The DC City Council voted today to recognize same-sex marriages performed in states that have adopted equality laws. It’s a solid step towards DC’s bringing same-sex marriage within its own laws. There will, no doubt, be the challenge of overcoming Congress (which can overturn any DC law, no matter how petty). It’ll be an interesting illustration of 1) the Democratic Party’s commitment to equality and 2) the hollowness of the Republican Party’s supposed commitment to states’ rights.
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Vermont’s legislature overrides its governor’s veto of a bill establishing equal marriage rights.
Slowly and surely.
Rob Beschizza on why Britons care about Google Street View, but not the jillion CCTV cameras in the country:
The thing that amazes me about my homeland isn’t its willingness to live under state surveillance, but the way we freak out whenever anyone else uses cameras in public. “I was determined to make a stand,” said one local, who helped block a Google Street View car from heading into a Buckinghamshire village.
My dad, who lives just an hour away from Broughton, suggests that the key to understanding this apparent paradox is in the amused contempt that many Britons have for politics. It’s not that they’re sheep: they just think that no matter what powers are given to the police, freedom is guaranteed by the fundamental incompetence of British police. We trust the authorities because the authorities are too stupid and useless to harm us.
There’s a certain truth to that, and not just in Britain. But surveillance tech is improving, and the delta between its effectiveness and the incompetence of its operators is narrowing.
Title stolen from this story.  Christ, people can be appalling. Especially when they’ve got invisible friends backing them up.
whether he will be helping Iowa politicians put forward a constitutional amendment to ensure that discrimination is built into the Iowa Constitution. He’s got relevant experience.
Wow:
The Iowa Supreme Court this morning unanimously upheld gays’ right to marry.
“The Iowa statute limiting civil marriage to a union between a man and a woman violates the equal protection clause of the Iowa Constitution,†the justices said in a summary of their decision.
The court rules that gay marriage would be legal in three weeks, starting April 24. The court affirmed a Polk County District Court decision that would allow six gay couples to marry.
Maybe equality really *is* an American value.
The Georgia legislature, as usual, is focuing on the important stuff:
Georgia would require that new drivers take a written license test in English under a bill being considered by state lawmakers, and the proposal has some employers and immigrant advocates worried it would keep people unfamiliar with the language from being able to work.
The measure is the latest in a series of English-only legislation around the country, but Georgia is believed to be the only state that would have a law requiring that drivers take the written test in English without a translator or other aid.
I would just like to point out that when I moved to Georgia as a teenager – a teenager with a fairly solid grasp of the English language – I had a pretty hard time understanding what in the hell half the people were saying.  More than once, I needed a translator to understand the teachers – apparently “Green Witch” is that place in England where they tell the time, and “licks” are what the principle does to you when you’re sent to the office.  We’re not even going to touch syntax. Oh, and as to the importance of the driving test itself? This is how mine went:
Tester: “Hey, it says here you live at 193 Little Joe Court [No, really.]. Do you know Alex?”
Me: “Yeah, he lives across the street. Cool guy.”
Tester: “Yeah, cool guy. Pull around the side and park the car.”
Passed on the spot. So I suggest Georgia focus less on trying to compete with South Carolina for The Most Militantly Ignorant State in the Nation Award and more on fundamental needs like, oh, not running out of water because no one can think more than a month or two ahead.
Colin Powell doesn’t know if torture is “criminal”:
Powell also questioned whether tactics like sleep deprivation, stress positions, or waterboarding were “criminal†— despite specific U.S. statutes and international law forbidding torture:
MADDOW: If there was a meeting though at which senior officials were saying, were discussing and giving the approval for sleep deprivation, stress positions, waterboarding. Were those officials committing crimes when they were giving their authorization?
POWELL: You’re asking me a legal question. I mean, I don’t know that any of these items would be considered criminal. And I will wait for whatever investigations that the government or the Congress intends to pursue with this.
I utterly fail to understand why this man is held in higher regard than the other criminals that made up the Bush Administration. Perhaps it’s just some desperate public need to believe that there was something good about the crew that was in charge. If that’s the case, Powell is hardly the place to look for that. The man traded on his reputation to start an utterly unnecessary war that has killed nearly a hundred thousand people. He gave cover to an administration that broke laws, ignored treaties, and violated the Constitution. And don’t give me any “he fought from the inside!” crap. Even if he did, he lost, and he lost big. When he left, what did he do? Stand up for the military kids that were getting killed over there for his mistakes? Tell us that he disagreed with the President? Do *anything* that would give any indication that he put country before politics? No. He slipped off quietly, and continues to engage in the same self-serving bullshit as the rest of them. Colin Powell may have once deserved the regard the public held him in. No more.
I missed this last Friday, and think it’s worth repeating:
Gov. Timothy M. Kaine vetoed several bills Friday, including those that would have expanded the death penalty to criminals who assist in murders or who kill fire marshals or auxiliary police officers.
“Virginia is already second in the nation in the number of executions we carry out,” Kaine said in a statement. “While the nature of the offenses targeted by this legislation is very serious, I do not believe that further expansion of the death penalty is necessary to protect human life.”
The death penalty is an abomination, but it’s one that has become a fundamental part of this country’s psyche and politics. It won’t be defeated any time soon, yet the (slow) trend is in that direction. Credit to Kaine and other politicians who brave the cheap rhetoric of its supporters and do the right thing.