WordPress (or more likely user error) seems to have eaten my last post, so here again is the link to info about the rallies after tomorrow’s Supreme Court decisions.

Attend a rapid response event near you!

This Thursday, the US Supreme Court is expected to rule on Rob McKenna’s partisan challenge to the Affordable Care Act – President Obama’s health care reform law. It’s perhaps the most anticipated Supreme Court ruling in our nation’s history.

Regardless of the outcome, we’ll be ready. Please RSVP on Washington Community Action Network’s web site.

Thursday, June 28 outside the Attorney General’s offices around the state

I’m not a huge college football fan, but I was glad that there will be a 4 team playoff in college football starting in 2014. It seems like the worthiness of the third and fourth choices is often indistinguishable from the second team that actually gets to play for the championship. I imagine there will still be controversies about who gets to play in this tournament. But a debate about who is the number 4 team is very different from a debate about who is the number 2 team.

I’m still reading through the Arizona immigration Supreme Court decision, but I expect that come Thursday, all of the Supreme Court discussion discussion will be about health care. So I’d like to get to the logical conclusion of Scalia’s dissent before that happens. It seems to me that if this is true, then it cuts both ways.

In his point-by-point defense of the Arizona legislation, the avowed law-and-order conservative surmised that the Obama administration “desperately wants to avoid upsetting foreign powers.” He accused federal officials of “willful blindness or deliberate inattention” to the presence of illegal immigrants in Arizona.

“[T]o say, as the Court does, that Arizona contradicts federal law by enforcing applications of the Immigration Act that the President declines to enforce boggles the mind,” Scalia wrote. “If securing its territory in this fashion is not within the power of Arizona, we should cease referring to it as a sovereign State.”

If a state has the right to, essentially do anything to keep anyone out, doesn’t another state have the right to keep anyone in? Or to make anyone a citizen? It seems to me if states can’t decide who is a citizen of the United States we can’t call them sovereign states. I guess that’s why we don’t.

So it seems to me if Scalia’s positions ever become the majority on the court, Washington should become a sanctuary state. We should let anyone become a citizen as long as they aren’t here to do us harm.

– This chart of Congressional wealth is one of those charts that shocks you with things you could have guessed.

– The Seattle Great Wheel looks like it will be pretty neat.

– This idea for filibuster reform is a bit overly complex. But in general it’s solid.

– WTF, SPD?

– Clearly this is not Romney’s party – yet, anyway. Other Republicans’ willingness to buck and rebuke him signals not bracing political independence – party leaders haven’t had the guts to stand up to the birthers in their ranks – but insecurity about their November prospects. A lot of Republicans seem to have their eye on November – of 2016.

– Spoke and Food

I like Darcy Burner, but unlike a lot of bloggers, I’m willing to wait and see who gets through the primary. I don’t live in the district so I don’t have to choose. And a lot of the candidates have done good things. Still, I’m encouraged by things like this in my email box.

I’ve heard Republicans lie. I’ve heard Fox News manipulate the truth. I’ve heard plenty of outrageous things. John Koster proved that through either ignorance or willful rejection of reality, Republicans can still shock me.

In an interview that will air on Sunday on King5, a question was asked about Congress addressing marriage equality. I answered that not only should we repeal DOMA, but we should go further and provide all married couples with all of the Federal benefits of marriage.

I was stunned by what followed.

John Koster jumped right in with an outrageous statement.

“…there is no Federal Defense of Marriage Act…”

Yes, of course on one level, it’s another fundraising appeal. Still I’m glad the heat is directed to Koster, and not the other Democrats.

Now look, I love primaries and I have no problem with them getting a bit rough and tumble (there are important issues at play). But these are the sort of things I love most about primaries. Even if Rudderman wins, all of Darcy Burner’s supporters (who bother to open their email, and read it) will have seen this. And if any media (beyond HA) mention it, even better.

– Decline to sign the charter schools initiative.

– Vincent Chin would have been 57 today. But the Michigan man never made it out of his 20s. Instead, 30 years ago this week Chin was brutally murdered when he was bludgeoned with a baseball bat wielded by two white, jobless auto workers who thought Chin, a Chinese-American man, was Japanese.

– Lou Dobbs is a horrible person [h/t].

– If evangelicalism were primarily a theological tradition, then British and American evangelicals would be more similar than they are. But American evangelicalism has ceased to be mainly a theological category. It’s now mainly a political subculture, a tribe.

– Pennsylvania State University, as an institution, decided that protecting Joe Paterno’s reputation and winning a few more football games was more important than stopping the ongoing rape of young boys.

