Oops:

Barbara Ann Radnofsky, a Houston lawyer and Democratic candidate for attorney general, says that a 22-word clause in a 2005 constitutional amendment designed to ban gay marriages erroneously endangers the legal status of all marriages in the state.

The amendment, approved by the Legislature and overwhelmingly ratified by voters, declares that "marriage in this state shall consist only of the union of one man and one woman." But the troublemaking phrase, as Radnofsky sees it, is Subsection B, which declares:

"This state or a political subdivision of this state may not create or recognize any legal status identical or similar to marriage."

Architects of the amendment included the clause to ban same-sex civil unions and domestic partnerships. But Radnofsky, who was a member of the powerhouse Vinson & Elkins law firm in Houston for 27 years until retiring in 2006, says the wording of Subsection B effectively "eliminates marriage in Texas," including common-law marriages.

She calls it a "massive mistake" and blames the current attorney general, Republican Greg Abbott, for allowing the language to become part of the Texas Constitution. Radnofsky called on Abbott to acknowledge the wording as an error and consider an apology. She also said that another constitutional amendment may be necessary to reverse the problem.

Obviously, Abbott and supporters are saying that the intention is clear and that Radnofsky is just being "silly." Personally, I think this is great opportunity to challenge the law on behalf of the gay partnerships being discriminated against. If the state of Texas does not want recognize any kind of legal standing between same sex couples to the point that they declare they will not recognize the legal standing of anything like marriage, let them experience the wrath of straight couples who will find insurance companies pouncing on this wording to deny benefits.

Even with cognitive dissonance this striking, they still think they've got a right to withhold civil rights from a whole segment of the population:

Maggie Gallagher's disdain for Marriage Equality New York board president Cathy Marino-Thomas was palpable. The feeling, we're guessing, was mutual. The two shared the stage at Hofstra University's “Day of Dialogue," and even outside the confines of a 30-second spot, Gallagher was still trafficking in misinformation. And eye rolls.

We do appreciate the debate over whether our "intolerance" for bigotry is, by definition, hate — of the very same variety we call out and despise daily on this website. That's Gallagher's position: By labeling Prop 8 supporters as advocates of hatred, we're being intolerant ourselves, showing no respect for a difference in viewpoints.

But what Maggie does not, and may never understand is the difference between agreeing to disagree, and actively endorsing discrimination against an entire group of people. For that, we cannot be tolerant. [..]

But here's the soundbite we're holding on to, as Maggie addresses Marino-Thomas: "[Your marriage] may be better, but it's not a marriage. … It's probably better than my marriage to hear you talk about it. I wouldn't talk about my marriage in such glowing terms."

It's so sad that someone who cannot speak well of their own marriage feels it's their right to fight to keep others from having that legal union.

On a related note, it's not a serious move so much as a political statement, but here in California, someone has decided to fight a real threat to the sanctity of marriage: the ability to divorce:

California Secretary of State Debra Bowen today authorized the backer of an initiative that would ban divorce to begin collecting signatures to put the proposed constitutional amendment before voters.

John Marcotte now has until March 22, 2010, to collect 694,354 signatures of registered voters in order to get the measure on the ballot next year. The proposal would change the California Constitution to "eliminate the ability of married couples to get divorced in California."[..]:

ELIMINATES THE LAW ALLOWING MARRIED COUPLES TO DIVORCE. INITIATIVE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT. Changes the California Constitution to eliminate the ability of married couples to get divorced in California. Preserves the ability of married couples to seek an annulment. Summary of estimate by Legislative Analyst and Director of Finance of fiscal impact on state and local government: Savings to the state of up to hundreds of millions of dollars annually for support of the court system due to the elimination of divorce proceedings.

While I obviously don't want my rights taken away (not that I'm planning on divorcing my husband, mind you. He's stuck with me.), I do appreciate the sentiment behind it. My gay uncle's marriage does not harm my marriage, threatens no one else's relationship and it's a ludicrous argument to claim it does. However, the ease in which we may end marriages (one-third of all first marriages end within 10 years, according to the CDC) certainly does. If these wingnuts want to hold up marriage as the foundation of society, then put up or shut up.

