Global warming in perspective

By Frank Moraes

I know it's not global warming. Weather is not global warming. But here is the seven day forecast for my hometown of Santa Rosa, California: 106, 106, 106, 106, 95, 97, 91. Three days ago it was in the 60s and pouring rain.

This is not typical weather for this place at any time. The truth is that in the last decade, this area hasn't been getting as much rainfall as it normally did. I suspect that's global warming. I suspect that we will be seeing more and worse heat waves because of global warming. That's the thing about climate science. We've never been that concerned that average temperatures would go up by a couple of degrees. The big problem is extreme weather events. This five-day period of 100+ temperatures (yesterday was the same) will cause people to die unnecessarily. They don't die because it is a bit hotter on average. They die because a two-day heat wave of 99 degrees is now a five-day heat wave of 106.

The other issue, perhaps even more important, is rainfall. Hotter surface temperatures will lead to more rainfall. The problem is that all that extra rain and then some will be falling over the oceans. Agricultural areas like my hometown will be screwed -- as will all those avocado farmers in the valley. In fact, over the next hundred years, most of the really productive farm land in the United States will go away. Things are looking mighty good for Canada! (Not that they weren't anyway.) Siberia is likely to become very fertile land as well. (The reasons for this are complicated, but the main thing is that carbon radiative forcing affects polar regions much more than equatorial regions.)


Of course, all of this is very directly focused on humans. We don't really know what's going to happen to the ecosystems of the world. There is little doubt that global warming is going to be great for insects. So there's that. Whether it will be good for bees, specifically, we can't say. And if bees die out, we are basically screwed. Or it could mess up the thermohaline circulation and then we are basically screwed. Or... We are basically screwed.

But what does any of this matter?! I mean, ExxonMobil only made $41 billion in 2011. What are extra deaths, the destruction of American farming, and the decimation of ecosystems compared to shareholder profits? Really: we have to have priorities and it is clear what those priorities are. After all, you start cutting into oil company profits and soon it is a Stalinist hellscape. Except it would be cooler than the world we are headed for.

Meanwhile, it's still too darned hot:


(Cross-posted at Frankly Curious.)

Read More

Europe not terribly happy it's being spied on by the U.S.

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Germany's Der Spiegel is reporting, based on documents obtained by Edward Snowden (whom that publication calls a whistleblower, in stark contrast to the way he's being treated by the corporate U.S. media), that the NSA spied on the European Union, apparently bugging its offices in Washington and even breaking into its computer network:

The attacks on EU institutions show yet another level in the broad scope of the NSA's spying activities. For weeks now, new details about Prism and other surveillance programs have been emerging from what had been compiled by whistleblower Snowden. It has also been revealed that the British intelligence service GCHQ operates a similar program under the name Tempora with which global telephone and Internet connections are monitored.

The documents SPIEGEL has seen indicate that the EU representation to the United Nations was attacked in a manner similar to the way surveillance was conducted against its offices in Washington. An NSA document dated September 2010 explicitly names the Europeans as a "location target".

The documents also indicate the US intelligence service was responsible for an electronic eavesdropping operation in Brussels.

Understandably, the Europeans aren't amused. As President of the European Parliament Martin Schulz put it in a statement:

I am deeply worried and shocked about the allegations of US authorities spying on EU offices. If the allegations prove to be true, it would be an extremely serious matter which will have a severe impact on EU-US relations. On behalf of the European Parliament, I demand full clarification and require further information speedily from the US authorities with regard to these allegations.

Furthermore:

German Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger "said if the accusations were true, it was reminiscent of the Cold War," ministry spokesman Anders Mertzlufft said, adding that the minister "has asked for an immediate explanation from the United States."

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius called for a swift explanation from American authorities.

"These acts, if they are confirmed, would be absolutely unacceptable," he said in a statement.

Now, let's not pretend that such activities aren't going on on all sides. Surely the French and the Germans are engaged in espionage as well, including against the U.S.

At the same time, these new revelations -- thanks to Snowden -- are indeed concerning, and "full clarification" and "an immediate explanation" are the least the U.S. ought to provide to try to mend fences with its friends.

Because, really, would you trust the U.S. given what you know of it, knowing that there's a whole lot more you don't know?

Read More

Ernie and Bert and the meaning of marriage equality

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Here's one of the greatest magazine covers ever. In its quiet way, it its expression of love, it explains what the whole fight over same-sex marriage, over equal rights, is all about. I find it deeply moving.

