The Commentariat -- June 27, 2013
Glenn Greenwald & Spencer Ackerman of the Guardian: "The Obama administration for more than two years permitted the National Security Agency to continue collecting vast amounts of records detailing the email and internet usage of Americans, according to secret documents obtained by the Guardian. The documents indicate that under the program, launched in 2001, a federal judge sitting on the secret surveillance panel called the Fisa court would approve a bulk collection order for internet metadata 'every 90 days'. A senior administration official confirmed the program, stating that it ended in 2011."
Does it have to be humans? -- Sen. Rand Paul (RTP-Ky.), wondering if the Supreme Court ruling on DOMA will lead to legalizing bestiality
He's right. A court that has given corporations a right to vote and believes that life begins on the first date, is capable of anything. -- Dan Lowery, Reality Chex contributor ...
Edie Windsor, the plaintiff in the DOMA case, spoke to the press yesterday:
... Adam Serwer of NBC News: "Families headed by married same-sex couples will now be recognized by the federal government as families. Service members fighting for their country will not have to worry about their spouses being denied benefits. The same-sex spouses of Americans who are not U.S. citizens will not be denied green cards on the basis that their marriages don't count. Kennedy's opinion striking down DOMA applies to states where same-sex marriage is already legal. But Kennedy's reasoning, that same-sex marriage bans violate Americans' constitutional right to equal protection under the law, could easily be applied to state bans on same-sex marriage as well. That fact was not lost on the rest of the conservative bloc, which treated the decision as a tragedy of epic proportions." CW: not sure why we're delicately calling the opponents of marriage equality "conservatives"; after all, many conservatives favor same-sex marriage. Isn't "homophobes" or "bigots" more apt? ...
My personal belief, but I'm speaking as a president as opposed to a lawyer, is that if you've been married in Massachusetts and you move someplace else -- you're still married, and under federal law you should be able to obtain benefits. -- President Obama, today, on the DOMA ruling
... Richard Socarides of the New Yorker: Justice "Kennedy suggested that laws distinguishing people on the basis of sexual orientation needed to be subjected to 'careful consideration' when 'determining whether a law is motivated by an improper animus or purpose.' This is not quite the standard of 'heightened scrutiny' that some were hoping for, but in terms of gay-rights jurisprudence it is new and important." ...
... Emma Dumain of Roll Call: "House Democrats ripped GOP leadership Wednesday for spending millions defending the Defense of Marriage Act after the Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that it violated the Constitution. House Democrats said the GOP spent $2.3 million on outside lawyers after Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. announced the Justice Department would no longer defend DOMA in court. They also noted that the Congressional Budget Office has scored repealing DOMA as reducing the deficit by $450 million a year." CW: now, there's a scandal for you, Darrell. You should investigate. ...
... Boehner Backfire. Alex Seitz-Wald of Salon: "... by hiring the best Supreme Court lawyer money can buy [$900/hour], Boehner helped ensure that the court ruled squarely on the merits of the law, and thus reject DOMA, instead of getting bogged down in procedural questions and possibly even tossing the case out on standing grounds." ...
Marriage was created by the hand of God. No man, not even a Supreme Court, can undo what a holy God has instituted. -- Rep. Michele Bachmann (RTP-Minn), Bible-thumping expert, reacting to the DOMA decision
Jacob had two wives.... Esau, Jacob's older brother, had three wives. David had at least five wives and countless fecund concubines. The wise King Solomon had 'seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines.' Even Moses had a second, Cushite wife, and God had his back, punishing Moses's siblings, Miriam and Aaron, for speaking out against the marriage. In Deuteronomy, there is even a legal provision for how to split up the inheritance between sons born to two wives, rather than to a wife (isha, in Hebrew) and a handmaiden (pilegesh). -- Julia Joffe of The New Republic
... Jake Sherman & Ginger Gibson of Politico: "Congressional Republican leaders are speaking with resounding unity: the same-sex marriage fight is ending on Capitol Hill. While conservative rank-and-file want to continue the fight that has, in part, defined the Republican Party for much of the last few decades, leadership is eager to shift it to state capitals across the country."
** E. J. Dionne: "In the wake of this week's decision gutting the heart of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, its actions must now be viewed through the prism of the conservative movement's five-decade-long quest for power.... On issues directly related to political and economic influence, the court's conservative majority is operating as a political faction, determined to shape a future in which progressives will find themselves at a disadvantage.... The marriage rulings ... should not distract from the arrogance of power displayed Tuesday in Shelby County v. Holder. Chief Justice John Roberts's opinion involved little constitutional analysis. He simply substituted the court's judgment for Congress’s.... And in other recent cases, the court has weakened the capacity of Americans to take on corporate power. The conservative majority seems determined to bring us back to the Gilded Age."
