Jesus “weeps” over DOMA

Zombie candidate and eternal right-wing pundit Mike Huckabee knows a thing or two about Jesus. The former Arkansas governor doesn’t think his Lord and Savoir is perturbed by tax cuts for zillionaires, sweetheart contracts for war profiteers, or budget cuts for those struggling with the real world consequences of Huckabee’s fave policies. But when it comes to marriage equality, Huckabee knows Jesus is so emotionally invested in denying same sex couples equal rights he cannot divinely compose himself today. [Read more…]

SCOTUS rules DOMA unconstitutional

9:04 AM PT: The Defense of Marriage Act, the 1996 law allowing Federal and state governments to discriminate against legally married same-sex couples, is unconstitutional, the Supreme Court has ruled. It’s a 5-4 ruling. Roberts and Scalia and dissent. Kennedy has written the ruling. The focus is equal protection.

9:03 AM PT: SCOTUSblog: “DOMA is unconstitutional as a deprivation of the equal liberty of persons that is protected by the Fifth Amendment.”

9:05 AM PT: Here’s the opinion.

9:06 AM PT: NBC’s Pete Williams suggests that DOMA ruling is a big enough ruling that it may take some time for the justices to read their opinions, which means the Prop. 8 ruling might take a little longer to be revealed.

9:08 AM PT:

NBC’s Pete Williams: “This was a very broad ruling…that can be used by proponents of same sex marriage to attack laws in other states”

— @igorvolsky

Live from Austin: Texas war on women stymied by people power, for now

Texasfilibuster

Political drama of the highest order unfolded here in Austin late Tuesday night. Conservative legislators planned to pass new restrictions and onerous regulations on clinics offering pregnancy counseling for thousands of women in Texas. By yesterday they were under the gun, the session due to close at midnight, with a key piece of the Republican war on women still waiting in the wings like an old sing-song bill waiting on capital hill. Then state senator Wendy Davis got the floor, refused to yield, and the people’s filibuster was on: [Read more…]

Texas GOP uses procedural technicality to silence woman lawmaker

 

Life feed of Texas Ledge 25 June, 2013
Update: Live Ustream outside capital … vote was taken at … 11:66 PM 25 June 2013, ahem. Texas ledge page was then “retrodated” to show just before midnight, making this one of the most shameful nights in Lone Star politics ever recorded. There is some disagreement between what Texas GOP says and what clerk is currently reporting as passed. Either way, progressives are pissed and registering new voters as you read this.

A battle has been raging in Texas, but the end may be near. A short time ago the filibuster was broken by a procedural technicality by GOP lawmakers in Texas. This story is moving fast, best followed on Twitter at #SB5 and TXLedge for starters. Context below but make no mistake folks, this bill is going through. If not tonight they’ll gin up a special session or cook up some governor magic. The idea is to make it as hard as possible and expose the clowns hoping to further restrict women’s’ rights. [Read more…]

Court strikes down part of Voting Rights Act

Via my colleague Jed Lewison at Daily Kos — The Supreme Court has struck down part of the Voting Rights Act. According to analysis from NBC’s Pete Williams, the court upheld the Section 5 notion of preclearance—requiring locales with history of racial discrimination to preclear any changes of their voting laws with the Department of Justice—but struck down the map identifying which areas must be subject to preclearance. According to Williams, this means Congress could, in theory, pass a law creating a new map of locales subject to preclearance. Assuming the Court approved the map, it would go into effect. On a practical level, however, it essentially means the end of preclearance because there’s virtually no chance of Congress agreeing on a new map. Therefore, given the current Congress, the effect of the ruling is to render Section 5 moot, although in theory at some point in the future it’s conceivable that a new map could be drawn that would revive Section 5.

Joe Klein takes obligatory swipe at atheists

A ‘thank you’ sign left by one of the residents whose property the atheists helped clear (Kai Tancredi)

Joe Klein knows how to sling the link bait. In his world, hits matter and integrity does not. In his latest, the inexplicably successful columnist gets the warm fuzzies for religious relief orgs in Moore, OK, the community hit by devastating tornadoes. Had he stopped there and continued on talking about post traumatic stress syndrome and how well military-trained  personnel do disaster relief, he might have slid under the decency bar.

But Klein had to add “funny how you don’t see organized groups of secular humanists giving out hot meals”. Hermant Mehta blogging at Patheos points out not only is this offensive and just plain mean, it’s flatly untrue and Mr DC Journalism utterly failed to perform basic reporting procedure in his Time Magazine cover story. [Read more…]