151 search results for ""14th amendment""

Backing up the president in case he decides not to panic

by digby

Greg Sargent reports that Democrats are taking some steps to ensure that the President can take some unorthodox steps to deal with the debt ceiling if it becomes necessary:

In a move that will significantly ratchet up the brinksmanship around the debt ceiling, the four members of the Senate Democratic leadership are privately telling the White House that they will give Obama full support if he opts for a unilateral solution to the debt ceiling crisis, a senior Senate Democratic leadership aide tells me.

The four Democratic leaders — Senators Harry Reid, Chuck Schumer, Dick Durbin and Patty Murray — have privately reached agreement that continued GOP intransigence on the debt ceiling means the White House needs the space to pursue options for raising it that don’t involve Congress, and that the White House needs to know that Dems will support whatever it decides to do.
[…]
The White House has said it doesn’t believe the 14th amendment option is legal, and has refused to engage on the question of whether it sees the coin as a viable option, saying only that there is “no Plan B” and that the onus is on Congress to raise the debt limit.

The aide tells me, however, that top Senate Democrats see the 14th amendment option as far preferable politically to the coin. “Of the available options, the coin, on its face, is politically much worse than the others,” he said. “Whatever the legal arguments for and against it, the imagery will be difficult to combat. What better symbol of out-of-control government spending could you have than a trillion dollar coin?”

I understand that, but instead of just accepting it they could try to educate the public about the subject instead of just throwing up their hands and saying “it looks bad.” These Democrats underestimate the ability of the public to comprehend something like this. Unfortunately, one of the problems with these seemingly never-ending “cliff” negotiations is that the Democrats seem to have decided that their best negotiating position is to repeatedly scream “the sky is falling” as loudly as loudly as possible — and that means that solutions beyond capitulation (like going over the cliff or the platinum coin) are only talked about on the fringe and the general public never gets what’s really going on.

It might very well work out fine, (after the usual dramatic kabuki pageant.) But it’s also not unlikely that the Dems will panic as they usually do and start giving away the store once we get close to the deadline. That’s been the pattern so far, even if the right wing is so idiotic that they refuse to take them up on their offer. Someday, they might just wise up.

If I were a betting person, I’d bet they won’t and we’ll have yet another delaying mechanism. Until the Democrats decide to pull the plug on this nonsense with something like the coin or the 14th Amendment, I can’t see any reason why the Republicans would change. They like these showdowns. Makes ’em feel powerful.

.

Fiscal cliff notes 1/1

by digby

I honestly am  not going to lose sleep over whether every dollar over 300k or 400k a year is taxed at the Clinton tax rates and I agree with this assessment of the very dumb behavior of Democrats over the past few months that led to it:

Could the administration have gotten more revenue by holding out for a better deal? Quite possibly. But could the administration have gotten a lot more revenue? That’s less clear. Administration allies point out that congressional Democrats frequently floated ideas, like extending all tax cuts for incomes below $1 million, that would have generated far less revenue.

Oh right, I forgot. They were “smoking them out.” Whatever. I have never felt that the tax hikes were the hill to die on, so it seems like a fairly reasonable outcome on that, all things considered. It will close the deficit by about 600 billion, which is good. But it won’t be enough to break deficit fever. It’s still going to be raging, unfortunately, even though it’s the last thing we should be worried about. Going over the cliff might have done it, but I cannot say I’m surprised the Democrats didn’t have the nerve. They were practically apoplectic this last week, with leadership all over TV wringing their hands and rending their garments over the allegedly dire consequences. Good bluffers they aren’t.

But while I agree with much of David’s assessment below, I think he overestimates the Republicans’ all-consuming power to do anything they choose and underestimates how much the president’s framing of the the deficit solution in his campaign, his public offers of spending cuts and his stated desire to “fix” entitlements has made the coming fights over spending much more likely to end badly.  I always say that I’m glad to live to fight another day, and today we are alive, but the bloody battles over the so-called “entitlements” loom and what’s gone before has left the Democrats’ weaker than they needed to be.

