North Carolina yesterday became the 30th state to ban same-sex marriage. Early results showed the amendment to its Constitution passing overwhelmingly by as much as 61 percent. The popularity of the amendment and key position of North Carolina in the upcoming presidential election appears to have prompted the White House to cancel an event in the state. President Obama cancelled a scheduled trip to North Carolina on the day of the vote. While Obama opposed the amendment last year, this week the White House was ridiculed by the media over the President’s refusal to support gay marriage and his insistence that his views were still “evolving” on the subject. The cancellation was widely viewed as an effort to avoid renewed questions over Obama’s refusal to take a clear stand on the civil rights question.
There was a huge turnout on Tuesday in North Carolina — attributed to the draw of the referendum. The proposed amendment states that “marriage between one man and one woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this state.”
North Carolina is viewed as a key target with Virginia for both campaigns. The vote reflects the division in the state with more liberal urban areas opposing the amendment while more conservative rural areas supporting it.
Just for the record, I have long advocated that the solution to this debate is to get rid of “marriage” licenses in favor of a universal civil union standard — which is closer to the function of the state recording of such unions. I believe that marriage should be left to individual faiths and institutions as a religious-based concept. The role of the state is to record a civil commitment of two individuals to live as one couple. The current debate — including the demand for retroactive termination of marriages — shows how the term marriage continues to inject religiosity into what is a civil contract between citizens.
Notably, the last time North Carolina amended its Constitution on marriage was in 1875 when it banned interracial marriage. That ban only ended in 1971.
Source: CNN
Mike, to be honest, you don’t strike me as having the type of ego that craves fame, and my apologies if I implied that you did, since I sense you’re of a purer & more honest spirit than that, but come on, don’t keep making me beat the dead horse point that guy’s who live & breathe legal principles like Turley cannot allow themselves to advocate for upholding the Constitution at all costs then turn around and vote for the guy he just articulated vociferously in major publications as the biggest gravedigger of the Constitution to take office in over 200 years.
I’ll tell you what, let me propose this Mitt Romney like wager even though I’m a man of modest means. The bet is this. If in the highly unlikely (I’d say mathematically impossible) event that you can get your friend Turley to admit that despite all the alarm bells he’s publicly raised re: Obama as the biggest gravedigger of the Constitution in US history, that he’ll still be voting for Obama this November (presumably under the rationalization as a lesser evil) then I will mail you, and this will be a publicly declared legally binding contract, a check for the sum of ten thousand US dollars.
Just put your money where your keyboard is and we’ll settle this lopsided debate once and for all.
Note that if in the highly likely event Turley confesses he must abstain this presidential election then you are required to mail me a check for exactly 10 US dollars, so I’m giving you 100 to 1 odds.
My mailing address will be forthcoming in a private email. I await your eager taking of this no-brainer challenge.
KF — I confess, I did not read the thread closely. I pretty much always skim the blogs, unless they’re about the Trayvon Martin case. Anyway, as I stated in the beginning of my comment, I do not have a dog in the race.
Mike Spindell, you said “believe it or not I even have close friends that are antediluvian Republicans.” I enjoyed that; I like sentences with the word “antediluvian” in them. Besides which, I had a fun experience recently. A friend of mine (very interesting woman, high i.q., fascinating background in India, Hindu, independent, educated, great cook!) told me that it was her intent to become a Republican political activist! She told me with fear because she expected me to condemn her for it. I, however, supported her decision and congratulated her. (Her reasoning was distinctly different from that of most of her colleagues engaged in that endeavor.)
She made her choices and carved out this life for herself while maintaining and even enhancing her habit of deep humankindness!
The world is full of such an incredible variety of things. It’s really a cabbages and kings kinda thing — even when it’s a bummer!
Good point HSKI: the libertarian ideology not only utilizes social darwinism: “let them die if they cannot affor health care” said Ron Paul’s son but also it’s ultimately a conservative ideology insofaras it harkens back to a bygone era that cannot be replicated, that is, a mythological free market capitalism ufettered by both regulations & rigged markets stacked with uneven trade agreements engineered by inherently predatory supra & multi-national corporations.
