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The Bible loses, thank god!

The federal appeals court in Boston struck down the Defense of Marriage Act on Thursday, ruling that the federal statute violates the constitutional rights of gay and lesbian married couples to equal treatment under the law.

The action by a unanimous three-judge panel of the First US Circuit Court of Appeals sets the stage for a much-anticipated showdown at the US Supreme Court over same-sex marriage.

Declaring that tradition alone was not enough to justify disparate treatment of same-sex couples, the appeals court said DOMA failed to pass constitutional muster. ...CSM

You might want to stop trying to use that 1968 VW Beetle manual as a guide to your 2022 RAM 3500 pickup, too.  

Achtung!  Next stop, Supreme Court.  Where five men think all they're god.

The left has a very big Fox on its side

It's called Univision. It's the main Hispanic network and it's said to corral votes for Obama.  Given the Hispanic populations in swing states (and given the Republican staggers, farts, and burps in discussions of immigration) there's plenty to make Plouffe and Co. to think this will help the Obama campaign find 270 electoral votes pretty easily.

For more on this and other reasons why the Obama campaign is optimistic (and for why they shouldn't be), check out John Heilemann's article at New York Magazine, and listen to his interview from WBUR this morning.

For Republicans, it's buy votes or suppress them.  They're doing both. Their super PACs have the money to buy the presidency -- no question about it.  And they're working, state by state, on targeting probable Obama voters for disenfranchisement.  Between those corporate billions and the swathes of erasures on voter rolls in Florida, Wisconsin, and elsewhere, it'll be tough going for Democrats, even with El Zorro fighting alongside.

And optimism persists within the campaign.  Heilemann writes:

“The natural gravity of this race is such that Romney will be close or a little bit ahead very soon, and it’s going to be like that through the convention,” says a Democratic strategist. “Romney doesn’t have idiots working for him; they’re going to run a safe, smart, tactical campaign.” And they have proven adept at one thing: “They kill well,” admits a senior White House official. “And that’s not unimportant.”

Amid all the chatter from the peanut gallery, the Obamans are keeping their eyes on the prize. In 2008, their campaign’s motto was “Respect, Empower, Include.” In 2012, at the direction of the president, a fourth word has been appended: “Win.” For all their brio, Obama’s people know their campaign could be derailed by myriad events outside their control: dismal job numbers, a spike in fuel prices, hostilities in Iran, an economic shock from Europe, the overturning by the Supreme Court of health-care reform.

Are the Obamans nervous? Healthily so, but they are also buoyed by a firm conviction. As Plouffe puts it, “This is going to be a very close race, but I’d rather be us than them.” ...NYMag

Robme foogs

Stephen Colbert cleans up after the persidental candy date.

Suit may put Occupy Wall Street out of business

A law suit.  But not the kind you may be thinking of.  A suit who's a graduate of Harvard Law.

Mr. Kelleher, a Harvard Law School alumnus and a former partner at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom — is a wisecracking, fast-talking operator who just happens to think that banks would devastate the economy if given the chance. ...NYT

Kelleher is one of DC's most effective (and powerful) lobbyists.  He "does not work for banks. He works against them."

... Mr. Kelleher is the president of Better Markets, a nonprofit organization that pushes for a stringent interpretation of the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory law, which passed in 2010 but whose specific rules and regulations are currently the focus of an intense, complex and expensive behind-the-scenes battle.

Think of Better Markets as Occupy Wall Street’s suit-wearing cousin. ...NYT

The money that keeps Dennis Kelleher in business comes from inside the banking industry -- "from millions contributed by Michael Masters, an Atlanta-based hedge fund manager who believes that the markets are as imperfect as the people participating in them, and therefore need stricter rules." 

Kelleher and Masters aren't particularly optimistic.

The odds remain against Better Markets and fellow public-interest advocates, Mr. Kelleher concedes.

“It’s a battle in which the Wall Street lobbying and public-relations machine will have a decisive advantage,” said [Ted] Kaufman, the former Delaware senator. “With the regulators, you don’t have to win. You just have to gum them up. And that is exactly what Wall Street has done.” ...NYT

Proposal for a radical change in America. Please.

An op-ed piece the other day in the Times proposes lowering our productivity, not much, just enough. 

Shock?  Dismay?  No. Sanity, finally.

... Low productivity is seen as a disease. A whole set of activities that could provide meaningful work and contribute valuable services to the community are denigrated because they involve employing people to work with devotion, patience and attention.

But people often achieve a greater sense of well-being and fulfillment, both as producers and consumers of such activities, than they ever do in the time-poor, materialistic supermarket economy in which most of our lives are spent. And here perhaps is the most remarkable thing of all: since these activities are built around the value of human services rather than the relentless outpouring of material stuff, they offer a half-decent chance of making the economy more environmentally sustainable.

Of course, a transition to a low-productivity economy won’t happen by wishful thinking. It demands careful attention to incentive structures — lower taxes on labor and higher taxes on resource consumption and pollution, for example. It calls for more than just lip service to concepts of patient-centered care and student-centered learning. It requires the dismantling of perverse productivity targets and a serious investment in skills and training. In short, avoiding the scourge of unemployment may have less to do with chasing after growth and more to do with building an economy of care, craft and culture. And in doing so, restoring the value of decent work to its rightful place at the heart of society. ...Tim Jackson, New York Times

Trump this!

That's from InTrade 5/30/12.   Obama, 57.6% to Robme's 39.2%.