I won’t reiterate my belief that the president truly and genuinely seeks a Grand Bargain.  You know what I think about that (and if you don’t, you can google my name and Grand Bargain and read all about it.) Making a fetish of raising taxes on the rich as part of a “balanced approach”  to deficit reduction in the recent campaign baked it into everything going forward. And the president has now twice shown that he’s willing to raise the Medicare age and cut Social Security benefits. So, that’s where we begin round two, basically for no good reason.

Greg Sargent talks about the “balanced approach”:

Presuming the Senate deal passes the House, what happened yesterday is that Democrats scored a victory on part two of that question — albeit only a partial one — while successfully deferring the epic, looming battle over the first part of it. Meanwhile, Republicans retained their leverage heading into round two, and thanks to the way things unfolded, they will likely walk into it more confident of winning major future concessions…

Obama has pledged to win more in new revenues from the rich via tax reform, has vowed not to agree to any deficit reduction that relies only on spending cuts, and continues to insist on a “balanced” approach. Only Obama, however, can ultimately define what he means by “balanced.” Liberals must continue to insist that this mean that the sacrifice necessary to reducing the deficit will not borne by the poor or seniors who can’t afford it.

All of which is to say that the major fight at the heart of this whole mess — over the proper scope and role of the safety net of the 21st century, and who will pay for it — remains unresolved. Only the outcome of that battle can settle the question of whether today’s compromise was a good one for liberals. Obama’s legacy on the future of the welfare state — which will help define his presidency and settle fundamental questions about our approach to governing that will define American life for years to come — remains yet to be determined.

That’s not comforting. I suspect that were he to define his preferred legacy on the question of the welfare state it would be that he enacted Obamacare and “fixed” the alleged funding crisis with a Grand Bargain on taxes and entitlements. That’s what he’s been saying for four years anyway. And what that has always meant was raising some taxes and cutting programs (also known as “everyone having skin in the game.”) He got the tax hikes because they were inevitable. He has yet to fulfill the second promise.  But it’s not for lack of trying. Ironically, it’s been those all-powerful Republican lunatics refusing to take him up on the offer that saved us so far.

But that’s not going to last. All we have left are cuts, whether in the “new” sequester or the impending debt ceiling hostage situation. I’m afraid there just isn’t time to change the campaign finance system, eliminate the filibuster, stop gerrymandering or any of the other implacable systemic problems we have that give the minority party the power in the House of Representatives to run the country against the will of the majority, the Senate and the President. So if the Republicans David describes below are as overwhelmingly nihilistic as he says —  and the Democrats are as helpless in the face of it — then we might as well just resign ourselves to giving up the safety net and having the Democrats take credit for it.

On the other hand, if you don’t believe the presidency is completely powerless and that the Republicans are not members of the Walking Dead with superhuman strength, it is still possible to thwart this. Unless Paul Ryan has magically eliminated the presidential veto and the US Senate, the president still has a teeny tiny bit of power he could use if he wanted. (And that’s not even counting the 14th Amendment option.) And I realize it’s silly to think that a Democratic president could actually help save the safety net by using his useless bully pulpit to become a strong advocate of the lifeline that the only growing GOP demographic depends on, I continue to imagine what it would be like if the President of the United States stood up and said “Republicans will cut SS benefits, raise the Medicare age and hurt the sick and the poor over my dead body.” Somehow, I think that could have an effect, even in their safe little gerrymandered districts. Sadly, that ship sailed a long time ago when he put those things on the table and the scary, all-powerful Republicans realized they have a very good chance to get a Democratic president to do the one thing they really want to do but for which they are too scared to take credit: cut the legs out from under their own constituents.

I don’t disagree with David’s assessment about the need for systemic change.  But in the meantime, it would really be helpful if we had a president who would at least test the limits of his power instead of seeking common ground in this toxic wasteland. I’m not sure that we’ve yet seen it proven that the relentless GOP zombies cannot be thwarted. I suspect that if the president took it directly to their voters and wasn’t afraid to lay cuts to SS and Medicare at the Republicans’ feet, he could defeat them. It wouldn’t be the first time a Democrat won a legislative battle on that basis. In fact, for all the decades between Roosevelt and Obama Democrats did that reflexively.

