digg:
Tweet first, ask questions later. (larger image)
In case you you missed the media’s epic fail this afternoon, check out this chart.
This is terrifying.
SSM. Day 2. Audio
GENERAL VERRILLI: So there is no administrative advantage to be gained here by what Congress sought to achieve. And the fundamental reality of it is, and I think the House report makes this glaringly clear, is that DOMA was not enacted for any purpose of uniformity, administration, caution, pausing, any of that. It was enacted to exclude same-sex married, lawfully married couples from Federal benefit regimes based on a conclusion that was driven by moral disapproval. It is quite clear in black and white in the pages of the House report which we cite on page 38 of our brief -
CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: So that was the view of the 84 Senators who voted in favor of it and the President who signed it? They were motivated by animus?
GENERAL VERRILLI: No, Mr. Chief Justice. We quoted our — we quoted the Garrett concurrence in our brief, and I think there is a lot of wisdom there, that it may well not have been animus or hostility. It may well have been what Garrett described as the simple want of careful reflection or an instinctive response to a class of people or a group of people who we perceive as alien or other. But whatever the explanation, whether it’s animus, whether it’s that — more subtle, more unthinking, more reflective kind of discrimination, Section 3 is discrimination. And I think it’s time for
the Court to recognize that this discrimination, excluding lawfully married gay and lesbian couples from Federal benefits, cannot be reconciled with our fundamental commitment to equal treatment under law.
I still cannot believe that people could actually go to the Supreme Court with ridiculous arguments like these:
JUSTICE BREYER: What precisely is the way in which allowing gay couples to marry would interfere with the vision of marriage as procreation of children that allowing
sterile couples of different sexes to marry would not? I mean, there are lots of people who get married who can’t have children. To take a State that does allow adoption and say — there, what is the justification for saying no gay marriage? Certainly not
the one you said, is it?
Look, you said that the problem is marriage; that it is an institution that furthers procreation.
MR. COOPER: Yes, Your Honor.
JUSTICE BREYER: And the reason there was adoption, but that doesn’t apply to California. So imagine I wall off California and I’m looking just there, where you say that doesn’t apply. Now, what happens to your argument about the institution of marriage as a tool towards procreation? Given the fact that, in California, too, couples that aren’t gay but can’t have children get married all the time.
MR. COOPER: Yes, Your Honor. The concern is that redefining marriage as a genderless institution will sever its abiding connection to its historic traditional procreative purposes, and it will refocus, refocus the purpose of marriage and the definition of marriage away from the raising of children and to the emotional needs and desires of adults, of adult couples.
Transcript: http://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/12-144a.pdf
Download: http://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_audio_detail.aspx?argument=12-144
i hate u google!
“Getting my news from what’s retweeted by Stalin?! Google Reader is more than a daily habit. It’s an extension of myself. I’m truly fucked now!”
The big picture is that this is a big problem that has gotten much worse quickly. Right now, there’s a general belief that because these are pharmaceutical drugs, they’re safer than street drugs like heroin. But at some point, people using these drugs are going to become more aware of the dangers
I think the focus on gaffes is a deep embarrassment, like, a deep embarrassment, and a systemic failure on the media’s part,” he says. “And the danger of that is that, when you don’t tell people how a machine works, when it’s broke, they don’t know how to fix it. And I think that’s begun to happen.



