{"id":15049,"date":"2015-04-14T12:17:40","date_gmt":"2015-04-14T19:17:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=15049"},"modified":"2015-04-14T12:17:40","modified_gmt":"2015-04-14T19:17:40","slug":"open-thread4142015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2015\/04\/14\/open-thread4142015\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Thread–4\/14\/2015"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I dug into my corporate reporting for my volunteer group, I discovered I have until mid-May to get that done, so I decided to blog instead, in addition to delving into the mess I need to tackle for grocery delivery day tomorrow.<\/font><\/p>\n

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

Today\u2019s took me 2:38 (average 4:30).  To do it, click here<\/a>.  How did you do?<\/font><\/p>\n

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

From Daily Kos<\/a>: <\/font>South Carolina wants to be able to continue to ban gays and lesbians from marrying each other. They want to do that so much that they filed an amicus brief<\/a> with the Supreme Court that they should continue to be able to do so. In it, they make an "originalist" argument that if the Constitution is read just as its drafters understood it, gays can be discriminated against because women can be discriminated against. Mark Joseph Stern at Slate has all the crazy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

Here\u2019s the gist of South Carolina\u2019s fascinatingly sexist argument. The state wants to prove that the 14th Amendment\u2014which guarantees "equal protection of the laws" to every "person"\u2014was not intended to displace state marriage laws. And what did those laws look like at the time? One major feature: In many states, married women were not permitted to own property or enter into contracts and had no legal existence apart from their husbands. According to South Carolina, the framers of the 14th Amendment explicitly preserved the rights of states to deprive married women of the ability to function independently from her husband. This right to deprive married women of basic liberties, South Carolina argues, is enshrined in the 10th Amendment<\/a> and is not at all undercut by the 14th Amendment\u2019s guarantee of equality.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Were SCROTUS (Republican Constitutional VD) to agree with this brief, not only would gays become the subjects of continued discrimination, but also, "barefoot and pregnant" laws would sweep those states, where Republicans have complete control.<\/font><\/p>\n

From The New Yorker<\/a>: <\/font>Hillary Clinton has followed up the official announcement of her candidacy with a new campaign ad featuring nothing but kittens.<\/p>\n

The sixty-second spot stars an assortment of kittens\u2014tabbies, calicoes, Siamese, and a dozen other breeds\u2014in a variety of adorable vignettes.<\/p>\n

At various points in the advertisement, the kittens are shown playing in a sock drawer, tangled up in yarn, and chasing a duckling.<\/p>\n

Clinton herself appears only in the final seconds of the ad, saying merely, \u201cHi. I\u2019m Hillary.\u201d<\/p>\n

Andy, I certainly hope my kitty cousins are not exploited in such a shameful manner. Wouldn’t it be better to portray the kittens using Republicans as a cat box? I might get in on that action myself!!<\/font><\/p>\n

From NY Times<\/a>: <\/font>One by one, four former Blackwater security contractors wearing blue jumpsuits and leg irons stood before a federal judge on Monday and spoke publicly for the first time since a deadly 2007 shooting in Iraq.<\/p>\n

The men had been among several private American security guards who fired into Baghdad\u2019s crowded Nisour Square on Sept. 16, 2007, and last October they were convicted of killing 14 unarmed Iraqis in what prosecutors called a wartime atrocity. Yet on Monday, as they awaited sentences that they knew would send them to prison for most if not all of their lives, they defiantly asserted their innocence…<\/p>\n

…The judge, Royce C. Lamberth, strongly disagreed, sentencing Mr. Slatten to life in prison and handing 30-year sentences to the three others.<\/p>\n

My only regret is that the top war criminals, Bush and Cheney, were not sentenced with them.<\/font><\/p>\n

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

\"0414Cartoon\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I dug into my corporate reporting for my volunteer group, I discovered I have until mid-May to get that done, so I decided to blog instead, in addition to delving into the mess I need to tackle for grocery delivery day tomorrow. Jig Zone Puzzle: Today\u2019s took me 2:38 (average 4:30).  To do it, […]<\/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-15049","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\/15049","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=15049"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15049\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}