And he’s doing it right out in public.

First the clearing of ACORN and then audio of the weasel welch.

This link is to the preliminary GAO investigation into all the alleged and found without basis accusations leveled against ACORN by Vermont Representative Peter “The Weasel” Welch and his rabid right wing allies.

And then there is this coverage:

Of course others, at least those interested in the truth, easily found the evidence too … California’s Attorney General has cleared ACORN of any criminality.

That’s just a touch of it. Not included above are such as a criminal investigation by a Bronx DA that cleared ACORN and called the videos bullshit; multiple state investigations looking into the voter registration programs run by ACORN that ALL found nothing wrong, and the latest GAO report that cleared ACORN of any financial wrong doings.

My long list can be found here.

And now to the weasel welch in his own words: from the Mark Johnson Show of 07/12/10. The complete podcast can be found here on the Mark Johnson Show website.

So all the evidence says welch is full of shit, but welch just keeps repeating the lies.

The weasel welch does not belong in congress … and if you’re voting for him you are voting for a determined liar.

because if you see it … you’ll believe it! And you’ll understand just how bad this man-made disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is.

SEE IT AND BELIEVE IT THROUGH THIS LINK!

As One Federal Court Declares Defense of Marriage Act Unconstitutional and Another Prepares to Rule on California’s Proposition 8, a Final Decision by the Nation’s Highest Court on Whether Gay and Lesbian Couples Have the Same Fourteenth Amendment Constitutional Right to Marry as Interracial Couples Have Is Not Only Inevitable, But Necessary

Confirming what The ‘Skeeter Bites Report has been arguing in a series of editorials since 2007, a federal judge in Boston last week declared unconstitutional the federal Defense of Marriage Act of 1996, on the grounds that its denial of federal spousal benefits to married same-gender couples in Massachusetts violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. As another federal judge in San Francisco prepares to rule on the constitutionality — also under the Fourteenth Amendment — of California’s voter-approved Proposition 8, which bars same-gender couples from marrying outright, there can be no doubt that the issue of whether gay and lesbian couples have the same constitutional right to marry as interracial couples have will inevitably be decided by the Supreme Court — and both sides in the battle had better start preparing themselves for it. (Image courtesy GenerationQ.net)

(Posted 5:00 a.m. EDT Tuesday, July 13, 2010)

By SKEETER SANDERS

For more than three years now, this column has argued repeatedly that laws that bar gay and lesbian couples from marrying were unconstitutional, based in part on a landmark 1967 Supreme Court ruling that struck down, under the equal-protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, similar laws that barred interracial couples from marrying.

This column has also argued that to restrict marriage to opposite-gender couples only was — and is — an equally unconstitutional enshrinement into state and federal law of a religious doctrine that condemns homosexuality, in violation of the First Amendment separation of church and state.

No one else has made the church-state argument. But now, for the first time, a federal judge has come to the same conclusion as this column with regard to the Fourteenth Amendment.

Ruling in a lawsuit brought by several married same-gender Massachusetts couples against the federal Defense of Marriage Act of 1996, Judge Joseph Tauro of the U.S. District Court in Boston declared that DOMA, as the law is commonly known, unconstitutionally deprives married same-gender couples in Massachusetts of federal spousal benefits enjoyed by their opposite-gender counterparts, in violation of the equal-protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Judge Tauro was appointed to the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts in 1972 by President Richard Nixon. At 79 years of age, he is the last Nixon appointee still active on the federal bench.

CONSTITUTION ‘DOES NOT TOLERATE TREATING CLASSES OF CITIZENS DIFFERENTLY’

“The [U.S.] Constitution neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens,” Judge Tauro wrote. “It is with this fundamental principle in mind that equal protection jurisprudence takes on governmental classifications that affect some groups of citizens differently than others.

“And it is because of this commitment to the law’s neutrality where the rights of persons are at stake that legislative provisions which arbitrarily or irrationally create discrete classes cannot withstand constitutional scrutiny,” the judge continued.

