SACRAMENTO, California (The Dissociated Press) - In what is sure to be just another milestone in the lengthy legal and political battle over same-sex marriage, the California Supreme Court Tuesday ruled that it has Alzheimer's Disease and can't remember why it's wearing black robes.
By a 6-1 margin, the justices voted to uphold a state constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, which they, themselves, ruled, last year, could not be banned by the state constitution. The ban was enacted through a statewide voter referendum, Proposition 8, which passed in November with 52 percent of the vote.
Writing for the six-member majority, Chief Justice Ronald George asked in his opinion, "What is my name? Is it Ron, or is it George? ... I knew a boy who had a dog named George. Is that who I am? I hope so; I like licking my balls and peeing on fire hydrants!! ... Hello?! Who's there? ... Did I just say something? What time is 'Howdy Doody' on? I really like Buffalo Bob! ... May I please have some Ovaltine?! ... Hello?! ... Hello??!!"
Proposition 8 is a legacy of California's controversial statewide initiative process, which allows voters, and certain species of wild animals, to amend the state's constitution with a simple majority --- usually either by a show of hands or using an applause meter. Through the initiative process, California's constitution has been amended 43,272 times since 1911, when the process came into being. By contrast, in the over-220 years since the federal Constitution was written, only twenty-seven amendments have been added to it, and the first ten (the Bill of Rights) came before it was even out in paperback!
As the result of one inglorious proposition (among thousands), which voters placed on the ballot three decades ago, the state constitution currently protects the right of persons who have owned their homes since 1978 to demolish a public school at their whim (as well as a public university, hospital, and library), provided that no students are inside it at the time. (No similar safety provision is offered for teachers.)
Another voter initiative, passed in the 1950s, established fundamental protections for "the civil rights of asphalt!"
Following the announcement of the Court's decision, angry protests by supporters of same-sex marriage, and, more generally, of equality among people, broke out across California. Justice Joyce Kennard, one of the three justices who developed dementia between voting last year to uphold same-sex marriage and voting against themselves this week, seemed taken aback by the public's outrage. In trying to explain her most recent legal reasoning, she pointed out that the Court had to decide between the competing interests of two rights: that of gays to marry and that of Californians to change their constitution.
"On the one hand we had the inalienable right of all couples to engage in a civil contract of mutual, life-long support, sanctioned and enforced by the state," Kennard said. "On the other hand, we had the inalienable right of Californians to put propositions on ballots and vote on stuff. It was a very tough call!"
"Now, may I please have some Ovaltine? ... Hello??!!"
Meanwhile, in...
WASHINGTON (The Dissociated Press) - President Obama nominated federal appeals court judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court Tuesday, putting her in line to become the country's first Hispanic justice and, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg hopes, bringing a badly needed left-handed power hitter to the Court's softball line-up.
Sotomayor would replace retiring justice David Souter, who announced this spring that he would leave the Court at the end of its present term in order to devote himself full time to his true passion: competitive needlepoint.
Souter is regarded as a reliable member of the Court's liberal wing, although he was appointed, in 1990, by Republican president George H. W. Bush and strongly opposed at the time by, among 7 other Democrats, Massachusetts senators Ted Kennedy and John Kerry. But Souter was a relative lightweight when he joined the Court, having only five prior months of service on a federal bench, the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals.
By contrast, Sotomayor has a wealth of experience in the federal judiciary. Since 1998 she has been on the 2nd Circuit Federal Court of Appeals in New York City. And before that, from 1992 to 1998, she was a judge of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Introducing her in the East Room of the White House on Tuesday, President Obama hailed both her experience on the bench and her compelling life story.
Indeed, Sotomayor's personal history is hardly typical for a nominee to the Court. She was born in the Bronx to Puerto Rican immigrant parents, who, fearing that they lacked the money to feed her, left her in a large wooded area north of New York City, where she was adopted and raised by a family of wolves, until she was 18, when she left the forest to attend Princeton University and Yale Law School.
"Judge Sotomayor, in addition to having great depth and breadth of experience in federal law, has the personal background to provide a perspective and level of empathy that are both rare and badly needed on the Court," the President said.
Several Republicans quickly seized on Mr. Obama's statement, accusing him of trying to appoint an "activist judge" with strong familial biases favoring the rights of ethnic minorities, and wildlife.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday the Senate would not be a “rubber stamp” to confirm Sotomayor and said Republicans would “examine her record to ensure she understands that the role of a jurist in our democracy is to apply the law even-handedly, despite their own feelings or personal or political preferences.”
And the Republicans' ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Jeff Sessions of Alabama, whose nomination to the federal bench 23 years ago was rejected by that same committee, was adamant about the need for vigilance in reviewing and evaluating the nomination of a judge who makes decisions based on empathy.
"The President and other liberals need to understand that a justice's role is to evaluate cases and make decisions based on what is written in the Constitution," Sessions said in an interview Wednesday. "Things like empathy or personal beliefs cannot be allowed to enter into a justice's legal rulings."
Sessions said he was referring to instances where, for example, a Latina justice, based on personal experience, might reflexively find credibility in a black person's claim of being discriminated against by a bank loan officer.
"This type of feelings-based approach to the law has no place on the Court," Sessions said.
Presumably the senator would differentiate completely such legal methodologies from the strict Constitutional interpretations which might, say, lead a justice to rule that the public school day should begin with a prayer, or that human life begins at the moment of erection.
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