Posting Towards Gomorrah

[Replaced_Texan]

No one gave me an "I voted" sticker when I voted this morning.

This country is falling apart.

[Shape Shifter]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
What if the law says, men and women can marry and if they do they get the following benefits: a, b and c. Another law says, same-sex couples can form civil unions and if they do they get the following benefits: a and b. A same-sex couple sues and says, under the NJ equivalent of the equal protection clause, we should get c too. In your view, should the court say that the legislature can't let people get married? Or can it say that same-sex couples in (previously permitted) civil unions get c.

Lawrence says they get slot c, too.

[ltl/fb]

Originally posted by Shape Shifter
Lawrence says they get slot c, too.

I thought it said everyone gets slot c -- i.e., don't legislate access to slot c?

Perhaps I am wrong, though.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
I just read that Michael J. Fox did a similar ad for Arlen Specter in 2004. Has anyone seen it? Was it pretty much the same?

some day will you post a client name redacted copy of your billing entries for a workday?

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Shape Shifter
Lawrence says they get slot c, too.

Club thinks Lawrence should mean that married couples don't get slots a and b?

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
some day will you post a client name redacted copy of your billing entries for a workday?

Probably not, but I would drink a beer in your immediate proximity if you were to come to town. You'd probably have to respond to PMs for that to happen, though.

[Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)]

Originally posted by sgtclub
I don't know enough without reading the case, but in my mind the court should either strike down the law (if it was a ban) or deny the application of the law (if that what was at issue). The court can give guidance to the legislature as to what the Constitution requires, but it should not say what laws the legislature has to pass.

I think that's exactly what it did, as did the court in Vermont.

It said: 1) extending marriage benefits to only heterosexual couples violates NJ Const. equal protection. 2) legislature has 180 days to resolve this by extending benefits, creating civil unions with similar benefits. 3) If it fails to do so, then marriage will be struck down.

I don't see 2 as telling the legislature what to do, so much as giving it time to correct the constitutional inadequacy of the existing structure, adn giving them guidance as to what will, and will not, meet constitutional muster in NJ.

You can read the opinion here, but I don't think they did much more than any court in ordering relief and explaining to the legislature how to comply with the mandate.

[Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
In your view, should the court say that the legislature can't let people get married? Or can it say that same-sex couples in (previously permitted) civil unions get c.

Why can't the court decide either, depending on legislative intent? That's basically the same as any severability question--would the legislature have intended for the entire statute to fail or for it to be retained and slightly expanded to meet constitutional requirements.

[Spanky]

iWhy didn't this come out in the primary? Allen is now a lock for reelection.


Webb Says His Novels 'Inappropriate' for News Radio
By Nathan Burchfiel
CNSNews.com Staff Writer
October 27, 2006

(CNSNews.com) - In an interview on Washington Post Radio Friday morning, Jim Webb, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Virginia, said excerpts of his novels are "a little bit inappropriate" to be read on news radio.

"I don't know why you're reading that on WTOP," Webb told host Mark Plotkin. "I think it's a little bit inappropriate."

Plotkin was reading an excerpt from Webb's novel "Something to Die For," in which Webb describes a female stripper performing sexual acts with a banana.

"I don't think that's appropriate for you to read on WTOP," Webb said again as Plotkin finished the excerpt. (Washington Post Radio is WTOP's sister station.)

The campaign of Republican Sen. George Allen on Thursday released excerpts from some of the war novels Webb wrote between 1978 and 2002. The books include some graphic sexual passages, as well as frequent uses of a racial slur for blacks and descriptions of Vietnamese women as "monkey-faced."

Among the excerpts is a scene from the 2002 novel "Lost Soldiers," in which a man embraces his four-year-old son and places the boy's penis in his mouth.

Webb said the release of the excerpts was "a Karl Rove campaign tactic" and a "classic example of the way this campaign has worked. It's smear after smear."

He defended his fiction as "illuminative."

"It's not a sexual act," Webb told Plotkin regarding the "Lost Soldiers" excerpt. "I actually saw this happen in a slum in Bangkok when I was there as a journalist."

"The duty of a writer is to illuminate his surroundings," he added.

Coincidentally, a Cambodian woman in Las Vegas is facing sexual assault charges for performing a similar act on her young son, according to an Oct. 14 report in the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

The article quotes an office manager for the Cambodian Association of America, who described the act as a sign of respect or love.

"It's an exception," Thira Srey told the Review-Journal of the practice. According to the report, the act is usually performed by a mother or caretaker on a child who is one year old or younger. In Webb's novel, the child is four years old.

Webb criticized the Allen campaign for focusing on excerpts from his novels.

"The most important issue facing the country, he hasn't got a statement to make on it," Webb said of the Iraq war. "This country's been breaking into pieces economically ... they've got no position on that.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally posted by Spanky
iWhy didn't this come out in the primary? Allen is now a lock for reelection.

It's a failure of our educational system.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Spanky
Webb Says His Novels 'Inappropriate' for News Radio
By Nathan Burchfiel
CNSNews.com Staff Writer
October 27, 2006

• “James Webb’s new novel paints a portrait of a modern Vietnam charged with hopes for the future but haunted by the ghosts of its war-torn past. It captures well the lingering scars of the war, and exposes the tension between the dynamism of a new generation and the invisible bondage of an older generation for whom wartime allegiances, and animosities, are rendered no less vivid by the passage of time. A novel of revenge and redemption that tells us much about both where Vietnam is headed and where it has been.”
  — Senator John McCain

Random House

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Spanky
iWhy didn't this come out in the primary? Allen is now a lock for reelection.

This will turn off every single voter who has never read a Harlequin Romance, watched prime-time TV, or listened to the BBC "PM's Questions" hour.

Okay, seven votes down . . .

[Spanky]

Originally posted by bilmore
This will turn off every single voter who has never read a Harlequin Romance, watched prime-time TV, or listened to the BBC "PM's Questions" hour.

Okay, seven votes down . . .

There is a scene in one where a man puts a young boys penis in his mouth. Who cares that it was fiction. In a close race this kind of stuff is death.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally posted by Spanky
There is a scene in one where a man puts a young boys penis in his mouth. Who cares that it was fiction. In a close race this kind of stuff is death.

Perhaps. But Webb is going to sell a lot of books this week.

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop

• “James Webb’s new novel paints a portrait of a modern Vietnam charged with hopes for the future but haunted by the ghosts of its war-torn past. It captures well the lingering scars of the war, and exposes the tension between the dynamism of a new generation and the invisible bondage of an older generation for whom wartime allegiances, and animosities, are rendered no less vivid by the passage of time. A novel of revenge and redemption that tells us much about both where Vietnam is headed and where it has been.”
  — Senator John McCain

Random House

McCain lauding the novels ain't going to help. Its game over.