(on loan from the Courage Campaign in Maine)

The Yes on 1 campaign just issued a "red alert" last night, raising their ad buy by $25,000 today.

I'm here in the No on 1 campaign boiler room (nerve center) and our coffers are dry after having invested in a field campaign to protect marriage equality second to none. We need to raise $50k on ActBlue today to counter their ad buy and expand our online ad buy to match their expansion. Jesse Connolly the No on 1 campaign manager just sent out an email to their list about it:

I wasn't going to come to you to ask for money again. We've asked so much, and you've dug deep and really come through.

Honestly, I wouldn't take my time away from managing our Get Out The Vote operation to send this email if it wasn't really important.

[snip]

With the money we have now, we simply can't counter their arguments on TV.

You and I have both invested a lot in this campaign. I won't-- I can't-- let them win this because we couldn't come up with the last $25,000 $50,000 in the final 36 hours.

We can't let Yes on 1 win the airtime war with their misleading, and factually inaccurate ads.

We can't let Yes on 1 lie to Maine voters about schools and teachers and children and same-sex couples in Maine.

We need to stand up and match every one of their lies with an ad of our own, that explains that marriage equality won't do anything to families but protect all of them.

And I need you to help. Can you come through one last time and give what you can to help us finish this campaign with a win?

Not much more I can add to that. We wouldn't be asking if we didn't really need it. I would be writing a "please help us make calls" blog post and we would be sending GOTV emails, not asking you for money.

I know the Blue America community has dug deep, but can you do it once again? We are 0-30 on marriage equality races. We can win this one, but we need your help.

Wired is one of the few publications that acts as a watchdog on civil liberties and freedom of information issues, and I'm glad they do. The federal government far too often overreaches - and this looks like it's one of those times. Go read the whole thing:

(WIRED) -- An anarchist social worker raided by the feds wants his computers, manuscripts and pick axes back. He argues that authorities violated the U.S. Constitution and the rights of his mentally ill clients while searching for evidence that he broke an anti-rioting law on Twitter.

In a guns-drawn raid on October 1, FBI agents and police seized boxes of dubious "evidence" from the Queens, New York, home of Elliott Madison. A U.S. District Judge in Brooklyn has set a Monday deadline to rule on the legality of the search, and in the meantime has ordered the government to refrain from examining the material taken in the 6 a.m. search.

Madison, who counsels more than 100 severely mentally ill patients in New York, seems to have first drawn attention from the authorities at September's G-20 gathering of world leaders in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. There he was arrested on September 24 at a motel room for allegedly listening to a police scanner and relaying information on Twitter to help protesters avoid heavily-armed cops -- an activity the State Department lauded when it happened in Iran.

A week later, the Joint Terrorism Task Force, armed with a search warrant and backed by a federal grand jury investigation, raided Madison's house, which he shares with his wife of 13 years and several roommates. The squad seized his computers, camera memory cards, books, air-filtration masks, bumper stickers and political posters -- all purportedly evidence that the 41-year old social worker had broken a federal anti-rioting law that carries up to five years in prison.

But a closer look at the court documents leaves the unmistakable impression that Elliott Madison is yet another casualty of the government's nasty, post-9/11 habit of considering political dissidents as threats to national security.

Madison, his wife and his lawyer Martin Stolar say the search violates the Constitution's protections against general searches and prosecution for political speech. The police also seized mobile phones, citizen emergency kits, manuscripts, posters and even the couple's marriage license.

In a motion to throw out the search, Stolar called the search unconstitutional:

In this day and age, federally authorized agents entered the private home of a writer and urban planner and seized their books and writings. The warrant's vagueness and lack of specificity encouraged the agents to use their own discretion and their own views of the political universe to seize, or not to seize, items which they thought were evidence of a violation of the federal anti-riot statute. The law and the Constitution do not allow this. If there really is a grand jury investigation with possible future prosecution under [a federal anti-rioting law], the use of this statute as applied to demonstrations, demonstrators, and their supporters has profound 1st Amendment implications.

