many other, more erudite sources around the web have pointed out the problems with the media’s scapegoating of the black voter population (which i perpetuated in my post below), so i’ll just link to them rather than replaying all the arguments here.

the moderate voice links to and reprints a portion of the message from kathryn kolbert, president of people for the american way;

a post on dailykos goes after CNN’s sampling methodology among other things (i don’t agree with all of the assertions, but it’s worth the read);

and raymond leon roker at huffpo has even more.

now, that said, if CNN’s sample was correct as to distribution of the black vote (if not the overall percentage of the vote that was cast by black residents of california), it does beg the question as to why 70% of california’s black voters cast a ballot in favor of prop 8. andrew sullivan links to more.

and what of the mormon support? apparently the LDS church pulled out all the stops in supporting prop 8. an LA times op-ed piece looks at the mormons’ own history of non-traditional marriages, opining that “there is no religious group in our country that should be more tolerant of “nontraditional” forms of marriage than those of us whose ancestors were polygamist Mormons, who were persecuted because of their “nontraditional” marriages.”

oh well.

the CT supreme court just ruled that same-sex couples have the right to marry. w00t! along with MA and CA, that makes three.

according to the ncsl, there are only five states without laws prohibiting same-sex marriage: MA, NJ, NM, NY and RI (you go, ocean state).

earlier this year, the governor of new york directed the state agencies to recognize same-sex marriages performed in jurisdictions where it is legal.

just my attempt to find some end-of-week cheer in a world where the economy is in free fall, and in a country where a presidential candidate has stooped to disgusting lows and stokes a climate of rage and violence.

hey, look! kittens!

In response to judges who say they see too many people in their courtrooms because of undiagnosed mental disorders, D.C. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty cut the ribbon to an urgent-care clinic at the D.C. Superior Court building yesterday.

mental health and legal issues often go hand in hand, as any forensic psychiatrist - or defense attorney - will tell you. there’s an american academy of psychiatry and the law, founded by psychiatrists, as well as a number of law and psychiatry programs in law schools around the country. but as far as i know, this is the first mental health clinic in a courthouse. according to the chief clinical officer at the dc department of mental health,

“there seems to be a lot of mentally ill people who were being arrested for quality-of-life crimes like open containers, aggressive panhandling and trespassing.

“They can either go to jail or go to treatment,” he said, adding that of the 146 people who have been treated, 110 were homeless, 60 people were given a community mental health provider and eight were referred to an emergency psychiatric facility.

30 years on, we’re still dealing with reagan’s legacy.

wired’s gallery of retired drugs reminds me why the (attempted creation of a) doctrine of FDA preemption of state law failure-to-warn cases is a bad thing, even if wyeth v. levine is lousy test case.

and if that doesn’t get your irish up, here’s some news that just walked across my transom that should:

United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Assistant Administrator for Global Health, Kent Hill¹, issued a new USAID instruction that requires its staff to force governments in several African countries to discontinue the provision of U.S.-funded contraceptive commodities to Marie Stopes International (MSI), one of the world’s leading family planning organizations.

Marie Stopes International is a london-based NGO that works on sexual and reproductive health, and operates its own clinics around the world, including in africa, bangladesh, and pakistan. more information on the ban is available on their website; according to their director,

the USAID instruction will “seriously disrupt” MSI’s family planning programmes in at least six African countries – Ghana, Malawi, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe - including one where the organisation delivers 25% of all family planning services nationally. Women in these countries will be left with few options other than abortion, the majority of which will be unsafe and will likely result in their death or disability.

more abortions. and here i thought the neochristiancons were all about fewer abortions. silly me.

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¹ the USAID directory says hill’s work number is 202-712-0970. yahoo even has a home phone number for him, if you search in his town of residence. not that i’m saying anyone should call him and give him what-for. i’m just saying.

i don’t normally read The Nation (mostly because i subscribed to their e-updates a year or so ago and am now inundated with email from them… i should unsubscribe, but it’s easier to let everything go into the junk mail folder), and these days when i do glance at the articles i find them a bit lefty-histrionic for my tastes. however, this one was forwarded to me from a reliable (if 60s-liberal) source, i.e., my mother:

Now that 80 percent of clinical trials fail to recruit sufficient numbers of test subjects on deadline, drug companies increasingly export their trials to developing countries, where sick, undertreated patients abound. It’s faster, it’s cheaper and it’s easier to conduct the placebo-controlled trials that companies and the FDA prefer. There is precious little oversight of these trials. Unlike for domestic trials, the FDA does not require advance notice before drug companies take their trials outside US borders. And with 90 percent of trials failing to gain FDA approval, a massive number of trials are conducted, fail and then vanish with no agency review at all–and little public record, if any.

this is significant for a number of reasons, one being the brewing domestic storm over FDA preemption of state liability claims. (in case any of my readers - both of them - are suspicious of anything written about big pharma on a self-named “injury board” site, it’s worth noting that david kessler, re-fanger of the FDA in the 1990s, doesn’t support the concept of FDA preemption and indeed points out that it contradicts the FDA’s own position over the last several decades.)

if SCOTUS upholds FDA preemption for drug warnings, and unfavorable results of foreign drug trials are allowed to vanish into the bowels of drug company file cabinets, US consumers may be left without recourse against drug companies for injuries the drug companies - but not the FDA - were aware a given drug could cause. imo, this is a Very Bad Thing.

