The word “landmark” is often misused. But not today, not in the golden state, where the California Supremes issued what is truly a landmark ruling. You gotta love it: six out of the seven justices were appointed by (OMG) Republicans. Sometimes, it seems, the law matters.

Glenn Greenwald sorts out what today’s ruling means–and what it doesn’t mean. If you read this in its entirety, you’ll learn something about the process of judicial reasoning–and how to counter the inevitable distortions.

In a landmark ruling certain to spark far-reaching political and legal consequences, the California Supreme Court today ruled, by a 4-3 vote, that it is unconstitutional to exclude same-sex couples from the legal institution of “marriage,” even if such couples are granted the right to enter into “domestic partnerships” or “civil unions” which provide most, or even all, of the same rights as “marriage.” The Court is comprised of six out of seven Republican-appointed judges. The ruling had nothing to do with the U.S. Constitution, but instead was based on the California State Constitution’s guarantee of the “right to marry” and its guarantee of “equal protection” under the law…

The crux of the Court’s ruling is grounded in what it called “the right of two adults who share a loving relationship to join together to establish an officially recognized family of their own — and, if the couple chooses, to raise children within that family.” That right “constitutes a vitally important attribute of the fundamental interest in liberty and personal autonomy that the California Constitution secures to all persons.” The Court rejected a “separate-but-equal” arrangement for same-sex and opposite-sex couples — where only the latter can enter into “marriage” — because:

“affording same-sex couples only a separate and differently named family relationship will, as a realistic matter, impose appreciable harm on same-sex couples and their children, because denying such couples access to the familiar and highly favored designation of marriage is likely to cast doubt on whether the official family relationship of same sex couples enjoys dignity equal to that of of opposite-sex couples, [. . . and] assigning a different designation for the family relationship of same sex couples . . . poses at least a serious risk of denying the family relationship of same-sex couples such equal dignity and respect.”

Gay Marriage Ruling

P.S. Have you ever really thought about why gay marriage is viewed as such a threat? Here’s Congressman Barney Frank to straighten us out (so to speak):

“So, apparently, same-sex marriage is the V8 juice of America.”

During a debate over a “marriage protection” amendment, Mr. Frank said he did not understand Republican arguments that gay marriages would undermine traditional marriages, as if happily married men in Indiana, Nebraska, Kansas and Mississippi, learning that same-sex marriage was legal in Massachusetts, would smack themselves in the head and declare, “Wow, I could have married a guy.”

Joseph Galloway of McClatchy news was not one of the water carriers for the the Pentagon propaganda campaign carried out in disguise as Military Analysts for the major TV news. He has a few things to say.

Once upon a time, it was widely believed that one of the greatest sins the U.S. government or its temporary political masters could commit was to turn a propaganda machine loose on the American people.

Congress viewed this so seriously that every appropriations bill passed since 1951 has contained language that says no public money “shall be used for publicity or propaganda purposes within the United States” without the lawmakers’ prior approval.

The Bush administration has been caught violating the propaganda ban before, notably in 2005 in the case of radio host Armstrong Williams, who was paid to endorse President Bush’s No Child Left Behind law.

Particularly abhorrent to the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), which oversees compliance with the ban, is an agency’s use of “covert propaganda” or “covert attempts to mold opinion through the undisclosed use of third parties.”

This is why alarm bells should be ringing all over Washington about The New York Times’ disclosure that then-Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld encouraged a secret Pentagon program to care for and spoon-feed more than 50 retired senior military officers whom the administration deemed reliable friends who could be counted on “to carry our water” on the television and cable networks.

Galloway

And here’s the capper. Not only wasn’t he part of the favored few but Larry DiRita, the Pentagon spokesperson in those years, has tried to claim there were no favorites and that Galloway himself was ‘reached out to’ by the Pentagon and by Rumsfeld himself. Galloway goes into some of the lie in his article at the link.

Glenn Greenwald looks at the whole sordid mess.

“The endorsement yesterday by popular Marin and Sonoma County Member of Congress Lynn Woolsey of San Francisco Assemblymember Mark Leno for the Third Senate seat speaks volumes of where the race now stands and what it means. In fact, it may be the deciding factor in this three way primary contest.

In giving Leno her support, Woolsey, an eight term Congressmember, cited Leno’s commitment to issues that matter most in the North Bay part of the district: “Mark Leno has built a strong record on behalf of the issues the people of my district care deeply about. I am proud to announce my support for him today. We can count on Mark to go to Sacramento and provide progressive leadership on the issues we all care about—a cleaner and more sustainable environment, universal, single-payer health care, better schools and access to affordable higher education.”

California Progress Report

[thx Jack Kaplan]

Hmmm….

The U.S. Navy’s 6th Fleet flagship, the USS Mount Whitney, sails this week for an unscheduled deployment toward Lebanon and Cyprus to support Navy ships already at sea, Navy and U.S. officials said.

“[The ship] is deploying to assist with logistical missions and supporting assets at sea in the Mediterranean,” said Lt. Patrick Foughty, a 6th Fleet spokesman. “It will be supporting additional communication requirements for our ships already underway” in the 6th Fleet area of operations.

