Romney's Gay Pride Week (not so much)

So Mitt Romney fired accepted the forced resignation of an openly gay member of his foreign policy staff. Yes, it was almost two weeks ago, eons in the collective memory, but its recollection bleeds into "This Week in Gay Marriage", in which Obama is yanked out of the closet even as his protagonist pushes past him and forces his way in.

Oh yeah, Mitt also bullied a gay kid when he was in high school.

Reading that story almost makes strapping an Irish Setter to the roof of your car for a ride to Canada sound like a normal thing, doesn't it?

At least the Log Cabins are unswayed. So he hasn't lost the entirety of another voting bloc. But let's back away from the snark for just a moment.

This story is resonant because one can, all too easily, see Romney walking away even now, or simply failing to connect, to grasp hurt. How he talks about this incident will be impossible to divorce from how he talks about same-sex marriage in the wake of President Obama’s announcement, and about questions of basic dignity for gay and lesbian Americans. But unless he deals with it soundly, it will also be present as people wonder about his compassion for anyone not as well situated and cosseted as he has always been. Who else might he walk away from? Until now, the campaign has talked about his fondness for pranks as a way to humanize him; his wife called him wild and crazy. Is this what they think that means?

There's a whole lot of excuse-making on the Right in the wake of these developments. "Everybody gets/got bullied in high school", "I was a bully; I got bullied; it's just a part of growing up, a right of passage'. I believe most of us know better than that today. Just as many of us know better than to vote for civil rights discrimination as codified into the state constitution. But mentioning gay anything lathers up the Christian conservatives so badly that they leap out of the pews and mob their e-mail accounts, or the phones, threatening to do the same thing at the polls. So the GOP knuckles under.

As for Mitt, he's left with "Can't we just talk about the economy, please?"

Hey, they're YOUR base, buddy. You get 'em in line.

Update: Cenk Uygur had a more expansive report on this topic last night: "(W)hat looks like a lifelong pattern of Mitt Romney’s mean-spirited behavior, from allegations of bullying a prep school peer, taunting a blind English teacher, hazing classmates at Stanford and, later, pressuring a pregnant woman whom he counseled not to have an abortion, even if it risked her life."

So the record shows it's a lot more than just bullying gay kids or family pets. I doubt Mitt is going to be able to talk much about the economy for the next few days.

Obama's position on gay marriage needs to evolve a little faster *and so it does*

That's not just my opinion.

On Tuesday night, Jon Stewart delved in to the twilight zone that is Washington D.C. to discuss an issue dominating the news this week: gay marriage. Tracing the chronology — from Joe Biden‘s remark on Sunday, to the reaction that followed, to the subsequent reassessing of President Obama‘s “evolution” on the issue — The Daily Show looked at how far the president has come in terms of supporting marriage equality. He has evolved: from openly supporting gay marriage to becoming, well, a political candidate.

Ron Reagan was even better in describing it.

“This whole evolving thing has really jumped the shark at this point,” Reagan said. “I mean, [Obama's] taking more time evolving on this issue than humans took evolving from apes.” He acknowledged that’s a bit of “hyperbole,” but digressed. We all know it’s a “political calculation,” he added: we could argue whether it’s a correct or incorrect one, but it’s an “obvious” calculation.

Reagan continued: “He’s taking a civil rights issue and he’s trying to kind of, you know, straddle the fence on it, and it’s unseemly. He’s beginning to look ridiculous on this issue. He needs to just get off the fence and just go wherever they know he really is in the first place.”

Matthews asked, “If he loses the election because of this, and Mitt Romney walks into the White House, a man who says he will not evolve — doesn’t evolve, RINO, doesn’t believe in evolution, period — [...] is that good for the cause?” Reagan replied, “It’s not good for the cause, although the cause will continue and will prevail just because of demographics if nothing else.”

He further added: “I understand what the calculation is, but I think the calculation is now incorrect. You can only make this political calculation when people don’t generally see it as a political calculation. If people know that you’re not actually speaking your mind and your heart, if you are inauthentic about this issue – and it is an important issue to some people, a lot of people – then you’re doing yourself harm. You’re actually harming your electoral prospects.” 

