After hearing conflicting and often emotional testimony about who deserves the last say on the marriage question, the Assembly Judiciary Committee voted 7-3 in favor of a resolution stating that citizens lacked the authority to put the gay marriage ban directly to voters [...] Since advocates are arguing that a two-thirds vote of the Legislature was required to qualify the gay marriage ban for the ballot, they want to have lawmakers on the record agreeing with that position when the Supreme Court begins its deliberations, said Geoffrey Kors, executive director of the gay rights group Equality California. "It's important that the Legislature makes it clear that they are not OK with having their power usurped," Kors said. The resolution goes next to the full Assembly. The state Senate is scheduled to consider a companion measure in coming weeks.
After hearing conflicting and often emotional testimony about who deserves the last say on the marriage question, the Assembly Judiciary Committee voted 7-3 in favor of a resolution stating that citizens lacked the authority to put the gay marriage ban directly to voters [...]
Since advocates are arguing that a two-thirds vote of the Legislature was required to qualify the gay marriage ban for the ballot, they want to have lawmakers on the record agreeing with that position when the Supreme Court begins its deliberations, said Geoffrey Kors, executive director of the gay rights group Equality California.
"It's important that the Legislature makes it clear that they are not OK with having their power usurped," Kors said.
The resolution goes next to the full Assembly. The state Senate is scheduled to consider a companion measure in coming weeks.
I think that there are actually two Politicos. There’s the good Politico, which offers big-picture, reported pieces that genuinely change the conversation, and boasts bloggers who regularly offer useful info and valuable insights. The good Politico is doing a better job of using Web-based journalistic techniques in a “non-ideological” setting than the Times. The other Politico does, in fact, play the “inside game” in unsightly ways. It fetishizes Drudge and consciously strives to break the kind of catty gossip that will reverberate inside the cable bubble.
I think that there are actually two Politicos. There’s the good Politico, which offers big-picture, reported pieces that genuinely change the conversation, and boasts bloggers who regularly offer useful info and valuable insights. The good Politico is doing a better job of using Web-based journalistic techniques in a “non-ideological” setting than the Times.
The other Politico does, in fact, play the “inside game” in unsightly ways. It fetishizes Drudge and consciously strives to break the kind of catty gossip that will reverberate inside the cable bubble.
This may be the essential Obama gift: making complexity and caution sound bold and active, even masculine... or rather, it may be one facet of a larger gift: what Zadie Smith calls "having more than one voice in your ear." Notice the canny way that the sentence above turns on the fulcrum of what may be Obama's favorite word: "but." What appears to be a hard line - "My view is... that nobody is above the law" - turns out to have been a qualifier for a vaguer but more inspiring motto: "I am more interested in looking forward than I am in looking back." The most controversial part of the sentence - "people should be prosecuted" - gets tucked away, almost parenthetically, in the middle.
Although Krugman is of course right to blame a "fanatical, irrational minority" for the current crisis in California, it can't be emphasized enough that what really matters is the incredibly stupid institutional rules that empower this minority: namely, the idiotic super-majority for tax increases and an initiative system that both created that supermajority requirement and provides incentives to vote for every tax cut while mandating certain kinds of spending because the issues are isolated.
I'm hopeful that the current budget disaster in California provides the impetus for a radical change in my adopted home state's budget and initiative process. To say it's "broken" is an understatement. The state is currently ungovernable.