Month: June 2011

A reader writes:

Your comment seems to miss the point of the story: that for this individual, at any rate, homosexuality seems to be a choice rather than an inalterable trait. And hasn’t that been why the country seems now to be leaning toward the acceptance of gay relationships and marriage: because the point is increasingly accepted that sexual orientation is something that is coded into an individual’s chemistry and not a matter of choice?

If it is a choice, then there is no harm in mandating one’s behavior. If sexuality is unalterably fixed in each person’s makeup, then requiring all to adhere to the behavior preferred by only some of the population, is to deny others an opportunity to share in the benefits of the sanctioned behavior.

Another writes:

I think you're wrong to say that Glatze is making a case FOR gay rights.

While I agree that Glatze's path might well be one made possibly by the struggle for gay acceptance, I consider his belief – that everyone who claims to be gay is misunderstanding their authentic heterosexuality – to be antithetical to what might be THE fundamental principle of gay rights: that gay people are fully human, neither mistakes nor mistaken. I do admire your generous articulation that "gay rights" should be "about enlarging the freedom for everyone not to be gay but to be themselves." Moreover, I embrace your challenge to accept and not dismiss Glatze's affirmation of selfhood. But, based on what he is quoted as saying in this profile, Glatze seems unlikely to extend such generosity to me as a self-affirming gay person.

Agreed. My point is better applied to the ex-gay movement in general rather than to this particular individual. Of course, in my reading of the piece, I became convinced Glatze was obviously gay. No one who wasn't would have this kind of extreme position-shift. It wouldn't matter so much to them.

Mark Kleiman sees legalized cannabis in California as an improvement on the status quo. But he isn't blind to the downsides:

Under repeal, California could easily supplant Mexico as the primary source of marijuana for North America, leading to a price collapse and a surge in cannabis use nationwide. We couldn’t expect Washington to just stand back and let cheap California marijuana flood the national market. As California police stepped back, we’d probably see a surge in federal enforcement. With volume and sales rising, it’s likely that some of the resulting conflicts among growers and dealers, and between them and the law, would be violent; that’s the nature of large-scale criminal enterprise.

Reihan re-forms Kleiman's argument:

As I understand it, Kleiman is embracing the stance of some of my friends and colleagues, namely that the repeal of criminal laws against cannabis in California could create an intergovernmental crisis — and that this is a good thing insofar as it forces us to reexamine federal drug laws and out international treaty commitments.

(Photo of "Private Reserve Lamb's Bread, Sativa" by Dank Depot. More pot porn here.)

From a new book of Palin's email poetry:

Where There’s Smoke

One of Lyda's aides stopped me in the hall
To say the building was getting a kick
Out of my "burnt toast" episode this morning
That caused the fire alarms to go off
For 20 minutes
And caused an evacuation.
She thought it was funny
I was cooking breakfast in the capitol
And burnt it.
I assured her
I was not in the building this morning,
I was not cooking breakfast here at any time,
And I did not burn any toast.
She looked at me warily,
I doubt she believed me.

And that's who I'd really like to write some poetry. The Ballad Of Lyda Green would be an instant classic.

John Avlon captures the consensus:

Right now, Mitt Romney’s commanding lead in the polls is a reflection of the fact that he has the center-right all to himself in a crowded far-right field. He is essentially the default frontrunner.  Huntsman’s entry will create competition for that demographic, boosted by the lack of enthusiasm for Romney.

Josh Green notes that Romney appears to be "moderating his image for the general electorate" while Huntsman is "making every effort to appeal to the right wing." Kevin Drum suspects that Huntsman is setting himself up for 2016:

[Running for president] just to set yourself up for a possible win four years down the road? That's some serious dedication. Huntsman must have a level of determination and self-control that makes Thomas Edison look like an indolent street urchin.

Or just doing what is required to be a Republican president.

(Photo: Republican Jon Huntsman waves as he arrives to a press conference to announce his bid for the presidency at Liberty State Park June 21, 2011 in Jersey City, New Jersey. Huntsman, until recently the U.S. ambassador to China under President Obama, emphasized his record as a two-term governor of Utah. By Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

The polling is pretty clear:

San Francisco voters 4:1 oppose a ballot measure that would make it against the law to circumcise any male child under the age of 18, according to a SurveyUSA poll conducted exclusively for KPIX-TV.

