“$87 billion for Iraq for 24 million people in a middle-income country filled with oil and $1 billion – that’s 1/87th of that – for 600 million impoverished and dying people in Africa. What kind of foreign policy is that? It is racist – of course it is … I’ve been at the White House for three years saying ‘How are you letting millions of people die – thousands every day – and you’re giving 1/400th of what you’re doing for Iraq for the global fund to fight AIDS, TB and malaria. This is so shocking for us as a country that we can’t have any balance at all. And then we’re dumping this money down the drain. But why? Of course, fundamentally why is we want that oil under the sand. That’s fundamentally why. We’re not going to get it anyway. But they want to privatize it no doubt because, where’s the first couple of billion going no doubt? Halliburton and Bechtel. Let’s have a Congressional investigation of that, to start. Let’s have a Congressional investigation of the Saudi-Bush family linkages which go back 20 years — which have enriched this president, enriched his father, enriched their family, enriched their friends. And brought us into this so-called special relationship with a country that truly was involved in the September 11 attack and we don’t hear anything about that. So let’s have an investigation of that. And if we get out of Iraq, then we’ll have tens of billions of dollars not for Bechtel and Halliburton, but we’ll have tens of billions of dollars for our needs and we’ll have the billions of dollars for Africa.” – Jeffrey Sachs, formerly sane Columbia University professor, joining the Krugman wing of the Democrats, at a Congressional Black Caucus meeting on Iraq last Friday (transcribed by a reader from C-SPAN).
SO WHAT DOES THE FMA SAY? Ramesh Ponnuru, like other intellectually honest souls, is having a hard time understanding the proposed religious right amendment to the constitution, barring any benefits to gay couples. At first he thought my worries about the text were “ridiculous.” Now he sees a little of what I’m getting at. His latest interpretation is as follows:
The FMA does, however, bar governmental benefits to unmarried persons premised on a sexual relationship between (or among) them. It would not bar legislatively enacted civil unions that, say, opened various benefits to any two people living together–whether they were two brothers, two guys who sleep together, widows who had set up house, or whatever. It would bar civil unions that were limited to gay couples.
I’m not sure how he gleans this from the text which is as follows:
Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this constitution or the constitution of any state, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups.
That seems pretty broad to me. Where does he get the gays-only clause? I think they need to be more specific and a lot clearer. My suggestion:
Neither this constitution or the constitution of any state, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon any homosexual couples for whatever reason.
What would be wrong with that? It’s clear, at least. Why would the editors of National Review disagree? They oppose any benefits to gay couples whatever.
The Dish 