Ed Kilgore: "Many political observers from both sides of the partisan barricades are genuinely puzzled that so many congressional Republicans seem willing, even eager, to court 'demographic disaster' by opposing comprehensive immigration reform and thus reinforcing their party's unsavory image among Latinos and Asian-Americans.... [It is because] a lot of Republicans in and out of Congress don't buy the basic premise that improved performance among minority voters is the best and only path to majority status. And a lot of them are reading, or are being influenced indirectly by, Sean Trende's series of analytical columns at RealClearPolitics suggesting that the more obvious route to a Republican majority, at least over the next couple of decades, is to intensify the GOP's appeal to white voters...."
It's a pain to click through, but might be worth your while to review the National Memo's compilation of "Darrell Issa's 5 biggest lies about the IRS" fake scandal.
Fareed Zakaria, in Time: "The larger question Big Data raises is, Should any government be permitted to use computer analysis -- even if highly accurate -- to observe, inform on, quarantine or even arrest people simply because they are likely to do something bad? That seems like a scenario from a horrifying sci-fi thriller. Yet here we are, very close to a real-world version. Is that compatible with life in a free society?" ...
I'm not going to be scrambling jets to get a 29-year-old hacker. -- President Obama, today, confirming that he has not been personally involved in extradition proceedings against Ed Snowden ...
... The Evolution of Ed. Peter Finn & Julie Tate of the Washington Post: "When he was working in the intelligence community in 2009, Edward Snowden ... appears to have had nothing but disdain for those who leaked classified information, the newspapers that printed their revelations, and his current ally... WikiLeaks, according to [his] newly disclosed chat logs. Snowden, who used the online handle 'TheTrueHOOHA,' was particularly upset about a January 2009 New York Times article that reported on a covert program to subvert Iran's nuclear infrastructure, according to the logs, which were published Wednesday by Ars Technica, a technology news Web site. 'They're reporting classified [expletive],' Snowden wrote. 'You don’t put that [expletive] in the NEWSPAPER.' At the time of the posting, in January 2009, Snowden was 25 years old and stationed in Geneva by the CIA. 'Are they TRYING to start a war?' he asked of the New York Times. 'Jesus christ they're like wikileaks.' Snowden's libertarian and dogmatic online persona adds to the emerging portrait of a shape-shifting young man whose motivations and decision-making remain in flux."
Local News
Rick Perry Must Control Women. Sean Sullivan of the Washington Post: "Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) on Wednesday called for a special legislative session to convene July 1, reviving GOP hopes of passing a controversial bill to tighten abortion restrictions just hours after it was stymied." ...
... Karen Tumulty & Morgan Smith of the Washington Post on Wendy Davis's epic filibuster. ...
... Nora Bricker of The New Republic: Wendy Davis didn't do it alone.
News Ledes
Orlando Sentinel: "Jurors this afternoon heard more testimony from a crucial state witness in the George Zimmerman murder trial: A young South Florida woman who was on the phone with 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in the moments before his shooting.... The key witness, 19-year-old Rachel Jeantel, gave a dramatic account of Trayvon's killing on Wednesday, followed by at-times-contentious cross examination by defense attorney Don West, which continued for several hours today."
ESPN: Former New England Patriot "Aaron Hernandez has been charged with murdering his friend after the two had a dispute during a trip to a nightclub. Hernandez was arrested Wednesday and charged with the first-degree murder of 27-year-old Odin Lloyd, a semi-pro football player whose body was found in an industrial park about a mile from the former New England Patriots tight end's home." ...
... Boston Globe: "Police on Wednesday found .45-caliber bullets in a condo rented by former New England Patriots star Aaron Hernandez and in a car linked to him, the same caliber ammunition Hernandez allegedly used to shoot and kill Odin L. Lloyd in a North Attleborough industrial park on June 17, a prosecutor said today."
Houston Chronicle: " As scores of death penalty protesters chanted, clapped and sang Wednesday, Dallas County convicted murderer Kimberly McCarthy became the 500th Texas inmate executed since the state re-activated the death penalty 31 years ago."