If Madison were an Iranian using Twitter to coordinate government protests, he'd likely be considered a hero in the West. Instead, the self-identified anarchist -- who volunteered in Louisiana after Katrina -- is now facing up to five years in prison for each count a grand jury cares to indict him on.

Yeah, it's a Hollywood mixed with Scientology story, which I normally avoid like the plague, but director Paul Haggis's very public and damning resignation from the Church of Scientology because he couldn't reconcile his belief in the fundamental unfairness of banning gay marriage and his church's support for it is definitely worth a read:

In what may prove to be an earth-shaking rupture for the organization, Oscar-winning writer and director Paul Haggis has broken publicly with the Church of Scientology, the Hollywood-centric religion that has recently come under renewed scrutiny for its political positions.

In a scathing letter to the church's celebrity contact, Tommy Davis, Haggis accused the church of hypocrisy and lies, especially regarding its decision to support the anti-gay-marriage proposition on the California ballot last year, Proposition 8.

"I told you I could not, in good conscience, be a member of an organization where gay-bashing was tolerated," Haggis wrote, referring to support for Prop. 8 in the church's San Diego branch. "You promised action. Ten months passed. No action was forthcoming."

He added: "The church's refusal to denounce the actions of these bigots, hypocrites and homophobes is cowardly. I can think of no other word. Silence is consent, Tommy. I refuse to consent."

The church has officially denied that it supported Proposition 8, however, Haggis felt that the denial was weak at best, and not the only troubling thing about Scientology:

He accused Davis of lying in a CNN interview about church policy regarding the requirement that members distance themselves from any family members who oppose Scientology.

"I saw you deny the church's policy of disconnection," he said. "I was shocked. We all know this policy exists."

Haggis said his own wife "was ordered" to break relations with her parents because of the policy, "because of something absolutely trivial they supposedly did 25 years ago when they resigned from the church. ... For a year and a half, despite her protestations, my wife did not speak to her parents, and they had limited access to their grandchild. It was a terrible time.

"To see you lie so easily, I am afraid I had to ask myself: What else are you lying about?" Haggis wrote.

Haggis's letter is available here. In it, Haggis acknowledges that the hardball tactics the Church of Scientology employs to smear those who have left the fold will be used on him as well. The Church of Scientology isn't having the best of weeks, either. They were convicted in France of fraud and the country just stopped short of banning the church altogether.

What decade are these people living in, anyway?

A Louisiana justice of the peace said he refused to issue a marriage license to an interracial couple out of concern for any children the couple might have.

Keith Bardwell, justice of the peace in Tangipahoa Parish, says it is his experience that most interracial marriages do not last long.

Neither Bardwell nor the couple immediately returned phone calls from The Associated Press. But Bardwell told the Daily Star of Hammond that he was not a racist.

"I do ceremonies for black couples right here in my house," Bardwell said. "My main concern is for the children."

Bardwell said he has discussed the topic with blacks and whites, along with witnessing some interracial marriages. He came to the conclusion that most of black society does not readily accept offspring of such relationships, and neither does white society, he said.

"I don't do interracial marriages because I don't want to put children in a situation they didn't bring on themselves," Bardwell said. "In my heart, I feel the children will later suffer."

If he does an interracial marriage for one couple, he must do the same for all, he said.

"I try to treat everyone equally," he said.

Yeah, he's a regular humanitarian. Not sure if this guy is up on his history or legal precedents but Loving v. Virginia made this kind of government interference illegal in 1967.

He might think he's not racist, but he sure as hell is being bigoted and needs to step down. As you might expect, the ACLU has picked up this case and will pursue it for the couple.

In 19 days we will know whether we beat back NOM and the Catholic Dioceses and protected marriage equality for Mainers, or took yet another step backwards at the ballot box for equality. 30 states have had votes on marriage equality since 1998 and the right-win has won in all 30 of them. We are going to stop that streak in Maine, but we can't do it without the resources to fuel a massive get-out-the-vote operation.

