Yes, you really did just hear that gaffe. Here is the question: Did a Democratic Member of Congress just gaffe up really, really badly in one direction, or the other?
Translation: Did he botch, or tip, it?
Category Archives: Law
Louisiana: Helping Build Family Values … and Families
Begging your pardon, there are certain things we need to make clear. Let us start with two paragraphs from Judge Edward D. Rubin that bear actual life-altering influence:
The court grants the Petitioners’ Motion for Summary Judgment and denies the Defendants’ Motion for Summary Judgment. It hereby declares that La. Const. Article XII, Section 15 (the Defense of Marriage Act/DOMA) and La. Civil Code Articles 86, 89, and 3520(B) are unconstitutional because they violate the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and Article IV, Section 1, the Full faith and Credit Clause of the United States Constitution. Louisiana’s Revenue Bulletin No. 13-024 (9/13/13) is likewise declared unconstitutional as it violates the petitioners’ rights guaranteed by the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Hence, Tim Barfield in his official capacity as the Secretary of the State of Louisiana Department of Revenue, is hereby ordered to act in accordance with this court’s ruling and allow the petitioners to file their state tax returns as a couple whose marriage is valid and recognized in Louisiana. The court hereby enjoins the state from enforcing the above referenced laws to the extent that these laws prohibit a person from marrying another person of the same sex. Additionally, having ruled that the petitioners’ marriage shall be recognized by the state of Louisiana, it follows that Angela Marie Costanza has satisfied the requirement of stepparent under the provisions of La. Ch. C. article 1243, which allows for intrafamily adoption. The court reaffirms its previous decision in Adoption of (__) which declared Angela Costanza’s adoption of (__) to be in the child’s best interest. The minor child, (__), is declared, for all purposes to be the child of petitioner, Angela Marie Costanza to the same extent as if (__) had been born to Angela Costanza in marriage. As such, the court further orders Devin George in his official capacity of the State’s Registrar of Vital Records, to issue a new birth certificate naming Angela Costanza as (__)’s mother.
The State of Louisiana is hereby ordered to recognize the Petitioners’ marriage validly contracted in California as lawful in this state, pursuant to the Full Faith and Credit guaranteed by Article IV, Section 1 of the United States Constitution.
This is what it looks like when justice comes.
There is, of course, a backstory.
Ghosts in the Making
When it was Trayvon Martin, I pitched a fit.
Michael Brown? Not so much.
It’s fair to ask why, and the answer is to simply look at what is going on in Ferguson, Missouri. The twenty-one thousand plus residents have seen their city torn to pieces, body and soul, as protesters and police battle over the murder of an unarmed black man by a city police officer whose record includes being fired as part of another small police department in Jennings, Missouri, that was disbanded by its city council for being so corrupt and generally awful. The town is in chaos; residents are intervening to slow the most vocal protesters, and are also reportedly attempting to prevent media from covering the events. Ferguson has become the latest incarnation of our nation’s sick heritage of deadly racism, emerged as a symbol of our dark slide toward militarized police, and found itself the butt of one of the worst jokes on the planet after a protester tweeted a comparison of the situation there to what is going on in Palestine, and instead of being indignant the Palestinians tweeted back with good-faith advice.
I first addressed the death of Trayvon Martin with friends on March 13, 2012, some weeks after the George Zimmerman stalked and pursued him for no good reason, shooting the seventeen year-old to death and then claiming self-defense. And when I first mentioned it, I did not expect what was coming. Certes, my gorge rose to learn the story, but like so many Americans the idea that an apparently murdered black man will die under the presumption that he needed to be shot just did not seem all that unusual. That is to say, like many I expected Trayvon Martin would become another forgotten lamb.
And, yes, I was wrong.
This time, the nation did not wait weeks. Before the name Michael Brown finished echoing after the first wave of press coverage the town was beseiged by chaos. Screaming and shouting from my evergreen corner of the country really doesn’t do me or anyone else any good.
And, yet, Justice still seems nearly destined for disappointing failure.
Quote of the Day: Benen on Republicans and the Ten Commandments
The larger point is that some conservatives are so eager to have government extend official support to their religious beliefs that they’re willing to argue that their sacred texts have no religious value at all. It’s ironic, in a way – it’s tempting to think opponents of religion would want to strip sacred texts of their spiritual significance. Here we have the opposite.
Yes, it comes to this.
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Benen, Steve. “This Week in God, 8.23.14”. msnbc. 23 August 2014.
What He Said
Certes, ’tis true that I am not one who generally appreciates certain modern shorthand, such as ^ ^, +1, or, shudder m’soul, ditto. Then again, Ryan Grim made the point many felt viscerally as the news broke.
The Court has basically just given up any attempt at coherence. It's just raw power. #HobbyLobby #HarrisvQuinn
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Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) June 30, 2014Still, though, it’s hard to not nod grimly (ha!) and think, “Yeah … what he said.”
This America Is Brought To You By ….
Via that blessed scourge otherwise known as Facebook comes a lovely gem that everyone should grab a local copy of, and hang onto until the 2016 presidential race. Some things really are that important.
(Tip o’the hat to D.P.)
Dave Granlund on Eric Holder
Make what you will of this one.
