The Commentariat -- Oct. 22, 2013

Michael Shear & Robert Pear of the New York Times: "In remarks in the Rose Garden, Mr. Obama acknowledged serious technical issues with the Web site, declaring that 'no one is madder than me.' He offered no new information about how many people have managed to enroll since the online exchanges opened on Oct. 1." CW: Shear (who is a Fox "News" contributor), & Pear couldn't seem to write a positive sentence about the President's remarks. Looks as if "crummy Website" is going to be the Big News till Darrell Issa dredges up something else:

... Ah, here's Joan Walsh of Salon: "As predictably as night follows day, on Monday the media establishment pivoted away from obsessing about GOP extremism and the party's alleged 'civil war' to the 'train wreck' that is, allegedly, the Affordable Care Act." ...

... William Saletan of Slate: "Blocking affordable health care. Denying coverage under Medicaid. Shutting down the government. Harming the economy. That's an all-out indictment of the opposition party. Even Republican criticism of the Web site debacle -- which everyone acknowledges -- has become, in Obama's words, 'rooting for failure' at the expense of middle-class families. Obama may not win this fight. But he has certainly entered it swinging." ...

... ** Alec MacGillis of the New Republic: House Republicans are preparing to hold hearings to probe why Healthcare.gov doesn't work; no matter that they don't want it to work. "Unspoken in all of those questions [MOCs will be asking HHS officials] is something that Republicans have simply shut out of their assault on Obamacare until now: That there are people out there, millions of them, who do not have coverage and will be helped by the law if it can be made to function properly.... Despite themselves and without fully realizing it, Republicans are perilously on the verge of becoming advocates for expanded health care coverage." CW: So maybe the Healthcare.gov fiasco has a silver lining. ...

... Single Payer! Ezra Klein: "The core problem for the GOP is that they're complaining about problems they don't actually want fixed. So the criticisms have an oddly self-negating quality: Republicans are furious that more people can't sign up for this law they want to repeal altogether.... The case that can be made against the difficulties of implementing a system this complex isn't a case for the status quo. Nor is it a case for Republican health-care ideas, insofar as they exist. After all, Rep. Paul Ryan's health-care plan -- and his Medicare plan -- would also require the government to run online insurance marketplaces. It's a case for a much simpler, government-run health-care system." (Related: Humor Break below.) ...

... Dave Weigel of Slate: Republican calls for HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius's firing over the botched Healthcare.gov rollout means she can keep her job. CW: I wish I could say I thought she was a great secretary, but this isn't her first Big Mistake. Obama& had to step in & rescue her when she mishandled the religious exception provisions of the ACA. He stepped in again -- and stepped in it -- when Sebelius overruled the FDA on over-the-counter sales of the morning-after pill (a fabulous Reagan-appointed judge later ruled against the administration). ...

... Lydia DePillis of the Washington Post: Why all the problems with Healthcare.gov? Because the government doesn't know how to structure bids for software contracts, which leads to a style of development & coding that builds in fundamental errors & does little testing until it's too late. ...

... Guaranteed Failure. Lean Sun & Scott Wilson of the Washington Post: "Days before the launch of President Obama's online health-insurance marketplace, government officials and contractors tested a key part of the Web site to see whether it could handle tens of thousands of consumers at the same time. It crashed after a simulation in which just a few hundred people tried to log on simultaneously. Despite the failed test, federal health officials plowed ahead. When the Web site went live Oct. 1, it locked up shortly after midnight as about 2,000 users attempted to complete the first step." ...

... Humor Break. Sarah Sees a Conspiracy! She Can See Canada from Her Porch. Travis Gettys of the Raw Story: "The former half-term Alaska governor and failed vice presidential candidate suggested Sunday in a Breitbart.com column that design flaws were intentionally implemented to make the system more difficult to use and drive Americans to accept a government fix. President Barack Obama admitted Monday that the site needed to be overhauled and announced a 'tech surge' to make those repairs, but Palin said the eventual fix would be a Canadian-style socialized health care system." ...

... Jonathan Chait: "Liberals admit ObamaCare's failures while conservatives refuse to concede its successes.... The coverage of the Obamacare website debacle is a helpful illustration of the epistemic imbalance between left and right.... Only the negative liberal coverage has pierced the conservative information bubble.... The imbalance in honesty has magnified the impact of bad Obamacare news and blunted the impact of good Obamacare news."