Judge Tauro flatly rejected the contention of same-gender marriage opponents that one of the purposes of DOMA’s denial of federal recognition to same-gender

marriages was to “encourage responsible procreation and child-bearing,” citing the federal government’s own admission that “this objective bears no rational relationship” to the enforcement of the law, “as a consensus has developed among the medical, psychological, and social welfare communities that children raised by gay and lesbian parents are just as likely to be well-adjusted as those raised by heterosexual parents.”

DOMA ‘USURPS AUTHORITY OF STATES TO SET OWN MARRIAGE LAWS’

In a separate lawsuit brought by the Massachusetts state attorney general against the federal government, Judge Tauro ruled that DOMA also unconstitutionally encroaches on the longstanding authority of the states to set their own marriage laws — an authority that, the judge said, dates back to the colonial era.

Same-gender marriage has been legal in Massachusetts since 2004, after the state’s highest court ruled that gay and lesbian couples had a right to marry under the equal-rights amendment of the Bay State’s Constitution.

“This court has determined that it is clearly within the authority of the Commonwealth [of Massachusetts] to recognize same-sex marriages among its residents, and to afford those individuals in same-sex marriages any benefits, rights, and privileges to which they are entitled by virtue of their marital status,” Tauro wrote. “The federal government, by enacting and enforcing DOMA, plainly encroaches upon the firmly entrenched province of the state.”

The judge wrote that control by the states over marital status actually pre-dates the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution, which says that “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

During the colonial era, “colonial legislatures, rather than [the British] Parliament [in London], established the rules and regulations regarding marriage in the colonies,” Tauro wrote. After independence, “the founding legislation of each state included regulations regarding marital status determinations.”

The issue of marriage, Tauro wrote, “was not raised” when the framers of the Constitution gathered to define the powers of the federal government. “The states had exclusive power over marriage rules as a central part of the individual states’ ‘police power’ — meaning their responsibility (subject to the requirements and protections of the federal Constitution) for the health, safety and welfare of their populations.”

GAY-RIGHTS ADVOCATES ELATED, CONSERVATIVES OUTRAGED

Reaction to Judge Tauro’s ruling was predictable, with gay-rights advocates hailing it and conservatives condemning it.

Mary Bonauto, an attorney for the Boston-based law firm Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders (GLAD) — who represented seven married same-gender couples and three widowers from Massachusetts (including Dean Hara, the widower of the late former U.S. Representative Gerry Studds) — called the ruling a simple affirmation “that our country won’t tolerate second-class marriages.” The decision, said Bonauto, “will make a real difference for countless families in Massachusetts.”

It was GLAD’s second major court victory on the issue. The firm successfully argued before the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court that gay and lesbian couples had a right to marry under of the equal-rights amendment (Article CVI) to the Massachusetts Constitution, which bars discrimination “because of sex, race, color, creed or national origin.”

Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley, who brought the second suit against DOMA on Tenth Amendment grounds, also hailed Judge Tauro’s ruling. “Today’s [Friday’s] landmark decision is an important step toward achieving equality for all married couples in Massachusetts and assuring that all of our citizens enjoy the same rights and protections under our Constitution,” Coakley said in a statement. “It is unconstitutional for the federal government to discriminate, as it does because of DOMA’s restrictive definition of marriage. It is also unconstitutional for the federal government to decide who is married and to create a system of first- and second-class marriages.”

Not surprisingly, social conservatives reacted with fury. Andrea Lafferty, executive director of the California-based Traditional Values Coalition, called Tauro’s ruling “judicial activism” and said Tauro was a “rogue judge. We can’t allow the lowest common denominator states, like Massachusetts, to set standards for the country.”

The TVC is one of several conservative groups fighting to preserve California’s Proposition 8, a voter-approved amendment to the California Constitution that bars same-gender couples from marrying. A federal judge in San Francisco is preparing to rule on a Fourteenth Amendment challenge to that measure.

Tom McClusky, senior vice president of the right-wing Family Research Council, said the rulings result in part from “the deliberately weak legal defense of DOMA” that the Obama administration mounted on behalf of the government.

“While the American people have made it unmistakably clear that they want to preserve marriage as the legal union of one man and one woman, liberals and activist judges are not content to let the people decide,” McClusky said in a statement.

THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT CANNOT BE IGNORED

This column’s only concern with Judge Tauro’s ruling regarding the Tenth Amendment is that the very argument used by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts against DOMA can be used by other states to preserve their laws banning same-gender marriage. The Obama administration has said only that it was reviewing the decision, but it’s a safe bet that it will appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

If the administration was smart, it would leave the judge’s ruling on the state’s lawsuit alone and appeal only the ruling on the GLAD lawsuit, as GLAD, in the opinion of this column, has a much stronger constitutional argument.

A Supreme Court decision against DOMA on Fourteenth Amendment grounds would all but doom Prop. 8 and all other state laws banning same-gender marriage to the same constitutional fate as those old anti-miscegenation laws, mostly in the South, that banned interracial marriages.

Given the court’s ideological makeup — with four hard-line conservatives (Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts), three liberals (Sonia Sotomayor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer), one moderate conservative (Anthony Kennedy) and, pending her confirmation, Elena Kagan (who’s been targeted for defeat by hard-line social conservatives), any ruling on same-gender marriage by the high court is all but certain to be 5-4, either way.

Consider the fact that it was Kennedy who wrote the majority opinion in two high court rulings won by gays (Romer v. Evans in 1996 and Lawrence v. Texas in 2003), as well as a concurring opinion in a third case favorable to gays handed down just last month (Christian Legal Society v. Martinez).

Add to that mix the fact that Kagan, President Obama’s nominee to succeed retired Justice John Paul Stevens, publicly spoke out at her confirmation hearing against “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the 1993 law passed by Congress that bars gay and lesbian U.S. military service members from openly acknowledging that they are gay and remain in the military.

While Kagan’s views on same-gender marriage are unknown, this column firmly believes that there is likely to be a 5-4 majority on the Supreme Court — assuming Kagan is confirmed — to strike down the ban on same-gender marriage on Fourteenth Amendment grounds, whether it’s DOMA, Prop. 8 or the other 31 similar state laws.

The justices, more than a generation ago in Loving v. Virginia, declared unanimously that the freedom of two mature, unrelated single adults who love one another and seek to form a lasting commitment to one another to marry is a freedom fully protected by the equal-protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, regardless of race, religion or nationality.

There is no reason to believe that such freedom to marry shouldn’t also be regardless of the gender of the couple.

# # #

Copyright 2010, Skeeter Sanders. All rights reserved.

Elections – Governor: A big, big week for the candidates for Governor to say the least.

Bob Kinzel had an excellent assessment of the significance of the upcoming financial filing last week on VPR, and it’s definitely worth checking out. What he did not cover, however, is how the early vote process fits into it all. In any well-run campaign, the goal is to stay in control of as many variables as possible, and nothing is more quantum than turnout on election day. Identifying supportive voters and making sure they get to the polls is much easier if you have a robust field operation that works the early vote process – as opposed to depending exclusively on get-out-the-vote (GOTV) work on election eve – and working early vote well is a comprehensive, resource-intensive task. Making sure your supporters request an early ballot, making sure the request was received and returned, sending persuasion communiques to everyone in a town that makes such a request, even if they aren’t on your list – doing all of this well takes a commitment that not all campaigns will choose to make, even if it clearly does put the elusive turnout variable under far greater direct control.

Between the two benchmarks of early vote and financial filings, we’ll know far more about the respective campaign strategies and trajectories by the end of the week, and the kind of analysis we do with our mojometers becomes far less speculative. Until then, expect to be pummelled with last minute donation requests in order to pump those reports up as far as possible.

Here, then, are the last mojometers before that picture comes more clearly into focus (all of which run fairly high, as the campaigns each work to deliver their “A” game on such a uniquely important week), including some thoughts on what to look for in the filings as well as what to expect in the coming weeks.

Peter Shumlin. Shumlin has had a big last couple weeks. He scored a major endorsement from the Teamsters Local (breaking up Racine’s labor monopoly) and got a lot of press for going up with the primary’s first TV ad. Endorsements like the Teamsters are important for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that they can act as a de facto field operation. Unions and other constituency groups don’t simply pass their endorsements on to rank and file, they become invested in turning out that rank and file, as a win for the candidate enhances their own clout and credibility. As such, these endorsing groups can help with field operations like GOTV and early vote (and as of Monday, Shumlin has added the Freedom to Marry Action Committee to what is now a list of endorsing organizations – an endorsement which will likely be more significant than the Teamsters in the Democratic Primary). This is good for Shumlin, as it’s not clear how much of a field operation he’s been able to support on his own.

