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They’re not even trying to be truthful any more, are they?

Conservative wise guy Michael Medved claimed today that no state has ever banned gay marriage.  “That’s a liberal lie,” he says.

Seriously, he said that.  I am not making this up.medved

Thirty state Constitutions and dozens of state laws which are easily found contradict him, as well as about half a dozen Federal Court decisions striking down those very laws.

What he is doing, besides lying, is being deceptive. His claim, which is only accepted by the gullible and the idiotic, is that gays can always get married!  There’s no prohibition to gays getting married!  Just not to each other.

Got that?

I can’t believe he actually believes this is a legitimate argument.   It’s the same one used by bigots who fought against interracial marriage.

Anyway, I certainly hope the GOP keeps this up, as it is just another nail in their coffin.  Eventually, the current Republican party will die and perhaps a new GOP not run by the extremists will rise from the ashes, phoenix-like, and then maybe we can get back to the days when we had two parties debating issues instead of one party trying to get things done and the other one just saying “no” to everything.

Editorial cartoon: First course

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Legal upskirt photos?

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court yesterday ruled that it is not illegal to take pictures of women in public who wear short skirts.  Well, sort of.  I guess the perverts aren’t exactly taking pictures of all of the women, just the skirts.  Or the parts under the skirts …

Anyway, here’s the thing that people aren’t getting about this decision.

When I did a search for "upskirt photographer" it didn't quite give me anything safe for work. So here's a picture of Massachusetts.

When I did a search for “upskirt photographer” it didn’t quite give me anything safe for work. So here’s a picture of Massachusetts.

The court is not saying “This is a good thing” or “We approve of this practice.”  They merely pointed out that under the current law, it was not prohibited.  It was a loophole, if you will.

The law in question made it illegal to photograph people in “partial nudity” — and the court said, rightly, that the law did not apply in this instance, because no one on the subway was “partially nude.”  Further, you do not have a complete expectation of privacy on a subway.  (Existing Peeping Tom laws protect people from being photographed in dressing rooms and bathrooms when nude or partially nude, but the way the law is written, it does not protect clothed people in public areas.)

Anyway, the Massachusetts legislature has already snapped into action to update the law to include this, so it should be fixed soon.

 

Editorial cartoon: Selective memory

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Helping criminals means you’re unfit

Despite the fact that our system of justice works when accused criminals are allowed to have at least one lawyer to fight against the full might of the government, we defense attorneys are still daily insulted by people who think that if we defend bad guys, we must be bad guys too.  This is despite the fact that defense attorneys are the ones who are making sure the government doesn’t just stop and search everyone all the time, ignore all your rights, and lock you up without reason.gavel

Not good enough for the US Congress.  They denied the appointment of one of our nation’s greatest defense attorneys today to head the Justice Department’s Civil Rights division because the guy had spent his career defending people’s civil rights.  Clearly, this makes him perfectly unsuitable for the position.  Worse yet, many Democrats (including my own Senator) voted against him.

Obama rightly criticized those who voted against him:  “The Senate’s failure to confirm Debo Adegbile to lead the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice is a travesty based on wildly unfair character attacks against a good and qualified public servant. As a lawyer, Mr. Adgebile has played by the rules. And now, Washington politics have used the rules against him. The fact that his nomination was defeated solely based on his legal representation of a defendant runs contrary to a fundamental principle of our system of justice — and those who voted against his nomination denied the American people an outstanding public servant.”

Apparently the only person who should be eligible to head the Civil Rights division is someone who has absolutely no experience with it.  Because otherwise, he or she may actually take action to address problems or something, and we can’t have that.

All lawyers should be insulted by this.

Editorial cartoon: Completely unbelievable

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Fox reacts to Putin’s invasion predictably

“Well, obviously it’s beyond our control. The Russians are advancing. There is nothing that will stop them. We are not going to go to war over it.” — Charles Krauthammer

“There’s really no danger the United States or Europe will get in involved in what is really a civil war.” — Jeff Birnbaum  FoxNews

“We simply don’t have the ground forces to do it.  And confronting the Russians in the air would lead to major hostilities that the USA cannot afford right now.” — Bill O’Reilly

Not one blamed the President for the invasion or implied that Putin did this because the President was “weak.”

Oh, wait!  My bad!  Sorry, these are quotes from Fox News after Putin invaded Georgia when George W. Bush was President.  You remember Bush, who said that he looked into Putin’s soul and saw a good man.

I don’t really have to post what these exact same people are saying about Obama now, do I?  I mean, it’s so predictable, you could write it yourself.

 

 

Editorial cartoon: Armchair Generals

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Fox anchor apologizes for insensitive remark

Damn, I wish I could type that headline more often.

But the fact remains that this is so rare that we should call attention to it.

Fox news host Clayton Morris had mocked Facebook’s new settings where people can choose options other than “male” or “female.”FoxNews

Now he says this:  “I made a pretty ignorant statement a few weeks ago, we were talking about the Facebook story where they added a bunch of different gender-identifying things. And I made sort of an offhanded comment and I regretted it later because now, ‘Wait a second. There are people who are actually dealing with this and I’m an idiot for saying something stupid like that.’ So before you open your mouth, just think about it a little bit.  There are millions of Americans and children who are born with the sexual organs who are not there or are not fully developed and therefore don’t define themselves by a particular gender.  It’s not as black and white as we would like to make it.”

That’s — that’s the right answer.  I’m stunned.  It’s so infrequent that a Fox commentator thinks to put him or herself into the shoes of the people they criticize.

So let’s encourage this.  Seriously.  Send him a thank you tweet or something.

Editorial cartoon: The Gettysburg Excess