Even with cognitive dissonance this striking, they still think they've got a right to withhold civil rights from a whole segment of the population:

Maggie Gallagher's disdain for Marriage Equality New York board president Cathy Marino-Thomas was palpable. The feeling, we're guessing, was mutual. The two shared the stage at Hofstra University's “Day of Dialogue," and even outside the confines of a 30-second spot, Gallagher was still trafficking in misinformation. And eye rolls.

We do appreciate the debate over whether our "intolerance" for bigotry is, by definition, hate — of the very same variety we call out and despise daily on this website. That's Gallagher's position: By labeling Prop 8 supporters as advocates of hatred, we're being intolerant ourselves, showing no respect for a difference in viewpoints.

But what Maggie does not, and may never understand is the difference between agreeing to disagree, and actively endorsing discrimination against an entire group of people. For that, we cannot be tolerant. [..]

But here's the soundbite we're holding on to, as Maggie addresses Marino-Thomas: "[Your marriage] may be better, but it's not a marriage. … It's probably better than my marriage to hear you talk about it. I wouldn't talk about my marriage in such glowing terms."

It's so sad that someone who cannot speak well of their own marriage feels it's their right to fight to keep others from having that legal union.

On a related note, it's not a serious move so much as a political statement, but here in California, someone has decided to fight a real threat to the sanctity of marriage: the ability to divorce:

California Secretary of State Debra Bowen today authorized the backer of an initiative that would ban divorce to begin collecting signatures to put the proposed constitutional amendment before voters.

John Marcotte now has until March 22, 2010, to collect 694,354 signatures of registered voters in order to get the measure on the ballot next year. The proposal would change the California Constitution to "eliminate the ability of married couples to get divorced in California."[..]:

ELIMINATES THE LAW ALLOWING MARRIED COUPLES TO DIVORCE. INITIATIVE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT. Changes the California Constitution to eliminate the ability of married couples to get divorced in California. Preserves the ability of married couples to seek an annulment. Summary of estimate by Legislative Analyst and Director of Finance of fiscal impact on state and local government: Savings to the state of up to hundreds of millions of dollars annually for support of the court system due to the elimination of divorce proceedings.

While I obviously don't want my rights taken away (not that I'm planning on divorcing my husband, mind you. He's stuck with me.), I do appreciate the sentiment behind it. My gay uncle's marriage does not harm my marriage, threatens no one else's relationship and it's a ludicrous argument to claim it does. However, the ease in which we may end marriages (one-third of all first marriages end within 10 years, according to the CDC) certainly does. If these wingnuts want to hold up marriage as the foundation of society, then put up or shut up.

From The Colbert Report:

The petition signers who want to overturn the "everything but marriage" bill should be able to stay in the closet that the gay people have abandoned.

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Xenophobic Arizona Sheriff, Joe Arpaio, has raised a lot of eyebrows. Besides his very public hatred of Hispanics, he's also established ties with a Neo-Nazi group in his home state. Arpaio's obliteration of civil rights has finally caught up with him and the Obama Administration is finally pushing back:

A controversial Arizona sheriff known for taking a hard line against illegal immigrants has been stripped of some of his powers in what he described as a political move by the Obama administration.

Under a two-year-old agreement with the federal department of homeland security, Arpaio and his deputies had been authorised to enforce federal immigration law by arresting suspected illegal immigrants in the field and by checking the immigration status of people arrested on other offences.

But after drawing thousands of complaints and a civil rights investigation from the justice department, Arpaio was this week stripped of his federal authority to make immigration arrests. County attorney Andrew Thomas, one of Arpaio's supporters, condemned the "setback in the fight against illegal immigration". Read on...

This is a positive sign and I applaud the White House for taking making this happen. It's long overdue.

I wasn't planning to write about this today, but reading this really got to me. Despite the fact that this country was founded on the idea of freedom of religion, there's a substantial bloc of citizens who seem to believe their religious beliefs trump everyone else's, even to the inclusion of institutionalized terror tactics.

I wonder when our constitutional-law president is going to use the extensive anti-terror powers at his command to protect women's legal rights?

For a nation that claims to cherish its freedoms, America is pretty damned complacent about the harassment that goes on outside abortion clinics. Imagine this circus outside of dentist's offices instead. Imagine what it would feel like, having to endure being called a whore and a killer on your way in to have a bad tooth pulled. Maybe they'd throw little plastic teeth at you; maybe they'd even take your photograph on the way in. People wouldn't stand for it: I have the right to choose my own dental care, they'd say. Who do these people think they are? And even if I were the smallest bit unsure about the choice I'd made, even if some part of me wanted to be talked into a filling and not an extraction--why in god's name would some hostile, red-faced, screaming stranger get a vote?

