Developments in the Gulf

At Seattle Post-Intelligencer, "BP prepares to finish up 'static kill' with cement":

And see, "Factbox." Plus, "Gulf Update: Some Oil Disappears, Static Kill Seems to Be Working."

Birtherism Lives? Only 42 Percent of Americans Believe Obama Is a Citizen

It's kinda funny, but it just occurred to me that the folks so insistent that President Obama is fully eligible to be president of the United States have themselves turned into a cult that mirrors those who they so often criticize: the "birthers." This is evident by reading through the comments at Steven Taylor's post, "Birtherism Lives." What interested me was Steven's appearance of absolute certainty of President Obama's eligibility for office, which even from my perspective hasn't been shown conclusively. At issue is the new poll from CNN showing that 6 in 10 have doubts about Obama's birth: "CNN Poll: Only 42% Of Americans Believe Obama is a Citizen, Only 23% Of Republicans." The survey was released on Obama's birthday. In response, MSNBC's Chris Matthews nearly had a heart attack, "Chris Matthews: Birthers Are Trying To “Assassinate” Obama “With Their Lies”."

It's all pretty funny to me. Since the left's attacks on the birth eligibility issue is pretty much like being attacked as RAAAAACIST! --- that is, it's simply a means of shutting down debate and dissent. The MSM plays it up, and all of a sudden you're lumped in with the 9/11 truthers if you question why no one's ever released the long form birth certificate, which was issued in August 1961 by the State of Hawaii. (The computer generated COLB is incomplete documentation, and includes no signatures from medical professionals witnessing the birth.)

In any case, for some related humor, see Jerome Corsi, "Oops! Obama Mama Passport 'Destroyed'":

Responding to a Freedom of Information Act request, the State Department has released passport records of Stanley Ann Dunham, President Obama's mother – but records for the years surrounding Obama's 1961 birth are missing.

The State Department claims a 1980s General Services Administration directive resulted in the destruction of many passport applications and other "nonvital" passport records, including Dunham's 1965 passport application and any other passports she may have applied for or held prior to 1965.

Destroyed, then, would also be any records shedding light on whether Dunham did or did not travel out of the country around the time of Barack Obama's birth.

The claim made in the Freedom of Information response letter that many passport records were destroyed during the 1980s comes despite a statement on the State Department website that Passport Services maintains U.S. passport records for passports issued from 1925 to the present.

The records released, however, contain interesting tidbits of new information about Obama's mother, including the odd listing of two different dates and locations for her marriage to Obama's Indonesian stepfather, Lolo Soetoro.

Image Credit: The Astute Bloggers, "Naughty Obama Mamma."

BONUS: I have a long response to Steven Taylor at Outside the Beltway. He claims there's irrefutable proof of Obama's birth eligibility. I have raised questions there that so far he's not answered.

Mary Jo Kilroy: Enemy of Israel

A new clip from the Emergency Committee for Israel:

PuffHo is not pleased.

Background from Jennifer Rubin, "Defending the Gaza 54." Also, at Timothy Birdnow, "Open borders with Gaza? 54 Democrats sign letter for it."

How Communists Exploit WikiLeaks

It's one thing when you have communist Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! interviewing convicted computer hacker and communist activist Julian Assange on the U.S. government's response to WikLeaks. It's quite another thing when mainstream newspaper editors also come down on the side of the WikiLeaks/communist alliance. But that's what's happening today at LAT, "WikiLeaks and a Journalism 'Shield Law'." Speaking of Senator Schumer's legislative effort to police criminal organizations like WikiLeaks, the Times notes:

Rather than trying to figure out who should be protected and who should not, Congress should focus on what it is trying to accomplish — namely, to preserve for citizens of this democracy the information they need to govern themselves, information that sometimes only becomes public if those who have it can supply it anonymously.

Spoken like a true hardline communist apparatchik.

If you travel around the horn of the Internet, you'll find a clear split between those patriots who recognize that WikiLeaks' criminal activities put lives at risk (military and civilian) and those anti-Americans who want to damage the United States at all costs.