I will also remind people that Reagan left office a popular guy who was falling in esteem over the following decade. So much so that Grover Norquist and the conservative movement boys put together the Reagan Legacy project to insure that he was remembered as the avatar of conservative success and popularity. And I think there’s little doubt they were very successful. I bring this up to remind everyone that the president’s legacy will depend in large part on how hard the progressive faction of the Democratic Party works to make it one worth having. The Republicans certainly will not help. And mushy centrists don’t care about such things. It’s the liberals he needs to think about if he’s planning for his legacy in this second term. They are not going to be impressed by scare stories of a rump Republican faction in the House to explain a Grand Bargain   that degraded the social safety net for the sake of budget projections 20 years hence.

Update: Jonathan Cohn has a good analysis of the deal in which he reports the WH line that they will demand more tax increases in the debt ceiling as part of a “balanced approach:”

Obama has said repeatedly he won’t negotiate on the debt ceiling. And, in what was perhaps the most important public statement made Monday, Obama during a press conference made clear he thinks future efforts at deficit reduction must have “balance.” Obama’s idea of “balance” is deficit reduction that includes both spending cuts and new revenue, in roughly equal proportions—and Republicans acted angrily. On twitter, McConnell’s chief of staff wrote “POTUS just moved the goalpost again. Significantly. This is new.”

Actually, Obama has talked about balance before. But never mind that. If Obama follows through on these promises, then the fiscal cliff deal would look a whole lot better. It would mean deficit reduction through a more reasonable balance of new revenue and spending cuts—and an end to Republican economic extortion.

But to achieve those goals, Obama cannot cede new ground. He really can’t negotiate on the debt ceiling. And he really must get deficit reduction that balances revenue with cuts. If the last 72 hours have made you doubt his ability to do these things, you have plenty of company.

I’m fairly sure that the Republicans are going to say they’ve already made their contribution to the “balanced approach” with tax hikes for the wealthy. That’s why they called it “moving the goalposts.” This round was all hikes — they expect that the next round is going to be all cuts. It’s nice that the president is looking for more revenue, but I think it’s fairly clear that he got all he’s going to get.

It’s now going to be about spending. And the Republicans know what cuts the president has already put on the table. Let’s just say it would be a lot better for the people if they didn’t. On the other hand, I have to wonder just how many times he has to offer them up before people believe that he really wants to do it? That many elite Democrats do too?

.

Waiting on Boehner

by David Atkins

With a small-bore deal from the Senate on the table, all eyes are on John Boehner as to whether he will bring it to the floor. Whether or not it’s actually a good deal for Republicans, it’s almost certain that the same House Republicans who rejected Boehner’s extremist Plan B as somehow too liberal won’t see a deal that extends unemployment benefits while raising taxes over $450,000 as anything more than Communism.

One of two things happens now: either Boehner refuses to bring the Senate deal to a vote in the House, thereby potentially maintaining his Speakership, or he brings it to a vote and hopes that enough Republicans join Democrats to pass it. It’s possible that Republicans will be OK with voting on this deal tomorrow after we go over the cliff so that they can call their vote a tax cut rather than a tax increase. Either way, though, it’s not likely to pass with a majority of Republican votes.

In the meantime, all the ballyhooed talk of the markets tanking if no deal is reached on the cliff seems to be overwrought: the Dow finished up 166 points today.

I’m still of the opinion that going over the cliff is better than the Senate’s deal. When taxes go up on all Americans, it’s important that the President and every Democratic politician make it clear that Republicans are to blame for it for insisting on keeping tax breaks on every dollar above $250,000. Let the newspapers write about it every single day until November 2014 if necessary. As much as it’s important that tax rates not go up on the middle class, it’s also probably not the end of the world for that to happen (it would reduce the deficit, after all, like conservatives supposedly want.)

If this deal does go through, it’s probably something that progressives can live with, but everything will depend on what happens when Republicans inevitably take the debt ceiling hostage. The President has declared that he won’t allow the debt ceiling to be taken hostage, but there already appears to be some retreat from that position, while the only ways to avoid that scenario would be to mint a trillion-dollar coin or invoke the 14th Amendment. While I would personally like to see the 14th Amendment used I don’t expect the President to do either one, which makes his pronouncements about not negotiating over the cliff pointless. He’ll be forced to.

