@TwitchyTeam Msnbc doesn't know what Supreme Court John Roberts looks like pic.twitter.com/DgbF67KL8Z
— Autiger (@autiger2k2) June 25, 2013
The Senate's Democratic leadership and bipartisan Gang of Eight were in such a hurry to stop debate on their 1,200-page immigration bill that they didn't want anyone to read it. It's the latest in a long line of political travesties that threaten the future of our 237-year-old republic.
Sadly, those who pass our laws can't be bothered even to read them these days.
But if they did, they might be shocked to discover that the "Immigration Reform Bill," after the Corker-Hoeven amendment, has turned into a giant pinata stuffed with all kinds of hidden pork and goodies to make it easier for senators to choke down.
"When you pass complicated legislation and no one has really read the bill," Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward noted on Fox News Sunday, "the outcome is absurd."
He's right. Just like the bloated, pork-filled ObamaCare bill before it, immigration reform has lots of juicy tidbits in it to buy the votes of key legislators.
And, also like ObamaCare, legislators and average citizens alike will have to "pass the bill to find out what's in it," in former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's now-infamous phrase.
Among other things, the bill:
• Adds $1.5 billion to President Obama's failed jobs stimulus, a gift to socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
• Turns the Travel Promotion Act, which was supposed to end in 2015, into a permanent program at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars. Prime beneficiaries? Las Vegas casino interests, a gift to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada.
• Makes a range of serious crimes for which U.S. citizens can be arrested and imprisoned — including assault and battery, drunk driving and tax fraud — "waivable" for illegal immigrants when it comes to their amnesty status.
• Gives Alaskan "Seafood processing" jobs special status as "shortage occupations," letting those industries hire low-skilled illegal immigrants to fill "temporary" jobs, a bipartisan favor to Alaska Sens. Mark Begich (Democrat) and Lisa Murkowski (Republican).
That, no doubt, isn't a comprehensive list. But since no one has read the bill — the latest version of immigration reform was issued less than 75 hours before Monday's vote — it's impossible even to say how much pork is in the bill the Senate is voting on.
But even if you took out all the pork, the bill should be rejected.
The Supreme Court upended a longstanding pillar of civil-rights-era legislation, the 1965 Voting Rights Act, ruling that the decades-old formula that Congress used to identify areas of the country subject to stringent oversight of election procedures is no longer constitutional.Also at Legal Insurrection, "Supreme Court Voting Rights Act Decision — Section 4 invalid."
The court ruled unconstitutional Section 4 of the law, which provides a coverage formula used to determine which voting districts must "pre-clear" voting changes with officials in Washington.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the 5-4 ruling for the court, which was divided along its usual ideological lines.
The court didn't rule on two gay-marriage cases Tuesday. It said it would issue the final opinions of the 2012-13 term on Wednesday, when the gay-marriage rulings are expected to come.
Chief Justice Roberts said Congress failed to update the Voting Rights Act formula that singles out many localities, mostly in the South, and requires them to seek the approval of the U.S. Justice Department before making any changes to their voting procedures.
"Our country has changed, and while any racial discrimination in voting is too much, Congress must ensure that the legislation it passes to remedy that problem speaks to current conditions," Chief Justice Roberts wrote in a 24-page opinion.
The court said it wasn't issuing any ruling on Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which puts the formula into effect. "Congress may draft another formula based on current conditions," Chief Justice Roberts wrote. However, that may be a difficult proposition in a deeply divided Congress.
The case involved Shelby County in Alabama, which is subject to the extra oversight under the law.
Congress has repeatedly reauthorized the Voting Rights Act, most recently in 2006, when President George W. Bush signed bipartisan legislation extending it 25 years.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote a 37-page dissent, joined by the three other members of the court's liberal wing. She said Congress's move in 2006 shouldn't be overridden by the courts. "In my judgment, the Court errs egregiously by overriding Congress' decision," she wrote.
Rarely has the Supreme Court ended its term with as much suspense about its final rulings as now. On Monday morning, the Justices sent a case that could have ended affirmative action back to a lower court; Tuesday, the next scheduled day for decisions, may bring a ruling that strikes down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act. And the two most anticipated remaining cases, expected by the end of the week, are on the future of same-sex marriage. Whatever the Court decides, it will, in an instant, dramatically change the political and legal landscape for gay rights.I'm not going to be surprised if that's the eventual outcome.
What’s at stake? If you are part of a same-sex couple and are or want to be married, or are the child of gay or lesbian parents, your life and your choices will be directly affected. One of the cases, Hollingsworth v. Perry, a challenge to Proposition 8, California’s same-sex marriage ban, should, at least, determine whether or not you can marry the person you love in that state. That could provide the template for how courts view other states’ bans. Depending on how the decision is written, it could bring marriage equality to seven states, or to fifty. (The New Yorker has put together a map with possible outcomes.) Most ambitiously, the plaintiffs are asking the justices to find that there is a constitutional right to same-sex marriage.