... Jim Siegel & Catherine Candisky of the Columbia (Ohio) Dispatch: Gov. John Kasich [a conservative Republican] forced implementation of the Medicaid expansion in Ohio, after the GOP-controlled state senate refused to ratify it/ (The general assembly had voted for it.) Kasich transferred the decision-making process from the senate to an oversight board, then packed the board with pro-expansion members. State senators plan retaliatory moves.

** Sam Stein & Ryan Grim of the Huffington Post write a fascinating piece on how President Obama & Speaker Reid worked together to fend off Republican demands. CW: As often is the case, I have to wonder why Leader Pelosi gets almost no mention. This is the story smarmy Bob Woodward probably wished he'd got.

If CNN did sports reporting, every game would be a tie. -- Cenk Uygur

... Here's one for Akhilleus. Paul Rosenberg, in Salon, applies logical & rhetorical constructs to Tea Party "reasoning" & MSM reporting. He concludes, "Our politics are a disaster because the media -- and the president -- pretend conservatives are dealing with facts." ...

... CW: Notice how Rosenberg's piece relates to Chait's discussion of the liberal & conservative criticism of the ObamaCare rollout. What I think this all demonstrates is that conservatives are for the most part extremists while only some liberals are extremists. Liberals are tethered to reality; conservatives are tethered to ideology & refuse to accept reality; when reality hits them in the face, they deny it & turn to "beliefs." Thus, as contributor Nancy wrote in yesterday's thread, there was no way to convince her neighbor that Obama hadn't shut down the government & that he could not raise the Social Security eligibility age by fiat. The neighbor just "believed" that was the case because she doesn't like "that Obama." Contra Pat Moynihan, Nancy's neighbor feels entitled to her own facts. Note to Nancy: I did stop a conservative neighbor of mine cold by pointing out that he was basing his opinions on impressions, not on facts. It hadn't occurred to him that his impressions were inferior to my facts. I think he got it. Momentarily, anyway. ...

... Dan Balz & Scott Clement of the Washington Post: "The budget confrontation that led to a partial government shutdown dealt a major blow to the GOP's image and has exposed significant divisions between tea party supporters and other Republicans, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. The survey highlights just how badly the GOP hard-liners and the leaders who went along with them misjudged the public mood. In the aftermath, eight in 10 Americans say they disapprove of the shutdown. Two in three Republicans or independents who lean Republican share a negative view of the impasse. And even a majority of those who support the tea party movement disapprove." ...

... Good News for Republicans! Thanks to Democratic Messaging. Todd Lindberg of the New Republic: "To the extent the GOP's internal struggle is understood as a contest between conservatives and radicals, in which the conservatives prevail, it will likely help the party regain some of the ground it has been losing at the center.... So long as the Tea Party is losing, division might be just what the GOP needs" because it makes non-Tea Party Republicans seem moderate & reasonable. ...

... Steve M. of NMMNB adds a cogent point: "What has to happen before voters decide the GOP can't be trusted at all? Does the party actually have to push us into default and start a global depression...? That's the difference between the majority of the U.S. electorate and the voters of Wingnuttia. You edge a millimeter toward a slope that's a hundred miles away, and isn't the slightest bit slippery, and wingnut voters immediately foresee a cataclysmic slide. Propose firearm background checks that aren't even truly universal, and wingnut voters think mass gun confiscation is imminent within weeks. Pass a market-based, Heritage Foundation-developed health care plan, and they think we're living under the Khmer Rouge.... But if Republicans take us nearly to the brink of disaster, a disaster from which we're rescued at the last second, centrist voters still don't develop a sense of alarm about the party." ...

... AND right on cue, as if he might be in the employ of Prince Rebus, Obama's former speechwriter Jon Favreau, now penning his bright ideas for the Daily Beast instead of the POTUS, writes a piece titled, "The Tea Party, Not Democrats or Republicans, Is the Problem. Blah blah blah." Favreau doesn't see red states & blue states; he sees the United States of America. Rah rah rah. ...

