Jonathan Chait reported something today that was so unbelievable that I had to look into it. Conservatives were at the Supreme Court the week before last trying to both get California’s Prop 8 (gay marriage) overturned and force the White House to enforce the Defense of Marriage Act. As Chait rightly points out, its fine for a conservative to just be against gay marriage because he is, “But if you’re a lawyer defending a gay-marriage ban in court, you need an actual legal reason for your position.” And boy oh boy did the conservatives come up with an actual legal reason!

The conservatives are arguing that same-sex couples should not be allowed to marry because they don’t have accidental pregnancies. Chait says, “Gay couples don’t get drunk and wake up pregnant.” Therefore: no marriage for you!

I had a hard time believing this. Was it April first? No. Was there some giveaway in the text—a nod and a wink? No. So I clicked over to the LA Times, Gay Marriage Opponents Take Unusual Tack With Supreme Court. Chait was telling the truth. The article reports that the lawyers are arguing, “Unintended children produced by opposite-sex relationships and raised out-of-wedlock would pose a burden on society.”

There are ways to make the argument sound less ridiculous. But it always comes down to this: we need marriage to make couples behave properly. There will always be responsible couples, of course. We don’t need marriage for them. In fact, if it weren’t for the irresponsible couples, we wouldn’t even have marriage. Thus, there is no point in expanding the definition of marriage because it isn’t necessary.

There are some obvious problems here. What if a absolutist anti-choice lesbian get pregnant via rape? That would be unintended. Her non-married mate could just leave, not wanting the responsibility. I realize that this is not going to happen all that much, but doesn’t the society have an interest in seeing that the child is raised by two parents?

Another issue, of course, is equal protection. (I realize that conservatives only think that equal protection applies to George W. Bush, but still.) Why should responsible heterosexual couples get (for example) tax benefits when responsible homosexual couples do not?

It is all quite silly. But note: the big lawyer behind this is none other than Paul “If the state can force you to buy healthcare why can’t it force you to buy broccoli” Clement. That was no more silly and he managed to get four of the justices to agree. Who knows how he’ll do with this case.

Let me lay the whole story on you because (1) it hasn’t been the well reported and (2) I’m a hip cat who wants to lay it on rather than just write it down. In the lead up to Colorado’s shocking vote to make cannabis legal—Just to get high, if you can believe it!—Tom Tancredo promised that if the proposition passed that he would blow a fat one. This promise was made to Adam Hartle, a documentary film maker who caught the exchange on video.

Well, Colorado passed the law to make cannabis legal—Just to get high, if you can believe it! If this were a normal story, it would end here. Tancredo would back out saying something like, “Well, it’s still against federal law.” But it isn’t and he didn’t. Instead, he announced that he was going forward with his promise. He and Hartle were gonna blow a fat on and let the empty ice cream containers fall where they may.

But it is not to be. On Saturday, Tancredo announced that he will not be subjecting himself to reefer madness. That’s fine. As I indicated, that’s what I originally expected. What bugs me is how he’s backing out. According to him, “My wife is absolutely… She’s pissed.” What’s more, his grandchildren are “very upset with grandpa.” Give me a fucking break! So now cannabis use is legal in Colorado—Just to get high, if you can believe it!—but the Tancredo family want the world to know that they think it is the wrong thing to do.

Tancredo has long been on record in support of cannabis legalization. So are we really expected to believe that he can’t explain to his wife and grandkids that the use of this drug is neither physically nor morally dangerous? Tom Tancredo has spent his career doing mostly harm. Here was a chance for him to do real good: to say to the nation that its ideas about drugs are based mostly on government propaganda and bad B-movies. Instead, he is doing the opposite. Can you dig it?

David Mamet is not a great writer. But he has a good sense of story and character, as well as very unusual dialog. Thus it is strange that he is a conservative. But not a very thoughtful one. And this is probably why Newsweek decided to run a cover story written by him, Gun Laws and the Fools of Chelm. Tina Brown seems to want to signal that just because they’re no longer publishing a print version of Newsweek, that doesn’t mean they are going to do anything so rash as to raise their incredibly low editorial standards.

I’ve written for a lot of little publishers. Some of them are great. But most of them edit only so far as it can ruin your work. And most don’t fact check. But all big time publishers fact check, right? I used to think so. As we learned during the Niall Ferguson fiasco, “We, like other news organisations today, rely on our writers to submit factually accurate material.” (I believe that all reputable publications do fact check.)

Yesterday, Matt Gertz at Media Matters reported on, 3 Major Flaws In Newsweek’s Red-Baiting Gun Rant. One of these is truly astounding:

What the fuck?! Even aside from the astounding lack of understanding of background checks, one line really stands out, “The country is broke.” The country is not broke. But again (and again and again), we have a conservative who knows—Just knows!—that which just ain’t so. And note the logic here. It is stupid not to check these cards! But it would be an outrage if these cards were checked! Anyway, we can’t afford it!

