In my latest column for Fox News’s opinion page, I write the bold, full-throated speech that I *wish* President Obama would make in support of same-sex marriage. Here’s an excerpt:
Too many young people in our nation are told they are worth less than their peers because of their sexual orientation. If one more young gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered teen commits suicide while I’m president, that’s one too many. I can’t do everything to make them feel whole and confident, but I can ensure that the laws of our land send a clear message that a loving, committed relationship between a man and a man or a woman and a woman is legally and morally indistinguishable from my own marriage.
And this:
I realize that in many states in our union, voters have gone to the polls to strike down marriage equality, going so far as to amend state constitutions to enshrine inequality. But we should never, we must never put fundamental rights up for a vote. This invites the very tyranny of the majority that our Founders warned against. Our constitutions and governing laws must be shining beacons of justice, not weapons to wielded otherwise. As a nation, we write our laws not to codify our ugliest instincts but to safeguard against them, to ensure that whatever private impulses we might have whether toward violence or discrimination are not amplified in the public square but tempered, our general welfare and common good protected. As president, I will always strive to reflect the collective spirit of America at its best, not succumb to the divisiveness and fear mongering that lurk in our darkest moments.
Please read the full “speech” here and share it — hopefully someday we’ll hear one like it.
Let me see if I have this right: Republicans don’t think that people who have served time in prison for felonies should have their voting rights restored, but they are damn keen on current inmates being able to run for President — so long as they’re running against Obama?
Today, the GOP put out this “news”:
Meanwhile, Republicans have firmly stood against restoring the voting rights of felons. During the Republican primary, a SuperPAC supporting Mitt Romney ran an ad attacking Rick Santorum for supporting felon re-enfranchisement.
Republicans have also long supported the practice of counting people for Census purposes (and, thus, the apportionment of Members of Congress and federal benefits) in the usually red districts in which they are incarcerated, instead of the usually blue districts in which they live.
In other words, Republicans don’t want people who have served their time to vote — let alone be allowed to vote while in prison. BUT Republicans are happy to exploit inmates to boost conservative representation in Congress or to stage political stunts that take jabs at the President. Seems to me that kind of blatant hypocrisy is what’s criminal.
I was on America Live on Fox News with Megyn Kelly today talking about the much-hyped photo snapped by a Romney staffer at Obama’s kickoff event this weekend showing a less-than-full auditorium. Well, turns out there were 14,000 people there (close to the 18,000 capacity) but the biggest audience Romney has ever achieved? 3,000! How’s that for an enthusiasm gap, y’all?
Here’s the video.
Democrats want to keep student loan rates low and raise taxes slightly on millionaires and billionaires. Republicans voted to let student loan rates *double* — and voted to *cut* taxes for the super-rich. There’s your class warfare, folks!
In my latest column for the American Prospect, I explore the relationship between so-called “social movement non-profit organizations” and the on-the-ground social movements they seek to spark and/or support. Here’s an excerpt:
The problem with social-movement organizations is that they can ossify, moving away from their original dynamic energy and settling into a routine that can be risk averse and stagnant. Sadly, many organizations that once grew out of and served movements become little more than mausoleums to those movements, the very existence of the institution a symbolic triumph to the victories of the past rather than an active participant in fights for the future.
What is needed is dynamic, adaptive growth. Doctors tell us that embryonic stem cells are especially valuable because they can morph into other varieties of cells. Put them next to a lung, they become lung cells. Put them next to skin, they become skin cells. They’re classically opportunistic, but not in a bad way—a political consultant might call them “strategic.” And keen strategy is just what is needed at this crucial time for social-movement organizations.
Read the whole essay here — and especially if you are in this mix of organizations and movements, tell me what you think.
The always incredibly un-credible Ann Coulter has a new column out and it’s a doozy. Coulter argues that Democrats have historically been anti-gun rights because they have wanted to keep guns out of the hands of blacks who wished to defend themselves from the KKK (which, Coulter argues, began as part of the Democratic establishment). In her concoction column even claims that the National Rifle Association is “America’s oldest and most august civil rights organization.” That statement right there would give most reasonable people pause, but knowing how these sorts of crazy Right wing arguments tend to corrupt and corrode our public discourse, I thought a few facts would be in order:
1. Coulter’s celebrated Republicans are now called Democrats!
This has got to be a big face palm for anyone with even a lick of historical knowledge reading Coulter’s piece. Until the Civil War, the Democratic Party was the major political party in America. But in the mid 19th Century, anti-slavery Democrats fled the party and the Republican Party emerged. Abraham Lincoln, he of the Emancipation Proclamation and social liberal attitudes of the time with respect to abolishing slavery, was a Republican. White Southerners burning with racial resentment indeed backed the Democratic Party in Reconstruction. But then, as any eighth grader can tell you, as the 20th Century emerged, Republicans shifted to become the party of big business, white industrialists while Democrats became the party of the New Deal and Civil Rights legislation.