KF, interesting. I tend to look at various cultures/countries around the world in terms of typical 100 to 300 year economic cycles. The free market always exists. Without trade and contracts of trade we cannot survive. To judge the quality of life in a specific society, I think that all one has to do is look at the level of government intervention into the market place to determine its current position in the economic cycle. Of course things like war, famine, technologies and desease etc. can cause huge variations or changes in the cycle in terms of both lenght and quality. I’ve always wanted to do a thesis on this to see how acurate it would be. The least amount of government intervention creates a better quality of life for the majority and the greatest level of government intervention creates the greatest quality of life for the ruling class, is what appears to be suggested from my broad historical analysis. It however would necessitate trying to determine which forms of government interventions create the greatest social and econonomic imbalances. For example. In some countries like So. Africa and Costa Rica, licensure laws, effecting both med schools and medical practitioners appear not to have created such economic imbalances in incomes, as in the U.S. yet appear to still maintain the quality of care. Of course a number of Americans have caught on to this and are going overseas for both their dental and medical care because it’s less than half the price . America is rated around 40th in overal healthcare but remains costly for the majority. Never the less, it would be a highly incompassing analysis to look at ever single intervention, evaluate its effect on the market place and then compare the apples to oranges. Alcohol is legal in one country with different sets of regulations and it’s out right illegal in another country. The conclusion is however, is that every single law creates negative ramifications to some degree depending on a vast set of conditions, yet offer some level of benefit. As an example, Fraud and Yong argued against one another, that an individuals sexual repression had both a neccesary benefits to society but also had tremendous negative impacts on behavior. The key to me is to determine those laws that create the greatest benefits and the least detriments. I have concluded for myself that almost all malum in se laws do that and almost all malum prohibitum laws do not and cause more harm than good. And the battle goes on. We’d have to repeal a lot of laws to give me hope.
“However, because government is a power brokerage cartel, and this is very important, libertarian understand, that we as a society cannot, no matter what we have tried, curtail the abuse of those in power.”
hskiprob,
The problem with the Libertarian analysis is that in the end it becomes all about social-Darwinism, with the strong oppressing the weak. Nice if you’ve got the guns and/or money, but bad for everyone else.
“The problem with the Libertarian analysis is that in the end it becomes all about social-Darwinism, with the strong oppressing the weak. Nice if you’ve got the guns and/or money, but bad for everyone else.”
You have neither the logicla analysis or historical data to come to that conclusion and make rme realize that you do not have a clear understaning of how the free market really works.
It is the unfettered ability to go out into the world and contract with others to do those things that you beleive will give you life liberty and the pursuit of happiness with taking the rights away of others.
How can this be bad? and why are you so fearful of it. You should be more fearful of governemnt because it has been the one to create such harm.
You guys???
“Bron. that is not the market. that is gambling. The market used to be investing in real companies that produced real things. What they are doing now is pure gambling on whether an index will go up or down. whether a group of people will or will not pay off their mortgages. Whether gold or silver will go up in price or down, whether the dollar will be stronger than the euro, etc.”
Shano,
Excellent points. Years ago the “market” was about investing in companies that actually produce products, or services. Now it is like Las Vegas, except that in Vegas the game is more or less straight, whereas here it is rigged towards the insiders, but as we see even they bet irresponsibly.
“You seem to imply that the economics of trading securities is a zero sum game, that is, what one person looses the other person gains so every thing balances out. When it comes to banks that is clearly not the case. Again, banks occupy a special place in the economy. When they loose it is not necessarily just for their own account. Their actions can have consequences for individuals who never wanted to be in the game.”
BFM,
In this and your ensuing comment, you detail the situation elegantly and I agree with all you’ve written
hskip:
“True free enterprise if you have enough balls.”
Most small businessmen and women would love to have real free enterprise, then we could compete on a level playing field with the big boys who get all kinds of goodies from government. It is megacorps who need to grow a pair and quit milking government [read tax payers].
shano:
“It is not the market when they can get free money from the fed and lend it back to the government at a profit. I could go on.”