Maybe there's an element of trolling to that analogy. I could write the outraged top-text for an email forward of this blog myself. "Can you believe it! A LIVING, ALMOST-BREATHING CHILD who will PROBABLY CURE CANCER SOMDAY is nothing more than a ROTTED MOLAR to this BARREN GODLESS WHORE!!!"

Feel free to copy/paste--but if you do, you're missing the point. Bullying never won any hearts or minds, and harassment or intimidation of private citizens going about their private lives is never, never, never a tool for good. There is no place for such tactics of fear in civil discourse, and no one who employs them can be truly called a warrior for good, no matter what they tell themselves while they're packing their bullhorn and their gore posters into the car every morning.

I can't make the protesters who camp out in front of my clinic in the mornings go away. I can't even make them behave like rational, responsible citizens. But I can make sure that the women (and men, and children) who walk into my clinic don't have to run that obstacle course alone, and I believe I can assuage some of their fear. I can shield them physically from shouts and eyes and cameras. I can assure by my presence as a witness that the protesters don't "forget" where the property line is. And I can be one voice of supportive reason, quiet but strong, in opposition to the shouting about the blastocyst deep conditioning cabal:

"I'm a volunteer with the clinic. We have some protesters out front who will try to shout at you. They don't know why you're here, but they're going to shout at you anyway. You don't have to listen to them. I can just walk alongside and keep myself between them and you. I'm sorry you have to deal with this today."

Their fear is why I escort. Their gratitude is why I keep coming back.

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During what I thought was one of the better parts of the President's address to Congress tonight was the last portion of his speech where he reminded everyone that health care is not just a policy issue, but a moral issue and a matter of social justice.

Whether the legislation he signs ends up reflecting that is another matter. When you're starting from the position that it's important to keep the insurance companies in place I'm not sure how you get there myself.

That is why we cannot fail. Because there are too many Americans counting on us to succeed – the ones who suffer silently, and the ones who shared their stories with us at town hall meetings, in emails, and in letters.

I received one of those letters a few days ago. It was from our beloved friend and colleague, Ted Kennedy. He had written it back in May, shortly after he was told that his illness was terminal. He asked that it be delivered upon his death.

In it, he spoke about what a happy time his last months were, thanks to the love and support of family and friends, his wife, Vicki, and his children, who are here tonight . And he expressed confidence that this would be the year that health care reform – “that great unfinished business of our society,” he called it – would finally pass. He repeated the truth that health care is decisive for our future prosperity, but he also reminded me that “it concerns more than material things.” “What we face,” he wrote, “is above all a moral issue; at stake are not just the details of policy, but fundamental principles of social justice and the character of our country.”

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Chris Matthews and his panel of Joan Walsh and Jonathan Alter talk about the Republicans' bad case of A.D.D. where they're already carping that the Democrats had better not use Ted Kennedy's death to push through health care/insurance reform. Heaven forbid what's good for Ronnie Raygun might be good for Ted Kennedy as well.

Matthews: Let me ask you about this attempt at foot steps here on the part of the right to interrupt this in a way, I called them ghouls a few minutes ago..

Walsh: Yeah.

Matthews: ..ah, grave robbers. They're trying to get into this story by saying the Democrats are going to do a "win one for the Gipper"...well do me if Audie Murphy served this country and was fighting for us, we'd say, well let's try to do something as well. Let's try to be equally courageous.

If somebody dies in a battle you say, let's try to carry it on, carry the banner forward. That seems to be very, American. They're turning that on the right as some kind of "well, you'd better not try that".

Alter: We've seen this before. The year was 1964. John F. Kennedy has been assassinated and Lyndon Johnson said let's pass the Civil Rights Act as a memorial to the slain president.

Matthews: Let it continue.

Walsh: Right.

Alter: And the right wing at that time said that it was inproper. The bill was passed and Ted Kennedy told me once that it was one of the top three accomplishments of the United States Senate in you know, all the years that he was there in the Civil Rights Act of '64.

Walsh: Well of course it was and you know passing a great health reform bill would be another signature accomplishment and he deserves it. And no one's dictating what should be in the bill, but to accuse, to say that's playing politics is just ridiculous. That is what the man stood for.

Matthews: Isn't it funny that people have memories that are so slight. The A.D.D. that overcomes them? Not in a clinical or medical sense, but just in a political sense. How many times in our lives in the last twenty or so years have you heard the phrase "win one for the Gipper"?

Walsh: Right.

Matthews: It's hilarious. It's a hoot, and now they're saying "don't do what we do".

