There Are Plenty Of Differences Between Bernie's Record And Hillary's

A few days ago, Hillary-- disgracefully, tried implying that Bernie is not just a gun-nut but a sexist trying to silence her to boot. I wonder which p.r. firm came up with that line. It's a natch for her though. Even one of her most outspoken, dedicated backers, Hilary Rosen, who had been tweeting earlier that Bernie looked like a madman, was exasperatied by how the Clintons lie and twist reality for their own political purposes, a reason so many Americans distrust them-- regardless of how horrid their Republican opponents are:

And for people who weren't there... we have The Google! New York Times, October 15, 1996:

In a radio advertisement aimed at religious conservatives, the Clinton campaign is showcasing the President's signature on a bill banning gay marriages in spite of earlier White House complaints that the issue amounted to "gay baiting."

The advertisement also promotes President Clinton's work to protect religious freedom and says he wants "a complete ban" on late-term abortions "except when the mother's life is in danger" or when a woman "faces severe health risks."

It refers to Mr. Clinton's support of the Defense of Marriage Act, which the President signed into law last month, to the dismay of many gay rights advocates. Mr. Clinton signed the law early on a Saturday morning, minimizing news coverage. He said he had long agreed with the principles in the bill but hoped it would not be used to justify discrimination against homosexuals.

The White House spokesman, Michael D. McCurry, had earlier criticized Republicans for raising the issue, calling it "gay baiting."

The Dole campaign was critical. "This is a President who signed the Defense of Marriage Act in the middle of the night so it wouldn't be news, but now he does paid advertising to promote it," said a Dole spokesman, Gary Koops. "This is a President who has never supported any restriction on abortion, but now, 20-plus days before the election, he does ads touting the fact that he now says he supports restrictions."

Rewriting history used to be so much easier. Last week Rachel Maddow had a nice, relaxed sit-down with Hillary Clinton on her show. Here's the transcript that's caused all the commotion yesterday:

MADDOW:  On-- on the issue of finding a path between the left and the right, finding what’s doable and what’s not doable, I’m a true-blue liberal, and I’m allowed to say that. OK?   (LAUGHTER)

But one of the things that I have been struck by – and during the Obama administration-- is that a lot of the-- really, the civil rights achievements of this administration have actually been undoing things that were done in the Clinton administration.

Whether it was “don’t ask, don’t tell” or the Defense of Marriage Act or the-- you know, tough on crime (ph) mandatory sentences. Former President Clinton is progressive on all those issues now…

CLINTON:  Right.

MADDOW:  …but the policies that he signed-- for politically practical reasons-- in the ’90s have taken-- you know, the political mural-- miracle of Barack Obama’s election and-- and-- and a decade of progressive activism to unwind those things to get back to zero.

And so I know that you and President Clinton are different people, and I know that-- I don’t-- you-- you’re not responsible for what he did as president. But is your approach to civil rights issues the same as his, or is it different?

CLINTON:  Well, I-- I want to say a word about the-- the issues you mentioned, because my-- my-- my take on it is slightly different.

On Defense of Marriage, I think what my husband believed-- and there was certainly evidence to support it-- is that there was enough political momentum to amend the Constitution of the United States of America, and that there had to be some way to stop that.

And there wasn’t any rational argument-- because I was in on some of those discussions, on both “don’t ask, don’t tell” and on-- on DOMA, where both the president, his advisers and occasionally I would-- you know, chime in and talk about, “you can’t be serious. You can’t be serious.”

But they were. And so, in-- in a lot of ways, DOMA was a line that was drawn that was to prevent going further.

MADDOW:  It was a defensive action?

CLINTON:  It was a defensive action. The culture rapidly changed so that now what was totally anathema to political forces-- they have ceded. They no longer are fighting, except on a local level and a rear-guard action. And with the U.S. Supreme Court decision, it’s settled.

“Don’t ask, don’t tell” is something that-- you know, Bill promised during the ‘92 campaign to let gays serve openly in the military. And it’s what he intended to do.

Hillary herself felt it was once politically convenient to be seen as a little anti-gay:



She's changed her mind. Too bad she can't claim to have had a D-minus from the National Organization For Marriage. She and Bill should just admit they were wrong and apologize and move on. I mean if an asshole like Tony Blair could apologize for his role in the Iraq War and the subsequent rise of Isis, why can't Bill and Hill cop to their bad decisions on LGBT issues?

The new CBS News poll of Iowa Democrats-- taken after Hillary eviscerated Trey Gowdy's silly Benghazi Republicans-- found her barely ahead of Bernie among likely caucus participants-- 46-43%. (The CBS poll in New Hampshire shows Bernie continuing to beat her by big numbers-- 51-36%.) Politico's story after the Iowa Jefferson-Jackson Dinner was how Bernie went on the attack and that he "launched a new, frontal attack on Clinton’s record, caution and character-- a direct response to her recent surge in the polls here and nationally, and fueled by her strong performance at the first Democratic debate earlier this month. The shift represents a gamble: Can a nice-guy candidate publicly dedicated to running on substance turn to attack mode without sacrificing his reputation as an authentic voice of the people?" Huh? Bernie went negative? Well no. Read a little further down and Politico reluctantly admits that "The Vermont senator, as always, did not go after the front-runner in a personal way or mention her by name. Instead, he delivered a fiery yet indirect indictment of her entire political career. In his 25-minute speech-- backed up by the thundering chants of supporters chanting 'Feel the Bern!'-- he attacked Clinton’s slowness to take a position on the Keystone pipeline: 'This was not a complicated issue,' he said. He lambasted her for now opposing the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which she once called the 'gold standard' of trade deals. 'It is not now, nor has it ever been, the gold standard of trade agreements,' Sanders said. And he reached back to Clinton’s 2002 vote to support the war in Iraq, an issue that plagued her eight years ago when she took the stage here. 'When I came to that fork in the road I took the right road, even though it was not the popular road at the time,' he said. Well... the shoe fits. He is after all, running for president on his record and his judgment and his courageousness as a frontline leader, against an opponent who is trying to distort her own-- and his-- record.

Want to make sure Bernie is elected president instead of more of the same Establishment crap? You can do it here, where you will also find the progressive candidates running for Congress who have endorsed Bernie and his platform.

Right To Vote/Right To Marry: The Red States

Barney Frank retired from Congress last year. Obama picked a series of crooked Wall Street operators for positions he should have tried filling with brilliant and proven tribunes of the public like Barney and Brad Miller (D-NC), who also resigned last year. I'm not certain what Brad is up to now but Barney has certainly not faded away. Having been for so many years the most noteworthy openly gay Member of Congress, media turned to him in droves for comments about the grudging and narrow Supreme Court ruling that struck down DOMA and kind of struck down California's hateful Prop 8. And Barney, who recently married his partner, was as gleeful as all members of the LGBT community. Like me... well, probably more than me. I'm less an assimilationist and, although I'm happy for the folks who wanted and needed this, I fear it is another deadly blow against what helped make the gay community unique and nonconformist.

