This is what I wrote in the comments about Obama’s same-sex marriage support on Yahoo. I’m sharing because I just developed the angle of this argument this morning, and figured it couldn’t hurt to put out there and, if necessary, tune to make it better.
MoveOn’s list of top POTUS achievements. What’s your vote for #1?
(via stfuconservatives)
Source: barackobama
The Supreme Court’s decision on the health care case is more than just a simple yes or no. View this handy chart for possible SCOTUS decisions.
The Health Care Case’s Legal Maze
(via reuters)
Source: nationaljournal.com
A constitutional amendment to do so, no less.
Now, agree with him or not (and I’m purposefully not taking a position because no one cares what I think and this is a dumb thing to fight over), but don’t we really have more important things to focus on?
Citizens of Alabama must be masochists.
Over the course of the Republican primaries, Rick Santorum has vowed to outlaw abortions, as well as contraceptives. Yet based on exit polls, he won the plurality of women in Alabama. Not just by a little, either; his closest competitor in this demographic was Mitt Romney with 30% to Santorum’s 38%. Rick I-Hate-Women’s-Rights Santorum won 8% more women than Mitt Romney. Also: he won working women with 49%, and married women with 33%.
What the hell?
That’s not all; the polls also show that Rick Santorum won 41% of Alabama Republicans 18-29, and 40% of the same group 30-44. What’s notable is that Santorum won 34% of people who had some college education and 40% of college graduates. This is after Santorum derided President Obama as a “snob” for wanting kids to be able to go to college. One would think he’d not only lose this demographic, but win the vote of those who never went to college. Yet he didn’t; Gingrich did.
I’m inclined to think this isn’t a national trend; after all, this is Alabama we’re talking about. If anything, it shows how deluded Republicans are. They’re willing to vote for a man who opposes issues that have directly benefited their own lives, just because he’s never shown an ounce of moderate thinking.
I’m telling you: if this man gets nominated, there is NO EXCUSE for sitting on the sidelines. We have to help Obama get reelected. I don’t always agree with him, but at least I know he’s not insane. And he never worked to steal the rice pudding recipe from the House while in the Senate.
But that’s another story.
the race goes on to find the craziest possible president .. anywhere else being utterly nutterly might bar you from office but not here ..
This comic is too accurate.
Source: cartoonpolitics
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
The Religious Right these days seems to be pushing an argument that the government is intruding on their religious freedoms because of everything from keeping abortion legal to making contraception mandatory for employers to provide. I must disagree, not because I am opposed to their philosophical beliefs, but because they are twisting the law of the land.
The point of the First Amendment (specifically the clauses on religion), its core function, is this: You let me believe what I want, and I’ll do the same for you. This is not mere opinion, but the interpretation laid out on numerous occasions by the Supreme Court. Surely those on the right can appreciate this libertarian approach: so long as the belief system doesn’t interfere with the rights of others, it has its own right to exist. However, this interferes with what many religions, particularly Christianity and Catholicism (and I mention them only because they are the ones in the news at present, not because I’m on a crusade), consider a core principle: conversion of others.
Even that, though, is not what has been happening in state legislatures and Congress. What has been happening is not the attempt to persuade people that a particular religion is more valid than others and is to be embraced. What has been happening is the forceful imposing of one’s religious beliefs on others through legislation. Abortion is legal? We’ll make it nearly impossible to get one. People use contraception? Not if they work for us, they don’t. All this, they claim, because they are correcting an infringement of their religious liberties.
Here’s the thing: religious freedom is an individual, not collective, right. Religious tolerance is not a “majority-rule” doctrine. You have the right to believe what you believe, and if there are millions or billions of others who believe roughly the same things, then kudos. However, just because more people believe one set of values than another group believing another set, doesn’t mean that majority gets to smother the minority. Most of us believe it’s wrong to blame dead soldiers for the apparent “sins” of the United States, yet the Supreme Court upheld Westboro Baptist’s right to believe and say otherwise. We don’t get to bully them until they change their minds, however much we may want to. This applies to everyone.
You have the right to believe what you believe. You have the right to scream about it from the rooftops. You do not, however, have the right to impose your beliefs on others; quite the opposite, hence no “prohibiting the free exercise thereof”. Laws are meant to protect the public overall, and to protect the right to make safe decisions. They are not meant as a tool of religious conversion. The Supreme Court has made its ruling on these issues, and even in cases where its theoretically possible to wiggle around them, that doesn’t make it right. If you disagree with someone’s beliefs, someone’s choices, then talk to them, maybe even pray for them.
But don’t disrespect them, and don’t force them to do something they don’t want to do.
Public education is one of the things I care about the most. What’s sad is, Republicans have seemed to develop a ‘give up and run away’ strategy. Call me stubborn, but I refuse to believe that education will be left to the privileged few who can afford it. It is as much a right as anything else.
Source: cartoonpolitics
