perfidy

In a decision that will be sure to arouse jubilation among some and existential loathing among others, the Massachusetts Supreme court found today that the state has no grounds for banning gay marriage, but also did not order marriage certificates be given to the seven couples that brought the original suit.

The Massachusetts legislature has been given 180 days to come up with a solution that is in keeping with the decision.

Paranoid frothing from the Moral Majority and paranoid right-wingers begins.... nnnnnnow.

[wik] .... and keeps on rollin'. These people all sound like the nutty neighbor in the Dead Milkmen's immortal "Stuart": "Do you know what the queers are doing to our soil? Building huge underground landing strips for gay martians."

[alsø wik] Post edited for kicks and giggles, 11:54 AM

[alsø alsø wik] My favorite is when anti-gay-rights activists compare letting gay couples get some civil rights to stuff like pigf*cking or NAMBLA, as if they were equivalent. If I could, I'd buy futures today in outrageously bigoted rhetoric.

[starring] Naturally, Eugene Volokh has some insight into the case. He observes that-- get this-- the Massachusetts state ERA paved the way for today's decision on gay marriage. It's true! Go read! Quoth the Volokh, "[T]his decision -- and the Hawaii decision cited by the concurrence, which has since been reversed by the Hawaii voters -- shows us that we shouldn't lightly dismiss plausible, facially valid textual arguments (the text bars discrimination based on sex, and the marriage laws do treat people differently based on their sex) as "canards," "scare tactics," or "hysteric[s]." The anti-ERA forces, much as I probably disagree with most of them on many things, have proved prescient." [emphasis in original.]

It's been weeks since I took a swipe at the PATRIOT Act, the RAVE Act, etc., so here goes. Volokh's observation cuts both ways. Just as bigots (and I use that term knowing full well it's sometimes inaccurate and incendiary-- it's my petard, and I shall hoist myself upon it!) maybe DID have something to fear from the implications of the ERA, likewise good patriots have something to fear from creative readings of recent Federal legislation ostensibly aimed at terrorism.

Chalk one up for us loony "moral-issues liberals!"

I would encourage the two Ministers who live in the greater Fairfax County, VA area to take a look at this.

t took more than 21 hours from the time polls closed Tuesday night for Fairfax County, the putative high-tech capital of the region, to get final election results from its new, computerized vote machines.

Widespread problems in the system, which the county paid $3.5 million to install, also opened the door to possible election challenges by party leaders and candidates.

School Board member Rita S. Thompson (R), who lost a close race to retain her at-large seat, said yesterday that the new computers might have taken votes from her. Voters in three precincts reported that when they attempted to vote for her, the machines initially displayed an "x" next to her name but then, after a few seconds, the "x" disappeared.

In response to Thompson's complaints, county officials tested one of the machines in question yesterday and discovered that it seemed to subtract a vote for Thompson in about "one out of a hundred tries," said Margaret K. Luca, secretary of the county Board of Elections.

"It's hard not to think that I have been robbed," said Thompson, whose 77,796 recorded votes left her 1,662 shy of reelection. She is considering her next step, and said she was wary of challenging the election results: "I'm not sure the county as a whole is up for that. I'm not sure I'm up for that."

Y'all have noted previously that there were some apparent aberrations in Fairfax County voting procedure in this last election, and this article suggests that the entire chain is flawed, from the operation of the kiosks to vote collection to vote counting. Now, if this were Nicaragua we'd say it's business as usual. But it ain't. This is scary.

Eugene Volokh has more on other irregularities around the country, with special attention to Diebold's repeated attempts to convince us that danger is safety and vulnerability is security.

Soros and now Peter Lewis are funding the Dems for millions, now.

I don't see the difference between the GOP, which is funded by a small number of wealthy people, and this tactic by the Dems (being funded by a small number of wealthy people).

Pioneers and Rangers, anyone?

It all amounts to the same thing.

