Scott Walker in 2016?

Today I saw a column by Byron York in the Washington Examiner called “Looking to 2016, Iowa GOP gets jazzed about Scott Walker of Wisconsin” in which York mentions that lots of people, both those who supported Mitt Romney last year and those whose choice in the GOP nomination contest was “anyone but Romney,” are becoming enthusiastic about Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin for the 2016 nomination. While I have said, and I still maintain, that the best choice for the nomination would be Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, I would not be unhappy with Walker as a nominee. He is rather more conservative than I am, but he's gotten his programs — including the well-known reforms that got organized labor so hot under the collar that they mounted a recall campaign against him — through and written into law in a very blue State. And that counts for a lot. Anyone who could survive the viciousness of that recall campaign as Gov. Walker did deserves credit. So, while I prefer Christie, I would certainly be willing to support Walker if he were the nominee, and I would not want to work against him while he pursues the nomination, if he does, any more than any other rival of my preferred choice. He's not like Bachmann or Perry in 2012, who were anathema to me.

Points about abortion

One reason that, although I am closer to the so-called “pro-choice” side in the debates on abortion than the so-called “pro-life” side, I still cannot accept all the ideas of the former, is that to me the primary issue is not “a woman's right to choose,” as most “pro-choicers” make it. For me, in fact, the big issue is a First Amendment freedom-of-religion issue.

The Catholic Church (and some Protestant groups) wants to impose its view of “personhood” on others. The idea that “human life begins at conception” is clearly the tenet of a particular religious community. (In Judaism, for example, there is a point — not clearly fixed in time — when the neshama [approximately translated as “soul”] is put into the developing fetus by Divine intervention; prior to that it is not considered human.)

Because I see this as a religious freedom issue, I am perfectly willing, say, to accept laws that forbid the State from forcing Catholic hospitals or Catholic medical doctors to perform abortions, because they too have First Amendment rights. Because I see this in other terms than “a woman's right to choose,” I am willing to allow some people other than the pregnant woman to be involved in the decision. (I have no problem with parental-consent laws when the pregnant “woman” is in fact a girl who would not herself be empowered to consent to some other forms of surgery on her body. I honestly believe that, when a married couple conceive as a result of an act entered into voluntarily, if the husband wants the child he should be able to insist that the birth take place.) So I feel uncomfortable with both sides' positions in the abortion debate.

While we have no way of knowing when the neshama enters the fetus, I feel that the best clue to when to consider it a new human being is the viability criterion — if you could deliver it, and it could survive outside the uterus, then it is a new human being; not before. Some argue that technology changes; we could deliver a baby in 2013 that would not have survived in 1963. I say “so be it.” We do not judge the doctors who attended Pres. Garfield as murderers, because they did not conform to modern standards of antisepsis, although it is clear that their filthy hands were actually the cause of his death. Since, at that time, the role of infection was becoming known, they come in for some criticism. But not what doctors in 2013 would incur if they did as those doctors did. The standards of any particulat time must apply.

Virginia's governorship race

Only two states elect governors in the immediate post-Presidential-election years: New Jersey and Virginia. While New Jersey is likely to be a rout (some polls put Chris Christie more than 30 points ahead of his Democratic opponent!), Virginia is going to be close, if appearances bear out. And it's a terrible dilemma for Virginia's voters.

Virginia Republicans have held their convention and picked Ken Cuccinelli, the current attorney general. The main reason they had a convention, rather than a primary, is that moderate lieutenant governor Bill Bolling might have won a primary, and diehard conservatives wanted to ensure Cuccinelli's nomination. While I applaud some things Cuccinelli has done, like fighting Obamacare, he is a strong “social conservative,” and I thing the Republicans will only be a constructive force in this country if they abandon “social conservatism.”

But then I look at the Democrats. They haven't had their primary yet, but Terry McAuliffe seems to have no serious challengers. (In fact, he has no challengers, period! Nobody else has filed for that primary.) And McAuliffe is best known for heading Bill Clinton's re-election campaign. He's strongly allied with the whole Clinton family — he was a big supporter of Hillary Clinton's bid for the 2008 Democratic nomination. That alone hurts him in my eyes.

If I were a Virginia voter, I'd be stumped. Cuccinelli is more extreme than I'd like, and McAuliffe is actually fairly moderate for a Democrat. But I'd hate to see any Democrat win in an election where it might be construed for support for the Obama Presidency — and to the extent it's not so construed, it helps set things up for Hillary in 2016.