... Not irritated enough yet? Why, let's check in with Alan Greenspan. That should help. BBC News: "Mr Greenspan confessed to sympathies with the aims of the Tea Party, the Republican faction that fought the government during debt ceiling talks. But the former central banker said the movement's tactics were 'undemocratic'.... 'What Britain has done with its austerity programme has worked much better than I thought it would,' Mr Greenspan said. 'As far as I can judge, it [the economy] is coming out pretty much the way they [the coalition government] had expected.'" Ayn Rand lives!

Declan Walsh & Ihsanullah Mehsud of the New York Times: "... a new Amnesty International investigation ... found, among other points, that at least 19 civilians in ... North Waziristan had been killed in just two of the drone attacks since January 2012 -- a time when the Obama administration has held that strikes have been increasingly accurate and free of mistakes. The study is to be officially released on Tuesday along with a separate Human Rights Watch report on American drone strikes in Yemen.... On Wednesday, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, a vocal critic of the drone campaign, is to meet with President Obama in the White House. And on Friday, the drone debate is scheduled to spill onto the floor of the United Nations, whose officials have recently published reports that attacked America's lack of transparency over drones."

Local News

This Is a Big Deal. Salvador Rizzo of the Star-Ledger: "Gov. Chris Christie dropped his legal challenge to gay marriage in New Jersey [Monday], only hours after same-sex couples began exchanging wedding vows throughout the state. Christie's unexpected decision to withdraw his appeal of a major case at the state Supreme Court marks the end of a decade-long legal battle. It means that a lower-court ruling allowing gay couples to marry in New Jersey stands as the law." ...

... Darrell Isherwood of NJ.com: "... some national social conservative leaders lashed out at the governor." CW: Here's an example of the "purity fallacy" Rosenberg wrote about:

Do we have any illusions, given the nature of the decision, that there was a high likelihood that his appeal would succeed? No. But that's irrelevant. You do what's right regardless of the cost. -- Brian Brown, President of the National Organization for Marriage

Freeeedom!

It comes as a surprise to me that many liberals oppose self-determination, especially since home rule is the central theory on which this country was founded. Remember the Declaration of Independence?:

That to secure these [inalienable] rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, – That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness….

It should be obvious that vast swaths of the country, emanating from the South and creeping westward and northward, do not now nor did they ever want to adhere to laws imposed by representatives of the majority of U.S. citizens. Moreover, those Southerners and others believe it is their inalienable right to ignore – or nullify – majority rule. In 1830, Vice President John C. Calhoun of South Carolina wrote to a friend,

The truth can no longer be disguised, that the peculiar domestick institution of the Southern States [i.e., slavery], and the consequent direction, which that and her soil and climate have given to her industry, have placed them in regard to taxation and appropriations in opposite relation to the majority of the Union; against the danger of which, if there be no protective power in the reserved rights of the States, they must in the end be forced to rebel, or submit to have their permanent interests sacraficed, their domestick institutions subverted by Colonization and other schemes, and themselves & children reduced to wretchedness.

Two years later, South Carolina’s legislature formalized Calhoun's theory in an Ordinance of Nullification:

We..., the people of the State of South Carolina, in convention assembled, do declare and ordain ... that the several acts and parts of acts of the Congress of the United States, purporting to be laws for the imposing of duties and imposts on the importation of foreign commodities..., are unauthorized by the constitution of the United States, and violate the true meaning and intent thereof and are null, void, and no law, nor binding upon this State, its officers or citizens....

This is the same theory under which the Southern states seceded in 1860 and 1861, and under which they imposed Jim Crow laws in violation of the post-Civil War Constitutional Amendments. Nearly two hundred years later, many states have passed laws that nullify federal laws and Supreme Court decisions: they violate Roe v. Wade, Planned Parenthood v. Pennsylvania and the Voting Rights Act. States and communities have passed laws and put into common practice violations of the First Amendment, laws and court decisions imposing the separation of church and state. In today's New York Times, the editors point out that four states – Texas, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Louisiana – are violating an order from the Defense Department – based on a Supreme Court decision – to provide equal protection to same-sex couples in the military. As the editors note, “The [national] guard units say they are merely adhering to state constitutions that ban same-sex marriages and do not recognize same-sex marriages lawfully performed in other states.... Under the Constitution’s supremacy clause, federal law takes precedence.” The editors are absolutely right about U.S. law, but the powers that be in those states don't see it as the New York Times does. Those Southern National Guard units stand today with the South Carolina nullifiers of old.

