One long, heavy sigh.

robot-heart-politics:

thesmarttart:

In 2005, the state of Texas adopted an amendment to its Constitution that said marriage in the state could only be between one man and one woman. The amendment also declared: “This state or a political subdivision of this state may not create or recognize any legal status identical or similar to marriage.” Now, Barbara Ann Radnofsky, a Houston lawyer and Democratic candidate for attorney general, is saying that the second section effectively “eliminates marriage in Texas”:

She calls it a “massive mistake” and blames the current attorney general, Republican Greg Abbott, for allowing the language to become part of the Texas Constitution. Radnofsky called on Abbott to acknowledge the wording as an error and consider an apology. She also said that another constitutional amendment may be necessary to reverse the problem. “You do not have to have a fancy law degree to read this and understand what it plainly says,” said Radnofsky, who will be at Texas Christian University today as part of a five-city tour to kick off her campaign.

Abbott’s spokesman Jerry Strickland replied to Radnofsky’s charge by saying, “The Texas Constitution and the marriage statute are entirely constitutional.” This isn’t the first time the reach of the second section has been questioned. Before the amendment passed, a group called Save Texas Marriage warned that a judge could potentially void all marriages in the state if the language became part of the Texas Constitution.

Oh, Texas…

I just got this sent to me by Barbara Ann Radnofsky on FB. She really want to become the Tx Att Gen, but where does she stand on gay marriage/Civil Unions. Does she want better wording in the amendment just to win over votes or does she care about the issue of witholding a group of people certain rights?

I think civil rights is important ya’ll.

There seems to be a talking point that with the restructuring of health-care in America and the involvement of a public option the cost of health insurance will go up.

1. Doesn’t this happen anyway, I mean insurance companies have raised the cost of insurance faster than the average rate of inflation without any sort of reform. (source)

2. Before his debate got rolling people would talk about those who are uninsured raise the cost of insurance on others akin to car insurance. Now many against HC reform have said that reform will raise costs even with the potential of a mandate in the bills. The insurance companies are about to get a massive influx of new customers even with a public option in place.

There should be no reason for prices to go unless you account for outright greed. I mean, yes, the bills are going to try and reduce the practices of denying coverage for those with pre-existing conditions and the denial/dropping of coverage of those with major (i.e. costly) health issues, but with this frakking mandate (I don’t like it but it will do wonders of offsetting costs) the insurance companies will have a ample supply of healthy bodies to charge up the butt and the public option will help many of those how are struggling financially to have an affordable plan.

3. The CBO still needs to punch the numbers on Reid’s bill but so far projections say this refrom spending over 10 years will help reduce the deficit by a couple billion. This is coupled with the overhauls the government will make in the budget to make room for HC reform. so yes we are still spending more than we would have without reform but hey we get more people affordable health-care, which i think won’t end up giving us a case of buyers remorse.

unburyingthelead:

It’s not often that an appellate court decision reflects so vividly what a country has become, but such is the case with yesterday’s ruling by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Arar v. Ashcroft (.pdf).  Maher Arar is both a Canadian and Syrian citizen of Syrian descent.  A telecommunications engineer and graduate of Montreal’s McGill University, he has lived in Canada since he’s 17 years old.  In 2002, he was returning home to Canada from vacation when, on a stopover at JFK Airport, he was (a) detained by U.S. officials, (b) accused of being a Terrorist, (c) held for two weeks incommunicado and without access to counsel while he was abusively interrogated, and then (d) was “rendered” — despite his pleas that he would be tortured — to Syria, to be interrogated and tortured.  He remained in Syria for the next 10 months under the most brutal and inhumane conditions imaginable, where he was repeatedly tortured.  Everyone acknowledges that Arar was never involved with Terrorism and was guilty of nothing.  I’ve appended to the end of this post the graphic description from a dissenting judge of what was done to Arar while in American custody and then in Syria.