What's amazing to me is that this president -- who took the biggest risk possible for his electoral prospects when he ordered the raid on bin Laden's compound -- is so equivocating on a civil rights issue. To me it's more cowardly than his lack of effort stamping the Affordable Health Care Act with a public option, which of course was way watered down from 'universal health care'.

Obama needs to get off the goddamned fence and take a stand on this, and he needs to do it yesterday. Let the conservatives wail and froth, and promptly counter-punch their teeth out. He could give a grand speech invoking Martin Luther King and LBJ and 1964 and call for legislation and out the Republicans in Congress in all their bigoted, hate-filled glory.

Ten-to-one nothing like that happens, though. This president is way too cautious -- way too conservative himself -- to stand up and fight for anything as messy as gay marriage in an election year. He'll probably promise to do something after he gets re-elected, and a whole lot of Democrats will be just fine with that.

That's not leadership; that's management by swing-state polling.

Update: Somebody should have taken my bet.

"At a certain point, I've just concluded that for me personally, it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married," he concluded.

Steve Clemons at The Atlantic leads the cheers.

John Carona has never said Dan Patrick was gay

This is uproarious. Two Republicans in the state Senate jockeying for the day a when Texas needs a new lieutenant governor are hurling rotten tomatoes at each other.

The Quorum Report scored a scoop highlighting the animosity between Republican Sens. John Carona, of Dallas, and Dan Patrick, of Houston — complete with Patrick accusing Carona of lying about Patrick’s marriage, and Carona not only denying it, but adding that he also didn’t call Patrick gay.

The accusation from Patrick, in part, in an e-mail to fellow senators:

I was in Dallas last week and learned that Senator Carona has told people outside the Senate that Jan and I are separated and may get divorced. He added in a few other negative comments about me in an obvious attempt by him to discredit me for some reason. … There is no excuse or justification for his actions. He could have easily checked the story out to see if it was true. He didn’t care if it was true.

The response from Carona, in part, also in an e-mail to fellow senators:

The email which you blasted to our colleagues and then provided to the media is false and you would have known that had you called or emailed before sending it. …Though I have heard rumors regarding your marital status and sexual preferences for a while now, at no time have I told anyone that you are either separated, divorced, or gay. (emphasis is mine)

Carona went on to blame Patrick’s political ambition for the e-mail.

Carona is a potential candidate for lieutenant governor if Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst is elected to the U.S. Senate and senators choose an interim replacement, and also in the 2014 statewide election for the seat. Patrick is a potential lieutenant governor candidate in 2014.

Carona also called Patrick “a snake oil salesman” and “a narcissist that would say anything to draw attention to himself.”

Patrick, in response, suggested that Carona is “at a very dark place in his life for some reason” and said:

“I find Senator Carona’s response repulsive and unbecoming of a Senator. I stand by my statement. … He still owes my wife and my family an apology. Now he owes me an apology for his latest smear, another fabrication by Senator Carona.”

Paul Burka is solemn and sober in his judgment. The rest of of us are Laughing Our Asses Off.

Greg Abbott is either incompetent or defiantly ignorant

Or he's playing some kind of long con game that nobody else can decipher.

The U.S. Department of Justice has asked a panel of federal judges to postpone the trial in Texas' Voter ID case because of complaints that state Attorney General Greg Abbott continues to stall requests for information.

The inability to get documents and Abbott's fight to keep Republican legislators from having to testify make a July 9 trial date impractical, Justice Department lawyers said in their motion to a three-judge panel in Washington, D.C.

Abbott wanted a quick trial to put the Voter ID law in place for the Nov. 6 general election.

"If Texas wants a speedy trial, then Texas will have to follow the rules. They shouldn't cherry-pick which rules they want to enforce and which rules they want to ignore," Mexican American Legislative Caucus Chair Trey Martinez Fischer, D-San Antonio, said Tuesday. 

