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Whether the White House is politically brilliant or not, they accomplished a respectable job of keeping Tim Russert occupied for this week. With his dry boring tone and insistence on sticking to the talking points, Josh Bolton delivered an utterly unremarkable performance on Meet the Press this past weekend. Baring Mr. Bolton occupying 20 minutes of Tim’s time, Tim may have given a voice to any number of political opportunists to continue hammering the administration’s handling of the war on terrorism and the middle east. Bravo, well played.

Reasoning that heterosexual marriages are more tenuous and that children produced as a consequence of such marriages deserve better than the “all too often causal or temporary” nature of such relationships, the New York State Court of Appeals finds that opposite-sex couples need an incentive.  By which they mean in comparison to the same-sex couples who, having all too stable relationships, and who “do not become parents as a result of accident or impulse” should be refused the right to marry.  It makes perfect sense that the State of New York might encourage the deadbeat dads and underage moms to marry happily ever after by pointing at the gay couple across the street who can only dream of being afforded the many “undisputed benefits of marriage.”

Or maybe the court should stop “could”-ing and “might”-ing as to the intent of the state legislature or drop the misconception that “it is better, other things being equal, for children to grow up with both a mother and a father” and realize that it is a fallacy to deny same-sex couples the right to marry on the basis of the prejudiced perception that any children such couples may adopt or birth are somehow at risk.  The court is effectively citing as reason against same-sex marriage that it is better for a child to grow up in an orphanage or a series of foster homes than with two mothers or two fathers.  Is it possible that the generalizations on which the court based its decision are a result of statistical averaging and not a function of any real world research?  The court should find error in its own argument as it claims to have insufficient experience in the quality of child rearing in same sex households.

Such inconsistencies regarding studies of same-sex parents are self serving as the court claims that “what they show, at most, is that a rather limited observation has detected no marked differences [between children in same-sex and opposite-sex households].  More definitive results could hardly be expected, for until recently few children have been raised in same-sex households, and there has not been enough time to study the long-term results of such child-rearing.”  Am I reading this right?  When there isn’t enough evidence we should assume that gay people are simply incompetent at raising children.  With statements like that, how could the plaintiffs possibly persuade the court that “this long-accepted restriction is a wholly irrational one, based solely on ignorance and prejudice against homosexuals?”  Apparently it takes centuries of strife, war and a handful of Constitutional Amendments to convince the court that those who think gay people should not marry are bigots, plain and simple.

The court conveniently fails to address any possibility that the decisions to deny same-sex marriage on the basis of the false claim of harm to the child comes at the expense of same-sex couples who do not have children.

While it is difficult to argue with the court’s reasoning due process, I imagine they could have found better precedent than to compare same-sex marriage to suicide.  Given the pretext (which has already been criticized) the claim to “legitimate governmental interest” of “protecting the welfare of children” stands or falls on the absurdity of those findings.  The fundamental assumption that marriage equals children all but predates the current court and will probably die with the last of the pre-boomer generation.  Upon removing the idea that the purpose of State endorsed marriage is procreation the entire stack of cards falls apart.

Alternatively an equally effective slice is dismantling the misguided belief that “fostering relationships that will serve children best” is somehow related to “sexual activity that cannot lead to the birth of children.”  This is completely counter-intuitive.  Relationships that cannot result in the birth of children (it seems the court has now chosen to forget adoption or artificial insemination) have zero relevance to children.  Such couples are as removed from the realm of child-care as they are in such a relationship in which they are not officially married.  The court also fails to address the very real existence of same-sex couples living together out of wedlock and raising the natural children of one or the other or both.  Is the state denying them the benefits of marriage going to change their relationship or the welfare of their children for the better?

Finally, the blogosphere as been rife with criticism of the courts inclination to refer to sexual orientation as “sexual preference.”  Reading the preceding dozen or so pages of arguments this is just par for the course.  Let us hope this benighted ruling serves as a wakeup call to the New York State legislature and that they take head to the courts closing statement to “listen and decide as wisely as it can.”  Marriage is a basic human right.  Being against gay marriage is not a moral or religious stand; it is bigotry, nothing more.

