I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a picture that captured the weirdness of Donald Trump’s hair quite like this one. I was thinking of putting in lines like an infographic. But just take a look. (Click the headline of this post to see a larger version of the photo.)
Florida is really shining with this needless obstacle for same-sex couples.
Here’s the deal:
A group of same-sex married couples sued the state of Florida today alleging it was not providing birth certificates for their children that lists both spouses as parents.
In indirect response, the state has now asked a judge in the closed year-old case that overturned the state’s same-sex marriage ban whether it must promulgate a new birth certificate form in light of the Supreme Court’s ruling that same-sex marriage is a constitutional right.
Of course, the answer is yes, they should. And that’s almost certainly what a judge will say. Any reasonable vital statistics office would have just proceeded with the new forms on its own. But perhaps fearing backlash from Gov. Rick Scott (R) or some state legislators, the office is slow-walking the whole thing. Nice work, guys.
After first saying that invading Iraq was awesome and then slinking back to ‘if the intelligence hadn’t fooled us’, now Jeb Bush is back to saying that “taking out” Saddam Hussein was a “pretty good deal.” In moments like these, it’s worth wondering, does Jeb want to be President? Are his political skills too rusty to make a run?
But there’s a more revealing prism.
Fareed Zakaria had a column out yesterday dissecting and demolishing New York Senator Chuck Schumer’s argument for opposition to the Iran nuclear deal. I won’t try to duplicate his arguments on the merits. I don’t think I can improve on them. But I have wanted for the last week to address Schumer’s decision.
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I feel like I’ve written this post four or five times now. But I just cannot get over or even fully get my head around the way that Donald Trump’s mere presence in the race has this power to drive everyone on the Republican side of the aisle insane. I don’t mean just that they don’t like that he’s in the lead and creating campaign havoc. I mean forgetting who they are, getting into fights with each other, and just generally losing their minds.
It’s like one of these classic Star Trek episodes where some malevolent non-corporeal force is driving everyone mad or putting everyone at each other’s throats for some unknown reason. But it’s not non-corporeal at all. It’s extremely corporeal, more than you and me. It’s Donald Trump.
Somewhat like the years of anti-Obama incitement and fomenting of The Crazy, which helped birth the Trump phenomenon that is now eating the GOP alive, the birther bacillus has now escaped the GOP biohazard lab and turned on four current Republican presidential candidates.
As we move closer to next month’s vote on the Iran nuclear deal, I wanted to note some parts of the story that are not getting sufficient attention in the mainstream press. Even in Israel, where the the P5+1 deal is quite unpopular, there is increasing concern, at least among elites, at just how far Benjamin Netanyahu is willing to go in damaging US-Israel ties in his war against the Obama administration over the Iran deal. As JJ Goldberg aptly puts it, the campaign of incitement and maliciously phony charges of anti-Semitism against the White House are “effectively turning American Jews into Netanyahu’s cannon fodder” in war against Obama.
Too true.
With all the commentary about the Iran, it is worth noting that there is an argument against the deal. It’s just not one that most opponents feel able or comfortable making publicly. It goes something like this.