Adam Serwer is a reporter at Mother Jones. Formerly a staff writer at the American Prospect, his writing has appeared in the Washington Post, the Root, the Village Voice, and the New York Daily News.
NOM President Brian Brown at a 2010 rally in Wisconsin.
Brian Brown, president of the National Organization for Marriage, which since 2007 has successfully fought to ban same-sex marriage in several states and fought to punish legislators and judges who have supported it, offered interesting analogy on the eve of Supreme Court arguments over the constitutionality of California's Proposition 8 and the Defense of Marriage Act. Friday, appearing on the show of conservative radio host Steve Deace, Brown argued for a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, saying "We need a solution in this country, we cannot be, as Lincoln said, half slave, half free."
I think we're going to win these cases. But say the worst happens and we lose in a broad way—that means that the Court somehow does a Roe, a Roe v. Wade, on marriage and says that all these state constitutional amendments are overturned, gay marriage is now a constitutional right – well, we’re going to press forward on a Federal Marriage Amendment. We’ve always supported a Federal Marriage Amendment, and there’s a lot of misconceptions about it. Some people try and argue, 'Well, this is against federalism.' No, our founders gave us a system where we can amend the Constitution. We shouldn't have to do this, we shouldn’t have to worry about activist judges, you know, making up out of thin air a constitutional right that obviously none of our founders found there and no one found there until quite recently. But if we do, for us, the Federal Marriage Amendment is a way that people can stand up and say, 'Enough is enough.' We need a solution in this country, we cannot be, as Lincoln said, half slave, half free. We can't have a country on key moral questions where we're just, where we don't have a solution. And if the Court forces a solution, the way we'll amend that is through the Federal Marriage Amendment.
Brown is referencing Abraham Lincoln's famous "House Divided" speech, which was about the inevitability of conflict within the Union over the issue of slavery. In Brown's analogy, presumably, the states where relationships between same-sex couples are legally recognized are the "slave states."
The issue of same-sex marriage will most likely be resolved with less bloodshed than the abolition of required. But judging by the evolution in public opinion on the issue, the marriage equality "solution" won't be the one Brown is hoping for.
A new survey from Gallup shows Americans oppose the use of drone strikes to kill suspected terrorists who are Americans whether those Americans are on American soil or abroad. But Americans still overwhelmingly back strikes against suspected terrorists abroad who are not American.
Here are the results, which suggest the public debate over targeted killing is affecting perceptions of the policy:
The most surprising result may be that 25 percent of those surveyed are okay with using drone strikes to target non-citizen terror suspects in the US. Maybe they just really don't like their neighbors?
Nevertheless, the premise of Gallup's question remains flawed. Although most of the debate over targeted killing has focused on drones, the survey is of limited usefulness because it focuses on the method of killing rather than the authority to kill. As far as Americans are concerned, the question is really whether and under what circumstances the government has the authority to use lethal force and what the limits are on that authority.
Although the use of drone airstrikes in the United States remains a far-fetched hypothetical, the use of targeted killing abroad is not. Between 3000 and 5000 people have been killed in US drone strikes abroad, including many civilians. Based on what we know publicly, only four Americans have ever been killed in drone strikes. Yet the kind of strikes the US is overwhelmingly engaged in are so popular that the number of people who oppose them is similar to the number who think the government should be firing missiles at terror suspects inside the United States.
Correction: This post originally stated that three Americans have been killed in drone strikes. The correct number is four.
Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Thomas Perez
Republicans are expected to fiercely oppose President Barack Obama's nomination of Thomas Perez, the assistant attorney general for civil rights and one of the more prominent progressives in his administration, to head the Labor Department. Already, Perez's GOP foes have accused him of corruption concerning a deal he helped forge in the Justice Department. This agreement prevented an unusual Minnesota housing discrimination case from going to the Supreme Court, and the full backstory—which Perez's critics haven't acknowledged—is a bizarre tale of legal complexities in which landlords tried to use a major civil rights law to protect themselves from city regulations meant to improve living conditions for low-income residents.
