Prop 8 Ruled Unconstitutional By 9th Circuit Panel!!

As expected, the federal appellate court in California has affirmed the lower court decision, ruling bya  vote of 2-1 that Proposition 8 violates the United States Constitution.

Here's the text of the decision (hat/tip to AmericaBlog)
Ninth Circuit Prop. 8 decision

Internet Websites Go Dark To Protest SOPA

Today many websites are observing a "blackout" day to call attention to dangerous legislation before Congress which would fundamentally alter the Internet, called the Stop Online Privacy Act or SOPA. Participants include Google, Wikipedia and Boing Boing, among many others.

The White House announced its opposition to the legislation over the weekend.

LGBT blogs are in the mix as well, with Karen Ocamb's LGBT POV, TowleRoad and Bilerico Project participating in the online SOPA  protest.

White House Opposes SOPA and PIPA

The White House has finally come out against legislation which would have a dramatically negative impact on the free and unfettered nature of the Internet, the so-called Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and its House companion bill, the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA).

The White House blog says:

Right now, Congress is debating a few pieces of legislation concerning the very real issue of online piracy, including the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), the PROTECT IP Act, and the Online Protection and Digital ENforcement Act (OPEN). We want to take this opportunity to tell you what the Administration will support—and what we will not support. Any effective legislation should reflect a wide range of stakeholders, including everyone from content creators to the engineers that build and maintain the infrastructure of the Internet.

While we believe that online piracy by foreign websites is a serious problem that requires a serious legislative response, we will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet.

Any effort to combat online piracy must guard against the risk of online censorship of lawful activity and must not inhibit innovation by our dynamic businesses large and small. Across the globe, the openness of the Internet is increasingly central to innovation in business, government, and society and it must be protected. To minimize this risk, new legislation must be narrowly targeted only at sites beyond the reach of current U.S. law, cover activity clearly prohibited under existing U.S. laws, and be effectively tailored, with strong due process and focused on criminal activity. Any provision covering Internet intermediaries such as online advertising networks, payment processors, or search engines must be transparent and designed to prevent overly broad private rights of action that could encourage unjustified litigation that could discourage startup businesses and innovative firms from growing.

We must avoid creating new cybersecurity risks or disrupting the underlying architecture of the Internet. Proposed laws must not tamper with the technical architecture of the Internet through manipulation of the Domain Name System (DNS), a foundation of Internet security. Our analysis of the DNS filtering provisions in some proposed legislation suggests that they pose a real risk to cybersecurity and yet leave contraband goods and services accessible online. We must avoid legislation that drives users to dangerous, unreliable DNS servers and puts next-generation security policies, such as the deployment of DNSSEC, at risk.

POLL: Huge Majority Supports LGBT Workplace Equality

A new poll commissioned by Human Rights Campaign confirms that the vast majority of Americans believes that employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity should be illegal.

The poll found a vast majority (77 percent) of voters support protecting LGBT people from discrimination in employment.  The support for employment protections defies conventional political wisdom, reaching across party and ideological lines.  Seventy percent of self-identified Republicans and 67 percent of conservatives support anti-discrimination laws.  Support is strong even among groups who tend to be less supportive of LGBT issues, such as seniors (69 percent among voters over age 65), those with a high school degree or less (68 percent), observant Christians (77 percent), born-again Christians (74 percent), and residents of the Deep South (72 percent). 

In a finding showing a need for more public outreach and education for employment non-discrimination laws, most voters believe anti-discrimination laws already exist.  Eighty-seven percent of voters believe it is illegal under federal law to fire someone for being gay and 78 percent believe it is illegal under state law.  Even in states without anti-discrimination laws, 75 percent of voters think it is illegal under state law to fire someone for being gay or lesbian. 

Of course there is pending federal legislation called the Employment Non-Discrimination Act which would actually make the law comport with what most people believe the law is already: illegal to fire workers because they are LGBT.

But it is absolutely unlikely to pass Congress while the Republicans control the majority of the U.S. House.

SCOTUS Aiming To Be Factor In 2012 Elections

The U.S. Supreme Court has announced some decisions recently which indicate that they will be a major factor in the 2012 presidential election. They announced they would decide three politically fraught cases: the constitutionality of the health care reform law, the constitutionality of Texas's congressional redistricting map and the constitutionality of Arizona's wildly xenophobic immigration law SB-1070.

Senate Judiciary Passes DOMA Repeal Bill!

