Politics

This article on Kerry’s defense votes is just something I want to have handy for later.

This shouldn’t come as any big surprise, but the world’s largest anthropological society says (original) that civilization does not in fact depend on limiting marriage to one man and one woman. The results of more than a century of anthropological research on households, kinship relationships, and families, across cultures and through time, provide no support whatsoever for the view that either civilization or viable social orders depend upon marriage as an exclusively heterosexual institution. Rather, anthropological research supports the conclusion that a vast array of family types, including families built upon same-sex partnerships, can contribute to stable and humane societies. ...

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 (original) 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 (original), who was court-martialed twice (once for hitting a non-com), and later got an honorable discharge (original). 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. ...

Saith Rex Hammock, upon meeting the President (original): 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 (original) 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. ...

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. ...

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. ...

Wisconsin is voting today. Kerry was polling (original) 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. ...

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 (original). 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. ...