A lull in the posting rate

I've not been posting much lately — only once a week or less often. And I notice that most of my favorite blogs, like Dennis Sanders' “Big Tent Revue” and Tom Bowler's “Libertarian Leanings,” have also slacked off. I wonder if this is because Barack Obama's Presidency is going to last till 2017, and nothing we say can change that? (And of course, even Congressional elections are 1½ years away.)

Next month, the Supreme Court will probably issue its decisions on Hollingsworth v. Perry (the California Prop. 8 case) and United States v. Windsor (the case challenging the so-called “Defense of Marriage Act”). I will certainly post comments on these decisions once we know what they are. But until then it is mere speculation. I know how I would rule. On Windsor, it is clear to me that DOMA is unconstitutional, because it conflicts with the Tenth Amendment-based right of States to define “marriage.” On Hollingsworth, my feeling is more nuanced. Because of that Tenth Amendment argument, it is not appropriate to declare same-sex marriage legal everywhere in the 50 States. Appeal to the precedent of Loving v. Virginia is attractive, and probably if there were more than 11 states with same-sex marriage on the books, would make sense. But clearly there is not a nationwide consensus on this issue. I think, if I were a Supreme Court Justice, however, the precedent I would follow is Romer v. Evans. Basically, to take away rights that people already have is unconstitutional, and this is what Prop. 8 did. And on this basis, the Court would, in my opinion, be right to invalidate Prop. 8, while not forcing those states without laws authorizing same-sex marriage on the books to institute it.

But this is my position. i cannot get inside the heads of the nine Supreme Court justices. So I cannot comment on their decision until they issue it, probably next month.

It's rather amazing

It should not be too surprising that the way the media cover a political story depends on their own political orientation. But how severely it does is amazing. There were three different stories about the Obama administration's actions that monopolized the headlines in recent weeks: The IRS' interference with “Tea Party” groups (but not similarly situated groups on the left) in their quest for tax-exempt status, the harassment of the Associated Press, and the Government's attempts to mischaracterize the Benghazi attacks in order to minimize its security weaknesses. In each case, papers such as the Washington Post and New York Times took the positions that there was really no scandal, that the only thing wrong was that Republicans in the Congress were making it one. Their attitude was that “Watergate” was a real scandal; this was nothing even resembling it. Well, to my way of thinking, if there is any reason to say that the two things were qualitatively different, it was the opposite. “Watergate” was nothing but a couple of overly zealous people doing a burglary attempt on the Democrats. yet it forced a President to resign — a far better president, I believe, than the current occupant of the White House. At Benghazi, four Americans died, including a highly respected ambassador, because of lax security precautions; nobody died from “Watergate.” The IRS business could legitimately be characterized, as was “Watergate,” as a few overly zealous people trying to help the political chances of the President. But in “Watergate” it only involved the offices of the Democrats, and hardly prevented them from doing their business. The IRS actually held up the tax-exempt status of some of these organizations so long that they folded! And as for the AP — well, freedom of the press is what one part of the First Amendment is all about; it's considered one of our primary liberties. The left-wing press says it's ridiculous to compare these scandals to “Watergate”; I think, if anything, they, especially taken together, make “Watergate” look like small potatoes.

The Kermit Gosnell decision

Kermit Gosnell has been convicted of murder. And the anti-abortion (or as they would have it, “pro-life”) people are happy with the results. But in fact, the Gosnell verdict was totally in conformity with what I, who oppose them, have maintained. A viable fetus is a real person. Some of these babies were, in fact, already born, not just “viable.”

My reply to the anti-abortion crowd has always been “if this is a baby, deliver it, then see if you can keep it alive.” In this case, several deliveries had been done, and then the babies were killed. So obviously, what Kermit Gosnell did was murder, under my own definition. And I agree with the verdict. But this says nothing about Roe v. Wade. Gosnell's attorney tried to invoke Roe, but the jury didn't buy it. And I think that no appeals court would, either.