The Democrats need at least one politically minded operative.  They need someone to com up with anti-Bush Bushism (Bush like rhetoric against Bush)?  Bush says he created a war in Iraq to fight terrorist there, not here.  But he hasn’t reduced terrorism.  There’s been more terrorism in the world since Iraq.  He hasn’t fixed the problem, he just diverted it somewhere else.  Bush is a Diverter, not a Fixer.

Wire reports that the Senate Commerce Committee is deadlocked on some net neutrality amendments in a current telecommunications bill.  The amendment basically says that a service provider cannot prioritize their own packets over competitors’ that are traveling on their lines.  It does not prohibit prioritization by type (e.g. all video can go faster than all e-mail).

I showed my wife the included quotation of Senator Ted Stevens’ attempt to explain why the amendment is bad.  After reading about his e-mail problem her first question was “Did he check his e-mail since Friday at 10?”  Well put.  Perhaps Senators should not use anecdotes from their own experience with technology to make laws.  I wonder why we have Senators who are obviously ignorant of technology involved in regulating it.

This is an election year.  It is a good time to promote some churn in Congress and elect new young faces into Congress.  Let’s elect some people who can represent the United States of America in the 21st century.

The Boston Globe (ostensibly defending its parent company) reports that the fact that the US was monitoring SWIFT for funny money transactions was the worst kept secret in the history of espionage.  Obviously Congress believes that terrorists do not use the Internet and that their only source of counter-intelligence is the Washington Post and the New York Times.

To quote the fictional yet wiser than our own President Bartlet:

“…is there an epidemic of flag burning going on that I’m not aware of?”

See the NYTimes  article on the flag burning amendment

The rhetoric on the liberal political airwaves lately has been all about whether the Democrats can win back the House or Senate and the likely 2008 presidential candidates jockeying for position.  The key Democratic hopefuls are trying to capitalize on diminishing support for the war in Iraq by standing up and taking blame for voting for the war.  The problem is that they are wrong.

With identical bills introduced into the Senate and House giving the President permission to use force against a perceived threat, the right move on the part of Congress was to vote yea.  A nay vote would have been an empty threat.  The issue is that the bill was overly broad and premature - a huge strategic failure on the part of the Bush administration.  Having survived the Cold War we are aware that the only thing worse than failing to threaten to go to war is to have to follow through on that threat.  No one listened to Sen. Robert Byrd when he said that it was a bad bill, with effectively no checks on the power that it granted.  Apparently it has been too long since Vietnam and our congressmen have forgotten their responsibility to keep a check on the executive power, lest the President starts to think that he can do anything.

The Democrats need to stop taking the blame for voting for the war or the country is going to start blaming them for it.  A yea vote for the war in Iraq was the right vote, but it was a bad bill to begin with.  The Bush administration and the GOP have shown their lack of strategic sophistication and a propensity towards poor planning.  Memo to Democrats: it is going to take a lot more than a misguided apology if you have any hope of regaining the public’s trust.

Jason Mazzone at Concurring Opinions writes that the new DHS grant allocation process is based on best protecting ”national monuments or icons [that] attract the interests of terrorists.”   I have not confirmed the source of his suspicions but the idea that a group of government employees can properly assess the terrorist risk of targets throughout the United States is ludicrous.  Terrorists are opportunists.  If they can cause fear and anger they consider themselves successful (that is why one big attack every few years is more effective than lots of little ones).  They could care less about Mount Rushmore or the Grand Canyon but large populated areas where people feel safe have been prime targets (Cafes, Trains, Office Buildings, the Pentagon).

Of course blindly allocating funds to states with the most office buildings is not only infeasible, it may have little effect on the safety of these structures.  Short of anti-aircraft artillery, the best way to protect the Twin Towers was locking the cockpits of planes.  The only way to completely thwart the 1993 attacks was to catch either the perpetrators after the planning but before the execution or stop the vehicle in a location where on the stop detonation would have caused minimal damage.

Perhaps DHS should spend more time talking to some real security experts instead of substituting terrorists’ values with our own.

