Political Theatre category archive

It’s harsh. It’s funny. And, like all good satire, it’s truth that hurts:

Via The Richmonder.

It’s a district court ruling and will undoubtedly be appealed.

(Judge) Walker, however, found it violated the Constitution’s due process and equal protection clauses while failing “to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license.”

“Indeed, the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California Constitution the notion that opposite-sex couples are superior to same-sex couples,” the judge wrote in his 136-page ruling.

He also said proponents offered little evidence that they were motivated by anything other than animus toward gays – beginning with their campaign to pass the ban, which included claims of wanting to protect children from learning about same-sex marriage in school.

Vivian Paige has posted the ruling itself.

As I have said before, nothing that happened between another couple, gay or straight, affected either of my marriages. We managed to mess them up quite well without outside help, thank you very much.

The notion that giving gay folks the joy of marriage (and, he added cynically, the fun of divorce court) somehow does anything to anyone else is a smokescreen.

It’s a smokescreen for hating persons because you just don’t like them and their existence (maybe) makes you feel weird.

And everyone knows it’s a smokescreen, even those who blow the smoke.

Addendum:

Michael Tomasky says, “To hell with the backlash.”

Bob Cesca has the link.

Not Rudy Guiliani, nutcase extraordinaire.

Michael Bloomberg, who understands the ideals for which the Founders risked their blood and treasure and resists the advocates of unreasoning hate. From his speech today (emphasis added):

Whatever you may think of the proposed mosque and community center, lost in the heat of the debate has been a basic question: Should government attempt to deny private citizens the right to build a house of worship on private property based on their particular religion? That may happen in other countries, but we should never allow it to happen here.

This nation was founded on the principle that the government must never choose between religions or favor one over another. The World Trade Center site will forever hold a special place in our city, in our hearts. But we would be untrue to the best part of ourselves and who we are as New Yorkers and Americans if we said no to a mosque in lower Manhattan.

Let us not forget that Muslims were among those murdered on 9/11, and that our Muslim neighbors grieved with us as New Yorkers and as Americans. We would betray our values and play into our enemies’ hands if we were to treat Muslims differently than anyone else. In fact, to cave to popular sentiment would be to hand a victory to the terrorists, and we should not stand for that.

Via John Cole.

More from the you-can’t-make-this-stuff-up dept.

A prison guard accused of killing a lawyer at a south-central Pennsylvania gun range told police he found the man dead and stole his rifle to help arm an extremist group bent on overthrowing the government, court records show.

Camp Hill state prison guard Raymond Franklin Peake 3d wouldn’t name the group but said a second guard, accused of helping him steal lawyer Todd Getgen’s AR-15, also was a member, according to the affidavit of probable cause.

It is interesting how the wingnut right proclaims allegiance to the Constitution of the United States of America even as it does violence to the letter and spirit of that document and the ideals which it embodies.

Jim Henley at Unqualified Offerings, after taking on some zombie lies, points out that:

. . . the Right’s anti-Muslim crusade has already moved past “sentiment” even if you don’t count waging war on Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan and pushing war against Iran as “anti-Muslim.” (Since, after all, when we wage war on someone it’s for their own good.) But the national campaign against building an Islamic cultural center in lower Manhattan and the separate attempts to stop the construction of Mosques and other Muslim buildings elsewhere in the country already constitute an active program of religious oppression. It’s not the worst thing a dominant culture has ever done to adherents (of) a minority religion, but it makes demonization concrete. And there’s no reason to think the New Crusaders plan to stop at this stage. “Sentiment” is no longer the problem. Policy is.

The hate does get tiring.

The Rude Pundit takes on Ann Coulter (WARNING: language).

Excerpt:

. . . I’m calling on the Republican leaders in the Senate to stop holding America’s small businesses hostage to politics, and allow an up-or-down vote on this small business jobs bill.

At a time when America is just starting to move forward again, we can’t afford the do-nothing policies and partisan maneuvering that will only take us backward. I won’t stand here and pretend everything’s wonderful. I know that times are tough. But what I also know is that we’ve made it through tough times before. And we’ll make it through again. The men and women hard at work in this plant make me absolutely confident of that.

Nothing much to add to this, except that all these locations are in the Upper Bay, where I used to go boating and where my kids went to scout and YMCA camps.

The team took water samples before and after significant rainfall at seven beaches and recreation spots along five rivers that feed the Chesapeake Bay. Their goal was to gauge the impact of stormwater — one of the fastest-growing pollution sources in the Chesapeake Bay — on bacteria levels in the water.