More progress on the "marriage equality" front

In the last few days, Rhode Island and Delaware have passed marriage equality bills. Of course, this makes it even more the case that geography is the big divide. Nearly all the states north and east of the Potomac now have marriage equality (calling the District of Columbia a “state,” which for this purpose it in effect is). Just south of the Potomac you have states like Virginia and North Carolina, which have shown open hostility to the concept. And heading westward, most states haven't really done anything one way or the other. (Iowa has, and Illinois is probably about to, institute same-sex marriage. Colorado just started civil unions, which ultimately seems to lead to marriage, as it did in the state that invented the concept of civil union, Vermont. And the big one, California, is the subject of the big Hollingsworth v. Perry case, which the Supreme Court will rule on, probably in a month or so, so supporters of marriage equality are awaiting this decision with bated breath. (Of course, the Court might rule on Hollingsworth v. Perry in a way that brings about marriage equality nationwide. I doubt that they will. I don't think it's time for a ruling like Loving v. Virginia involving sex instead of race, yet.)

Why Matt Lewis could never be a liberal, and my own (general) agreement

Today I saw a post by columnist Matt K. Lewis of The Week's site, entitled “Why I could never be a liberal.” And, although I don't consider myself a “true conservative,” I align myself with conservatives on enough important issues that I estimate my position as more conservative than not. And much of what Lewis said resonates with me.

He begins with a comment, just below the title, but above the column itself:

I get in fights with my fellow conservatives all the time. But I'm not about to switch sides.

I'm not about to quote the entire column (please follow the link if you want to read it) but there are specific points he makes that I would echo:

…though my friends on the activist Right may sometimes drive me nuts, I've never ever entertained the thought of going over to the dark side of the Left. David Brock might have garnered a lot of attention and publicity by switching sides, but for me, the Left is never an option.

This isn't just because I believe conservatism will lead to a more prosperous and virtuous society, but also because — in the unlikely event either side were to obtain carte blanche authority — the Left scares me more than the Right.

There's no shortage of examples. Melissa Harris-Perry, for instance, recently revealed a terrifying tenet of the Left, which says our children belong to the collective, not to parents or families. As I wrote, this sentiment was so feared by George Orwell that he included it in both 1984 and Animal Farm. I should have also mentioned Aldous Huxley's Brave New World.

Look at extremists abroad: From Stalin to Castro to Chavez, some on the Left have consistently displayed not just a tolerance for heavy-handed authoritarian regimes (as the Right has admittedly sometimes also done) but also an admiration of them.

In recent weeks, some on the Left have mourned the death of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, even while cheering the death of Britain's Margaret Thatcher. And a similar sentiment was on full display when Jay-Z and Beyonce, perhaps naively, enjoyed Cuban hospitality — without noticing the dissidents or the gulags they conveniently avoided on their vacation.

I will skip a couple of paragraphs, with which I don't really agree, about liberals' disregard for the Divine and about abortion, and resume with his next paragraph:

We live in a fallen world. I do not expect any party — or any ideology, for that matter — to have all the answers. I don't put my faith in politics. There will be no utopia on earth. We cannot immanentize the eschaton.

Neither side of the political spectrum has all the answers — and both sides have fringe elements they'd rather not highlight, as well as moments in history they'd rather leave unspoken.

I've probably had more public fights with my friends on the Right than with my adversaries on the Left in recent years. This is probably natural. As Anthony Trollope wrote, "The apostle of Christianity and the infidel can meet without a chance of a quarrel; but it is never safe to bring together two men who differ about a saint or a surplice."

I get in fights with my fellow conservatives all the time. Immigration is but one example. But still, for me, the Left is never an option.

There are specific points where I differ with Lewis. But by and large, I approve this column.

The Kermit Gosnell case

Self-styled “right to life” advocates have been bewailing the lack of media coverage of the trial of Philadelphia doctor Kermit Gosnell. They accuse pro-abortion media of suppressing it because of their own biases. The only thing is — the trial is going on, local authorities have charged Gosnell with murder, and even under the standards of Roe v. Wade, if Gosnell is found to have done what he is accused of doing, he will be convicted of murder and possibly put to death. So it is not an instance of the issue they would like to feature, the justifiability of Roe v. Wade. The point is that Dr. Gosnell is accused of ending the lives of babies, already delivered and likely to have survived if the acts in question had not been performed by Dr. Gosnell and his staff. Even if you have the most thoroughly pro-choice mindset, once it passes the threshold of viability, it is not a mere fetus but an independent human being.