Read More

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

By Michael J.W. Stickings

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

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

Some of the lyrics:

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

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

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

At City Hall

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

Love shall prevail.

Read More

The bigots will stop at nothing (updated)

By Michael J.W. Stickings 

UPDATE: Fail.

**********

From the L.A. Times:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read More

Anti-bullying

By Mustang Bobby

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

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

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

Read More

Begging for it

By Mustang Bobby

Either the Family Research Council really has no idea what goes on outside of their nice little 1950s cocoon, or someone in their marketing department is a genius at coming up with not-so-subtle Freudian slips.

Here's their new logo for their anti-gay rally:

Seriously?  "On our knees" and "I'm in"? Well, whatever gets you off, buddy.

On the other hand, they could have gone with "I'm coming." [Or maybe something about the second coming? -- MJWS]

H/T to Americablog.

Read More

The myth of objective journalism

By Frank Moraes 

The primary difference between Fox News and MSNBC is not ideology; it is that Fox pretends to be objective. Yes, in general, MSNBC does a better job of reporting actual facts and doesn't go out of its way to mislead. But they are both advocacy groups: one for the Republican Party and the other for the Democratic Party. But no one ever claims that MSNBC provides the Truth that the other networks don't want the people to know.

Other than this fact, I have no problem with Fox News. I believe strongly that news organizations should have an explicit political inclination because they all have an implicit inclination. But even worse than that Fox who any reasonable person can see is just GOP-TV, I'm concerned about the middle-of-the-road media outlets. I'm visiting my sister and I just overheard some reporting on the TV from a local station, KTVU. They were covering information about the company that did Edward Snowden's background check. It was anything but objective. The coverage was akin to the coverage of the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg trial.

This has long been a thorn in my side: the idea that centrists are not ideological. They are -- every bit as ideological as those of us on the left and the right. It is just that their ideologies are usually incoherent. Let's think about my favorite centrist example: Nazis. On one side you have the Nazis who want to kill all the Jews, on the other you have people who don't want to harm any Jews, and in the middle you have those who just want to give all Jews life in prison. It's clear than the centrist position is ideological.

Similarly with Edward Snowden, the centrist position that he did something dangerous that put us all in danger is just as ideological as my position that he did the American people a great favor that did not put us in any danger. Matt Taibbi wrote an excellent article yesterday about this issue, "Hey, MSM: All Journalism is Advocacy Journalism." It is basically a defense of Glenn Greenwald.


Greenwald is explicitly an advocate. Andrew Ross Sorkin is not; he's an advocate, but he isn't upfront about it. Recently, he got into trouble by saying that he would "almost arrest" (whatever that means) Glenn Greenwald for publishing the Snowden revelations. But Taibbi highlights a more important passage from that same article:

I feel like, A, we've screwed this up, even letting him get to Russia. B, clearly the Chinese hate us to even let him out of the country.

Whatever happened to a press that was an adversary of the government's attempt to hide things? This is right out of Pravda: we've screwed up by letting Snowden get to Russia? In that sentence, he indicates not that he's an American (I do that all the time) but that he is an arm of the government. Clearly, he is advocating -- and in a way that is dangerous to democracy because he isn't explicit about what it is he's doing. In fact it is worse: he's claiming to be an objective journalist.

The hidden assumptions are always the ones that harm us. That is why I would rather discuss politics with a right-wing extremist than a centrist. Most centrists really have convinced themselves that they aren't ideological just because most people they know agree with them. But that's just silly. If everyone you know thinks that Man of Steel is the best movie ever, it doesn't mean that it is objectively the greatest movie ever; it means that you don't know a very diverse group of people. With silly superhero movies, it hardly matters. When it comes to U.S. foreign policy, it does.

(Cross-posted at Frankly Curious.)

Read More

The NSA and the criminal surveillance of Americans

By Michael J.W. Stickings

In case you missed it, make sure to read "The Criminal N.S.A.," an op-ed in Thursday's Times by Jennifer Stisa Granick and Christopher Jon Sprigman. Their argument is essentially this:

The Fourth Amendment obliges the government to demonstrate probable cause before conducting invasive surveillance. There is simply no precedent under the Constitution for the government's seizing such vast amounts of revealing data on innocent Americans' communications.