The court agrees with the DOJ.

In a harshly worded order issued this afternoon, the court in the Texas voter ID case reprimanded the state for what it said were “well-documented” discovery violations “that can only be interpreted as having the aim of delaying the Defendants’ ability to receive and analyze data and documents in a timely fashion.”

The court said:

Texas has repeated ignored or violated directives and orders of this Court that were designed to expedite discovery, and Texas has failed to produce in a timely manner key documents that Defendants need to prepare their defense.  Most troubling is Texas’ conduct with respect to producing its key state databases, which are central to Defendants’ claim that S.B. 14 has a disparate and retrogressive impact on racial and/or language minority groups.  The record reflects that these databases are voluminous, complex, and essential to the preparation of the opinions of Defendants’ expert witnesses. Yet, according to Texas, the full production of such databases to the United States was only complete on May 4, 2012 - 35 days after they were initially due.  The production to Defendant-Intervenors is still not complete.

The court told Texas that “[b]ased on the record to date, this Court would be well within its discretion to continue the July 9 trial date, to impose monetary sanctions against Texas, or to keep the July 9 trial date and impose evidentiary sanctions such as an adverse inference upon Texas.”

I simply don't understand what the Attorney General of Texas thinks he's going to accomplish here. His stonewalling might delay the trial he claims to want that he believes will settle the Photo ID business just in time to suppress November voting. But the judges seem more inclined to simply punish him for his sloth, or his deception, or whatever it is.

His refusal to comply with basic rules of discovery -- while attempting to create some kind of long-game legal precedent with this 'legislative privilege' BS that seems designed to produce a victory at the SCOTUS -- actually appears more directed to win in the court of TeaBagger opinion when the GOP finally loses the case. "Oh well, we lost because they forced the legislators to testify, and that's why the Ill Eagles are still able to vote 50 times..."

Greg Abbott is an abject failure at the simplest of tasks of an attorney's practice, and yet the very worst people representing the Republicans of Texas throw rose petals at his chair wheels.

Is this some parallel universe I have stumbled into?

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance thinks Mrs. Sarkozy would have been the better candidate than her husband (but probably still would've lost to the Socialist) as it brings you this week's roundup.

Three more Congressional candidate interviews from Off the Kuff: State Rep. Joaquin Castro, the heir apparent in CD20; Bexar County Tax Assessor Sylvia Romo in CD35; and former Bastrop County Judge Ronnie McDonald in CD27.  

BossKitty at TruthHugger is overwhelmed by the disgusting realization that everyone's future will be determined by America UNDER THE INFLUENCE!  

BlueBloggin sees zombies everywhere. Zombies are disengaging common sense and promoting the Great Unlearning of America at the bidding of the Koch Brothers: Zombie Politics Desecrates Science Education and Economy.

Texas GOP House Speaker Joe Straus and anti-abortion groups make nice. WCNews at Eye On Williamson has the skinny: The political calculus is changing in Texas.  

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme hopes the Valley recognizes Filemon Vela for the opportunistic a**hole he truly is.

The Libertarians selected former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson as their presidential nominee at their national convention in Las Vegas this past weekend, and then pushed all their chips in on the pivotal issue of 2012: weed. PDiddie at Brains and Eggs doesn't think it's a smokescreen.

Lightseeker explains, over at TexasKaos, how Texas has a shoot-first law and even the bill's sponsor didn't know it. Give it a read.

Sunday Evening Funnies

Click on these last two to see the larger version.

'Lesser of two evils' is still evil

He's a smug, Harvard-trained elitist who doesn't get how regular Americans are struggling these days. More extreme than he lets on, he's keeping his true agenda hidden until after Election Day. He's clueless about fixing the economy, over his head on foreign policy. Who is he?

Your answer will help decide the next president.

Is it Barack Obama, as seen by Mitt Romney? Or Romney, the way Obama depicts him? For all their liberal versus conservative differences, when the two presidential contenders describe each other, they sound like they're ragging on the same flawed guy. Or mirror images of that guy.