This campaign finance thing is so goddamn easy to fix. Just place a flat cap on the amount of money any one television station or broadcast network is allowed to accept, per reader/watcher in their audited audience (from advertising). Each party must be given the opportunity to spend the same amount, but the total amount spent by all parties must be below the cap.

This will shift many campaign finance dollars into print and other forms (leaflets, whatever). It is good to at least partially abandon television as a medium for conducting democracy; it is a failure.

It will de-emphasize the role of money overall. The good effects are too many to name.

Another huge problem solved! Bring it on.

Some say the Democrats in the Senate are ruining the country with their blocking of Bush appointees to the Federal Courts.
Some say they are doing good; keeping far-right troglodyte thinkers off the bench.
Some say that Newt Ging-er-itch started it way back when.
Some say that Daschle's the villain.

Lileks says, "[L]istening to the Senate debate, if that word applies, [I was] wondering: are they always this banal? This condescending? Are bloviating prevarications the rule rather than the exception? In short: is the world’s greatest deliberative body really filled with this many dim bulbs, card sharps and overstroked dolts who confuse a leaden pause with great rhetoric? If everyone in America had been tied to a chair and forced to watch the debate Clockwork-Orange style, we’d all realize that the Senate is just a holding tank for people whose self-regard and cretinous reasoning is matched only by their demonstrable contempt for the idiots they think will lap this crap up."

No matter what you may think of the first four conditions I list, number five really hits the mark. The Senate has always been a magesterial clownshow, no less now than at any point before. But the current hijinks combined with the fact that ideological rivals no longer even meet socially-- Republicans and Democrats can't even be drinking buddies-- means that the nation's political landscape is more unstable now than it has been since... oh.... 1876 or so.

This is interesting.

The Hon. Rudy S. Moore was removed today from his post as Chief Justice of Alabama. This is a bit of a surprise considering the flapdoodle has made him very popular in the state, but from the perspective of this Godless Yankee M----- F-----, it was the right decision to make.

Don't worry. He'll be back.

[wik] Eugene Volokh thinks it'll be the Senate. Upon reflection I think he's right. Why just drag Alabama down when you can have a run at the whole damn country?

Now, I'm not gonna say his campaign is over, yet, but on Tuesday night John Kerry appeared on The Tonight Show With Jay Leno second billed to a hand puppet.

Truly, John Kerry is the leading candidate..... for me to... naah, too easy.

Salon is running an article today about various bills quietly wending their way through Congress that would undermine Roe v. Wade. Regardless of your personal opinions on the matter, there's some good information in there about the effects of Bush's abortion policy on the international health community as well as about a set of bills that have not yet gotten much public scrutiny.

Link courtesy of Crooked Timber.

The Supremes, fresh off a tour of Japan, are going back in the recording studio, this time to hear an appeal on behalf of detainees held at Guantanamo Bay.

The issue at stake is whether US law extends to that foreign soil. The Military and Executive claim that Gitmo is and always has been under Cuban sovereignty. The appellates argue that they are being held in violation of international laws that the US is bound to uphold under treaty.

Here's what I think. The whole Gitmo/military tribunal thing is a cheap dodge of our judicial system, and one that the Administration ought to be ashamed of. So far there have been exactly Zero military tribunals, and very little other movement towards processing, prosecuting, and/or releasing any person held there. In a time when the US is attempting to assert the primacy of democracy in the world, it's both dangerous and two-faced to circumvent those very laws at home.

I'm not going to argue that the people being held at Guantanamo Bay are heroes, much less all good folks. That's vanishingly unlikely. But indefinite detentions coupled with no examination of whether these are the guys to detain is a scary precedent, as is the doublethink that allows the government to assert US domain over Guantanamo Bay when necessary, and deny the same when convenient. As the Washington Post puts it, "The administration effectively asks Americans to tolerate the indefinite detention of large numbers of people with no charge, no accountability and no seeming urgency about making the rule of law into a reality."

The Post article linked above does a good job of articulating the issues at hand. Go read!

