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.
Tag: Local
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.
Vivian Paige, in the context of some shameful personal attacks on a candidate for Lieutenant Governor, says:
The people have been lulled – by their own inaction – into a sense that politics is dirty and that’s just the way it is. But it doesn’t have to be. There are a lot more of us than there are of them. If we wanted to, we could change the way politics is done. But far too many are “too busy†to get involved, the result being the kind of attacks that Pat Edmonson and others experience, attacks that divert the candidate’s attention away from the real issues of jobs, healthcare, education and others.
People like to blame the candidates for the state of politics, but the candidates do it for a reason – it works with voters. And it takes the focus away from things that are hard: jobs, healthcare, education; and onto things that are easy: playground insults and identity politics.  Now, as a fan of the occasional playground insult, I’m hardly hoping for some idealized world of policy debates (although if it could keep me from ever having to endure another pearl-clutching kabuki dance about how shocked and offended a Virginian was by language, all the while gliding over the ugliness of their ideas, I might sign up). Rather, I’d like us all to be a little more conscious of our own tolerance for the form-over-substance approach to politics.
Mike over at Blueweeds says what ought to be said:
I have been trying to stay away from the increasingly odd temper tantrums promoted by the MacAuliffe “netroots” supporters over at Blue Commonwealth and  Blue Virginia. There is a level of self importance which I do not understand, which is bad for the party, and which makes folks like myself, whom I would describe as true neutral grassroots Democrats who have zero interest in being employed by any campaign, want to do anything other than support the candidate jammed at me by the self-described progressive netroots bloggers.
This sort of childishness has happened every cycle since the Miller-Webb primary, and every time, it does a little more damage. If you’re part of it, stop it. If you’re in the audience, get up and leave. And for fuck’s sake, Virginia Democrats, stop rewarding it.