In the end, what happened is that Republicans took last year’s debt ceiling hostage, forcing a pointless game of brinksmanship now in which they have taken stupid spending cuts and middle-class tax cuts hostage. Even though Democrats hold the stronger negotiating position, it seems Republicans are going to force Democrats to a draw at best now, in the hopes of taking the same debt ceiling hostage again this year in order to get what they really want.

This is never going to stop because there is no downside for Republican hostage taking. The only way it will ever stop is when Democrats finally just shoot the hostage and destroy the Republicans over the outcome.

In the meantime pseudo-centrists like Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz will continue to blame both sides. But it’s best to mock them and mobilize against them to show where the people really stand.

.

Fiscal cliff notes 12/6

by digby

Golly, I sure hope Lawrence O’Donnell is as full of “malarkey” as he sounds because if he isn’t, we’re in trouble:

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

When asked what the GOP should get in return for what everyone agrees is an impending cave on the high end tax cuts, O’Donnell explained:

The president offers it every time he lays this out and I think that most of the world doesn’t hear he second part of what what he says. He always says, “I have to have the top rates go up” — and it’s worth noting that he doesn’t specifically say I have to have 36 or 39%, he doesn’t offer a specific number. But he always says, “but we’re willing to do that by significant spending cuts in entitlements.” He says that. He brings it up. He doesn’t say the word Medicare, but that s what he’s talking about. You have Paul Ryan and Boehner saying, we can’t do anything without cuts in Medicare, they specify, they’re happy to say what they want to cut in entitlements. [no they’re not — ed.]

So it’s there. They’re both saying they want to do that. It’s absolutely true that there are some Democrats who will say “absolutely not, I won’t touch medicare in any way in relation to that” but remember, in this kind of package, when it’s bipartisan, you don’t need every Democratic vote just as you don’t need every Republican vote.

At that point Krystal Ball explained that the Democrats are drawing the line at benefit cuts, and O’Donnell helpfully explained that was all bullshit and that there wasn’t any more squeezing to be done out of providers and doctors. Now, O’Donnell is hardly an oracle and much of what he says there is just wrong. I’ve been as harshly critical of the president in this matter as anyone and have followed this story very closely for months and it’s just not correct that the president has openly offered cuts to entitlements every time he demands the tax hike. The reason people haven’t heard it because he hasn’t said it. He has said that he won’t allow the rich to have tax cuts while deficit reduction rests on the backs of the middle class and he’s said that he wants “balanced approach” and that he’s willing to agree to a deal that will make people in his own party mad, but he’s never been that explicit in public. The only reason we know that Medicare and other “entitlements” are likely on the table is because we know that he offered them in the previous debt ceiling negotiations. If he’d ever said this aloud, I think you would have a much different negotiation today.

As I said, O’Donnell isn’t much of an oracle and normally I wouldn’t pay any attention to him, but as you can see from my previous post, he isn’t the only one who’s thinking along these lines. Now that the Republicans are talking tax hikes, the rest of the equation is coming into focus — as a fait accompli.

In other news, the White House took one of the major tools to avoid the debt ceiling standoff off the table today:

White House spokesman Jay Carney put an end to intense speculation Thursday about whether President Obama would do an end run around Congress with one simple line: “This administration does not believe the 14th Amendment gives the president the power to ignore the debt ceiling — period.”

I’m going to guess that means it’s part of these lame duck negotiations which isn’t good news for the home team.

.

“Cliff” notes 12/3

by digby

In case you were wondering about what’s in the “Bowles Plan” (as opposed to the Simpson-Bowles proposal) Talking Points Memo lays it out:

Bowles called for $800 billion in new revenue, without resorting to using “dynamic scoring,” but not specifically from raising tax rates. He proposed raising the Medicare eligibility age, and changing government tax and spending formulas to use so-called chained CPI, reducing benefits in programs like Social Security and raising tax revenues over time by hastening workers ascent into higher tax brackets as they climb the income ladder. He proposed $300 billion in further cuts to discretionary spending, $600 billion in cuts to health care programs, and $300 billion in other mandatory spending programs, but did not spell out entirely how the cuts should be designed.