This Ain't Hell has more, "Left Plots Exploitation of WikiLeaks Documents":

The Left didn’t waste any time getting together in New York City yesterday looking for ways to use the documents from the Wikileaks drop for their own nefarious purposes. Someone dropped a link to me Saturday about the conference. They highlighted the luminaries that they had invited to speak;

* Dahr Jamail, journalist, author of “Beyond the Green Zone”
* Cindy Sheehan, antiwar leader, author, Director, Peace of the Action
* Josh Stieber, Army veteran of Bravo Company 2-16
* Matthis Chiroux, Army veteran, Iraq war resister
* Mike Ferner, President, Veterans for Peace
* Ray McGovern, former CIA Agent, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
* Jeff Paterson, Courgage to Resist, spokesperson for Bradley Manning Support Comm
* Elaine Brower, military mother, World Can’t Wait
* Debra Sweet, Director, World Can’t Wait

Debra Sweet calls them “a strong group of resisters and truth-tellers”. They resist common sense and none would know the truth if it bit their collective ass. Dahr Jamail has made a career of ignoring facts that get in his way, Cindy Sheehan you all know, Josh Stieber bears witness to the “Collateral Murder” video yet he was still behind the wire during the events of that day. Matthis, well he’s a celebrity here. TSO dealt with Jeff Paterson’s hyperbole last year. Elaine Brower, hiding behind her son’s service, calls other troops baby killers.

That's Debra Sweet of the communist World Can't Wait organization: "Webcast: Anti-War Leaders and Veterans Respond to the WikiLeaks Revelations."

This is the leftist coaltion we're dealing with. Or, this is the domestic/international enemy coalition stabbing our troops in the back. (And recall also that the New York Times has been right at the center of this entire criminal leaking enterprise. Treasonous and disgusting.)

Michaele Salahi of 'D.C. Housewives' on 'The View'

I'd almost forgotten about the Salahis. I guess Whoopi Goldberg touched Michaele on yesterday's episode of "The View'. Now it turns out the "Real Housewives of DC" star (and former White House gate-crasher) is claiming she was "abused." And attorney Lisa Bloom (Gloria Allred's daughter) is on the case. At CBS News, "Michaele Salahi's Lawyer: 'View' Appearance Degrading." Plus, at ET, "'The View' update: Whoopi says she used 'choice words' backstage but 'didn't hit' Michaele Salahi."

The key moment's at about 1:50 at the clip. Looks like Whoopi simply touched her:

Mosque is No Way to 'Build Bridges'

From Thomas Kidd, at USA Today:

On Tuesday, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission voted, correctly, to deny landmark status to a fairly nondescript building that formerly housed a Burlington Coat Factory retailer. The only reason that the notion of landmark status had come forward (despite weak arguments about the building representing mid-19th century economic growth) was because a Muslim organization wants to build a mosque there, and the building stands near Ground Zero, the former site of the World Trade Center. Building the mosque near the epicenter of the 9/11 tragedy is in extremely bad taste, but the Constitution's protection of religious freedom should allow it to be built.

This case is a perfect example of the delicate nature of religious freedom. Religious freedom is most tenuous when the religious act in question is unpopular, and the building of this mosque is unpopular, to put it mildly. The proposed Islamic center shows an incredible lack of sensitivity on the part of the Cordoba Initiative, the group backing the mosque. One wonders whether Oz Sultan, spokesman for the group, can be serious when he says that the project will "build bridges" and that the Cordoba Initiative is "committed to promoting positive interaction between the Muslim world and the West." Could this group really be so out of touch, or is it intentionally trying to provoke a harsh reaction to prove some point? We don't know, but the overwhelming consensus of public opinion is that the idea of building this mosque on this property is deeply offensive. It insults the memory of those who died at the hands of jihadist terrorists.

More at the link.

Cartoon Credit: Sean Delonas.

In the Mail: The Obama Victory: How Media, Money, and Message Shaped the 2008 Election

Came to my home address, which is unusual. Available at Amazon.

And from the publisher's page:

Barack Obama's stunning victory in the 2008 presidential election will go down as one of the more pivotal in American history. Given America's legacy of racism, how could a relatively untested first-term senator with an African father defeat some of the giants of American politics?

In The Obama Victory , Kate Kenski, Bruce Hardy, and Kathleen Hall Jamieson draw upon the best voter data available, The National Annenberg Election Survey, as well as interviews with key advisors to each campaign, to illuminate how media, money, and messages shaped the 2008 election. They explain how both sides worked the media to reinforce or combat images of McCain as too old and Obama as not ready; how Obama used a very effective rough-and-tumble radio and cable campaign that was largely unnoticed by the mainstream media; how the Vice Presidential nominees impacted the campaign; how McCain's age and Obama's race affected the final vote, and much more.

