Tag Archives: links

Whither Lewis?

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Why is the New Jersey Supreme Court taking so long to issue a decision in Lewis v. Harris, the same-sex marriage case? The word is that the decision will be announced by October 25 (eight days from now), the day before Chief Justice Deborah Poritz reaches mandatory retirement age and must step down. That’s just 13 days before election day.

Same-sex marriage hasn’t been a galvanizing issue for Republicans in this election cycle, but a decision from New Jersey’s high court in favor of it could certainly make it one. New Jersey has a relatively liberal high court compared to other states; the New Jersey Supreme Court, after all, is the body that ruled that the Boy Scouts had to let in gays, before that decision was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court. New Jersey is more likely than New York or Washington to issue a pro-gay-marriage decision.

The court heard oral arguments in the case in February. That was eight months ago. The U.S. Supreme Court doesn’t take this long to issue decisions. Why are state courts taking this long? New York took a long time to issue its marriage decision, and Washington State took fifteen months. Courts must be aware that the issue is a big hot gay potato, and perhaps the judges take time to craft their language. (That doesn’t explain the shoddy workmanship and thinking behind the anti-same-sex opinion in New York, though.)

I want the decision to be announced already. Enough is enough.

Corzine Nonstatement

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From the AP:

New Jersey Gov. Jon S. Corzine will not approve legislation banning gay marriage if the state’s highest court rules that such unions are legal, a Corzine spokesman said Thursday.”

There’s no point to that statement; it’s meaningless. The New Jersey Supreme Court won’t rule on whether same-sex marriage is legal; it will rule on whether a ban on same-sex marriage is constitutional. If the court says such a ban is unconstitutional, there’s nothing the legislature can do about it. Corzine is basically saying that he wouldn’t do something that he wouldn’t be constitutionally permitted to do anyway.

And it’s too bad the governor is personally opposed to same-sex marriage.

It’s also too bad the governor appointed a machine Democrat to fill his old Senate seat, one who’s fighting a harder-than-expected contest to retain a Democratic seat in a Democratic-leaning state (although he’s gaining ground, which is good, because if the Democrats win just enough seats to take back the Senate, only to lose the New Jersey seat, heads will roll), and it’s also too bad the governor’s budget cuts made me lose my job, but that’s neither here nor there…

At any rate, a decision in the New Jersey marriage case is expected by October 25.

Oh, For a Helicopter

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New Jersey’s two Democratic senators, Frank Lautenberg and Bob Menendez – the latter of whom is in a tight race against Republican Tom Kean, Jr. – both voted for the president’s awful torture/enemy combatant/habeas-corpus-stripping bill yesterday.

If I were still a New Jersey resident, I would consider not even voting for U.S. Senate this year. If Democrats can’t stand up for themselves, they don’t deserve to control either house of Congress.

Except.

Except that Glenn Greenwald makes an excellent point.

But a desire to see the Democrats take over Congress — even a strong desire for that outcome and willingness to work for it — does not have to be, and at least for me is not, driven by a belief that Washington Democrats are commendable or praiseworthy and deserve to be put into power. Instead, a Democratic victory is an instrument — an indispensable weapon — in battling the growing excesses and profound abuses and indescribably destructive behavior of the Bush administration and their increasingly authoritarian followers. A Democratic victory does not have to be seen as being anything more than that in order to realize how critically important it is.

A desire for a Democratic victory is, at least for me, about the fact that this country simply cannot endure two more years of a Bush administration which is free to operate with even fewer constraints than before, including the fact that George Bush and Dick Cheney will never face even another midterm election ever again. They will be free to run wild for the next two years with a Congress that is so submissive and blindly loyal that it is genuinely creepy to behold.

Greenwald also makes the point that Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens is 86 years old, so Bush might get another court appointment in the next two years. If the Republicans keep the Senate and Stevens dies or becomes incapacitated, then Bush can get nominate whomever he wants in his place, meaning that “the Supreme Court will be composed of a very young five-Justice majority of absolute worshippers of Executive Power — Thomas, Scalia, Roberts, Alito and New Justice — which will control the Court and endorse unlimited executive abuses for decades to come.”

Or, as she puts it:

Imagine you are stranded on your roof in rising floodwaters. Sooner or later you’re going to drown if you aren’t rescued. Yet you refuse to be rescued in an old rowboat because it might be leaky and you are waiting for a helicopter.

Well, folks, the Dems are the rowboat, and there ain’t gonna be a helicopter.

Sigh.