Daniel J. Solove over at Concurrent Opinions ponders a response to the “Nothing to Hide” argument posited by supporters of unmitigated surveillance. He gets very close while considering the value of “not having to explain or justify oneself,” grasping at the same instinct the framers may have had when they wrote the Fifth Amendment. While often cited as the right to keep one’s mouths shut, the Fifth Amendment also guarantees due process when a person’s liberty is at stake (life, liberty and property).

There are numerous definitions of “liberty” but most sources define it as freedom from control, especially arbitrary or government control. If the reason liberty was included in the due process clause is to ensure freedom from arbitrary government control, we may find some context in examining the purpose and procedures of due process. As merely a conscientious citizen I don’t have the means to examine this issue to scholarly standards but it is not to big a stretch to suggest that the issue of what role warrants play in due process is a key question.

Under what criteria and to what extent can the executive branch engage in developing a criminal case without a check from the judiciary?  Another way to state this (and one that has been causing strife in our country for the past half century) is what level of privacy may not be violated by the executive (with or without judicial approval)?

Where Solove cuts short is where I suspect the legal argument may begin: what threat of invasion of privacy constitutes deprivation of liberty?  If the executive can, without judicial oversight, infringe on the privacy of its citizens in the course of developing a criminal case, at what point do we stop feeling free and by extensions stop being free?

As if you couldn’t tell that it’s an election year:

Senate committee OK’s ban against gay marriage

Senate Votes to Set English as National Language

Susan Pace Hamill is a professor of Law at the University Of Alabama School Of Law.  She has written copiously about tax policies in Alabama and given interviews with titles such as What Would Jesus Tax.  While I am not Christian nor particularly religious in the traditional sense, I whole heartedly agree with her claim that tax policies are rarely grounded in our moral beliefs.  Though she writes primarily about the tax policies of Alabama State, her message applies to all states and to the country as a whole.

I was inspired in particular by a recent article she wrote criticizing Alabamans for being lazy about their pro-life beliefs.  Having read the article it is not a far stretch to conclude that when Alabamans say they are pro-life, what they really mean is that they are anti-abortion.  If you listened to this past Easter Sunday’s Meet the Press you heard Sister Joan Chittister criticizing those who claim to be pro-life as being pro-birth.  If you consider the entirely of life, the left wing vegan nuts who break into alpaca farms, sit around in trees, marry their best friends and protest war and poverty are the real pro-lifers.  A truly pro-life country would have no death penalty, never launch a pre-emptive war, safe-guard the nation’s wild-life, and spend its riches on ensuring that every life had a fair chance at liberty and happiness.

It quickly becomes apparent that those who so often claim to be pro-life are really just anti-abortion and are using the word ‘life’ to frame the debate.  The opposite of pro-life is not pro-choice, but rather pro-death and pro-choice is not the same as pro-abortion.  Very few believe in abortions but unlike idealistic anti-abortionists who claim themselves pro-life, pro-choice groups live in the real world.  The way to reduce abortions (something we can all agree on) is to treat the causes of unwanted pregnancies and to realize that sometimes the most inhumane thing to do is force an unwanted pregnancy to completion.  The abortion debate needs to be split and reframed: there are those who believe in creating even the cruelest of lives at any cost and those who believe we should make the most of the lives we have.

To Susan Hamill’s point, we should be talking about how our policies (both taxes and otherwise) help us as a nation make the most of our 295 million lives and the world’s 6.5 billion lives.

I rarely agree with Investors Business Daily when it comes to policy, but there are those rare moments when they write a policy piece about finance and manage to raise an interesting point.  While ostensibly criticizingSenator  McCain’s push for lobbying reform, the anonymous editorialists at IBD point out that the root cause of legislative corruption is not the lobbyists per se but the unaccountable control we give our congress in the form of power of the purse.  Recently there has been much movement on term limits (more thoughts later) but that solution is not cut and dry.  While anti-Federalists might argue that this is what you get when you concentrate that much power in a central government - this argument runs into trouble when you weight the beneficial reforms that elected representatives can accomplish when they work together.  We should spend more time as a country - one decreasingly satisfied with our elected representatives - discussing how to reform our aging and tenured legislature.