You can be for, you can be against, but you can't deny that there wasn't a single woman on the stage when Bush was signing it.

From the White House site (for as long as it stays available):

Signing Ceremony

Dan Drezner's Brother is a pretty rich guy (investment banker). He wrote there on how most people pay nothing in taxes, except for rich people, and how the heck can we expect rich people to do anything more?

The giant holes in this argument are easy to spot.

Social security is a tax on the poor and middle class ONLY, to the tune of 15.8% of income. Sales tax is usually another 5% or more.

So our "zero tax payer" pays, in fact, around 20% tax right out of the starting gate, even if he's not paying anything in federal income tax because his income is low. He's also paying property taxes, "license fees" (taxes in disguise), and a myriad of other little taxes that really add up.

We need to stop pretending that the social security deductions are any different from our normal taxes. They're not. They're used in the general fund. If we just think of the whole thing (fed, state, SS, etc) as the tax burden, suddenly it doesn't seem like such a great deal to be poor any more. So if we're just going to push them into the general fund, we might as well make it the "flat rate tax" that conservatives have always pushed for so vigorously. Here's your chance! Prove it's what you really want.

You know, the "lucky duckies".

Remember: Take the taxation rate on person X who isn't crazy rich, add 16%, and you know what they're really paying in taxes. Better yet, add another 5% for state taxes, and another two or three for the various "licenses" we need to have. Pretty soon you're talking real money.

According to the Washington Post, the White House has decided that it will no longer respond to questions about government finances from members of Congress who aren't Republicans. Of course, what they say is that they'll only respond to committee chairs, but since all the chairs are Republican, it's the same thing, right?

Last time I checked, the chairs of committees didn't carry any more legal authority into Congress (voting support) than any other member of Congress. This whole committee business is something that has to change. When you have half the Senate controlled by one party and half by the other, the chairmanships ought to be split equally.

Why does this Administration fight releasing information at every turn? Why are Cheney's conversations about energy still secret? Are there truly so many necessary secrets?

There aren't. Just as we've seen the Patriot Act being abused to prosecute crimes unrelated to terrorism, we're now seeing executive powers abused. These people aren't interested in what's right. They're interested in what they're legally able to get away with. And truly, that is why they emphasize the rule of law at every opportunity. You see, what they're doing is legal.

It's extremely useful to place all this in context. We had a tempest in a teapot last week, with RepubliFoxNews shouting to all who would listen (in other words, the people that already agree with them) that the democrats were "politicizing the intelligence process". This was continuously repeated all around the blogosphere as well. Doesn't it make sense to go to the memo itself, read it ourselves, and judge?

Look at the opener on that story: "Following is the text of a memo written by a Democrat on the staff of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that suggests how to make the greatest gain off of intelligence data leading to the war against Iraq. The memo was obtained by Fox News".

Talk about leading the reader around by the nose. Don't bother reading it, they're telling you. We've already done that for you!

This memo is a tactical one. It's trying to figure out how to get an investigation of intelligence matter started, because they're being stonewalled in every other way. And, as I pointed out earlier, the White House is becoming substantially less cooperative vis-a-vis elected representatives. These committees are fundamentally political entities. If they weren't, the chairmen would listen to requests made by all committee members, rather than only those made by his party.

All in all this points to the following: The White House views our elected representatives as nothing more than speed bumps on the road to "getting it done", whatever it is. We sure as hell can't count on anything they've said so far to understand what they're doing.

It's just another pile of steaming crap, fresh out of the GOP's "The Earth is Flat" Playbook. Yeah -- the earth is being flattened. And by the time they're through with it, it'll be scorched too. But it won't matter to Bush and Corporation -- they'll be safe in their gated communities, paying less in taxes than the workers whose jobs they are vigorously sending overseas, in the name of "productivity", or shareholder value, or whatever BS line they're delivering this week.