The government has made a mockery of that protection by relying on select Supreme Court cases, decided before the era of the public Internet and cellphones, to argue that citizens have no expectation of privacy in either phone metadata or in e-mails or other private electronic messages that it stores with third parties. 

*****

We may never know all the details of the mass surveillance programs, but we know this: The administration has justified them through abuse of language, intentional evasion of statutory protections, secret, unreviewable investigative procedures and constitutional arguments that make a mockery of the government’s professed concern with protecting Americans' privacy. It's time to call the N.S.A.'s mass surveillance programs what they are: criminal.  

I haven't written much about it here, but on Twitter I've frequently expressed my opposition to what the NSA is doing, and more broadly to the growth and activities of the national security surveillance state. (I've also expressed my general support for Glenn Greenwald and Edward Snowden, though my view is really that it's not about them but rather about what they've exposed.)

What I've seen is that some of the most virulent defenders of the NSA and Orwellian America are on the left, where among many support for President Obama trumps all else: Obama can do no wrong, and so what he's doing with respect to continuing Bush-Cheney domestic surveillance, prosecuting whistleblowers, and otherwise waging the so-called war on terror cannot be wrong. Either that, or they don't see anything wrong with mass surveillance of Americans. One expects that sort of thing from the right, but when it comes from the left, particularly when they then attack others on the left for expressing what I and others have been expressing, it's simply grotesque.

I call these people the "surveillance state apologists of the left." And what I often hear from them is that it's all legal, end of story. First, what is legal is not necessarily what is right or just. Slavery used to be legal. What the state does in Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four is legal, because the legal is simply a code of acceptable and unacceptable behavior enacted by the ruling power. There was a lot that was legal in Nazi Germany that I think we can all agree was unjust. But second, is it really all legal? Not according to Granick and Sprigman, who are right, I think, to call it criminal.

Read More

Vimeo of the Day: "Horizons"

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Here's a beautiful video with some stunningly gorgeous images from photographer Randy Halverson, who describes it as follows:

If you have ever been in a wide open landscape the most interesting thing isn't necessarily the landscape itself, but what you see coming over the horizon. Growing up in South Dakota the landscape itself can be beautiful at times, but that doesn't compare to what the sky can do, especially at night. Combine that with the landscape, and it makes for great photo opportunities...

Bear McCreary (The Walking Dead, Defiance, Battlestar Galactica, etc) once again helped me with some original music for the video. This time he suggested adding vocals to the mix. Brendan McCreary and his band (Young Beautiful in a Hurry) did just that. They came up with "I Forever."

The music is great, too. (For more on Bear McCreary, see here; for more on his brother Brendan and Young Beautiful in a Hurry, see here.)

Enjoy.

Horizons from Randy Halverson on Vimeo.

Read More

Immigration reform still unlikely

By Frank Moraes 

(Ed. note: Well, good for the Senate, or at least for the Democratic majority along with a handful of Republicans. But now it goes to the House, where crazy-ass Republican extremism prevails, where the Republican leadership is divided, with Speaker Boehner barely clinging to power, and where it will likely die. Maybe there's enough establishment Republican support to give Boehner cover, and so maybe the bill can pass with Democratic votes and a few Republicans on board, but it's awfully hard to move anything forward when the majority party is insane, so much so that it won't even support a flawed, Republican-oriented bill that Ronald Reagan would have backed and that includes a pile of throw-ins for conservatives. -- MJWS)

I'm sure you've heard that the Senate managed to pass their little immigration reform bill with a vote of 68-32. Let's think about that for a second. That means that 32 of the 46 Republican senators voted against the bill: 70%. This is what passes for a huge bipartisan compromise. And notice: the bill itself is extremely conservative. Bernie Sanders voted for it, but with a great many misgivings. Yet despite giving in on all kinds of issues, the Democrats only managed to get 14 Republicans to vote for it. And these were senators: the more moderate of the congressional Republicans.

Now it moves to the House where many of our liberal friends in the pundit world are cautiously optimistic. Somehow, they think that winning 30% Republican support in the Senate will put pressure on the House to pass the bill. Maybe! Stranger things have happened. But Dylan Matthews wrote an article this afternoon that made me think it is highly unlikely, "Immigration Reform Has Passed the Senate. Here's How it Passes the House." In the article, he provided three ways that the immigration reform might make its way through the House.

