Does the Pope know he’s Pope? Fascinating look at how Pope Francis has thus far refused to take on most of the trappings of the papacy.
Time Magazine and Rush Limbaugh agree: the gay marriage debate is over.
The more I thought about it, Chief Justice Roberts’ suggestion that President Obama should have stopped enforcing DOMA really was preposterous. From TPM Reader AN …
I read Sahil Kapur’s write up on Roberts’ and Scalia’s swipe at the Obama administration for continuing to enforce DOMA despite the Administration’s belief that it is unconstitutional. I wanted to make two quick points about this:
First, is there significant and recent precedent of an Administration refusing to enforce a duly enacted law passed by Congress and signed by a President?
Back home in their districts, Republicans decide sequestration kinda sucks.
The latest question to emerge in the ongoing saga of Sen. Bob Menendez is the real identity of a man who so far has only gone by the name “Carlos.” ABC News recently released this photo of him. Can you identify him?
At border, McCain survives incident where woman climbs a fence. Per McCain: “Incident is another reminder that threats to our border security are real.”
This got buried yesterday under an avalanche of Supreme Court news, but it could end up being a significant barrier to comprehensive immigration reform, so it’s worth revisiting.
The short version is that Janet Napolitano sat down with reporters yesterday and effectively rejected one of the GOP’s key CIR demands — that any path to citizenship remain locked until border security is strengthened to meet some measurable, yet to be determined standard. Read More
The initial reactions out of the Court hearing this morning (very much take it for what it’s worth) suggest that DOMA is in big trouble. The notable fine print, however, is that while the four liberals on the Court appear to see an Equal Protection problem, Anthony Kennedy appears to be focused on federalism — i.e., states rights, that DOMA oversteps into the states’ right to define marriage.
If that’s the case, it would probably be the first time that “states rights” was ever used to vindicate any actual person or group’s rights. It’s almost always been bulwark behind which states hide to deprive citizens of rights. There are likely some marginal examples of the contrary. But the big verdict of history is unmistakable. It would be an ironic first.