Andy’s whereIstand Blog

In an update to the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruling that stated same-sex couples from outside of Massachusetts could not have their relationship legitimated by the State, it appears this decision could affect other cases in other States:

Citing polling that suggests opposition to same-sex marriages is receding, gay rights advocates expressed confidence on Friday that such weddings would spread, despite a ruling by Massachusetts’ highest court that bars homosexuals from other states from marrying there.

Activists on both sides of the issue were awaiting a court ruling on whether Washington will follow Massachusetts and become the second U.S. state to legalize gay marriage, at least among residents.

"Washington state’s Supreme Court right now, any day, is going to deliver their ruling on marriage, so it’s something that we’ve been waiting for a while now to happen," said Brad Luna of gay rights group Human Rights Campaign.

After hearing arguments in March 2005, Washington state’s top court will decide whether to overturn two lower court rulings in favor of same-sex marriage. The case was brought by eight same-sex couples denied marriage licenses.

Legal challenges seeking permission for gays and lesbians to marry are pending in 10 states. New Jersey’s Supreme Court is expected to rule this year on a bid for gay marriage. Two cases are also winding through New York’s court system and could end up in the state’s highest court this year.

Massachusetts’s highest court ruled in 2003 that it was unconstitutional to ban gay marriage, paving the way for America’s first same-sex marriages in May the following year

.

I predict these cases will keep coming and perhaps while States like The Dakotas and Mississippi go against Roe V. Wade and Abortion, the right for same-sex unions to be approved of by the State and Federal governments of this country will continue as popular opinion changes and the citizenry comes around to the prospect of changing ideas of family.

This has been Andy D

whereIstand Tags

• What legal rights to a relationship of consenting adults should be available for same-sex couples?

It’s a hot time for the illicit child porn world:

NASA HQ was raided and laptop confiscated that was used by James R. Robinson to traffic in child porn videos and pictures.

Then a teenage girl, apparently the third in the same case, is being arraigned for a separate child porn ring.

This latter case was propagated on the latest Rupert Murdoch acquisition - Myspace, which in the wake of the case has removed several - some 200,000 -profiles deemed "objectionable."

Surprisingly, no clergy has been implicated yet today in any of this. But the night is young.

This has been Andy D.

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• [open thread]

This minister embodies the perfect version of Christianity in America:

A youth minister was charged with assault for allegedly knocking down a 16-year-old boy and kicking him in the groin after taking a head shot from the teen in a dodgeball game.

David M. Boudreaux, 27, was charged Wednesday with one count of third-degree assault. According to court documents, the incident happened in February at Crescent Lake Christian Academy.

Authorities said the teen missed Boudreaux with one throw but then knocked the youth minister’s glasses off with the next.

The boy apologized, authorities said, but Boudreaux pushed him backward, and when the teen got up again Boudreaux kicked him in the groin and left.

The teen suffered whiplash and post-concussion syndrome and had blood in his urine after being kicked, according to court records.

Boudreaux later apologized, prosecutors said.

Jeanne D. Hewitt, administrator of Crescent Lake Christian Academy, said Boudreaux had been placed on administrative leave.

For the representative of a suite of religions predicated on forgiveness, Boudreaux has a heightened sense of vengeance. He did apologize however, sought forgiveness perhaps.

Now if we could just get Bush Corp and all of his wealthy born again cronies to take that whole bit about a camel having a better chance getting through the eye of a needle than a rich man getting into heaven, we might be getting somewhere.

This has been Andy D.

whereIstand Tags

• Is man infallible?

Here’s the colored Venn Diagram of the Nation’s Approval of Bush:

We are blue, but still worried?

This has been Andy D, go see V for Vendetta.

whereIstand Tags

• Will President George W. Bush be impeached?

X-Men since its first publication can be read as the plight of homosexuals in a society that fears them, wants them exterminated, wants them illegalized, and wants them cured. The third installment of the movie trilogy based on the popular comic series comes out in a couple months and it couldn’t be more timely.

The Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled this week that while they are the first State to legalize Same-Sex Unions, people outside of the state cannot come there to have their union legitimated. This gets rid of the portability (between States) issue of marriage - only Massachusetts citizens can enjoy this privilege.

At the same time, Brokeback Mountain has been banned in the Bahamas:

A Bahamian government board’s decision to ban the movie "Brokeback Mountain" has prompted charges of discrimination and censorship in the island chain.

Gay rights groups and others have called on the Plays and Films Control Board to reverse its decision prohibiting theaters from showing the award-winning movie about a troubled love affair between two cowboys.

"You have a group of people who are telling grown men and women what they can and cannot watch," said Philip Burrows, a theater director in the island chain. "I cannot understand denying people the right to make their own choices."

