Wow.

A "victory for gay rights," and a loss for all other rights.

The Supreme Court refused on Monday to be drawn into the spreading controversy over the right of business firms to refuse to serve gay and lesbian customers, turning aside the appeal of a New Mexico photography studio and its owners. The Court made no comment as it denied review of Elane Photography v. Willock, involving a refusal to photograph a lesbian coupleÂ’s wedding-style ceremony.

...

The Elane Photography case had gained some prominence on the CourtÂ’s docket because it was the first to reach the Court, in the wake of new successes in achieving legal equality for gays and lesbians, to test whether homosexuals can be turned away as customers of ordinary businesses that are open to the public.

...

At one point, the business in Elane Photography case also raised religious objections, but the studioÂ’s lawyers dropped that issue when they took the case to the Supreme Court. Instead, they argued that, since photography is a form of expression, the government should not be allowed to compel the use of that freedom in ways that the business owners find objectionable.

Courts do not explain why they don't grant certiorari (review), and they didn't make an exception in this case.

Update: The brief submitted by Eugene Volokh and Ilya Shapiro.

They rely heavily on a Supreme Court case called Wooley v. New Hampshire, in which someone sued, objecting to the "compelled" messaging of putting a license plate on his car which read "Live Free or Die." There, the court recognized that compelling someone to speak (or endorse sentiments he objected to) was the same offense as forbidding someone to speak.

They argue, persuasively, that the New Mexico Supreme Court's decision "directly contrary to" the Supreme Court's ruling in Wooley. In Wooley, the Court had recognized an "individual freedom of mind;" the New Mexico ruling -- and now the Supreme Court's refusal to review it -- establishes the contrary proposition.

Apparently our collective freedom of mind trumps it. (My words, any court's, though Breyer's dissent in McCutcheon did attract three other votes.)

Posted by: Ace at 02:42 PM | Comments (431)
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Althouse links a snarky New Yorker hit-job on Ezra Klein's new "explanatory journalism" site Vox.com.

The New Yorker seems unconvinced that Klein will "explain" the news to people who don't follow it, or will make "eating your news vegetables" fun.

I'm posting this because of the below sampling of Vox humor. Apparently in a piece explaining the individual mandate, they get all sorts of Silly!!! and instead explain an "Individual Man-Date."

Well.

Posted by: Ace at 02:04 PM | Comments (202)
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I'm heartened that Mozilla users are disheartened.

Most "sad" comments since the company
began tracking them

Companies make these kind of cowardly decisions because they fear the backlash if they don't give in to the Leftist Thought Police.

They should be made to fear more the backlash if they do.

Posted by: Ace at 12:49 PM | Comments (457)
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I kind of think this must be true, inasmuch as we are constantly retraining our brain to perform in whatever environment we find ourselves in.

We've been in a digital environment for a long time now. There must be some consequences of that, right?

Claire Handscombe has a commitment problem online. Like a lot of Web surfers, she clicks on links posted on social networks, reads a few sentences, looks for exciting words, and then grows restless, scampering off to the next page she probably wonÂ’t commit to.

“I give it a few seconds — not even minutes — and then I’m moving again,” says Handscombe, a 35-year-old graduate student in creative writing at American University.

But itÂ’s not just online anymore. She finds herself behaving the same way with a novel.

“It’s like your eyes are passing over the words but you’re not taking in what they say,” she confessed. “When I realize what’s happening, I have to go back and read again and again.”

...

Wolf, one of the world’s foremost experts on the study of reading, was startled last year to discover her brain was apparently adapting, too. After a day of scrolling through the Web and hundreds of e-mails, she sat down one evening to read Hermann Hesse’s “The Glass Bead Game.”

“I’m not kidding: I couldn’t do it,” she said. “It was torture getting through the first page. I couldn’t force myself to slow down so that I wasn’t skimming, picking out key words, organizing my eye movements to generate the most information at the highest speed. I was so disgusted with myself.”

I find that happens to me a lot. I have trouble reading more than a five or six pages of a novel at a time (unless it's really compelling).

I think my brain is looking for links to click on.

Posted by: Ace at 04:23 PM | Comments (442)
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The report seems to be saying that while some Progressive groups were given a second look, it was due to specific flags coming up in the course of the normal application process, flags that would have gotten a second look in any situation.

Thus, while Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself again) can point to this progressive group or that one being scrutinized, it's not because progressive groups were generally being given additional scrutiny.