But, like Barney, I'm not exactly singing the praises of the Supreme Court. The 5 conservative bastards did something far more destructive the day before by striking down the Voting Rights Act. It's a much bigger deal than letting gays marry-- because it will inevitably lead to a far more conservative and intolerant government, one that could do a great deal of harm to, among others, the LGBT community. Thursday Barney was on MSNBC's Morning Joe and he said that if he had been empowered to decide one Supreme Court decision this week, he would have taken up the case on the 1965 Voting Rights Act and not the Prop 8 marriage ban that is no longer supported by California voters anyway. He explained that the "terrible decision killing the Voting Rights Act" is far more harmful to the country than the marriage equality case. "Racial discrimination," he asserted, correctly, "has been much worse [than discrimination against the LGBT community] in this country and if I could have frankly picked one decision this week,  I'll be honest, it wouldn't have been the gay marriage one. I wish I could have reversed that terrible decision killing the Voting Rights Act because I think there are still serious issues there in democracy." It would be amazing if Scalia, who's 77, wakes up in hell tomorrow and Obama nominates Frank to replace him. And if we all get unicorns for our birthdays.

This wasn't lost on Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chairs Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ) and Keith Ellison (D-MN). They got it just right when they commented on the Supreme Court rulings this week in a joint statement:

“We celebrate today’s decision by the Supreme Court to respect the right of all Americans to marry who they love. The road to today’s victories started 44 years ago at the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, where the gay community made a public stand against institutional discrimination. Since that day, LGBT Americans have worked tirelessly for equal rights under the law. The decisions made by the Supreme Court today reaffirm those rights and move our country closer to fulfilling the promise in our Constitution of equal rights for all.

“While today’s rulings were a positive step forward, yesterday’s Supreme Court decision to weaken the Voting Rights Act endangers voting rights and is a troubling step backward. We should celebrate the victory for marriage equality by working together to defend the voices of millions of Americans who may face increased discrimination at the polls after yesterday’s decision. Senator Harry Reid has already vowed that the Senate will act quickly to fix the problems created by yesterday’s ruling. The House should follow his lead as soon as possible.”

So what can, realistically, be done to fix the problem before the Republican just start barring minorities from voting across the Old Confederacy and in states they control like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, the Dakotas and Indiana? The Senate is where it will start, of course. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), chairman of the Judiciary Committee: "I intend to take immediate action to ensure that we will have a strong and reconstituted Voting Rights Act that protects against racial discrimination in voting." He says he plans to start right after the 4th of July break. Unfortunately, Leahy's counterpart in the House is an old line unreconstructed Confederate and racist pig, Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) and he's not likely to allow any kind of protections for minorities to get through his committee, which is stuffed full of teabaggers and bigots and boasts some of the most contemptible partisan extremists in Congress, like Steve King (R-IA), Trent Franks (R-AZ), Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Jim Jordan (R-OH), Lamar Smith (R-TX), Spencer Bachus (R-AL), Darrell Issa (R-CA), Randy Forbes (R-VA), Trey Gowdy (R-SC), Ted Poe (R-TX), George Holding (R-NC), Doug Collins (R-GA), Ron DeSantis (R-FL) and Jason Smith (R-MO).

Pelosi was whistling in the wind when she said "I would like to see something called... the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, which would address the concerns that the Court put in its decision about Section 4. It’s really a step backward and it’s not a reflection of what is happening in our country in some of these places. And when we put that bill together, when it was passed last time, it passed overwhelming, overwhelming 98 to nothing in the Senate and 390-something to almost nothing in the House. And it was bipartisan and we came to terms on it, in a way that we were all jubilant about the passage of it, Democrats and Republicans alike.”

Your Supreme Court at work and play -- as same-sex marriage slips through the portals of privilege

-- from NYTimes.com's "Afternoon Update"

"Today's Supreme Court decision is a victory for all Americans, and brings our nation one step closer to the promise of equality and justice for all. The DOMA decision ensures that married gay and lesbian couples are recognized by the federal government, and that their families receive equal treatment in the eyes of the law. There should be no more discrimination based on where you're from, what you look like, or who you love. Today's DOMA decision is a historic step in the fight for equality. The federal government must ensure that no one is degraded or demeaned by the law, and that all couples receive the legal recognition and respect that they deserve."

-- Florida Rep. Alan Grayson, in a statement today

"Today's rulings are a major step forward for the country, but for Floridians they fall short of justice and are more than anything a call to action. For those of us who live in states like Florida where our marriages are still not recognized, today's decisions are a reminder that we cannot wait for justice to be handed to us, we are going to have to get engaged and fight. . . .

"While Florida couples who marry elsewhere will receive some federal benefits, unfortunately many federal protections related to marriage are based solely on whether the marriage is recognized by the state in which the couple lives. Today our rights as Americans are not based on our shared citizenship, but upon our geographic location. . . ."

-- Equality Florida Executive Director Nadine Smith, in
a statement today (Nadine issued a video "call to action")

by Ken

A historic day, yes, but when you break it down, and fit together the pieces of the other decisions the Supreme Court has announced in its end-of-term festivities, it's all recognizably our hard-right-wing Roberts Court at work, dragging the law back into the Dickensian heyday of the Industrial Revolution, if not the glory days of the Spanish Inquisition.

Earlier today Howie wrote about yesterday's ghastly Supreme Court voting-rights debacle at the Supreme Court's end-of-term festivities, and homed in on the five bozos I described on Tuesday as far-right-wing-stooge (FRWS) justices -- and specifically how they slithered their way onto the High Court, with often-inconsequential opposition. Crikey, these are life forms that have no business sitting on any bench that isn't bolted down in a park.

I would never say that I could have predicted how the major decisions would come down. The way I argue it is that once they do, we can usually see the theatrical hand orchestrating it all. So, for example, on Monday we got the seemingly moderate decision on affirmative action -- "moderate" in that contrary to the expectation of many of us, the majority didn't shitcan affirmative action altogether. Justice Scalia left no doubt that he would have been happy to do so, and my assumption is that there would have been four votes to do so. I'm guessing, though, that try as FRWS justices might, they couldn't get a fifth vote for that. What we got instead was a seeming "unity" ruling, a 7-1 remand, sending the case back to the lower court for a closer look, to make absolutely sure that there wasn't any unallowable racial-preference funny business going on. Naturally, those judges have been put on alert to look really, really hard -- would anyone care to bet what they're going to find?

The message was pretty clear to the state of Texas, which immediately announced that for the next election it's putting into effect the election revamp it passed in 2011 designed to screw voters the right-wing establishment doesn't like out of their right to vote. Let's assume that the Supremes' FRWS Five aren't total morons (I'm not entirely sure in a couple of cases, but let's give them all the benefit of the doubt), and know that for all the right-wing screeching about "voter fraud," there has been no indication of any such thing happening, whereas dating back at least to the stolen presidential election of 2000, Republicans have been devoting more and more resources and time to election-stealing, and seizing control of the voter rolls has been a principal tool. Most of its strategies to date have been anywhere from probably to flagrantly illegal, but look here now, we control the law!

Which is where Justice Scalia's ruling in Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona takes a turn for the comical. The issue, you'll recall was the illegality, according to the 7-1 majority, of Arizona adding a requirement while using a federal form. Uh-uh, said our Nino, you can't do that. And "if a reader of the Scalia opinion stopped at the top of page 13," wrote ScotusBlog's Lyle Denniston, "the impression would be very clear that Congress had won hands down in the field of regulating federal elections."

But from that point on, there is abundant encouragement for what is essentially a states' rights argument: that is, that the states have very wide authority to define who gets to vote, in both state and federal elections.

On the particular point at issue in this case -- Arizona's requirement of proof of citizenship before one may register to vote or actually vote -- the Scalia opinion said that a state was free to ask the federal government for permission to add that requirement. And, Scalia said, if that doesn't work — either because the federal agency that would deal with such a request is either not functioning or says no -- then a state would be free to go to court and make an argument that it has a constitutional right to insist on proof of citizenship as an absolute qualification for voting, in all elections.