Theaters in Nassau, the capital, had already begun to advertise the movie Friday when the board announced its ban at the request of the Bahamas Christian Council.

"The board chose to ban it because it shows extreme homosexuality, nudity and profanity, and we feel that it has no value for the Bahamian public," Chavasse Turnquest-Liriano, liaison officer for the control board, said Wednesday.

The Rainbow Alliance, a gay rights group, called the ban a "farce," and said most Bahamians reject the idea that a "small group of appointed individuals … can provide the moral compass for the entire country."

Hopefully X-Men-3 will keeps it’s metaphor obtuse enough for the Bahamas Christian Council. And Wolverine, Colossus, and Ice Man are hardly the Village People.

This has been Andy D.

whereIstand Tags

• What legal rights to a relationship of consenting adults should be available for same-sex couples?

I think the awesomeness of America is our history of immigration. We are a nation of immigrants. And while the displacement of the Native American cultures was one of the worst part of our history and would not have been possible without this mass immigration, I think the immigration trend should never stop. It is oddly hypocritical for a nation founded by immigrants and populated by the descendents of immigrants to not allow immigrants anymore.

At the very least, illegally immigrating should not be a felony.

I’m not looking at the economic factors here because like borders, economics are a construct meant to serve people, not cast people into servitude.

People want a better life. That is the American dream - pure Horatio Alger. That’s all any immigrant wants. The problem now is that for people to immigrate legally they must demonstrate their value, their worth. To quantify any part of the human condition is ridiculous, and to quantify someone’s worth or value so they can cross an imaginary line without persecution is cruel.

It turns out that Lou Dobbs is calling the administrations of North America out for not considering their constituents’ will:

I find it incredibly difficult to imagine how three economies with such disparities in economic growth, income and labor forces could possibly integrate any time soon. But far more troubling is there has been no popular expression of the people’s will in any one of the three countries that any such integration occur.

For that matter, in the United States, this president and Congress seem hell bent on defying the popular will. The American people, in poll after poll and survey after survey, are revealed to be opposed to the direction of the war in Iraq, illegal immigration, amnesty, a guest-worker program, the outsourcing of jobs and certainly the outsourcing of our security. It has become increasingly clear over the last several years that the least represented constituency in either Congress or the White House is the middle class, working men and women who are the foundation of our country.

And while these three leaders are meeting in Cancun, the Senate is debating whether there should be a guest-worker program and whether there should be amnesty for those already here. Guest worker programs never work anywhere in the world. I firmly believe that we cannot significantly reform our immigration policies unless we can control immigration. And the control if immigration is impossible if our borders remain porous and vulnerable.

One of the things that frustrates many of us who care about our country and the truth is the rampant barrage of misinformation, disseminated by such vociferous special interests, whether they are ethnocentric social activists, labor unions, the Catholic Church or Corporate America. The truth is advocates of amnesty, guest-worker programs and open borders are unconcerned about the 280 million American citizens, the men and women of this country who work for a living and their families.

The problem of fighting a porous and vulnerable border is that the "safety" we strive for from terrorism is that terrorism comes from within more often than from without. Timothy McVey was an American. The 9-11 terrorists operated within the country for months before the attacks. Building walls never works - The Berlin Wall attests to this.

I usually like Lou Dobbs, but we fundamentally disagree on what constitutes safety and what immigrants mean to America.

The problems of terrorism and drug control are other issues, but they affect his one as well. I think their causes are already within our borders, why restrict those wishing to join America, and be its citizens other than on culturally biased and racist grounds?

Fear and Hatred have been bounced off each other to destroy freedom - now it happens with the freedom of movement. Conservatism at its finest.

This has been Andy D.

whereIstand Tags

• How should the federal government approach legal immigration?

Turns out the loudest Judge of our high court maintains that the gesture of scraping one’s hand under the chin is one of dismissal not obscenity. He blames stereotypes and muckraking for the mix up:

The Boston Herald reported Monday the justice made "an obscene gesture, flicking his hand under his chin" in response to a question about whether lawyers might question his impartiality in matters of church and state.

The incident occurred after Scalia attended Mass at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross.

But Scalia said in his letter the gesture is not obscene at all, but dismissive. Scalia said he had explained the gesture’s meaning to no avail to the reporter, whom he referred to as "an up-and-coming ‘gotcha’ star."

To back his interpretation of the gesture, Scalia in his letter quoted from Luigi Barzini’s book, "The Italians:" "The extended fingers of one hand moving slowly back and forth under the raised chin means ‘I couldn’t care less. It’s no business of mine. Count me out."’

Scalia said in the letter, written to Executive Editor Kenneth Chandler, that the reporter leapt to conclusions that it was offensive because he initially explained his gesture by saying, ‘That’s Sicilian."’