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Reader Comments (14)
Does it have to be humans? -- Sen. Rand Paul (RTP-Ky.), wondering if the Supreme Court ruling on DOMA will lead to legalizing bestiality ...
He's right. A court that has given corporations a right to vote and believes that life begins on the first date, is capable of anything.
Re: Baaah humpbug; "Does it have to be humans?" No,Representative Paul, you can follow your dreams. But it should be pointed out that the human species is considerably dumber then the rest of the animal kingdom. After all what other species is engaged in the willful destruction of the planet? So you might have a tough time of finding a suitable mate outside your own kind.
As a marriage consultant I would suggest a single cell bacterium often found in pond scum as a choice. Of course you would be marrying up but in your case that's the only possibility.
It's amusing that we seem to be reacting to the same idiot statement from randy Randy who worries about beasts of the wild or the barn yard taking up with regular human beings. I wonder if he's had an eye out for that fetching little fox he caught in the hen house. I had a dream once where a creature that looked somewhat like a lion was trying to make love to me. So you see, Randy might be right––or maybe he read Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man Is Hard To Find" being a good Christian and all and has a disguised hankering for a little hanky panky with the beasts of burden or maybe he's just an idiot.
On a positive note the good news from yesterday from the Supreme Court on DOMA and Texas where that blond bombshell stood for hours trying to defeat Perry's control on women and succeeded (but for how long?) makes for celebrations all around. Meanwhile Snowden is secretly sneaking around and Paula Deen is still crying.
Read somewhere yesterday that WalMart is dropping Paula Deen products. Must have been a tough decision to offend your redneck customers to please your minority customers. But then again, maybe it's just a sign that demographics foretell the future.
Li'l Randy's reference to bestiality is just him channeling one of the most coarse, loutish, vulgar tropes, routinely heard from the right, to pass through his timorous, dessicated black heart. The chronic comparison of basic human sexual relationships with bestiality is beyond insulting and only serves to demonstrate just how fearful, ignorant, and brutish offensive little twits like Rand Paul can be.
Or, as PD has suggested, it merely opens a slime encrusted window onto Li'l Randy's own deviant hankerings.
Presidential timber? More like presidential twig.
By the way, do you have to be certified to engage in bestiality? Self-certified ophthalmologists want to know.
I liked this:
"It’s true that those who support the tradition definition of marriage argue
that defending marriage is not a sign of “animus” but a serious moral
disagreement to which the Constitution does not speak. But Justice Kennedy
and the Court rejected that argument in the DOMA case today, just as they
rejected it ten years ago in Lawrence. By equating moral disapproval with
animus, the Court has effectively decreed the end of morals legislation, as
Justice Scalia accurately predicted in Lawrence. That’s why I would have
thought the writing was on the wall for the traditional definition of
marriage, and why I’m surprised that Justice Kennedy failed to vote with the
liberals in the Perry case today.
As for doctrinal persuasiveness: I would have preferred that the Court
decide Perry narrowly and on the merits, holding that California, having
granted a right, can’t take it away because of moral disapproval. That
holding would have been consistent with Justice Kennedy’s position in
Lawrence, and with the position he embraced in the DOMA case. But for
reasons known only to Kennedy, he failed to embrace that view. Perhaps some
future Bob Woodward will tell us why."
Jeffrey Rosen–––New Republic legal affairs editor and a Law Professor at George Washington U.
Does anyone else think the mad scramble by red state officials to immediately put in place schemes to suppress minority voting proves John Roberts' willfully obtuse sentiment that no such things go on anymore?
He hadn't even pocketed his glasses after declaring the VRA officially gutted before Texas Republicans started breaking out the hammers and saws to build walls and moats around polling places.
The truly hilarious thing (in a sort of nefarious way) about Shelby County being freed by Johnny and the Dwarfs from concerns about free and open elections is that the whole suit was brought in the first place not because Shelby officials felt themselves cleansed by the waters of integration, and belief in fair elections, but because the VRA precluded a town in the county from redrawing district lines with the express intention of suppressing minority voting.
Just think about that. That's like an investment bank that had been routinely defrauding its stockholders for decades demanding relief from fraud oversight.
And getting it.
This decision stinks to high heaven. No amount of posturing by the dwarfs and their allies on the right can disguise the ugly fact that this is a naked power play, pure and simple.
@P. D. Pepe: like Rosen, I am mystified by one of Kennedy's choices this term, but not on the Prop 8 case. Kennedy seems like a natural to uphold the Voting Rights Act. Unlike Johnny & the Wackos, Kennedy does not lack empathy.
