Category: politics/law

election year politics

Last week Pennsylvania legislators introduced an amendment to the state constitution to ban gay marriage. Since 1996 there has been a statutory ban in place, but anti-gay advocates have apparently been scared by a Baltimore court’s decision to overturn a Maryland state ban.

The proposed amendment would insert the following into the state constitution:

Only a marriage between one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage in this Commonwealth, and neither the Commonwealth nor any of its political subdivisions shall create or recognize a legal status identical or substantially equivalent to that of marriage for unmarried individuals.

The bill is co-sponsored by some ridiculous number of legislators, including, I’m sorry to say, mine. The Pennsylvania Gay and Lesbian Alliance has an easy way to send a message to your representative.

As every news outlet is saying, this is probably just election year politics that won’t go anywhere. But let’s remind our elected representatives that this kind of play doesn’t fly.

born to rule?

Quoting a line from Bruce Springsteen, a rock singer admired by Alito, [Senator Durbin] said, “The ‘crushing hand of fate’ here seems to always come down against the workers and the consumers and in favor of these established institutions and corporations.” (The Washington Post)

There’s something weird about entering an era in which Supreme Court Justices listen to rock music.

kitzmiller verdict

Issued today in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District:

For the reasons that follow, we hold that the ID Policy is unconstitutional pursuant to the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution and Art. I, § 3 of the Pennsylvania Constitution.

I haven’t read the whole opinion yet (it’s 139 pages long!), but here’s CNN’s take on it, and here’s a link to download the opinion yourself.

the right way to admit you were wrong

I applaud the espoused sentiment behind this column by John Edwards in today’s Washington Post. He writes:

It was a mistake to vote for this war in 2002. I take responsibility for that mistake. It has been hard to say these words because those who didn’t make a mistake — the men and women of our armed forces and their families — have performed heroically and paid a dear price.

I think this is the right direction to go with the rhetoric — focusing on “We made a mistake, how can we recover from it?” rather than “Who tricked us into this?” It’s also a good alternative to the administration’s stance, which appears to be, “There was no mistake and everything’s dandy. Quick — look over there.”

Edwards proposes a three-fold plan that includes reducing our military presence in Iraq, implementing a “more effective training program for Iraqi forces,” and pursuing “a serious diplomatic process that brings the world into this effort.” I think these are good ideas — although I don’t know about reducing our military presence before replacing troops with competent Iraqi forces — but can they actually be implemented? I mean, they sound like the same ideas that have been there all along, which makes me think either the administration hasn’t even tried, or implementation is impossible. Or, I suppose, that the current leadership isn’t competent but someone else could do it.

It seems to me that the broad ideas are covered — although, as I mentioned, it is good to hear a Dem accepting responsibility for a mistake and at least saying that he wants to move on to focus on a solution — but specifics are, as always, lacking. What does a more effective training program look like? How can we convince other countries to get involved?

I certainly don’t have any ideas, and it’s probably naive of me to ask a politician to offer any real solutions, but all of this — the blame game, the acceptance of responsibility, the statement of broad objectives without steps for how to achieve them — still won’t help.

vote your deepest values

From the Washington Post:

The Internal Revenue Service has warned a prominent liberal church that it could lose its tax-exempt status because of an anti-war sermon a guest preacher gave on the eve of the 2004 presidential election, according to church officials.

So…enlisting churches to help with the re-election of the president is okay.

Giving a sermon about the fundamental tenets of Christianity — “Thou shalt not kill” and all that — is not?

I’m not sure about The Middle America Chronicle’s assertion that as long as a church “doesn’t specifically say “Vote Republican” or “Elect Democrats,” it shouldn’t be intimidated by the IRS,” but certainly a church’s tax-exempt status shouldn’t be called into question simply for preaching a sermon that extrapolates values to real world issues.

The sermon is archived on the church’s website. It is certainly critical of Bush, and does say things like, “When you go into the voting booth on Tuesday, take with you all that you know about Jesus, the peacemaker. Take all that Jesus means to you. Then vote your deepest values.” At no point, though, does it actually endorse Kerry or any part of his “plan”.

Clearly I’m not an expert on tax-exempt rules, and I am probably a bit biased in this particular case, but I think this is okay. It’s certainly a far cry from paying for an advertisement, which the Post cites as an example of activity conducted by a church that previously lost its status. And I’m sure there were much more blatant endorsements coming from less prominent pulpits that Sunday.

meager little great paradigm shift

I’m posting from Gathering Grounds, a coffeehouse here in Westminster. It’s a cute little place, consisting of four tables, four couches, and more high school outcasts than I’ve seen since the Wire. It’s nothing like the Wire, except that it does seem to be a “gathering ground” for the aforementioned teenagers. It’s pretty low key and relatively quiet, and no one seems to be doing anything remotely close to crazy. But anyway, I should be working on my novel.

I just wanted to draw your attention to this article about the close of the Dover Intelligent Design trial. The Washington Post also pointed out a few days ago that the Dover school board is up for re-election on Tuesday. I’ll be interested to see how that turns out.

stuck in the middle with you, babe

Here’s an interesting take on the current landscape. While I haven’t read anything else by this guy, and have the feeling our perspectives diverge, he (and, perhaps, more relevantly, Bull Moose) raises an important issue. Does the Democratic party really want to cast itself as being gullible and easily manipulated?

Clearly there was misinformation in the months leading up to the war, and it certainly appears that the Bush administration was gathering and presenting information with a clear objective of going into Iraq. But can the Democrats really claim that they weren’t at all responsible for what happened? And how would we be feeling about this if things in Iraq had gone more smoothly?