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Dave Granlund, August 12, 2013. Via Cagle Post)
Conservative Irony: Update
“And this is why we might suggest conservatives don’t do irony well. Sometimes it really does seem like a bad joke, when equality means supremacy, and freedom means the power to strip others of their rights.”
—B.D.
Just a brief update on the NCLP, a moronic cohort who believe physical fitness is a religion.
A San Diego Superior Court judge rejected a claim Monday by parents in the Encinitas elementary school system that teaching yoga in the schools is an improper attempt at religious indoctrination.
The ruling by Judge John Meyer, who heard the case without a jury, means that the Encinitas Union School District can continue to teach yoga as part of a health and exercise curriculum.
Dean Broyles, president and attorney for the Escondido-based National Center for Law and Policy, had filed a lawsuit on behalf of a couple with two children in the school system. The suit sought to have the program ousted as a violation of state law prohibiting the teaching of religion in public schools.
Broyles said having yoga in the schools “represents a serious breach of the public trust.”
But Meyer sided with the school district’s explanation that it has taken out any references to Hinduism and its liturgical language, Sanskrit. Yoga, the judge said, is similar to other exercise programs like dodgeball ….
…. “We are not instructing anyone in religious dogma,” Baird said. “Yoga is very mainstream.”
Yoga supporters noted that it is used at the Naval Medical Center in San Diego to help military personnel wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan recover from injuries and regain self-confidence.
But Broyles said he “strongly disagrees with the judge’s ruling on the facts and the law.” During the trial he insisted that yoga poses are integrally linked to religious and spiritual beliefs.
“This case is simply about whether public schools may entangle themselves with religious organizations like the Jois Foundation and use the state’s coercive powers to promote a particular religious orthodoxy or religious agenda to young and impressionable schoolchildren,” Broyles said after Monday’s ruling.
(Perry)
It’s worth noting that Judge Meyer criticized the NCLP suit, noting the inaccurate information that seems to have come from dubious internet sources. “It’s almost like trial by Wikipedia,” Meyer admonished, “which isn’t what this court does.”
But, as usual, the idea of facts don’t matter to Christian fanatics like Dean Broyles.
Conservative irony
Politically conservative groups in the U.S. don’t do irony very well. Or, as Rob Boston noted last month:
Religious Right groups spend a lot of time beating on church-state separation. TV preacher Pat Robertson once called that constitutional principle “a lie of the left” and said it comes from the old Soviet Constitution.
Not to be outdone, Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association asserted that Adolf Hitler invented church-state separation
Others have been less hyperbolic but have still made it clear that they’re no fans of the handiwork of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.
Take Alan Sears, for example. Sears runs the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the nation’s largest Religious Right legal group. He once called the church-state wall “artificial.”
Funny, though, how that “artificial” wall that the Religious Right tells us over and over doesn’t exist and was never intended by the Founding Fathers can come in handy sometimes – like when the right wing wants to attack yoga in public schools.
In Encinitas, Calif., an attorney named Dean Broyles has filed suit against the Encinitas Union School District, asserting that a voluntary yoga program for students violates church-state separation. Broyles runs a small legal outfit called the National Center for Law and Policy, which, according to its website, defends “faith, family and freedom.”
Broyles is proud of his association with the ADF and notes that he “has received extensive training in pro-family, pro-life and pro-religious liberty matters at ADF’s outstanding National Litigation Academies (NLA). Because of Dean’s pro-bono work, he was invited to receive special training at ADF’s advanced NLA. Dean is proud to be an ADF affiliate attorney and member of ADF’s honor guard.”
Was Broyles asleep when Sears explained that separation of church and state doesn’t exist? How else can we explain his use of the principle in this lawsuit?
‘Tis a fine question.
You’ve Got To Be Kidding! (#2)
Let us simply go with the Associated Press:
An African-American nurse claims that a Michigan hospital agreed to a man’s request that no black nurses care for his newborn.
Tonya Battle tells the Detroit Free Press she “didn’t even know how to react” when she learned about the request from the father in October at Hurley Medical Center in Flint. The Flint Journal reports Ms. Battle sued last month in Genesee Circuit Court ….
…. Battle’s lawsuit claims a note was posted on an assignment clipboard reading, “No African American nurse to take care of baby.” She says that later was removed, but claims black nurses weren’t assigned to care for the baby for about a month because of their race ….
…. The Free Press said the lawsuit recounted how the neonatal intensive care nurse was at the infant’s bedside when a man came in and she requested to see the hospital-issued identification wrist band given to parents of patients. The man responded that ” … I need to see your supervisor.”
A supervising nurse spoke with the father who told him he didn’t want African-Americans to care for his child; the supervising nurse, reports the Free Press, also told Battle that he appeared to have a swastika tatoo on his arm.
“What flashed in my mind is ‘What’s next?’ A note on the water fountain that says ‘No blacks’? Or a note on the bathroom that says ‘No blacks’?” Battle told the Free Press.
Sometimes, there are no words that suffice, so the relevant critique comes from Rev. Charles E. Williams II, president of the Michigan chapter of the National Action Network: “There is growing concern around the country about how this could be in 2013.”
B.D.'s Last Refuge 