Month: April 2009

So far, discussion of the responsibility of far right paranoids' fueling the kind of rampage that left three cops dead in the Mark Poplawski case has been abstract. Now we find out that Poplawski actually posted Glenn Beck's insane FEMA concentration camp segment to a neo-Nazi website.

In a sign of where the debate is going, governor Chet Culver, while retaining his own religious view that gay couples' marriages are not valid, nonetheless

said the issue before the court in its unanimous ruling Friday involved only civil marriage, and that churches and other religious institutions do not have to perform them. "The court also concluded that the denial of this right constitutes discrimination," Culver said. "Therefore, after careful consideration and a thorough reading of the court's decision, I am reluctant to support amending the Iowa Constitution to add a provision that our Supreme Court has said is unlawful and discriminatory."

A man who can understand the distinction between civil law and religious doctrine. Money quote from Culver's statement:

“As Governor, I must respect the authority of the Iowa Supreme Court, and have a duty to uphold the Constitution of the State of Iowa. I also fully respect the right of all Iowans to live under the full protection of Iowa’s Constitution.

“I urge Iowans who hold beliefs on all sides of this issue to exhibit respect and good will. Our state faces many serious challenges. We are in the midst of a serious economic recession. Tens of thousands of our fellow Iowans are without work. We have suffered the worst natural disasters and most difficult recovery our state has ever faced. We must join together and redouble our efforts to work toward solutions that will help Iowans in this time of uncertainty. That is where, I believe, my focus and energies should lie. “Let us not lose sight of the fact that we are all Iowans, all neighbors, united in the promise and faith of a brighter future for our state. Let us all work together toward that common goal.”

This is an amusing column. And this is the most amusing part:

Bill, I am concerned that you have been losing touch with reality recently. Did you really say you are more powerful than any politician? That reminds me of the famous story about Squeaky the Chicago Mouse. It seems that Squeaky was floating on his back along the Chicago River one day. Approaching the Michigan Avenue lift bridge, he called out: Raise the bridge! I have an erection!

Another sign of the same sectarianism that gave us the last wave of mass murder in occupied Iraq, and the green shoots of the next major Sunni and Qaeda insurgency. Notice how the insurgents are targeting a major Shiite mosque, exactly the tactic that precipitated the last wave of violence in Samarra:

A bomb left in a plastic bag exploded Wednesday near the most important Shiite shrine in Baghdad, killing seven people and wounding 23, police said. The blast occurred in the same neighborhood where an infant was rescued from a burning car the day before following an explosion that killed his mother… Last January, a man dressed as a woman blew himself up near the shrine, killing more than three dozen people and wounding more than 70.

Glenn Reynolds needs to keep the victory champagne going. It would be dreadful if reality interrupted, wouldn't it? Or how long before Obama is blamed for "losing" Iraq?

Professors of Economics Barry Eichengreen and Kevin O’Rourke use the d-word:

…the world is currently undergoing an economic shock every bit as big as the Great Depression shock of 1929-30. Looking just at the US leads one to overlook how alarming the current situation is even in comparison with 1929-30. The good news, of course, is that the policy response is very different. The question now is whether that policy response will work.

Krugman is his usual chipper self.

What Eichengreen-O’Rourke show, it seems to me, is that knowledge is the only thing standing between us and Great Depression 2.0. It’s only to the extent that we understand these things a bit better than our grandfathers — and that we act on that knowledge — that we have any real reason to think this time will be better.

Free Exchange is less apocalyptic:

the handwringing over the state of economics is somewhat premature. We remain in the thick of a great test of economic policy. Given an economic shock as large or larger as that which set off the Great Depression, world leaders have responded very differently from their counterparts almost a century ago. If we still find ourselves in deep Depression, then economists will have much to apologise for. If instead the outcome is much better this time around, then the field of economics will have succeeding in preventing a great deal of human suffering.

The right refuses to give up its argumentative crutch. W. James Antle, III:

The Judges played a role even here — the civil unions regime was judicially imposed on a state without any mechanism for the people to vote directly; it is highly unlikely that this would have come to pass had that not been the case — but this is the first time this decision has been made by an elected legislature in the United States.

Matthew J. Franck:

Would same-sex marriage have arrived in Vermont in 2009 without the state supreme court forcing the issue in 1999?  It's impossible to be certain, but I think probably not.  So this is still, in part, a story of the leverage that judicial usurpation can produce in generating social change that legitimate representation of the people would continue to resist.

Dan Riehl:

Unless one happens to be wearing a black robe, it seems the people have less and less say in government every day.

A reader writes:

I'm getting tired of the self-congratulatory notes from potheads. Sure, probably marijuana should be legalized. But how is this issue a major priority? In a world where we have climate change, peak oil, species extinction, geopolitical instability, nuclear proliferation, economic collapse, religious extremism, not to mention the issues of education and health care to concern ourselves with, shouldn't we try to focus on things at that level first — the really important things? Then stuff like gay marriage and the poor whiny pot smokers.

The first is one of the most basic civil rights enumerated in Constitutional history, and civil rights, in my book, are far more important than the economy. The second is a core freedom – the right to grow a frigging plant in your own backyard. For me, freedom is always primary. It is the core political value. The Dish will continue to cover the economy, climate change (my last column was on the subject), Iraq, Afghanistan, and all sorts of other issues. But the attacks on core freedoms in America are my priority and covering them is my prerogative. And I'm tired of hearing that the basic rights of Americans are unimportant – just because those Americans are gay or, God forbid, smoke a little weed.

William Galston is fascinated by Rawls's relationship with religion:

Many of Rawls's students regarded him as a secular saint, and he may well have been. But judging from the writing of his youth, the aspects of his bearing that made him so compelling as a teacher and human being were rooted in a religious sensibility that made it impossible for him to approach politics on its own terms. Even at its best, politics cannot be a branch of moral philosophy, or a kind of rational choice, or the product of deliberations among reasonable people. While politics is not without norms and standards, it must reflect the nature of the human species as self-interested and passionate as well as reasonable–and as capable of destruction as well as cooperation. Political norms and standards must also take into account the distinctive difficulties of collective action and the means sometimes needed to enforce compliance. If we look at political life from too high an altitude, we can no longer see it as it is.

My point stands about the fragility of relying on the somewhat tired judicial activism argument when a legislature enacts marriage equality. Allahpundit is at a loss:

Normally this is where I’d gauge whether a constitutional amendment to overturn the decision is feasible or not, but since Vermont’s gone off-script I’m without an angle here.

NRO manages to revive the judicial activism case by pointing out, accurately enough, that this process was kicked off by a court ruling that equal rights and benefits were mandatory under the state constitution. But are conservatives now saying that courts should have no role whatsoever in judging minority rights? Meanwhile, Hot Air's online poll of conservative blog readers finds that 74 percent of Hot Air readers are either fine with marriage equality in Vermont or happy to let a state make its own decisions. Only a quarter still support the federal amendment approach.