Mt Whitney to Lebanon

“Considered by some to be the most sophisticated Command, Control, Communications, Computer, and Intelligence (C4I) ship ever commissioned, Mount Whitney incorporates various elements of the most advanced C4I equipment and gives the embarked Joint Task Force Commander the capability to effectively command all units under the command of the Commander, Joint Task Force.

Mount Whitney can receive and transmit large amounts of secure data from any point on earth through HF, UHF, VHF, SHF and EHF communications paths. This technology enables the Joint Intelligence Center and Joint Operations Center to provide the timely intelligence and operational support available in the Navy.”

USS Mt Whitney

In more desperate gambling by our losing Presidential gang, Secretary of Interior Dirk Kempthorne, forced by court order to do something, declared the Polar Bear a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act, not an endangered species and specifically said this listing should not be used as a tool to get at the causes of the threat. And by the way, Oil Cos keep up your fine work — just clean up the bears if they fall into the oil

While giving the bear a few new protections — hunters may no longer import hides or other trophies from bears killed in Canada, for instance — the Interior Department added stipulations, seldom used under the act, that would allow oil and gas exploration and development to proceed in areas where the bears live, as long as the companies continue to comply with existing restrictions under the Marine Mammal Protection Act.

Protected Species

The oil and gas cos are already yelping:

‘We now have a species threatened which is both healthy in size and population; the real risk is litigation that will follow,” Crockett said. ”Lawsuits will continue to be filed opposing individual operations, lease sales and permits, and that could have a significant impact on business up here.”

These guys must really believe you can take your money with you after death. They are pushing pushing relentlessly against crucial action to slow down and stop the deterioration of our environment, letting all the costs be dumped into the laps of their heirs so they themselves can out boast Croesus. We’re the wealthiest! We have the most!

For a good look at the conditions of the bears and the fast changing environment see Michael Shnayerson’s May 2008 Vanity Fair article.

Of the world’s 19 distinct polar-bear populations (with an estimated total of 22,000), the one most carefully studied is in Canada’s western Hudson Bay. Instead of hunting from the ice in late spring and early summer, scooping up newly weaned ringed-seal pups like so many hors d’oeuvres, the bears found the Hudson Bay ice melting all too soon. Many lost significant body mass when forced to swim too early to shore and stay ashore too long. Females bore one cub instead of three. Some starving polar bears engaged in cannibalism. East of Kaktovik, U.S. scientists reported four polar bears drowned. Polar bears are among the world’s best marine-mammal swimmers. They aren’t supposed to drown. But even polar bears can’t swim indefinitely. For those four, the ice edge had receded too far.

Nicholas Kristoff managed to get into Tibet recently.

I sneaked through these Tibetan areas in Gansu and Qinghai Provinces, eluding the troops by taking a local car with curtains pulled over the windows, and it became clear that the recent anti-Chinese protests spread across a larger area in traditional Tibet than is sometimes realized. This was, in effect, a popular uprising against Chinese rule throughout Tibetan areas, and the region is still seething.

In addition, for good background on recent events in Tibet, under the guise of reviewing Pico Iyer’s new book, The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, Robert Barnett has a good piece in the New York Review of Books. Thunder from Tibet. Recommended.

The young monks of Drepung Mon-astery meet each afternoon to practice their skills in philosophical debate, and it was one such session that spilled out into the protest on March 10. They had several reasons to be antagonized about China’s policies in Tibet, besides what some probably see as nearly sixty years of foreign occupation. Many of these reasons can be traced to restrictions on religion and culture introduced in 1994 in order to erode the suspected sources of Tibetan nationalism.

Such measures include campaigns forcing Tibetans to denounce the Dalai Lama; an unprecedented ban on pictures or worship of him; a prohibition on the construction of new monasteries and on any increase in the number of monks; and a ban on students and government employees having religious possessions or carrying out religious practices. During the last two years, tension has been further increased by the forced relocation of 250,000 farmers to roadside houses, partly at their own expense; the much-publicized opening in 2006 of the Chinese railway line connecting Tibet to neighboring Qinghai Province, with its implicit encouragement of yet more Chinese migration to Tibetan towns; and the announcement by the Chinese government of a plan for the settlement of 100,000 Tibetan nomads. It was made clear by the Chinese authorities that public criticism of any of these policies would be unwelcome if not dangerous.

“A long-delayed trial of C.I.A. operatives and former top Italian intelligence officials moved forward here on Wednesday, as a judge ruled that Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi could be called to testify about the abduction of a radical Muslim cleric here in 2003.

Ghali Nabila, the wife of a Muslim cleric abducted in Italy in 2003, left a Milan court Wednesday after testifying in the case.

Testimony also began Wednesday. The cleric’s wife, Ghali Nabila, said her husband, Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, known as Abu Omar, was taken from Italy and transferred to a prison in Egypt, where, she said, he was repeatedly tortured. While acknowledging a program of “extraordinary rendition,” or abducting terrorism suspects outside the United States, the Bush administration claims that no one is sent to nations that torture.