The other case, United States v. Edith Windsor, is a challenge to the Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, which prevents the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages sanctioned by the states. This means that it affects same-sex marriage in any of the twelve states that currently allow it, as well as any future ones. If DOMA is overturned, couples will be entitled to the federal benefits of marriage (preferential estate-tax treatment, social-security benefits) as well as the responsibilities (listing a spouse’s assets on financial disclosure forms), not to mention the dignity that comes with full recognition.
Exactly how the Court will rule has been subject to a lot of speculation. The expert consensus, which I think is correct, is that DOMA will be ruled unconstitutional. Prop 8 will end up being nullified, but not on the merits; instead, the Court will rule that the Prop 8 case is not properly before it and thereby allow a lower court ruling striking it to stand...
SÃO PAULO—Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff called for a national referendum on overhauling a political system often criticized as unaccountable and corrupt, unveiling a far-reaching response to two weeks of mass demonstrations that have rocked this South American nation.She's a communist. No doubt street protesters will cut her some slack. And should she shower the demonstrators with more social spending, poof!, away go the protests.
Under Ms. Rousseff's plan, Brazilians would vote on whether to convene an assembly to potentially alter the country's 1988 constitution. She announced other initiatives, including a bill to make political corruption a serious felony, rather than a minor offense, and additional funding for health and education.
The plan, announced at an emergency meeting with state governors and city mayors, underscored concern with the near-daily protests that have killed four people, brought cities to a standstill and threatened Ms. Rousseff's popularity. In it, Ms. Rousseff seeks to resolve what many see as the root of a matrix of national grievances expressed by protesters, from the poor quality of public services to corruption.
"This could release enormous political energy and, if done right, could be a way for her to come out on top," said Paulo Sotero, who directs the Brazil Institute at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington. "Every Brazilian knows the political structure is completely messed up, and though the initiative to change it is coming from the street, she is showing she is listening and understands it."
By responding to protesters' demands, Ms. Rousseff has adopted a different strategy from the heavy-handed responses of other developing-world leaders who have faced mass demonstrations, such as Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Much of the explanation lies in the fact protesters weren't targeting Ms. Rousseff explicitly. And Ms. Rousseff, a former Marxist guerrilla and the country's first female president, still sees herself as a revolutionary in office dedicated to improving governance in a country that shed a military dictatorship in 1985.
In her speech, Ms. Rousseff defended her record, and that of her Workers Party, in power for the past decade. She cited low employment, years of economic growth and promised to leverage the street protests into long-standing changes.
"Everyone knows what the problems are. And we also know about the innumerable difficulties to resolve them," Ms. Rousseff said. "I have encountered since taking office, numerous obstacles, but the energy that is coming from the streets is bigger than any obstacle."
Customers taunt Lisa Weiss. “Talk dirty to me,” they joke. “We know you like it.” Colleagues refuse to speak with her. Strangers mock her in nasty online messages.She agreed to it. That's the puzzle for me. Why did women exchange vulgar Twitter messages with the dude, who was not only a Member of Congress but also a married man? The thrill of it all, I guess.
“Clearly she’s got mental issues,” declared the latest.
Anthony D. Weiner’s improbable campaign for mayor of New York City is a wager that voters have made peace with his lewd online behavior, a subject he has largely left behind as he roils the race with his aggressive debating style and his attention-getting policy proposals.
But for the women who were on the other end of Mr. Weiner’s sexually explicit conversations and photographs, his candidacy is an unwanted reminder of a scandal that has upended their lives in ways big and small, cutting short careers, disrupting educations and damaging reputations.
“I cannot tell you the devastation,” said Ms. Weiss, a 42-year-old blackjack dealer in Nevada who exchanged dozens of explicit messages with Mr. Weiner, then a congressman, in 2010 and 2011.
Ms. Weiss, a die-hard Democrat who once volunteered for Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign and was inspired by “Fahrenheit 9/11,” a film critique of the Bush administration, said she had reached out to Mr. Weiner after watching him joust with Republican rivals on cable news. They traded admiring messages on Facebook that, at his prompting, became intimate and raunchy, she said.
When their correspondence eventually became public, she said in an interview, conservative-minded colleagues sought to have her fired. The press lined up outside of her house and showed up at her casino, causing her to miss work for weeks. One night, she turned on the television to find the HBO host Bill Maher and the actress Jane Lynch performing a dramatic reading of the bawdy messages. Ms. Weiss, an avowed Maher fan, said she sat in her living room crying. While coping with the onslaught, she drank heavy amounts of alcohol, a habit that persists.