There is a question, about which responsible citizens can disagree, as to when the existence of a new human being begins. “Pro-life” people may claim that it is at the moment a sperm unites with an egg, but I've discussed how fallacious I believe this is. It is clear to me that, until a fetus has reached the point where it can be delivered and would survive without being attached to a placenta, it is simply a piece of parasitic tissue in the mother's body, not an independent human being. Where Dr. Gosnell betrayed his oath as a doctor of medicine is that he took the lives of those who, by this criterion, were independent human beings. This has nothing to do with the morality of abortion in general, nor with whether Roe v. Wade is good law — under the Roe decision Dr. Gosnell went too far! So there is no reason to bring up this case in discussions of Roe or abortion in general.

And the NRA wins again

The Senate has refused to pass the Toomey/Manchin gun control law. It was pretty weak to begin with, but we might have gotten something. But too many people are too conscious of the NRA's demands.

Obviously, as long as we have the Second Amendment in our Constitution — and it's not going to be possible to repeal it, though I wish it had never been incorporated into the Bill of Rights in the first place — there are people who are going to claim that being free to shoot at anyone is a “right” as precious as freedom of speech, press, and religion. Nobody thinks of our right to live without the fear that someone will shoot at us (even accidentally)! The NRA seems to believe that law-abiding people will use guns responsibly. Law-abiding people, by and large, don't even own guns, or know how to fire them!

I have no legitimate reason to kill someone, and thus I have no legitimate use for a gun. Nor does anyone else, outside the police and military.

For once, I agree with President Obama — but we can't simply retire those lawmakers who voted against gun control as he would like, because the alternative is lawmakers whose positions on so many other issues are so evil that they cannot be considered worthy of election. So I don't know how this problem can be solved.

Margaret Thatcher

Yesterday, Margaret Thatcher died at age 87. While I normally talk in thid blog about our own country's political leaders, Baroness Thatcher's service as Prime Minister deserves more than my usual degree of attention. Britain had been in decline; with her accession, it became an important and reliable ally, which we could rely on to work alongside us toward our common goals.

With some pride, I have to say that she was originally trained as a chemist (as was Angela Merkel of Germany). In this country, it seems lawyers dominate politics; it might be nice to find more people with a scientific background. (True, Thatcher became a lawyer eventually. But her first career was in chemistry.)

Chronologically, her Prime Ministry coincided in large part with Ronald Reagan's Presidency here. These two paragons of the Right, of course, found it easier to forge a tight alliance than peope on opposite sides of the ideological spectrum might. But even Labourite Tony Blair saw a need to keep the alliance together — of course, much of Blair's service coincided with Bill Clinton's Presidency, so again they were close.

But back to Thatcher. I believe that she was the greatest — in the sense of improving the strength of the British nation — prime minister since Winston Churchill, and not many could compare with him!

Vale, Baroness Thatcher.

Another GOP senator endorses gay marriage

A while ago, Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio endorsed gay marriage, becoming the first sitting GOP senator to do so. He was just joined by Sen. Mark Kirk of Illinois. This is an important development.

Until Portman, it seemed as though the Democrats had the monopoly on this side of the issue. And it took his son's coming out to convince Portman. Now with Kirk as the second one, the GOP is moving in the direction it ought to: getting rid of the dominance by “social conservatives” — a code word for “religious bigots trying to impose their views on others.” We even have the spectacle of Speaker of the House John Boehner hiring an attorney to defend DOMA before the Supreme Court, because the Obama Administration accepts its unconstitutionality!

The Republican Party is generally the party in favor of freedom of the individual. But because of the “social conservatives'” power, it has taken the wrong stance on issues like abortion, gay rights, and such. That two sitting GOP senators have decided to push against the “social conservatives” can only be praised. Hopefully, they will be joined by more. The GOP needs to stand up to the “social conservatives.”

Reports that seem to come from the Court

What I see in the reports on the two days of hearings seems to confirm what I've said about DOMA — there's a strong states' rights argument that DOMA is unconstitutional. The Prop. 8 news seems to be a bit less clear, but it looks as though there's a good chance that the Court will rule that the anti-gay side has no standing, or that the court should not have granted certiorari, and in that case the Ninth Circuit opinion will stand: Prop. 8 in California is unconstitutional, but the status quo will continue in at least most of the 49 other states (legal where it is, illegal where it's not currently legal). This will mean the pro-marriage-equality side will have to keep working where they haven't won, but there is a precedent that will say that wherever gay marriage has been approved, that action can't be reversed. Inexorably, gay marriage will become legal in more and more states.

If all this comes to pass, it's good for advocates of equality. Not perfect, but good.

