Posts Tagged ‘Defense of Marriage Act’
Monday!
* I may have done this one before, but what the hell: the RAW rejection letter.
* RIP, Sally Ride. And here’s the politicized postscript.
* The NCAA drops the hammer on Penn State.
* Justice Department Investigates Pennsylvania Voter ID Law.
* The New Yorker profiles the Boss.
The tune, thick with horns and vocal harmonies, elides into “My City of Ruins,” one of the elegiac, gospel-tinged songs on the 9/11 album, “The Rising.” The voices sing “Rise up! Rise up!” and there comes a string of horn solos: trombone, trumpet, sax. Then back to the voices. Springsteen quickly introduces the E Street horns and the singing collective. Then he says, “Roll call!” And, with the music rising bit by churchly bit, he introduces the core of the band: “Professor Roy Bittan is in the house. . . . Charlie Giordano is in the house. . . .”
When he finishes the roll call, there is a long ellipsis. The band keeps vamping.
“Are we missing anybody?”
Two spotlights are now trained on the organ, where Federici once sat, and at the mike where Clemons once stood.
“Are we missing anybody?”
Then again: “Are we missing anybody? . . . That’s right. That’s right. We’re missing some. But the only thing I can guarantee tonight is that if you’re here and we’re here, then they’re here!” He repeats this over and over, the volume of the piano and the bass rising, the drums hastening, the voices rising, until finally the song overwhelms him, and, if Springsteen has calculated correctly, there will not be an unmoved soul in the house.
* Six facts about guns, violence, and gun control.
* Dibs on the novelization: Zhang and Li write that the the Milky Way will be torn apart 32.9 million years before the big rip. The Earth will be ripped away from the Sun two months before the end, and we’ll lose our moon with five days left. The Sun itself will be destroyed 28 minutes before the end of time, and the Earth will explode a mere 12 minutes later.
* The headline reads, “Neurosurgeons banned from human research for giving infectious bacteria to brain tumor patients.”
* Radiolab says the Greeks didn’t know about blue.
* Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld go get coffee.
* And Fred Willard is keeping his head up.
Arc of History Watch
Here, too, this Court finds that Congress cannot, like an ostrich, merely bury its head in the sand and wait for danger to pass, especially at the risk of permitting continued constitutional injury upon legally married couples. The fact that the issue is socially divisive does nothing to relieve the judiciary of its obligation to examine the constitutionality of the discriminating classifications in the law.
A Bush appointee has found DOMA unconstitutional. Your move, Justice Kennedy…
Thursday Evening
* Seven weeks of Occupy, at In Focus.
* Imagine what it’s like to be a normal student nowadays. You did well—even very well—in high school. But you arrive at university with little experience in research and writing and little sense of what your classes have to do with your life plans. You start your first year deep in debt, with more in prospect. You work at Target or a fast-food outlet to pay for your living expenses. You live in a vast, shabby dorm or a huge, flimsy off-campus apartment complex, where your single with bath provides both privacy and isolation. And you see professors from a great distance, in space as well as culture: from the back of a vast dark auditorium, full of your peers checking Facebook on their laptops.
It’s no wonder, in these circumstances, that many students never really internalize the new demands and standards of university work. Instead they drift from course to course, looking for entertainment and easy grades. Nor is it surprising that many aren’t ready when trouble comes. Students drink too much alcohol, smoke too much marijuana, play too many computer games, wreck cars, become pregnant, get overwhelmed trying to help anorexic roommates, and too often lose the modest but vital support previously provided by a parent who has been laid off. Older students—and these days most are older than traditional university age—often have to work full-time and care for children or parents, or both. Those likeliest to encounter these problems are also the ones who haven’t been schooled since birth to find the thread that can lead them through the labyrinths of the bureaucracy. They aren’t confident that they will see an invitingly open door, where a friendly adviser or professor is eager to help them, and they don’t have parents hovering, eager to find that helper for them.