The opinion seemed to leave little doubt that, if Arizona or another state went to court to try to establish such a constitutional power, it might well get a very sympathetic hearing, because that part of the Scalia opinion laid a very heavy stress on the power of states under the Constitution to decide who gets to vote.

And again, since Justice Nino isn't a moron, he surely knows full well that the agency to which Arizona would make this request is completely crippled by virtue of having no members, thanks to the Republican philosophy of non-governing: blind obstruction. So Arizona would get no answer to such a request, would go back to court, and . . . well, you get the idea. Ha ha ha!

What's more, in the process we get to see Justice Nino being, it appears, unpredictable. Mmm, no, that's just an illusion. But I think a not entirely accidental one. The FRWS Five seem to have become a lot more sensitive to the optics of their shredding of the Constitution and constitutional precedent, which for a number of frightening years has been unapologetic. Note, for example, that in the voting-rights decision, Chief Justice Roberts essentially blamed Congress for screwing up, failing to come up with constitutionally acceptable criteria for subjecting states and localities to Justice Dept. scrutiny of their voting procedures. Of course in the decades that the Voting Rights Act has been in force, and in all the times it has been reauthorized by Congress, nobody ever told them that the existing criteria were unconstitutional. (To which I assume the Chief would answer, "Well, nobody asked me!") And once again, the Chief, not being a moron, knows full well that at present there isn't the slightest possibility that Congress could rise to the occasion, because the House is effectively controlled by the kind of people who love the idea of being able to exclude people they don't like from the voting rolls.

Once again, the message to the states is: Discriminate, baby, we've got your back!

Note too how the voting-rights case, Shelby County v. Holder, was neatly sandwiched between the "moderate" non-eradication of affirmative action and today's decisions in the two same-sex-marriage cases. I am prepared to give the Court credit for coming right out and declaring Section 3 of DOMA unconstituional. That's the one that has prevented any federal agency from extending any marital benefits to same-sex couples, and it was nice to have a relatively unequivocal declaration that this is an unconstitutional form of discrimination.

That was all that was needed to decide the case, and traditionally the Supreme Court doesn't rule any more broadly than is needed to decide a case. Of course this is a tradition that the Roberts Court has regularly trashed, since going beyond what's needed to decide a case has been one of its favorite hobbies. In fact, the opportunity to do so has frequently seemed part of its reason for taking certain cases. In this case, though, it means that while the federal government is going to have a hard time going foward treating parties to a same-sex marriage differently from parties to an opposite-sex one, it doesn't mean that same-sex couples have been found to have any inherent right to the institution of marriage. If they're legally married, the ruling says, they have to be treated the same as any other couple that's legally married. In addition, neither the case nor the ruling required the justices to deal with the right of states to refuse to recognize other states' same-sex marriages -- that's protected in Section 2 of DOMA, which hasn't yet been touched.

But even in the matter of the DOMA rejection, as those NYT article blurbs up top suggest, the Court has more than anything followed the trend taking hold in the country. Remember that when same-sex marriage was finally authorized in New York State, a lot of important support, financial and otherwise came from Republican businesspersons. The business community has indeed been grasping that homophobia is increasingly "bad for business." It makes it harder to recruit qualified LGBT candidates, and it makes it hard to sell to LGBT consumers and straight consumers who understand the issue at stake. Go back to Rep. Alan Grayson's statement at the top of the post: "Today's Supreme Court decision is a victory for all Americans." There's someone who gets it, and getting this has been spreading to more and more of the country's mainstream.

So again, give the Supremes credit, but not that much. And in the Prop 8 decision, while the result will be to reinstate the District Court ruling that Prop 8 is just plain unconstitutional (and not merely at odds with the California state constitution, as the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals had argued, since it took away a right -- one that had been established by the courts -- for no reason except to discriminate against LGBT folk), and same-sex marriage is clearly going to be legal in California again, but the ruling is unlikely to have any impact outside California. It's conceivable that the District Court ruling could be cited in other jurisdictions, but federal District Court rulings have no automatic application anywhere else.

And so the Roberts Court may have bent a little in its mission to uphold the rights of the privileged and white, but it didn't really bend all that much. It certainly didn't break.

I don't suppose this is terribly diplomatic, but then, it's aimed at people who have never had any impulse toward diplomacy in dealing with us. Like Michele "Mighty Mouth" Bachmann, who sent out a tweet saying, "No man, not even a Supreme Court, can undo what a holy God has instituted."


MEANWHILE, NOTHING CAN SHAKE JUSTICE NINO FROM
HIS DIVINELY ORDAINED MISSION TO HATE THE HOMOS

JUNE 26, 2013

SCALIA ARRESTED TRYING TO BURN DOWN SUPREME COURT

POSTED BY ANDY BOROWITZ

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report) -- In a shocking end to an illustrious legal career, police arrested Justice Antonin Scalia today as he attempted to set the Supreme Court building ablaze.

Justice Scalia, who had seemed calm and composed during the announcement of two major rulings this morning, was spotted by police minutes later outside the building, carrying a book of matches and a gallon of kerosene.

After police nabbed Justice Scalia and placed him in handcuffs, the [Justice] appeared "at peace and resigned to his fate," a police spokesman said.

"He went quietly," the spokesman said. "He just muttered something like, 'I don't want to live in a world like this.' "

Back at the Supreme Court, Justice Scalia's colleagues said they hoped he would get the help he needed, except for Justice Clarence Thomas, who said nothing.

VISIT THE STAND-ALONE SUNDAY CLASSICS WITH KEN

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Arizona Republican Jim Kolbe Is Getting Gay-Married Today

Kolbe and Foley

Former eleven-term Congressman Jim Kolbe (R-AZ) has been "living in sin" with his Panamanian lover, Hector Alfonso, for eight years. Today they will legally wed at the Cosmos Club in DC. (It's still illegal for same sex couples to marry in Arizona, although recent polling shows 55% of Arizonans support marriage equality.) Kolbe is the first gay congressman who voted for DOMA in 1996 to get married. Back then, Kolbe was a closeted mainstream conservative-- one of many in the House Republican caucus who, for one reason or another-- felt they had to vote against the interests of the LGBT community. The only "out" Republican-- and the only Republican-- to oppose DOMA was Steve Gunderson (R-MN), who had been publicly outed by raging homophobe "B-1 Bob" Dornan on the floor of the House, in an attempt to humiliate him. And the Republicans weren't the only bigots that day. Nancy Pelosi only managed to muster 66 Democrats to oppose DOMA.

Among the Republican closet cases voting for Bob Barr's so-called Defense of Marriage Act were then-closeted Reps. David Dreier (R-CA), Mark Foley (R-FL), Jim Kolbe (R-AZ), Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), Dave Camp (R-MI), Jim McCrery (R-LA), Phil English (R-PA), Denny Hastert (R-IL), and Bill Paxon (R-NY). This week, Kolbe told the Washington Blade "Two decades ago, I could not have imagined such an event as this would be possible. A decade ago I could not imagine that I would find someone I could be so compatible with that I would want to spend the rest of my life with that person. So, this is a very joyous day for both of us." Ironically, even though they’ll be legally married, Kolbe will still be unable to sponsor his spouse for residency in the United States because of the DOMA legislation he helped pass.