The first way is that the House "Gang of Seven" bill might be able to get majority Republican support. But it contains a path to citizenship, so that isn't going to happen. The second way is for one or more of Bob Goodlatte's proposals -- none of which include a path to citizenship -- might be able to pass. Then that bill could go to conference with the Senate. If the resulting bill had a path to citizenship (which is hardly certain), it would only allow the Republicans to vote for a path to citizenship once. This is downright funny. Does Matthews really think that representatives are going to be able to sneak one vote past their constituencies? They would be primaried as much for one vote (especially the one that caused the bill to become law) as they are for a dozen votes. The third way is for the House to get a discharge petition and force a vote. The problem here is that they've tried to get discharge petitions before and have failed. There would be hell to pay by Republicans who signed it.

For the umpteenth time: nobody, including me, knows what is going to happen. But this just doesn't look good for the immigration bill. I'm not wedded to it either way. I think it would be good to provide a path to citizenship for all of these people. It is the right thing to do. But the bill has a lot of baggage and the path to citizenship is ridiculously long and punitive.

(Cross-posted at Frankly Curious.)

Read More

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

By Mustang Bobby 

Florida Gov. Rick Scott on the repeal of DOMA:

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

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

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

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

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Read More

Rand Paul thinks dog marriage is next

By Frank Moraes 

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

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

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

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


Of course, Paul didn't stop there. He said that soon marriage equality proponents may ask, "Does it have to be humans?" Well, as a matter of fact Dr. Paul, yes, it does have to be humans. This is a settled issue. Humans can't marry dogs for the same reason that they can't marry children. Marriage is a contract. It requires that all parties being legally able to consent. This is Rick Santorum level "man-on-dog" thinking. As low as I've thought of Rand Paul, he's actually reached a new quantum level.
__________

[1] I am concerned about certain aspects of polygamy -- mostly pushing young girls into marriage before they are old enough to make an informed choice. I could imagine it becoming a form of slavery. But I'm sure these issues could be dealt with.

(Cross-posted at Frankly Curious.)

Read More

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

By Michael J.W. Stickings

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

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

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

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

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

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

Furthermore, it hardly matters that DOMA was enacted by a Republican Congress and Democratic president, or by any partisan combination. That was 17 years ago. Clinton himself is now against it. And laws are not enacted for eternity.

But Christie is really just grasping at straws. He opposes same-sex marriage and so opposes the ruling simply because he doesn't like it. In so doing, though, he misunderstands or misrepresents checks and balances as "judicial supremacy." And in fact the 5-4 ruling was rather conservative. The justices may have struck down DOMA, but they did not issue a sweeping endorsement of same-sex marriage, one that would have required it immediately at the state level. Yes, the case against DOMA is essentially the case against state bans on same-sex marriage as well, but the Court effectively left it to states to address.

Christie is safe. He'll win re-election easily later this year, and of course he's done a lot of good in his state in response to Hurricane Sandy, not least by embracing Obama as his BFF last year. But behind the media-friendly pragmatism lies the core of an ideological conservative who in many ways isn't all that different than your standard Republican from anywhere else.

And his ridiculous take on the historic DOMA ruling just shows him to be a moron as well.

Read More

A.M. Headlines

(Dallas Morning News): "Gov. Rick Perry uses Sen. Wendy Davis' personal story to question her abortion stance, prompting backlash"

(New York Times): "Chief Justice Roberts plays a long game on Supreme Court"

(NBC News): "Does immigration reform stand a chance?"

(Boston Globe): "Coakley may enter the race for governor"

(USA Today): "Pelosi: Dems are coalescing behind Hillary for 2016"

Read More

DOMA never had a chance

By Mustang Bobby 

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Read More

P.M. Headlines

(Baltimore Sun): "Senate approves landmark immigration bill"

(New York Times): "Both sides on same-sex marriage issue focus on the next state battlegrounds"

(ABC News): "White House unsure what files Edward Snowden has"

(Wall Street Journal): "White House assembles list of potential Bernanke successors at Fed"

(Sun Journal): LePage hints he may not seek a second term"

Read More

Can we stop calling them "gay" now?

By Carl

I mean, Jeez, they’ve earned the right to be as miserable as the rest of us!

With the expected addition of California’s citizens after Wednesday’s Supreme Court ruling, some 30 percent of Americans will live in states offering same-sex marriage.