* How could a late entrant still shake up the Republican field? Nate Silver reports. You already know my thoughts on this.
* One-half of Floridians believe the GOP is intentionally sabotaging the economy. Gee, you think? On the one hand, I’m surprised the number is so high; on the other, I’m amazed there’s anyone who can’t see this…
* Mars 500 wraps up this week. io9 says it doesn’t prove anything.
* A Utah man who claimed to be an illegal immigrant from Mexico to avoid going to prison is now wanted by police after he returned to the United States and acknowledged his true identity to a judge.
* If episodes of fission at Fukushima were confirmed, Mr. Koide said, “our entire understanding of nuclear safety would be turned on its head.”
* This week we celebrate 100 years of dropping bombs on people from planes.
* Two great tastes (okay, one): The Muppets on WWE Raw.
* And the headline reads, “Cash-strapped Chicago mulls easing marijuana law.” Do the right thing for the wrong reasons if you have to, just do it…
DOMA DOA
It’s always seemed completely obvious to me that the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional, but now the courts are starting to catch on.
Good Day Wednesday
* Good news: The Obama administration has decided it will no longer defend Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act in court. This from Barney Frank suggests that Democrats may have stumbled, through no fault of their own, onto a key truth: “People who will be angry at the President over this won’t vote for him anyway.”
* More good news: Scott Walker gets awesomely prank-called. More here.
* Maybe Jon Stewart should rethink this moronic camel gag. It’s good that the protests in Wisconsin haven’t turned violent, but it’s not as if there isn’t a history of anti-union violence in the U.S. Remember that this all began with Walker promising to bring in the National Guard—and a deputy attorney general from Indiana was fired just today for advocating the use of live ammunition against the protestors.
* This is weak even by Fox standards.
* Nate Silver pregames 2012, state by state.
* Bernie Sanders is my copilot:
What we have to understand is this is not just Wisconsin. This is part of the concerted attack on the middle class and working families of this country by the very wealthiest people in America, the Koch brothers and many others. And you’re also right in suggesting that if you look at the end game, what are you talking about?
You’re talking about the end of Social Security, privatization of Social Security, massive cuts and privatization of Medicare, major cuts in Medicaid. You’re talking about over a period of time, the end of unemployment compensation, the end of the minimum wage or lowering the minimum wage.
What these guys want is to return us to the 1920’s when working people had virtually no rights to organize or to earn a decent living. Bottom line today is the top 1% earn more income than the bottom 50%. The top 1% owns more wealth than the bottom 90%. That gap between the very rich and everybody else is growing wider.
And what the wealthiest people in the country are doing are using their resources to make the attack against the middle class even stronger. They want the destruction of the middle class and almost all wealth in this country to go to the people on top.
* And to top it all off: creationists suffer defeat in Oklahoma. It’s like I can’t lose today.
Thursday Night Linkdump
* I hope someday my admirers are moved to unearth my terrible college fiction: Wes Anderson’s “The Ballad of Reading Milton” (1989).
* The true size of Africa. Also has the true side of Australia and the USA as a bonus.
* Liberal blogs are trotting out cell phone effect again. Looks like it’s time to call November for the GOP.
* “In these challenging economic times, it’s good to know you can get some financial protection for unexpected illness and injury to your pets,” the e-mail reads before listing the many benefits. Federal Employees Can Purchase Health Insurance For Their Pets, But Not Their Same-Sex Partners.
* Running it up the flagpole: Wheel of Fortune‘s Pat Sajak argues at National Review Online that public employees shouldn’t be allowed to vote in at last some state and local state elections.
* And in twenty years, we’ll need another Earth to sustain us. Time to get building.
Full Faith and Credit
Mexico’s Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that all 31 states must recognize same-sex marriages performed in the capital, though its decision does not force those states to begin marrying gay couples in their territory.
Gerry Canavan 