Briskly written and filled with surprising insights, The Obama Victory goes beyond opinion to offer the most authoritative account available of precisely how and why Obama won the presidency.

'I Never Swallow'

This dude's a riot. Impeccable timing as well: "Obama does not endorse gay marriage. As a candidate for president, he consistently said marriage should be reserved for a man and a woman." Freakin' homophobe!

Plural Marriage is Waiting in the Wings

Flashback.

Stanley Kurtz, from 2005:

ON SEPTEMBER 23, 2005, the 46-year-old Victor de Bruijn and his 31-year-old wife of eight years, Bianca, presented themselves to a notary public in the small Dutch border town of Roosendaal. And they brought a friend. Dressed in wedding clothes, Victor and Bianca de Bruijn were formally united with a bridally bedecked Mirjam Geven, a recently divorced 35-year-old whom they'd met several years previously through an Internet chatroom. As the notary validated a samenlevingscontract, or "cohabitation contract," the three exchanged rings, held a wedding feast, and departed for their honeymoon.

When Mirjam Geven first met Victor and Bianca de Bruijn, she was married. Yet after several meetings between Mirjam, her then-husband, and the De Bruijns, Mirjam left her spouse and moved in with Victor and Bianca. The threesome bought a bigger bed, while Mirjam and her husband divorced. Although neither Mirjam nor Bianca had had a prior relationship with a woman, each had believed for years that she was bisexual. Victor, who describes himself as "100 percent heterosexual," attributes the trio's success to his wives' bisexuality, which he says has the effect of preventing jealousy.

The De Bruijns' triple union caused a sensation in the Netherlands, drawing coverage from television, radio, and the press. With TV cameras and reporters crowding in, the wedding celebration turned into something of a media circus. Halfway through the festivities, the trio had to appoint one of their guests as a press liaison. The local paper ran several stories on the triple marriage, one devoted entirely to the media madhouse.

News of the Dutch three-way wedding filtered into the United States through a September 26 report by Paul Belien, on his Brussels Journal website. The story spread through the conservative side of the Internet like wildfire, raising a chorus of "I told you so's" from bloggers who'd long warned of a slippery slope from gay marriage to polygamy.

Meanwhile, gay marriage advocates scrambled to put out the fire. M.V. Lee Badgett, an economist at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and research director of the Institute for Gay and Lesbian Strategic Studies, told a sympathetic website, "This [Brussels Journal] article is ridiculous. Don't be fooled--Dutch law does not allow polygamy." Badgett suggested that Paul Belien had deliberately mistranslated the Dutch word for "cohabitation contract" as "civil union," or even "marriage," so as to leave the false impression that the triple union had more legal weight than it did. Prominent gay-marriage advocate Evan Wolfson, executive director of Freedom to Marry, offered up a detailed legal account of Dutch cohabitation contracts, treating them as a matter of minor significance, in no way comparable to state-recognized registered partnerships.

In short, while the Dutch triple wedding set the conservative blogosphere ablaze with warnings, same-sex marriage advocates dismissed the story as a silly stunt with absolutely no implications for the gay marriage debate. And how did America's mainstream media adjudicate the radically different responses of same-sex marriage advocates and opponents to events in the Netherlands? By ignoring the entire affair.

Yet there is a story here. And it's bigger than even those chortling conservative websites claim. While Victor, Bianca, and Mirjam are joined by a private cohabitation contract rather than a state-registered partnership or a full-fledged marriage, their union has already made serious legal, political, and cultural waves in the Netherlands. To observers on both sides of the Dutch gay marriage debate, the De Bruijns' triple wedding is an unmistakable step down the road to legalized group marriage.

More important, the De Bruijn wedding reveals a heretofore hidden dimension of the gay marriage phenomenon. The De Bruijns' triple marriage is a bisexual marriage. And, increasingly, bisexuality is emerging as a reason why legalized gay marriage is likely to result in legalized group marriage. If every sexual orientation has a right to construct its own form of marriage, then more changes are surely due. For what gay marriage is to homosexuality, group marriage is to bisexuality. The De Bruijn trio is the tip-off to the fact that a connection between bisexuality and the drive for multipartner marriage has been developing for some time.