At least one writer in yesterday's comments thread suggested a sort of Rodney King solution – we should all just get along. That is a lovely thought, similar to one expressed by Barack Obama in his 2004 Democratic convention speech. Now President Barack Obama has found out the hard way that his lovely image of “one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America” is illusory. Legislators in and from red states have done all they can to nullify laws passed during his administration, most notably of course the Affordable Care Act. They have done this, as Paul Krugman notes today, out of “sheer spite – the desire to sabotage anything with President Obama’s name on it,” and to the disadvantage of their neediest citizens. Southerners do not believe Barack Obama is the legitimate President of the United States; as Garry Wills writes, they say they “object to Obama because he is a 'foreign-born Muslim'” but “they really mean 'a black man.'” Public Policy Polling found that

49% of GOP voters nationally say they think that ACORN stole the [2012] election for President Obama. We found that 52% of Republicans thought that ACORN stole the 2008 election for Obama, so this is a modest decline, but perhaps smaller than might have been expected given that ACORN doesn't exist anymore.

Almost 200 years after the South Carolina legislature passed the Nullification Act, 150 years after Southern states seceded from the Union and Northern states forced them to return – Southerners and some Westerners continue to hold the views that inspired these early acts of nullification. Today's Southerners are not going to try to “get along” with “Northern aggressors.” Laws imposed by the representatives of the majority of Americans did not adhere to Southern views then or now. Southern conservatives think the federal government is illegitimate – a fraud perpetrated by liberal election cheats.

I don't agree with any of those Southern conservative views. I believe in a woman's right to choose, in everyone's right to vote, in everyone's right to equal protection, in the separation of church and state, and in the legitimacy of the elections of Barack Obama. But I also believe in the principles articulated in the Declaration of Independence: that governments derive their power from the “consent of the governed.” It is clear that Southerners do not consent to certain Constitutional provisions and laws deriving from them. Perhaps the majority of Southerners do not “consent” to the U.S. government. They live in a country that has for two centuries deprived them of self-determination.

That is why I propose secession – not to punish Southerners but to free them to make their own constitutions and their own laws. For most of the history of our country, the North has aggrieved the South. Northerners have forced Southerners to live in a country whose values they eschew. We should give them a way out. It has happened before, and it has happened on a massive scale during my lifetime. The break-up of the Soviet Union came in the form of a “Velvet Revolution,” one in which nary a shot was fired, but the “inalienable right” to self-governance was restored to millions of Europeans and Asians. Is it likely to happen here? No. But until it does, this country will be crippled by a fundamental and unbreachable divide. You can suppress people, but you cannot suppress their beliefs. Attempts to suppress beliefs and values serve only to solidify those beliefs and to give them exaggerated importance. After 200 years, let us not insist upon prolonging this noble experiment. It failed when we forgot why we started it in the first place.

The Commentariat -- Oct. 21, 2013

Justin Sink of the Hill: "President Obama 'will directly address the technical problems' with the ObamaCare website during a Rose Garden event Monday morning, according to a White House official.... The official said the president will be joined by 'consumers, small business owners, and pharmacists,' including individuals who have already enrolled in ObamaCare online." ...

... Louise Radnofsky of the Wall Street Journal: "The Department of Health and Human Services said Sunday it was bringing in outside help to resolve some of the technical woes that have beset the federally run insurance exchanges...." ...

... Department of Health & Human Service: "Unfortunately, the experience on HealthCare.gov has been frustrating for many Americans.... The initial consumer experience of HealthCare.gov has not lived up to the expectations of the American people. We are committed to doing better." ...

... Sharon LaFraniere, et al., of the New York Times: "Federal contractors have identified most of the main problems crippling President Obama's online health insurance marketplace, but the administration has been slow to issue orders for fixing those flaws, and some contractors worry that the system may be weeks away from operating smoothly...." ...

... Fox "News": Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) "said Sunday that Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius will testify before Congress about the problem-plagued ObamaCare website, amid a growing call for her to accept requests to testify.... Sebelius and the entire Obama administration has declined requests to testify on Capitol Hill about the site, which has been plagued by crashes, slow responses and other glitches since it went online Oct. 1." ...