He had it right in his grasp and came oh so close. History that is. Tom Watson almost did the unthinkable today when he just fell short and lost in a four hole playoff at the British Open in Turnberry, Scotland. The odds had him at something like a 1000-1 long shot to win it before the tournament started and boy did he ever smash that betting line apart. And it all came down to the last hole of the Open. Just par the hole and take the trophy. His tee shot was great, but then he hit his second and third shots a little too hard on eighteen and he missed his 10-foot victory putt which made him lose his one stroke lead---forced the playoff and poof--lost his chance at history. it happened that fast.

In his presser he was really disappointed because he knew he had it in his hands and all competitors for the most part do not like to finish second in anything even if they're almost 60. It still was a remarkable run and one that should make us take notice and tell us that anything is possible in life. Watson was also coming off of a hip replacement this year which made it even more improbable that he had a chance to win a major. Just walking 18 holes in one day is tiring, but to do it for four straight days was simply remarkable.

Tom also should be recognized for his civil rights stance when he quit a Club because they refused to allow Jews to become members.

Which brings us to Tom Watson, one of the greatest golfers of his generation and whose heroic, but unsuccessful charge for the Claret Jug at age 59 will be long-remembered. Tom is a rock-ribbed midwesterner from Missouri, a native of Kansas City, and like his father, who taught him golf, was a lifelong member of the National Golf Club of Kansas City.

In 1990, the Club refused membership to someone because he was Jewish. Quietly, without fanfare, Watson immediately quit the Club, but made his reasons why known privately. Not until the Club dropped its exclusionary policies did Watson rejoin.

When Jeff Sessions speaks, weird things happen.

He was talking to Wade Henderson, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, about scheduling a Senate Judiciary hearing on the disparity of the penalties for crack cocaine versus powder cocaine

Sessions said he and Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., had been talking about it. "Senator Leahy and I were talking during these hearings, we're going to do that crack cocaine thing you and I have talked about before," Sessions said.

The hearing room cracked up.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., looked over at Sessions. "Please rephrase it, Senator. Please rephrase," he said.

Sessions laughed along with the crowd. "I misspoke," he clarified. "We're going to reduce the burden of penalties in some of the crack cocaine cases and make them fair."

We have learned that Sen. Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III (R-AL) has a favorite Puerto Rican jurist -- Jose Cabranes. Sessions demanded to know why Judge Sotomayor did not follow Judge Cabranes' lead

Interestingly, Sessions was very critical of Judge Sotomayor's involvement, as a member of the Board of Directors, of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund. Sessions seemed not to know that his favorite Boricua judge, Cabranes, was also a member of the Board of the PRDLEF. Now right wing groups allied with Sessions and following his lead are running an ad attacking Sotomayor as a "terrorist."

The question needs to be asked of Sen. Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III (R-AL) (the KKK sympathizer; the person who said the NAACP was a "commie" group and who berated a white lawyer who worked for civil rights as a "disgrace to his race"), what do he and his allies make of the fact that their favorite Puerto Rican jurist, Jose Cabranes, was also a member of the "terrorist" group - the PRLDEF?

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Yes, Bill O'Reilly, it really is a crappy thing when major public figures -- or pissant ankle-biters -- can outrageously smear other public figures as "racist" and do so with impunity and repeatedly. That's what BillO was on about last night, anyway.

But no, he wasn't talking about Sonia Sotomayor. She's just a minor figure, after all. O'Reilly was talking about his own august self. Of course.

It was really quite the stomach-churning whinefest. He started off ranting that "my civil rights" and "my rights as an American" had been violated because he's been branded a "racist" on numerous occasions, which he claims is "libel." Then he indulged one of his periodic bully-the-women routines ("My rights were violated here!"), where he had on two female lawyers who proceeded to explain to him that he was full of crap. This, of course, did not sit well with O'Reilly, who ended up shaking his finger at them and accusing them of enabling the destruction of America.

Along the way, he managed to emit some momentous howlers:

If I were a minority, they couldn't do this to me. You know it. You know it, Tonia. If I were African-American like you are, and they started to do all this kind of stuff, I could kill 'em. And that's my point now. White Americans, Miss California, their rights are being violated, at least the spirit of their rights, by these unbelievable attacks, personal attacks.

...

They're attacking people who disagree with them in very personal ways. That's what they're doing. Don't dodge it.

Then, when they pointed out that the same could be said of his own behavior, he flew into a barely contained rage:

Wait a minute! Hold it! Tonia, keep quiet. I don't dish it out, madam. I don't do that stuff. Don't sit here and say I do. ... We don't do that here. Ever.

And then, at the end of the show? His usual segment of "Pinheads and Patriots." The "Pinheads" segment featured Barbra Streisand:

On the Pinhead front, Barbra Streisand's gonna write a book -- about design. It's gonna tell us all about her mansion in Malibu. I just can't wait for that, can you? No truth to the rumor she'll be concentrating on designs in ... Red Square!

That, of course, is only a sampling of the nonstop flow of "attacking people who disagree with them in very personal ways" on The O'Reilly Factor. Indeed, his whole show is built around it.