“I obsess about it,” she said, “every day.”
I hate to say this. Well, maybe I don’t.Continue reading.
It appears that Edward Snowden, the 30-year-old computer analyst hiding in broad daylight, has managed not only to throw a wrench into U.S. foreign policy, but to outfox the very national security apparatus whose overreach he warned against.
It’s pretty astonishing that our government can figure out a way to vacuum up our every phone call, email and text message, but can’t get its hands on Snowden, who left Hong Kong for Russia on Sunday, and may be there still, as he figures out how to make his way to what he has (inexplicably) described as a democratic nation for asylum.
Republican South Carolina Sen. Lindsay Graham put his finger on it when he told Fox News on Sunday that “The freedom trail is not exactly China-Russia-Cuba-Venezuela.” (I guess somewhere along the line, Iceland dropped off Snowden’s list.)
In New Delhi during a three-day visit to India, Secretary of State John Kerry sarcastically called Russia and China “bastions of Internet freedom” and admonished governments that have helped or may help Snowden remain out of the grasp of American authorities.
“There would be, without any question, some effect and impact on the relationship, and consequences,” Kerry said, according to my colleague Henry Chu. “I’d urge them to live within the law. It’s in the interest of everyone.”
Still, one has to wonder why it took the government until Sunday to revoke Snowden’s passport, as the AP reported . It may not have mattered in the long run, but why wait two weeks to take that step?
When Snowden left Hong Kong, according to a detailed New York Times story posted Monday http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/25/world/asia/snowden-departure-from-hong-kong.html?pagewanted=1&hp, he was allowed to pass through normal airport checkpoints, despite his annulled passport.
The story also said that Snowden decided to leave Hong Kong after attorneys there advised him that he might not be able to remain free on bail while fighting extradition to the U.S. If he were incarcerated during that time, they said, he would probably not have his computer. Giving up his computer, the attorney said would be “totally intolerable.” (Forget waterboarding. Confiscate a 30-year-old’s computer and watch him beg for mercy.)
One also wonders why the feds revealed Friday that Snowden had been indicted on three felonies, including two charges under the 1917 Espionage Act, which made it likely, in the view of some foreign policy experts, that countries antagonistic to the United States (i.e. Cuba and Venezuela) would not be inclined to respect the State Department’s notice advising governments that Snowden should not be allowed transit to or through their countries.
In any case, as this amazing story continues, in slow motion, like a global version of the famous white Bronco chase, the Obama administration has itself to blame for this mess.
WikiLeaks statements on Snowden asylum | SBS http://t.co/2HjWAXCr6i
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) June 25, 2013
Last week, I presented my own reasons for why I think it is futile to go into Syria. I respect the arguments and analysis of those who favor intervention. I understand their motivations and their frustrations, all the result of our president’s failed policies. I comprehend Elliott Abrams’ analysis, and his argument that “the central fact about the region today is Iran’s use of raw power in Syria, with Russian support.” To counter Iran and Russia, Abrams believes that necessitates arming the rebels and more, and the announcement of a coherent and strong U.S. policy on Iran and Hezbollah. Abrams cites the work of Frederic C. Hof, who believes that we are militarily capable of stepping in without “boots on the ground,” and that we can “destroy and degrade” Assad’s capability without our own forces getting involved. Hof writes: “Syrians are being slaughtered and U.S. friends and allies are suffering the consequences. A family regime supported by terrorists threatens to plunge the region into war as it systematically wrecks the Syrian state.” But he thinks the U.S. can act even without a no-fly zone, which others see as a necessary first step.RTWT.
For laymen like most readers and me, we can only consider the judgment of the experts, and then try to sort out their arguments and to reach our own conclusions. For now, I still believe intervention is shortsighted and likely to bring even worse results. I agree with my PJM colleague Victor Davis Hanson, who argues the following at National Review Online:
There is no guarantee that American air support or close training might not end up in some sort of American ground presence — the only sure guarantee that so-called moderates might prevail should Assad fall. Of course, any costly intervention would eventually be orphaned by many in the present chorus of interventionists in a manner that we also know well from Iraq. We are told that dealing a blow to Iran and Hezbollah would be a good thing, and no doubt it would be. But in the callous calculus of realpolitik, both seem already to be suffering without U.S. intervention.And I take serious notice of the admonition of Michael Rubin, who recently returned from a trip through Iraq, where he often goes. Rubin writes that “many Iraqi Shi’ites warned against any support for the Syrian opposition, claiming they were more radical than the Americans realized,” and that they were joined in this analysis by Iraqi Kurds, Christians, and Sunnis. Rubin thus advocates only the use of U.S. air power, which he thinks is sufficient to stop Assad. He argues: “Arming the Syrian rebels is wrong and would gravely undercut U.S. national security.”
