AddieStan

cross-posted from The Huffington Post The killing of George Tiller , a doctor who performed late-term abortions, will likely be attributed to some lone and deranged individual, acting on his or her own. (As I write, the suspect remains at large.) Indeed, Operation Rescue, the hold-no-prisoners anti-abortion group, issued an immediate statement from Operation Rescue President Troy Newman , decrying Tiller's shooting as "a cowardly act." In fact, the hands are many in the death of George Tiller, some more directly than others. Take Ann Coulter , for example. I watched her describe , to a church full of right-wing activists, abortion-clinic doctors and health care personnel who were murdered as either having been shot, "...or, depending on your point of view, had a procedure performed on them with a rifle." And she's still out there today, spewing the same bile with violent force. Several weeks ago, President Barack Obama 's commencement address at ...

The California Supreme Court has essentially ratified Proposition 8, the ballot measure that nullified an earlier court decision legalizing marriage rights for LGBT folks. Yet Californians already married will be permitted to remain so, regardless of the gender mix of their marriages. One suspects that the court could not agree on constitutional grounds for overturning the expressed "will of the people". Yet the legitimizing of marriages already performed calls constitutional questions of its own. The closeness of the Prop 8 vote suggests another electoral battle to come. From the Los Angeles Times Prop. 8 upheld by California Supreme Court : By Maura Dolan 10:08 AM PDT, May 26, 2009 Reporting from San Francisco -- The California Supreme Court today upheld Proposition 8's ban on same-sex marriage but also ruled that gay couples who wed before the election will continue to be married under state law. The decision virtually ensures another fight at the ballot box over mar...

Cross-posted from The Huffington Post President Obama's nomination of Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court is stunning on many levels: She's the third woman to serve on the high court, the first of Latino descent and the first to grow up in public housing. On her own merits, Sotomayor is a deserving nominee. Yet in his choice of Sotomayor, Obama has also made a brilliant tactical move -- one that not only shores up his standing with the Latino community and the women's rights community, but also serves to further divide the beleaguered Republican Party. In discussions of this nomination, much will be said about the debt Obama owes to the Latino community for his 2008 electoral victory. As Politico 's Ben Smith recently wrote : [McCain] got 31 percent of the Latino vote to the 44 percent that George W. Bush took in 2004, according to exit polls. And it was enough to put much of the West and Southwest out of reach for the Republican Party, to give Florida to the Democ...

Did you know, mes amis , that Pakistan is now officially in the throes of a civil war? Out of the Swat Valley, where Pakistan's government had tried to compromise with the ascendant Taliban, now flow some 1.3 million refugees who flee a full-scale war between the two forces. Why should you care? First off, many Pakistanis believe that the government's offensive in Swat was taken at the behest of the U.S. Given the toll on the civilian population, that can't be a helpful perception. Then, of course, there's the matter of Pakistan, a nuclear power, flirting with chaos. Next up -- Afghanistan. In truth, these are not separate problems. Afghanistan and Pakistan are the same problem for the U.S., and in many ways, problems of out government's making. Even if you only care about domestic politics, you had best turn your attention to this volatile region, for this mess really could ruin everything for Obama (and the rest of us). Your blogstress has a new essay at The...

When no less a sage than George McGovern warns the president against further involvement in Afghanistan, it behooves one to listen. Above, in an interview with the former 1972 Democratic presidential candidate -- who won that distinction for his opposition to the war in Viet Nam -- the American News Project 's Harry Hanbury and Mike Fritz find McGovern warning President Obama of a possible fate like Lyndon Johnson's -- one in which a quagmire of a war puts an end to many grand social programs. Still, your blogstress remains unconvinced that the the analogy is apt. For one, America was in no danger because of the Vietnamese civil war, in which we intervened. On the other hand, the al Qaeda attack on American soil was partly the result of the U.S. having walked away from Afghanistan in its hour of need just after its warlords so kindly won the Cold War for us. (No, Ronald Reagan did not win the Cold War; guys in turbans on horseback with U.S. Stinger missiles on their sho...

With last night's news of the pending departure of Justice David Souter from the bench, all bets seem to be placed on a female replacement. The one woman on the Court today, the venerable Ruth Bader Ginsburg , is elderly and suffering from colon cancer. NPR's Nina Totenberg this morning ran through a list of possible contenders: Possible nominees who have been mentioned as being on a theoretical short list include Elena Kagan , the current solicitor general who represents the government before the Supreme Court; Sonia Sotomayor , a Hispanic judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit; and Diane Wood , a federal judge in Chicago who taught at the University of Chicago at the same time future President Barack Obama was teaching constitutional law there. UPDATE: Garance Franke-Ruta has more on this; women's group pushing hard.