Will voters prefer the man waving with his left hand or his right?

Blame it on two cautious candidates with more traits in common than their disparate early biographies would suggest.

That article is dead solid perfect.

And Mr. Fish gets it right except for the "voting makes it worse" part. Voting for the lesser of two evils is the real problem, and this is particularly true for those of us living in Texas and other non-swing states, where the presidential contest will never be as close as the polling suggests it to be.

So the key is not to vote for the men. Or any Republicans.

Liberal and progressive women running for office will start fewer wars, torture fewer people, they won't cut education or women's health care, and they're a lot less likely to constantly act like assholes.

I'd of course like to be able to type "none" instead of fewer, but we have to get started somewhere.

Update: And just as a reminder, the lame-ass bunch of moderate Republicans running Americans Elect are not the solution to anything either. Buddy MF'n Roemer, for crissakes.

Libertarians go all in on the ganja vote

The Libertarian Party is wrapping up its national convention today (Vegas, baby!) having selected its presidential and vice-presidential nominees. I mentioned the dilemma Gary Johnson found himself in all the way back in February. Looks like he resolved it.

On the first ballot, Judge Jim Gray of California wins the vice presidential nomination of the Libertarian Party in 2012. Gray thanks (presidential runner-up Lee) Wrights for being a gentleman and said he looked forward to debating (Vice President Joe) Biden.

Judge Gray's candidacy was just rumored a week ago, and quickly bloomed into full flower. Excerpt from Tucker Carlson's Daily Caller, who broke this news; if you click the link, you'll understand why they had the inside dope first:

The decision to run with Gray “puts pot front-and-center in the campaign,” one Johnson adviser told TheDC, before adding that Johnson’s opposition to the war in Afghanistan will likely remain the campaign’s defining issue.

According to the biography on his website, Gray “currently presides over the civil trial calendar for the Superior Court of Orange County.” Gray previously served in the Peace Corps, was an attorney in the Navy JAG Corps, and prosecuted cases in the Los Angeles U.S. Attorney’s Office. He ran as a Libertarian against California Democratic Sen. Barbra (sic) Boxer in 2004. [...]

Gray was a conservative Republican who later became a Libertarian after deciding that the nation’s drug laws did more harm than good. He is the author of several books about law, politics and the drug war, and helped spearhead Proposition 19 in California, which would have decriminalized marijuana in the Golden State had it passed.

“I was a drug warrior until I saw what was happening in my own courtroom,” Gray said in 2010. 

This presents a fascinating conundrum for both Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. Nobody can say with any confidence who loses more of which demographic in a scenario where cannabis is the topic. The Republicans probably have to fall out against it. They've spent all of this time and effort sucking up to the Christian bloc that they can't put the pipe down back away now. Obama is in a bigger quandary because he owned the youth vote four years ago. Even as those voters have leaked away from the President before this development, his focus on addressing the student loan crisis may have been designed to shore up some lagging support.

Twenty-somethings with a mountain of college loan debt, bleak employment prospects, and a soothing habit of anti-depressant, sedative self-medication may be one-issue voters -- if they can find their way to the polls --  just like conservative Catholics.

Tom here seems to capture many of the absurdities of the haze surrounding legalization.

Toke of the Town has more (of the story).  

Update: You did know that yesterday was the Global Marijuana March, right? Yeah.

Update II: The secretary of state in Michigan (a Republican) will refuse to place Johnson's name on the ballot in that state due to an arcane law known as "sore loser", which is to say that nobody who lost his party's nomination can be nominated on another party's ticket. This development -- particularly if it spreads to other states -- bodes ill for the Libs unless they can successfully appeal it through the courts.

Update III: More opinions of Gary Johnson and the Libertarians' prime role as spoiler from Socratic Gadfly and The Daily Beast.

Sunday Seis de Mayo Funnies

Happy belated Cinco de Mayo. Stace has the Cinco de Meow report.