For comparison, the team also took two water samples from a household toilet: one while it was clean, and another after human feces had sat in it for four hours.

After rain on July 15, the tests showed that three of the seven sites had bacteria levels far higher than Maryland and Virginia standards for safe recreation, and five were above the level for safe swimming. Two — Savage Park in Howard County and Middle Branch Park in Baltimore — had bacteria levels much higher than the dirty toilet.

Deregulation will undoubtedly fix this.

Also, you may already have won.

Steve Benen wants to know, when Ensign is facing criminal charges and Rangel is facing (probably) censure at best . . . .

No reporters staked out in front of Ensign’s home. No op-eds speculating about the need for Ensign to resign in disgrace. Instead, the media’s fascinated with Charlie Rangel.

Rangel is facing a probe from the House ethics committee, while Ensign is under scrutiny from the FBI.

Is this just the IOKIYAR rule taken to the extreme? Was there some kind of memo stating that only Democratic scandals deserve media attention in an election year?

I think there’s more to it than IOKIYAR. Most reporters and pundits with a national audience cluster in New York and Washington; the major news organizations are headquartered in New York.

Rangel is local news for them. Except for conventions on the Lost Wages Strip, Nevada is just some place out there somewhere that they rarely visit and know little about.

They’ve decided what to write for their columns and commentaries each day before folks in the Mountain Time Zone are getting to work.

Unless it happens to Lindsey Lohan or Jennifer Anniston, they have no idea what’s going on west of Leesburg, Virginia.

More here.

Via the Richmonder, who spells it out.

Arizona racial profiling on hold:

(Judge) Bolton’s ruling stops four of the law’s more than a dozen provisions from going into effect. “The court also finds that the United States is likely to suffer irreparable harm if the court does not preliminarily enjoin enforcement of these sections,” she states in the ruling. “The balance of equities tips in the United States’ favor considering the public interest.”

Key parts of (Arizona) SB 1070 that will not go into effect Thursday:

• The portion of the law that requires an officer make a reasonable attempt to determine the immigration status of a person stopped, detained or arrested if there’s reasonable suspicion they’re in the country illegally.
• The portion that creates a crime of failure to apply for or carry “alien-registration papers.”
• The portion that makes it a crime for illegal immigrants to solicit, apply for or perform work. (This does not include the section on day laborers.)
• The portion that allows for a warrantless arrest of a person where there is probable cause to believe they have committed a public offense that makes them removable from the United States.

The ruling says that law enforcement still must enforce federal immigration laws to the fullest extent of the law when SB 1070 goes into effect at 12:01 a.m. Thursday. Individuals will still be able to sue an agency if they adopt a policy that restricts such enforcement.

Bolton did not halt the part of the law that creates misdemeanors crimes for harboring and transporting illegal immigrants.

Reactions from Arizona pols and their promises to appeal are at the link.

Aside:

The slap at Iran may be good marketing, but it ignores that Iran imports more fuel than it exports; I believe I’ve read that it has the resources, but not the refining capacity.

Via the Richmonder.

It was pretty clear things weren’t going well.

It was not clear that they were going this badly.

And, no, “potentially embarrassing” is not sufficient reason for hiding official actions from public view, at least not and maintain any level of democracy.

Yet that, natch, is why governments dislike leaks and, in particular, are gunning for Wiki-Leaks–it’s not the potential for the dangerous; it’s the potential for the embarrassing.

It has nothing to do with the Republican Party.

Via BartCop.

Good news from Maryland: Anne Arundel County (home of Annapolis) approves private energy windmills.

The wrong things go up, the wrong things go down:

Existing home sales fell 5.1 percent to an annual rate of 5.37 million units, the National Association of Realtors said. Financial markets had expected sales to fall 8.1 percent. The median home sales price in June was $183,700, a 1.0 percent increase from the prior year.

“It’s still a horrible number. It’s just not as horrible as what people were looking for. Do you really view that as good news? Apparently the stock market does,” said Mary Ann Hurley, vice president of fixed-income trading at D.A. Davidson & Co in Seattle.

A separate report from the Labor Department showed initial claims for state unemployment benefits rose 37,000 to a seasonally adjusted 464,000 last week, more than erasing a decline in the prior week.

Rigell hearts Wall Street banksters:

Via Blue Virginia.

July 21, 2010 | Posted by: Frank | Posted in: Political Theatre | Bookmark this post

Sign the petition.

Via the New Orleans Times-Picayune.