Snowden’s departure from Hong Kong comes a day after a senior administration official warned that failure to extradite Snowden “will complicate our bilateral relations and raise questions about Hong Kong’s commitment to the rule of law.”RTWT.
The Justice Department had been in continual contact with Hong Kong officials at senior levels since learning June 10 that Snowden had relocated there, the department said Sunday, including a call last week from Attorney General Eric Holder directly to Hong Kong Secretary for Justice Rimsky Yuen.
The State Department, the U.S. consulate and the FBI had also repeatedly engaged their Hong Kong counterparts during that two-week period.
While Hong Kong’s government said Sunday that Snowden’s departure was via “a lawful and normal channel,” the Justice Department expressed frustration with the decision.
“The request for the fugitive’s arrest for purposes of his extradition complied with all of the requirements of the U.S./Hong Kong Surrender Agreement,” a Justice Department representative said in a statement.
“At no point, in all of our discussions through Friday, did the authorities in Hong Kong raise any issues regarding the sufficiency of the U.S.’s provisional arrest request. In light of this, we find their decision to be particularly troubling.”
Earlier Sunday, the Justice Department had said it would continue to discuss the matter with Hong Kong and to “pursue relevant law enforcement cooperation with other countries where Mr. Snowden may be attempting to travel.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to allow Snowden to change planes at Moscow’s airport on the first leg of his j0urney comes just a week after an icy bilateral G-8 appearance with Obama, where the Russian leader noted bluntly that on Syria, the positions of the United States and Russia “do not coincide.”
One reason Putin isn’t likely to cooperate now, Talbott said, is that the United States would almost certainly take in a Russian operative who admitted to leaking information about that country’s secret surveillance programs.
“If the shoe were on the other foot, if there was somebody who was wanted in Russia for leaking classified material would we feel obliged to turn them over?” Talbott said. “I don’t know, I kinda doubt it.”
In fact, there is little the United States could do now to secure Snowden’s return that wouldn’t chance creating more problems than it solves.
“I don’t see from my limited knowledge of how the world operates that there is any prospect of getting him back unless we were to interdict one of these flights,” said Gabriel Schoenfeld, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. “It’s in the realm of the possible, but not the likely. It would have serious consequences for relations with countries that I don’t think we are interested in poking right now.”
For realz? RT @mkhammer Is are chilldrin lurning? RT @studentpowernc: They tried to divide and concor but they only untied us. #moralmonday
— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) June 24, 2013
I'm back running! #HKNB pic.twitter.com/ICUMlgsLnm
— Heidi Klum (@heidiklum) June 23, 2013
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday ordered lower courts to take a fresh look, under a more demanding standard, at the race-conscious admissions policy used to admit students to the University of Texas. The 7-to-1 decision was simultaneously modest and significant, and its recalibration of how courts review the constitutionality of affirmative action programs is likely to give rise to a wave of challenges to admissions programs at colleges and universities nationwide.RTWT.
The brief decision, issued eight months after the case was argued, was almost surely the product of intense negotation among the justices. The compromise they reached was at least a reprieve for affirmative action in higher education, and civil rights groups that had feared for the future of race-conscious admission programs breathed a sigh of relief.
For now, the Texas program and other affirmative action programs can continue without changes.
The decision did not disturb the Supreme Court’s general approach to affirmative action in admissions decisions, saying that educational diversity is a government interest sufficient to overcome the general ban on racial classifications by the government. But the court added that public institutions must have good reasons to use the particular means they use to achieve that goal.
That requirement could endanger the Texas program when it is reconsidered by the federal appeals court in New Orleans. The program admits most students under race-neutral criteria, accepting all students in the state who graduate near the top of their high school classes. But the university also uses a race-conscious system as a supplement.
“Strict scrutiny,” Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the majority, “does not permit a court to accept a school’s assertion that its admissions process uses race in a permissible way without closely examining how the process works in practice.”
Courts reviewing affirmative action programs must, he wrote, “verify that it is necessary for a university to use race to achieve the educational benefits of diversity.” That requires, he said, “a careful judicial inquiry into whether a university could achieve sufficient diversity without using racial classifications.”
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who announced her lone dissent from the bench, said the race-neutral part of the Texas program worked only because of “de facto racial segregation in Texas’s neighborhoods and schools.” She said she would have upheld the appeals court decision endorsing the entire admissions program.
The remaining justices, including ones friendly and hostile to affirmative action, agreed on a middle ground, though Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas each issued dissents indicating that they would vote to strike down race-conscious admission plans in a future case.