Today the United States Senate Judiciary Committee passed the Respect for Marriage Act by a party-line vote of 10-8 with all Democrats voting in favor and all Republicans voting against. Think Progress has video clips of the absolutely insane things the Republican opponents said to defend their increasingly tenuous and arbitrary defense of the Defense of Marriage Act.

President Obama endorsed the bill in July and the White House issued a statement after the vote which said:

President Obama applauds today’s vote by the Senate Judiciary Committee to approve the Respect for Marriage Act, which would provide a legislative repeal of the so-called “Defense of Marriage Act.” The President has long believed that DOMA is discriminatory and has called for its repeal. We should all work towards taking this law off the books. The federal government should not deny gay and lesbian couples the same rights and legal protections afforded to straight couples.”

Very important result. It will be interesting if they can even get a vote on the bill on the Senate floor

133 House Members Sign Brief Challenging DOMA

133 Democratc congressmembers signed their names to a brief filed before the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in the case of Gill v Office of Personnel Management in which the central question is whether the  so-called Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is unconstitutional.

The case was brought (and won) by Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders before U.S. District Court judge Joseph Tauro in July 2009. The Department of Justice appealed the decision, but then in February 2011 the United States changed sides in the case after the President determined that DOMA is inherently unconstitutional and laws that discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation warrant heightened scrutiny.

DOMA is being defended in federal court by superlawyer Paul Clement for BLAG, the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group, on behalf of the U.S. House Republican majority.

Hat/tip to Joe.My.God

Sen. Mikulski Tweets DOMA Repeal Support

Closeted United States Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-Maryland) was previously the subject of a petition campaign to get her support for the Repeal for Marriage Act, federal legislation which would repeal the so-called Defense of Marriage Act, has announced (via Facebook and Twitter) that she will indeed sign on to S. 598.

The Washington Blade reports:

In a statement provided to the Washington Blade via e-mail, Mikulski confirmed she’s a co-sponsor of the legislation.

“I am proud to co-sponsor legislation to repeal key provisions of the Defense of Marriage Act,” Mikulski said. “I believe all Americans are entitled to equal protection under the law and all of our citizens deserve to be treated with dignity and respect.”

She continued, “The Respect for Marriage Act, S.598, will allow couples who have a legal marriage in a state to have the same federal protections as every other married couple. This includes the right to receive spousal benefits under Social Security; to file joint federal tax returns and to take leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act when a spouse falls seriously ill.”

Mikulski’s support brings the total number of co-sponsors for the Respect for Marriage Act to 30. In July, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the repeal legislation and how DOMA, which prohibits federal recognition of same-sex marriage, burdens gay couples.

Last month, a coalition of LGBT rights groups — Freedom to Marry, the Courage Campaign and Equality Maryland — delivered a petition with names from nearly 3,000 Maryland residents to Mikulski’s office calling on her to support DOMA repeal.

Hat/tip to TowleRoad.

Celebrity Friday: Barbara Mikulski Avoiding DOMA Repeal?

U.S. Senator Barbara Mikulski, Democrat of Maryland, is the
second-longest serving woman in Congress in history

As support for legislative repeal of the so-called Defense of Marriage Act gains steam with hearings being held in the United States Senate Judiciary Committee, attention has begun to fall on liberal members of the Democratic caucus who have inexplicably not yet co-sponsored the Respect for Marriage Act (S. 598/H.R. 1116). For example, in Maryland where marriage equality supporters are expected to move forward with another attempt to legalize marriage equality in 2012 with the strong support of the state's Governor after 2011's heartbreaking defeat, only one of that state's two Democratic U.S. Senators is on record in support of the Respect for Marriage Act or marriage equality itself.There are currently 18 US Senators who support marriage equality and there are 28 U.S. Senators co-sponsoring the DOMA repeal bill.

It's a perfectly reasonable position to be against DOMA (which even in 1996 was a truly shocking federal intrusion into an area of law ceded to the states for hundreds of years rooted in animus towards homosexuality) without publicly endorsing marriage equality, that's the current position of the President of the United States.

What's so surprising is that the Senator from Maryland who is supporting DOMA repeal is Benjamin Cardin, not Barbara Mikulski. Mikulski is a longtime liberal and is currently the longest serving female member of Congress. If she is still in office after March 12, 2012 she will become the longest serving female member of Congress of all time. She has also been widely rumored to be a closeted lesbian for decades. Regardless of what her sexual orientation, it is becoming unacceptable for prominent members of the Democratic party, especially someone as senior as Mikulski not to take a position in favor of marriage equality, especially when it is an important issue for her state and there is federal legislation pending before the United States Senate right now.

