon Liddy practically fresh from prison talk about Mark Felt and morality.... Felt couldn't go to Attorney General John Mitchell--who is worse? Mitchell or Gonzalez? Because Mitchell helped plan Watergate with Liddy in his office at the Justice Department. read on
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday sidestepped a dispute over gay marriages, rejecting a challenge to the nation’s only law sanctioning such unions.
Justices had been asked by conservative groups to overturn the year-old decision by the Massachusetts Supreme Court legalizing gay marriage. They declined, without comment...read on
Merita Hopkins, a city attorney in Boston, had told justices in court papers that the people who filed the suit have not shown they suffered an injury and could not bring a challenge to the Supreme Court. “Deeply felt interest in the outcome of a case does not constitute an actual injury,” she said.
Massachusetts Attorney General Tom Reilly told justices that voters can overrule the Supreme Court by adopting a constitutional amendment.
The lawsuit was filed by the Florida-based Liberty Counsel on behalf of Robert Largess, the vice president of the Catholic Action League, and 11 state lawmakers.
Justice Department officials told Arizona's attorney general and aides to the governor Friday that the federal government has serious reservations about the state's new immigration law. They responded that a lawsuit against the state isn't the answer.
"I told them we need solutions from Washington, not more lawsuits," said Attorney General Terry Goddard, a Democrat.
The Justice Department initiated separate meetings by phone and face-to-face in Phoenix with Goddard and aides to Republican Gov. Jan Brewer to reach out to Arizona's leaders and elicit information from state officials regarding the Obama administration's concerns about the new law.
The strong message that the Justice Department representatives delivered at the private meetings – first with Goddard, then with Brewer's staff – left little doubt that the Obama administration is prepared to go to court if necessary in a bid to block the new law, which takes effect July 29.
Goddard said he noted that five privately filed lawsuits already are pending in federal court to challenge the law.
"Every possible argument is being briefed," said Goddard, who is running unopposed for his party's nomination for the governor's race.
Brewer, who is seeking re-election, later said in a statement that her legal team told the Justice Department officials that the law would be "vigorously defended all the way to the United States Supreme Court if necessary."
The department officials, Brewer said, "were advised that I believe the federal government should use its legal resources to fight illegal immigration, not the state of Arizona."
We hit the question briefly on Friday in this post, and the initial answer to the question seemed to be no, that in passing an immigration law, Arizona was improperly stepping into the domain of the federal government.
The NYT’s John Schwartz on Wednesday takes a deeper look at the question. His finding: that, yes, the law probably — though not definitely — runs violates preemption principles, and is therefore unconstitutional.
“The law is clearly pre-empted by federal law under Supreme Court precedents,” said UC Irvine’s Erwin Chemerinsky.
For decades, the role of controlling immigration and enforcing immigration laws has fallen to the federal government, not the states. And the law will likely fail on those grounds, said Chemerinsky.
I just received this from a former very high-ranking official of the Justice Department (under Clinton) (and TalkLeft reader), whose opinion I hold in especially high regard:
The apparent nomination of Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General is a mixed blessing for progressives. It is fair to say that Gonzales is not nearly as bad as we might have expected. He is by no means a hard core ideologue, and he would not be likely to aggressively pursue a far right agenda. on his own By temperament he is a moderate, even if his views are far more conservative than we would wish. His record as a judge, while conservative, was not outrageous; indeed, it's commonly believed that he may not have been acceptable to the far right as a Supreme Court nominee. And what little leaks out of this Administration suggests that Gonzales was not a moving force behind most of the Administration's most outrageous legal positions.