Photo Credit: "The Polygamists - FLDS: An exclusive look inside the FLDS."

And from the comments at Christianity Today:

Big deal. Sticking a reproductive organ into an excretory canal will never constitute grounds for biblical marriage. Also, it's not over, yet. This will be appealed to the SC where it will be a 5 to 4 decision against homosexual marriage. If not, there is no logical reason to prevent plural marriage or any other arrangement. This federal judge must be a crackhead.

RELATED: From Dale Carpenter, "A Maximalist Decision, Raising the Stakes" (via Memeorandum).

WikiLeaks: Criminal Enterprise

From Marc Thiessen, at Washington Post, "WikiLeaks Must be Stopped":

Let's be clear: WikiLeaks is not a news organization; it is a criminal enterprise. Its reason for existence is to obtain classified national security information and disseminate it as widely as possible -- including to the United States' enemies. These actions are likely a violation of the Espionage Act, and they arguably constitute material support for terrorism. The Web site must be shut down and prevented from releasing more documents -- and its leadership brought to justice. WikiLeaks' founder, Julian Assange, proudly claims to have exposed more classified information than all the rest of the world press combined. He recently told the New Yorker he understands that innocent people may be hurt by his disclosures ("collateral damage" he called them) and that WikiLeaks might get "blood on our hands."

With his unprecedented release of more than 76,000 secret documents last week, he may have achieved this. The Post found that the documents exposed at least one U.S. intelligence operative and identified about 100 Afghan informants -- often including the names of their villages and family members. A Taliban spokesman said the group is scouring the WikiLeaks Web site for information to find and "punish" these informers.

Beyond getting people killed, WikiLeaks' actions make it less likely that Afghans and foreign intelligence services (whose reports WikiLeaks also exposed) will cooperate with the United States in the future. And, as former CIA director Mike Hayden has pointed out, the disclosures are a gift to adversary intelligence services, and they will place a chill on intelligence sharing within the United States government. The harm to our national security is immeasurable and irreparable.

RTWT.

Interesting discussion (FWIW), from Charli Carpenter, "Wikileaks and 'War Crimes'."

Cameras in the Supreme Court

Making the case at Reason:

HAT TIP: Glenn Reynolds.

Most Americans Want ObamaCare Changed or Repealed

At Fox News, "Most Voters Unhappy with Health Care Law":

Few American voters like the new health care law — and most want it changed or repealed.

In addition, according to a Fox News poll released Wednesday, almost twice as many voters think changes in the law "go too far" as think they "don't go far enough."

Nearly half of voters — 45 percent — think the changes go too far, while 25 percent think the changes don't go far enough. Some 16 percent think the law includes the right amount of change.

Just 15 percent of voters like the new health care law and think it should be implemented as is. Most don't like the law in its current form: 42 percent think it needs to be changed, and another 36 percent would repeal it all together.

The full article and questionnaire at the link.

Palin Talks Tough

On Hannity's:

Hezbollah Ambush of IDF Troops at Lebanon Border

YNET has the story, "IDF: Journalists were tipped off."

Journalists and photographers were briefed in advance of the intention to ambush IDF troops and were therefore present at the site of Tuesday's deadly clash between Israeli and Lebanese forces, IDF officials charge.

The lethal skirmish ensued after IDF forces performing routine operations in a border-area enclave came under Lebanese fire. The Israeli troops fired back, killing three Lebanese soldiers and a local journalist.

The killed correspondent, Assaf Abu Rahal, worked for Hezbollah-affiliated Beirut daily al-Akhbar.

Another journalist, Ali Shuaib from Hezbollah's al-Manar station, was wounded in the incident and was taken to hospital for treatment.

IDF officials raised questions about the presence of journalists and even broadcast trucks at the scene even before the clash ensued, charging this further reinforces suspicions that the incident was a well-planned Lebanese ambush.

But see the detailed report from Melanie Phillips, "Here we go again...":

About the strategic significance of these events and their possibly momentous consequences for the region and world peace, the western public is today -- thanks to the uselessness and worse of the mainstream media -- almost wholly ignorant.

Phillips cites Yossef Bodansky, "Clash on Israel-Lebanon Border Holds Potential for Strategic Escalation."