A couple of debates last night

Both were in Houston. One was televised. The US Senate candidates were at the Melcher Center at U of H, and the Harris County DAs -- also known as the Republicans -- gathered at TeaBagger Central.

In a Thursday night forum in Houston among candidates vying to succeed U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, former Texas Solicitor General Ted Cruz picked up where he left off after a Dallas debate last month, blistering Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, the front-runner.

Asked about an ad the Dewhurst campaign released last week questioning Cruz's connection as an attorney in a case involving Chinese copyright infringement, Cruz called Dewhurst a liar.

"The reason that he's lying," he said, "is because conservatives all over this state are uniting behind our campaign."

Isn't this too nasty even for the TeaBags?

I was shocked at the anger and animosity Ted Cruz demonstrated throughout the evening. Sadder yet, Dewhurst tries too hard to match it thinking he's appealing to the same subset, but that's a fool's game for him.

Craig James really might need to kill 5 hookers in order to get some attention, and poor Tom Leppert is going to have to fire his makeup artist after she made him look ready for casketing last night. But the creepiest thing was seeing Harris County Clerk Stan Stanart, in every shot just over the shoulder of the moderator in front of the audience, half-grinning at the camera all night long. It was disturbing, I tell you.

 The two Democrats, former state Rep. Paul Sadler and Sean Hubbard, a 31-year-old small-business owner from Dallas, faced the dual task of introducing themselves to a broader audience and quickly offering a contrast to their GOP counterparts. Texans haven't elected a Democrat to statewide office since 1994.

Hubbard said he was older than Joe Biden the vice president, when he was elected to the US Senate from Delaware at 29. "I'm the only one in the race who isn't a career politician or a super-wealthy person," he said.

Sadler, an acknowledged expert on public school finance when he served in the Texas Legislature from 1991 to 2003, used his interview time to talk about education.

Hubbard impressed me with his knowledge and his poise (but I've been on his bandwagon for a long time now). Sadler was the legislative heavyweight champion on that stage -- much more experience and success even than the light gov -- but he's stultifyingly boring, untelegenic, and appears to be running a campaign as an independent in the grand Joe Lieberman tradition.

Time for a youth movement in the US Senate. And if the Dems can't nominate Hubbard I will easily transfer support to the Green, David Collins.

Update: Here's Peggy Fikac's live-blog of last night, and if you click here, you can vote in the online poll for the candidate you support in the primary (click on 'newest' if you don't see it when the page loads). Sean Hubbard is currently leading. ;^)

You'll have to wait for Big Jolly to post his slathering review -- here's the advance -- of the DA swap meet when he gets around to putting it up. I'll only say that by excluding the Democratic candidates for district attorney, KSP strengthens the case against them in the lawsuit they have already lost once.

Update II: Thanks BJ. Now empty your drool bucket, please.

Update III: Here's TexTrib's video of the entire two-hour affair. One-on-ones with Dewhurst, then Hubbard, then Leppert, then Sadler, and then James and Cruz. My advice is to fast-forward through the Republicans unless you are a masochist. The best part -- the second hour -- is when all six are together at the table and fielding questions from the moderators.

Give me your thoughts in the comments.

Real guns WILL be banned in the 'free speech' zones, however

You know, the ones outside the convention hall down the street, where those anarchists and dirty hippies exercising their First Amendment rights are being kettled.

In the politically-charged and likely protest-filled streets of Tampa, Fla., during the Republican National Convention in August, water guns will be strictly prohibited. Concealed handguns, on the other hand, will be perfectly legal.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott said this week that banning handguns from downtown Tampa during the convention, as the city's Mayor Bob Buckhorn requested, "would surely violate the Second Amendment."

"It is unclear how disarming law-abiding citizens would better protect them from the dangers and threats posed by those who would flout the law," Scott said in a letter to Buckhorn Tuesday, emphasizing the words "law-abiding." "It is at just such times that the constitutional right of self defense is most precious and must be protected from government overreach."

Buckhorn said today that he was "disappointed" by Scott's decision, but that the city will "plan and train accordingly."

