{"id":10197,"date":"2013-04-03T02:10:19","date_gmt":"2013-04-03T09:10:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=10197"},"modified":"2013-04-03T02:10:19","modified_gmt":"2013-04-03T09:10:19","slug":"open-thread432013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2013\/04\/03\/open-thread432013\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread–4\/3\/2013"},"content":{"rendered":"

I seem to be back on the mend and expect to be back to full time by the weekend.<\/font><\/p>\n

Jig Zone Puzzle<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n

Today\u2019s took me 3:57 (average 4:42).  To do it, click here<\/a>.  How did you do?<\/font><\/p>\n

Short Takes<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n

From NY Times<\/a>: <\/font>With two same-sex marriage cases before the Supreme Court, numerous commentators have latched on to remarks by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg critical of the court\u2019s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion nationwide. It is not the judgment that was wrong, but \u201cit moved too far, too fast,\u201d she said at Columbia Law School last year, a view she has expressed in various speeches and law review articles. As one of the court\u2019s moderate liberals and a champion of women\u2019s rights, she is now being routinely cited to argue for a timid resolution on the issue of same-sex marriage that would strike down California\u2019s ban on such marriages, but would leave prohibitions standing in about 40 other states.<\/p>\n

How Justice Ginsburg will vote on same-sex marriage is unknown. But her comments misread the legal and political landscape at the time of the Roe decision and have been used to bolster the inaccurate notion that the court\u2019s ruling on abortion rights somehow short-circuited a political process that was moving in the states to end criminalization of abortion. Some now argue that a toxic multidecade backlash against abortion rights could have been avoided if the court had given states more time to act \u2014 supposedly a cautionary lesson for marriage equality. <\/p>\n

The real story<\/a>, as explained by Linda Greenhouse, a former New York Times reporter who now teaches at Yale Law School, and Reva Siegel, a professor there, is that political conflict over abortion was escalating before the Roe decision, and that state progress on decriminalization had reached a standstill in the face of opposition from the Roman Catholic Church\u2026<\/p>\n

I seldom disagree with Justice Ginsburg, but in this case I do. In Roe v Wade<\/em>, SCOTUS made a correct and timely decision, because church intrusion into state affairs was keeping from women a basic human and Constitutional right. In like manner, the Court should not condone religious intrusion into state affairs that is keeping from LGBT couples a basic human and Constitutional right. Moving "too far, too fast" in the right direction is NEVER<\/strong> the issue.<\/font><\/p>\n

From Alternet<\/a>: <\/font>A Texas sheriff threw two Latino men into jail for 39 days "with no charges, no hearing, and no probable cause" and seized the $14,000 they had saved up to buy a new car, the men claim in Federal Court. <\/p>\n

     Roberto Moreno-Gutierrez and Jaime Moreno-Gutierrez sued Hill County, the Hill County Sheriff’s Department and the Texas Department of Public Safety, in Federal Court. Hill County, whose seat is Hillsboro, is between Waco and Dallas\u2026<\/p>\n

To understand the absurdity and bigotry of this injustice, you’ll need to click through for the rest of the article. Of course, the responsible official, Hill County Sheriff Michael Cox, is a Republican.<\/font><\/p>\n

From Crooks and Liars<\/a>: <\/font>The city of Stockton, California officially went bankrupt yesterday. Instead of concern for what that might mean for its residents in terms of services and their quality of life, Fox predictably focused on one thing: public pensions. And, instead of doing any kind of real analysis of the pension issues, or delving into the pushy behavior of the Wall Street creditors, Stuart Varney suggested the whole problem is due to slacker public employees living high on the hog for decades after just a brief stint of work. He looked forward to pensioners taking the hit and expressed hope that the same would happen in other California cities, too\u2026<\/p>\n

…And how many of those pensioners have worked for decades educating and protecting the public based on the promise of a comfortable retirement? While retiring at 50 may seem young to the 60ish Varney, I\u2019d like to see him start hauling firefighter equipment and running into burning buildings before he sneers about retirement ages again\u2026<\/p>\n

 <\/param><\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n

I stopped volunteering as a firefighter by 50, because I was becoming a drag on the youngsters, and unlike the pros, I didn’t even have to do it every day. Like the party that the Republican Reichsministry of Propaganda serves, Varny concerns himself only with taking away what working people have earned.<\/font><\/p>\n

Cartoon<\/strong>:<\/font><\/p>\n

\"3Cartoon\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I seem to be back on the mend and expect to be back to full time by the weekend. Jig Zone Puzzle: Today\u2019s took me 3:57 (average 4:42).  To do it, click here.  How did you do? Short Takes: From NY Times: With two same-sex marriage cases before the Supreme Court, numerous commentators have latched […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,3,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-open-thread","category-personal","category-politics","category-35-id","category-3-id","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10197"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10197\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}