We being with the Republican attempt to gut net neutrality. From
Jon Brodkin at Ars Technica:
US Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) this week filed legislation she calls the "Internet Freedom Act" to overturn the Federal Communications Commission's new network neutrality rules. [...]
In the latest election cycle, Blackburn received $25,000 from an AT&T political action committee (PAC), $20,000 from a Comcast PAC, $20,000 from a cable industry association PAC, and $15,000 from a Verizon PAC, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
And of course, the Republican "alternative" to the Affordable Care Act is just as wrong-headed, as
Greg Sargent at The Washington Post explains:
At oral arguments before the Supreme Court yesterday, two of the conservative justices — Samuel Alito and Antonin Scalia — both floated versions of the idea that, if the Court does strike down Obamacare subsidies in three dozen states, it might not be that big a deal, because surely lawmakers would then fix the problem and avert disruptions for millions. [...]
The conservative Justices implicitly suggested that the consequences of ruling with the challengers — which Scalia himself termed “disastrous,” though there may have been a hint of sarcasm there — are in fact weighing on the Court, and they themselves floated the idea that a legislative fix might mitigate those consequences.[...]
[H]ere’s the thing: It seems likely that it will only get harder later this year — not easier — for Republicans to fulfill any promise of a backup plan, either on the state or federal level. By then the 2016 GOP presidential primary will be in full swing, and continued Total War resistance to Obamacare — in the form of opposition to any fix that Obama and Democrats will be demanding — could very well emerge as a conservative litmus test. It’s hard to see GOP state lawmakers coming together to create exchanges in many states, and it’s even harder to see consensus forming behind a contingency plan among Congressional Republicans. Indeed, Ted Cruz — who is expected to run for president — is already insisting that any “alternative” in the wake of a Court decision against the ACA must repeal most of the law, the subsidies included.
More on the day's top stories below the fold.
Bloomberg's editors urge Congress to stay out of the Iran talks:
In the afterglow of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's fiery speech to Congress, the Republican-controlled Senate is feeling its oats on foreign policy. Senators should be careful not to undermine President Barack Obama's negotiations with Iran.
Leave aside for the moment the typical partisan debate and more high-minded questions over the respective roles of the legislative and executive branches. The central question here is whether the bill under discussion will increase the odds of a good nuclear deal with Iran. The answer is no.
Meanwhile, on the topic of Ferguson's police department,
Jay Bookman at The Atlanta Journal Constitution explains the significance of the latest report on Ferguson's police department:
Given those attitudes and circumstances — a policing model driven by revenue, not by justice, imposed on a black community by an almost exclusively white bureaucracy that was at the very least tolerant of casual expressions of racism — it’s easy to see how Ferguson might become a resentful tinderbox awaiting a spark, a spark that came when Officer Darren Wilson confronted Brown over allegedly walking in the street.
It’s also hard to ignore the disturbing parallels between Ferguson’s revenue-driven policing model and Georgia’s scandalous, largely privatized misdemeanor probation that treats poor misdemeanor offenders as a major profit center.
Writing at The New York Times, law professor
Ronald J. Krotoszynski Jr. analyzes federalism and the courts in light of Alabama's attempts to ignore the SCOTUS gay marriage ruling:
Since the United States Supreme Court will rule on gay marriage in June, it’s easy to dismiss the Alabama court’s ruling as quixotic. But it raises a real issue: not what state courts can do, but rather what they should do. Because state and federal courts operate on entirely separate tracks, the state court’s position that it need not follow lower federal court rulings is technically correct. Yet if our judicial system is to function smoothly, both court systems must, from time to time, refrain from exercising their legal discretion to ignore the other’s handiwork.
The gay-marriage rulings bring this aspect of the state-federal relationship, called comity, into close focus. Alabama’s probate judges are subject to the jurisdiction of both state and federal courts. If both judicial systems exercise their authority concurrently and independently, issuing conflicting constitutional rulings, the probate judges are caught in a Catch-22. Respecting one court’s order necessarily will involve a failure to respect the other’s.
And, on a final note, CNN's Douglas Brinkley argues that Selma's historic bridge should be renamed in honor of John Lewis:
Lewis had emerged as the bravest and youngest of the major civil rights leaders of the Kennedy-Johnson era, even speaking at the March on Washington in 1963. As a Freedom Rider in the South, he was arrested 24 times, and proud of it. Therefore on March 9, to protest "Bloody Sunday," as the incident became known, Parks walked down Detroit's wide Woodward Avenue in full solidarity with Brother Lewis and the others arrested in Selma. "The Edmund Pettus Bridge for me was wrought in symbolism," Parks recalled years later. "The photos taken that day made me think of the bridge as a battlefield, like at Lexington and Concord. It was the start of a turning point. [...]
One thing "not right" on the 50th anniversary of the Selma marches is the sad fact that the Edmund Pettus Bridge hasn't been renamed the John Lewis Bridge. Continuing to honor Pettus -- a Confederate general, U.S. senator and white supremacist -- is insulting to America's civil rights heroes. When the bridge was built in 1940, Jim Crow ruled Alabama. Dallas County blacks had no say in the bridge being named to honor a Reconstruction-era white supremacist.