#GayMarriage: 4 #SCOTUS dissents, 0 new arguments

Four Justices, four vacuous opinions

Unfortunately, after writing the 6-3 majority decision yesterday on Obamacare exchange subsidies (and seeing fellow justice Kennedy join him, reversing his original vote opposition to Obamacare), Chief Justice John Roberts acted a bit like Antonin Scalia today.

Roberts from bench: "Today 5 lawyers have ordered every state to change their definition of marriage. Just who do we think we are?"

Gee, just yesterday, Scalia was saying that, in essence, "6 lawyers have ordered every state to change their definition of the word 'state.' Just who do we think we are?" 

On this case, each of the four dissenters — Roberts, Scalia, Alito, and Thomas — wrote his own dissent. They can't even agree what's wrong legally with gay marriage, just that they don't like it. (Yes, I know they concurred in each others' dissents, but the fact that four separate dissents were written still shows they disagree with each other on the primary reason gay marriage is wrong.) 

More parsing of the dissents, from the full opinion, reveals just how vacuous they are.

Roberts was partially joined by Scalia and Thomas. If "this Court is not a legislature" is the best opening argument you can find for tap-dancing around the 14th Amendment, and ignoring the obvious parallels to Loving, you're weak tea indeed. And, to extend that parallel and refute your next sentence, no, on Loving, and in many other cases, the Court has indeed said just what the law should be.

Later, his dissent tries to explain away Loving parallels, noting that previous gay/lesbian petitioners raised that and were rejected. Yeah, well Loving cases themselves were once rejected, both interracial marriage, and just interracial marriage. That's why Think Progress claiming that Roberts' dissent is more bad news for conservatives is tendentious at best.

Beyond the above, per Roberts, I could almost extend his argument to say stare decisis on Plessy v Ferguson. Of course, Brown vs Board of Education trumped Plessy.

Next, he goes to a traditionalist-presentist stance, invoking the old "marriage for conception" argument. This has repeatedly been refuted.

Scalia and Thomas then added their concurring dissent with the this claim gay marriage is a "threat to American democracy." For Scalia, at least, I get the feeling that this was more important. And, by his logic, then, the Supreme Court IS supposed to be a legislature, bowing to the tyranny of actual, or perceived, or finger-in-the-wind tested majoritarianism.

The final laugh is the pair them, especially Scalia, calling out Kennedy for "hubris."

Thomas, to whom Scalia concurred, then tried to pull an economics rabbit out of his hat, claiming that marriage is a "government benefit" that's neither a right nor entitlement, ignoring the IRS, state tax codes, etc. Fine, then, your actual argument should have been to overrule any government benefit for ANY marriage.

He then, without irony as a minority, chides people for reading too much into the Due Process clause of the 14th Amendment.

He ends with the old "religious liberty" argument, as big a red herring as any.

Alito then brings in the "states rights argument," which in turn ignores the "full faith and credit" clause" of the Constitution itself. Like the Chief tap-dancing around Loving, Alito does the same here.

Assange, the MSM, the Constitution and more

First, a British newspaper knows the Constitution of the United States better than many top-level American journalists, or politicians -- both of whom, in incestuous embrace, salivate over the possibility of us "getting" WikiLeaks mastermind Julian Assange.

Just one problem — any crimes allegedly committed by Assange are extraterritorial of the United States, therefore, as the Guardian notes, it would be unconstitutional to prosecute him.

It's well established that the due process clause places limits on such sweeping assertions of power. For example, when foreign monopolies manipulate prices overseas, it's not enough to show that they have hurt American consumers. Courts insist on evidence that they had fair notice that American anti-trust laws would govern their activity.

Of course, with U.S. courts showing a fellatio-level degree of subservience to "executive authority," especially as part of the hyperinflationary "War on Terror," the theoretical is likely to have little effect on the actual.

Next, the latest WikiLeaks revelations roundup:

The U.S. has been even more active in bolstering authoritarian governments in Muslim-majority nations than previously revealed.

Two problems with this.

The first:

"This kind of feeds the al Qaida narrative, that we're doing it everywhere," said Lawrence J. Korb, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress in Washington and a former Pentagon official in the Reagan administration.

And the second:

Peter Singer, the director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative at the center-left Brookings Institution in Washington, said(this type and degree of support) illustrates the dangers of U.S. forces relying on local allies who have other objectives.
"There are no guarantees that our ally might not also use the tools against another of their enemies — indeed, they would be almost remiss not to," Singer said. "The end result is that you may get the action you may have wanted, but you also incur all sorts of unexpected side effects, including in these cases being drawn into local disputes that aren't fully in our strategic interests."

AND, **big kudo** to McClatchy in this story for identifying the Brookings Institution as "center-left." (It's not that liberal.) Here's its WikiLeaks coverage webpage. Since it's better than general than most MSM newspaper companies on challenging the conventional Beltway wisdom, a good one to bookmark. http://www.mcclatchydc.com/wikileaks/

It gets worse ...

We had an Afghan drug lord on the CIA *and* DEA payroll.

If Amazon caved to the U.S. government (which it did, despite its denial), would it cave to China? Not sell certain books there? What does this say for cloud computing in the future? More questions the Guardian asks that U.S. media largely aren't.

Tying Pfc. Manning to Assange might be difficult. Plus, are all the cables from Manning anyway? http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/12/10/105110/wikileaks-tying-assange-to-manning.html

Additional thoughts from Australia's The Age on Anna Ardin and the allegations against Assange.

And from Feministing.com founder Jessica Valenti, who isn't as strident on this issue and gender feminism as a certain Stephanie Zvan.

Obama wants gay couples at back of bus

Yessir, Just.Another.Politician.™ doesn’t really extend civil rights to gay marriage; in fact, his administrastion officially opposes that idea.

Obama’s Department of Justice, per the link, is officially on record in a federal suit as supporting the Defense of Marriage Act, one of the more craven bill-signings of the Clinton Administration, and officially rejecting the idea that the “full faith and credit” clause of the U.S. Constitution requires states to recognize each others’ marriage laws, regardless of gender and sexual orientation of the two married persons.

Meanwhile, the Obama Administration is being chickenshit in another way, insisting that Congress take the lead in overturning DOMA. On environmental issues and more, we’ve seen that this is The One’s M.O. No leadership from this White House.

John Aravosis at AmericaBlog, already excoriated over other issues by pseudoliberals at Kos for taking Obama to task, adds that Obama is lying in other ways, too, namely, claiming that DOMA doesn’t deny gay partners any equality under the law.

And, at another link, which itself has a link to the Obama DOJ official brief, we see that Obama says DOMA saves money, is consistent with equal protection under the law, and more, including claiming the right to marriage is not a fundamental right.

The Team Obama illogic is stunning.

First and foremost, if marriage is not a fundamental right, then why do we even have a Defense of Marriage Act? And, why are you so worried about protecting this act? Even to the point of using conservatives' rational-review scrutiny standard?