“I found him wasted, skinny — so skinny — his hair had turned white, he had a hearing aid,” Ms. Nabila said, recounting her husband’s condition between prison stays in 2004.

Wearing a veil that revealed only her eyes, Ms. Nabila at first said she “didn’t want to talk about” any abuse against her husband in prison. But advised by prosecutors that she had no choice, she told the court in tears: “He was tied up like he was being crucified. He was beat up, especially around his ears. He was subjected to electroshocks to many body parts.”

“To his genitals?” the prosecutors asked.

“Yes,” she replied. ”

Oh, and by the way

“Many members of Italy’s law enforcement agencies were furious about the kidnapping. They say they could have arrested Mr. Nasr at any time and had long had him under surveillance for potential connections with terrorists. They say his clumsy and illegal kidnapping erased years of police work that had put them on the verge of gaining valuable information about Muslim groups in Italy.”

NY Times

Haaretz has a clear message for Bush as he feebly attempts to get peace talks re-energized: “The realization of this aspiration of the right-wing groups will leave not a single stone in place in Vice Premier Haim Ramon’s plan to divide Jerusalem according to ethnicity, according to the principles of Bill Clinton’s outlines of December 2000. The creeping annexation of parts of the Arab neighborhoods will turn a political conflict into a religious struggle, which will prevent any diplomatic solution. It will also arouse the entire Arab and Muslim world against Israel. The United States, Israel’s greatest friend and the broker of the two-state vision, will not emerge clean either.

When he landed yesterday on Israeli soil, Bush declared that “the Israelis are our close friends.” A close friend of the Israelis is not permitted to stand on the sidelines while their government is playing with matches next to a barrel of explosives.”

Rope a Dope

Rob Christensen in the Raleigh News and Observer reflects on what different the Edwards endorsement is likely to make: “Although the endorsement’s timing was a surprise, Edwards said during the weekend that Obama had all but wrapped up the nomination.

Many of Edwards’ key supporters in North Carolina, as elsewhere, had backed Obama, seeing him as a kindred spirit to Edwards in running outsider campaigns. Both Edwards and Obama portrayed Clinton as a Washington insider too tied to special interests and insufficiently opposed to continued U.S. involvement in Iraq.

Among the more recent Obama backers was Ed Turlington, a Raleigh lawyer who was Edwards’ general chairman during his first presidential run in 2004.

Turlington said the timing of the endorsement could send a signal throughout the party that the race is essentially over and Democrats should unite behind Obama.”

End Game

As reported by James Nash and Alan Johnson of the Columbus Dispatch, Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann resigned yesterday afternoon, just hours after the inspector general’s office launched a raid on his office to investigate sexual harassment complaints and other misconduct: “He has been under pressure to resign since a May 2 report by two of his office’s attorneys found widespread mismanagement, cronyism and tolerance for sexual harassment in his office. The report was triggered by sexual-harassment complaints filed by two junior employees who worked for a longtime Dann friend, former condo-mate and section chief, Anthony Gutierrez.”

Crime Busters

The Joshua Green, Atlantic article on Obama and Silicon valley I mentioned the other day is on-line now. Pretty interesting stuff.

Todd Gitlin is in Israel for the 60th anniversary of the founding of the state. He has heard, and reports on, some very alarming “intimations” about Iran, its nuclearity and armed response.

Gitlin in Israel

I don’t think the Israeli’s give a shit about John Conyers and his offer to impeach President Bush if he orders a strike against Iran. Bush himself may give one, however.

Late last year, Senator Joseph Biden stated unequivocally that “the president has no authority to unilaterally attack Iran, and if he does, as Foreign Relations Committee chairman, I will move to impeach” the president. 8

We agree with Senator Biden, and it is our view that if you do not obtain the constitutionally required congressional authorization before launching preemptive military strikes against Iran or any other nation, impeachment proceedings should be pursued. Because of these concerns, we request the opportunity to meet with you as soon as possible to discuss these matters. As we have recently marked the fifth year since the invasion of Iraq, and the grim milestone of 4,000 U.S. deaths in Iraq, your Administration should not unilaterally involve this country in yet another military conflict that promises high costs to American blood and treasure.

AfterDowningStreet asks you to e-mail your congress critter and ask them to get on board.

Our friends Jes and Leslie who have been pounding on Conyer’s door for months have had some part in the recent action.

Dear Friends,

Leslie and Ellen found out about Chairman John Conyers’ letter threatening Bush with Impeachment if he attacks Iran during one of the “National Conversation on Impeachment” meetings. According to the Chairman, he planned to circulate the letter shortly. When Leslie and Ellen did a follow-up two weeks later, they discovered the letter had been stalled. They talked to Judiciary Committee staff, made some inquiries and pushed the issue with some other progressive representatives, including Lynn Woolsey. Apparently Chairman Conyers also applied a little friendly persuasion because the letter is again on its way to the President.

The letter needs more co-signers … a larger number will send a stronger message that WE ARE NOT INTERESTED IN ATTACKING IRAN! Please call your Congress Member today (202-224-3121) and ask them to co-sign this letter.

Here’s the letter: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/051308A.shtm

Peace and Freedom,

Jes & Leslie

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