Yesterday I had a pleasant talk with one of those former closet cases/former congressmen, Mark Foley. Of course, he was genuinely happy for his old friend Kolbe. "Any time people find love," he told me, "they need to celebrate it. And he's not only celebrating it, he's memorializing it with this ceremony." The two used to travel together frequently but have lost touch in recent years. They were members of the moderate Republican Ripon Society and of the House Republicans' Tuesday Group. "We were called the Tuesday Group but we met on Wednesdays. People used to ask if we were hiding from our friends, the rednecks," laughed Foley who regrets that so many of his colleagues from the Tuesday Group have been forced to turn sharply right more recently, for the sake of political expediency (or survival). There were around 40 members then, which, according to the New Republic "provided a private forum for the party’s more moderate members, and, in its own quiet way, it pushed back against the Republican leadership, preventing it from running off increasingly radical rails... While the Tuesday Group occasionally pushed moderate legislation, members freely admit that its greatest impact was behind the scenes. Tuesday’s members worked to squash measures that would inevitably divide the party-- like strict restrictions on abortion and deep cuts to spending on scientific research or education-- 'bills that would never have had any workability and would just further drive the wedge between us,'" explained Nancy Johnson, then a moderate Republican from Connecticut. Foley remembers that he and Kolbe were members, as were Fred Upton, Mike Castle, Sue Kelly, Mark Kirk, Charlie Bass...

Just before the vote for DOMA on July 12, 1996, there was a Democratic Motion to Recommit, an attempt to ameliorate the negative aspects of the bill. It failed 164-249 but most Democrats (134) voted for it, as did 30 Republicans, mostly Tuesday Group members. The only Republican closet cases who voted for DOMA but also took the brave stand of crossing the aisle to vote with the Democrats on the Motion to Recommit were Kolbe and Foley-- NOT Dreier, Rohrabacher, Camp, McCrery, English, Hastert or Paxon, each of whom voted NO. Foley's proud he voted for the Motion but he knows he should have opposed DOMA. "It was always," he told me, " a vote I wish I could have undone... It's a vote I've always regretted." He then reminded me that both he and Kolbe also voted in favor of domestic partnerships for DC and that "very clearly, Hillary Clinton has just evolved on this topic last week."

Kolbe's come a long way. Mazel tov! Watch his testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee last month:

Jim Kolbe (R-AZ) Who Once Voted For DOMA Is Getting Married To A Man Next Month

Here's one homophobic asshole whose mind Kolbe won't be able to change anytime soon

I had already ended my time as the pop music critic for The Advocate in 1996 when Arizona Republican Congressman Jim Kolbe came out as gay. But I still recall the stir around the magazine because they had decided to publicly "out" Kolbe after he voted for DOMA, which was meant to prevent gay couples from marrying. Since almost everyone in Washington already knew Kolbe was gay, the homophobic vote seemed especially hypocritical. Kolbe decided to beat The Advocate to the punch by calling a press conference and announcing he was officially out of the closet.

Within days of the vote on the Defense of Marriage Act, they began a blistering campaign on the Internet to compel Mr. Kolbe to disclose that he himself was gay, a practice known as outing.

The campaign reached its peak last week with a full-page ad in the Washington Blade, a newspaper that reaches a nationwide gay audience, calling on "all closeted gay and lesbian members of Congress" to "end your silence and defend your community."

On Thursday night, Mr. Kolbe spoke.

He also spoke yesterday-- at the Senate Judiciary Committee, this time urging senators to include gay couples in the immigration bill they're working on. He and his partner, Hector Alfonso, are getting married in May.

Kolbe, a Republican who represented the Tucson area in Congress for 11 terms, has a partner from Panama who had to leave the United States after his work visa expired, bringing his teaching career in this country to an abrupt halt. Under current law, Kolbe could not sponsor his partner for a family reunification visa.

Kolbe's partner was able to return to the United States from Panama a year later after obtaining an investment visa, which allows immigrants who invest in new U.S. businesses to live here. But Kolbe said the process was long and expensive, costing more than many people can afford to spend.

"Our laws should not separate American citizens from their loved ones for such unacceptably long periods of time," Kolbe told the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is holding a series of hearings on an 844-page immigration reform bill drawn up by a bipartisan group of eight senators. Among the bill's authors are Arizona Republican Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake.

The committee chairman, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., has introduced separate legislation, the "Uniting American Families Act," that would allow gay Americans to sponsor their foreign-born partners to come to the United States using family reunification visas. That controversial provision is not part of the sweeping reform bill, although gay rights' advocates are urging that it be included.

"While the bill you are considering is an excellent starting point for reform, I submit to you that it is still incomplete," Kolbe told committee members. "Families like mine are left behind as part of this proposal. Equally important, U.S. businesses and our economy suffer because of the omission of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender families from the bill introduced last week."

Kolbe's come a long way since voting for DOMA, as has public opinion (not to mention France and Delaware, each of which legalized marriage equality earlier today)... but his party hasn't. The vast majority of Republicans in Congress are still hateful and virulent homophones-- or at least pretending to be-- and oppose marriage equality and immigration equality. Let's see if he can convince any of the Republican closet cases Congress-- like Patrick McHenry (R-NC), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Aaron Schock (R-IL), Trent Franks (R-AZ), Dave Camp (R-MI), etc.-- to support the LGBT community even before being officially outed.

Not Every Homophobe In Congress Is Republican-- And The DCCC Wants To Spend Your Money On Anti-Gay "Democrats" Running For Reelection

Jim Matheson (D-UT), a face of the Mormon bigotry against the LGBT community. Last year the DCCC funneled $1.3 million into reelecting him

When you contribute to the DCCC, most of the money that gets earmarked for candidates goes to Frontliners, vulnerable incumbents viewed as having the worst chances to be reelected. There's a list. Most of them, though not all, wind up on the list because they vote like Republicans and local Democrats hate them and don't contribute to them or even vote for them. Like Mike McIntyre... who came within 650 votes of losing in November, will face a primary from Jonathan Barfield next year and, if he survives that (and doesn't retire or try a career Hail Mary pass with a pointless run against Kay Hagan), will be challenged by Republican David Rouzer again. Democrats in North Carolina may abhor Rouzer, but McIntyre usually votes exactly the same way he promises to vote-- last month against minimum wage, for example. Only 6 Democrats joined the Republicans to defeat a proposal to raise the minimum wage-- John Barrow (Blue Dog/New Dem-GA), Jim Matheson (Blue Dog-UT), Mike McIntyre (Blue Dog/New Dem-NC), Bill Owens (New Dem-NY), Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN) and Kurt Shrader (Blue Dog/New Dem-OR)-- and, like with any reactionary initiative, Boehner and Cantor know they can count on McIntyre. So if you responded to one of Steve Israel's desperate and unending pleas for contributions last week, you just helped finance the several million dollars the DCCC will waste trying to defend McIntyre's seat next year. And if you're gay or pro-LGBT rights it's doubly ironic because McIntyre is one of Congress' most virulent and hateful bigots.

The last time the Republicans made an anti-gay push-- with a homophobic amendment to the Violence Against Women Act on February 28-- 164 Republicans + Mike McIntyre (NC) and nominal Democrat Dan Lipinski (IL) voted for it. It wasn't enough to carry the day. 60 Republicans (not to mention the 197 other Democrats) seem to have decided homophobia is on the way out and the GOP leadership amendment was defeated despite McIntyre's treachery.