The TV ad has, as ads often do, generated a lot of “earned media” coverage from reporters, creating an impact above and beyond the buy itself. As such, Shumlin’s mojo goes decidedly up for the week. Nevertheless, the timing raises eyebrows. Coming so close before the filing deadline generates inevitable questions about his finances, and whether or not the Shumlin campaign has begun its sprint for the home stretch relatively early in part to drive up last minute contributions to avoid an underwhelming cash on hand report. Time will tell. Still, momentum feeds momentum and Shumlin has given his operation a serious adrenilin injection in recent days.

The outgoing Senate President Pro Tempore won’t have the best field operation, won’t have the most ad buys, and likely won’t get the most earned media in the final days. What he’s going to need to do is be second best at everything in order to cobble together the votes when the polls close.

Deb Markowitz. Markowitz, like all the others, has sent out early vote messages to supporters. Unlike the others, though, field seems to be a relative afterthought. Despite the fact that Campaign Manager Paul Tencher talked up field and grassroots organizing in the above-linked Kinzel report (including touting the recent hiring of a field staff), the fact is that up to this point, the Markowitz campaign has been all about fundraising, with most of its human resources focused on bringing in more resources.

This means that Markowitz’s focus will be media buys rather than field work, so we can expect to see some major ad buys from her campaign soon. This will dovetail with the Markowitz’s campaign messaging up to this point, which has been primarily focused on building up the Secretary of State as a positive personality, and getting into issue specifics more slowly and tenuously than her rivals.

Winning with paid media is certainly a modus operandi for modern campaigns, but in a small state like Vermont it comes with risks. The winner may only receive 15,000 votes after all, so while the more field-focused operation will be concerned with banking those votes in advance (and driving up the turnout overall in the process), Markowitz will focus more on working hearts and minds leading up to the big day. Her financials will be particularly interesting to watch for this reason. If she reports as much money on hand as many expect, that cash combined with a smaller voter turnout could easily equal a Markowitz victory in August. Good mojo but not great because of vulnerability in the ground game in a race that could well turn on the ground game.

Doug Racine. Racine has inherited tremendous field resources through his multiple endorsements. The Vermont League of Conservation Voters and the Vermont NEA in particular will do early vote work on his behalf, and the effect of the stream of endorsements (along with the hiring of national election bigshot Joe Trippi) on his campaign’s buzz has been tremendous, raising confidence in his potential prowess as the possible Democratic Party standard bearer among uncertain primary voters. He does continue to be dogged with rumors that he isn’t raising money, but it’s difficult to judge those rumors. Earlier in the year, it seemed likely that those rumors were unfounded (possibly originating with opponents?), as their emergence would be followed by campaign expenditures such as new campaign hires (he must be paying them something, no?). Still, who knows?

But truthfully, even if he is broke (which, again, is unlikely), the support from his constituency groups along with a savvy, field-focused campaign means he could easily win this regardless, and refill his coffers after the fact. A big turnout equals more early voters, and could equal a Racine victory. Good mojo but not the greatest because of the fundraising buzz.

Matt Dunne. Dunne is going to have a good week, as he is likely going to surprise many with his fundraising. If he comes in with a better filing than Shumlin, it will surprise enough observers to give him some good momentum in the media. With his not insignificant (and recently trumpeted) support from many in the business community, Dunne will be able to compete strongly on resources and message.

From all appearences, Dunne seems to have the most comprehensive and vibrant field operation. Whether it can compete with Racine’s largely outsourced one is the question, but good buzz from a filing will help across the board by generating coverage and boosting his still-lower name recognition.

If Dunne has a lot of money on hand, don’t be surprised to see some strategic TV buys, as we saw in his Lieutenant Governor primary against John Tracy (and an excellent ad it was, targeted right to the VPR crowd with its Willem Lange voiceover). Strong mojo, and again, the higher the turnout, the better the chance of a Dunne victory.

