Category: Politics

The mayor of New Paltz, New York is about to start performing gay marriages.

The story highlights an important aspect of this issue: namely, that the New York state constitution does not specify marriage as being between a man and a woman. Nor does the Massachusetts state constitution. The Massachusetts SJC, like the mayor of New Paltz, are in fact taking strict constructionist approaches to interpreting the law. Does the state constitution say that marriage is restricted to one man and one woman? If not, by strict constructionist doctrine, it is not.

Roy Moore is thinking about running for President. That makes Bush’s decision to hold tight on a marriage amendment all the more risky. There’s no guarantee that the radical right will vote for Bush if there’s a more attractive fringe candidate out there. (Via Oliver Willis.)

George Bush, of course, got an honorable discharge from the National Guard, which should erase any question of wrongdoing while he was in the Guard. Sorta like John Muhammad, who was court-martialed twice (once for hitting a non-com), and later got an honorable discharge. The Fox News story says the honorable discharge can’t be confirmed, but the AP story and the ABC News story linked above both claim to have a source for that portion of the tale.

Via Matt Lavine, who keeps track of right-wing dog injuries. He also once summarized a post of mine as noting “that absence of evidence about absence might not mean evidence of absence, but that there is evidence which already shows absence by the absence of evidence of presence. Yeah!” Which is an accurate summary and you gotta love that.

Saith Rex Hammock, upon meeting the President:

He is definitely not a wonk, but he knows clearly what he believes needs to happen for the country and its eocnomy to prosper. I don’t think the circular arguments regarding “what ifs” and “what abouts” interest him.

Rexblog is kind of neat, actually — he’s a small business owner in the magazine industry. I like the focused special interest blogs that never get any attention most of the time. And I like publishing.

Gotta say, though. Bush doesn’t like what ifs and what abouts, huh? Who’d’ve guessed?

The media that has convinced many people that John Kerry is a dull and boring campaigner is the exact same media that convinced a lot of people that Dean was a dangerous scary angry man. Kerry did not win Iowa by accident; he won Iowa by having a kick-ass machine on the ground and by campaigning his heart out and by attracting people on his own merits.

It wasn’t media. The media wrote him off as dead. The media storyline challenger for Dean was Clark.

Bush is raising lots of money? Eeek. Didn’t someone just prove that the money leader doesn’t always win elections? Oh, yeah, that was Kerry.

Me, I liked Dean better than Kerry, but right now? I wouldn’t put money on Bush against Carol Mosley Braun. The funniest thing in the world is watching the Democrats maneuver Bush into bragging about job growth, cause every time Bush says there are more jobs, another few unemployed people get pissed off. Kofi Annan is carefully setting Bush up: you think he doesn’t know that the Iraqi Shi’ites aren’t going to tolerate anything other than direct elections? The next step is a UN recommendation that we wait until December or so to hand over power.

The National Guard story tested really well, and now it’s going to go back to sleep until someone trundles it back out in August or so. Plame may yet be an issue. Some of Bush’s base is losing faith with every day Bush fails to call for a DOMA Constitutional amendment, while a quiet plurality of Americans are wondering why they should care if two guys want to get married. The Senate document theft thing isn’t going away just yet. And the White House press briefings are getting brutal.

It’s going to be a very rough 2004 for the President.

Huh, my predictions weren’t too bad. Kerry took 40% of the votes in Wisconsin; Edwards took 34%, and Dean took 18%. I underestimated the Edwards surge again. The undecided voters went for Edwards in a big way.

This is no doubt energizing for the Edwards campaign; he’ll be in at least until March 10th. Super Tuesday will tell us a lot. He’s not going to take on Dean as his Vice President, and if he does he’ll lose — you don’t want a VP who’s going to draw controversy and in some ways outshine you. Dean will also have more influence if he converts his campaign into a 527 and becomes a political center for grassroots populism, so I’m not sure Dean would bite on that either.

When expectations for the March 10th primaries settle, Edwards will know what he needs to do to sustain his candidacy.

Addendum: Al Giordano thinks it comes down to New York. He’s been right before.

Wisconsin is voting today. Kerry was polling way high. Figure in the Edwards surge, and Kerry wins with Edwards coming in second by a decent margin (I’d say he beats Dean by around 5 percentage points).

Edwards sticks in the race till Super Tuesday to see if he can beat Kerry head to head. It wouldn’t surprise me if Edwards wins Georgia, but that’s the only Southern state on March 2nd. If Edwards wins Georgia and still has money flowing, he may keep it going till March 9th to take advantage of a Southern slate of primaries. If Edwards surprises everyone, which is possible, he could catch fire.

Dean is set up to make a long term political difference if he can keep his organization in motion. I’ll be watching closely. I don’t think he’s going to stay in the race after today, however.

Warning: the post ahead touches upon devil’s advocacy regarding recent gay rights events in San Francisco.

