Civil & Human Rights

Big victories for marriage equality today

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The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit has upheld the December 2013 U.S. District Court for Utah ruling in Kitchen v. Herbert striking down that state’s same-sex marriage ban as unconstitutional, in a 2-1 decision written by Judge Carlos Lucero. The Salt Lake Tribune reports, 10th Circuit Court upholds same-sex marriage:

Pride-Flag-Thumbnail-Friday-3x2-256x171A federal appeals court on Wednesday ruled that states outlawing same-sex marriage are in violation of the U.S. Constitution.

By upholding a Utah judge’s decision, a three-member panel of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver became the first appeals court in the nation to rule on the issue, setting a historic precedent that voter-approved bans on same-sex marriage violate the Fourteenth Amendment rights of same-sex couples to equal protection and due process.

But the court immediately stayed the implementation of its decision, pending an anticipated appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Utah attorney general’s office said Wednesday it will initiate that appeal.

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Sixth Circuit schedules same-sex marriage appeals for argument on August 6

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EqualWe are waiting on the Fourth Circuit and Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals to issue opinions any day now in the same-sex marriage appeals argued earlier this year.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals will hear same-sex marriage appeals from Idaho and Nevada in September.

The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, in an unusual move, has scheduled all four same-sex marriage appeals pending before that Court for argument on August 6, 2014. Sixth Circuit sets oral arguments in same-sex marriage cases from four states:

The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals has formally scheduled arguments in all of its pending same-sex marriage cases, for August 6.

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The court is hearing cases from Michigan, Tennessee, Kentucky, and two from Ohio. The arguments are set to begin at 1PM on that day, and last for over three hours.

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50th Anniversary of Mississippi Freedom Summer

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This weekend marks the Mississippi Freedom Summer 50th Anniversary:

50LogoSquare_new_450In the summer of 1964, hundreds of summer volunteers from across America convened in Mississippi to put an end to the system of rigid segregation. The civil rights workers and the summer volunteers successfully challenged the denial by the state of Mississippi to keep Blacks from voting, getting a decent education, and holding elected offices.

As a result of the Freedom Summer of 1964, some of the barriers to voting have been eliminated and Mississippi has close to 1000 Black state and local elected officials. In fact, Mississippi has more Black elected officials than any other state in the union. While the Freedom Summer of ’64 made profound changes in the state of Mississippi and the country, much remains to be accomplished.

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GOP candidate forum for Secretary of State was a joke

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Politics Unplugged on azfamily.com channel 3 hosted a candidate forum for the Tea-Publican candidates for Secretary of State on Sunday. The video segments do not embed in WordPress, so here is the link. Politics Unplugged: June 15, 2014. The moderators threw softball set-ups to the candidates, and did not challenge their statements. It was a joke.

In the first segment, state Sen. Michele Reagan tried to take credit for her weak-tea bill dealing with “dark money” campaign organizations. What she fails to mention is that her bill did not get past the Senate Elections Committee, which she chairs.  She had such little influence with her GOP colleagues, she couldn’t get a vote. I wrote at the time:

“Sen. Reagan’s bill “to include the names of the three largest contributors” will only result, at best, in the disclosure of “Kochtopus” alphabet soup 501(c) organizations — Russian nesting dolls — set up to hide the true identity of the actual contributors, who are millionaire and billionaire plutocrats. It is not a serious attempt to regulate the dark money organizations corrupting our elections. It is pure posturing by her for her campaign to become Arizona’s next Secretary of State. We can do better than Michele Reagan, the co-author of the GOP Voter Suppression Act, HB 2305.

 That would be the GOP Voter Suppression Act that the Arizona legislature repealed earlier this year because they were terrified of the voters turning out this fall for a “citizens veto” of their handiwork dirty work.

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“Polarization” is the new “incivility”

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pew chart

Pew recently released a survey that showed Americans to be (holy shit!) polarized on a variety of issues. Predictably, this has set off a flurry of pearl clutching and smelling salt huffing in Upper Elitist Punditopia about the nettlesome yokels. Here’s the Washington Post fretting over it.

There was a time in the not too distant past when conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans made up significant parts of their respective coalitions. Northeastern Republicans moderated the GOP, while Southern Democrats pulled their party to the right.

Those days are over. A new mega-survey conducted by the Pew Research Center shows that the percentage of Americans who express consistently conservative or consistently liberal opinions has doubled over the past two decades. At the same time, the ideological overlap between the parties has shrunk to historic lows: Now, 92 percent of Republicans are to the right of the average Democrat, while 94 percent of Democrats are to the left of the average Republican.

Both Sides™!!

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