Tampa officials are expecting thousands of protesters to descend on the Florida metropolis for the GOP convention. While no handguns will be allowed inside the convention, which is being protected by the Secret Service, concealed carry license-holders will be able to carry their weapons in the streets surrounding the convention.

They will not, however, be able to have "super soaker" water guns, sticks, poles, portable shields or glass bottles.

This isn't 2012, it's 1984. Either that, or we are through the looking glass.

Caro's latest LBJ installment: "Passage of Power"

Business remains brisk and posting has been light for weeks now, so here's a review at the WaPo from the recently published Lyndon biography by Robert Caro.

The book opens in the rump years of the Dwight D. Eisenhower administration, with our hero — or should that be antihero? — contemplating a presidential run. It chugs through the grand detour of John F. Kennedy’s reign, with LBJ sulking on the sidelines. And it ends in the first weeks of Johnson’s presidency, which has been thrust upon him by JFK’s assassination.

Although these are, for Johnson, years of relative inaction, Caro infuses his pages with suspense, pathos, bitter rivalry and historic import — with Robert F. Kennedy in particular emerging as a nearly co-equal, second lead in the psychodrama, always looming offstage and threatening frequently to steal the spotlight from his arch rival.

In Caro’s account, LBJ comes across by turns as insecure, canny, bighearted, self-defeating, petty, brilliant, cruel and, of course, domineering. In the opening pages, he longingly eyes the presidency but, psychologically paralyzed, can’t bring himself to declare his candidacy or enter even a few primaries. Instead, he rages at the upstart Kennedy, who shows unforeseen proficiency in the old game of locking down governors and state Democratic Party leaders for the convention and in the new game of winning over the masses via television.

When Kennedy claims the party’s mantle in Los Angeles and searches for a running mate, a different Johnson suddenly appears: calculating, cagey, capable of subsuming his contempt for Kennedy to a steely desire to place himself next in line for the presidency. LBJ has staff members look up how many presidents had died in office and then does the cruel math, admitting in many conversations — and Caro recounts several of them — that such a route is his best hope of becoming president himself.

About a decade or longer ago I went with some online friends -- we were meeting offline -- to the LBJ library, which I always have considered a tour de force of the man's life. I was not an admirer of Johnson so much as I was in awe of him, much like Caro (and everybody else for that matter).  In our group of about ten was a guy who had fought in Vietnam, come home and protested the war, been gassed, arrested, etc. I did not know this prior to our tour; in fact I found out about a year or so later. As we left the library I asked him how he liked it and he said he didn't. I apologized (I had organized the trip) and he shrugged and said, 'no problem", so I forgot about the incident.
Sometimes my superhuman ability to empathize with others fails me. Anyway...

When Kennedy is shot in the Dallas motorcade, Johnson is transformed again — in an instant, according to Caro. Facedown on the floor of his car, a Secret Service member’s foot planted in his back, Johnson is magically possessed by self-assured calm. Rising to the immense challenges before him, he guides the country with a strong hand through the dark days of November using Kennedy’s martyrdom to realize his slain predecessor’s unfulfilled agenda, although not without exacerbating already-miserable relations with Robert Kennedy.

Like Popeye after a can of spinach, the once-impotent Johnson finds his legislative powers revived. The previous summer, as Kennedy was preparing to introduce at long last a civil rights bill, Johnson had advised Ted Sorensen, JFK’s close aide, to wait until he passed other key legislation first, because Southern senators would hold it hostage. “I’d move my children [the other bills] on through the line and get them down in the storm cellar and get it locked and key[ed],” he urged, but to no avail.

In December, however, Johnson, now president, undertakes a series of brilliant legislative maneuvers, which Caro deliciously recounts, to pick the locks of the congressional committees that had been caging up Kennedy’s controversial civil rights and tax bills and set them free.

If only Lyndon's ghost had provided some inspiration to Barack Obama with respect to the Affordable Health Care Act. Can't blame LBJ in the grave for someone else's lack of leadership, though.

Read the rest here. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going back to reading the book itself.