The GOP’s offer provides no further specificity about those cuts either. It is silent on how to raise $800 billion in revenue, other than to call for closing loopholes and lowering marginal rates. It says nothing about when the higher taxes would kick in.

“This is by no means an adequate long-term solution, as resolving our long-term fiscal crisis will require fundamental entitlement reform,” the letter reads. “Indeed, the Bowles plan is exactly the kind of imperfect, but fair middle ground that allows us to avert the fiscal cliff without hurting our economy and destroying jobs. We believe it warrants immediate consideration.”

This comes from a congressional hearing in the fall of 2011 in which Bowles testified that he thought the above was a “balanced approach.” At the time the Republicans scoffed at the idea they would ever agree to raise taxes any way, any how, but they’ve cleverly evoked Bowles’ name (a name that’s repeatedly been floated to replace Geithner as Treasury Secretary )as cover for their proposal to cut the living crap out of well … everything.

It’s true that Bowles proposed this — he was among a whole bunch of Very Serious Democrats (including the president) who put these cuts on the table repeatedly in 2011. But he disavowed his proposal today, saying circumstances have changed. (I’m hopeful he’s talking about the circumstances of Democrats winning the election, but who knows?)

He explained at the time that cutting Medicare was logical since we now have Obamacare. A lot of people seem to think this makes good sense, but I honestly cannot believe that anyone would talk about raising the age for Medicare eligibility because an untried, untested, hugely controversial new program will supposedly make it all ok. That’s just daft in my opinion. And from what we’re seeing with states rejecting Medicaid dollars and refusing to create the exchanges, it should be unequivocally off the table for the foreseeable future. It’s not as if it will ever be easy to lower the age again and even that would come on the heels of a hell of a lot of suffering among people who worked their whole lives in anticipation of having their medical care covered once they got old and sick. It’s appalling that anyone would play and experiment with them before anyone has the vaguest idea if Obamacare is going to work. You simply cannot take health care away from people, particularly at this age, without knowing that the replacement will be adequate. And we do not know if it will be adequate.

The White House responded to the GOP offer with this:

“The Republican letter released today does not meet the test of balance. In fact, it actually promises to lower rates for the wealthy and sticks the middle class with the bill. Their plan includes nothing new and provides no details on which deductions they would eliminate, which loopholes they will close or which Medicare savings they would achieve. Independent analysts who have looked at plans like this one have concluded that middle class taxes will have to go up to pay for lower rates for millionaires and billionaires. While the President is willing to compromise to get a significant, balanced deal and believes that compromise is readily available to Congress, he is not willing to compromise on the principles of fairness and balance that include asking the wealthiest to pay higher rates. President Obama believes – and the American people agree – that the economy works best when it is grown from the middle out, not from the top down. Until the Republicans in Congress are willing to get serious about asking the wealthiest to pay slightly higher tax rates, we won’t be able to achieve a significant, balanced approach to reduce our deficit our nation needs.”

So the public kabuki is still all about the taxes. Let’s hope there’s more discussion behind the scenes because as dday pointed out, it is about a lot more than that. He quoted this from Jonathan Karl about the so-called Republican Doomsday Secnario:

It’s quite simple: House Republicans would allow a vote on extending the Bush middle class tax cuts (the bill passed in August by the Senate) and offer the president nothing more – no extension of the debt ceiling, nothing on unemployment, nothing on closing loopholes. Congress would recess for the holidays and the president would face a big battle early in the year over the debt ceiling.

Dday adds:

Karl says that the sequester could get delayed for a year as part of the House GOP doomsday scenario. But either way, this would put Democrats in a tough spot. They would lose the tax leverage after having won that battle. They would see an economic slowdown from the end of extended unemployment benefits, the payroll tax cut and possibly the sequester. And they would have to battle over a debt limit increase without the tax rate discussion to fall back on.

This actually shows some recognition that the fiscal slope is not solely a tax discussion. Even if you solve the tax puzzle, there are lots of other moving parts. Republicans learned that the debt limit gives them real leverage as long as the President doesn’t resort to the Constitutional option, using the 14th Amendment to essentially render the debt limit moot. I’d almost guarantee articles of impeachment in the House in that event.

