A Word of Caution.

How can the most powerful court in the most powerful country in the world be so intellectually corrupt?

Roberts, Alito, Thomas, and especially Scalia - shameless political stooges the lot of them.

While many Americans and wellwishers in other lands celebrate today's US Supreme Court decision effectively extending same sex marriage to every state without exception, it was nonetheless a 5-4, split decision.  A 5-4 split on an issue as plain as this.  That's worrisome.  A little more stacking of that bench with another Scalia or Thomas could theoretically reverse today's decision, perhaps on the pretence of states' rights - you know, the same guise used to launch the Civil War.

It's nice to think "there's no going back now" but that may be just whistling past the graveyard.  This is 21st century America, something the 'founding fathers' would probably find unrecognizable.  Jesus Christ on a Crutch, this is the country that has abandoned habeas corpus.  It is the Land of Liberty where today even its very own citizens can be swept up and imprisoned indefinitely with neither charge nor trial. It's the nation where the president has assumed the power to execute US citizens by drone strikes.  It is the land of Total Information Awareness where everyone is spied upon by both government and the commercial sector.  This is the land where democracy and the political process has been subordinated to the forces of market fundamentalism, neoliberalism and corporatism.

This is not a place where same sex equality before the law is secure on the strength of a 5-4 split decision.  Sorry.  Maybe with time and a major demographic shift, political, civil and human rights may be restored.  Maybe not.

California Legislators Trash Proposition 8

The Mormons and other homophobes behind California's Proposition 8 intended to ban same sex marriage have run into a legislative wall.

California legislators say the proposition is invalid because it attempts to rewrite the state constitutionl, something within the power only of the legislature itself.

Just days before a historic state Supreme Court hearing on Proposition 8, the Legislature approved a resolution Monday declaring that voters alone did not have the right to adopt the gay-marriage ban.

The nonbinding resolution contends that Proposition 8 – which defines marriage as between only a man and a woman – was an improper revision of the state constitution. Sweeping revisions can only be adopted, the resolution says, if they originate in the Legislature, gain two-thirds approval in that body and then win approval by voters.

The resolution also states that Proposition 8, which voters approved in November, oversteps the authority of the courts to enforce equal protection and prevent government discrimination.

"We're talking about a radical revision to our constitution," said Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, an openly gay member of the Legislature who sponsored the resolution.

"Do we have a constitutional democracy in California," Leno asked, "or do we have mob rule, where a majority of Californians can change the constitution at any time?"

It seems logical enough. Why should a bare majority of a minority of eligible voters be allowed to do what takes a 2/3rds majority in the legislature followed by voter endorsement?

When the question comes before the courts, California's attorney-general will argue that Proposition 8 violates an "inalienable right of liberty" in the state constitution