Flap's Blog – FullosseousFlap's Dental Blog

These are my links for March 9th from 15:22 to 15:28:

• California Census 2010: Where the Children Aren’t – Children are a disappearing presence in the Bay Area, the 2010 census shows, with slow growth or a net loss of the under-18 set in the region's nine counties, as families with young children move to areas with cheaper housing and better job opportunities. But diversity of the youth population is increasing as white and black families leave and are replaced by Asian and Latino families with young kids.

  The drop in the overall population of children in the Bay Area would have been greater if not for the increased numbers of two particular groups: Asians and Latinos. In several counties, in fact, the loss of black and white children was mostly balanced out by the increase of Asian and Latino children.

  ======

  Not too many children in San Francisco with all of the gays who have migrated there either.

• CA GOP issues formal invite to Jerry Brown: Come out from "behind your picnic table" and debate Norquist – In a move that ramps up a high profile battle of words over the state budget, the California State Republican Party has formally issued an invitation to Gov. Jerry Brown to "come out from your office picnic table" and attend the party's upcoming state convention in Sacramento — to debate anti-tax advocate Grover Norquist.

  We just got hold of the letter being delivered to Brown's office from state party chair Ron Nehring, who says Americans for Tax Reform President Norquist has already agreed to debate the governor, if it can be arranged at the three day state GOP convention scheduled March 18-20 at the Hyatt Regency in Sacramento. Democrats, including Brown and state party chair John Burton, have been engaged in a verbal tug of war with Norquist over the issue of a special election to let voters decide on tax extensions.

  ========

  Jerry Brown just might do it but I would rather have John Burton since he would try to fight Grover after the word exchange. and, I would like to see that.

• Will Another Dream Fade? Obama Should Endorse Same-Sex Marriages for Immigration Purposes – The way out of this inequity is the Uniting American Families Act (UAFA). UAFA would allow U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents to sponsor their same-sex partners for immigration to the United States. In the last Congress, UAFA was introduced in the House by Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) and Mike Honda (D-CA) and in the Senate by Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT). Over 120 co-sponsors signed on in House and more than 20 co-sponsors in the Senate.

  UAFA would amend the immigration laws by simply adding the term "permanent partner" in sections where "spouse" appears, thus ensuring that a non-citizen permanent partner may receive the same immigration benefits that a non-citizen spouse now receives.

  In the lame-duck session of Congress this past December, the DREAM Act that would have legalized undocumented youngsters who have graduated from high school in the United States went down in a disappointing defeat. The Obama Administration's late, but strong, support for the measure proved insufficient. With little hope for comprehensive immigration reform on the horizon, will the administration at the very least step forward to announce support for UAFA and get the ball rolling on this important effort? Let's hope so.

  =======

  It is called the Defense of Marriage Act and unless it is repealed or SCOTUS declares it uncosntitutional, it is the law of the land.

  End of story.

  This legislation will never become law with a GOP House – thank goodness.

These are my links for February 28th from 09:52 to 09:56:

• Speaker Boehner: House likely to defend Defense of Marraige Act since Justice Dept. won’t – The House is likely to take steps to defend the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said in an interview posted Monday.

  Boehner, the leader of the Republican-held House, said he and and his members are considering a number of options to defend DOMA after President Obama ordered the Justice Department to stop defending the 1990s law in court.

  ++++++++

  As they should.

• Dem Rep. david Wu says he was hospitalized in 2008 for reaction to mental-health drug – U.S. Rep. David Wu says he was hospitalized after his 2008 campaign for symptoms that later were diagnosed as a reaction to a common mental health drug.

  The Oregon Democrat said he felt dizzy and confused on Election Day that year, a period of time when his staff and family have said they were unable to find him.

  "It came up that afternoon, and it knocked me off my can," Wu said, referring to the symptoms.

  Wu discussed his mental health Sunday in an interview with The Associated Press at his Portland office, offering more details of his psychiatric treatment since reports first surfaced last month of bizarre behavior.

  +++++

  Read it all.

  Of course, he will NOT resign.

