Category: The Dish

How US immigration law targets gay couples for discrimination:

On a Sunday morning in early December, 41-year-old Abbie Green stands next to Sandra Veronica Campuzano Trevizo, her partner of eight years, in their one-bedroom rental in Chihuahua, Mexico, saying can-do things in the face of a policy that has sent them from Phoenix to Vancouver, British Columbia, to Chihuahua in order to make a life together, legally, somewhere. Then she cries.

In Glasgow, Scotland, David Black — stopped, detained, turned back at New York’s JFK airport in August — conducts his uprooted life, his strained relationship and much of his Denver real estate business from Glasgow coffee shops that have Wi-Fi service. Back in Denver, his partner, a U.S. citizen, keeps the business they have together running as he begins contemplating options that would mean leaving the U.S.

And in southwestern London, Gordon Stewart stands amid the dust and torn-down drywall of his new flat. After 4 1/2 years of fighting, then lobbying, then accepting that he wouldn’t be returning to the U.S. with his mate anytime soon, the pharmaceutical executive bought this new home.

The important thing, it seems, is to attack our relationships and our families. It makes others feel better about themselves.

It’s going to be a wild ride, I have a feeling. Thanks for getting through 2007 with the Dish, and for making it our biggest year since I started blogging in 2000. The image above is made of flowers, frozen in liquid nitrogen, and then blown up. It’s by Ori Gersht. Bio of the artist here.

Ambinder reports from the trail:

The drive time host of WHO was an introducer at the Huckabee event I’m at … He said "when the guy in a suit and the guy in the dress are against you, then you know you’ve got something. And then he said: "When Rush Limbaugh and Andrew Sullivan are against you …"

Well, it’s not verbatim. But I think accusing Rush Limbaugh of secretly wearing dresses is really beyond the pale.

Noah Millman pulls a Safire. Money quote:

Not because I really expect it but because I think it’s plausible, I predict that the 2008 Presidential Election will be: McCain-Huckabee versus Obama-Webb.

I guess anything can happen:

I live in Cedar Falls, Iowa. I have attended rallies by all of the candidates, save Obama, this week.  Edwards rally was small and unenthusiastic. Biden was mesmerizing, and drew many prominent Republicans from the area. Biden has some real potential in Eastern Iowa. He will draw away from Hillary. I saw Hillary last night and she sounded so, well weird. She was trying to lay out a calm, modulated case, but ended up just being boring. There were upwards of 500 people there, but as a staffer pointed out to my sister, who is from Minnesota, " I can’t find one person here from Iowa!"

If you really want to know what is going to happen in Iowa, fasten your seatlbelt. This is the prevailing wisdom on Iowa, as heard in the parking lot at a Hillary event, " Is this who you are going to caucus for?", an elderly man said to another elderly couple. " I don’t know. We’re gonna go see Dodd tomorrow and Obama on Wednesday. I won’t know till I walk in the door on Thursday."

I am for Obama, my daughter works for Edwards, my husband leans Hillary and most of my friends are for Kucinich, Richardson, and Biden. Husband, wife and daughter, sons all over Iowa are supporting various people and believe me there were probably many holiday arguments in this state this year! Stay tuned!

Maybe the State Department was on vacation:

The American State Department, having first congratulated Mr Kibaki on his victory, hastily withdrew this accolade and said: "We do have serious concerns, as I know others do, about irregularities in the vote count."

My italics. Meanwhile the country explodes. Kenya’s bloggers are busy countering the government’s media blackout. Kenyan Pundit, Ory, writes:

This is now officially a police state.

Menacingly, the Kibaki government’s patent election-rigging has split the military, opening up the prospect of civil war:

Planning an alternative inauguration can be interpreted as treason which would explain the security forces heavy approach (if this is true). During the press conference Raila introduced an army Major who stated that the armed forces are behind Raila. Our military is divided.

But the US sent congrats to the the men who stole a democratic election. However unqualified some of the candidates in this election, could any of them be more incompetent in foreign affairs than the Bush administration?

(Photo: Kenyans wave ‘pangas’ (a broader blade machete) as they demonstrate after fresh violence linked to the disputed presidential poll erupted 30 December 2007 at the Kibera slum in Nairobi, during the Presidential polls winner, Mwai Kibaki’s swearing in ceremony. By Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP/Getty.)

But they allow Fred Thompson in their New Hampshire debate next week. Paul has twice the support of Thompson in New Hampshire. He has raised much more money than Thompson and has more ability to last into the campaign. On what basis is he excluded? New Hampshire may well be his moment. And Fox seems determined to stop him.

The Dallas Morning News piece on Huckabee’s presser today.  Via Marc.

Joe Klein:

That sound you hear rumbling out of Des Moines appears to be a monumental implosion.

I’d be cautious. Huckabee’s supporters are not like the mainstream press.

A reader writes:

Ron Paul’s religious AND constitutional fundamentalisms are anti-historical, and consequently anti-literate, as all forms of fundamentalism are.  As a Christian fundamentalist believes in the supposed "literal" truth and total organic unity of the bible from beginning to end (the "authored by God" position), failing to acknowledge the thousand of years of changing circumstances and beliefs that produced the various texts that we now call scripture, the constitutional fundamentalist views the U.S. Constitution as a document produced by a group of like-minded individuals with one definitive goal in mind.

For Paul and others, "the forefathers" are our surrogate God/author; the strangest thing about this point of view is that it directly contradicts their mantra that our country was founded by "rugged individualists."  How can our forefathers be both a group of individualists AND a collective hive-mind?  The God/author view of the constitution ignores all readily and widely available documentation of the circumstances which produced the Constitution, which shows us a group of men with a wide variety of opinions on how to deal with the important issues of their time and create a fair representative government of the people.  The Constitution is a series of compromises that this group of individuals settled on, not the "word of God."