Rick Perry's Top 10 Crazy Ideas (That Will Affect You)

Oh good grief. Maybe it's true that George W. Bush was "the smart one." His successor, Governor Rick Perry is now running for President and  has even crazier ideas about government than Michele "Crazy Eyes" Bachmann.

Blogger Matt Yglesias took his life in his hands and read Perry's book, Fed Up! Our Fight to Save America from Washington and posted the Top 10 craziest ideas he found inside:

— 10. Social Security Is Evil: According to Perry Social Security is “by far the best example” of a program “violently tossing aside any respect for our founding principles.” (page 48)

— 9. Private Enterprise Blossomed Under Conscription and Wartime Price Controls: Not only does he argue that the New Deal failed to end the Great Depression, but he asserts “recovery did not come until World War II, when FDR was finally persuaded to unleash private enterprise.” (page 48)

— 8. Medicare Is Too Expensive But Must Never Be Cut: Both establishing Medicare in 1965 and expanding it to include prescription drugs in 2003 are examples of “an irresponsible culture of spending in Washington” (page 63), but establishing “‘councils of experts’ and panels of various sorts” to assess the cost effectiveness of different Medicare-eligible treatments is a “frightening” “scheme” that “undermines freedom” and can be fairly labeled “death panels” (page 81).

— 7. All Bank Regulation Is Unconstitutional: Criticizing the Security and Exchange Commission’s rulemaking process under the Dodd-Frank financial regulation bill, Perry asserts that “if the Constitution were shown the appropriate respect, Washington regulation writers wouldn’t have to worry about underrepresented views, because they wouldn’t have control over them in the first place” (page 94).

— 6. Consumer Financial Protection Is Unconstitutional: Further reiterates his view that all federal financial regulation is illegitimate, listing the SEC on page 44 as part of a “federal alphabet soup” in which “undemocratic unelected Washington bureaucrats” are “now (dubiously) empowered to dictate their own preferences to the American people.”

— 5. Almost Everything Is Unconstitutional: Regrets the existence of jurisprudence construing the Commerce Clause to permit “federal laws regulating the environment, regulating guns, protecting civil rights, establishing the massive programs and Medicare and Medicaid, creating national minimum wage laws, [and] establishing national labor laws.” Perry makes a partial exception for laws barring racial discrimination which he says fulfill “the intent behind the passage of the Reconstruction Era amendments.” (page 51)

— 4. Federal Education Policy Is Unconstitutional: Cites the willingness of Republicans to vote for reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act as a “perfect example” of “losing sight of the fact that perfectly laudable policy choices at the local level are not appropriate (much less constitutional) at the federal level.” (page 87)

— 3. Al Gore Is Part Of A Conspiracy To Deny The Existence Of Global Cooling:Jokes that the Social Security Trust Fund “must be somewhere in Al Gore’s lockbox, right next to his notes from inventing the Internet and that global cooling data he doesn’t want anyone to see” (page 60). Argues that moderates oppose curbing greenhouse gas emissions because “they know that we have been experiencing a cooling trend” (page 92).

— 2. Not Only Is Everything Unconstitutional, Activist Judges Are A Problem:Having called the majority of the duly enacted modern welfare state and federal regulatory apparatus unconstitutional, Perry pivots to the complaint that “the [Supreme] court too often chooses to take it upon itself to govern and to develop policy” (page 114).

— 1. The Civil War Was Caused By Slaveowners Trampling On Northern States’ Rights: Rather than simply citing chattel slavery as an exemption to his “states’ rights are good” principle, Perry argues that slaveholder activism in the 1850s was an example of big government federal overreach. “In many ways it was was the northern states whose sovereignty was violated in the run-up to the Civil War,” he argues, citing the Fugitive Slave Act and completely ignoring the human rights of the enslaved African-Americans of the south. He says “we can never know what would have happened in the absence of federal involvement,” ignoring again the fact that federalism would have bought peace at the price of continued slavery.

Please don't think that Gov. Perry just wrote these comments in a book nobody read and is now distancing himself from these extreme positions. In an interview with The Daily Beast last week, Perry repeated many of these extreme positions unapologetically.

Pick your poison: Perry, Bachmann or Romney. No thanks, I'll take Obama!