I'm way too tired to post today, but I wanted to call a discussion question…

Glenn Greenwald has stated, again, what we've all been thinking in light of the Mukasey nomination.

First off, let's acknowledge what a disgraceful display by Washington Democrats this whole vote was. All the Senators running for President managed to hide from the vote (and yes, I'm sure they all happen to have just dandy excuses, how-dare-I-complain), and you have the spectacle of the head of the DSCC up there saying that the now-Attorney General of the United States is “wrong on torture,” but he should be confirmed anyway. My god, are civilized people in generations to come likely to look back on someone like Schumer with anything other than absolute scorn and contempt after that? 

But Greenwald's point is:

   Every time Congressional Democrats failed this year to stop the Bush administration (i.e., every time they “tried”), the excuse they gave was that they “need 60 votes in the Senate” in order to get anything done. Each time Senate Republicans blocked Democratic legislation, the media helpfully explained not that Republicans were obstructing via filibuster, but rather that, in the Senate, there is a general “60-vote requirement” for everything.

So why would 44 Democratic Senators make a flamboyant showing of opposing confirmation without actually doing what they could to prevent it?

So, the question is: with our Constitution in shreds, and our congressional leadership pacing nervously while the Republicans are dancing tangos on the pieces, are cloture votes now the only REAL votes that have any meaning on Constitutional matters (and don't try and tell me the Mukasey nomination wasn't a Constitutional matter)? Is it all or nothing on such votes, when dealing with the Bush GOP?

Should we even care about how our Senators vote, or otherwise speak out, if they aren't doing everything in their power – including filibuster – to protect us from things as serious as legalized torture? I'm having a hard time imagining how that answer could be anything but 'no.'

(Don’t know that it’s “the best” argument, but it’s a damned fine one. – promoted by JulieWaters)

The best written argument I have read thus far on the marriage issue.  As a Justice of the Peace recently presiding over my first marriage, this is how I read the JoP manual and understand the law. 

Enjoy one and all. 

From today's Times Argus letters: 

Civil versus religious marriage 

November 9, 2007 

Though religion is an essential component of marriage for many couples, legal marriage in this country is a secular institution. 

The required license does not mention God, faith or children. It establishes a state of legal, not holy, matrimony. It confers no divine blessings, but provides hundreds of civil rights, protections and benefits, among the greatest of which is the word “marriage” itself. Opponents of same-sex marriage would like to read capability of procreation and Biblical injunctions against homosexual relations into the civil marriage laws, but they are not there, either overtly or by implication. 

Couples who want religious wedding ceremonies of course have every right to them, but this does not mean that religious marriages may be substituted for civil ones. The state invests the clergy with the authority to sign marriage licenses and thus to perform the civil and religious marriages simultaneously. The religious ceremony may be more important to couples and their families, but it is immaterial to the state. The legal part of the marriage is the civil portion only. 

The essential point is this: a duly executed state marriage license is valid without a shred of religious ceremony or any ceremony at all; a religious marriage is not legal without a civil marriage license. 

Members of the clergy must never be compelled to perform marriages which violate their religious principles, but neither may they force their convictions on other clergy — a steadily growing number — who believe differently, or on civil marriage law, which must always remain secular. A slight change in wording will make the standard state marriage license equally applicable to same-sex and heterosexual couples. There is no defensible reason not to make the change. 

Judy and Michael Olinick  Middlebury