Well, we all survived the number of the beast. (Ironic that debate on the Anti-Marriage Amendment was scheduled for that day. In that vein, maybe solid reasoning like this is the reason the amendment is moribund:
Likewise, [Sen. Wayne] Allard [R-CO] held a news conference Monday at which the speakers said they wanted to reduce the "epidemic level of fatherlessness in America."
"How would outlawing gay marriage encourage heterosexual fathers to stick around?" was the first question.
Allard skirted the question by saying that "laws send a message to our children."
The moderator, Matt Daniels of the Alliance for Marriage, tried to find a question on another subject. But when reporters continued to press Allard on the link between same-sex marriage and deadbeat dads, Daniels blurted out: "All right, you know what? We're going to call this press conference to a close."
Now, that's class.)
Link dump, mostly:
The Best Way to Win
is to control who votes. If you thought Robert F. Kennedy's article about Republican vote fraud was alarmist, read this at FDL.
The Culture of Death:
Another rabid right mantra. Rendered by Ramesh Ponnorus as "The Party of Death" -- it's all about liberals, the destroyers of western civilization. This comes from people, mind you, who worship a dead man and practice symbolic cannibalism.
Presidential Power Grab:
Read this post by Glenn Greenwald, and this update by Hume's Ghost on the fact that the country has finally figured out the naked Bush/Cheney (and there's an image -- eew!) power grab of the past five years.
Someone Else
has figured this out, too. See this post by Hume's Ghost on the Christianists' attitude toward American democracy:
The Religious Right is a political movement that is inherently anti-democratic. The Dominionists and Reconstructionists which lead the movement understand that the democratic institutions which safeguard our civil liberties - the seperation of church/state and the seperation of powers between branches of government - stand in the way of their plan (given voice by D. James Kennedy) to:
"... exercise godly dominion and influence over our neighborhoods, our schools, our government, our literature and arts, our sports arenas, our entertainment media, our news media, our scientific endeavors -- in short, over every aspect and institution of human society."
Listen to the language being used to defend the passage of the anti-gay marriage amendment, and you will notice it's about protecting American values from "activist courts" run by "unelected" judges. The use of these terms is like blowing a dog whistle which the Religious Right can hear the message of, but most Americans can not. They understand that an independent judiciary, which was described by Alexander Hamilton in Federalist #78 "as the citadel of the public justice and the public security", is the last line of defense preventing them from achieving their theocratic goals. It just so happens that getting rid of an independent judiciary which can serve as a check on the legislative or executive branch by providing oversight also fits the purposes of neoconservatives and cultist/political religion conservatives.
Update:
It turns out that reader e-mail at Andrew Sullivan that I mentioned yesterday (Dog and Pony Show, Part I) was from Spencer Wendes at LeftCoastBreakdown.
Faith-Based:
Marty Lederman updates a case I had been following for a while:
Finally, the court-ordered relief runs not only against the state, but also against Prison Fellowship and InnerChange, which are ordered to pay back more than $1.5 million in money that they have received from the state. In ordering this remedy, the court appears to have been strongly influenced by the fact that the constitutional questions here were not difficult ones, and that the defendants, "well-financed and sophisticated entities who know every contour of First Amendment law," had "retained experienced, knowledgeable legal counsel that should have been aware of the constitutional risks associated with state funding of InnerChange."
That last part is key -- the point is, they don't care about the First Amendment issues (see previous item). In fact, they're trying to get around them.
OK -- I'm going to spend today taking it easy, maybe do a little gardening, catch up on a couple of reviews, and just enjoy the beautiful summer weather. (I know it's not summer yet, but no one told the weather systems over the Midwest -- you learn to play it as it lays.)
Later. . . .
No comments:
Post a Comment