If the President doesn’t go that route, and he doesn’t direct his Treasury Secretary to mint a $1 trillion platinum coin, then you have a situation where House Republicans have the power to control events, and Democrats have serious needs – a debt limit increase, restoration of extended unemployment benefits, etc. The Republican position may be unpopular, but if they’re willing to press the issue, they can force through many of their priorities. The increase in top marginal rates will soon turn into a hollow victory on partisan grounds.

Yeah well, I’ve been screaming about that hollow victory for a couple of years now and I’m highly suspicious that there are people on the Democratic side who would be perfectly willing to be backed into this corner. They’ve demagogued the deficit into a crisis worthy of an invasion from a foreign planet at this point so whether the cuts come as a result of a Grand Bargain or a series of “showdowns” doesn’t really matter. There is a tremendous amount of pressure to gut “entitlements” from a whole bunch of center and center right elites to do it. The biggest challenge for the White House would be how to frame this as a part of their vaunted “balanced approach” and I’m not sure it would be that easy. I’d be very interested to see if the Republicans are willing to give them that.

Anyway, grain of salt on all of this. They’re posturing in public and dealing in private and we really can’t know what’s up from these reports. I continue to believe that the baseline for negotiations is the 2011 debt ceiling agreements, with the major hang up being the tax rates.  I still suspect that everything we’re seeing is in service of making that happen in a way that the Republicans can stomach. Seriously hoping I’m wrong.

.

.

Just because it’s murder doesn’t mean they’re against it

by digby

Oh please:

The 2012 party platform crafted in Tampa this week includes an abortion ban that makes no exceptions for cases of rape, incest or to save a mother’s life.

“Faithful to the ‘self-evident’ truths enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, we assert the sanctity of human life and affirm that the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed,” the draft platform reads. “We support a human life amendment to the Constitution and endorse legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to unborn children.”

But the party insists that its strict opposition to abortion doesn’t necessarily mean it objects to rape and incest exceptions. Instead, the RNC argues, it enshrined a broad set of principles that don’t delve into any policy details.

Exceptions to personhood? That’s called murder.

But don’t worry. It’s not like they’re all rigid about it or anything:

“So it’s not that we are being pro-exception or anti-exception — we are SILENT on exceptions and leave that up to the states,” the official said.

Interesting that they’d make a states’ rights argument. I’d imagine they’ll be quite a bit more viciferous in their support of fetuses to have the full protections of the 14th Amendment than they were for African Americans.

.

George Will openly rejects judicial restraint

by David Atkins

They don’t even try to hide the hypocrisy anymore. Here’s George Will, if you have the stomach for it:

Because judicial decisions have propelled American history and because a long-standing judicial mistake needs to be rectified, the most compelling of the many reasons for electing Mitt Romney is that presidential elections shape two of the federal government’s three branches. Conservatives, however, cannot coherently make the case for Romney as a shaper of the judicial branch until they wean themselves, and perhaps him, from excessive respect for judicial “restraint” and condemnation of “activism.”

In eight years, Ronald Reagan appointed 49 percent of the federal judiciary; Bill Clinton appointed 43 percent. Clint Bolick says that the power to nominate federal judges has become “the grand prize in presidential elections,” because presidents now choose appointees with special attention to judicial philosophy and because human longevity has increased…

[A] conservative majority might rectify the court’s still-reverberating mistake in the 1873 Slaughterhouse cases. It then took a cramped view of the 14th Amendment’s protection of Americans’ “privileges or immunities,” saying these did not include private property rights, freedom of contract and freedom from arbitrary government interference with the right to engage in enterprise. This led in the 1930s to the court formally declaring economic rights to be inferior to “fundamental” rights. This begot pernicious judicial restraint — tolerance of capricious government abridgements of economic liberty.

One hopes that Romney knows that on today’s court the leading advocate of judicial “restraint” is the liberal Breyer, who calls it “judicial modesty.” Contemporary liberalism regards government power equably, so the waxing of the state seems generally benign. Yet Romney promises to appoint “restrained” judges. If, however, the protection of liberty is the court’s principal purpose, it must not understand restraint as a dominant inclination to (in the language of Romney’s Web site) “leave the governance of the nation to elected representatives.”