But the rest of it reminds me of this SNL skit about how ignorant undecided voters are:

“Who is the president right now? Is he or she running? Because if so, experience is maybe something we should consider.” It is remarkable that a major news magazine would publish speculation about something that the writer could easily look up. Like Matt Gertz did (on a blog), “The FBI explains that, for more than a decade, there have no longer been forms resting ‘somewhere in the vast repository,’ but rather prospective purchasers are subject to FBI background checks to ensure they are not ineligible to own a weapon.”

I guess when you’re a Republican, there are just some things you can’t know. And unlike in the undecided voters in the video, conservatives like Mamet will not be helped by answering very specific questions. Our biggest problem in American politics is not the ignorant undecided voter, it is the willfully ignorant and myth-loving conservative voter who knows—Just knows!—that which just ain’t so.

As I reported yesterday, Don’t Get Excited About Immigration Reform. Greg Sargent reports this morning, Confusion Envelops Senate Immigration Plan. Basically, the eight senators can’t quite agree about what exactly they mean by the Southwestern border commission. The Democrats claim that this will just be an advisory commission and that it won’t have veto power about whether the federal government can move forward with the rest of the plan.

But Marco Rubio says he wouldn’t support a plan that doesn’t require the approval of the border commission. Rubio is in a difficult position. He wants to appeal to Latinos[1] but he doesn’t want to offend the Tea Party angry-crazy coalition that just loves him. You might think he is just another senator, but right now, he is the Republican Party’s best chance at the White House in 2016. The other Republicans will not go along if he doesn’t.

The whole “secure the boarder” clause in the Senate “framework” is a typical delay tactic. We see this tactic used a lot in gun law reform. Senator X would love to support a ban on high capacity magazines, but there is $100 in the bill for gun safety awareness and Senator X really can’t accept more than $50. (If the bill is changed to have only $50 for gun safety awareness, Senator X will find something else in the bill that “unfortunately” stops him from supporting it.) In this particular case, the Republican senators have come up with a brilliant idea: they pass immigration reform without doing any actual immigration reform.

It will be interesting to watch this go forward. Regardless, I remain unconvinced that anything real will happen. This is yet more of the Republicans pretending to reach out to (in this case) Latinos while signaling to the angry-crazy coalition that they have nothing to fear.

[1] You might think that Rubio doesn’t need to appeal to Latinos. After all, he’s one of them! But have you ever looked at him? He’s less Latino than I am. He’s a very white Cuban. And Cuban-Americans have a very strange place in the Latino ecosystem. Whenever I hear them talk, they seem primarily motivated by all the wealth their families lost when Castro took over Cuban. In Florida, they lean strongly Republican. So they aren’t at all typical of Latinos generally in their voting.

Exactly which demographic is Target attempting to target with this ad?

The provocative soundtrack alone is confusing: does the singer want to see what the girl or the piñata “has got”?

I could only watch in wonder as the pretty young woman, blindfolded and wielding a wand, brings out her best sexy Jedi-in-the-basement moves as she attempts to make contact with the hangy-thing. What will spill out when and if she ever breaks it open? Condoms? Jello shots? Feminine hygiene products? None of the above! In an M. Night Shyamalan twist, it’s fruit snacks for children. The look of sheer joy and surprise on the the girl’s face is bound to get her a lot more work. That was some fine acting.

The commercial is saved from complete surreal stupidity when the breathy voice explains that fruit snacks aren’t just for children; they’re for anyone above the choking hazard age. And they’re colorful against a white background. Brilliant. Now I really want a piñata. I don’t think I’ll go to Target though. That place is nuts.

I had to spend the afternoon at the DMV today. And I spent much of it reading (or trying to read) Why Does the World Exist? There is perhaps no more bizarre place to contemplate the nature of existence. At least for me. Because I have a natural tendency to get captured by solipsism. When you get right down to it, I’m not too sure that you exist. And just to show you how outside of normal thought I have gone, although I think I may well be alone in the universe—perhaps a dream of the universe itself—I fully accept that you too are alone in the universe.

At the DMV, the nature of existence takes on an intense “in your face” form. I spent most of the time there right behind a 60-year-old man who was getting an identification card. Apparently, the government had taken his driver’s license away from him for good. But the people at the convenience store would not take his expired driver’s license to prove that he was over 18 and thus allowed to buy cigarettes. If ever there were proof that I am a subset of the universe, there it was! Alone with my little brain, I never would have conceived of such a character.