Dan Gillmor wonders whether the Mayor of San Francisco should be ordering city clerks to disobey the law. Larry Lessig chimes in. His argument is that the executive branch has a duty to disobey unconstitutional laws. I find myself pensive. Ashcroft and Bush no doubt feel that it is unconstitutional to force them to provide counsel to Jose Padillo.

I am also not convinced by the McCain-Feingold argument. There is a distinct difference between vetoing an unconstitutional law and refusing to obey one after it has become law.

Perhaps the last paragraph saves the argument:

“One critical caveat: The rule of law requires some coordination. So if a court decides that a law is constitutional, while an executive has the right to disagree, and even push to have the decision changed, it is important that the executive follow the law at least with respect to that case.”

But we do not say “Well, Bush is wrong, but it’s all right for him to make that decision until the courts overrule him.” We say “He should never have done that.”

Elsewhere, there’s the obvious comparison to Roy Moore:

“The fact is, Newsom has a duty to uphold the law, as Moore did as a judge. If he is not willing to do that, he can resign in protest. That would have been the truly principled thing to do. He could have also issued a proclamation that he thinks gay marriage would be a good thing, and his office could even issue a proclamation that he considers all those couples to be married, even if the law doesn’t allow it, and give all those couples copies to put on their walls.”

And yes, Newsom is violating his oath of office. No less so than Roy Moore, unless you think Newsom’s oath is less meaningful than Justice Moore’s. Of course, most of the people using this line of argument didn’t disapprove of what Roy Moore did.

It’s not that I disapprove of what Newsom did, because I don’t. I’m glad he did it. It’s that my approval for Newsom’s actions forces me to reconsider my disapproval for Roy Moore’s actions. I do not have a dispassionate argument for approving of the one while disapproving of the other. Neither does the guy quoted above, unless he was saying that Moore should have resigned.

Schoolhouse Rock had best never return to the airwaves. It would be far too complicated.

The Fog of War blew me away. Unexpected, revelatory, all that good stuff. Mostly just plain compelling. Errol Morris got Robert McNamara to open up about a lot of his life, albeit not as much as one might like about Vietnam, and it’s really just a gripping picture of a man who was under immense pressure and who made mistakes.

I can’t say it answered many questions. MacNamara comes about this close to saying he screwed up Vietnam, but he doesn’t really get deeply into the matter — which is interesting, considering that he flat out says he acted immorally in World War II. Vietnam is closer to him, for some reason. It framed some questions for me: was MacNamara a man with a finely developed ethical sense who acted against that sense out of loyalty to Johnson and Kennedy? Was he a man with a finely developed ethical sense who had an easy time ignoring that ethical sense in order to achieve the desired goals?

He’s not really giving us many clues. He may be lying, or not.

Still, it’s a portrait of regret whether or not it’s a portrait of mendacity. How often do you hear a former Secretary of Defense say he may have been a war criminal?

It’s still my opinion that The Passion of the Christ is going to bring the fanatics out of the woodwork. It looks as though it may also enable David Neiwert’s transmission process. Over on Ain’t It Cool News, Harry printed a defense of The Passion by Rabbi Daniel Lapin, who he describes as “a well known zealot type is known to do some pretty wild right wing things that I completely do not approve of.”

Well, yeah. Rabbi Lapin is of the camp that believes there’s a civil war in this country that may need to be settled by force:

“First of all, [there’s] the matter of the little battle that must be fought, just as it was in the 19th century.” There were, and are, “two incompatible moral visions for this country. We had to settle it then. We’re going to have to settle it now. I hope not with blood, not with guns, but we’re going to have to settle it nonetheless. The good news is that I think our side is finally ready to settle it. Roll up its sleeves, take off its jacket, and get a little bloody. Spill a little blood. We’ll settle it. And we’ll win. And then there’s no holding us back.”

OK, so what? Does this mean his opinions on the movie aren’t worth printing?

Not in and of itself, but Rabbi Lapin’s argument is that Jewish leaders have only hurt themselves by protesting the movie, and that they were motivated by hatred for Christianity. The sum total of his commentary about the movie itself is two paragraphs in which he claims that “The movie will one day be seen as a harbinger of America’s third great religious reawakening.”

It’s not a piece about the movie. He’s simply using the movie as an excuse to write about his perceptions of the Jewish establishment.

Harry Knowles is providing a platform for a right-wing fanatic who encourages — if necessary — spilling blood in order to advance the cause of a theocratic America. Said fanatic is using that platform to advance his cause, with only a half-nod to the putative topic of movies. He writes about the controversy surrounding The Passion, not the movie itself.

Harry let him in because Harry loved the movie — unsurprisingly, since it’s a brilliant piece of filmmaking — and he wants to give others a chance to defend it. And that’s exactly how Neiwert’s transmissions work. The fanatics find common ground and use it as a springboard.