But you don't get the full story at FDL, naturally: "IDF Tree Removal Kills Three in Lebanon."

Rule 5 Preview: Katy Perry at Esquire

Gettin' ready for the weekend!

Nihad Awad, Executive Director of Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Attacks Pamela Geller on 'O'Reilly Factor'

Nihad Awad is an outspoken supporter of Hamas and an unindicted co-conspirator in the FBI's Holy Land investigation. In a frankly bizarre appearance on last night's O'Reilly show, Awad smeared Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs as blaspheming Islam:

And Pamela responds:

I am perplexed not only by CAIR's presence on legit media, but by the absence of their true identity. O'Reilly has them on quasi-regularly and never identifies them as co-conspirators in the largest Hamas (also Muslim Brotherhood) terror funding trial in US history. The Muslim Brotherhood is dedicated in its own words, according to a captured internal document released during that same trial, to "eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within, and sabotaging its miserable house...so that Allah's religious is made victorious over other religions."

CAIR founders Omar Ahmad and Niwad Awad (who still serves as CAIR's executive director) were present at a Hamas planning meeting in Philadelphia in 1993 where they and other Hamas operatives conspired to raise funds for Hamas and to promote jihad in the Middle East.

CAIR is not only an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror funding case -- so named by the Justice Department. Also, CAIR operatives have repeatedly refused to denounce Hamas and Hizballah as terrorist groups. Several former CAIR officials have been convicted of various crimes related to jihad terror, and CAIR's cofounder and longtime Board chairman (Omar Ahmad), as well as its chief spokesman (Ibrahim Hooper), have made Islamic supremacist statements.

Pamela made a short appearance last night, but as is usually the case, it didn't seem like she had enough time to make her case. Interesting, either way:

Modern Leftism and the Courts

Update to my earlier entry, "'Gender No Longer Forms An Essential Part of Marriage'."

Be sure to compare Judge Bork's comments at the link above to John Hinderaker, "Today's Proposition 8 Decision" (via Memeorandum):

Conservatives have long said that the day would come when liberal judges declare the Constitution unconstitutional. That happened today, when a gay federal judge in San Francisco, relying on the opinions of mostly-gay "expert" witnesses, ruled that an amendment to the California constitution, which was adopted in perfectly proper fashion by a substantial majority of voters, is "unconstitutional." In this context, unconstitutional means "unpopular with me and my friends."

As a legal matter, Judge Walker's decision is a bad joke. It will be appealed, of course, but the outcome of the appeal will be determined by politics, not law. I think it is safe to assume that anyone nominated to the Supreme Court by a Democratic President is explicitly or implicitly committed to the proposition that gay marriage is a constitutional right. If you think that is bizarre, stop voting for Democratic politicians.

And again, idiot Scotty smears rather than engage substance, "Former Time Blog of the Year Apparently Unaware That Federal State Entails Multiple Constitutions."

Kristallnacht in New York?

On November 10, 1938, the Gestapo, the SS and various Nazi Youth and other brown-shirt militias launched a massive pogrom against Jews in Germany. The "Night of the Broken Glass," the attacks resulted in nearly 100 Jews murdered and tens of thousands rounded up and shipped to concentration camps. Kristallnacht is widely considered the initial stage of the Nazi regime's "final solution" to the Jewish problem.

It would seem pretty evident to any reasonable person in America today that the country's treatment of Muslim Americans doesn't even remotely resemble the persecution of Jews during the interwar period of German history, and then into WWII and the Holocaust. But if we've learned anything about the political left in the last few years (if not sooner) it's that the one political gambit that continues to pay off for Democrats and radicals is the claim of "discrimination." We're fortunately seeing some very successful pushback against the left's incessant claims of racism, but it's going to take continued efforts to beat back the lies and slanders that form the central discourses on the left-wing today.

My latest case in point is Andrew Sprung's entry,"Kristallnacht in New York?"

Sprung points to the New York Times' coverage yesterday, highlighting the passage suggesting that opponents "aggressively scrutinize" donors to the Cordoba Project. The highlighted section also quotes Dan Senor, who said there'd be "a real stigma associated with this project." Senor published one of the more thoughtful essays on the whole debate at yesterday's Wall Street Journal, "An Open Letter on the Ground Zero Mosque."

