Supreme Court Avoids Proposition 8 Ruling

As expected, the Court ruled on a technicality, and not on the merits. The decisions of the lower federal courts will prevail in California, which means gay marriage will be de facto in the state.

At the San Francisco Chronicle, "High court: Prop. 8 backers lack standing." And at the Los Angeles Times, "Prop 8: Gay marriage could resume soon after Supreme Court ruling."

Expect updates...

Supreme Court Strikes Down Defense of Marriage Act

I'm not surprised.

At the Los Angeles Times, "Gay marriage ruling: Supreme Court finds DOMA unconstitutional."

And at Legal Insurrection, "Supreme Court DOMA decision – Unconstitutional."

UPDATE: We're still waiting for the decision in Hollingsworth v. Perry, the Prop. 8 case out of California.

More at Twitchy, "SCOTUS circus day: Supreme Court declares DOMA unconstitutional; Hardest hit: Bill Clinton."

Okay, the Court has ruled narrowly on Prop. 8, arguing that supporters don't have standing to defend the initiative, sending the case back to the 9th Circuit.

Meanwhile, here's the People's Cube on DOMA:

#DOMA today the 2.5% forced the other 97.5% of us to be termed as haters for support of traditional marriage #tcot

— The People's Cube (@ThePeoplesCube) June 26, 2013

Expect updates...

Men's Wearhouse Explains Why It Fired George Zimmer

At the Los Angeles Times, "Men's Wearhouse: Zimmer tried power grab, privatizing before firing."

He tried to take back the company through some privatization scheme. I told you he was getting eccentric.

PREVIOUSLY: "Men's Wearhouse Fires Founder George Zimmer."

Obama Unveils War on Fossil Fuels

It's not just coal, and he didn't campaign on this either.

At Wall Street Journal, "The Carbonated President":

President Obama's climate speech on Tuesday was grandiose even for him, but its surreal nature was its particular hallmark. Some 12 million Americans still can't find work, real wages have fallen for five years, three-fourths of Americans now live paycheck to check, and the economy continues to plod along four years into a quasi-recovery. But there was the President in tony Georgetown, threatening more energy taxes and mandates that will ensure fewer jobs, still lower incomes and slower growth.

Mr. Obama's "climate action plan" adds up to one of the most extensive reorganizations of the U.S. economy since the 1930s, imposed through administrative fiat and raw executive power. He wants to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 17% by 2020, but over his 6,500-word address he articulated no such goal for the unemployment rate or GDP.

***
The plan covers everything from new efficiency standards for home appliances to new fuel mileage rules for heavy-duty trucks to new subsidies for wind farms, but the most consequential changes would slam the U.S. electric industry. These plants, coal-fired power in particular, account for about a third of domestic greenhouse gases.

Last year the Environmental Protection Agency released "new source performance standard" regulations that are effectively a moratorium on new coal plants. The EPA denied that similar rules would ever apply to the existing fleet, or even that they were working up such rules. Now Mr. Obama will unleash his carbon central planners on current plants.

Coal accounted for more than half of U.S. electric generation as recently as 2008 but plunged to a mere 37% in 2012. In part this tumble has been due to cheap natural gas, but now the EPA will finish the job and take coal to 0%.

Daniel Shrag of Harvard, an Obama science adviser, told the New York Times Monday that "Politically, the White House is hesitant to say they're having a war on coal. On the other hand, a war on coal is exactly what's needed." At least he's honest, though in truth Mr. Obama's target is all forms of carbon energy. Natural gas is next...

Man, he's awful.

Continue reading.

Giraffe Chases Jeep on Safari

This is great.

More at London's Daily Mail, "When giraffes attack! Moment tourists left terrified by angry bull chasing their car."

#VRA: Reactions Reveal Divide on Race Progress

Here'ss Jackie Calmes, Robbie Brown, and Campbell Robertson, putting it mildly at the New York Times, "On Voting Case, Reaction From ‘Deeply Disappointed’ to ‘It’s About Time’":

WASHINGTON — President Obama on Tuesday said he was “deeply disappointed” with the Supreme Court’s 5-to-4 decision ruling a central piece of the 1965 Voting Rights Act unconstitutional, and he called on Congress to pass legislation protecting access to voting.

