Americans who may have hoped that the latest of American mass murders would result in even the tiniest reflection on American gun policies got a blunt answer from House Republicans this week:
No.
A GOP-led panel blocked a proposal Wednesday that would have reversed a nearly 20-year-old ban on funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to research on gun violence.
New York Rep. Nita Lowey introduced an amendment to repeal the current Congessionally-imposed ban on federal research into the causes and possible responses to gun violence. It went, as usual, absolutely nowhere.
In the GOP panel’s report on the funding bill, Republicans wrote that the ban is to protect the rights granted by the Second Amendment.
“The restriction is to prevent activity that would undertake activities (to include data collection) for current or future research, including under the title 'gun violence prevention,' that could be used in any manner to result in a future policy, guidelines, or recommendations to limit access to guns, ammunition, or to create a list of gun owners,” the report says.
“That convoluted argument is an insult to this committee,” Rep. David Price (D-N.C.) said. “It borders on the paranoid.”
Not just borders on, Rep. Price. Not just borders on.
Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2013—The DOMA Decision:
The Supreme Court of the United States has declared unconstitutional Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act, which barred the federal government from recognizing or granting equal benefits to same-sex couples lawfully wed in their home states.
For couples in those twelve states which recognize marriage equality, it is a glorious and long-awaited day. At the same time (and as expected), however, the Court did not address the constitutionality of Section 2 of the Defense of Marriage Act, thus leaving for another day the question of whether the other thirty-eight states can refuse to recognize same-sex marriages, nor did it adopt (or reject) a heightened scrutiny standard so as to allow any strong prediction as to whether the Court will some day recognize a fifty-state right to marriage equality.
The opinion of the Court was written by Justice Kennedy, who also authored the Court's overturning of anti-sodomy laws exactly ten years ago today, and it holds that DOMA is invalid because "no legitimate purpose overcomes the purpose and effect to disparage and to injure those whom the State, by its marriage laws, sought to protect in personhood and dignity."
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