Thanks to a heads up from the Joshua blog, ABC News just posted a story on their Web site that claims the White House is working hard behind the scenes in preparation for a possible nasty round of musical chairs for the US Supreme Court if two of the judges step down this spring.
Justice John Paul Stevens is one of the rumored potential retirees. At 89, the judge admitted to the Associated Press last fall that he hadn’t hired a full complement of clerks for next term, according to ABC News.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, as we already know,announced last year that she had undergone surgery for early stage pancreatic cancer. She is 76.
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Gotta love the guy’s chutzpah. The lead counsel for the Prop 8 defense Andrew Pugno just doesn’t seem to get that being treated as less than or being viewed by society as some sort of freak somehow can actually impact a person’s self-worth. In his latest entry on the Protect Marriage blog he compares what he obviously views as the ridiculous notion of gay social stress and outcastdom as similar to special class considerations and imaginary demands of stutterers and exceptionally tall people.
Andrew really? Oh really?
It blows our mind the level of insensitivity and lack of empathy others display when not having had to walk in someone else’s shoes. Of course it would be hard to showcase the prism of emotions one carries throughout their daily lives when a majority of one’s society has determined that you are not worthy of the same privileges as they. That’s just not something you can act out in an impromptu game of charades. It either takes having the experience yourself to know the feeling or the simple act of compassion and the willingness to understand another human beings challenges when it it is so very clear that their path is very different than your own.
You’d think a college educated and intelligent man like Pugno could easily grasp that. But there’s almost this stubborn and unforgiving refusal to acknowledge that Prop 8 hurt people—-period. As though to do so would be a treason of sorts. To simply acknowledge that it hurt other human beings. Even if to just put the sexual identity aspect and constitutionality of it aside and just acknowledge that it hurt somebody. Is that too much to ask?
Here’s Pugno’s summation of the Prop 8 trial, day 4
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His name is Alan Sears. Mr. Sears is CEO and general counsel of the Allied Defense Fund. The fund bankrolls the defense for the Prop 8 trial. The fund has also bankrolled every other legal battle against marriage equality in the United States.
Here’s a special message from Mr. Sears for you. His agenda not only includes same sex marriage, it includes DOMA, ENDA—pretty much the destruction of any chance for this country’s LGBT community to see any glimmer of full civil rights and equality. This is one seriously deranged and dangerous white man. With a lot of money behind him—-and a lot of power.
03:10 – 10 months ago
Alliance Defense Fund President, CEO and General Counsel, Alan Sears, talks about the new administration’s support for homosexual demands and the new White House website that went up on inauguration day.
When you’re done watching the vid look at the following to see what Sears and his thugs are up to in DC right now while at the same time waging war against marriage equality in California.
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Supreme Court blocks cameras at gay marriage trial.
The Supreme Court has indefinitely blocked cameras from covering the high-profile federal court trial on the constitutionality of California’s ban on same-sex marriage.
The high court split 5-4 today, with the conservative justices in the majority.
Now in its third day, the trial in federal court in San Francisco is over the state’s voter-approved ban on gay marriage.
The presiding judge, Vaughn Walker, had proposed posting recordings of the trial on the court’s Web site after several hours of delay and allowing real-time streaming of the trial for viewing in other federal courthouses in California, New York, Oregon and Washington.
LA Times
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Here’s the latest from Mercury News regarding today’s blow-by-blow activities in the Prop 8 trial so far:
12:15 p.m.: UCLA professor to testify on positives of same-sex marriage
The Prop 8 trial is on lunch break until 1:40 p.m. Yale professor George Chauncey is done testifying after about a full day on the stand. Next up for the plaintiffs is Dr. Letitia Peplau, a UCLA professor being called to testify on the positive benefits of marriage for same-sex couples, and the impact on them of denying the right.
11:54 a.m.: Video of Prop. 8 supporter William Tam played in court
The plaintiffs continue to play the videotaped deposition of William Tam, one of the leaders of the Proposition 8 campaign, as Yale Professor George Chauncey remains on the stand (almost as
Prop 8 Trial Primer
an afterthought at this point). In the depo, Tam answers a variety of questions about why he opposed gay marriage, including what he perceived as a threat to children. He testified that children would opt to be gay if they know same-sex marriage is permitted. “Since it’s in the air, then they think, why not?” Tam said in his deposition.
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It’s great to see that most bloggers and news outlets are very much on top of Prop 8 trial coverage. What they’re not focusing on enough however is the perspective of the other side in terms of trial developments and how things are looking. So we decided to go take a sneaky peek at the Protect Marriage Web site; they really haven’t been doing a good job of updating it over the last year—resting on their laurels we suppose. But since the trial started the Protect Marriage blog has suddenly come alive. Here’s today’s latest entry from Prop 8 defender and general legal counsel Andy Pugno himself giving his personal take on how things are going since the trial commenced yesterday morning:
Day Two Mid-Day Comments from ProtectMarriage.com General Counsel, Andy Pugno
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The Courage Campaign is obviously committed to running this game—the Prop 8 trial game that is. While folks were hustling to find out which twitterers would be tweeting from the trial this weekend, Courage was quietly building a nifty little Web site that post tweets directly from the courtroom with summaries. It’s a one-stop shop for real-time trial updates. We love it—-except for the part where they’re sending an emailer around today asking for donations for building the thing. While we appreciate the gesture, as we recall we didn’t ask them to make the Web site. And Rick Jacobs—who’s sending the tweets—was gonna fly up to San Francisco anyway to see the trial. Why the hell should we have to pay for his meals, airline tix and hotel room?
We decided to ignore that email. You might want to do the same. We thought Courage was acting out of the goodness of their hearts—it turns out that they’ve just figured out another angle to raise up some coin. Why not send out a mailer straight out asking for money instead of the switch ‘n’ bait action?
Here’s the url the Courage trial tracker: http://prop8trialtracker.com
Feel free to tell ‘em we sent you:)
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Scene from the epic gladiator film "300"
You know, all this time no one has really given too much notice to the real backers of Prop 8—the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF). The Alliance Defense Fund is in their words— a legal alliance defending the right to hear and speak the Truth through strategy, training, funding, and litigation.
In other words they’re a bunch of wealthy extremely conservative attorneys who are determined to keep this country as white bread hetero as possible at any and all costs. And they’ve been hard at work at it since ‘94. For the Prop 8 trial which commences Monday morning, Charles J. Cooper (an ADF member) and other attorneys from the law firm of Cooper and Kirk along with ProtectMarriage.com General Counsel Andrew Pugno will be making up the legal team for Prop 8’s defense.
But the Alliance Defense Fund organization is the motherlode—the real home base for these attorneys and the org that provides all the coin to back the Prop 8 case. Protect Marriage is just a front. Don’t fall for it. ADF is where it all begins and ends. You need to know this. The media likes to dumb folks down and divert their attention away from the real playas and string pullers. The ADF Web site is listed at the bottom of this post along with other Pro Prop 8 resources for your voyeuristic pleasure.
Here’s a partial list of Supreme Court cases that ADF has funded and won over the years:
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