"From watching too many episodes of the Sopranos, your staff seems to have acquired the belief that any Sicilian gesture is obscene — especially when made by an ‘Italian jurist.’ (I am, by the way, an American jurist.)," he wrote, referring to the American television series about a fictional mob boss and his family.

His job is interpretation - listen to Scalia or suffer his mighty wrath.

This has been Andy D.

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• [Open Thread]

Now I know that statistics lie and polls are sketchy in determining the actual implications the numbers have on meaning, but this gallup poll sounds like good news:

In a (perhaps) historic shift, more Americans now consider themselves Democrats than Republicans, the Gallup organization revealed today.

Republicans had gained the upper hand in recent years, but 33% of Americans, in the latest Gallup poll, now call themselves Democrats, with those favoring the GOP one point behind. But Gallup says this widens a bit more "once the leanings of Independents are taken into account."

Independents now make up 34% of the population. When asked if they lean in a certain direction, their answers pushed the Democrat numbers to 49% with Republicans at 42%. One year ago, the parties were dead even at 46% each.

This shift indicates, Gallup says, why its polls show Democrats leading in this year’s congressional races.

The latest poll was taken from January to March 2006, with a national sample of about 1,000 adults.

Well that’s a rather narrow window for a gain in the supposed party of the people. Blame the decimation of working base in the urban centers during the seventies and eighties.

We’ll see how it works out come election time.

This has been Andy D.

whereIstand Tags

• Will the Left and Right ever find a way to live with each other in a civilized manner?

Even with his plea bargaining, Abramoff still faces six years in prison, and 21 million in restitution payments according to the sentence today. Well this is the first domino to fall. They have nearly all been laid in place, but now that Abramoff’s fate is sealed, those connected to him, GOP and Dems alike, including the lying George W Bush himself, who disavows any knowledge of meeting Abramoff despite the surfacing now of several photos of the two together and sworn testimony from others as well as Abramoff’s own emails attest to the President knowing intimate details about Abramoff and his family life. Perhaps as Clark fears, Bush will not go down, and some how dodge these implications. I hope otherwise.

I also know that money leaves the best paper trail.

If that won’t do it, perhaps Abramoff’s own words can get the job down:

U.S. District Judge Paul C. Huck sentenced Abramoff and a former business partner to five years and 10 months in prison and ordered them to pay restitution of more than $21 million.

The sentences were the minimum under their plea agreement in the case.

Abramoff, 47, and Adam Kidan, 41, both pleaded guilty to conspiracy and wire fraud.

They won’t start their sentences for at least 90 days so they can continue cooperating in a Washington corruption investigation and a Florida probe into the murder of Konstantinos "Gus" Boulis, owner of the SunCruz Casinos fleet they bought.

In court, Abramoff said the case was "incredibly painful" for himself, his family and his friends.

"In the past few years I have begun the process of becoming a new man," he said.

So he took a PR cue from that "Duke" Senator guy talking about changing and repentance. Hey, whatever works to uphold his word against those he is rolling over on.

This has been Andy D.

whereIstand Tags

• Clark
• Will the Abramoff investigation implicate anyone at the White House?
• [Open Thread]

Standardized Tests never work. In fact, I’m suspect of anything trying to estimate the efficacy of teaching. Education is such a long and subjective experience to be comprehensive. The problem is that our public education administrators are so concerned with results represented by figures that it seems that many students are successful in life despite of their public education rather than because of. I did better in college than I ever did in high school. I also achieved in college what I consider to be the real goal of education - learning how to learn. Realizing that knowledge is constructed and that anything I wanted to learn, I now know how to on my own.

That said. The Repercussions of Bush Corp’s No Child Left Behind Act, which is nothing if not the attempt to quantify education results, are finally being felt. From the NYT article "Schools Cut Back Subjects to Push Reading and Math:"

Thousands of schools across the nation are responding to the reading and math testing requirements laid out in No Child Left Behind, President Bush’s signature education law, by reducing class time spent on other subjects and, for some low-proficiency students, eliminating it.

Schools from Vermont to California are increasing — in some cases tripling — the class time that low-proficiency students spend on reading and math, mainly because the federal law, signed in 2002, requires annual exams only in those subjects and punishes schools that fall short of rising benchmarks.

The changes appear to principally affect schools and students who test below grade level.

The intense focus on the two basic skills is a sea change in American instructional practice, with many schools that once offered rich curriculums now systematically trimming courses like social studies, science and art. A nationwide survey by a nonpartisan group that is to be made public on March 28 indicates that the practice, known as narrowing the curriculum, has become standard procedure in many communities.

I think those Montessori people are on to something, because while reading and math are important, they should not come at the expense of everything else.

This has been Andy D.

whereIstand Tags

• Should states be forced to fund the federally mandated No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act?