These are my links for February 24th from 14:06 to 14:17:

• Follow the Money – Who Benefits from the Public Employee Unions? – Everyone has priorities. During the past week, Barack Obama has found no time to condemn the attacks that Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi has launched on the Libyan people.

  But he did find time to be interviewed by a Wisconsin television station and weigh in on the dispute between Republican governor Scott Walker and the state’s public-employee unions. Walker was staging “an assault on unions,” he said, and added that “public employee unions make enormous contributions to our states and our citizens.”

  Enormous contributions, yes — to the Democratic party and the Obama campaign. Unions, most of whose members are public employees, gave Democrats some $400 million in the 2008 election cycle. The American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, the biggest public-employee union, gave Democrats $90 million in the 2010 cycle.

  “Follow the money,” Washington reporters like to say. The money in this case comes from taxpayers, present and future, who are the source of every penny of dues paid to public-employee unions — who in turn spend much of that money on politics, almost all of it for Democrats. In effect, public-employee unions are a mechanism by which every taxpayer is forced to fund the Democratic party.

  So, just as the president complained in his 2010 State of the Union address about a Supreme Court decision that he feared would increase the flow of money to Republicans, he also found time to complain about a proposed state law that could reduce the flow of money to Democrats.

  And, according to the Washington Post, he had time enough to get the Democratic National Committee to organize protests against the proposed Wisconsin law — protests that showed contempt for the law, with teachers abandoning classrooms, doctors writing phony medical excuses, Democratic legislators fleeing the state and holing up in a motel. The lawmakers played hooky without losing any salary, which is protected by the state constitution.

  It’s true that Walker’s proposals would strike hard at the power of the public-employee unions. They would no longer have the right to bargain for fringe benefits, which are threatening to bankrupt the state government, and they would no longer be able to count on government withholding dues money and passing it along to them.

  But what are the contributions that public-employee unions make to our states and our citizens? Their incentives are to increase the cost of government and reduce toward zero the accountability of public employees — both contrary to the interests of taxpaying citizens.

  ++++++

  Read it all

• Obama’s Gay-Marriage Striptease – The Obama administration’s announcement today that it regards the Defense of Marriage Act as unconstitutional and will not defend it in court is the latest act in a striptease. President Obama favors same-sex marriage — favors its judicial imposition — and is casting off the disguises that have hidden that position one by one.

  The portion of the Defense of Marriage Act on which the administration just opined defines marriage as the union of a man and a woman for the purposes of federal law. So if a state court declares that in Massachusetts men can marry each other, its edict does not require the federal government to provide spousal benefits under Social Security to such couples. Obama, while claiming to oppose same-sex marriage, has also favored repeal of this act.

  ++++++

  Read it all

• President 2012: Mike Huckabee defends Obama on Jeremiah Wright – In an interview with Christianity Today, Mike Huckabee denounces the line of attack that Republicans opened up against Obama in 2008 concerning his controversial pastor Jeremiah Wright. Huckabee, on Obama:

  He's been very expressive in his statements, even at the Saddleback Forum when he ran in 2008. He spelled out very clearly what his view was, and frankly, it's inappropriate , wrong-headed, and not helpful to the overall discussion when people try to say he doesn't have a birth certificate or he's a Muslim. To me that demeans the entire real discussion—what is he proposing and whether it's good for the country—that ought to be the centerpiece for our entire conversation, not what did he hear when he sat in church. If people went back and heard every sermon I heard when I was a little kid and some of the more fundamentalist pastors were yelling from the pulpit at me, if they took every one of those sermons and lifted out of them certain phrases and things, it could be scandalous, but only out of the context of the bigger picture. That's why I thought that a lot of the focus on Jeremiah Wright was misplaced.

  ++++++

  Still think Huckabee is running for President in 2012?

  Mike will have a hard time winning the GOP nomination and he will not readily give up his fat paycheck at Fox News.

• Watchdog calls for criminal probe of Governor Walker over prank Koch call – A Washington-based campaign finance watchdog group is calling on Wisconsin prosecutors to launch an investigation of Governor Scott Walker, alleging potentially illegal fundraising activity in an exchange with the prankster who posed as billionaire David Koch, the group says.