Today at midnight is the last major financial reporting deadline and it also marks the first day of early voting. If you were planning on giving to No on 1 and haven't yet, or have the resources to give again, today is the day to do it. Luckily, we at Blue America have a little sweetener, courtesy of Howie:

Meanwhile we have something nice to offer to donors today. The first 9 people who kick in at least $30 at the Blue America '10 page each wins a special DVD of Barbra Streisand's spectacular 1966 television special Color Me Barbra (which includes a rare poster). And if that wasn't fabulous enough, we also have something pretty mind-blowing for the person who donates the most by 6AM (PT) tomorrow. The picture is above. It's a gorgeous Joan Osborne RIAA custom double platinum award for both Relish and "One of Us." It's rare, collectible, unique and... well, what a gift it would make for anyone who you happen to know who went bonkers over the song below! And, more important, what an opportunity to make a real difference in the lives of our brothers and sisters in Maine!

There is new polling out that shows us up 51.8% to 42.9%, but Bill in Portland Maine over at the great orange satan reminds us of why poll numbers are crap:

I take you back to 1997 when, after nine attempts spanning 20 years, the Maine legislature finally passed a basic civil rights bill preventing discrimination in employment, housing, credit and public accommodation on the basis of sexual orientation. Governor Angus King signed it. The law was put on hold while the religious conservatives---trying to marginalize our very existence by denying us any official state recognition---launched a war to repeal it by a citizens veto referendum, very similar to the kind they're waging now. They got the signatures they needed and the fight to take away our newly-won civil rights was on.

The polls had our side up by several points. The result? The 1998 referendum passed. The fundies won. The final vote: 51.9% to 48.1%. It's one thing to feel disappointment when your favorite candidate loses. It's quite another when you are the one being voted on by your neighbors, and a majority of them agree that, yes, it should be legal for a Maine business owner to pull you aside and say, "I don’t want no faggots workin' here. You're fired." It took another seven years to finally make that against the law. To this day I still get a knot in my gut when I think about what happened 11 years ago.

The only way we stop this from happening again is to make sure that we can get our voters out to the polls. The No on 1 campaign needs your help to make sure they have the resources to execute their field plan. So give today and maybe take home a platinum Joan Osborne album, or a rare Barbara Streisand poster and DVD.

The Courage Campaign is sending me back to Maine in a week or so. Expect more reports from on the ground there on how your generous donations are being spent. I was there a couple weeks ago and can assure you, the campaign is a tightly run ship, simultaneously on the offense and firing back at the lies spewed from the other side. No on 1 is IDing and turning out their voters, relying on thousands of in state volunteers and assisted by out of state phone bankers from around the country. They know how to win in Maine "and can do it with your help.

Yesterday, the No on 1 campaign released this great new ad, featuring a Catholic mom who wants nothing more than for her gay son to have the same rights as everybody else.

It seems to have touched a nerve with the other side. A Catholic group is demanding that the ad be taken down, because:

“Everybody knows the Catholic Church is opposed to counterfeit marriages. The Church believes marriage is a natural institution, vindicated by common reason that serves both men and women, and the needs of children. The Church defends marriage as a civic institution believing marriage and family to be the fundamental unit of society,” explained Burch.

“For homosexual groups to suggest that the Catholic Church believes otherwise is disingenuous, dishonest, and an insult to the intelligence of Catholic voters in Maine,” said Burch.

We are on offense here in Maine, pushing back at the Catholic Church which has raised over $214k for Stand for Marriage Maine last quarter.

But the campaign needs your help to win this election, to be the first to protect marriage rights at the ballot box, to keep the momentum up that we have gained since Prop 8. And they need the resources to do it.

We are launching a "moneybomb" for Maine, with a big push to get as much cash in the door for No on 1 by Oct 15th, the last major financial filing deadline and the first day of early voting.

After that date money in the door just isn't as useful for the campaign. They need to figure out their budget for the last few weeks of the campaign.

Give now if you can on Blue America's ActBlue page. Maine is a cheap state. Here's a breakdown of what your donation will "buy".