– Give me a rambling rover.

Via Blue Oregon, I see that PPP are asking for suggestions for what they want polled in OR, OH and MA. But it got me thinking of some things I’d like polled in Washington.

• I know it’s my hobby horse, and nobody else cares. But I’d like to see if there’s any support for making it necessary to get 2/3 of the legislature to cut education or social services.
• I don’t trust the conventional wisdom on the 10th district. I don’t know that a district that’s largely exurban and suburban Pierce County and has Joint Base Lewis-McChord in the middle of it with Olympia (and Olympia’s suburbs) should be considered safe for Democrats. I’d like to see polling confirming that.
• Since we’re on this blog, how about “Is Tim Eyman a Horse’s Ass?”

But enough of me saying what I’d like to see, what would you like to see in polls in Washington State?

I don’t think it is. I mean we’re a secular country. So our laws don’t reflect one doctrine or one religion over another. And Christians who oppose letting anyone getting married clearly aren’t the oppressed minority they seem to think they are.

Still, it’s nice to see the push back from the Christian community beyond just a live and let live attitude. Joel Connelly has an interesting piece on the Minnesota anti-marriage equality constitutional amendment. After noting the official Catholic Church position, he talks about Catholics who oppose the amendment:

Three retired priests recently sent a letter to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune under the heading, “Catholics of Minnesota, you have a choice. There is not just one way for Catholics to vote in November.”

Rev. Tom Garvey, a priest for 55 years, spoke to Minnesota Public Radio about Nienstedt’s edict, saying: “That was a terrible thing, such an injustice to say you cannot disagree with me on this matter.”

And in other religions, the officialdom is getting on the right side of history.

Five synods of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ECLA) have voted to oppose it. The United Methodist Church in Minnesota has come out against it.

The proposed amendment “would prevent one group of committed couples and their families from pursuing ordinary legislative or legal means to gain the support and protections afforded to all others,” said a resolution passed by the Minneapolis Synod of the ECLA.

– Oh, that kind of marriage equality.

– I didn’t know anything about the story of the story KIRO ran about the Leschi custodian. But the response from the Washington News Council makes me glad there’s at least some type of accountability.

– The Interurban Trail in Edmonds.

– This influx of cash followed a major effort by Zimmerman’s supporters to cast him as the real victim, a poor man being railroaded by the justice system and major media outlets. They flooded comment sections and social media with racist horseshit, tried desperately to dig up dirt on Martin and discovered that he was, get this, a fucking teenager, and did whatever they could to violently shove the media narrative in the other direction because it made their guy look bad and didn’t make the young boy he had killed look bad enough.

– Another 36th District debate.

– How have you been celebrating National Pollinator Week?

I should start out by saying that Mars Hill have been good neighbors since they opened a church in my neighborhood. They’re a part of the community, and it’s appreciated. That said, what the fuck [h/t]?

“Mark started the meeting by telling us he was convinced that I had demons,” says Amy, “and then he went on to add that my demons were ‘sexual demons’.”

Amy describes Mark’s demeanor toward her as a “fiery tirade”. During this encounter, Mark told Amy he believed that every one of her sins were “sex based.” He said that the demons inside her were out to destroy every one of the marriages in their circle of friends.

Really, I don’t know what to say (other than muttering “sex demons?” repeatedly under my breath, and that’s probably not helpful).

It’s that time of year again. Time to debate if the Space Needle should fly the rainbow flag.

The Space Needle, a symbol of Seattle though owned by a private company, initially said it would not fly the rainbow flag last year. The company changed its mind after $50,000 was raised to benefit charities that work with the LGBT community, and the flag waved during Seattle’s 2011 Gay Pride Parade.

The 2012 parade is this weekend. Space Needle managers haven’t responded to my question about whether they will or won’t fly the flag atop the structure, now painted “galaxy orange” in honor of its 50th anniversary.

I hope they fly it every year, like the 12th man flag.

– I’m not sure zero tolerance is a good strategy for dealing with gun crimes. But the previous strategies clearly weren’t working.

– RIP Rodney King.

– If there is anything the Federal Reserve could be doing that it’s not doing — and there is — then they are to blame for this. For this multiplied by 14 million. For Ben Bernanke and his cohorts to be giving a single flying fig about the remote possibility of inflation right now really is obscene.

– If the Tea Party doesn’t want to be seen as racist, maybe don’t start off a rally with a racist joke.

– Lord Player says more homophobic nonsense.

– Publicola are back.

– Happy Solstice.

– This is the greatest headline in human history.

– Kill My Blues.