2. One can’t ascribe the attitudes of the 1800s racist Democratic Party to today’s Democratic Party
Yes, the so-called Democrats of the mid-1800s were rabidly racist and tied to the Ku Klux Klan. But given the profound ideological flip-flop between the two parties over the last two centuries, it’s about as absurd to attribute 1800s Democratic Party attitudes to today’s Democrats as it is to suggest that the Republican Party is “the Party of Lincoln”. If people like Ann Coulter are so damned proud of what anti-slavery Republicans stood for back then, why aren’t they standing up for those same values now?
3. The “civil rights hero” Coulter hangs her argument on exiled himself to Cuba and China and inspired the Black Panthers
This is the best part. Coulter writes about Robert F. Williams, author of the book “Negroes With Guns” (from which Coulter takes the title of her piece), who apparently formed the Black Armed Guard in Monroe, NC, with a charter from the NRA. In other words, ignoring about a hundred year gap in her narrative, Coulter tries to portray Williams as a Republican joining forces with the NRA to fight against the Democrats’ KKK. Ms. Coulter must not have known that one of Williams formative experiences was, at age 11, witnessing a black woman being dragged and beaten by a police officer named Jesse Helms, Sr. (father to future Republican Senator Jesse Helms, Jr.). And she must have missed the part where Williams delivered a speech at the 1965 International Conference for Solidarity with the People of Vietnam Against U.S. Imperialist Aggression for the Defense of Peace. Doesn’t sound like a Republican, eh Ann?
4. The “Negroes With Guns” premise assumes a persistent racism in America that Ms. Coulter and Republicans are otherwise quick to deny.
Let me see if I get this straight: The existence of persistent, implicit racial bias in America is a sufficient argument to exploit when making the case for the NRA and 2nd Amendment rights but when making the case for everything from equal funding for public schools to ending racial profiling to affirmative action, suddenly racism is a thing of the past that liberals are inventing?
5. And lastly, does Ann Coulter really want to arm black folks now?
It seems to me, the leading argument that conservatives make for lax gun laws is that “criminals” (read: black people) have guns and, therefore, law-abiding citizens (read: white people) need guns to protect themselves. By seemingly embracing Robert F. Williams’ arguments, is Ms. Coulter seriously suggesting she wants to see more black folks take up arms today? Apart from being refreshing if true, is she aware that a resurgence of Mr. Williams’ Black Armed Guard-type movement today would likely go after not the Democratic establishment but Republicans — the party that repeatedly suggests problems in the black community are the fault of “black culture” and not deep-seated history and public policy, the party that wants to cut food stamps to give more tax breaks to the rich, the party that won’t even pass the Violence Against Women Act because it might help immigrants and gay people? Oh, yeah, and the party that is constantly blowing its dog whistle about the “New Black Panther Party”?
Perhaps Ann Coulter thinks she can pick and choose from history and biography and tell only the parts of political party history and Robert F. Williams’ life that fit her narrative. And perhaps Ann Coulter also thinks that unicorns poop glitter.
Just in time for Tax Day, I wrote a piece for Time Magazine online about why conservatives are absolutely nuts to say Warren Buffett should voluntarily pay higher taxes — instead of passing the Buffett Rule to raise taxes on all millionaires and billionaires. I write:
If we relied on voluntary taxes, donors would begin insisting that they could earmark their donations—say, to the military or to Medicaid and food stamps. But the reality is that national defense helps all of us, so those not contributing to the military would become “free riders” in economic terms. Voluntary taxation is also a slippery slope—if, instead of raising taxes on millionaires and billionaires we just decided to make it optional for them to give more, then why would we ever raise taxes or close corporate loopholes?
I also explore the core America values and founder’s philosophy around taxation — and why even Adam Smith supported redistribution.
Read the essay here and please share it around!
One of the most successful corporations in America is extorting tax breaks from Texas to relocate part of its business to Austin. In exchange, the government wants Apple to agree to employ some “economically disadvantaged” folks from the community — in other words, the folks footing the tax break! Seems like a simple return on investment!
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