Tea Party groups, on the other hand, got scrutiny just for being Tea Party groups.

I think that's what they're trying to say.

“Only seven applications in the IRS backlog contained the word ‘progressive,’ all of which were then approved by the IRS, while Tea Party groups received unprecedented review and experienced years-long delays. While some liberal-oriented groups were singled out for scrutiny, evidence shows it was due to non-political reasons,” according to the Oversight staff report, which was obtained by The Daily Caller.

“[T]he Administration and congressional Democrats have seized upon the notion that the IRS’s targeting was not just limited to conservative applicants,” the report states. “These Democratic claims are flat-out wrong and have no basis in any thorough examination of the facts[."]

Thanks to @johnekdahl.

Posted by: Ace at 11:13 AM | Comments (453)
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Maybe some small amount of good news.

Maybe. Things have a tendency to find their way to new awfulnesses.

Afghan voters turned out in large numbers Saturday for historic presidential and provincial elections, undeterred by the threat of violence by the Taliban and poor weather.

A heavy security presence in the capital, Kabul, and across the country ensured that the vote went largely smoothly, although some attacks were reported.

...

Afghan lawmaker Shukria Barakzai, at a polling station in Kabul, told CNN she felt proud and happy because "today is the day ... when the people of Afghanistan can go and vote freely."

She said the turnout was a slap in the face for the Taliban and terrorists who have sought to obstruct the elections.

"See, wonderful people are coming to practice democracy," she said. "We are not afraid of the threats. As much as they kill us, we get more stronger. As much as they killed our children, our journalists and innocent women, we say no, we will go and vote because we are fed up. We want to see real change, we want to enjoy our democracy."

Karzai had backed a candidate named Rassoul. Karzai had gone so far as to ask his own brother to back out of the race, to clear a path for Rassoul.

It will take weeks to count the votes (and rule on all the allegations of fraud), but a sampling from 100 key polling places seems to indicate the public has had enough of the Karzai regime.

Former World Bank executive Ashraf Ghani and opposition leader Abdullah Abdullah appeared to be the two front-runners in Afghanistan's presidential election, sidelining a candidate viewed as President Hamid Karzai's favorite, according to partial results tallied by news organizations and one candidate.

A victory for Mr. Abdullah or Mr. Ghani could significantly reduce the influence of Mr. Karzai, who has ruled Afghanistan since the 2001 U.S. invasion. Both candidates say they will sign the bilateral security agreement, which is needed to maintain American aid and a limited U.S. military presence in Afghanistan once the international coalition's current mandate expires in December. Mr. Karzai has infuriated Washington by refusing to complete the deal.

...

The Wall Street Journal tallied partial election results from visits to roughly 100 polling stations, out of more than 20,000 nationwide, in the capital Kabul and the cities of Mazar-e-Sharif in the north, Kandahar in the south, and Gardez and Jalalabad in the east. At nearly all these stations, Messrs. Ghani and Abdullah were the clear leaders, according to counts posted by local poll supervisors. Mr. Karzai's former foreign minister, Zalmai Rassoul, trailed far behind.

Based on very little information at all, I'm pulling for Abdullah:

Both Mr. Ghani and Mr. Abdullah ran against Mr. Karzai in the 2009 election. Mr. Abdullah, 54, a former aide to anti-Taliban Tajik commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, came in second at the time with 30.6%.

Massoud, you might remember, was the Northern Alliance commander who was assassinated by bomb just before 9/11, on September 9, 2001. It was theorized back then that this was a prepatory move by the Taliban, knowing that the US attack which would surely follow would probably involve first making common cause with the Northern Alliance.

I don't know if those speculations have held up, or if the Taliban's assassination was just coincidental in time.

Apparently Abdullah has a shot at winning because he's partly Pashtun (Pashtuns are the largest ethnic group) and speaks Pashto better than Rassoul-- who despite being Pashtun himself, grew up in a Persian-speaking area.

Oh, both Abdullah and Ghani have former (?) warlords for running mates.

I guess that's just Afghanistan.

Posted by: Ace at 10:07 AM | Comments (212)
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Apparently Breyer has been pushing to make Free Expression a "collective" right, subject to a veto from the majority, for some time.

But it was only in the McCutcheon case that he found three other "liberals" willing to endorse his bizarre theory.

