links for 2008-11-07

The global economic downturn hit Walt Disney Co's quarterly results harder and faster than Wall Street expected, with the company on Thursday reporting a sharp decline in hotel bookings and softness in advertising revenue at its networks.

Disney's shares slid 9 percent in extended trade but recovered a bit after executives announced plans to discount stays at Walt Disney World to stimulate bookings in the first half of 2009.
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The recession hits Disney

Wow -that is some savage cutting & gutting that Nicole Wallace has just performed upon Sarah Palin. Nicole & I crossed swords once, during the Harriet Miers nomination battle. Watching what Nicole can do when she is seriously annoyed, I am grateful that I got away from that fight with nothing worse than a few bumps and bruises ….

That said: Some of these stories do not ring quite true to me, especially the story about Palin allegedly not realizing that Africa was a continent rather than a country. Apparently she did not grasp that "South Africa" was not the same thing as "southern Africa." But there a lot of possible innocent explanations for a mistake like that.

Larger point: Would it not better serve the cause of understanding for Nicole Wallace to give an on-camera interview to Carl Cameron and state these points in her own voice – and allow viewers to asses their credibility? Wallace's fingerprints are all over these leaks anyway, so it's not as if she has any anonymity to los

Opponents of a ballot measure to end gay marriage in California conceded defeat today – two days after voters repealed a state Supreme Court decision that has allowed same-sex couples to wed since May.

With all precincts in the state counted, Proposition 8 was leading by a 52.5 percent to 47.5 percent margin. Opponents had held out hope that they could overcome a 400,000 deficit when provisional and absentee ballot were counted.

But during a telephone conference today with reporters, opponents acknowledged that waiting for the final tally would be fruitless.

"While we think the margin will close, we are convinced that we will not be able to overcome what the current small deficit is and that Prop. 8 will pass," said Geoff Kors, a member of the executive NO on Proposition 8 Committee.
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Finally, they concede. Now, the lawsuits.

"While the election was close, and millions of votes still remain uncounted, it has become apparent that we lost," writes Dr. Delores A. Jacobs, CEO of the Center Advocacy Project, and Lorri L. Jean, CEO of the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center, Kate Kendell, executive director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, and Geoff Kors, executive director of Equality California, in an e-mail to supporters.
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Nope. California voters have spoken

Assemblywoman Audra Strickland appears to have prevailed in the toughest campaign of her career, as she held a 3 percentage-point advantage over Democrat Ferial Masry after the vote count on Election Day.

About 86,000 votes in Ventura County remain to be counted, and about half of county voters reside in the 37th Assembly District. If the outstanding votes are proportionately distributed, that would mean about 43,000 votes remain to be counted in the district. Masry would have to win 55 percent of those votes in order to overcome Strickland's 4,000-vote lead.
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Alot of votes to be counted. Best to wait before calling the elction.

I'm no legal expert, but as a political matter, I do not favor litigating this. I favor continuing the work in educating people about marriage equality, about gay couples, and the good, integrative effect of allowing this reform. And I think the greatest way to do this will not be lawsuits but the witness and example of thousands of legally married couples in California. That's how fears of miscegenation abated in time: seeing inter-racial couples live and breathe defused the opposition. Remember, the anti-marriage equality forces lost over ten points in eight years in two consecutive initiatives. We're winning. Just not all the time.
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Sully knows they will lose the legal argument and the US Supremes could ban gay marriage for all time. Flap doubts winning hearts and minds will ever occur in sufficient numbers to be a majority – at least in Flap's lifetime

Issue # 1: Did Prop 8 amend or revise the Constitution? There are two modes of changing the California state constitution. First, there is an amendment. An amendment can be effected in either of two ways: (1) passage of an amendment by a 2/3 vote of each house of the state legislature or (2) by ballot initiative, as was the case with Prop 8. Second, there is a revision. In order to revise the California state constitution, the change must be approved by a 2/3 vote of each house of the legislature and thereafter approved by public referendum via a legislatively-initiated ballot proposition.
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The lawsuits will now fly.

And the two cases that I've found in other states that dealt with the same question have likewise concluded that an opposite-sex-only marriage initiative was an amendment, not a revision: Bess v. Ulmer (Alaska Supreme Court, 1999), and Martinez v. Kulongoski (Oregon Court of Appeals, 2008). Bess, in particular, expressly applied California precedents (though with a minor change that doesn't seem relevant here), and concluded that the opposite-sex-only marriage initiative was an amendment, not a revision: "Few sections of the Constitution are directly affected, and nothing in the proposal will 'necessarily or inevitably alter the basic governmental framework' of the Constitution."
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Should the CA Supreme court hold otherwise, voters will recall the entire court. Ronald George, Chief Justice will be not confirmed in 2010 anyway.

California's black and Latino voters, who turned out in droves for Barack Obama, provided key support for a state ban on same-sex marriage. Christian, married and older voters also helped give the measure the winning edge, according to exit polls for The Associated Press.
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Yep. White bigots – not so much……

The National Religious Broadcasters, for one, was concerned enough about Schumer's comments to issue a press release Wednesday saying it "foreshadowed an intolerance of ideas."

NRB, which supports the FCC's indecency crackdown, took issue with Schumer linking the two.

“I was stunned by Senator Schumer’s suggestion that by keeping filth off the air, the federal government has somehow become empowered to take over the control of legitimate programming content of broadcasters," said Craig Parshall, senior VP and general counsel for NRB and author of its brief supporting the FCC on indecency enforcement. "That paints a very grim picture for the future of broadcasting freedoms, particularly for Christian broadcasters.
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Christian right broadcasters must leave boradcast radio anyway and migrate to the internet and satellite boradcast radio.