At first, I was thinking that he decided to strike DOMA because he probably has a close friend or relative who is gay, & that caused him to realize that DOMA was ridiculous. A similar effect could have caused him to largely uphold Roe in Planned Parenthood v. Casey -- maybe he knew a woman or women who told him why they needed to have abortions.
But that wouldn't explain his decision in Brown v. Plata, the California prison case, where Kennedy told Jerry Brown to empty out those prisons on accounta inhumane crowding. Surely Kennedy isn't buddies with the small-time crack dealers & other hoodlums who have been or will be sent back out into the world. And those people -- let's face it -- aren't as sympathetic as minorities & students & old people who will lose the vote because of the Voting Act ruling.
If the Supremes are really living in the rarefied air of an ivory tower, as commentators have suggested, wouldn't they hold the right to vote as sacrosanct? Wouldn't they jump through hoops to make sure everybody has the vote? The only explanation that comes to my mind for Kennedy's vote in the Shelby County case is that it was partisan one: an effective effort to reduce Democratic votes. Because sometimes "too many" Democrats vote & you have to pull something embarrassing like Bush v. Gore.
Marie
Marie - Why did Kennedy do it? Justice Charles Evans Hughes explains (from Wikiquotes):
"At the constitutional level where we work, ninety percent of any decision is emotional. The rational part of us supplies the reasons for supporting our predilections."
Reported in Justice William O. Douglas, The Court Years (1980), p. 8.
Also, why does a dog lick his privates?
Because he can.
I have never seen Kennedy as compassionate nor any great legal mind. His singular driver is ego. The constant search for the spotlight and what he sees as burnishing his legacy. Were he not the swing vote, his tenure would be a minor footnote in history. Although I applaud that he clearly stated the legal foundation for the DOMA decision. The equal protection argument is obvious to most of us even without a law degree. I think Toobin captured Kennedy quite well in "The Nine". There's a whole anecdote about selecting the furnishings for his office that defines his character.
Here's a funny to brighten your day. A filly named "Downtown Hottie" threw her rider early on at Belmont and galloped across the finish first. Best "get off my back" attributed to a horse.
http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/the-turnstile/horse-throws-rider-goes-win-race-belmont-130603903.html
Diane,
Great link. Your "get off my back" zoomed me immediately back to my adolescence when my brothers and sister and I gorged ourselves on Bill Cosby's comedy albums one of which includes this gem of which your link reminded me. It's not long but still funny all these years later:
Lone Ranger, Tonto, and Silver
@ Akhilleus. I didn't remember that great Tonto, Lone Ranger bit but my sister, my dad and I listened to those albums over and over. When my younger brother came along (9 years after me, 16 years after my sister) our favorite thing to say to him was "the police are your mother and father", stolen straight from a Cosby album. Ironically, he became a cop.
Something I've been musing about for weeks (or longer) as the increasingly paternalistic and harsh views of the Republicans get louder and louder...it feels as though I'm reliving the 60's all over again. Rick Perry's remarks today toward Wendy Davis (and all women) were insulting and a reminder of past MCPs.
Take the abortion rights issues, the Huelscamp/ Perry et al crowd made me think of a 'pejorative' term that liberated femmes have rarely, barely used in years. MCP. Male Chauvinist Pig. Yeah, guess we thought they had managed to evolve these past decades. Back in the days of Germaine Greer, Betty Freidan, Gloria Steinem (still), I often marveled as feminist causes seemed to progress seemingly quickly (or is it time passing that makes me think that?) and more favorably. We made great strides. Men, I knew would joke and laugh and call themselves, MCPs—but, overall most seemed to see our rights & equality as the right thing. There are many, many guys who got it! Then and now. It's the ones who didn't — who are attempting to reboot the past.
I've wondered, if perhaps their 'cult' went underground, one that never made the transition. They could be a subset, or subspecies... MCPs like locusts! Could this be their 17-year cycle? Let's hope their noisy mating efforts are equally short-lived and unproductive!
Akhilleus: Yes, the Cosby is funny and The Lone Ranger is returning to the silver screen with, I'd guess, heap many production values that 50's TV never thought of. But for my money Johnny Depp will have a hard time doing a better Tonto than Jay Silverheels did, and as for the meaning of Kemosabe, here's what academics had to say about it, seriously.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2013/06/26/kemosabe_meaning_origin_and_history_of_tonto_s_word_in_lone_ranger.html