Courts & Law

Republican empathy and narcissism

by

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Senator Rob Portman (R-OH) revealed that his son is gay and that he has now decided to support gay marriage. Some are praising him for his "courage," and others (namely the "God hates gays" crowd) are condemning him for his reversal — Portman was a cosponsor of the Defense of Marriage Act now pending before the U.S. Supreme Court.

I have to agree with Jonathan Chait, Rob Portman, Gay Marriage, and Selfishness:

The triumph of the issue
relies upon the changing of minds — some thanks to force of argument,
others to personal contact with gay friends, colleagues, and neighbors.
From that standpoint, Portman’s conversion is a Very Good Thing.

And yet as a window into the working of Portman’s mind, his
conversion is a confession of moral failure, one of which he appears
unaware.

Ted ‘Calgary’ Cruz demonstrates he is a prick, and wrong on the law

by

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The Senate Judiciary Committee today completed passage of a package of four bills for gun safety, including the assault weapons ban renewal by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA). The ghost of Joe McCarthy, Senator Ted "Calgary" Cruz, decided to demonstrate once again that he is an obnoxious prick who thinks too highly of his own intellectual prowess. He decided to query Senator Feinstein, in that smug prickish way of his, as follows:

The question that I would pose to the senior senator from
California, would she deem it consistent with the Bill of Rights for
Congress to engage in the same endeavor that we are contemplating doing
with the Second Amendment in the context of the First and Fourth
Amendments. Namely, would she consider it constitutional for Congress to
specify that the First Amendment shall apply only to the following
books, and shall not apply to the books that Congress has deemed outside
the protection of the Bill of Rights? Likewise, would she think that the Fourth Amendment protections against searches and seizures could properly apply only to to the following specifified individuals, and not to individuals that Congress has deemed outside of the protection of the Bill of Rights?

The conservative media entertainment complex is all atwitter today with excitement over the piqued response this baiting by Sen. McCarthy Cruz elicited from Sen. Feinstein (in the video below the fold). The wingnuts think that "Calgary" carried the day with his absolutist position on the Second Amendment.

Bill Clinton: It’s time to overturn DOMA

by

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Former president Bill Clinton has a guest opinion in the Washington Post today, It’s time to overturn DOMA:

In 1996, I signed the Defense of Marriage Act. Although that
was only 17 years ago, it was a very different time. In no state in the
union was same-sex marriage recognized, much less available as a legal
right, but some were moving in that direction. Washington, as a result,
was swirling with all manner of possible responses, some quite
draconian. As a bipartisan group of former senators stated in their
March 1 amicus brief to the Supreme Court, many supporters of the bill
known as DOMA believed that its passage “would defuse a movement to
enact a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, which would have
ended the debate for a generation or more.” It was under these
circumstances that DOMA came to my desk, opposed by only 81 of the 535
members of Congress.

On March 27, DOMA will come before the Supreme Court,
and the justices must decide whether it is consistent with the
principles of a nation that honors freedom, equality and justice above
all, and is therefore constitutional. As the president who signed the
act into law, I have come to believe that DOMA is contrary to those
principles and, in fact, incompatible with our Constitution.

(Update) Arizona’s Neo-Confederate dead-enders and secession

by

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

I posted about this previously, Arizona's Neo-Confederate dead-enders and secession:

AZConfederacyRemember the "Checks and Balances in Government" citizens initiative aka
the "nullification" initiative from a nutty Scottsdale millionaire
businessman, Jack Biltis, that failed to qualify for the ballot due to
an insufficient number of signatures last year? Businessman spends $1.2 million to put nullification measure on ballot.

Biltis has decided to bypass the expense
of another initiative effort and to take the easy route of getting his
fellow Neo-Confederate dead-enders in the legislature to repackage his
"nullification" initiative as a constitutional amendment referred to the
ballot by the Arizona legislature. SCR1016
is sponsored by the usual suspects, Sen. Rich Crandell (R-Heber), Sen.
Judy Burges (R-Sun City West), and cosponsors Sen. Cap'n Al Melvin
(R-Saddlebrooke), and Rep. Brenda Barton (R-Payson).

Tom ‘banned for life by the SEC’ Horne misleads on the Voting Rights Act

by

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Editor's Note: I strongly encourage Felecia Rotellini, a Democratic candidate for Attorney General, to weigh in on this issue. We will be happy to give you space on the blog if the corporate media will not give you an opportunity to respond.

In The Arizona Republic(an) today, Tom "banned for life by the SEC" Horne (and under investigation for political corruption) has an op-ed explaining his lame reasons why he filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of Arizona in Shelby County v. Holder, seeking to strike down Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act (the preclearance enforcement provision). Preclearance of voting laws now irrational. "Tommy Boy" would have you believe that it is oh so unfair that Arizona was ever included under Section 5 (by amendment) in the first place, and oh, "states' rights!" (the battle cry of segregationists):

In 1975, the act was amended to include “language minorities.” Any state that had a population of more than 5 percent belonging to a language minority and that did not have bilingual ballots by 1972 would be an included state.

This amendment was reverse-engineered to take in Arizona, which adopted bilingual ballots in 1974, not 1972. Now, more than a third of a century later, we are still being punished for having adopted bilingual ballots in 1974, rather than in 1972.