Democrats have evolved mightily on LGBT equality-- at least most Democrats have. In July 1996 when DOMA first passed 118 Democrats joined with 224 Republicans to pass it. Only 65 Democrats (+ Independent Bernie Sanders and one gay Republican, Steve Gunderson, voted against it). Last year crazed GOP homophobe and hatemonger Steve King (R-IA) attached an amendment to the 2013 defense appropriations bill to prevent same sex couples from marrying on bases. It passed 247-166. There were 17 Democrats who also voted with the hate-mongers. Here's the list. The ones bolded were singled out by the DCCC, not for retribution but for special financial support in their reelection bids. They were on the DCCC's Frontline list for 2012 and their faltering reelection campaigns were top priorities for DCCC spending last cycle. Because millions of dollars were spent on them, there was no money to go after vulnerable Republican policy makers like Paul Ryan, Buck McKeon, Fred Upton, Eric Cantor, etc:

John Barrow (Blue Dog/New Dem-GA)
Sanford Bishop (Blue Dog-GA)
Ben Chandler (Blue Dog-KY)- defeated
Jerry Costello (IL)- retired
Mark Critz (PA)- defeated
Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX)
Joe Donnelley (Blue Dog-IN)
Gene Green (TX)
Tim Holden (Blue Dog-PA)- defeated in primary
Larry Kissell (Blue Dog-NC)- defeated
Dan Lipinksi (IL)
Jim Matheson (Blue Dog-UT)
Mike McIntyre (Blue Dog/New Dem-NC)
Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN)
Nick Rahall (WV)
Mike Ross (Blue Dog-AR)- forced to retire
Heath Shuler (Blue Dog-NC)- forced to retire

Over the weekend The Hill counted 11 Democrats left in Congress who are unevolved gay hating bigots. Obviously McIntyre is one of them. Their list includes the 9 Democrats who voted in 2011 to uphold the Defense of Marriage Act that denies federal benefits to gay couples who have neither left Congress nor publicly changed their positions: Barrow, Bishop, Cuellar, Green, Lipinski, Matheson, McIntyre, Peterson and Rahall plus two freshmen Democrats who voiced opposition to same-sex marriage during their 2012 campaigns: Bill Enyart (IL) and Pete Gallego (Blue Dog-TX). Of the 11, Israel has vowed to pump immense sums of DCCC money into the campaigns of Barrow, Enyart, Gallego, Matheson, and, once again, McIntyre.

The Hill also counts 9 Democrats who haven't taken a position on marriage equality yet: New Dem chairman Ron Kind (WI), Jim Costa (Blue Dog-CA), Cedric Richmond (New Dem-LA), Kurt Schrader (Blue Dog/New Dem-OR), David Scott (Blue Dog/New Dem-GA), Terry Sewell (New Dem-AL), Bennie Thompson (MS), Pete Visclosky (IN) and freshman Filemon Vela (New Dem-TX).

The Hill contacted all 20 offices this week as the Supreme Court considered two gay marriage cases and several Democratic senators made headlines by announcing their support for gay marriage.

Matheson, Rahall, and Gallego’s offices said they continue to oppose legalizing gay marriage.

Green said the choice should be left to the individual states but didn’t address DOMA, which he’d voted to uphold, or say whether he personally supported gay marriage.

Richmond told The Hill in a statement that he is “a firm proponent of equal rights” and thinks DOMA is unconstitutional, but didn’t expressly endorse legalizing gay marriage. His office said they had nothing more to offer on the matter when asked if that meant he backed gay marriage or just civil unions.

The rest of the offices did not respond to requests for comment.

Sewell said in 2010 that she supported gay rights but expressed a preference for civil unions over gay marriage.

Thompson and Scott voted for an amendment to the Constitution that would have banned gay marriage in 2006. They also are among the 29 Democrats who didn’t sign a 2012 "friend of the court" brief urging the Supreme Court to strike down DOMA, though both voted against DOMA when it came up for a vote in 2011.

Nine of those 29 Democrats now say they support gay marriage: Reps. Frederica Wilson (D-Fla.), Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.), Ben Ray Lujan (D-N.M.), Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.), Rick Larsen (D-Wash.), Mel Watt (D-N.C.), Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.), G.K. Butterfield (D-N.C.) and Ruben Hinojosa (D-Texas).

“Like many Americans, my views have evolved over time and I believe that committed adults-- be them gay or straight-- deserve to marry the person they love,” Butterfield told The Hill in a statement this week that represented his first public support for gay marriage.

Hinojosa was in Congress in 2006 but didn’t vote on the amendment, and voted against DOMA in 2011. His office this week said he supported gay marriage, the first time he appears to have publicly done so.

Important: if you contribute to the DCCC, you are contributing to reelecting Blue Dog hatemongers like Matheson, McIntyre, Gallego and Barrow who vow to vote with the Republicans to make sure there will never be equality for the LGBT community. Is that where you want your money to go? May I suggest an alternative? Every candidate on the Blue America list is publicly committed to LGBT equality.

Politicians May Be Slow To Change... But Republicans Are Absolutely GLACIAL When It Comes To Gay Equality

Long after he was kicked out of the Army for fondling a private's privates, Miss McConnell voted for DOMA-- and still clings to an outward show of virulent homophobia

Boehner wasted over $3,000,000 in non-sequestered tax payer money to enrich some of his lawyer crony pals by defending DOMA. Yesterday, even this conservative Supreme Court sneered at the lame, stale and ineffective arguments Team Boehner made on behalf of bigotry, divisiveness and hatred. From the SCOTUSblog analysis:

If the Supreme Court can find its way through a dense procedural thicket, and confront the constitutionality of the federal law that defined marriage as limited to a man and a woman, that law may be gone, after a seventeen-year existence.  That was the overriding impression after just under two hours of argument Wednesday on the fate of the Defense of Marriage Act.

So how can Boehner recoup his $3 million investment? Well, why not reintroduce a new version of DOMA that takes whatever narrow wishy-washy ruling the Supreme Court winds up making? The GOP controls the majority of the House. There's probably a real appetite for some nice pre-election gay bashing among a big chunk of the GOP caucus.

The last time the Republicans made an anti-gay push-- with a homophobic amendment to the Violence Against Women Act on February 28-- 164 Republicans + nominal Democrats Dan Lipinski (IL) and Mike McIntyre (NC) voted for it. Oh, but it wasn't enough to carry the day. 60 Republicans (not to mention 197 Democrats) seem to have decided homophobia is on the way out. And it was a GOP leadership amendment that was defeated. I guess Boehner can't kick all 60 of those Republican defectors off their committees.

Back on July 12, 1996 when DOMA passed 342-67 it was a very different story. Only 65 Democrats (+ Independent Bernie Sanders, then a House Member) voted NO. [Major Owens (D-NY) and Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-TX) voted "present."] The only Republican to vote against it was Steve Gunderson (R-WI) who had been publicly dragged out of the closet by hysterical homophobic fanatic Bob Dornan (R-CA) two years earlier.

66 Democrats voted against bigotry that day-- but 118 voted with the GOP. How things have changed! Not in GOP-land; they're slow. Republicans who voted against equality in 1996 are almost universally still against equality: Boehner (R-OH), Brownback (R-KS, now governor of Kansas), Burr (R-NC, now a senator), Camp (R-MI, a closet case himself), Chambliss (R-GA, now a senator), Coburn (R-OK, now a senator), Jim Kolbe (R-AZ, who was outed the next month, though just as "gay" rather than as a child molester, which is what he is), McKeon (R-CA, the conduit for so much Mormon money that financed California's Prop 8), Mica (R-FL), Portman (R-OH), Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL, still telling her gay constituents how much she loves them while stabbing them in the back), Steve Stockman (R-TX, back in Congress after working with domestic terrorists who blew up the OK City Federal Building and taking some time off), and Fred Upton (R-MI).