Although Hamilton called the judiciary the “least dangerous” branch because it has “neither force nor will, but merely judgment,” it is dangerous to liberty when it is unreasonably restrained. One hopes Romney recognizes that judicial deference to elected representatives can be dereliction of judicial duty.

In other words, since the people’s representatives might have the temerity to restrain the “economic freedom” of corporations and billionaires to enslave the entire population, it’s important for “conservatives” to throw Burkean modesty overboard in favor of judicial activism.

Of course, we already knew that this was the modern-day conservative position. But it’s jaw-dropping to watch everyone’s favorite bow-tied, supposedly “reasonable” conservative state the reversal so openly in a major newspaper.

The only way for political activists not to become sullen with rage in the face of this sort of thing is to develop the ability to laugh darkly while steeling their resolve.

.

Rights are rights. Blowback is irrelevant.

by David Atkins

Marriage equality advocate Mae Kuykendall writes an op-ed in the New York Times demonstrating the key element, that has gone wrong with liberalism over the last 30 years. She argues, essentially, the the Supreme Court should thread the needle on the coming challenges to marriage discrimination laws by forcing states to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states, without requiring those states to perform the ceremonies themselves:

Some observers expect the court to dodge the issue. They assume that the best that can be hoped for is a long period of legal skirmishes that will gradually chip away at states’ denial of the rights and privileges of gay couples who marry where it is legal to do so. But a protracted and agonizing battle would not be good for anyone.

I happen to believe that same-sex marriage is a fundamental right under the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause. But I also believe that the court isn’t ready to go that far. Directly mandating that states rewrite their laws to allow same-sex marriages (and that county clerks issue marriage licenses to gay couples) would risk the kind of backlash that followed court-ordered school desegregation in the 1950s.

In contrast, a more limited ruling that forbade states from voiding other states’ marriages would recognize equality as a fundamental norm of citizenship while also speaking to values, like fairness and neighborliness, that are often obscured by anti-marriage ballot initiatives. An example of this can be found in Wyoming, where Republican legislators defeated a bill last year that would have prohibited recognition of out-of-state marriages.

One can empathize a little with Ms. Kuykendall’s desire to find an outcome that might allow conservatives to save face and avoid a major backlash. But it’s deeply misguided.

Rights are rights. That’s why they’re called “rights.” One might wish they were enforced globally, but the limitations of power structures usually prevent that, at least at this point in human history. So insofar as our courts have jurisdiction, we expect them to enforce rights within our borders.

Imagine the contempt we would have today for an opinion writer who used the same logic for interracial marriage that Ms. Kuykendall does on same-sex marriage. Did Loving v. Virginia create a backlash, especially in certain states I’ll politely refuse to characterize? Yes, of course it did. Was it the right thing to do, anyway? Of course it was. Did the locals view it as the tyranny of a federal power intervening in business that it didn’t belong in, obliterating decent God-fearing local customs at the point of a federal marshal’s gun? I guess so. Too damn bad. Rights are rights, and local prejudices don’t get to determine who has rights and who doesn’t. If we had the civil rights era to do all over again, knowing that the Civil Rights Act would usher in two generations of Reaganomics delivered at the hands of racists and their puppeteers, would we do anything differently? No, we wouldn’t. Some principles are worth fighting for, and applying as universally as possible.

And if that means the regressive localities in question decide to wage a culture war and deliver blowback to the more progressive ones? Too damn bad. We’ll do without their votes, and drag them kicking and screaming into the 21st century, anyway.

That’s been the progressive program in the modern era ever since at least the late 19th century. The victories are never easy. There’s usually blowback, mostly political but also violent at times. And in the long run it’s worth the cost. The left broadly speaking used to understand that. I wonder if it still does.

.

The Santorum Legacy

Sarah Posner:

Just days after he won the Iowa caucuses (at the time, he was a close second until additional votes were found and counted), Santorum began the race to the dark ages:

Rick Santorum thinks Griswold v. Connecticut, the 1965 case that invalidated criminal bans on contraception, was wrongly decided. He’s off the deep-end on this one, and completely out of touch even with his fellow Catholics, but his statement provoked an exchange at last night’s debate about whether states should be permitted to ban birth control.