The president registered his critique in a written statement issued by the White House that noted the law’s bipartisan legacy and the Supreme Court’s acknowledgment, in the ruling, that discrimination persists.

“For nearly 50 years, the Voting Rights Act — enacted and repeatedly renewed by wide bipartisan majorities in Congress — has helped secure the right to vote for millions of Americans,” the statement read. “Today’s decision invalidating one of its core provisions upsets decades of well-established practices that help make sure voting is fair, especially in places where voting discrimination has been historically prevalent.”

Mr. Obama’s attorney general, Eric H. Holder Jr., who is named as the defendant in the case, Shelby County v. Holder, used similar language to criticize the court’s decision.

“The Department of Justice will continue to carefully monitor jurisdictions around the country for voting changes that may hamper voting rights,” Mr. Holder said. “Let me be very clear: We will not hesitate to take swift enforcement action using every legal tool that remains available to us against any jurisdiction that seeks to take advantage of the Supreme Court’s ruling by hindering eligible citizens full and free exercise of the franchise.”

Mr. Holder also emphasized the law’s long history of bipartisan support in Congress and under successive presidential administrations.

In his decision, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said that Congress remained free to try to impose federal oversight on states where voting rights were at risk, but it was clear that the likelihood that a divided Congress could agree on a remedy was small.

Members of the N.A.A.C.P. and civil rights lawyers said they would ask Congress to draw up a new coverage formula, laid out in Section 4 of the act.

“We are confident that members of both houses of Congress that helped lead the effort in 2006, many of whom are still there, will help to restore the power of Section 4,” Wade Henderson, the president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said outside the Supreme Court on Tuesday....

Across the South, reaction to the decision appeared to be split, largely along racial and partisan lines. Luther Strange, the Republican attorney general of Alabama, called it “a victory for Alabama” and added that he did not believe that the state should be included in any formula Congress may adopt.

Tate Reeves, the Republican lieutenant governor of Mississippi, said he was pleased by the decision but said that preclearance “unfairly applied to certain states should be eliminated in recognition of the progress Mississippi has made over the past 48 years.”

On one point, most people agreed: that Congress was not likely to come up with a remedy to Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act any time soon, leaving the South without the oversight provided by Section 5.

Good.

And see J. Christian Adams' comments to that effect as well, "Supreme Court's Ruling in Shelby v. Holder: 'It is one of the most important decisions in decades...'."

Lee Bollinger and Gail Heriot Discuss Affirmative Action

It's Lee Bollinger who's most interesting here. He was named as the defendant in the pair of big affirmative affirmative action cases 10 years ago. He's a pathetically lame racial grievance hack. A typical idiot leftist stuck in the Jim Crow past.

Brazil's Dilma Rousseff's Rebuked in Call for National Referendum

At WSJ, "Brazil's Proposed Political Overhaul Meets Resistance":

SÃO PAULO—Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff labored to drum up support Tuesday for the sweeping overhaul of the nation's political system she has proposed in response to large public demonstrations against government waste and corruption.

The first-term president called Monday night for a national referendum on whether to alter the constitution to improve government accountability. This was part of a package of proposals to appease an increasingly angry public that has taken to the streets in crowds of as many as a million to protest corruption and deteriorating government services. She also called for earmarking oil revenue for education, hiring foreign doctors to improve health, and other initiatives.

But Ms. Rousseff's proposal met with immediate resistance from some political leaders and legal experts.

The national chairman of the opposition Social Democrats, Senator Aécio Neves, called the referendum an attempt to shift the public focus from "the administration's failed social and economic policies" to the new and difficult-to-digest topic of electoral reform.

The president of the Brazilian bar association, Marcus Coelho, said the referendum was unnecessary and that an existing bill in Congress could be pushed forward to address political reform without a constitutional amendment.