Most of the Democrats who were in the homophobia camp have now seen the light-- for one reason or another. I can't look into his heart but then Blue Dog Adam Schiff was a viciously consistent anti-gay vote who supported DOMA. Last year his district changed drastically and he now represents some of the gayest neighborhoods in America: West Hollywood, Hollywood, Silverlake, Atwater, Los Feliz. Guess what! Schiff abandoned the Blue Dogs, abandoned his career-long homophobia, tries palling around the gays too dumb to spot a phony in his district and-- he's against DOMA! Other Democrats who have changed their minds include Ben Cardin (D-MD, now a senator), Jim Clyburn (D-SC), Dick Durbin (D-IL, now a senator), Steny Hoyer (D-MD), Bob Menendez (D-NJ, now a senator), and the always courageous Chuck Schumer (D-NY, now a senator).

Pelosi led a group of House liberals who voted against it. One of them was Sherrod Brown (D-OH), now a senator, who spoke with Greg Sargent yesterday about the whole idea of political courage, something he showed, while Schumer, for example, didn't. Sargent singles Brown out because "he voted against DOMA in a state where gay marriage was so unpopular that Republicans were able to use it to turn out voters by referendum eight years later, in the 2004 presidential election."

“When I made that vote, it was politically unpopular — today that position is politically popular,” Brown said in an interview today. “The No votes on DOMA were almost all east coast or west coast.” Brown voted against DOMA as a member of Congress representing a heavily industrial, working class, swing district southwest of Cleveland.

“Casting a controversial vote forces us as elected officials to go home and take a public opinion bath,” Brown said, in a reference to Lincoln’s famous formulation. “Advocating for a position, you can move the public.”

Case in point: gun control. A number of red state Democratic Senators are refusing to say whether they will back expanded background checks, even though by any reasonable measure this is not all that tough a vote, given that the proposal is supported by nine in 10 Americans. (In a hint of movement, Senator Hagan has now indicated she is open to the idea.)

Brown declined to comment directly on his colleagues’ skittishness about background checks, or on the sudden rush among them to support marriage equality, now that the country has shifted dramatically on the issue and the Supreme Court looks on the verge of striking DOMA down. But he noted that the episode carries lessons for Dems who are eying difficult votes in swing or red areas.

“People were very critical after the vote-- there was a lot of disagreement and anger about it,” said, Brown, who won reelection by a comfortable margin last year despite running an aggressively populist campaign in the face of tens of millions of dollars in outside cash. “To me, taking a controversial position, if you believe it and you argue it, you can convince enough people that even if they don’t agree with you, they’ll appreciate that you stand for something.”

Take note, red state Dems. It is possible to win arguments over difficult, controversial issues, even when the politics look daunting. And if you try it, you just might find yourselves on the right side of history.

If Supreme Court justices are really concerned about standing, make Paul Clement give back the BLAG-pilfered millions or make "Sunny John" Boehner pay it all back

The New York Times's Marcus Mabry talks to reporter John Schwartz about the Supreme Court's consecutive days of hearings on marriage-equality issues -- California's Prop 8 yesterday, DOMA today.

by Ken

Court-watchers stress that we mustn't make assumptions about Supreme Court justices' ultimate decisions from the questions they ask during oral arguments. But nobody seems to question that:

(1) Yesterday the justices showed reluctance to take bold action in the appeal to save California's homo-hating Prop 8. What some of of those court-watchers conveniently forget is that the Roberts Court is far from constitutionally averse to bold action. In fact, the five right-wing bozos like nothing better than being able to strike landmark blows, as long as they're in the direction of furthering crackpot right-wing ideology or deep-pocketed corporatist interests.

When it comes to protecting the rights of unempowered citizens, well, then they're free to wallow to their hearts' content in their deep concern for not racing ahead of the country's delicate sensibilities. Like the delicate sensibility in favor of the sacred constitutional rights of corporations, or the delicate sensibility against tampering with the right to spend money on the pretense that it's "speech."

Kind of forgotten in the crush, seemingly by the justices as well as the commentators, is that in the Ninth Circuit ruling being appealed, the appeals court didn't strike Prop 8 down on U.S. constitutional grounds, but on the narrow state constitutional ground that rights that existed as a matter of law were taken away without any tenable justification. All the Supremes have to do is say, "Um, what they said."

(2) Today, in considering the challenges to Section 3 of DOMA, with its hard-to-deny discrimination against same-sex couples, the four moderate justices (as usual referred to incorrectly as "liberal" justices, though there isn't a liberal among them) predictably showed  concern for the "equal protection" of the conspicuously trampled-on rights of citizens in same-sex relationships. The news was that the man everyone was waiting to hear from, swingman "Slow Anthony" Kennedy, seemed sort of willing to possibly tilt in their direction.

Except that the Slowman doesn't really appear to be on the same page as the moderates. He doesn't seem much concerned about those trampled-on rights. What's got Slow Anthony in a tizzy seems to be DOMA's imposition of a single standard on (gasp) all 50 states! Because when has the federal government ever done that?

Well, nobody ever said the sailing would always be smooth when you have a halfwit functioning as the swing vote on the High Court. (It seems only fair to point out that that still leaves Slow A half a wit ahead of the cartoon blockheads of the Court's hard-core Right.)

WHAT'S ALL THIS ABOUT STANDING?

All accounts of the two days' hearings have noted the extensive consideration reflected in the justices' questioning of the issue of standing, not just in the Prop 8 case, where it has already been a much-discussed issue as to whether the right-wing loonies who pushed for the amendment's passage originally ever had standing to appeal the District Court ruling following the decision of California's governor and attorney general not to do so.

If the justices were to decide that the Proppers, might that mean that the Ninth Circuit's cautious ruling goes out the window (since after all there wouldn't have been a valid appeal) and the more clear-cut District Court ruling is reinstated? Practically speaking, it's a distinction without that much of a difference, since there would be no question of a District Court's ruling having any standing outside California.

The justices' interest in standing on the defense of DOMA was more surprising, and raises more questions. The issue is whether the House's laughably named Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group (BLAG) had standing to rush into the breach when, again, the appropriate agency of government, in this case the Dept. of Justice, made it clear that it wouldn't defend this law that it considered unconstitutional.

I'm sure we'll hear much parsing of the ins and outs of this standing issue in the months between now and the announcement of the Court's ruling(s) in these cases. So let me just press my case for an outcome.

Since BLAG functions with votes of the House speaker and the majority and minority leaders and whips, it's hard to imagine the circumstances in which the the speaker and the majority leader and majority whip weren't an indissoluble bloc. And so in practice BLAG fucntions as a way of making a pretend-bipartisan decision out of the will of the majority party.

Dare we hope that the Court will recognize that the BLAG-gers not only didn't have standing but in fact were being very naughty in their siphoning off of millions of taxpayer dollars to press their personal ideological crusade? And surely it would follow from that the Court might apply one of two remedies:

(1) Make far-right-wing superlawyer Paul Clement, who has been the beneficiary of those pilfered mllions, even though in earning that money his legal briefs have been so preposterously ineffectual that he has appeared more like a legal superninny, give back all the swag.

(2) Or, failing that, make the House GOP con-squad headed by "Sunny John" Boehner, repay the loot to the Treasury.

Either way works for me. Of course we know how timid this Court is about taking sweeping bold actions.