... Paul Krugman: "... the technical problems, while infuriating — heads should roll -- will not, in the end, be the big story. The real threat remains the effort of conservative groups to sabotage reform, especially by blocking the expansion of Medicaid. This effort relies heavily on lobbying, lavishly bankrolled by the usual suspects, including the omnipresent Koch brothers." And other lice! ...

... Garance Franke-Ruta of the Atlantic: "... people do not turn to government programs because they believe in them. They turn to them because they need them, and the market is not meeting their needs.... That's going to save the Obamacare rollout.... People who have experience with programs for the needy will recognize a familiar bureaucratic incompetence in the rollout.... Obamacare ... also has also suffered from what Johns Hopkins University political scientist Steven Teles calls 'kludgeocracy' -- the tendency of interest groups, lobbyists, bureaucracy, and bad management to combine to create highly complex legislation and giant public-administration kludges, a term defined as 'an ill-assorted collection of poorly-matching parts, forming a distressing whole.'" (Emphasis added.) ...

... Ross Douthat: "Like the Bush administration in Iraq, the White House seems to have invaded the health insurance marketplace with woefully inadequate postinvasion planning, and let the occupation turn into a disaster of hack work and incompetence." ...

... Digby: "Yes, except for all the actual human carnage, torture and death, it's exactly the same. Good insight. Once again, I'm struck by how the right sees Obamacare in such violent terms. I thought I was immune to how weird these people are, but I still have things to learn. These are people who valorize our out of control gun violence and cheer on any war the nation decides to join. But affordable health care is a fundamental threat to life and liberty. Ok." ...

... Douthat: "The Obamacare exchanges… are actually closer to the right-of-center vision for health care reform...." ...

... Brad DeLong of U.C.-Berkeley: "For five years Ross Douthat has been claiming Obamacare ≠ RomneyCare, and that the marketplaces-exchanges are not the Heritage Foundation's intellectual child. But now, apparently, it is finally time to strip of the mask and acknowledge what he has been pretending for five years is not so.... Could you have made a difference, Ross, if you had spent the last five years telling your copains of the right that ObamaCare = RomneyCare?" ...

... Max Ehrenfreund in the Washington Monthly: "... if we hadn't been so concerned about protecting hospitals and insurers, we might have found our way to a simpler system with a better chance of success.... It's far too early to give up on the exchanges, but if they do fail, it seems most likely that they will fail because of their conservatism -- because Congress and the president weren't willing to go far enough in 2010 in expanding the government presence in the health care system." ...

... Jeb 2 Ted: STFU. Justin Sink: "Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) said in an interview airing Sunday that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) needs to 'have a little bit of self-restraint' if the Republican Party is to succeed in repealing ObamaCare.... 'Tactically, it was a mistake to focus on something that couldn't be achieved,' Bush said, complaining that the controversy over the shutdown had 'crowded out' how 'dysfunctional' the implementation of ObamaCare had been." CW: Huh. Sounds like me telling my stray mouser to quit dropping dead (or half-dead) rodents at my feet. Neither Ted nor the cat can comprehend the message. ...

... Ted 2 Jeb, et al.: STFU. Ashley Killough of CNN: Cruz "was unapologetic for fighting to defund President Obama's health care law in the face of outsized odds, saying he doesn't work for the 'party bosses' in Washington." CW: Toljaso. ...

... Everything Is Obama's Fault. Igor Volsky of Think Progress: "Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) suggested on Sunday that President Obama's refusal to compromise with Republicans on Obamacare to re-open the government and raise the nation's debt ceiling has jeopardized the chances of passing comprehensive immigration reform." CW Translation: Obama refused to kowtow to us nullifiers & insurrectionists who refused to do our jobs, so we're never going to do our jobs. ...

Illustration by Donkey Hotey.Paul Steinhauser of CNN: "Just more than half the public says that it's bad for the country that the GOP controls the House of Representatives, according to a new national poll conducted after the end of the partial government shutdown. And the CNN/ORC International survey also indicates that more than six in 10 Americans say that Speaker of the House John Boehner should be replaced.... 54% say it's a bad thing that the GOP controls the House, up 11 points from last December.... Only 38% say it's a good thing the GOP controls the House, a 13-point dive from the end of last year." ...

... AND Treasury Secretary Jack Lew writes a "can't we all just get along" op-ed for the New York Times: "It is time to put an end to governing by crisis and focus on accelerating economic growth and job creation. If we are open to what we can achieve together rather than simply setting our sights on our divisions, there is a lot we can do to support America's workers and businesses. This is what the American people expect from their leaders in Washington."