It isn’t that the guy was strange. I’m actually rather good at creating very interesting and unusual characters. But I would never conceive of a character that had such a ridiculously trivial motivation. In fact, since hearing his story, I’ve been trying to spice it up. Surely the cigarette thing was a ruse. For one thing, I know that it will take him up to four weeks to get his card. Yet he had cigarettes. He was smoking at the bus stop. There is definitely more there than meets the eye. He’s up to no good.

Or was he? One thing I’ve learned during this “life” is that “God” is a terrible story teller. He is always creating two-dimensional characters in plots that are complicated without being interesting. Or so they seem to me. It is very clear that the stories and character I create are much better. But maybe that’s the point. Maybe it is just the limitations of my little brain—or the fact that I have a brain at all. This is, after all, the same brain that thinks (despite all the obviously contrary evidence) that nothing ought to exist.

I think, therefore I am confused.

This morning, an immigration reform framework was announced by 8 senators. There are two big reasons why we shouldn’t be excited by it.

First, it is primarily a huge giveaway to corporate power. It specifically calls for making it easier for high tech and farm workers to be giving a quick route into the country. I’m not against this necessarily. But the biggest problem we have in this country is in the healthcare field where groups like the AMA and ADA manage to erect huge barriers to foreign doctors and dentists practicing in this country. This is all about priorities and for the ruling class, getting tomatoes picked for a cent and a half a pound is far more important than providing all Americans affordable healthcare.

Second, this is a framework, not even a bill. Plus, it is coming out of the Senate and not the House. Anything that is good in the bill (and there is much) is likely to be stripped out or at least watered down. So stay tuned.

Part of me thinks that this is all one big PR push for Marco Rubio’s 2016 presidential run. As such, it doesn’t matter if the framework goes anywhere; it just matters that Rubio does something that looks like he gives a shit about anyone but our corporate overlords. I find it interesting that Rubio was the one to push the most conservative aspect of this plan: that the 11 million undocumented residents must get at the back of the line in applying for citizenship. This could put off citizenship for these people for decades. As they say, the demon is in the details, but this could make the whole reform practically nonexistent.

So let’s just wait. Let’s see how this moves forward. It will be a good test of whether the Republican Party is prepared to make even the smallest steps toward reform.

Afterword

The framework specifically mentions children. Ezra Klein reports:

These are pretty words, but they don’t make much sense. The whole reason that conservatives are against “amnesty” is that sets a bad precedent. It gives people an incentive to come to the United States illegally. The children may not have come here knowingly, but their parents did. Giving children special treatment gives parents everywhere an incentive to bring their kids here illegally.

Having said that, I’m all for making it easier for children to immigrate here. But I’m also for amnesty. I really think there is more than enough room here in the United States for everyone who wants to come. That isn’t true of most conservatives or even liberals.

This weekend Republicans had yet another get together where they planned to figure out how to stop being a minority party without, you know, actually changing the party in any meaningful way. And I think it is important to remember that some of their great ideas are really not going to work. Recently, I’ve been hearing this one, “Never discuss rape.” A better idea would be, “Pretend that you are for abortion exceptions.” As I’ve noted, this is the real hateful position. But it continues to be the one that comes off the least repellent. It just is the case that being an abortion absolutist is going to get the Republicans into trouble.

And this brings me to my general advice for Republicans, “It’s the policies, stupid.” Last week, Bobby Jindal said that the Republicans had to stop being the stupid party. But any party that takes advice about how not to be stupid from a creationist who has done exorcisms is in deep trouble. And it isn’t just that the Republicans are the party of stupid. They are also the party of hateful. Everywhere they seem committed to have no principle to being anything but thoughtless assholes. Except on abortion where their principled stands makes them thoughtless assholes.

It’s getting old to note that the Republicans are talking around their problems. And even I have been saying that eventually they will have to take a look at their policies. But there are good reasons to resist such a move. Traditionally, the Republicans have been pretty good at finding a charismatic leader and going from there. It was only 6 years between the humiliation of Nixon’s resignation and the start of the Reagan party. Now you could argue—and I do—that Reagan became president only because Paul Volcker created a recession just as we were coming to the 1980 election. But there will always be such events that will give Republicans hope.

The Republicans will have to change their policies eventually. The demographic shift is too extreme. So they are bound to do worse and worse in the coming decade. But eventually, they will figure out a way to get Latinos to resent African Americans. Or something. But that will happen. And the price they’ll pay will be giving in on little things. Like immigration reform, which their primary constituency (the rich) want anyway.

I am proud that I stood up to our government. I stood up for what I believed was right conviction or no conviction. I mean they can convict anybody of anything if they put their minds to it, but I wear this as a badge of honor. I am not a criminal. I am a whistleblower. The thing that I blew the whistle on is now the law of the land. Torture is illegal and it’s officially abandoned in our country and I’m proud to have had a role in that.

—John Kiriakou
Quoted in Fire Dog Lake