My stance here.

A reader protests:

Jon Stewart was not wrong. He never mentioned that Fox viewers were UNinformed, but MISinformed and even their own study showed in MISperceptions Fox viewers suffered the worst. That study only is relevant to a small part of what Stewart was saying, and in that part Stewart is 100% correct. And Gillespie's article deals with being UNinformed exclusively. WHIFF!

Note: several capital letters were removed from this email. Read the full Politifact piece, which does address the un- versus mis- distinction. On some critical issues, especially before the Iraq war, Fox clearly did actively misinform its viewers. But the data are nuanced. Money quote:

The way Stewart phrased the comment, it’s not enough to show a sliver of evidence that Fox News’ audience is ill-informed. The evidence needs to support the view that the data shows they are "consistently" misinformed — a term he used not once but three times. It’s simply not true that "every poll" shows that result. So we rate his claim False.

A reader turns our attention to another marriage equality fight:

Yesterday, a state court trial judge (a good friend of my father’s and a fine judge who subsequently announced his impending retirement) held that Wisconsin’s domestic partnership law was legal under the Wisconsin constitution.  This is only an issue because Wisconsin passed a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage or anything “substantially similar.”  Of course, when the amendment was being sold to voters in 2006, its supporters claimed that this language was meaningless and would not affect civil unions or domestic partnership benefits.  (The amendment didn’t pass by much, and had its supporters admitted that it would ban civil unions, it likely would have failed.)  But in 2009, when a Democratic governor and legislature passed a law creating a domestic partnership registry, it was immediately challenged by the religious right.

The ridiculously named Wisconsin Family Action filed suit, claiming that domestic partnership were “substantially similar” to marriage and thus barred by the state constitution.  Wisconsin’s new, and extraordinarily divisive and dogmatic, governor, Scott Walker, recently fired the attorney defending the law, claimed he thought it was unconstitutional, and the refused to allow the state to defend it.  Lambda took over the case, apparently, and won the day – at least at this point.  

With a highly partisan and majority-Republican state supreme court, I’m pessimistic about the domestic partnership law’s ultimate chances.  And unfortunately, amending the Wisconsin constitution is a colossal ordeal – the state legislature must approve any constitutional amendment twice and it has to win on a referendum.  I’m afraid that Wisconsin is going to be well behind the arc of history on gay rights.

Drudge goes apeshit over a one-day movement in Obama's polling in one source. I guess it's a slow news day. Looking at Gallup – and other larger polls of polls – what's striking is the stability of the polling. A year ago, Obama's ratings were essentially the same as they are now. As is the case in January 2010, when the polling settled down. His longest period of sustained net disapproval was in the summer of 2010. This year, he moves in waves of rather small size. Yes, he could still not be re-elected. But a one-day gyration in a single tracking poll?

But one always remains grateful to Drudge for campy headlines like this one:

Family says glass Martha Stewart table 'exploded'...

Now that's some Drudge we can all love.

Bruce Bartlett, having shown that tax revenues as a proportion of GDP are at 50 year lows, now takes up the issue of tax rates. Are they higher than they once were? Only for the very poor, because of the EITC. Video here. Money quote:

As one can see, average tax rates on the working poor have never been lower; in fact, they pay neither income taxes nor the employee’s share of the payroll tax, because the earned income tax credit offsets both and even gives them a small refund on top.

However, the tax credit is phased out at a rate of 21.06 percent for families with two children after their earned income reaches $16,690. The loss of a refundable credit is exactly the same, economically, as paying more taxes, and this is what imposes such high marginal rates on the working poor.

A typical middle-class family, on the other hand, is paying less in federal taxes than it has since 1967. Its marginal rate is also down substantially since it peaked in 1982 at 31.7 percent. The well-to-do family, too, has seen its average and marginal tax rates decline substantially.

Maybe it helps to use the Reagan nirvana of 1985 to persuade conservatives. In those glorious days of conservative triumph, the marginal tax rate for the median income family in the middle class was 29 percent. Today, it's 23 percent. The wealthy/successful have seen their marginal rates drop from 38 to 28 percent. If jobs are not returning, it's not because taxes, either as a whole or in terms of marginal rates, are too high.

Nick Gillespie joins Politifact in explaining.