$1,000 we can blanket the state with radio ads for 1 day

$800 pays for one field organizer for a week

$720 would fund 20 canvasses in key counties around the state on a Saturday

$550 pays for one channel of cable for a day

$420 pays for one much needed field organizer for a week

$330 is 2 radio commercials to beat back their lies

$210 pays for 70 $3/day cell phones to talk to targeted voters

$186 about the cost of 1 radio commercial

$137 will buy supplies for 4 door-to-door canvasses

$108 buys about 100 yard signs for visibility

$72 will pay for signage for visibility for one weekend on a targeted campus

$66 pays for about 20 $3/day cell phones to talk to targeted voters

$54 buys 50 yard signs for visibility

$36 will fund supplies for one door-to-door canvass

$24 buys 20 yard signs for visibility

This is certainly good news. I don't know if it has a snowball's chance in hell of passing, but you never know:

Senators Chris Dodd (D-CT), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Russ Feingold (D-WI), and Jeff Merkley (D-OR) announced today that they will introduce the Retroactive Immunity Repeal Act, which eliminates retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies that allegedly participated in President Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program.

“I believe we best defend America when we also defend its founding principles,” said Dodd. “We make our nation safer when we eliminate the false choice between liberty and security. But by granting retroactive immunity to the telecommunications companies who may have participated in warrantless wiretapping of American citizens, the Congress violated the protection of our citizen’s privacy and due process right and we must not allow that to stand.”

Senator Leahy, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said, “Last year, I opposed legislation that stripped Americans of their right to seek accountability for the Bush administration’s decision to illegally wiretap American citizens without a warrant. Today, I am pleased to join Senator Dodd to introduce the Retroactive Immunity Repeal Act. We can strengthen national security while protecting Americans’ privacy and civil liberties. Restoring Americans’ access to the courts is the first step toward bringing some measure of accountability for the Bush-Cheney administration’s decision to conduct warrantless surveillance in violation of our laws.”

“Granting retroactive immunity to companies that went along with the illegal warrantless wiretapping program was unjustified and undermined the rule of law,” Feingold said. “Congress should not have short-circuited the courts’ constitutional role in assessing the legality of the program. This bill is about ensuring that the law is followed and providing accountability for the American people.”

Greetings from Maine! I arrived on a red-eye yesterday to help out Maine's "No on 1" campaign to protect marriage equality. Everyone around here is pumped up, but they just crunched the numbers for their quarterly fundraising goals. As of a few minutes ago they are $112,000 short of the goal.

The reporting deadline is Wednesday at midnight and they need to get to $803,208 on ActBlue. Contribute on the Blue America ActBlue page.

If you need more reason to give, than me just saying they really need the cash (and they do), check out this quote from the other side via the Baptist Press:

"Until this point, our opponents have presented a rose-colored glasses view of homosexual marriage," Stand for Marriage Maine campaign director Marc Mutty said in a statement. "Starting today, Mainers across the state will hear about the real cost to society should traditional marriage be replaced by genderless contracts whose sole focus is the adults involved in the relationship."

Rose-colored glasses? What the heck is he talking about? (Note the use of homosexual marriage, not same-sex or gay) It's simply an attempt to sow doubt about marriage equality "scary unforeseen consequences" boooo!

Repeat after me: marriage is a civil contract. It is a legal binding agreement between two adults. Letting gays get married changes nothing about this.

Mutty is seems to be insinuating that some how kids from straight couples will be effected when the forms people fill out when they get married no longer read "male" and "female" and instead are some version of "party 1" and "party 2". That of course is patently absurd.

The other side is counting on prayer to help them. In honor of Yom Kippur, I ask for you to atone for your sins and promise to make next year even better with a win in Maine. ">Do that by contributing to the No on 1 campaign.

Although funding certainly is critical, Joey Marshall, a local Southern Baptist pastor, says the pro-Question 1 side must not forget the importance of prayer. It's vital to "inform the people in the state of Maine of the dangers of same-sex marriage," he said, but it's more important to pray.

I'm fasting and working. I'm sure you guys can multi-task as well.