Every single night on his show, O'Reilly demonizes liberals. It's what he does. His critics are all "far-left loons" and "haters" who he himself has compared on a regular basis to Nazis and the Klan. Guess he doesn't much care for it when the shoe's on the other foot.

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(All for the sake of dignity and a sandwich)

Hard to imagine that only 48 years ago today, a group of people, black and white, got on buses and rode South, attempting to bring an end to segregation in bus station waiting rooms and lunch counters. In 1961 it was illegal to mix races in social settings in the south - there were separate bathrooms, restaurants, hotels, waiting rooms, beaches. If you grew up during the end of Apartheid in South Africa, and were witness to the sweeping change that took place in the 1990's there, realize that pretty much the same atmosphere prevailed in the South in America in the 1960's. It was a horrific struggle in Alabama and Mississippi in 1961, but it was the turning point in race relations in America. When the first Freedom Riders went into Alabama, they were not greeted as liberators. Rather as agitators, communist inspired - part of some evil plot as the KKK, White Citizens Council, American Nazi Party and countless other hate groups would like to say. Buses were stoned and burned - Freedom Riders were pulled from buses and clubbed, beaten or tossed in jail on a myriad of trumped-up charges.

In response, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy sent Federal Marshals to enforce Civil Rights laws, ensuring safety of the protesters. It drew national attention and continued a struggle that began in the 1950's when the Supreme Court ruled Segregation of Public Schools was illegal. Slowly things began to change, but it was certainly not overnight. 1961 began a new era in the Civil Rights movement and it would be met with waves of violence from hate groups, bent on preserving a society where racism was the norm, a society run on fear and hate, a society doomed to implode on its own ignorance.

A segment of our society which sadly, still exists today.

Here is an NBC News Special recapping the events in Alabama in May 1961 called "Alabama USA" as well as some local (Montgomery Alabama) news reports, all as it was happening.

(Fear and Ignorance: Priceless)

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CNN ran Martin Luther King's immortal 1963 speech on the Washington Mall -- known as the "I Have a Dream" speech -- in its entirety today, and it really is something to see again.

Meanwhile, a CNN poll finds that more than two-thirds of black Americans consider King's vision now fulfilled with Barack Obama's election.

No doubt, every white Republican on the planet (see esp. Bill Bennett) will now wave that poll in our faces to claim that racism has been officially overcome.

Totalitarians rule!

The Supreme Court has ruled by 5-4 split decision that the exclusionary rule, which bars evidence obtained in an illegal search, is not absolute. The case in question, Herring v. U.S., involved a police officer, Mark Anderson, who executed a warrant to arrest Bennie Dean Herring, (described by the Times as "very unlucky as well as felonious in his conduct,") who had previous run-ins with the law and was at the Sherriff's department to retrieve items from his impounded car. A search turned up a gun and metamphatamines in Herring's possession.

The warrant had actually expired several months earlier, so the search was illegal even though Anderson had made an honest mistake. Evidence illegally obtained is usually inadmissible. But with the court's decision, under circumstances such as the one above, this won't be the case...read on

Here's more...

The one limitation on the Court’s opinion — and it will be the key to determining whether it reworks Fourth Amendment jurisprudence very significantly — is the Court’s statement that its rule applies to police conduct “attenuated from the arrest.” Those statements constrain today’s holding largely to the bounds of existing law. But the logic of the decision spans far more broadly, and the next logical step — which I predict is 2 years away — is abandoning the “attentuation” reference altogether...read on

I'm actually a lot more interested in how the Obama administration plans to purge the DoJ ranks of those appointees who were hired based on this illegal criteria:

Ideological considerations permeated the hiring process at the Justice Department's civil rights division, where a politically appointed official sought to hire "real Americans" and Republicans for career posts and prominent case assignments, according to a long awaited report released this morning by the department's inspector general.

The extensive study of hiring practices between 2001 and 2007 concluded that a former department official improperly weeded out candidates based on their perceived ties to liberal organizations. Two other senior managers failed to oversee the process, authorities said.

The key official, former Deputy Assistant Attorney General Bradley Schlozman, favored employees who shared his political views and derided others as "libs" and "pinkos," the report said.

Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine and Office of Professional Responsibility chief H. Marshall Jarrett said they would refer their findings to legal disciplinary authorities.

"The Department must be vigilant to ensure that such egregious misconduct does not occur in the future," Fine said in a statement.

)

Award-winning composer Marc Shaiman put together Jack Black and a star-studded cast for "Prop 8: The Musical".

Join the Impact is still organizing protests and other events to call attention to the inequality of Proposition 8 in California (and lest you non-Californians think this doesn't impact you, think again. California is the guinea pig for similar legislation through out the country).