The opposition was so strong that some analysts said they expected Ms. Rousseff to alter her call for a national vote on whether to call a constitutional assembly.

The call for a referendum was seen by some political analysts as an attempt to use the protest movement to push Congress into action on reform.

"Congress hasn't understood what's happening on the streets," said David Fleischer, a professor of political science at the University of Brasília. "The president wanted to take a step forward," but she is taking a big risk that could backfire if Congress blocks the move, he said.

It appeared that Ms. Rousseff's call for action already has had some impact. Congressional leaders agreed to vote—as early as Tuesday night— on a series of reform measures that have languished in the corridors of power for months. Congressional leaders also proposed pushing forward with existing legislation on political overhaul, which they said would be faster than the president's call for a constitutional assembly to decide the changes.

The protests began last week and marches continued Tuesday. Despite rainy weather in São Paulo, hundreds of people blocked major roads into the city, while there were protests in several other cities including Belo Horizonte, in the southeastern state of Minas Gerais, and São Luís, in the northeastern state of Maranhão.

Continue reading.

PREVIOUSLY: "Brazil President Dilma Rousseff Offers National Referendum to Ease Unrest."

Germany Blasts Britain Over Surveillance

I think it was Glenn Greenwald's feed, but folks were joking about how this was like the 1930s.

At the Guardian UK, "Germany blasts Britain over GCHQ's secret cable trawl":

Minister questions legality of mass tapping of calls and internet and demands to know extent to which Germans were targeted.

The German government has expressed the growing public anger of its citizens over Britain's mass programme of monitoring global phone and internet traffic and directly challenged UK ministers over the whole basis of GCHQ's Project Tempora surveillance operation.

The German justice minister, who has described the secret operation by Britain's eavesdropping agency as a catastrophe that sounded "like a Hollywood nightmare", warned UK ministers that free and democratic societies could not flourish when states shielded their actions in "a veil of secrecy".

Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger sent two letters on Tuesday to the British justice secretary, Chris Grayling, and the home secretary, Theresa May, stressing the widespread concern the disclosures have triggered in Germany and demanding to know the extent to which German citizens have been targeted.

It is the first major challenge to David Cameron's government to publicly justify its mass data-trawling operation, which was revealed in documents leaked by the former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden.

More at the link.

Stumbling Into Syria

From David Bromwich, at the New York Review:

Reporters working in Syria—most recently Robert Worth in an article in The New York Times Magazine—have converged on a single unhappy perception: far and away the largest and most capable groups of rebels are jihadists. That is a central fact of this uprising. But the fall of the town of Qusair to Hezbollah forces, in the first week of June, and the realization that Aleppo is also in jeopardy have turned the war so heavily in Assad’s favor that an all-out campaign for French, British, and American intervention has now been launched. The French “new philosopher” and journalist Bernard-Henri Levy did much to persuade Nicholas Sarkozy of the propriety of organizing a NATO war to overthrow Qaddafi; in a characteristic recent column for The Daily Beast, Levy nicknames Assad “the Syrian killer” and speaks of the danger that now threatens the morale and substance of the West:

The surrender of Aleppo to the death squads of Hezbollah would be a fresh eruption of carnage whose victims would be heaped atop the hundred thousand already claimed by this atrocious war against a civilian population.

He affirms that “Aleppo belongs not to Syria but to the world”—a stirring phrase of ambiguous import—and he numbers the recent crimes against civilization by Serbs and Islamists: “those past crimes haunt our collective conscience.” The failures of the West have all been failures to wage the necessary humanitarian wars against Slavic or Islamist fanatics.

It must be admitted that American policy has fallen short of demands like these. We sided with Islamist rebels in Afghanistan, under the name of Mujahideen fighters, and against the same rebels under the names of Taliban and al-Qaeda; we fought against them in Iraq during the 2004 insurgency, and stood at their side as paymasters and allies when they became the “Sunni Awakening” in 2007; we were against them in Mali, Somalia, and Yemen, but allied with them as the courageous militias in Libya; and now in Syria, we are both for them and against them—allies insofar as they agree with us in attacking the government, but opponents because they want to dominate or kill the moderate rebels to whom we intend to ship arms. We will wage war against them after they help us to win the war against Assad.