When Lee and I (and some other folks) used to do metacommentary one of our favorite blogs to make fun of was Reagan Wing. Nowadays, they’re pretty much just a Ron Paul blog. And is keepusfree upset with Rand Paul, but don’t criticize him.

Rand Paul a Traitor?

No. He endorsed a different presidential candidate than you. Unless that presidential candidate is Jefferson Davis, it ain’t treason.

Along with many of you in the Liberty Movement, I watched and listened with sick horror to Rand Paul’s endorsement of Mitt Romney. But thinking about it, in a political sense, in a global context of what is happening in our world, I would like to offer a hypothesis.

I think you’ll be surprised to learn that there’s a difference between vague half articulated conspiracy theories and a hypothesis.

We do not know the pressures that might have been brought to bear on Ron and Rand Paul. The power wielded by the enemies of the free people of the world is enormous and they have no scruples, no mercy, and no justice. In a perfect world, there might be a “John Galt” moment, where Rand steps aside to reveal the gun pointed at him. But that is a novel. Real life is not so clean.

I think the enemies of free people probably brought a bear to bear on Rand Paul. What I’m saying is watch out for his family getting mauled by a grizzly if he switches back to his father. It can’t possibly have anything to do with delegate math. I know the Ron Paul people think they’ll just overwhelm the national convention. But (a) they won’t, and (b) even if they did, maybe Rand Paul thinks it would be immoral (or just bad politics) to nominate someone who couldn’t win the majority of a single state. But you know what, fuck all that: mysterious forces.

If the Powers That Be can see our heroes brought low, it is to their great advantage and will serve them well. That someone breaks under the kind of pressure that they can exert is to be expected.

The pressure of winning the nomination. Wait, am I defending Mitt Romney? What’s wrong with me? It must be The Powers That Be. Anyway, it goes on like this for a while: they’re brave truth tellers, and it’s oh so tough. Then we reach the conclusion.

Rand Paul’s Cross

In this metaphor, Rand Paul is Jesus. But maybe, I’m being too over the top. It’s a fairly common metaphor that we all understand. It’s not like she called his father “Father” with a capital “F” or something.

Before you criticize Rand Paul, you should walk a mile in his shoes. The road he is traveling cannot be easy and will be rocky and dangerous. But his Father must have passed on some of his stalwart principles to his son, and he may yet serve us, even while he faces our ire and castigation for something which well may be completely out of his control, or may be a part of something we cannot yet see or understand. It may be the cross he has to bear and the sacrifice he has to make in order to continue in the fight at all. Only time will tell.

Or, he’s just a politician with some awful ideas that are closer to his dad’s. But since his dad isn’t going to win the nomination, he endorsed the other guy with horrible ideas.

– the ideas are to restrict the rollover of surplus campaign funds from one election to the next to $5,000, and to limit campaign fundraising to begin in January of the election year.

– This story about how Obama’s DREAM act executive order will play out in the Tri-Cities is interesting, but is Tri-Cities a reasonable dateline?

– This is where the knee-jerk conservative resentment of anything deemed “liberal” leads. Prudence, fitness, frugality, conservation: These are the kind of old-fashioned American values that conservatives claim they stand for. But since liberals also agree that saving money, doing right by your body, and having a liveable environment are good things, Republicans have to childishly reject all that on the grounds that liberals tainted it. This is how far we’ve fallen as a country.

– The Vagina Monologues to be performed at the Michigan capital.

– Good question.

– Extra value?

On Friday David Brooks and Paul Krugman share space on the New York Times Op-Ed page. Sometimes, the contrast between the quality of writing is embarrassing. Today, I noticed the transitions between paragraphs. Here’s how Bobo starts each paragraph after the first:

I guess I’d say
But many Republicans
“We have a sense
To Republican eyes,
America’s economic stagnation
In America as in Europe
The welfare model favors
This is the source of Republican extremism
Mitt Romney hasn’t put it this way
Democrats have had trouble grasping
In his speech
Obama championed
This is what this election is about
Republicans and Democrats have different perceptions

Sometimes it ties the previous paragraph to the next one. But more often than not it’s jarring. Oh here’s a new idea. Maybe there are connections, but you’ll have to make them yourself. Compare that to K-thug.

Never mind
In the remarks
You can see
So would getting rid of teachers, police officers, and firefighters help the American people?
But the more relevant question
First of all
And, if we had those extra jobs
The really decisive evidence
But recovery never came
And the point is
So the former governor
Actually, it’s kind of ironic
And that’s not just an inference
In fact
Needless to say

Whatever you think of Krugman’s argument in this piece, you can see the way he ties one paragraph into another pretty much every time.