A lot of times, though, when people say the president should lead, what they want him to do is adopt Republican positions and then push for those. That's not leadership, that's capitulation. -- E.J. Dionne on "Press the Meat," via Digby, who may have mentioned this herself

Zach Carter of the Huffington Post: Sen. Dick Durbin, the No. 2 man in the Senate told Chris Wallace of Fox "News" "that Republicans had to put tax revenue on the table to get entitlement cuts. 'Social Security is gonna run out of money in 20 years," Durbin said. "The Baby Boom generation is gonna blow away our future. We don't wanna see that happen.' [CW: gonna, wanna?] Social Security will not run out of money in 20 years. The program currently enjoys a surplus of more than $2 trillion. Social Security will, however, be unable to pay all benefits at current levels if nothing is changed. If a 25 percent benefit cut were implemented in 20 years, the program would be solvent into the 2080s." ...

... Really, Dick? Really, Zach? Phoenix Woman in Firedoglake: "The only 'reforms' Social Security might possibly require, besides keeping the hedge fund CEOs away from it, are as follows: 1. Remove the cap, and 2. Subject *all* income to FICA. Doing this keeps Social Security safe forever." CW: When even HuffPost writers, not to mention Durbin, can't get with the obvious, we're in trouble. ...

... Digby: "Gee, Dick, way to stoke generational warfare there. Thanks a lot. Pete Peterson's wrecking crew couldn't have said it better." ...

... As Peter Nicholas & Colleen Nelson of the Wall Street Journal report, at least some actual Democrats -- and Bernie Sanders -- will fight Durbin & Obama on this.

Humor Break. Mark Sanford's fiancee Maria Chapur, speaking on the Argentine news site InfobaeTV to which she occasionally contributes, "acknowledged that there are 'extremists' among Republican lawmakers, but 'just because there are extremists that doesn't mean they aren't fundamentally right.' ... Her latest [contribution to the site], published on Oct. 8, addressed the topic of why a U.S. debt default is 'unthinkable.'" Via Daniel Politi of McClatchy News. CW: Evidently Chapur's soulmate doesn't agree. He voted "no" on the bill to reauthorize the government & prevent debt default. So are extremists fundamentally right -- or not?

Jens Glusing of Spiegel Online & others: "The NSA has been systematically eavesdropping on the Mexican government for years. It hacked into the president's public email account and gained deep insight into policymaking and the political system. The news is likely to hurt ties between the US and Mexico.... This operation ... is described in a document leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden...." CW: Thanks for sharing, Ed. I really needed to know this. ...

... AFP: "France and Mexico have angrily demanded prompt explanations from Washington following fresh, 'shocking' spying allegations leaked by former US security contractor Edward Snowden. The reports in French daily Le Monde and German weekly Der Spiegel revealed that the National Security Agency secretly recorded tens of millions of phone calls in France and hacked into former Mexican President Felipe Calderon's email account." CW: Thanks again, Ed.

Ben Protess & Jessica Silver-Greenberg of the New York Times: JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon & Attorney General Eric Holder personally negotiated the settlement deal -- which has not yet been signed -- in the government's civil case against the bank -- the nation's largest.

More Nullification. New York Times Editors: "In August, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced that the Defense Department would begin offering full spousal and family benefits, including health care coverage, housing allowances and survivor benefits, to the same-sex spouses of military personnel" in compliance with the Supreme Court's ruling on DOMA. "National Guard units in four states -- Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana and Oklahoma -- have, however, refused to process applications by same-sex couples in a convenient and respectful manner.... The guard units say they are merely adhering to state constitutions that ban same-sex marriages and do not recognize same-sex marriages lawfully performed in other states. But state bans cannot pre-empt a lawful Defense Department order based on a Supreme Court ruling. Under the Constitution's supremacy clause, federal law takes precedence."

Gubernatorial Race

Artwork by Richmond Times-Dispatch.

"None of the Above." Richmond (Virginia) Times-Dispatch Editors: "The major-party candidates have earned the citizenry's derision. The third-party alternative has run a more exemplary race yet does not qualify as a suitable option. We cannot in good conscience endorse a candidate for governor.