Oh I agree. But until you get rid of the Fed and the idea of too big to fail, we will keep seeing this crap.
For the life of me I cannot understand why libs dont want a market economy, it would hammer these people like Jaime Dimon and the other incompetents who run major companies. It would crucify them, as it is they hide behind government regulations and use them to cry no foul when they screw the pooch.
The market puts incompetence and inefficiency out of business. Government regulations allows both to run wild unchecked and rewards it to boot.
bigfatmike:
“Well for one thing banks play a special role in the society and the economy. Even when they play with their own money they may get into situations which place depositors money in jeopardy, or in situations which may require a bail out from the government.”
And that is why people have a brain, so they can figure out which banks take risks and which dont. I have my accounts with a nice little regional conservative bank which doesnt do those types of things or at least not on that large a scale.
If you dont know the CEO of your bank and you dont know their philosophy, maybe you shouldnt have your money in a bank. Maybe a credit union is better.
Stupidity should not be a get out of the poor house on someone else’s dime card.
Enough bailing people out, even AIG execs now say it should have gone bankrupt. Let JP Morgan get itself out of the jam and if its customers are hurt then so be it. If I had money in JP Morgan Chase it would have in another bank as soon as I found out about this trade. Let the market pick the winners and losers; government, Krugman and the NY Times dont know enough.
@Bron “Let JP Morgan get itself out of the jam and if its customers are hurt then so be it.”
You and I actually agree on quite a bit. But the problem with just letting the market clear and take care of business is that some of these banks are so big that the damage will extend beyond bank shareholders and depositors.
The last time the damage nearly did extend far beyond the banks and their depositor to thoughtful depositors like yourself. The fact is that these big banks are so large and so intertwined in the economy that their bad behavior can affect all of us no matter how careful we are with our own financial affairs.
At that point I think it is both reasonable and essential that we take action together in the form of government regulation to protect all of us. Of course, I acknowledge and it should be noted that regulation also can cause serious problems as well.
BTW, emotionally, I would like nothing better than to cut these guys loose and let them rise or fall by their own hand. The problem with that is that lots of innocent and careful and thoughtful people would be wiped out financially.
Malisha:
Have you really been following this thread closely? Have you read Turley’s articles on “Obama’s Kill Policy” after Holder’s NWU speech?
Forget oaths for crying out loud.
No Constitutional Lawyer that has an ounce of credibility and self-respect is going to sound the alarm to the world that Obama is the greatest threat to over 200 years of this democracy’s most precious legal principles and then 7 months later cast a vote of confidence for him.
—————————————————————————————————
Sorry Mike: despite those 20 years of school I started a shoe shine business on the streets of Chicago when I was 8 years old one summer break and have been gainfully employed every year since, often in union jobs, some in factory jobs where one of my thumbs was crushed and rendered partly mangled, and both my parents retired from trade union jobs.
I realize it gets you all bunched up to imagine your beloved Professor that’s given you the closest thing to your 15 minutes of fame won’t be voting out of principle alongside you this presidential election but I suspect if you were a famous Constitutional Lawyer who took an oath to protect the Constitution and then you learned the President you just voted for 4 years ago has now decreed, like a medieval King, that he can lock up or summarily execute anybody he wishes without recognizing habeas corpus — that you too would consider such an act so far beyond the Pale that you couldn’t reward him again.
“I realize it gets you all bunched up to imagine your beloved Professor that’s given you the closest thing to your 15 minutes of fame won’t be voting out of principle alongside you this presidential election but I suspect if you were a famous Constitutional Lawyer who took an oath to protect the Constitution and then you learned the President you just voted for 4 years ago has now decreed, like a medieval King, that he can lock up or summarily execute anybody he wishes without recognizing habeas corpus — that you too would consider such an act so far beyond the Pale that you couldn’t reward him again.”