Now the two sides of the marriage wars are gearing up to resume the costly state-by-state battles that could, in the hopes of each, spread marriage equality to several more states in the next few years, or reveal a brick wall of traditional values that cannot be breached.

There is wide agreement from both sides on where the next battlefields will be.

I want to point out something that has gone unnoticed in the coverage of these decisions. While I could not be happier that there is an overt acknowledgement by the SCOTUS that gay people are as human as I am, I’m disheartened by the time it took to get here. We still have a long way to go.

DoMA was passed in 1996. It is now nearly twenty years later that the Court has overturned key provisions of the Act. Keep that in mind as the focus shifts to the states, not just on this issue but on abortion.

It’s hard to believe in the 21st century that we’re still battling for individual sovereignty, for the individual’s right to live life unmolested by antediluvian mores and customs of other people who happen to have a megaphone.

And don’t think the right wing is going to go quietly on any of these issues. Same article:

The opponents of same-sex marriage, while unhappy that the Supreme Court struck down a key part of the Defense of Marriage Act and opened the door to gay marriage in California, are taking heart that the court did not declare same-sex marriage a constitutional right.

After a recent succession of stinging defeats in Delaware, Maryland, Maine, Minnesota, Rhode Island and Washington State — after political campaigns in which they were heavily outspent — the groups have also vowed to step up fund-raising for advertising and mobilizing supporters.

“These court decisions could be a real boon to our fund-raising,” said Frank Schubert, a conservative political consultant and vice president of the National Organization for Marriage. “People tend to react when the wolf is at the door.”

And this isn’t nearly as big an issue as a women’s right to choose. After all, one has merely to look at the heroic efforts of Texas state senator Wendy Davis the other evening, and the concomitant reaction of Hair-for Brains governor Rick Perry, his lieutenant governor David “Do The” Dewhurst, and state senator….ummmmm…uhhhhhh….I forgot. Oops!

That it took DoMA, a prima facie unconstitutional law, three decades to be overturned means we have to double down to protect the rights we supposedly cherish, particularly in this day and age when we’ve given so many of them away for free.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

Read More

Environmentalism good for economy right now

By Frank Moraes 

I'm glad to see that Obama made his big speech and that he is now going to take executive action on climate change. I do, however, wonder why it took so long. The standard answer is that the president can only do so many things at once. While that is certainly true of me, I don't think it applies to him. He has an enormous staff. He could hire more people if he needed. Why didn't he, on day one, tell some people, "Put together a report on what we can do on climate change." That would have taken 4 seconds. Or six if he had added, "Make it so." But it's all good and I am eager to see what actually gets done. A big part of it will depend upon the Senate getting past the Republican filibuster machine.

As I've been arguing for the last four years, now is the time to clean up the environment. Conservatives (and sadly, many liberals) claim that we can't do that because it will hurt the economy. That seems like a logical complaint. But the situation is exactly the opposite. Right now, we have a huge amount of unused capacity. There are lots of people sitting around because they can't find jobs. Corporations are sitting on piles of money they can't find uses for. Now is the time to require companies to become energy efficient. If we wait until the economy is booming, then such regulations really will hurt the economy.

But you see, when conservatives claim that environmental regulations will hurt the economy, what they mean is that it will hurt corporate profits. And that's true. But keeping corporate profits high is not the business of the government. That's especially true when unemployment is high. Pollution is what economists call an externality. All of us pay part of the production costs of a polluting company through reduced quality of life (and often also quantity of life).

All economists agree that externalities are bad. They distort markets. Let me give you an example. Suppose you are making a dress at home. After you are done, there is a lot of trash: paper, thread, cloth. If you clean this up it will cost you time, thus increasing the cost of the dress. Or you could just throw it all on the floor. That wouldn't cost you any time, but it would make your house messy, which would harm everyone in the house. By "polluting" the house with your trash, you've just made your housemates pay for part of the cost of your dress, even though they get none of the benefits.


We have lots of externalities in our economy and we should eliminate them as much as we can. So forcing companies to use less and cleaner energy is not depriving the company of freedom. Their actions are depriving all of us of freedom. As the companies get greener, they are taking responsibility for their actual costs of production. And now is the time for them to make the necessary changes. Not only can they afford it, it will act as a stimulus for the economy, putting unused capacity to work.

Environmental regulation during bad economic times is a win-win situation. 