The two gay marriage cases

Yesterday and today, the Supreme Court has been hearing arguments on two gay-marriage cases, two which in fact are quite different but both bearing on the future of gay marriage. Given that I was certain that last year the Court would find “Obamacare” unconstitutional, I have no credentials as a Court decision predictor, and so I will not try on these, but there are a number of points to be made.

If the court wanted to take a strict “states' rights” position, it would rule that California's Proposition 8 was properly enacted, ending gay marriage in California, but invalidate the “Defense of Marriage Act” as an infringement on the States' rught to define marriage — a Tenth Amendment based decision. So gay-marriage people would have, then, a split decision.

It is, of course, possible that the Court would follow the precedent of Loving v. Virginia, as Ted Olson would suggest, and grant gay marriage rights nationwide as a Fourteenth Amendment (equal protection) right. I really don't expect this, but it would be a great day fopr gay couples if the Court did so

What could more likely happen, and was hinted at by at least two Justices, is that Hollingsworth v. Perry (originally called Perry v. Schwartzenegger and then Perry v. Brown: these changes can be quite confusing!) will not be decided at all; the Court will rule that the supporters of Prop. 8 have no standing to sue, gay marriages will resume in California as a result of a lower court decision, but the other 49 states will be unaffected.

Of course, we will not find out the decision for several months. The Court will do as it did in the Obamacare case, issuing its opinion in June rather than right away. So we are waiting while various analysts examine the questions the Justices asked to try to discern their thought processes.

Jonathan Chait, secular pope?

Yesterday I ran a post which in part referred to a critical column by Jonathan Chait in New York magazine. But in his column, he didn't only make an uncalled-for dig at Senator Rob Portman of Ohio; he also managed to bring in criticism of Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, recent candidate for the Vice-Presidency. He takes Ryan to task for saying, of universal health insurance, that it was “a new entitlement we didn’t even ask for.”

The construction was so telling — “we” meant the majority who have access to regular medical care and would rather not subsidize those who don’t.

It is Chait who doesn't seem to think that there are people around that he cannot imagine — not everyone who doesn't have health insurance is in that category because he can't get it; some want to take the risk because they are young and healthy, and would rather put the money somewhere else than in health insurance premiums. Others want to purchase bare-bones coverage for catastrophic illness only, because they figure they can afford normal medical expenses; of course “Obamacare” will not permit that.

Universal health insurance really isn't what we needed. What we need is to make health insurance obtainable for those who want it and cannot get it — not the same as all those who do not have it! But Chait thinks that, like the Pope according to Catholic doctrine, he is infallible — anyone who doesn't think the way he does is in error. If Ryan says that universal health insurance is “a new entitlement we didn’t even ask for” it is because he doesn't include all of us in that “we.” That's what Chait says, and that is, therefore, official doctrine. What claptrap!

Bipartisanship at last!

A few days ago I ran a post in which I was somewhat critical of Chad Griffin, the head of the Human Rights Campaign, for sending out an email praising President Obama for the administration's filing a brief before the Supreme Court, arguing that that a law denying gay and lesbian couples the ability to marry is unconstitutional. Mr. Griffin has, in my mind, remedied this to an extent. He sent out another e-mail, praising Republican Senator Rob Portman of Ohio for coming out for marriage equality. It has not been only Obama and the Democrats who have taken pro-equality stands; there are Republicans, who run more risk because of some conservatives' religiously-based bigotry, but have come out on the side of equality as well.

In Griffin's e-mail, he quotes Sen. Portman as saying, referring to his own son's coming out as gay:

It allowed me to think of this issue from a new perspective, and that's of a Dad who loves his son a lot and wants him to have the same opportunities that his brother and sister would have – to have a relationship like Jane [my wife] and I have had for over 26 years.

Nice to see the Republicans' being recognized too.

Chad Griffin is to be complimented. Not so Jonathan Chait, who uses the same bit of news to accuse Sen. Portman of selfishness in his New York Magazine column:

It’s pretty simple. Portman went along with his party’s opposition to gay marriage because it didn’t affect him. He thought about gay rights the way Paul Ryan thinks about health care. And he still obviously thinks about most issues the way Paul Ryan thinks about health care.

That Portman turns out to have a gay son is convenient for the gay-rights cause. But why should any of us come away from his conversion trusting that Portman is thinking on any issue about what’s good for all of us, rather than what’s good for himself and the people he knows?