Karl,
If you think “fame” is of interest to me then you’re really more of an ass then I thought. I do this as my contribution to trying to make the world better, but unlike you, it comes out of my compassion for humanity. I neither need people’s approval, nor do I need a “party line” to cleave to, as you so obviously do. I’m quite happy with who I am and quite grateful that I have no celebrity. At the early part of my life when small celebrity presented itself as an opportunity for me, I consciously walked away from it, since I didn’t need others adulation to boost my own self-esteem. If the workings of this blog were to run counter to my personal ideals, then I would walk away from it without a second thought and enjoy obscurity, because I enjoy my life.
All you are doing is merely repeating your one point over and over again in the spirit of “when did you stop beating your wife?” However, Professor Turley votes is no concern of mine, because believe it or not I even have close friends that are antediluvian Republicans. My measurement of esteem for people is based on their innate humanity, not some pre-judged political stance. Your repetition of the same assertions time and again represents either logic, nor proof. It is mere rote repetition of an allegation and a constant evasion of questions asked you. Your comments are the equivalent of an eight year old going “NYAHH, NYAHH, NYAHH” on a schoolyard. Surely your “twenty continuous years of education” should have schooled you better.
KF, I have no dog in the race, as to who votes for whom and how, but I do want to make an observation about one of your observations.
You described Professor Turley as someone who “after his bar exam had to take a sworn oath to protect & defend & uphold the US Constitution and then … he recently published a series of articles in major publications” etc.
My comment has nothing to do with predicting Professor Turley’s future conduct — it’s just about being able to judge someone’s conduct by their bar exams, their sworn oaths, and their publications or pronouncements thereafter. Just one example: Kenneth Gribetz, Esq., an attorney practicing in New York, was once the Prosecutor of Rockland County, New York. He passed the bar exam and had to take a sworn oath etc. etc. and then he wrote, spoke and publicly displayed his authority and his positions for years. On Wednesday, May 3, 1995, THE INDEPENDENT (newspaper) reported,. under the headline “GRIBETZ PLEADS GUILTY,” that Gribetz, “facing a battery of federal felony charges,” pled guilty to two federal misdemeanors, resigned his office, and reportedly left the country. (He has returned now and practices law again, his bar license apparently unaffected by the “flap.”) But really, who could have predicted his conduct simply on the basis of his status as a lawyer, his oath, and his public acts, deeds and writings?
In spite of my reputation, I am also not trying to say that all DA’s are corrupt, that all lawyers should be suspected of corruption, that oaths are generally meaningless, or anything else like that; I am not going farther than this:
You just can’t always predict what someone will do by their credentials and what they put into writing or speech for public consumption.
Mike: Your arguments are getting weaker & weaker like a tired old boxer whose running out of steam.
The only thing authoritarian in my mindset is having the authority of 20 straight years of education to predict with mathematical certainty how certain actors will behave under certain circumstances.
Now you take the case of a highly ethical legal scholar & Constitutional expert who after his bar exam had to take a sworn oath to protect & defend & uphold the US Constitution and then juxtapose that fact with the fact he recently published a series of articles in major publications documenting how & why Obama has done more to damage, undermine, thwart & render meaningless the world’s most powerful & enduring legal principles, rendering his administration the ultimate arbiter of life & death — guilt or innocence — by decreeing that he alone has the right to be the judge, jury & executioner of anybody on the planet he sees fit — a leap back to medieval jurisprudence one decade into the 21st Century for crying out loud!
Now why would any rational person keep desperately clinging to the notion that’s it’s even 1% possible for a Professor like Turley to violate his sworn oath & duty by casting a vote of confidence for the man that he’s just sounded the loudest possible alarm bells about being the most pernicious & supreme gravedigger of every principle he holds dear and was sworn to protect?
Maybe you can sleep at night by stomaching such hypocrisy but rest assured the nation’s preeminent Constitutional Lawyer with sworn oaths to uphold cannot, and will not. Q.E.D.
The more you struggle against the logical power of this argument the more you look like a silly old fool, clinging to his religion, as closed minded as any conservative that ever was, whose perhaps not quite as smart as everybody here once thought.
Res ipsa loquitur
Karl,
Only the fool or the knave declares his assertions to be logical, without providing actual proof. You then assert to having twenty straight years of education. I guess you haven’t worked much in your life. This makes you an empty braggart with disingenuous tendencies. Ho hum. Seriouly is this the best you’ve got after all those years of study?