Mitt Romney feigned surprise — and emphasized that he would be absolutely, positively against banning birth control — but the moderators failed to ask him about his enthusiastic support for “personhood” bills that would effectively ban certain kinds of birth control (not to mention fertility treatments). Santorum turned the question to be all about the Griswold ruling on a “penumbra” of rights created under the constitution, anathema to conservatives because of how it underpins Roe v. Wade, and, as Chris Geidner points out, Lawrence v. Texas. They claim these rights are not actually found in the Constitution but were created by “activist judges” — this from the people who think the 14th Amendment guarantees equal protection to fertilized eggs.

At his press conference today, Santorum alluded to reproduction and procreation by praising the family as “the moral enterprise that is America,” and by specifically thanking the 19 Kids and Counting Duggars for campaigning for him. It might have sounded like a standard political homage to wholesome family life, but to anyone who knows Santorum’s views, it was an homage to uber-fertility. As Kathryn Joyce noted here last week, it rings of Quiverfull:

It’s the movement that looks to the Duggar family as de facto spokespeople (even if the Duggars have often hedged whether or not they consider themselves a part of it), and that so venerates the role of proud “patriarch” fathers leading their families—comparing them to CEOs and generals—that it’s easy to see where Harris’ appraisal of Santorum’s family-man qualifications come from. In this election, and the birth control debate that has become a significant part of its soundtrack, the convictions of the Quiverfull community seem to have made a mainstream debut.

Santorum’s speech this afternoon was suffused with other religious imagery, calling Good Friday his family’s “passion play” because of his daughter Bella’s hospitalization; he talked about “witnessing” for Americans’ stories and voices, and belief in miracles. Miracles, that is, for the true believers, not the Kennedys who want to keep religion out of governing, or the mainline Protestants whose congregations are supposedly in shambles, or the believers in “phony religion.”

I wrote about the Quiverfull influence a couple of weeks ago, here. I think he succeeded in doing exactly what he set out to do:

The forces of bigotry lose again

by David Atkins

As you no doubt know by now, the 9th Circuit has ruled against California’s Proposition 8:

In a 2-1 decision, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit announced its long-awaited ruling that Prop 8, approved by voters in 2008, violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

Judge Stephen Reinhardt, in the court’s 128-page opinion, wrote that “although the Constitution permits communities to enact most laws they believe to be desirable, it requires that there be at least a legitimate reason for the passage of a law that treats different classes of people differently. There was no such reason that Proposition 8 could have been enacted.”

“All that Proposition 8 accomplished was to take away from same-sex couples the right to be granted marriage licenses and thus legally to use the designation of ‘marriage,’ which symbolizes state legitimization and societal recognition of their committed relationships,” Reinhardt wrote. “Proposition 8 serves no purpose, and has no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California, and to officially reclassify their relationships and families as inferior to those of opposite-sex couples. The Constitution simply does not allow for ‘laws of this sort.’”

The panel also rejected arguments by Prop 8 proponents that the purpose of the initiative was “to promote child rearing by biological parents, to encourage responsible procreation, to proceed with caution in social change, to protect religious liberty, or to control the education of schoolchildren.”

“Simply taking away the designation of ‘marriage,’ while leaving in place all the substantive rights and responsibilities of same-sex partners, did not do any of the things Proponents now suggest were its purposes,” the opinion says. “Proposition 8 ‘is so far removed from these particular justifications that we find it impossible to credit them.’”

Now would be a good time to remind freaked out conservatives that if it had been up to the voters to decide these sorts of civil rights issues, anti-miscegenation laws would still be on the books in many parts of the South.

Maybe Ron Paul thinks that’s a good idea, but decent people don’t. There’s still an effort to get Prop 8 repealed by will of the voters, an act that may be necessary if the case goes to the Supreme Court and Proposition 8 is upheld. It would also be sweet to win this battle in the court of public opinion, not just the court of law.

Still, any victory against the forces of bigotry is a good one.

.