That's an excellent analysis, and Bromwich lays the blame for an inevitable fiasco right at the feet of Barack Obama.

Be sure to RTWT.

Al-Nusra Front Beheads Assad Supporters in Syria

Allegedly so, according to this video at Live Leak, "Big Crowd & Beheading Syria [Graphic]."

President Obama is supporting these rebels.

HAT TIP: Golem.

PREVIOUSLY: "NBC's Richard Engel: 'Just Back From #Syria ... Lots of Black Banners at Checkpoints...'" And, "Child Chained Up and Forced to Watch Parents Murdered by Obama-Backed Syrian Rebels."

The Economist Argues for Further Western Intervention in Syria

An interesting case, although as I always say, the moment has passed.

See, "Can Iran be stopped? The West should intervene in Syria for many reasons. One is to stem the rise of Persian power":

The growing risk of a nuclear Iran is one reason why the West should intervene decisively in Syria not just by arming the rebels, but also by establishing a no-fly zone. That would deprive Mr Assad of his most effective weapon—bombs dropped from planes—and allow the rebels to establish military bases inside Syria. This newspaper has argued many times for doing so on humanitarian grounds; but Iran’s growing clout is another reason to intervene, for it is not in the West’s interest that a state that sponsors terrorism and rejects Israel’s right to exist should become the regional hegemon.

The West still has the economic and military clout to influence events in the region, and an interest in doing so. When Persian power is on the rise, it is not the time to back away from the Middle East.

RTWT.

Emily Gets Her Gun...

That's Emily Miller, who's writing a book about becoming a gun owner.

Katie Pavlich on Obama's International Embarrassment

With Emily Tisch Sussman on Hannity's last night:

Better Naked Than Burka

Well, I guess they have a point.

A FEMEN interview at Euronews.

And at Blazing Cat Fur, "'Femen Is Pornography' Say Facebook."

"The six-year old 'transgender girl' is actually a boy and the couple's 'daughter' is actually their son, but since this confused child thinks he is actually a girl, he now is a girl in the eyes of the media, and the son is now a daughter..."

A great piece from Michael Brown, at Town Hall, "This Battle is For Your Children's Future."

And at Pat Dollard, "Transgender First-Grader Wins Civil Rights Suit After Girls’ Bathroom Ban."

Parents of Trayvon Martin Devastated by Graphic Pictures in George Zimmerman Trial

A huge piece, with lots of photos, at London's Daily Mail, "Drama at George Zimmerman trial as Trayvon Martin's parents walk out of court after jury is shown graphic pictures of their son's body."

And in case you've not been following, Andrew Branca is blogging the trial at Legal Insurrection, "Zimmerman Trial Day 2 – Analysis of State’s Witnesses."

Here's yesterday's main entry as well, "Zimmerman Trial Day One – Analysis of State’s First Four Witnesses."

Hollywood Slaying Suspect Arrested 46 Times

How many times have I heard this story?

How many multiple times have the perps been in and out of jail, only to have these vile criminals murder another innocent?

At the Los Angeles Times, "Suspect in Hollywood stabbing had been arrested 46 times."

PREVIOUSLY: "Death of Christine Calderon Recalls Hollywood's Crime-Ridden Past."

Lacey Banghard on Curvy Women

A commentary piece, at the Sun UK, "We are sick of stick ... curvy is the new size 0: Page 3 beauty Lacey Banghard on model Chloe Hayward — a size 12."

Previous Lacey Banghard blogging at the link.

'Classic Reactionary Liberalism'

That's an interesting concept, via WFB, "Krauthammer: ‘Classic Reactionary Liberalism’ On Display After Voting Rights Act Decision."

Some background here, "Civil Rights Icon John Lewis: Supreme Court Put 'Dagger in Heart of Voting Rights Act...'"