In his book Active Liberty: Interpreting Our Democratic Constitution (2006), Justice Breyer offered an overview of the First Amendment which posited that its primary purpose was not to protect speech from government control or limitation but “to encourage the exchange of information and ideas necessary for citizens themselves to shape that ‘public opinion which is the final source of government in a democratic state.’” A statute limiting independent spending on political speech is thus defensible against a First Amendment challenge and indeed serves First Amendment interests since it “facilitate[s] a conversation among ordinary citizens that will encourage their informed participation.”

In his dissenting opinion in McCutcheon, Breyer takes that a step further, concluding that “the First Amendment advances not only the individual’s right to engage in political speech, but also the public’s interest in preserving a democratic order in which collective speech matters.” (emphasis in original). The First Amendment, he maintains, must be understood as promoting “a government where the laws reflect the very thoughts, views, ideas and sentiments, the expression of which the First Amendment protects.”

Worth reading in full, as is Abrams' full piece. (The first link has excerpts and additional quotes from other writers.)

It is difficult to read the McCutcheon dissent without recalling two of the Court’s landmark First Amendment rulings of the past. Both were unanimous. Both would be at risk if the First Amendment were somehow viewed as anything but a limitation on the government’s power to limit speech, even in the supposed service of “preserving democratic order,” vindicating “collective speech,” or the like.

They really like government power, and they really don't like individual liberty.

Posted by: Ace at 08:32 AM | Comments (335)
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And scene.

"[Cheney's] being interviewed (in 1995), I think, by the American Enterprise Institute, and and he says it would be a disaster, it would be vastly expensive, it would be civil war, we'd have no exit strategy. He goes on and on for five minutes — Dick Cheney saying it would be a bad idea," Paul said. "And that's why the first Bush didn’t go into Baghdad. Dick Cheney then goes to work for Halliburton. Makes hundreds of millions of dollars — their CEO. Next thing you know, he's back in government, it's a good idea to go into Iraq."

Paul also said the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks were used as a pretext for the invasion.

"It became an excuse," Paul said. "9/11 became an excuse for a war they already wanted in Iraq."

Video at the link. The Iraq stuff starts around 6:45.

As I said before, I wanted to support this guy but it was like running around with a live grenade with the pin pulled. You just knew it was going to blow up in your face at some point.

The one guy who was actually trying to reach out to voters who aren't already committed Republican voters and was good at finding ways to try and bridge the libertarian and traditional conservative wings on the party.

But he is who he is.

Posted by: DrewM at 07:10 AM | Comments (540)
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Remember the sham vote the House GOP leadership held the week before last to increase Medicare spending over the level it was supposed to be? Well, via Monty King of the DOOMED, it turns out there was a little something extra in the bill...an ObamaCare "fix".

At the prodding of business organizations, House Republicans quietly secured a recent change in President Barack Obama's health law to expand coverage choices, a striking, one-of-a-kind departure from dozens of high-decibel attempts to repeal or dismember it.

Democrats describe the change involving small-business coverage options as a straightforward improvement of the type they are eager to make, and Obama signed it into law. Republicans are loath to agree, given the strong sentiment among the rank and file that the only fix the law deserves is a burial.

"Maybe you say it helps (Obamacare), but it really helps the small businessman," said Rep. Phil Roe, R-Tenn., one of several physician-lawmakers among Republicans and an advocate of repeal.

Yes, yes...all Republicans hate ObamaCare equally, even the ones who vote to "fix" it.

The merits of this particular policy are neither here nor there. The House GOP talks a big game in public and then rams through a provision that not only puts the GOP's fingerprints on ObamaCare but gives vulnerable Senate Democrats a talking point, "See, we can fix ObamaCare if the Republicans would just be flexible and reasonable like they were in this case!".

The whole idea behind not "fixing" ObamaCare is that in order to do the heavy lifting of repealing it you need as many people angry about it as possible. If you start pealing off repeal supporters, you're helping eliminate pressure to actually repeal the damn thing. But let's be honest, "repeal" is just some BS Republicans tell people to win their votes. When push comes to shove, they will tinker with it and call it a day.

All you have to believe to support the GOP is that the key to reducing government is spending more and "fixing" ObamaCare is the only way to repeal it.

But hey...Go Team GOP! Yay!

And just because: Jeb Bush- Illegal immigrants didn't really break the law, they committed "an act of love".

Run Jeb, run!

Posted by: DrewM at 05:56 AM | Comments (200)
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Follow me on twitter.

Oh and since we're doing movie reviews, I saw the Grand Budapest Hotel this weekend and it was very good.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 05:05 AM | Comments (192)
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