Health Care, Gay Marriage and Constitutional Law: A Report from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts

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Wednesday December 20, 2006 · 10:30 AM PST

2006/12/20 · 10:30

It has been some time since I wrote a diary, but right now in Massachusetts, there is a supreme judicial court case which is raising questions of both constitutional law and progressive politics. The story goes like this:

In MA, as many of you may know, there is a right-wing movement to place on the ballot a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. What you may not know is that there is a progressive movement to place on the ballot an amendment making affordable health care a right. Both amendments were killed through procedural means. To read about the ongoing struggles, see the flip.

Poll

11 votes Show Results

Should the MA SJC force the legislature to vote on the issues of Health Care and Gay Marriage

11 votes Vote Now!

Should the MA SJC force the legislature to vote on the issues of Health Care and Gay Marriage

Yes on Marriage and Health Care

0 votes

Yes on Marriage, no on Health Care

0 votes

No on both

5 votes

No on Marriage, yes on Health Care

6 votes

A testament to people power

idissent

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Sunday October 15, 2006 · 3:04 PM PDT

2006/10/15 · 15:04

For the past few months, several of my family members have devoted themselves to the cause of getting Deval Patrick elected governor of Massachusetts. While I had no qualms with him as a candidate, I simply didn't understand the why so many of my acquantainces were head-over-heels in love with the guy. I was working for a health care advocacy group and focused on our own political battle, and I simply didn't have time to care what was happening in the gubernatorial race. I watched with amazement as my brother would wake up early and come home late each day doing unpaid work for a candidate. What drove him and others like him to do this? I found out today. More on the flip. Read More

Romney and Khatami's visit to MA

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Wednesday September 06, 2006 · 10:21 AM PDT

2006/09/06 · 10:21

This sunday, former Iranian president Mohammed Khatami is scheduled to give an adress at Harvard's Kennedy school of government. Although this is a privately scheduled visit (one of a number of U.S. speaking engagements) the state department has asked Mitt Romney to provide trooper security for Khatami during his time in MA, in consideration of the fact that Khatami is a high level foreign visitor. Romney refused. The story is here

http://www.boston.com/...

Commentary on the flip... Read More

What the voters really need to hear about Allen

idissent

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Tuesday August 15, 2006 · 7:46 AM PDT

2006/08/15 · 07:46

So George Allen made an apparantely racist comment. As if the noose in his office, his love of the confederate flag, and his opposition to MLK day weren't hints too begin with. Still, we may be getting lost a little too much in the details here and not focusing on the larger picture regarding Allen Read More

My letter to andrew

idissent

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Friday August 11, 2006 · 7:46 AM PDT

2006/08/11 · 07:46

I know he isn't very popular on this site, but I am a fan of Andrew Sullivan's blog. Not because I agree with what he says; most of the time I don't. I suppose I like it because in the age of Coulter and Malkin, it's nice to have a somewhat level-headed conservative out there.
Anyway, he recently posted on his blog a bit about the democrats, middle east reform, and national security. I vehemently disagreed with him, as I believe most people on this site would, and wrote him a letter. Since it's such a shame to have long pieces of email disappear into the "series of tubes" never to be seen again, I thought I would post it here. See the flip. Read More

FOX News and the conservative war on academia

idissent

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Sunday August 06, 2006 · 11:39 AM PDT

2006/08/06 · 11:39

As a college student, my guilty pleasure/addiction/procrastination tool is most often the website facebook.com. It is a social networking site where uses can create profiles on a network (in this case the college), and share them with other users. The site was originally restricted to colleges and universities, but has since expanded to include other networks such as employers and cities. Many would argue that this expansion is a bad thing, but that is not the point of this discussion. The conservative war on academia is. More on the flip. Read More

A liberal's military dilemma

idissent

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Friday July 07, 2006 · 1:56 PM PDT

2006/07/07 · 13:56

I worry about today's military. This is not because I think they are not good at what they do. While the war in Iraq is going poorly, I do not attribute this to incompetence in terms of infantry. Our failures in the middle east have much more to do with stupidity and poor leadership at the command level. But I digress...please see the flip for what I hope will inspire some discussion of perceived problems with military personnel and how these problems can be rectified.
Read More

Ignorance or hatred? I report, you decide

idissent

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Saturday July 01, 2006 · 7:40 PM PDT

2006/07/01 · 19:40

It's been a very long time since I've updated. I try to only do it when I feel that I have a salient point to make on something that hasn't already been said thousands of times. This being the case, I'm not entirely certain why I am blogging at this time. What will follow is mostly an angry rant. It's about people who hate America. Read More

Moussaoui's after trial quote-how wrong he is

idissent

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Wednesday May 03, 2006 · 2:26 PM PDT

2006/05/03 · 14:26

So the verdict is in, and Zacharias Moussaoui gets life. I realize this topic has been written about, but I noticed something in the news that I thought was noteworthy. Moussaoui's quote after the trial was, "America. You lost, I won!" Apparantly he clapped his hands as he was led away. Of course, right wing America is going to seize this as an argument for the death penalty, but the fact is, whatever he believes, Moussaoui is wrong. America won, the enemies of freedom lost. More on the flip. Read More

An interesting yet flawed hypothesis at TNR

idissent

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Tuesday May 02, 2006 · 3:09 PM PDT

2006/05/02 · 15:09

James Forsyth at The New Republic has an article online presenting the theory that a democratic victory in 2006 will aid republican chances is 2008 for the presidency. His argument essentially follows this path:

1. If the democrats claim a major victory in 2006, republicans will feel too insecure to nominate a more radical rightwing candidate (someone who is a clearcut social and religious conservative) and will be forced to nominate a more moderate candidate, or at least one with a more broadly based appeal. His examples for such a candidate are McCain, Rice, and Guliani.
2. Because studies showed that a "security gap" rather than a "values gap" caused Bush's reelection in 2004. Forsyth uses this logic to suggest that a moderate canidate can where while a far right conservative is less likely to acheive victory.
3. If the republcans hold congress, they will be emboldened into nominating a far right candidate unlikely to win in 08.
For discussion and reasons why this logic is flawed, see the flip. Read More

Parental rights and public schooling

idissent

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Friday April 28, 2006 · 6:18 AM PDT

2006/04/28 · 06:18

This story hasn't made it far beyond the Boston area (although I did see it on the Yahoo news page last night), but I thought it was interesting enough to mention here.
In Lexington, MA, a parent is suing the school system over their reading of the book "King and King" in class. The book is exactly what the title suggests--a story about a king who chooses to marry another king, and not a queen. The parents of a student are suing, claiming that they have the right to be notified of books with controversial themes prior to their use in classrooms. More on the flip. Read More

A small, yet important story about prisoner's rights

idissent

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Tuesday March 28, 2006 · 4:26 PM PST

2006/03/28 · 16:26

I was looking through the New York Times online and came across this story about a lawsuit concerning whether or not an inmate has the right to news media in prison. Here's the link
http://www.nytimes.com/...

It's an interesting debate...one has the right to freely disseminate media, but is the right to view it a universal guarantee? I'm not entirely sure, but I believe in this case the prisoners have a point. The state lets them have paperback books and religious materials, yet a newspaper is deemed a "security risk." Seems far fetched to me. The other, and in my mind more disturbing, justification has to do with behavior modification. More about this and it's implications on the flip. Read More

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