Susan Bartlett. If Racine has a constituency-group-driven field machine and Dunne has a sophisticated internal field machine, Bartlett gets the award for having the most field-dominated operation, putting her on the opposite end of the spectrum from Markowitz. No one is expecting Bartlett to have a lot of cash on hand, and her campaign is playing down any such expectations. Instead, her operation is proudly announcing its focus on the ground game, even going so far as to sell that reliance as a messaging virtue.

Field is great, but name recognition and broad support are still tough hurdles for Bartlett, so expect a few Hail Mary campaign passes in the coming weeks. A mysteriously unrevealing press release announcing a press conference for today (Tuesday) could well signal one, and its enigmatic lack of detail clearly teases those who may be expecting her to drop out of the race entirely (unlikely, as another email to supporters went out pushing early vote).

It’s difficult to judge the mojo of the Bartlett campaign, so we’ll make it a wash – but as a more fiscally conservative, straight-talk style candidate, she very much fits the profile of a candidate who will get a lot of love from newspaper endorsement boards. If she can stay afloat a while longer, it seems likely she’ll pile up her share of these highly influential endorsements.

After last week’s AP blunder, it was nice to see Doug Hoffer on the front page of the Free Press today.  Apparently the word is getting out that there’s more than one way to skin a Salmon. I don’t know Doug personally, but I have read enough of his piercing analysis right here on Green Mountain Daily to know that he is ideally suited to the position of Auditor, and that there could be no more engaged or passionate watchdog for the public interest.   Let’s see that website up there right away, Doug (Publisher’s note: It seems to be up now at hofferforauditor.com/).  Early voting began today!

The goings-on in Franklin County never fail to entertain, and often recollect the opportunistic politics of much earlier times.  A weekend Messenger profile of the county Sheriff’s race reveals some interesting facts concerning the incumbent, Democrat Bob Norris.   Apparently referred to in some law-enforcement circles as “Benefits Bob,”  Sheriff Norris’ administrative approach has raised a few eyebrows.   Complaints of inter-departmental friction with local and state enforcement are coupled with questions regarding liberties Norris’ department may have taken in billing the state for certain contract-related expenditures.  In Franklin County, what expenses the county may be billed for is left entirely to the discretion of the side judges who appear to have allowed the Sheriff wide-latitude to use public funding sources to cover costs that might more appropriately have been included in contractual expenses.

In a July 7 Messenger feature, Michelle Monroe gave a detailed account of what is known of the financial management of the department, but the picture was still somewhat hazy:  

On March 22, the Messenger requested from the Franklin County Sheriff in writing “a detailed accounting of what expenses were billed to Franklin County during FY 2009 and the current fiscal year. If a formula was used to determine what share of various costs was to be billed to the county, please include a copy of that formula.” Norris said no formula was used to determine what was billed to the county. He pointed to statutory requirements and the county budget to show what expenses were paid by the county.



Asked about the training paid for by the county, Norris said how much training the county pays for is at the discretion of the assistant judges.

Two Republicans are vying for the privilege of challenging Norris in the November election.  One of them, Paul Morits currently serves as a detective on the St. Albans City Police force, but worked in the Sheriff’s office before that.  He characterizes the relationship between the Sheriff and other law enforcement bodies as poor owing to the Sheriff’s inclination to be”territorial.”

This might just be dismissed as the rumblings of a rival candidate but, according to the Messenger:

In December, when Morits resigned from the Sheriff’s office, he said that Norris e-mailed a single word to him in reply, “Accepted.”  Then it gets interesting:

On Dec. 23, Morits’ last day with the Sheriff’s office, Det. Sgt. Michael Sisino, with approval from Norris, and via a Sheriff’s dispatcher, sent e-mail to everyone on staff -forgetting that Morits was still on the active recipients’ list.  “From this point forward,’ the note states, ‘Paul Morits is not allowed inside this building for any reason.  He (Sisino) advised that this is to include while he is in uniform with the St. Albans Police Department.”

According to Morits, Norris’ anger with him was due to the fact that he went to work for the City Police.  