This is the brand new ad from the Yes on 1 campaign in Maine:

And, this is a Prop 8 ad from last fall in California:

The same consultants behind Prop 8 were hired for exactly this, drive up fear about marriage equality using lies about kids and churches. It goes without saying that Maine does not force school to talk about marriage equality, in fact they don't have to talk about marriage at all. Dirigo Blue got a comment from the Maine Department of Education Comunications Director David Connerty-Marin:

I cannot comment on Massachusetts education law or decisions made by local school districts in Massachusetts. Here in Maine, our Learning Results standards and education regulations make no reference to the teaching of marriage in any way. So a change in Maine's laws or definition of marriage places no requirements on local districts regarding whether or how they teach about marriage. Such curriculum decisions are strictly local. Before or after passage of the gay marriage law a district could choose to teach about marriage or not, and to teach about it in any way it deemed appropriate. It simply is not governed by state education law.

But Schubert/Flint seems to be phoning it in a bit. They don't seem to realize what a far right wacko they picked to be in their ad.

Charla Bansley is a high school teacher at a private Christian school, not an elementary public school teacher as they are implying in the ad. And the leader of the Maine Chapter of Concerned Women of America, which is a hard-right nut-job org (anti-gay, anti-abortion, pro-religion in schools, anti-porn, and anti-UN, yes they hate the United Nations). And she is a teabagger. And tried to get a student expelled for writing a pro-marriage equality letter to the editor as part of a class project.

And she thinks gays are psychotic and deviants. From a speech she gave at a Stand for Marriage Maine rally recently. Louise has much more over at the Blend.

Public display of psychosis and we have dealt with it by redefining decency down so as to explain away and make normal what a more civilized, and ordered, and healthy society would label deviant and the result has been a stunning failure.

This woman is a walking opportunity for opposition research and should be fodder for a while. Her values are not Maine values.

Fight back against this nasty. Fight back against fundie lies. Fight for love and marriage.

Give till it hurts, because if they win, there will be pain for Maine LGBT families.

P.S. The Courage Campaign is deploying me out to Maine next week. So expect a few posts from on the ground.

Dkos released yesterday the first public polling numbers on Ballot Question 1 in Maine, which asks voters if they want to repeal the marriage equality law passed by the legislature and signed by the governor.

We are up by the narrowest of margins: 46 YES, 48 NO. That is essentially were we were at this point in the Prop 8 campaign, prior to the Yes side's devastating ad campaign.

The other side is excited about these results. From a Yes on 1 press release:

We are encouraged by the results of a poll released today by Daily Kos which shows that Mainers support protecting marriage between a man and a woman over legalizing homosexual marriage by a 48-to-46 margin.

Our lead is particularly significant given that the poll was conducted after our opponents had the television airwaves to themselves for two-and-a-half weeks and our ad had aired for just two days. It is clear that their message of fairness and equality do not compel voters to support homosexual marriage, particularly against the backdrop of the serious, real consequences to individuals, small businesses and religious organizations that we raise.

They are right. We are yet to see the effects of their messaging on the polling and that makes me really freaking nervous. We have never won a marriage fight at the ballot box. Losing in Maine would really set back the marriage equality movement, particularly after all of the momentum post-Prop 8.

But we all have the power influence the outcome of the race.

Maine is small. (For us out in California, it is really freaking small.) They are only expecting about 500k voters and have a budget of $3 million. They are as they like to say, "a cheap date".

That means we, the netroots can have a huge impact on this race.

I'm proud to announce that Blue America's 2010 ActBlue page is now live and No on 1 Maine is the first campaign to be list. They need your help to make sure unlike the Prop 8 campaign can stay up strongly on the air and continue to build their robust field program.

Give whatever you can. Early money is much more useful than late money, especially when so much of the vote will come in through the mail.

If you have some airline miles to spare, you can donate them here to fund volunteers traveling to Maine for a week, as part of their volunteer vacation program.

I'm headed to Maine myself in a week, on loan from the Courage Campaign. I can't wait to work beside the wonderful volunteers featured in this video:

It gets more unbelievable by the day, doesn't it?

Joe Szakos leads the Virginia Organizing Project, an almost fifteen year-old community organization that Health Care for America Now works with in Virginia to organize for health care reform. Szakos's organization employs dozens of people, and they get their health care through Anthem Blue Cross/Blue Shield.