It all began in the early 2000s, when the city of St. Paul—after finding that many homes in low-income neighborhoods lacked heat or locks on the doors—kicked off an aggressive campaign of housing code enforcement. A group of landlords retaliated, brandishing an unexpected weapon: the 1968 Fair Housing Act. This law bars practices that adversely affect minorities, whether those practices were designed to discriminate or not—a legal standard known as disparate impact. The landlords alleged that the city's actions would force them out of business and harm their minority tenants whose access to affordable housing would be affected. The landlords were essentially arguing that by aggressively enforcing basic housing standards St. Paul was discriminating against low-income minorities, hoping to replace them with wealthier homeowners.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) endorsed a path to legalization—but not citizenship*—for unauthorized immigrants in the United States at a speech before the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce Tuesday, another step on Paul's short, steep journey to moderation on immigration reform.
"If you wish to work, if you wish to live and work in America, then we will find a place for you," Paul said Tuesday. "Somewhere along the line Republicans have failed to understand and articulate that immigrants are an asset to America, not a liability."
"Would I hope that when they become citizens, these new immigrants will remember Republicans who made this happen? Yes," wrote Paul in February, while later referred to "normalizing" or "legalizing" undocumented immigrants rather than granting them citizenship. "But my support for immigration reform comes not from political expediency but because it's the right thing to do." Paul also wrote that undocumented immigrants eligible for the DREAM Act—those brought to the US as children who are poised to go to college or join the military—should be legalized first. "I would start with Dream Act kids, children brought here illegally as minors."
Paul has come a long way on immigration. In 2008, he was a believer in the "Amero" conspiracy—the secret plan to merge Canada, the United States, and Mexico and create a "borderless mass continent" under a single currency called the "Amero." During his 2010 Senate run, when he campaigned as a tea party insurgent, he struck a hard line on immigration. "We shouldn't provide an easy route to citizenship," Paul said in 2010 during an interview with Russia Today. In the same interview, Paul rejected the guarantee of birthright citizenship in the 14th Amendment: "We're the only country that I know that allows people to come in illegally, have a baby, and then that baby becomes a citizen. And I think that should stop also." Another reason Paul opposed immigration reform and birthright citizenship? "A lot of this is about demographics," Paul said during the RT interview. "If you look at new immigrants from Mexico, they register 3-to-1 Democrat, so the Democrat Party is for easy citizenship and for allowing them to vote."
On his campaign website in 2010, Paul endorsed making English "the official language of all documents and contracts." He wanted "an underground electric fence, with helicopter stations to respond quickly to breaches of the border." He supported Arizona's harsh anti-immigration law, part of which was struck down by the Supreme Court. Paul insisted in his speech Tuesday that security must be a component of comprehensive immigration reform, abandoning the electrified fence idea but insisting on "drones, satellite, and physical barriers, vigilant deportation of criminals, and increased patrols" to help secure the border. (Prior security benchmarks have largely been met, and border crossings are way down, but on the right it's an article of faith that nothing has been done.)
Still, legalization without citizenship is a nonstarter for comprehensive immigration reform supporters, who say it would create a large permanent group of second-class citizens.
Paul has yet to join the GOP's big stars in supporting path to citizenship a group that includes Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), and Jeb Bush (R-Fla.). Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who joined Paul during his drone filibuster, still opposes a path to citizenship.
Passage of an immigration reform bill that guarantees a path to citizenship for the nearly 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States depends on how many GOPers in the House and Senate decide to follow the path of Marco Rubio, rather than that of Cruz. Although he's come along way from his original hardline positions, Paul remains somewhere between the two.
Correction: An earlier version of this post erroneously stated that Paul now supports a path to citizenship; he does not.
Thomas Perez, head of the Justice Department's civil rights division.
President Barack Obama will nominate Thomas Perez, currently the head of the Justice Department's civil rights division, to be the next secretary of labor, Politico reports.
Perez is well-regarded by organized labor and his tenure as the head of the civil rights division has been praised by civil rights groups. But he's long been a target of the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Chuck Grassley. Grassley's concerns revolve around Perez's involvement in a Minnesota fair housing case. The division has also come under fire from Republicans over its handling of the New Black Panther voter intimidation case, but an Inspector General's report released last week did not conclude that the decision to narrow the case, which was made before Perez was confirmed, was based on racial or political bias.
If confirmed, Perez would likely be the most progressive member of Obama's cabinet, which is reason enough for Republicans to fight his nomination.
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