Update 1

Matt Yglesias reports on some of the details of regulatory stimulus. It's good, although what he says about power plants is obviously the way that it would work. 

Update 2

Paul Krugman provides a standard economics discussion of what I wrote above. He doesn't mention dresses at all!

(Cross-posted at Frankly Curious.)

Read More

Glenn Greenwald is a pornographer!

By Frank Moraes 

It looks like a couple of newspapers are interested in Glenn Greenwald's past. In particular, they want to know about his history as a pornographer. This is the kind of thing that makes me want to say, "You can't make this stuff up." But that's not true. This is exactly the kind of thing that I write: the intrepid journalist breaks a major story and all anyone cares about is the fact that he once was co-owner of a business that distributed adult movies. If I wrote it, I would set it in the future where pornography was illegal to set up the tragicomic ending where a prostitute is lionized for murdering him to get money for a fix.

Anyway, the whole thing is nonsense. I am an admirer of Glenn Greenwald and regardless of anything else, I am grateful to Edward Snowden for the revelations. But when did this story become about them? There is a real story that few in the media seem particularly interested in. Maybe it is just that it's a lot easier to dig into Greenwald's decades-old business dealings or Snowden's chatroom musings about the gold standard. Looking into the NSA is hard. Of course, that's why people should be so grateful to Greenwald and Snowden.

In another Greenwald column, he discussed the Espionage Act. That law goes back to the bad days of World War I. It was what Oliver Wendell Holmes was defending when he said that one couldn't shout "fire in a crowded theater." That law was never about espionage and always about silencing critics of United States foreign policy.

I hadn't given it too much thought, but it is remarkable that until Obama -- over 91 years -- the Espionage Act had only been used three times total and in the last 4+ years, Obama has used it 7 times. I've heard the stat before, of course. But given that I didn't have much hope for Obama anyway, I didn't think much about it. But it is important to put this into context. James Goodale recently said, "President Obama will surely pass President Richard Nixon as the worst president ever on issues of national security and press freedom." Obama might want to think about that. In the long run, his great legacy may not be Obamacare but rather a major move backwards in government transparency and individual privacy.

It seems to me that the forces of darkness are winning. I'm sure that to some extent, this is just an indication of my frame of mind. But it does seem that Obama is winning in those areas where he is wrong and the conservatives are winning in all the other areas. I will not give up the fight, but it weighs heavily on me. And the consolation prizes like same-sex marriage aren't nearly enough.

(Cross-posted at Frankly Curious.)

Read More

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

By Michael J.W. Stickings

(photo from the San Francisco Chronicle)

Wednesday, June 26, 2013 was quite the day:

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

No, not a perfect day in these terms:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

**********

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

Read More

A.M. Headlines

(Politico): "Chris Christie blasts gay-marriage ruling"

(National Journal): "Scalia: 'High-handed' Kennedy has declared us 'enemies of the human race'"

(Roll Call): "GOP leaders look to states to oppose gay marriage"

(Reuters): "Kerry resumes tough Israeli-Palestinian peace drive"

(Fox News): "Texts, video cited in murder charges against Hernandez"

Read More

P.M. Headlines

(Time): "Change in American society: Rolling back DOMA and the Voting Rights Act"

(USA Today): "Analysis: After the court ruling, more battles loom"

(CBS News): "Texas Gov. Rick Perry calls 2nd special session to pass abortion bill"

(Bloomberg): "This is not about Edward Snowden"

(Reuters): "Can Paul Ryan sell immigration reform to conservatives?"

Read More

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

By Michael J.W. Stickings

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

Republicans Across The South Promise Quick Action After SCOTUS Ruling

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

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

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

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

Read More

Dear Senator Reid...

By Carl 

It ain’t working.

That's the way you do it:

Helped by a marathon speech, Texas Democrats have managed to block a bill that would shut most of the abortion clinics in the state.

Democratic state Senator Wendy Davis spoke for more than 10 hours, in a stalling speech known as a filibuster, at the state capitol in Austin.

Republicans then scrambled to pass the bill, but the vote was ruled too late for a midnight deadline.

The bill would ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy.

You probably thought it was quaint when Rand Paul stood up and filibustered for 13 hours. Of course, it didn't help that Paul couldn't help but aggrandize his actions. It makes it easy to minimize the effort when he inflates its importance.

But here, here we have a bona fide filibuster that actually accomplished what it set out to do: to establish a firewall for a basic human right, the right to decide what to do with one's own body. 