This year, Szakos was informed that Anthem was going to increase the premiums on Virginia Organizing Project's health plan by 14.1%. Around the same time, the Virginia Organizing Project received an email from Anthem:

We strongly support reform that builds a strong, sustainable private-sector health care system - and strongly oppose creating a government-run health plan. We are urging our elected officials in Washington to take bipartisan action that will accomplish that. We are educating policymakers in Washington and working with our trade associations to encourage Congress to build on the current system and not disrupt the quality, affordable coverage on which our members depend....

As our elected officials debate health care, they need to hear directly from you.

Szakos immediately had some questions for Anthem. Chief among them, why is Anthem using its resources to lobby against health care reform with a public health insurance option while at the same time increasing rates by 14.1%?

Szakos, along with three other Virginia Organizing Project board members, went down to Anthem's offices in Richmond, VA to ask. He left in handcuffs.

Szakos, a customer, couldn't get an answer from Anthem. There was no justification for raising rates on one hand, and spending money lobbying against health care reform on the other. And instead of trying to offer Szakos an explanation, they had him arrested.

As Szakos said in the video, this is about greed and force. There is no good explanation for these rate increases, and there is no justification for Anthem to spend money it collects in premiums from customers suffering under its "health care" plans on lobbying against reform that would help these very same people. The only thing motivating Anthem - and all insurance companies - is greed. And they get and keep their money by force.

Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) has introduced a bill that would repeal the reprehensible Defense of Marriage Act:

Civil Rights advocates and LGBT Americans herald new legislation to overturn one of the nation's most discriminatory laws

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), Chair of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) and Congressman Jared Polis (D-CO), along with Congressman John Conyers (D-MI), Congressman John Lewis (D-GA), Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez (D-NY) and Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-CA), with a total of 91 original co-sponsors to date, introduced the Respect for Marriage Act in the House of Representatives. This legislation would repeal the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), a 1996 law which discriminates against lawfully married same-sex couples.

The 13-year-old DOMA singles out legally married same-sex couples for discriminatory treatment under federal law, selectively denying them critical federal responsibilities and rights, including programs like social security that are intended to ensure the stability and security of American families.

The Respect for Marriage Act, the consensus of months of planning and organizing among the nation’s leading LGBT and civil rights stakeholders and legislators, would ensure that valid marriages are respected under federal law, providing couples with much-needed certainty that their lawful marriages will be honored under federal law and that they will have the same access to federal responsibilities and rights as all other married couples. Read on...

This legislation is long overdue. Three cheers for Rep. Nadler and the other Democratic co-sponsors in the House! Pam's House Blend has a list of responses from the LGBT community. You can read them here.

Unfortunately, Scalia's right. According to the rule of after-discovered evidence (I became familiar with it when I was a reporter and covering a similar case), an innocent man can still be put to death if the evidence that could have exonerated him should have been brought forth during the original trial. There are exceptions, but that's the gist:

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday ordered a federal trial court in Georgia to consider the case of Troy Davis, who is on death row in state prison there for the 1989 murder of an off-duty police officer. The case has attracted international attention, and 27 former prosecutors and judges had filed a brief supporting Mr. Davis.

Seven of the witnesses against Mr. Davis have recanted, and several people have implicated the prosecution’s main witness as the actual killer of the officer, Mark MacPhail.

The Supreme Court’s decision was unsigned, only a paragraph long and in a number of respects highly unusual. It instructed the trial court to “receive testimony and make findings of fact” about whether new evidence clearly established Mr. Davis’s innocence. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who joined the court this month, did not participate.

The decision set off a sharp debate between Justices John Paul Stevens and Antonin Scalia about Supreme Court procedure, the reach of a federal law meant to limit death row appeals and the proper treatment of claims of innocence.

“The substantial risk of putting an innocent man to death,” Justice Stevens wrote in a concurrence joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer, “clearly provides an adequate justification for holding an evidentiary hearing.”

Justice Scalia, in a dissent joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, said the hearing would be “a fool’s errand,” because Mr. Davis’s factual claims were “a sure loser.”

He went on to say that the federal courts would be powerless to assist Mr. Davis even if he could categorically establish his innocence.

“This court has never held,” Justice Scalia wrote, “that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is ‘actually’ innocent.”