Author: jpm

Posted on

This Is Where I Get Off

I know a number of Democrats who are looking for a reason not to vote for Chris Christie for President in 2016. These are my deal-breakers.

Memo to Chris: Marriage equality and women’s reproductive rights are, respectively, the civil rights issue and public health crisis of our generation. Get on board, or you’ll never wear the post-partisan mantle.

This is where liberals can and should choose to engage. We’ve lost the privacy/spying debate. Even if the polls were on our side, we’d still be up against an intelligence/industrial complex that makes Eisenhower’s departing warning seem quaint. We certainly won’t win the public on that issue, but if we get into power on other grounds, we can effect the change we want in those areas, too.

Posted on

Infamous Pennsylvanians: Daryl Metcalfe

On Wednesday, Representative Brian Sims (D-Phila.) rose to speak during the unanimous consent portion of the PA House session. He began to speak in praise of the historic marriage equality rulings handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday, but was cut off with a procedural tactic by fellow Representative and self-styled Tea Partier Daryl Metcalfe (R-Butler).

It shouldn’t matter, but Rep. Sims is the first openly gay lawmaker in Pennsylvania history.

Rather than apologize for the slight, or just be satisfied at having silenced a political opponent, Rep. Metcalfe doubled down and let his bigotry all hang out:

I did not believe that as a member of that body that I should allow someone to make comments such as he was preparing to make that ultimately were just open rebellion against what the word of God has said, what God has said, and just open rebellion against God’s law.

Rep. Sims’s response was far more dignified: he introduced legislation to provide civil marriage equality for same-sex couples in Pennsylvania. In a prepared statement, Rep. Sims said:

After Wednesday’s decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court, it is past time for Pennsylvania to join the 12 states – soon to be 13 because of California – and the District of Columbia that already provide this basic measure of equality and dignity to their residents.

Rep. Sims also requested the Legislature formally admonish his colleague for his remarks, but it declined to do so because its rules only apply to statements made on the floor of the House. One hopes the good people of Western Pennsylvania hold Mr. Metcalfe accountable since his fellow legislators can’t or won’t.

Daryl Metcalfe, another Infamous Pennsylvanian.

Posted on

Welcome to your grim meathook future, abortion edition

At least he waited a few hours to call a new Special Session to annex women’s special parts for the good of the Republic.

Make no mistake: Rick Perry is a tool. A giant, megalomaniacal tool. But he is a democratically elected tool, and right now he’s calling the shots in (the Former Republic of) Texas. For the time being, anyway. Fortunately, you cannot gerrymander a statewide office. Nonetheless, when he says “dance,” the Republican legislators line up to fill their cards at the Special Session ball.

It is without a hint of irony that Texas Governor Rick Perry announced a second Special Session of the Texas Legislature to pass the failed abortion restriction legislation on the same day Texas murdered their 500th person since 1976. His comment at the time: “In Texas, we value all life.”

So Wendy Davis’s filibuster had no practical effect. We knew that anyway. She knew that going into it. But sometimes you have to fight the good fight, choose your hill, and die trying. Her heroism is not diminished in the slightest by her stand for women’s rights.

The other night someone suggested that things getting so spectacularly craptastic might be what is needed to finally get enough people to turn against these supposed public servants. I don’t particularly want to welcome a grim meathook future with open arms, but if it is going to happen anyway, why not capitalize on it?

I think we saw some of that the other night, but that was the choir. If you want to see real change, you need, to extend the metaphor, to energize the Easter and Christmas crowd. Nearly every social movement is the same. African-Americans didn’t win recognition of their civil rights because they marched, rode buses, sat at lunch counters, and were arrested, beaten, and sometimes killed. They won because the majority recognized a wrong and determined to right it. Thus was it then, thus must it be now.

That’s all I have for now. This week has been a roller-coaster of emotion and historic change. Tom is right: someday, someone will write the definitive narrative of the last week of June, 2013.