Bron. that is not the market. that is gambling. The market used to be investing in real companies that produced real things. What they are doing now is pure gambling on whether an index will go up or down. whether a group of people will or will not pay off their mortgages. Whether gold or silver will go up in price or down, whether the dollar will be stronger than the euro, etc.
It is not production and it is not the market when they are frontrunning by a billionth of a second in order to make a profit on their customers traders.
It is not the market when they can get free money from the fed and lend it back to the government at a profit. I could go on.
Mike Spindell:
you neglect to mention that the 2 billion trading loss is someone else’s gain. But then so has the NY Times and other main stream media outlets.
From what I know, a bunch of firms made hundreds of millions of dollars on that JP Morgan Chase loss.
Where is the harm? Someone wins and someone loses, that is the market. Some people literally made fortunes.
Why should government regulate voluntary exchanges of goods and services? Why should government pick losers and winners? Why should government have the power to prevent the winners from making bank and the losers from going out of business?
@Bron
Well for one thing banks play a special role in the society and the economy. Even when they play with their own money they may get into situations which place depositors money in jeopardy, or in situations which may require a bail out from the government.
Society may be faced with the choice to bank-roll their foolish behavior or face the prospect of collapse of large parts of the economy. There are good arguments to restrict the business activities of banks that accept deposits from ordinary people. If banks insist on mixing deposit and investment banking then it makes sense to regulate the kinds of investment the banks can make. If banks refuse splitting the banking business, or regulation of investment choices, then it makes perfect sense to restrict the size of of banks. A few decades ago there were more than 13,000 banks in this country. If a few of them failed the consequences did not include economic disaster for the country. Today the failure of a single bank can cost millions of individuals their life savings and set off an economic death spiral that can lead to the loss tens of millions of jobs, with international consequences.
Banks are one of the few business that by their own actions can bring on a depression or set us all back to subsistence living. Why would any one or any society place their living and perhaps their lives in the hands of business leaders delusional enough to think they really are master of the universe?
@bron “the 2 billion trading loss is someone else’s gain.”
You seem to imply that the economics of trading securities is a zero sum game, that is, what one person looses the other person gains so every thing balances out. When it comes to banks that is clearly not the case. Again, banks occupy a special place in the economy. When they loose it is not necessarily just for their own account. Their actions can have consequences for individuals who never wanted to be in the game. There actions can force others to intervene in order to save what should never have been put at risk in the first place.
There is much to be said on each side of this discussion. But the idea that banks should be left alone because their actions only affect their own accounts is simply false – which can be ascertained by anyone willing to look at the headlines in the past few years.
“Mike: I already established above that an “unequivocal declaration” by Turley is not necessary for proof but rather deductive logic and common sense make crystal clear that no world famous Constitutional lawyer would ever write a series of articles documenting how Obama has done more to undermine the Constitution than anybody in the nation’s history — reducing it to a scrap of paper really insofar as he’s decreed himself judge, jury & executioner of every soul on the planet — and then have the audacity & hypocritical self loathing to turn around and vote for him — for if you love the Constitution you cannot possibly abet it’s grave digger.”
Karl,
Not logic, merely your opinion. I certainly know JT better than you do and I couldn’t possibly venture an opinion of what he will do once in the privacy of the voting booth. Even though your political philosophy disdains voting, you can’t deny that it is a process that one performs in secret. All I know is that in 2008 JT rightly didn’t endorse any candidate and certainly didn’t disclose his vote. You are merely opining is a duplicitous manner: “and then have the audacity & hypocritical self loathing to turn around and vote for him” to advance your political views. Your statement: “folks like Turley & I and so many others will be abstaining this round” rounds out your duplicity by trying to equate yourself and the Professor. The easy difference is that he has the courage you lack.
Now truthfully Karl, you don’t love the Constitution at all do you? Oh that’s right you lack the guts to ow up to your political viewpoint, even though the only penalty that would accrue, is that people will better understand what an authoritarian place you’re coming from. Your entire verbiage bespeaks an authoritarian mindset.