You want to weed out the nonsense "filibusters" just being done to screw with the Democratic agenda? Force Senators who oppose a bill to stand their asses up and start talking about why. Passionate filibusters have a time honored place in American culture, not just in politics. Americans respect, even if they ultimately don't agree with, someone who has strong and deep feelings about something.

Your mealy-mouthed, status quo-centric pass on the whole issue of filibuster reform was ludicrous. It's not about what happens when Republicans take back power (if not them, then someone).

It's about believing in your cause. It's about knowing that the legislation you bring to bear is important enough to withstand tactical attacks like a filibuster.

It's about, in the end, honesty. Honesty is a quality you seem to minimize as much as you minimize Rand Paul's rage.

You ought to try it, Senator. It does a body politic good.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

Read More

Are we not men?

By Capt. Fogg

Not to go on all-fours; that is the Law. Are we not Men?

- H.G. Wells, The Island of Dr. Moreau -

I'd hate to make anyone think I'm an optimist. I'm not even sure I care too much about the human race aside from a few individuals, but that's what pessimism is about -- a cosmic frame of reference that sees no permanence, that sees everything that is on the way up as inevitably on the way down.

Perhaps not caring gives a clearer vision. If it doesn't matter in the end that voting rights are in peril, or at least under continuing assault, then the failure of the Texas legislature to pass a bill further restricting abortion rights despite a ten-hour filibuster by Texas state Sen. Wendy Davis is less likely to be overshadowed. She might have gone on but was ruled to have drifted off topic amidst a chorus of boos and catcalls, and the bill was declared dead at 3 am.

For those of us who still hope for sweeping reformation and the triumph of truth and justice for all,  it's a little and perhaps temporary victory over the animal meanness of human nature and as Dr. Moreau learned, you can dress up the animal and teach it to walk on two legs, you can make it recite pledges and formulae, you can make up stories about divine origins, but the beast is still a beast and evolution is so slow.

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

Read More

A.M. Headlines

(The Columbus Dispatch): "Justices ax portion of voting law"

(TPM): "Justice Ginsburg slams Supreme Court's 'hubris' in fiery dissent on voting rights act"

(Wall Street Journal): "Supreme Court set to rule on gay marriage"

(ABC News): "Ed Markey beats Gabriel Gomez in Massachusetts Senate race"

(New York Times): "Texas vote passing abortion bill is rendered moot"

Read More

Vladimir Putin gives America the finger by giving Edward Snowden a free pass

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Let's not make too much of this.

Snowden may very well be in a transit zone at Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport that lies beyond Russian sovereignty, and so it's not clear what Putin could do.

But let's face it, he's an authoritarian with little respect for the rule of law, other than his own law, and so he could no doubt make things difficult for Snowden, not least by bowing to American pressure to send him back home to face "justice" (i.e., injustice).

But that's not Putin, giving in to such demands -- not when he can take the occasion to give America the finger:

In his first public comments on the case, Mr. Putin said that Mr. Snowden — the former National Security Agency contractor who leaked documents about American surveillance programs — had committed no crime on Russian soil and was "a free man" who could choose his own destination. "We can only extradite some foreign nationals to the countries with which we have the relevant international agreements on extradition," he added. "With the United States, we have no such agreement."

Giving America the other one as well, a gleeful double bird, he added that Snowden sees himself as a "human rights activist" who "struggles for freedom of information" and, just to drive home the point, indicated that the U.S. is being hypocritical in going after a dissenter, the implication being that the U.S. shouldn't complain when he does the same, which, of course, he often does (e.g., Pussy Riot).

What fun.

Here's Putin the Autocrat standing behind a facade of legal niceties while sticking it to the U.S. -- at a time when he's facing growing international pressure, particularly from the U.S. and its G8 partners, over his support for the Assad regime in Syria. For a time, I was wondering if there was a deal to be made: I'll give you Snowden if you lay off Syria. But now it just looks like he's taking great pleasure making the U.S. look inept and ridiculous and desperate.

Let me be clear: I'm no fan of Vladimir Putin. I loathe him, in fact.

But even if it's all part of his self-serving agenda, he's doing the right thing with Snowden, letting a free man facing persecution look for a new home.

And hopefully Snowden will find what he's looking for, with Putin's admirable restraint helping him get there.

Read More