Chait seems to think that there is an objective measure of “what’s good for all of us,” which is absolute nonsense. What is good for a landlord (increases in the rental values of property) is not good for a renter. What is good for an urbanite who has to buy his food (lower prices on agricultural products) is not good for a farmer who has to sell the products to a wholesaler. Very little is good for all of us. And so we must really decide on the basis of “what is good for [our]selves and the people [we] know.” All of us reason this way, not just Sen. Portman.

Maryland and the death penalty

The state of Maryland, where I currently have my home, is in the process of ending its death penalty. The House of Delegates today voted to do so; the Senate has already acted. Governor O'Malley is a death penalty opponent, so there is no chance he will do anything but sign it into law. And it will not make a practical difference, because Maryland has not executed many people in recent years. What it will say is that nobody's life is worth anything — if someone takes it in an act of murder, he will not be required to pay an equal penalty. My wife — who is against the death penalty — takes the position that if someone is wrongfully convicted and executed, as could have happened to Kirk Bloodsworth, it cannot be reversed. This is so, but if someone is murdered, that cannot be reversed either.

Maryland is making a mistake — but I can't do anything to prevent it. I guess we should change the state motto to “Maryland Welcomes Murderers.”

A new pope

The Catholic Church has chosen a new pope — and broken ground in many ways, though on the other side, shown how conservative they are. The new pope, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, to be known as Pope Francis, is the first non-European pope in nearly thirteen centuries. He is the first ever from Latin America, the first Jesuit, and of course, the name Francis has never been taken by any earlier pope. (Although some people have taken to calling him Francis I, apparently the correct thing is to call him just Francis until there is a Francis II. They did, however, refer to John Paul I before John Paul II became pope, but of course, that was only a 34-day reign.)

Yet for all that is new, ths pope is deeply conservative. Bergoglio has been as anti-gay as any Catholic clergyman around, having stated that same-sex marriage was the work of the devil and a “destructive attack on God’s plan.” Even gay adoption was in his eyes “discrimination against children.” His conservatism has been demonstrated in other ways. He has been associated wuth a group named “Communion and Liberation,” known to be very conservative.

So, despite the new ground broken by the Catholic Church, one can assume that under Pope Francis, it will still be the same in ways that really matter — anti-gay, anti-equality for women, sure of itself as the only true religion. One could perhaps have hoped for a different direction, but I would never have expected it; the previous pope, Benedict XVI, was moving them in a more conservative direction, and there seemed little likelihood of a change.

Cal Thomas returns to form

A bit over a week ago, I posted a message expressing my surprise at finding a column in the Washington Examiner by Cal Thomas with which I actually agreed. well, in Yesterday's Examiner I saw another column by him. And while it is not the very next column after the one I commented on last week (there was at least one more column between the two), I found it striking at just how much this column illustrated just how far apart Mr. Thomas and I are on most issues.

The subject of yesterday's column was, in large part, the improperly-named Federal Defense of Marriage Act of 1996. He begins:

Given his track record on marital fidelity, former President Clinton is not the person I would consult about “committed, loving relationships.” Clinton used those words in a Washington Post op-ed last week, urging the Supreme Court to overturn the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as the legal union of one man and one woman, which he signed into law.

In his column, Clinton said that 1996 “was a very different time.” No state recognized same-sex marriage and supporters of DOMA “believed that its passage ‘would diffuse a movement to enact a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, which would have ended the debate for a generation or more.’” Clinton says he now supports same-sex marriage based on justice, equality and the Constitution.

Now, while the slap at former President Clinton's marital history is, I believe, not entirely gratuitous, it really is out of place here — the issue is not Clinton's sex life, but the right of other people, who may be far more deeply committed, to enter into a relationship that they wish recognized as a marriage. But Cal Thomas is being a smarty-pants here, and bringing up Clinton's history to add an ad hominem reason to come out on the other side of the question. Whatever you think of Bill Clinton's conduct, it shouldn't be the issue in this discussion.

Mr. Thomas actually mischaracterizes DOMA anyway — it is only for Federal purposes that DOMA “defines marriage as the legal union of one man and one woman” — each state in fact can, at present, define it in that way or any other. And in fact, later in the same column, Mr. Thomas actually says:

The Constitution doesn't guarantee the right to marry. States, not the federal government, issue marriage licenses.

