A note from TPM Reader AH …
It’s [AH] in Boise, Idaho. I’m a long time reader of TPM, have contributed a couple of news items, and have written you personally two or three times. Also a primate. This is a long email, and I apologize for that, but it takes a while to describe the situation here in Idaho.
I have watched happily as one state after another has had their ban on gay marriage reversed, was particularly joyful when Judge Candy Dale ruled against Idaho’s, and am in general agreement with you that the marriage equality issue will probably be settled by the end of President Obama’s second term.
TPM Reader JO gives us his read on how and when the Supreme Court will make its will heard on the seemingly inevitable judicial consensus in favor of same sex marriage rights under the US Constitution …
It’s hard to see how SCOTUS doesn’t take a case and provide a definitive answer within the next couple of terms. The current crop of district court cases are going to start producing circuit court opinions within the next year, and one of two things will happen then: either there will be the same kind of unanimous endorsement of marriage equality that we’re seeing at the district level, or there will be a circuit split – a unanimous rejection of equality seems extremely unlikely.
As you can see, today we have not only another state gay marriage ban struck down by a federal judge. We have another struck down by a Bush appointee. Indeed, one endorsed by then-Senator Rick Santorum. I’d like to hear from lawyers and SCOTUS watchers but I’m straining to think of any analogue in recent history where you have an issue of great national import, SCOTUS makes an ambiguous but suggestive ruling and basically all the lower courts in rapid succession say, “SCOTUS folks, you meant this.” In this case, your ruling means that state bans on same sex marriages are unconstitutional.
House Republican suggests voting be restricted to property owners. Watch.
That bizarre story down in the Mississippi Senate primary may have just gotten dicier. The wife of that ‘blogger’ who broke into Thad Cochran’s wife’s nursing says he took it down because Chris McDaniel, Cochran’s Tea Party opponent, told him to.
That would be an unfortunate development for McDaniel since he’s stated categorically that he only found out about the incident a couple weeks later after the blogger, Kelly, got arrested.
Koch Brothers group mobilizes to strangle Detroit in fiscal bathtub in rare recorded instance of archaic and horrifying right-wing ritual.
Whether they know it or not, I think Chipotle just entered the culture wars, asking customers not to bring their guns to their stores.
Okay, Arthur Sulzberger has now given his first interview about the firing of Jill Abramson. He shouldn’t have. It didn’t go well.
The most fascinating, even mysterious, part of the Abramson firing for me is just how such a big institution, with so many good lawyers and PR people, could manage to set off such a toxic explosion within its own precincts. And after that be seemingly so unprepared for the fallout. As I noted earlier, a lot of this seems to come down to the person of Arthur Sulzberger, who is after all the owner of the paper. (Of course, it comes down to him.) And his leadership of the Times – admittedly during one of the most challenging periods in decades – has already struck me (and many others who know vastly more than me) as weak and uncertain.
But reading over all the stuff that’s been reported – and mainly by Ken Auletta in the New Yorker and Dylan Byers in Politico – I feel like I’m starting to get a progression of events that makes intuitive sense. And it’s one that brings together even seeming contradictions in the account.