Get this straight: Increasing shareholder value only helps if you're a shareholder. With the massive decline in the economy overall, I suspect that the average citizen in this country will be returning to historical investment positions. Most of the time that means he really won't have any. And that's just fine with the ruling majority, who'll continue to suck the lifeblood out of that guy's family and finances with regressive taxes needed to give the very richest among us a massive tax cut, use his money to pay for a war he doesn't give a shit about, and hand the bill to his children, while shielding their own children by eliminating the estate tax.

I love a good conspiracy theory.

A must-read editorial in the Washington Post.

Gerrymandering has produced districts that where, due to strategic reallocation of funds to contested areas, one side or the other has essentially ceded all ground. It represents the destruction of local politics, and the reduction of discourse to the lowest common denominator. Why? Because at the national level of politics, only the lowest common denominator applies.

Good article from The Economist; well worth reading. Not being as entirely aware of history as I should be, it's interesting to learn that Reagan's tax reform was, on the whole, pretty much revenue neutral. He was able to drop rates, but close loopholes at the same time, and I guess we can presume that he did us all a big favor by doing so.

Bush's tax cuts are far from revenue neutral. Yes, it seems like the economy is starting to turn a corner, and that is a very good thing. It's been a really tough environment out there. The thing is, there is an ever-widening gap between the sales pitches the administration uses to get its policies passed, and the reality on the ground afterwards.

For example, Brad DeLong notes that the President's "Council of Economic Advisors" projected, last February, that passing the "Jobs And Growth" package would result in an overall increase of 300,000 new jobs. Actual figure: A loss of 2.3 million jobs. That's a pretty big gap.

So what we're learning is this: If there's some vague effect on the job market that the tax cuts have, it's very weak at best, and in no way, shape or manner does it even begin to resemble the sales pitch provided to America beforehand.

We've provided massively for the Rich in this country so jobs would be created, so we were told. The trickle-down effect would help us all. What we've found is that Bush tax policy has had little effect on anything, other than effecting a massive inter-generational wealth transfer, as the current generation in power spends like mad, running up the national deficit, financing their own retirements.

You can bet they'll all be voting as a block in the years to come, forcing the younger generation into ever-more extreme taxation and deficit positions, whining and bitching that "they paid into social security all their lives".

We'll see about that.

I'm surprised that this story hasn't gotten as much traffic as the "sixteen words" or plamegate. Or maybe I'm not.

From Matt Welch at Reason:

Yesterday in Bolinas, California, this ballot measure passed with 67.4% of the vote:

Shall the following language constitute a policy of the Bolinas Community Public Utility District? Vote for Bolinas to be a socially acknowledged nature-loving town because to like to drink the water out of the lakes to like to eat the blueberries to like the bears is not hatred to hotels and motor boats. Dakar. Temporary and way to save life, skunks and foxes (airplanes to go over the ocean) and to make it beautiful.

What the effing hell, you ask? Go read the comments, which explain all, my little moonbeams.

For an unsurprising picture of the author of this measure, known as "Measure G," click the little blue thing here....

The accompanying text from SFGate.com reads, "Jane Blethen, who authored Measure G, now walks around with a burlap headband and strips of burlap tied around her legs and her face smeared with dark brown chocolate"

Drudge is reporting that some of the undocumented immigrants that were arrested in the WallMart bust are now planning to sue, yes, sue WallMart for - get this - discrimination as well as failing to pay overtime, withhold taxes and make required workers' compensation contributions.

What these people fail to realize is that they are, you know, illegal aliens. The very first thing that they did when they arrived in our country was to break our laws. They have absolutely no right to sue. They should be immediately deported. (Not that WallMart should get off - employing illegal immigrants violates the law as well.)

Many people who complain about our policies toward illegal immigrants are accused of racism or the usual parade of PC claptrap. But there is a world of difference between wanting to stop illegal immigration and wanting to stop legal immigration. We can argue about how many people from what countries we should let in and for what reasons until the cows come home blue in the face - fine - but there should be no argument that illegal immigration is, well, illegal and should be stopped.