  The Public Campaign Action Fund provided me with a letter it has sent to the Dane County District Attorney, who has jurisdiction over state government matters, asking him to probe whether Walker engaged in an effort to solicit "illegal coordinated political spending," as well as whether he illegally did so from state property, i.e., his office.

  +++++++

  Greg Sargent is a lackey for the Far Left and what else do you expect from the Fleebag LEFT.

  This is as stupid as it is moronic.

These are my links for February 23rd from 11:43 to 11:47:

• Obama administration won’t defend Defense of Marriage Act – The Obama administration announced Wednesday that it will no longer defend the constitutionality of the federal government's ban on recognizing same-sex marriages, a rare legal reversal and the latest in a series of political victories for gay rights activists.

  The Justice Department had appealed the decision of a federal judge in Massachusetts who struck down the Defense of Marriage Act in July, saying it was obligated to defend federal statutes. The 1996 law defines marriage from the federal perspective as between a man and a woman, which means same-sex married couples are denied access to marriage-based federal benefits.

  In an extraordinary change, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said Wednesday that he and President Obama had determined – after an extensive review – that the law's key section is unconstitutional. "Given that conclusion, the President has instructed the Department not to defend the statute" in court, Holder said in a statement.

  Administration officials said the review was triggered by a court-imposed filing deadline in two new legal challenges to the Defense of Marriage Act, filed in federal courts in New York and Connecticut.

  The change in position came after intense lobbying of Justice Department and White House officials by gay rights groups and the American Civil Liberties Union, according to activists familiar with the White House's thinking. "There has been an all-out effort to get them to do the right thing," said one activist, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe internal deliberations.

  Obama's relationship with the gay community, a key part of his political base, has been complicated, and activists had strongly opposed the administration's earlier defense of the federal same-sex marriage law. The president has said in the past that he does not support the right of gay couples to marry, though he said in December that his views are "evolving.

  ++++++

  Obama has now elevated gay marriage into the 2012 Presidential race.

• Indiana Senate leader says right-to-work bill is dead – But Dems Won’t Return to Indiana Anyway – Republicans have killed a controversial labor bill that has sparked a Democrat work-stoppage and large union protests at the Statehouse.

  But Democrats say that isn’t enough to get them back to the Statehouse.

  The Indiana House resumed at 2 p.m. today although most Democrats were gone and the galleries — which earlier were full of protesters who were applauding and chanting — had been cleared by Republican Speaker Brian Bosma.

  Shortly before that, House Minority Leader Patrick Bauer spoke to reporters from Urbana, Ill., where most House Democrats are holed up in a Comfort Suites hotels.

  Bauer said the House Democrats realize Republicans won’t let them have their hope: taking 11 labor and education bills taken off the table for consideration this session. But they want more than just the one, the “right to work” measure, that Republicans today agreed to send to a study committee.

  ++++++

  Read it all

  The Dems won't be returning because there are now other issues.

  Wow – negotiations of legislation in absentia – a new one for American politics

These are my links for February 23rd from 10:45 to 10:47:

• Democrat Rep. Michael Capuano urges unions to ‘get a little bloody when necessary’ – Sometimes it's necessary to get out on the streets and "get a little bloody," a Massachusetts Democrat said Tuesday in reference to labor battles in Wisconsin.

  Rep. Michael Capuano (D-Mass.) fired up a group of union members in Boston with a speech urging them to work down in the trenches to fend off limits to workers' rights like those proposed in Wisconsin.

  "I’m proud to be here with people who understand that it’s more than just sending an email to get you going," Capuano said, according to the Statehouse News. "Every once and awhile you need to get out on the streets and get a little bloody when necessary."

  Political observers have been the lookout for potentially incendiary rhetoric in the wake of January's shooting in Tucson, Ariz., where Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D) survived an assassination attempt, six were killed, and 12 others were injured.

  ++++++

  How's that civility working out for you?

• WH: Obama still ‘grappling’ with gay marriage – The White House says President Barack Obama is "grappling" with his personal views on gay marriage even as he's ordered the Justice Department to stop defending the constitutionality of a law that bans it.