###

on an unrelated note, i find it interesting that the word “sanction” has two mostly contradictory meanings. to ratify or confirm, and to penalize.

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and in what might be the most damning news coverage yet, sarah palin has been called “just another politician.” big surprise there. but it would be interesting to see palin facing a subpoena along with the general election.

so, SCOTUS struck down dc’s ban on handguns last week, in an opinion likely to create ripples across the country as more gun laws are challenged. an interesting article in the wsj law blog discussed the practical implications of the decision in terms of gun-buying in the city, the upshot of which seemed to be “nothing is going to change quickly.” the immediate reaction in the dc metro area seems to have been a flurry of interest among wannabe hand gun owners who are trying to buy guns in md and va.

given this backdrop (and the wsj interview particularly), a new development in the district caught my eye. the wapo reports that a new gun bill is being introduced by phil mendelson today. the liberalization of the city’s gun laws seems to be happening more quickly than i’d expected, but apparently not quickly (or liberally) enough for some.

alan gura, the attorney who argued against the gun ban before the supreme court, is apparently of the opinion that mendelson’s legislation doesn’t go far enough:

After looking at the draft yesterday, Gura said in an e-mail, “It’s a good start, but there are other issues with the code.”

In particular, he is concerned about the city’s decision to continue a ban on semiautomatic weapons, which he said is unconstitutional.

if i were a writer of very bad puns, i’d say gura was setting himself up for a heller ironic ending.

my friend M from law school had this insight to the heller opinion:

woo, now I can get a gun and shoot birds and puppies!

there’s just something about shooting puppies in our nation’s capitol that feels so patriotic.

yes, folks. that’s our highbrow legal analysis at work. full decision here.

kgf, an occasionally grouchy grammarian (you’ll never catch me saying “i wish i was…” lemme tell you) had this to say about scalia’s dismissal of the “A well regulated Militia…” clause:

the moral of the story is that subordinate clauses are unimportant and should be eliminated from the syntax thereby freeing the next generation from having to learn any grammar beyond text messaging.

LOL.

as a condition of recovering custody of their kids - taken from their homes without regard for due process or less-hostile alternatives, judge barbara walther is requiring that the yearning for zion flds parents

… be photographed, take parenting classes, submit to in-home inspections and remain in Texas during a continuing investigation by state child welfare authorities.

excuse me? i’m confused as to what gives walther the authority to require the parents submit to any of those things - as far as i know, they haven’t been charged with any crimes; does the investigatory power of the texas department of family & protective services extend that far?

i’d read the actual order, but walther’s court doesn’t seem to have an online presence.

(other information in the article disturbs me as well: the department and the judge seem to want to make it as difficult as possible for families to reunite, requiring that parents travel to where their children are, rather than returning the children to them. according to the article, the children are scattered around the state - and texas isn’t small. a comment by the spokeswoman for the department, marleigh meisner, also raises red flags: she mentions “where the children are being held.” held? does the department think they, too, have committed some crime?)

virginia’s attorney general wants to end the recent trend of democratic governors by securing the gubernatorial spot for himself. he’s been distancing himself from kaine’s policies, invokes god and prayer in his richmond times-dispatch columns, and thinks that philip morris is a good corporate citizen.

what a peach.

now he’s appealing the 4th u.s. circuit court of appeals ruling in richmond medical center v. herring that virginia’s abortion law is unconstitutional.¹

that’s just great.
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¹ virginia, that great commonwealth, couldn’t content itself with the right-wing label “partial birth abortion” and came up with the even more inflammatory - and nonsensical - term “partial birth infanticide.” the cliff notes version of the decision is that carhart II, the scotus decision upholding the federal pba ban, hinged on the doctor’s intent to perform a standard d&e vs. an intact d&e; the virginia statute makes no such distinction and therefore is distinguished from carhart II as imposing an undue burden on a woman’s right to obtain an abortion.

ginsburg’s scathing dissent in carhart ii is a must-read - not only does she go after the majority’s opinion, but flays - nay, dismembers - the congressional findings and recitations in the act itself. i think my favorite paragraph (and it’s hard to choose just one) is this:

Revealing in this regard, the Court invokes an antiabortion shibboleth for which it concededly has no reliable evidence: Women who have abortions come to regret their choices, and consequently suffer from “[s]evere depression and loss of esteem.” … Because of women’s fragile emotional state and because of the “bond of love the mother has for her child,” the Court worries, doctors may withhold information about the nature of the intact D&E procedure. … The solution the Court approves, then, is not to require doctors to inform women, accurately and adequately, of the different procedures and their attendant risks. Cf. Casey, 505 U. S., at 873 (plurality opinion) (“States are free to enact laws to provide a reasonable framework for a woman to make a decision that has such profound and lasting meaning.”). Instead, the Court deprives women of the right to make an autonomous choice, even at the expense of their safety.

i’m gratified to read that the texas supreme court has ordered the return of the yearning for zion kids to their parents. i’m not crazy about the idea of marrying teenage girls off to older men,¹ but there is that whole freedom of religion thing we’ve had for two centuries. i’d rather freedom from religion, but that’s just me.

in other religious news, the military has suspended a marine (hopefully by his toenails) for proselytizing to iraqis; i just wish they’d do the same to military officers who can’t keep their religious yaps shut when it comes to their own troops.

and go read freakangels. it’s good for what ails ya.
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¹ for a postapocalyptic feminist perspective on flds-style family units, read the gate to women’s country.