[wik] Our own Minister Ross is a legal immigrant, and despite his lefty canuck ideas, is a perfect example of the sort of person we should allow in. A effective crack down on illegal immigration would not effect him.

[alsø wik] We do not want to go down the road that Europe and especially Germany have gone, with a permanent population of unassimilated gastarbeiter who are second class citizens. The only way to prevent that is to reduce the immigration from Mexico, so that those who are here can assimilate, and will not be permanently isolated in Spanish speaking enclaves and having minimal interaction with the rest of soceity. We also need to level to Canadian ghettoes in our richer suburbs.

Here in the DC area there's a story getting some buzz: Glitches Prompt GOP Suit Over Fairfax Tabulations. The GOP is absolutely right to protest this vote; it's not about anything other than the validity of the process.

The machines in question are the WinVote model, from Advanced Voting Systems. Just listen to their pitch: The functionality linchpin of the WINvoteTM system is its wireless LAN (IEEE 802.11b) system - called the Wireless Information Network (WIN) -- that enables the user to communicate remotely with the major components of the voting system.

Does anybody else see a problem with enabling wireless communications to voting machines? This is just f'ing stupid, beyond belief. Encryption can help ameliorate the situation, but what I see is the possibility of ne'er-do-wells attempting to disrupt elections with laptops. All they have to do is hang around the building within a few hundred feet, and they can screw with the election machines to their heart's content.

Who wrote the IP stack on the machines in question? We can't tell from the web site, which means in all probability it isn't open source. That means we have no idea what stack is running in there and what its vulnerabilities are. Even encrypted stacks can be vulnerable to certain kinds of attacks.

Voting companies have been pretty underfunded. Why are we trusting our democracy to these stupid machines? The only function of a computer in the democratic process should be to help print a legible vote.

Count me, as a computer guy, concerned.

On the group-blog Crescat Sententia, Amy Lamboley describes the blog-world as "a clubhouse for rightwing nuts." Okay, context is everything, so that's not what she said, exactly.

Which is good, because it could never be true, could it?

[wik] According to Kim DuToit (link above, on the word "could"), American men have become "a nation of women." "Ooh, In my day, men were men! We drank whiskey! Women didn't vote! And we cut our firewood by hand! And we liked it!" Yes, and today I'm a man who knows that some whiskey goes better with a touch of soda, is very happy that women vote (even if they push the country to the left (please!)), and is smart enough to heat my home with gas so I don't have to moisturize my hands and face every ten minutes in the dry heat of a wood fire.

My message to Mr. duToit: Get a life, queen bee. It's my world, you just live in it.

[alsø wik] The highlight of Mr. duToit's self-parodying rant is this gem about Queer Eye For The Straight Guy (which according to him airs on the Homo Network): "what kind of girly-man would allow these simpering butt-bandits to change his life around?"

Very clever, Kim. But I ask you, [by your own lights,] what kind of girly-man [would I be to] allow [my] masculinity to be called into question by a Canadian gun nut with a woman's name?

Nothing can stop it! No force can turn it aside! No elixir can save you! No bromo can cure you! Their awesome force shall not be denied!

Unless it's by a cabal of whiny pissant conservatives who claim to be marginalized and use their ostensibly nonexistent soapbox to scream "the Gipper wuz libeled!" over an effing television show thereby causing a national network, the very bastion of the Pablum-Puking Liberal Media Juggernaut, to hastily pull said show off the air and apologize abjectly like puppies who just fouled the rug.

Liberal effing media, my ass. That insurgent-conservative schtick don't play no more if you can call the shots. Go cram it, with walnuts.

/*shuffles sullenly leftward, hands in pockets.

[wik] My message to the chattering conservative set: Seriously, folks, a hatchet job on the Gip isn't the end of the universe. You already got the guy a freaking airport, f'r crying out loud, and he's not dead yet! (he's not?(no!)) If you're so exercised about it, go make one of your own and show it on Fox. I'm sure there's no shortage of hagiographers you can find to write the script, and I would welcome an effort that avoided Streisand connections.