  The Justice Department announced Wednesday that, at Obama's direction, it would not defend the Defense of Marriage Act in a court case where it's being challenged.

  Spokesman Jay Carney said Obama has always opposed the Defense of Marriage Act as "unnecessary and unfair." But Carney said there's no change to how Obama views gay marriage itself.

  Obama said in January that he is still wrestling with whether gay couples should have the right to marry. He said his feelings on the issue continue to evolve but he still believes in allowing strong civil unions.

  +++++++

  Looks like a wedge issue for the 2012 Presidential race

Patterico raises the issue.

Republican Meg Whitman now has a wedge issue in the California governor’s race, if she chooses to use it.

She also has a more subtle but much stronger issue: the responsibility of elected officials to defend the people’s laws.

Here’s why. The Ninth Circuit’s briefing schedule calls for the last brief to be filed by Prop. 8 supporters on November 1, 2010. The court has ordered the parties to discuss whether the
proposition’s defenders have standing on their own, given that the Attorney General and the Governor failed to fight for the law in court.

But here’s the thing: come November, there will be a new Attorney General in California  and perhaps more important, a new Governor. They will probably be sworn in before the appeals are decided. And the identity of the new Governor will probably decide whether California’s elected officials are going to join the appeal. (This assumes that procedural time limits don’t prevent them from joining an ongoing appeal by intervenor defendants. I dont know the answer to this question, but my educated guess is that there would be no procedural bar, as long as the appeal is still live.)

Our current Attorney General, Jerry Brown, refused to defend Prop. 8 and would continue this path as Governor. Meg Whitman, by contrast, was a Prop. 8 supporter. Presumably she would move to join the appeal if elected.

Since Meg Whitman campaigned for California Proposition 8 and presumably donated money to the cause, I would think this issue will raise itself sometime during the campaign. Moreover, Whitman is very close to LDS-Mormon former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and the California LDS community.

My bet is that Whitman uses targeted direct mail to the Pro-Proposition 8 Protect Marriage list shortly before the early voting/absentee voter ballot request time. Also, flyers will appear at many Christian, especially Roman Catholic and LDS churches during this time. Undoubtedly, there will be a sermon/homily or two.

So, the answer is yes.

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals granted the stay, pending an expedited appeal of the Federal District Court Order that held Proposition 8 violated the United States Constitution.

Appellants’ motion for a stay of the district court’s order of August 4, 2010 pending appeal is GRANTED. The court sua sponte orders that this appeal be expedited pursuant to Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 2. The provisions of Ninth Circuit Rule 31-2.2(a) (pertaining to grants of time extensions) shall not apply to this appeal. This appeal shall be calendared during the week of December6, 2010, at The James R. Browning Courthouse in San Francisco, California.

The previously established briefing schedule is vacated. The opening brief is now due September 17, 2010. The answering brief is due October 18, 2010. The reply brief is due November 1, 2010. In addition to any issues appellants wish to raise on appeal, appellants are directed to include in their opening brief a discussion of why this appeal should not be dismissed for lack of Article III standing. See Arizonans For Official English v. Arizona, 520 U.S. 43, 66 (1997).

Here is the order:

Perry v. Schwarzennegger – 9th Cir. – Order Granting Stay Pending Appeal

An interesting aside is the matter of standing – whether California Proposition 8 supporters have the right to appeal the decision.

There are two interesting aspects to this issue.

1. There will be an election in November of this year and both the California Attorney General and Governor WILL change. Both California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Attorney General Jerry Brown oppose the stay and support the overturn of California Proposition 8. They both do have standing and a change in office by either Meg Whitman as Governor and Steve Cooley as Attorney General could change the standing issue – as one or both of them may very well flip on the issue.

2. Should the court of appeal agree with the district court that Proposition 8 proponents do NOT have standing to appeal, then they might very well decide that Proposition 8 proponents might not have been allowed to intervene in the trial court – and, thus vacate the entire trial. Hence, the case would have to be tried again.

In the meantime, there will be no further gay marriages in California, as the issue is played out in the political process.