I can image Thomas Frank reading about conservative Christians criticizing the GOP evoking a classic Bart Simpson “Duh!”

There is a very good reason why Republicans have not made any real moves on the far right’s key issues: they’re oppressive.  Christian conservatives want less freedom because they believe it is immorale - less speach (obscenity), less love (gay marriage) and less choice (abortion).  Their platform is that everyone should live life based on what the religious right believes.  That is exactly the reason the majority of the Republican party, as happy as they are to milk their votes, does nothing about it.
Everyone else in the country disagrees with them.  If the GOP started legislating far right they would be out of office (and in court) next election.  The right wing may swing the vote but the line between having a left based party in control and a right based party is not that wide.  The GOP are just settling in to their second decade of power after being the minority for the previous four.  Now is not the time to start telling the voters that their America is no longer the land of the free.

AP quotes the first lady as saying she doesn’t believe the President’s poll numbers because when she travels around the country she sees many people who express their appreciation and who tell her to “stay the course.”

Of course this is the beauty of statistics.  Assuming the polls are accurate and representative, with around 300 million people in the United States it’s pretty easy to find some of the 90 million or so who are supportive - especially when the first lady is giving a speach or press conference.

“The NSA would like to remind everyone to call their mothers this Sunday. They need to calibrate their system.”

arstechnica writes about the follies of the TSA.  Can you see where this might be headed?  Tomorrow morning you get a fine in the mail for having participated in a suspicious phone call.  Please mail the government $235.  Thank you for your cooperation.  Have a nice day.

If you’re an elected representative of the people charged with legislating to ensure the common good of all citizens, what are your biggest concerns? Apparently House Speaker Dennis Hastert and Representative Mark Kirk are obsessed with Internet porn.

If you’ve never seen an interview or press conference with Donald Rumsfeld, I would encourage it - just be sure to keep a bottle of whiskey near by in which to drown your sorrows.  On par with a President who believes his hand is guided by God, is a Defense Secretary who is dismissively unimpressed that our elected representatives are very worried about who is running the CIA.  It’s one thing to try and spin accusations of masterminding a war at a press conference.  It is very disconcerting that Rumsfeld takes the same tone dismissing the concerns of the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee about the administration’s nominee for the head of the CIA.

The house approved a bill extending a number of Bush’s tax cuts along mostly party lines (guess who was for them). While the usual cries of tax cuts benefit the rich more than the poor permeated the media, it’s hard to imagine tax cuts for the poor that the rich couldn’t benefit from. It’s doesn’t take more than basic accounting to realize that if you have more money you have more flexibility in how you earn money. By contrast if you’re strapped for cash there’s only so much you can do. If you tax income, high wage earners will divert their earnings to perks or cap gains and it will hit the middle class; if you tax don’t tax income but tax cap gains; high wage earners will limit their wages to the tax effective and defer the rest (take a look at some CEO benefit packages for great examples of deferred income). If you tax dividends then companies spend more on stock buybacks.

It’s all well and good to decry Bush’s tax cuts as benefiting the rich, but what tax cuts do not?

It should come as no surprise that Americans are split. We are split when it comes to our political party of choice and all the policies that they support. We are split on whether people who are attracted to members of the same sex have the right to live out their lives the same way as those who are attracted to member of the opposite sex. We are split on what kinds of choices a pregnant woman should be able make. We are split on whether we should be fighting someone else’s war of independence. We are split on whether access to education and health care should be a privilege or a right. We are split on how it is that we welcome immigrants into our country.

I am proud to live in a city and a state that believes we should enjoy living here. I am proud to live in a place where sexual preference does not make you a second class citizen; where woman have the freedom to choose what they do with their body if they so require; where the majority of our citizens, though they serve their country with honor, believe we should not be invading someone else’s; where education is need blind and health care is available to everyone. I am proud that, despite how ludicrous it seems given the cost of living, I live in a city where everyone is welcome.