Cheez Doodles

MARRIAGE

Some on the right believe that if 50.1% of the people vote for something – like California’s marriage ban – it must be Constitutional. And that the Courts should have no role in deciding whether or not that’s so.

So if, for example, 50.1% of the people voted to prevent Catholics from receiving Social Security benefits – or marrying – that would be okay.

And if a judge said, “Whoa! Hang on! We have a Constitution meant to protect the 49.9% – or even the 4.9% or the 0.00049% – from the ‘tyranny of the majority,’” then that judge should be impeached. Never mind that in this case the judge was agreeing with noted conservative attorney Ted Olson and noted Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and noted former First Lady Laura Bush.

Get a grip, people!

You can still consider your own marriage superior to ours!

You can still disown your child for being gay!

You can still hope he or she never forms a stable, loving relationship!

Or that – if God forbid he or she does – he or she will be discriminated against in subtler ways (like being kicked out of your church).

The only thing you can’t hope, if Judge Walker’s ruling is upheld, is that your child and his or her family will be denied Social Security benefits (along with the other Federal benefits and responsibilities of civil marriage).

Sorry, but that’s the downside of living in a country where everyone is guaranteed equal treatment under the law.

See David Boies on CBS here. Ted Olson on Fox, here. And a straight San Franciscan’s take on gay marriage here.

DODD-FRANK

Sam Kahn: I’ve had dozens of conversations with people over the years who blame Frank and Dodd for the financial meltdown. All concede that that the problems occurred starting in the late 1990s going through 2007 when the bad stuff really started happening. In every conversation, I asked people to name the chairmen of the committees from 1994 through the end of 2006. [Frank was in the minority all those years, Dodd was in the minority most of those years – they can’t possibly be blamed for the inactions of the “regulation is bad” Republicans.] I’ve yet to find one person who could name any of the Republican chairs. They are, in my opinion, the ultimate Teflon people. They ran the committees, but no one even knows who they are. Instead, Republicans want to blame Dodd and Frank.”

CHEEZ DOODLES

Jim Leff: “Cheez Doodles weren’t invented. They were ripped off.”

THUMBNAILS

From the Campaign for America’s Future

NYT’s Paul Krugman sounds the alarm that there’s not enough state aid to prevent a collapse in infrastructure and education: “…for all the talk of a failed stimulus, if you look at government spending as a whole you see hardly any stimulus at all. And with federal spending now trailing off, while big state and local cutbacks continue, we’re going into reverse … Everything we know about economic growth says that a well-educated population and high-quality infrastructure are crucial.”

NYT edit board tries shaming Congress to do more on jobs: “… the response from Washington has been inadequate, at best, with Democratic initiatives too timid and Republicans bent on obstruction … the [$26B state aid] measure started out as a $50 billion effort … it was a reasonable response to anticipated budget shortfalls estimated at well over $100 billion this year. Now, deep spending cuts and tax increases will still be needed to balance budgets, undermining the recovery. … There is no one way to foster job growth. There are many ways, and they should all be deployed. Maybe after Congress gets back from vacation.”

Robert Reich rebuts Robert Rubin and Alan Greenspan’s no-more-stimulus stance: “Both Greenspan and Rubin are deficit hawks. So was Herbert Hoover and so was Hoover’s Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon. And look what Hoover and Mellon got us into. When we least need him, Hoover is being exhumed.”

Tomorrow: ETFs – and More Reason to Think Charlie Rangel Shouldn’t Quit