And this is a very important reason that DMA should be considered unconstitutional. But he continues:

Current laws restrict “underage” marriage, as well as polygamy. If same-sex marriage is approved, what's to stop polygamists from demanding legal protection and cultural acceptance? … So I ask, if “fairness” and “equality” are the standard, isn't it also “unfair” to “discriminate” against polygamists who wish to live in “loving” and “committed” relationships?

But while there is a case before the Supreme Court that addresses this issue — and I will get to that latter — DOMA does not have anything to do with whether a state should, or should not, permit any given couple (or set of more than two, if you bring in the question of polygamy) to marry. What DOMA says is that, even if a couple is married under the laws of the state of Massachusetts, the Federal Government will refuse to recognize that marriage if the two are both of the same sex. And that contravenes the usual Constitutional relationship between the states and Federal government. A simple Tenth Amendment argument makes DOMA unconstitutional.

Anyway, we aren't seeing suits to legalize polygamy, or “underage” marriage, and as recently as the 1950s, perhaps more recently (I haven't checked on when the law was changed) a 12-year-old girl (but not a boy!) could get married legally in one state. The charge that “if we legalize this, next we will be asked to legalize that,” is always raised when someone is opposed to the first one, but wants to try to scare people who are willing to permit it by bringing up the second, which he believes that fewer will accept. And that is a fallacious argument. If we legalize same-sex marriage, perhaps a movement will arise to legalize polygamy, but if you don't want to see polygamous marriages legalized, the time to oppose them is when that bill comes up. When we lowered the voting age to 18 from 21, people didn't complain that if we did that, soon we would have to lower it to 16, or 14, or 10, or even 7! Yet that's the same type of argument. What the proper voting age is can be debated — and I would be amenable to an age below 18, as I think that at 14, my political beliefs were already formed nearly fully — but the debate should center on what is the proper age, and not whether a lowering now leads to a further lowering later. And the same applies to expansion of who is allowed to marry legally.

Yes, I believe that same-sex marriage should be approved, but DOMA is not about that; it is about the Federal Government recognizing marriages that are already legal under state laws.

What Cal Thomas is really getting at, however, is contained in the next piece of his column:

Since we are rapidly discarding the rules for living and social order set down in a book found in most motel room drawers, what is to replace it? Opinion polls? Clever legal arguments? Fairness? What exactly does “fairness” mean and who decides what's fair? Many things may seem “unfair,” but not all can, or should, be addressed by courts.

Of course, the reference to “a book found in most motel room drawers” is to the Bible — what Thomas, of course, means is the Christian Bible, which has a number of books I do not recognize as scriptural, but let us not get into that debate here — and now we get into the First Amendment. There are people like Mr. Thomas who think that this amendment permits laws that are designed to impose the standards of one particular form of Christianity upon all of us, and clearly the purpose of this amendment was to prevent such laws. And I say “one particular form of Christianity” because, contrary to what Mr. Thomas may wish, there are churches that will perform same-sex marriages, so their clergy do not seem to think the Bible condemns them.

The Court is considering DOMA, and it is also considering the separate issue of whether states should be required to allow gay marriage. These are different issues. DOMA should be ruled unconstitutional because the Federal Government should not prevent a state's legal right to sanction a marriage from being recognized Federally. The other question is more nuanced. Ultimately, however, I think there is an equal-protection issue, and just as the Court held in Loving v. Virginia that people of different races should not be prevented from marrying, they ought to apply the same logic to people of the same sex. But there is a state's rights issue that points the other way. So this decision is less clear.

The worm has turned

Back at the end of last year, the Republicans found themselves in a bad spot. If they did nothing, the Bush tax cuts would all expire Jan. 1. Even President Obama wanted to preserve many of them, so there was bipartisan agreement that doing nothing was unacceptable. And thus, John Boehner and the House Republican caucus ended up surrendering too much to President Obama. There was no better choice.

Now, on the other hand, it is the President who is in the same pickle that the Republicans were in back then. If nobody does anything, the sequester kicks in — the spending cuts go beyond what the GOP wants, but certainly Obama gets none of the tax increases he wants. So the only compromise possible is for the President to give up on some of the tax increases. We are seeing his allies — Nancy Pelosi and the rest of the House Democrats — making wild statements to try to curry favor with the American people. But they cannot win — and President Obama knows it. Finally, he is talking with the GOP leaders in Congress — something he refused to do last December. My, how the worm has turned!