Regardless of whether or not this squabble is fairly represented by the Republican candidate, questions regarding the finances of the Sheriff’s Department under Norris have apparently been a topic of curiosity for a while now.  According to state law, a 5% “administrative fee” may be collected by the Sheriff on all contracts carried out by the Department.  Norris has apparently taken this as a windfall to elevate his own annual salary of $65,000. from the state to a handsome $112,000.  Some, like Morits, argue that that “administrative fee” should go back into the Department:

“Forty-thousand dollars in fees means a lot when you’re talking manpower, especially in an office that claims it doesn’t have the resources to do what it needs to do.”

I haven’t followed the Sheriff’s career, but I don’t like where this seems to be going.   I can only await further developments in the news with that peculiarly Franklin County kind of dread that yet another public figure who styles himself a “Democrat” will force me to support his opposition.

(Uncomfortable but fair questions for Rep. Welch. – promoted by GMD)

Peter Welch claims he’s doing all he can to hold BP responsible for the damage caused in the Gulf of Mexico (see http://welch.house.gov/index.p… That’s certainly commendable. A while back, he asked some memorably tough questions of BP CEO Tony Hayward, and he has subsequently poked at some specific shortcomings of BP in the cleanup effort, albeit with dubious results (I doubt BP cares what Peter recommends/suggests/implores they do).

Most audaciously, he’s insisted that BP refrain from paying bonuses and dividends until the cleanup has been completed and the bill paid. All well and good, but so far, it’s been largely rhetoric.

In fact, it’s not clear how much of this is Peter grandstanding on a story that’s front-and-center in the news, and how much of it is a genuine attempt at actually, you know, holding BP responsible. Recall, if you will, that shortly after ACORN had been accused of fraudulent behavior following a theatrical right-wing smear attempt, Peter was awfully quick to jump on the bandwagon and insist that ACORN be barred from receiving federal funds. Specifically, he voted for the house bill to de-fund ACORN, about which author Mike Johanns (R-NE) said: “Until a full investigation is launched into ACORN, no taxpayer money should be used to fund their activities. A vote in favor of my amendment is a vote in favor of the taxpayer and against the status quo.”

Mind you, ACORN hadn’t been found guilty at the time, and the organziation was subsequently aquitted of all charges, but Peter nevertheless found that the accusation alone was enough to vote for Johanns’s draconian bill and withhold all federal funds from ACORN. This turns out to have been illegal in its own right (only after being found guilty could Congress defund an entity like ACORN), but regardless: with Peter’s help, the right-wing smear accomplished its goal, and ACORN was shut down. The poor and disenfranchised lost yet another important advocate, while I assume Peter proudly notched the whole thing down as “holding ACORN responsible…”

Back to BP, then: Attorney General Holder confirms that BP is already under criminal investigation for what has transpired with the Deepwater Horizon disaster. (Obviously, BP is bound to be aquitted — they have too many friends in Congress, and Barack Obama will no doubt offer BP amnesty for past wrongdoings like he did the Bush administration perpetrators of torture and crimes against humanity. Remember, the law is different for big corporations than for you and me). But the investigation alone should be plenty for Peter Welch to come forward with an amendment — he should be the first to state that “Until a full investigation is launched into BP, no taxpayer money should be used to fund their activities. A vote in favor of my amendment is a vote in favor of the taxpayer and against the status quo.”

But as of now, I’m looking in vain to find any mention anywhere of Peter’s initiative to immediately stop, for instance, the annual purchase of almost $1bn worth of aviation fuel from BP by the DoD (see http://www.commondreams.org/he… But if he felt justified in stopping the paychecks of community workers employed by ACORN based on nothing but an alleged crime, then surely this is no different? Actually, this is different, because Peter now claims to himself be on the frontline, “holding BP Responsible.”

Too much for Congressman Welch to pull off? Well, he’s already authored a pending piece of legislation “To require the proposal for debarment from contracting with the Federal Government of persons violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977”,/i> (see http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/… so he’s clearly familiar with precisely this sort of thing. Is the courage to genuinely take on BP perhaps lacking, Congressman?