Your stated goal of interfaith and cross-cultural understanding is a good one-one that we all share and have devoted considerable energy to furthering. It may well be that this goal would be furthered still by the building and operation of Cordoba House. However, while we will continue to stand with you and your right to proceed with this project, we see no reason why it must necessarily be located so close to the site of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

I hardly see how such concerns warrant vicious comparison to Gestapo anti-Semitic pograms in the 1930s, but that's where we are with today's radical left. Everything's about racism, discrimination, homophobia, hate speech, etc. Unreal. But one more example of a refusal of anti-conservatives to look at the issues dispassionately, and discuss things reasonably.

RELATED: At National Review, "Not at Ground Zero," via Memeorandum.

'Gender No Longer Forms An Essential Part of Marriage'

Folks are reacting to that line at the ruling.

AoSHQ is especially good. And Jeff Goldstein responds:

... this ruling does nothing more than enshrine the notion that what has always been the definition for marriage can no longer be the definition for marriage, because defining marriage as it has always been defined is discriminatory against those who wish it was defined in a way more to their liking, and in a way that changes what it is and has always been into something it never was nor ever has been. But be that as it may.

I've tired of writing about this, frankly. I'm not so much in the business of seeking to deprive people rights --- contrived rights, be that as it may as well --- and I'm to the point where the only legitimate solution I see would be a federalist one, to let the voters in their own states decide how they want to define marriage. The courts will not reflect the people on this, and the law will be tweaked to extend the right to marry to a faction that's not interested in the traditional bases of that institution. I'm reminded of Robert Bork's comments on the larger implications:

What we are seeing in modern liberalism is the ultimate triumph of the New Left of the 1960s - the New Left that collapsed as a unified political movement and splintered into a multitude of intense, single-issue groups. We now have, to name but a few, radical feminists, black extremists, animal rights groups, radical environmentalists, activist homosexual groups, multiculturalists, People for the American Way, Planned Parenthood, the American Civil Liberties Union, and many more. In a real sense, however, the New Left did not collapse. Each of its splinters pursues a leftist agenda, but there is no publicly announced overarching philosophy that enables people to see easily that the separate groups and causes add up to a general radical left philosophy. The groups support one another and come together easily on many issues. In that sense, the splintering of the New Left made it less visible and therefore more powerful, its goals more attainable, than ever before.

In their final stages, radical egalitarianism becomes tyranny and radical individualism descends into hedonism. These translate as bread and circuses. Government grows larger and more intrusive in order to direct the distribution of goods and services in an ever more equal fashion, while people are diverted, led to believe that their freedoms are increasing, by a great variety of entertainments featuring violence and sex ...

NYT has a story up now (FWIW), "Court Rejects Same-Sex Marriage Ban in California" (via Memeorandum).

U.S. District Court Strikes Down California's Proposition 8

Via Doug Mataconis:

Added, at Los Angeles Times, "Judge strikes down Prop. 8, allows gay marriage in California." And at Legal Insurrection, "Fed Judge Finds Calif. Prop. 8 Unconstitutional":

Today, Chief Judge Vaugh Walker of the Northern District of California issued his ruling in the case holding that Prop. 8 violates the U.S. Constitution.

Here is the Judge's conclusion:

Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license. Indeed, the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California Constitution the notion that oppositesex couples are superior to same-sex couples. Because California has no interest in discriminating against gay men and lesbians, and because Proposition 8 prevents California from fulfilling its constitutional obligation to provide marriages on an equal basis, the court concludes that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional.

Throughout the opinion, the Judge goes into great detail regarding trial testimony and justifications for Prop. 8. The Judge then holds, in essence, that the justifications are irrational and have no legitimate societal basis.

The Judge even designated a section of the opinion "Credibility Determinations." Many commentators think the Judge was trying to insulate the opinion from appeal since appeals courts do not normally overturn credibility determinations, since only the trial judge observed the witness.

In this case, the Judge seems to be trying too hard to insulate the opinion, and I doubt that on such a momentus finding of a new constitutional right for same sex marriage that an appeals court, much less the U.S. Supreme Court, will care much about the credibility of witnesses as a basis for a legal ruling.

Everyone expects this case to end up on the U.S. Supreme Court, which should test what Elena Kagan meant when she said, under oath, that there is no constitutional right to gay marriage.

Perry v. Schwarzenegger - Proposition 8 Unconstitutional