#

Immigration Meets DOMA-- No Big Deal, Says Senile Chuck Grassley

Every time some spoiled multimillionaire piece of garbage announces he's leaving the U.S. because taxes are too high, right-wing sites and fringe lunatics like Satanist Bryan Fischer go wild on twitter. Fischer's latest hysteria was brought on when over-the-hill Filipino boxer Manny Pacquiao said he won't fight in America any more because the tax bite is too high. Awwwwwww. Don't let the door hit you on the way out... and, please, don't come back. Yesterday, though, the NY Times featured the story of two young men the country should be genuinely sad to see leave, Brandon Perlberg and Benn Storey. They're living in London now instead of New York. Our loss.

Perlberg, an American who is gay, now lives in London. Early last year he reluctantly left his law firm, rented out his apartment and said goodbye to friends. After nearly seven years in the United States on legal but temporary visas, his partner had not been able to obtain a visa as a permanent resident. The two were facing the possibility of permanent separation.

Americans with a foreign-born spouse of the opposite sex are able to get them resident visas, or green cards, with relative ease. But federal law does not allow Americans to petition for green cards for same-sex spouses or partners. Eventually, they face a choice of remaining in the country with the immigrant here illegally or leaving the United States.

“Ultimately, we resolved that staying together was the most important thing for us,” Mr. Perlberg said. “And the only way to guarantee that we got to stay together was by making this move.”

Mr. Perlberg is part of a diaspora of gay Americans who have found they had to uproot and leave the country to continue to live with foreign partners. And this year, binational gay couples like his are a new-- and controversial-- focus of the debate in Washington on an ambitious overhaul of immigration laws. In a blueprint that President Obama presented last month, he pledged to give citizens, and also immigrants who are legal residents, the ability to petition for a green card for a same-sex foreign partner, if they can show they have “a permanent relationship.”

The Supreme Court will also take up same-sex issues this year, with hearings in March on two cases that challenge the definition of marriage as being a union between only a man and a woman. One case deals directly with a 1996 statute, the Defense of Marriage Act, that prohibits the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriage and governs the exclusion of gay couples from visas and other immigration benefits.

The politics of same-sex marriage are rapidly shifting, with polls showing Americans viewing it increasingly favorably but still divided. Many Republican voters strongly oppose it. Leading Republican lawmakers have questioned whether Congress should include such a hotly disputed issue in the debate when it will also wrangle with giving legal status to 11 million illegal immigrants.

“There are so many other, bigger issues the Congress has to resolve in immigration reform before we would even get to a point where we would be discussing a change to a longstanding policy like this,” said Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the highest-ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is working to prepare immigration legislation.

The restrictions in the marriage act, known as DOMA, have a direct impact on Americans with foreign-born spouses or partners who want to live in the United States.

“A straight couple living in the U.S. can apply for a green card based on their spousal relationship,” said Rachel B. Tiven, the executive director of Immigration Equality, a legal advocacy group focusing on gays and lesbians. “Gay couples simply can’t do that.”

For the first time, in Mr. Obama’s blueprint, same-sex couples have been included in a comprehensive framework for immigration legislation.

The president “has long believed that Americans with same-sex partners from other countries should not be faced with the painful choice between staying with the person they love or staying in the country they love,” the White House spokesman, Jay Carney, said when Mr. Obama announced his plan in Las Vegas on Jan. 29.

The president’s proposal was echoed in a bill introduced last week in the Senate by Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, a Democrat who is the Judiciary Committee chairman, and Susan Collins of Maine, a Republican. A similar bill was introduced in the House of Representatives earlier this month.

Mr. Perlberg, 34, has been following the debate in Washington from the apartment in London where he landed with his partner, Benn Robert Storey, 31. In a telephone interview, they recalled that Mr. Storey had never felt like an exile during the years they lived together in New York. A graphic designer, Mr. Storey already had a job and a work visa lined up when he moved to the United States.

“I did not feel like a British person in New York, I felt like a New Yorker,” Mr. Storey said. “And during that time, my relationship with Brandon grew stronger and stronger.”

But the end of Mr. Storey’s temporary visas was approaching. Because he does not have an advanced degree in a technical profession, lawyers advised them that Mr. Storey’s chances of gaining a green card based on his employment were very slim.

The uncertainty of Mr. Storey’s immigration future became “a dark cloud that hung over our relationship,” Mr. Perlberg said. In July 2011, same-sex marriage became legal in New York State. But under the federal marriage law, Mr. Storey still would not have been eligible for a green card as a spouse.

Unlike Dick Cheney and Rush Limbaugh, I wasn't a draft dodger. My lottery number was high enough to exempt me from the draft. But I decided I didn't want to live in the U.S. while any taxes I paid could, at least in theory, go towards buying the bombs and napalm being rained down on the heads of the Vietnamese people whose cause I supported, at least emotionally, with every fiber of my being. So I lived in Amsterdam. The Dutch government made it very easy for Americans to live there. I even had a government job. The issue may not be important to Chuck Grassley-- who is, after all 79 and basically senile more often than he's lucid-- but it is the most important issue in the world to hundreds of thousands of people whose lives are impacted by a law that should never have been passed to begin with and is on its last legs in any case.

Also over the weekend, Marco Rubio, desperate to somehow make his party's far right base think his own immigration reform is not about what right-wing loons call "amnesty," attacked President Obama's plan and called it "dead on arrival." Kentucky crackpot Rand Paul did the "Me Too" Dance.

Congressional Republicans on Sunday criticized a White House plan on immigration reform that allows illegal immigrants to become legal, permanent residents within eight years-- saying Congress will never pass such a proposal and questioning President Obama’s intent.

Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul said the plan is untenable and so outside of what the country wants that it suggests Obama is not sincere about passing immigration reform.

“The president is torpedoing his own plan,” Paul told Fox News Sunday. “It shows me he is really not serious. … The bill won’t pass.”

The draft immigration bill being circulated by the White House also includes plans for a new visa for illegal immigrants living in the United States, as first reported by USA Today.

Obama's bill would create a "Lawful Prospective Immigrant" visa for the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants living in the country. The bill includes more security funding and requires business owners to adopt a system for verifying the immigration status of new hires within four years, the newspaper said.

On Saturday, Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio called the White House proposal "half-baked and seriously flawed."

Rubio-- part of an eight-member, bipartisan Senate panel working on an immigration reform bill--- also said the proposal was disappointing to those “working on serious solutions” and repeats failures of past legislation.

He said the White House also erred in not seeking input from Republican lawmakers.

"If actually proposed, the president's bill would be dead on arrival in Congress, leaving us with unsecured borders and a broken legal immigration system for years to come," Rubio said in a statement.

...USA Today also reported that the bill would require that immigrants pass a criminal background check, submit biometric information and pay fees to qualify for the new visa.

Immigrants who served more than a year in prison for a criminal conviction or were convicted of three or more crimes and were sentenced to a total of 90 days in jail would not be eligible. Crimes committed in other countries that would bar immigrants from legally entering the country would also be ineligible.

...Clark Stevens, a White House spokesman, said Saturday that Obama still supports a bipartisan effort to craft a comprehensive immigration bill. "While the president has made clear he will move forward if Congress fails to act, progress continues to be made and the administration has not prepared a final bill to submit," he said in a statement.

Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, described the draft bill as a "very moderate" proposal. While the path to citizenship was welcomed by Noorani, he said not enough attention was being paid to future immigration.

"Commonsense immigration reform must include a functioning immigration system for the future," Noorani said in a statement. "Reform does not begin and end with citizenship and enforcement alone."

