Month: May 2009

“Make Change, Not Lawsuits”

The ACLU, GLAD, Lambda, NCLR, the Equality Federation, Freedom to Marry, GLAAD, HRC and NGLTF are not happy about the Olson lawsuit:

In response to the California Supreme Court decision allowing Prop 8 to stand, four LGBT legal organizations and five other leading national LGBT groups are reminding the LGBT community that ill-timed lawsuits could set the fight for marriage back.  The groups released a new publication, “Why the ballot box and not the courts should be the next step on marriage in California.”  This publication discourages people from bringing premature lawsuits based on the federal Constitution because, without more groundwork, the U.S. Supreme Court likely is not yet ready to rule that same-sex couples cannot be barred from marriage.  The groups also revised “Make Change, Not Lawsuits,” which was released after the California Supreme Court decision ending the ban on marriage for same-sex couples in California.  This publication encourages couples who have legally married to ask friends, neighbors and institutions to honor their marriages, but discourages people from bringing lawsuits.

More info on the suit here. The complaint can be read here (pdf).

Beyond The Valley Of High Premiums

Atul Gawande tells the tale of McAllen, Texas, one of the most expensive healthcare markets in the US. Worth your time:

Advocates of a public [healthcare] option say government financing would save the most money by having leaner administrative costs and forcing doctors and hospitals to take lower payments than they get from private insurance. Opponents say doctors would skimp, quit, or game the system, and make us wait in line for our care; they maintain that private insurers are better at policing doctors. No, the skeptics say: all insurance companies do is reject applicants who need health care and stall on paying their bills. Then we have the economists who say that the people who should pay the doctors are the ones who use them. Have consumers pay with their own dollars, make sure that they have some “skin in the game,” and then they’ll get the care they deserve. These arguments miss the main issue. When it comes to making care better and cheaper, changing who pays the doctor will make no more difference than changing who pays the electrician. The lesson of the high-quality, low-cost communities is that someone has to be accountable for the totality of care. Otherwise, you get a system that has no brakes. You get McAllen.

I understand the problems of McAllen. I also shudder at the phrase "totality of care."

Diet Gitmo

The usual suspects on the right are calling for a new and improved Guantanamo. Massie counters:

This isn't going to work. How hard is it to understand that Guantanamo has become a poisonous symbol? Sure, there were plenty of evil-doers and terrorists before Guantanamo ever opened its doors and there will still be plenty once it's shut. But that's no reason to give people an additional reason for despising the United States when, you know, you don't have to accomodate and deepen their prejudices in this fashion. Equally, european public opinion is one thing, but it's not as important as views elsewhere in the world. Do these people really think that you can have Diet Gitmo and persuade the rest of the world that it isn't actually just the same old stuff in new packaging? Therere are good reasons explaining why Abu Ghraib, or in another place, the Maze prison in Belfast, were demolished.

Hewitt Award Nominee

"I never in my life thought I could possibly see a Supreme Court pick as bad as Sonia Sotomayor. Barack Obama is quite clearly trying to upend all the underpinnings of American society in order to create his own version of a Brave New World. … He nominates the most radical possible choice for the Supreme Court, a woman whose speeches and writings are so obscenely racialist that no white male could possible get away with saying anything like those things and live, professionally, for even a single additional day. … This is a war for our civic souls. We dare not lose it," – Quin Hillyer, American Spectator.

Rope-A-Conservative-Dope Watch

Drum sees the crafty way Obama makes his political enemies blow themselves up:

[Obama] gets to be the calm at the center of the storm, providing his usual striking contrast to the seething stew of preachers, radio screamers, and Gingrich acolytes who will be making themselves ever more tiresome to Mr. and Mrs. Heartland with their ranting jeremiads.  I don’t blame conservatives for opposing Sotomayor even though they know that she’d only be replaced by someone equally liberal if they did somehow manage to derail her (liberals did the same with Roberts and Alito, after all), but if they’re smart they’ll realize that the usual shriekfest is playing right into Obama’s hands.

But they’re not smart, are they?

Dissent Of The Day

A reader writes:

In the item "Debating a Bud", you quote Harvard economics Jeffrey A. Miron as saying, "One thing legalization would not do is produce a major increase in marijuana use; existing evidence suggests prohibition has only a modest impact. Alcohol consumption declined moderately but not dramatically during alcohol prohibition, for example."

Per capita consumption of alcohol in the U.S. in 1934, the first year after Prohibition was repealed, was at half of the level before the first of the state prohibition laws was enacted in 1906 (federal in 1919). And it did not return to pre-prohibition levels until the early 1970s. Miron himself published this data! He states, "The evidence on alcohol consumption during Prohibition  is incomplete," but look at Figure 1 in his study and make up your own mind.

The Daily Wrap

Today on the Dish we amassed a ton of commentary on Sotomayor.  Tancredo, Limbaugh, Beck, and Gingrich called her a racist, while Ponnuru opted for Harriet Miers.  Hilzoy sighed, then  scrutinized Sotomayor's record, while others tried to divine her abortion views. Hewitt showed her some surprising props while Goldfarb had his predictable cow. Mankiw made the strangest point yet. Noah Millman lined up several questions while Reihan pressed her stance on executive power. National Journal dug into the claim that she would be the first Hispanic justice. And Jeff Rosen called a truce.

In other news, GOP lawyer Ted Olson joined the new federal suit to strike down Prop 8 and Dale Carpenter drilled into the decision from yesterday. Stephen Walt told us to chill on North Korea while Fred Kaplan turned to China's role. A reader showed us the value of talk radio. And, with the help of an interrogator, I took a long look at how Obama has ended the torture and tyranny wrought by Cheney.

Because it's the Dish, we also checked out some wicked unicorn tats, an ode to chest hair, and the soporific value of pot.