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Colorado state court judge strikes down state’s same sex marriage ban (Updated)

July 13, 2014July 9, 2014 by AZ BlueMeanie

The Denver Post reports, Adams judge tosses Colorado gay marriage ban but stays ruling:

An Adams County District Court judge on Wednesday declared Colorado’s ban on same-sex marriages unconstitutional, but he immediately stayed his ruling.

The ruling makes Colorado the latest in a string of states that have seen their bans on same-sex marriages tossed out by state and federal judges.

The ruling came as another judge in Boulder County considered a request by Attorney General John Suthers to stop a county clerk from issuing marriage licenses to gay couples.* Last week, attorneys filed a federal lawsuit seeking to challenge Colorado’s gay marriage ban.

Democrats to introduce a legislative fix to Hobby Lobby decision

July 9, 2014July 9, 2014 by AZ BlueMeanie

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Hobby Lobby was not grounded on the First Amendment, as the opinions made clear. It was grounded on a statutory law, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA), 42 U. S. C. §2000bb et seq. which overturned the standard of review in Employment Division v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872 (1990), which held that the Free Exercise Clause permits the State to prohibit sacramental peyote use, and thus to deny unemployment benefits to persons discharged for such use. The opinion was written by Justice Antonin Scalia.

As Justice Ginsburg explained in Hobby Lobby:

Lacking a tenable claim under the Free Exercise Clause, Hobby Lobby and Conestoga rely on RFRA[.] . . . In RFRA, Congress “adopt[ed] a statutory rule comparable to the constitutional rule rejected in Smith.” Gonzales v. O Centro Espírita Beneficente União do Vegetal, 546 U. S. 418, 424 (2006).

Sweet Lord why did I read MacEachern’s column on Hobby Lobby?

July 9, 2014 by AZ BlueMeanie

Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

I was warned not to read Doug MacEachern’s piece on Hobby Lobby. I should have listened.

A lot about the majority decision in the Hobby Lobby case has made liberals go all crazy in the head (see: here, here, here and, emphatically, here) .

But there is one part of the decision that makes them craziest in the head. And that would be that notion of for-profit corporations being people too.

Which is just nuts. Or, better yet, crazy in the head. The Left is utterly committed to the duty of corporations to act morally in uncounted ways. And not just in some loosely defined notion of “corporate responsibility,” either. They want corporate CEOs to be held personally responsible for their moral transgressions, to the point of seeing them thrown in jail.

Yeah, those crazy leftists! Doug might want to take a gander at how some of his conservative counterparts have reacted to the decision. The gist of the article, an idiotic thesis MacEachern either pulled out of his ass or heard on Fox News, is that liberals are hypocrites because we want corporations to behave ethically, ergo, we want them to be people too! Neener neener. He also seems to be under the illusion that CEOs can’t currently be prosecuted as individuals for criminal conduct in the course of their jobs. Whatever, the main argument is too stupid to dignify with a rebuttal.

ACLU Files Suit on Behalf of Refugee Children

July 9, 2014 by Pamela Powers

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has filed suit on behalf of the 1000s of refugee children being held in detention centers in the southwest.

The ACLU suit claims that the children should have legal representation when they go through their deportation proceedings.

I have witnessed several immigration hearings for people with and without lawyers. Setting aside anxiety and potential Spanish/English/indigenous language barriers, judges and lawyers have their own lingo and their own rules. Even adult non-lawyers can get tripped up by the legal system. These deportation hearings are literally a life or death matter for the refugee children. There is a fine line between being label a refugee who is fleeing violence and persecution in her homeland (OK, you can stay) or a migrant who broke US law and crossed the border (Hasta luego).

Providing them with lawyers is the humanitarian thing to do to. I also believe that the government should make every effort to hook up these minors with relatives who are in the US. (I have this to say to the people who claim the US can’t afford to care for these children and treat them humanely: TAX THE RICH.)

From the ACLU..

Eleven-year-old Luisa was too young to apply on her own for a visa to come from Guatemala to the United States where she hoped to be reunited with her mother. But since federal immigration authorities detained her last year in Texas, Luisa has learned that she is apparently not too young to act as her own lawyer as federal immigration officials move to deport her back to her native Guatemala.

During a recent hearing in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom, Luisa and more than two dozen other children crowded into a small room where the U.S. government has begun deportation hearings against them. Some sat quietly, feet dangling from benches. Others, who spoke indigenous languages and understood little Spanish, looked nervously around struggling to understand the proceedings.

Tom ‘banned for life by the SEC’ Horne keeps digging his hole deeper

July 8, 2014 by AZ BlueMeanie

The “first rule of holes” is “When you’re in one, stop digging.”

Apparently Attorney General Tom “banned for life by the SEC’ Horne never learned this invaluable lesson.

Tommy Boy is the subject of two lawsuits, investigations by the office of the Secretary of State and the Citizens Clean Elections Commission, and an internal whitewash investigation by some of his campaign contributors, paid for with your tax dollars ala Governor Chris Christie and his Bridgegate scandal. Only Christie made his whitewash investigation public. Tommy Boy does not intend to make public his whitewash report. Shhhh. Results of Tom Horne investigation to stay secret.

That’s a pretty deep hole Tommy Boy has dug for himself. So what does he do now? Double-down and dig a little deeper! AG Tom Horne sues to block investigation:

Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne is challenging the authority of the Citizens Clean Elections Commission to investigate him over alleged campaign-finance violations.