Shano: Nobody’s implying that Romney is a viable alternative, on the contrary, which is why, unfortunately, folks like Turley & I and so many others will be abstaining this round.
Hskip:
I dont think government has all the answers, in fact I only think government is there to protect our rights and should be strictly limited. Our Constitutional Republic with our Constitution and Declaration is pretty dam good. It has just been abused by fools and evil men.
Where libertarians go wrong is assuming you can revert to the state of nature and still support individual rights. You cannot, you need an objective set of laws with the ability to uphold those laws. You cannot have a 1000 court system with a 1000 different laws.
I am a big free market guy but I am no anarchist which is basically a nihilist. Having a 1000 different court systems all competing for supremacy of market is like having nothing at all. And the winner would be the court system which gave the most people what they wanted regardless of whether it was right or not.
Free markets work well to bring milk, eggs and cars to market, but not so well in protecting our rights. For that you need government with a codified, objective set of rules and regulations which protect individual rights of all people.
You stated, “I don’t think government has all the answers, in fact I only think government is there to protect our rights and should be strictly limited. Our Constitutional Republic with our Constitution and Declaration is pretty dam good. It has just been abused by fools and evil men.”
You’re absolutely correct on this. However, because government is a power brokerage cartel, and this is very important, libertarian understand, that we as a society cannot, no matter what we have tried, curtail the abuse of those in power. As you have seen, they lie, cheat, steal and even kill to get into power or maintain it because government truly is a power brokerage cartel. How are you going to stop them when they have such vast police and judicial powers? Who is regulating the regulators, when the regulators are controling the entire system of justice.
If someone can show me something different I’m all ears. I’ve been around a long time and I’ve seen constant corruption and abuse from our political system over 45 years. The only way to beat them is by not allowing them to redistribute or wealth, in the first place, hence limited government or anarchy. The U.S. Constitution attempted to limit government and I say we have failed miserable. So what’s left? True free enterprise if you have enough balls. That’s my biggest fear.
HA HA! @Mike Spindell and KF: During the 90s I was doing a lot of activism in the child abuse prevention area, and I was publicizing (before www days) a case where the Army had colluded with a high-ranking officer to help him gain control over his four children, who had credibly alleged abuse by him in the past. Just at that time the gay rights folks were demonstrating in DC against the ban on gays in the military. So we joined up for a couple of our demonstrations and for a while I trained with them so my people and theirs were on the same page. At one point, when we went out for coffee after some event or other, I began to get funny (I can do funny when I’m very tired) and I pointed out to them that the two worst traps our culture has to offer are MARRIAGE and the MILITARY. I said: “THE VERY TWO WORST INSTITUTIONS WE HAVE IN OUR SOCIETY, THAT HAVE RUINED MILLIONS OF LIVES, that any number of people will tell you were the biggest mistake of their whole lives, and you guys don’t have it but you WANT IT?”
It was a gay crowd and they all laughed with me, nobody took offense, and we demonstrated anyway.
hskip:
did you actually read what I wrote to Mike?
Or do you not know what an “invisible hand” is? Which is what I am inferring from your reply.
We have several hundred court systems now, each a monopoly run by some government throughout the world. I say we need a thousand more and we must eliminate, of course, the monopolies controled by various power brokerage cartels. I think if people have the option of choosing between a private company and a government court monopoly, many would choose, as they do already with mediation companies, the private concern. The entire world of international trade created the Law Merchant to escape the various political courts. We as people have let brawn rule over the pen and it is only our fears that prevent us from changing. Just as the cultures around the world lived under the tyranny of monarchs, we live under the tyranny of fascism.
While I agree with the Obama bashing on this thread, I can imagine that Romney bashing (if he gains the office) would uncover even worse acts and policies. Romney would bully the whole world by having his posse tackle it and cut off its hair.
Yea, Obama is working in an evil system, an imperial system.
Speculating on Constitutional changes each would make, Romney would be supporting the one man one woman marriage amendment (shit out of luck gay people-forever!) and Obama supporting the remedy for Citizens United.