In January, 2007, the Canadian Prime Minister publicly apologized to Arar for the role Canada played in these events, and the Canadian government paid him $9 million in compensation.  That was preceded by a full investigation by Canadian authorities and the public disclosure of a detailed report which concluded “categorically that there is no evidence to indicate that Mr. Arar has committed any offense or that his activities constituted a threat to the security of Canada.”  By stark and very revealing contrast, the U.S. Government has never admitted any wrongdoing or even spoken publicly about what it did; to the contrary, it repeatedly insisted that courts were barred from examining the conduct of government officials because what we did to Arar involves “state secrets” and because courts should not interfere in the actions of the Executive where national security is involved.  What does that behavioral disparity between the two nations say about how “democratic,” ”accountable,” and “open” the United States is?

Yesterday, the Second Circuit — by a vote of 7-4 — agreed with the government and dismissed Arar’s case in its entirety.  It held that even if the government violated Arar’s Constitutional rights as well as statutes banning participation in torture, he still has no right to sue for what was done to him.  Why?  Because “providing a damages remedy against senior officials who implement an extraordinary rendition policy would enmesh the courts ineluctably in an assessment of the validity of the rationale of that policy and its implementation in this particular case, matters that directly affect significant diplomatic and national security concerns” (p. 39).  In other words, government officials are free to do anything they want in the national security context — even violate the law and purposely cause someone to be tortured — and courts should honor and defer to their actions by refusing to scrutinize them.

Reflecting the type of people who fill our judiciary, the judges in the majority also invented the most morally depraved bureaucratic requirements for Arar to proceed with his case and then claimed he had failed to meet them.  Arar did not, for instance, have the names of the individuals who detained and abused him at JFK, which the majority said he must have.  As Judge Sack in dissent said of that requirement:  it “means government miscreants may avoid [] liability altogether through the simple expedient of wearing hoods while inflicting injury“ (p. 27; emphasis added).

The commentary about this case from Harper’s Scott Horton perfectly captures the depravity of what our Government has done — and continues to do — to Arar.  His analysis should be read in its entirety, and he concludes with this:

When the history of the Second Circuit is written, the Arar decision will have a prominent place. It offers all the historical foresight of Dred Scott, in which the Court rallied to the cause of slavery, and all the commitment to constitutional principle of the Slaughter-House Cases, in which the Fourteenth Amendment was eviscerated. The Court that once affirmed that those who torture are the “enemies of all mankind” now tells us that U.S. government officials can torture without worry, because the security of our state might some day depend upon it.

I want to add one principal point to all of this.  This is precisely how the character of a country becomes fundamentally degraded when it becomes a state in permanent war.  So continuous are the inhumane and brutal acts of government leaders that the citizens completely lose the capacity for moral outrage and horror.  The permanent claims of existential threats from an endless array of enemies means that secrecy is paramount, accountability is deemed a luxury, and National Security trumps every other consideration — even including basic liberties and the rule of law.  Worst of all, the President takes on the attributes of a protector-deity who can and must never be questioned lest we prevent him from keeping us safe.

[Emphasis in last paragraph mine.]

I don’t even have the time to express how fucked up this is and how America’s quest for security has effectively begun to dismantle our freedoms.

The numbers from last nights vote on the House health-care bill of the Democrats who voted against the measure. I understand if you oppose a measure for a legitimate reason but more or less the way Washington works is that the congresspeople are really just watching out for their seats and apart from the blue dogs the others were either freshman Dems who won their seats from Republicans last year or those who had McCain win their district in the election.

I can see the same method played by the GOP as a whole, the party is moving away from the center and many are starting to label moderates as leftist (in reality they are on the left of those who are farther right but we all get what I’m trying to say). I can see this as a way to redefine the values the GOP wants to present to the public. Those who dwell in the political grey are being cast off by the GOP and the Dems who have conservative leanings are also getting shaken up when they don’t fall in line.

When there are major gains by one side the other usually goes through a period of redefinition which lasts until the next round of elections. We have seen the Democracts haggle more now with a ‘supermajority’ then when spread was pretty much half-half.

If there isn’t universal coverage then I say FUCK the mandate. Premiums will supposedly go down when the insurance industries get the huge influx of Americans without insurance but then who is to stop them from dictating market price like they already do, and how will they work out the whole denial of coverage or plan drops that the insurance companies already do.

Right now R’s want scant reforms at most and a large portion of the D’s don’t want drastic reform because they either have big pharm filling their pockets or trying to save their seat in a contested district.