In contrast, Republican icon Newt Gingrich was on ABC-TV's This Week Sunday and he told viewers that basically Republicans just hate Obama, don't recognize him as the legitimate president of the country and will oppose anything and everything he proposes... just because he proposes it. Watch:

If the House GOP weren't allowed to throw away money on right-wing boondoggles, could the economy nevertheless be saved from disaster?

This infographic devised by the Center for American Progress and LGBT Progress (click on it to enlarge, and let's hope for the best) envisions other ways that the $3M dumped down the Paul Clement sinkhole by the House GOP leadership might have been spent, thereby sparing us the horrors of reneging on the economic bulwark of right-wing legal Keynesianism. (You can also view the infographic here.)

by Ken

It has come to my attention that I have been perhaps a tad rough on that toxic pile of human uselessness House Speaker "Sunny John" Boehner. Not "too rough," mind you -- could there be such a thing as being too hard on that festering hemorrhoid in the rectum of American democracy? Just rough. And maybe not rough enough on his reluctant sidekick, Majority Leader Eric Cantor -- the man who forces us to ask the question: Are the anti-Semites entirely wrong? Why, I haven't even given the cockroach a nickname! (Hmm, "Cockroach"? That might work.)

Still, this division of abuse still seems to me approximately correct, in that it's Sunny John who bears the burden of the responsibility. He is, after all, the speaker of the goddamn U.S. House of Representatives. Even as I type it, my astonishment is no less than when this appalling development first developed. Speaker "Sunny John"? This is, after all, a man who reached his career apogee, at least aptitude-wise, as a bagman, handing out tobacco bribe money on the floor of his revered chamber.

Most recently, I've been harping on that $3 million (and counting) that Sunny John (and, yes, the Cockroach Man) have shoveled into the pockets of the Great Right-Wing Law God, Paul Clement, to defend against court challenges present and future the shamefully dishonestly named Defense of Marriage Act. (Of course shameful dishonesty is the currency of the day for right-wingers, whose motto might be "No Lie Too Large." They're just acting out a sentimental attachment to Republican-style marriage as the institution that did so much to turn them into the raging sociopaths they became.)

Most recently I reported the hardlly shocking news that the original $1M House GOP DOMA boondoggle investment has indeed been reauthorized -- by stealth, naturally, now the preferred Republican way of doing business -- at the new $3M level ("So what are we getting for that $3M we've shelled out to defend the indefensible DOMA? Glad you asked!"). And I shared with DWT readers the astonishment of ThinkProgress Justice's Ian Millhiser at Super Paul's latest bit of "save DOMA" legal briefery ("House GOP To Supreme Court: Gay People Are Too Powerful To Get Equal Rights"), which argued that gays and lesbians have become so influential -- alarmingly influential, one might read between the lines -- as to neither need nor deserve any kind of protection for our rights, and fuck any issues of equal rights!

Which, by the way, is what a number of commentators have been pointing out is just what Super Paul's pathetic brief did -- fuck any issues of equal rights, that is. They're pointing out that for most of the brief Superman simply ducked the issue us gays and lesbians have any constitutional right to equal rights, merely tacking on a few pages at the end in answer to the question that the Supreme Court itself had indicated it itself wanted briefed. One commentator I read was so shocked by the unresponsiveness and general ineptitude of this brief that he wondered whether it was in fact authored by Super Paul -- and if so, whether that said anything about his vaunted legal beagledom. (My own feeling is that if we taxpayers insist on paying the super shyster a paltry $520/hour, we can hardly expect every last word, or every last brief, to come straight from the word processor of the great legal genius.)

As a matter of fact, I guess I haven't been terribly respectful of the great man's legal bona fides. Last October, after another round of court thumbs-downs on his DOMA defensery, I asked: "As DOMA goes down again, will ideological hack shyster Paul "Ohfer" Clement be kicking back any of that $1.5M?" Now that the stakes have at least doubled, and the quality of the shyster's work product seems to have gone totally down the crapper, I think the question might be asked with double force.

BUT OF COURSE THERE ARE ANSWERS . . .

Yes, as we know, there are always two sides to every question, even when there really aren't, when for example the minions of the Far Right have chosen to duck the actual question in favor of some hot-off-the-presses psychotic hate- and ignorance-mongering propaganda point(s). There are, as far as I can tell, two basic lines of response to the charge that Sunny John and Cockroach Eric have authored a $3M heist from the U.S. Treasury for the benefit of legal ignorance and indecency -- you know, the kind of cause they can really get behind.

ANSWER NO. 1: "Aw c'mon, dude, it's only $1M -- or maybe 1.5, or possibly 3, or whatever. For the feds that's pocket change."

This is a pretty hilarious answer, though, coming from the apostles of to-the-bone slashing of gummint spending. These are people, after all, who not only wouldn't hesitate to yank milk out of the mouths of growing babes, or the necessities of life out of the grasp of our sinking seniors.

ANSWER NO. 2: "But Ken, if we try to withhold these sums, unemployment will be rampant and the economy will sink back into the very recession we worked so hard to create do, er, something about."

Ah, in other words, legal Keynesianism, to complement the few other kinds of Keyesian stimulus that right-winger are on record as favoring: the military Keynesianism that makes it impossible to reduce military spending on the ground that to do so would make unemployment rampant and cause the economy to sink back into recession.

Or the national security Keynesianism that applies the same logic to the shadow economy so starkly revealed in that fantastic 2010 Washington Post series on "Top Secret America," which garnered a few weeks' worth of headlines before sinking into obscurity, just as we all knew it would. (At this late date, even though, as the Web note tells us, "More than a dozen Washington Post journalists spent two years developing Top Secret America," and no doubt many more Post staffers contributed significantly to the project, I think another salute to lead reporters Dana Priest and William M. Arkin is in order. Heck, they did their job, and they could hardly have done it better. It's the kind of work that in a remotely just world could fairly crown a journalistic career. And now it's as if it never happened.)

Or the guns 'n' ammo Keynesianism by which our elite industrial merchants of death and their toadying mouthpieces in the NRA recently threatened anyone who dares to speak of diminishing the economic clout of our armaments business, which they would like to see officially designated as Too Big to Mess With.

Clearly not all of that $3M went in the pocket of Beagle Clement. And if we were to try to renege on such commitments (and if there's anyone who would know about reneging on commitments, it's the right-wing crazies who think it's appropriate to play hardball on the debt ceiling, which merely authorizes the government to pay the bills we've already incurred), can we not anticipate that unemployment would skyrocket and the economy sink back into recession?

It's in this spirit that I changed my mind about passing along the infographic at the top of this post, from the Center for American Progress and LGBT Progress. Here it is in fuller form. Again, click to enlarge, or view in in the ThingkProgress ProgressReport "What The GOP Wasted $3 Million On," pointing out: "Republicans are against government spending -- except when they aren't."

My original thinking was that, clever as the graphic is, it so clearly posits forms of expenditure that would never be countenanced by people like Sunny John and Cockroach Eric or their so-called House "conference" that it hardly seemed worth passing on even as a gag. But now I see that it's not a partisan issue, it's an issue of saving the economy from slipping back into recession.

It's true that if Beagle Paul were denied any future income from the House GOP leadership boondogglers, or were even asked to kick back some of the booty he's already pocketed, he would have to cut back his expenditures on yachts or crocodile-skin briefs or whatever he spends his booty on, he might be reduced to shopping at WalMart. But as our creative infographickers have demonstrated, that doesn't have to spell economic doom for the U.S. as would, say, in any way limiting access to assault weapons.

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