Which is it Peter: are you going to measure out the same tough justice & love here in an instance where it really matters, or will you simply stomp your feet, raise your voice a bit when the cameras are rolling, but then let BP continue to pull down billions of tax payer dollars as an unjust reward for their criminally inadequate efforts to clean up their act of gross negligence & wanton destruction in the Gulf of Mexico?

Dana Milbank starts his piece off with “[Arizona Governor] Jan Brewer has lost her head.” (Headless bodies and other immigration tall tales in Arizona, Washington Post, 07/11/10) He then goes on to report in a very factual way on how this baseless assertion was actually looked into and found to be without any support, and the head bit is found to be only one in a list of lies told by the likes of Brewer and, yes, John McCain (he who thought Palin would make a good Vice President).

The only problem with Milbank’s story being that it was not on the front page where it belongs but placed in the opeds with the ‘he said, she said’ stuff.

Obviously the Republican lie machine needn’t worry when evidence based stories exposing their outrageous and dangerous to all of us bullshit is simple opinion while their lies are reported in the “factual” section of the papers.

It worked that way with Iraqi WMD … remember? And when the radical right wing in congress made up lies about ACORN all sorts of Democrats – especially our own weasel peter welch – jumped on the liars bandwagon.

It would certainly help if the papers would start a liars section. The claims by Brewer, McCain or weasel peter welch could go right after the opeds, and then all their crap could be relegated to a heading under which that crap belongs.

And stories like Milbank’s could be moved from the opinions section into the factual area where it belongs.

Then maybe the likes of weasel peter welch and McCain and Brewer wouldn’t be able to spread their lies so easily.

PS. Still waiting on weasel peter welch to apologize to all those hard working folks who associated themselves with ACORN. After all the weasel peter welch went out of his way to join his radical right wing buddies in congress and viciously attack ACORN based entirely on lies.

 Perhaps as Fitzgerald and Hemingway are said to have once discussed, the rich are different than you and me.  

“They may be less susceptible to the shame and fear-mongering used by the government and the mortgage banking industry to keep underwater homeowners from acting in their financial best interest,” said a University of Arizona law professor in a New York Times article who has studied strategic defaults.  

Yes, they have more strategic options.

More than one in seven homeowners with loans in excess of a million dollars are seriously delinquent, according to data compiled for The New York Times by the real estate analytics firm CoreLogic.  

By contrast, homeowners with less lavish housing are much more likely to keep writing checks to their lender. About one in 12 mortgages below the million-dollar mark is delinquent.  

Though it is hard to prove, the CoreLogic data suggest that many of the well-to-do are purposely dumping their financially draining properties, just as they would any sour investment.

It’s simply a strategic default option for the wealthy that can walk away unscathed from something sour, unlike the other people that are susceptible to shame and fear mongering used by the government and banking industry.  

I wonder if this strategy might strike some bankers as an option above the law. Nah, at a certain level all the rules change, this is America 2010.

But how does all this trickle down?

I haven't read them yet, but there are two new District Court decisions invalidating provisions of the Defense of Marriage Act. From Talking Points Memo:

Judge Joseph Tauro, of U.S. District Court in Boston, issued rulings on two separate cases today.

“This court has determined that it is clearly within the authority of the Commonwealth to recognize same-sex marriages among its residents, and to afford those individuals in same-sex marriages any benefits, rights, and privileges to which they are entitled by virtue of their marital status,” Tauro wrote in the decision for Massachusetts v. Health and Human Services.

“The federal government, by enacting and enforcing DOMA, plainly encroaches upon the firmly entrenched province of the state, and, in doing so, offends the Tenth Amendment. For that reason, the statute is invalid,” he wrote.

In the other case, Gill v. Office of Personnel Management, Tauro ruled that DOMA violates the equal protection principles in the Fifth Amendment

Taken together with the decision this week of the governor of Hawaii to veto civil unions, this seems to be another very important step in the direction of marriage equality. (What's the connection? The decision in Hawaii suggests that civil unions are not a sufficient alternative.)

Of course, there are many months and many hundreds of pages of briefing before these cases are resolved, but it sounds like a big step.

It's also a response to people who are opposing state marriage laws because they won't have any effect on federal benefits.