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History is Made: Supreme Court Strikes Down Federal, California Laws Limiting Same Sex Marriage

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5-4 Ruling Says Defense of Marriage Act Unconstitutional, California Decision Limited to in-State Unions

By Doug Porter

The opinion on DOMA was by Justice Kennedy, joined by the four liberal Justices — Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan.

“DOMA singles out a class of persons deemed by a State entitled to recognition and protection to enhance their own liberty.”

Here’s a  copy of the opinion. The impact of the case is the federal govt will have to re-work all their regulations to make benefits available to same sex couples. Note that Section 2 of DOMA was not struck down, meaning this ruling has no direct impact on State that ban same sex unions.

Politicians react on Twitter:

Great to hear #DOMA is ruled unconstitutional. Federal recognition of equal rights.

Carl DeMaio ‏@carldemaio2m
I’m very pleased with the decision to strike down DOMA. All Americans deserve equal protection under the law.

Barack Obama  @BarackObama: Today’s DOMA ruling is a historic step forward for #MarriageEquality. #LoveIsLove”

Right wing reaction:

Supreme Court overrules God…. Won’t be long before they outlaw the Bible as hate speech… How long before federal agents haul pastors out of the pulpit?   [Read more…]

The Fallacy of the “Non-Partisan” Lincoln Club

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Endorsement of Carl DeMaio over Scott Peters washes away any pretense of the club’s non-partisanship.

By Andy Cohen

The Lincoln Club yesterday formally endorsed Carl DeMaio in his quest to unseat freshman Democratic Congressman Scott Peters in the not-yet-begun 2014 52nd Congressional District in San Diego. Not exactly a huge surprise there. The Lincoln Club is a right wing, conservative organization that typically endorses conservative Republican candidates for office. What is surprising, however, is the claim by a Lincoln Club spokesman that it is a “non-partisan,” pro-business organization.

This came as a complete shock to me. “The Lincoln Club is populated by R’s, D’s, and DTS who all share a common thread—business interests,” wrote spokesman Tony Manolatos in response to an email expressing my faux “shock” at the club’s release announcing that they were “critical of Filner’s behavior.”   [Read more…]

Readers Write: Against the Wind

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By Tom Hunter

What vast damage has the United States suffered from revelations from Pfc Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden?

Well for starters we have been found to be not very good to our allies – “come on, everyone spies on their friends”.

Our layers of lies have been found to be redundant.  These are only hurtful to our national pride, kinda like being called out by your mom when she catches you in a bald faced lie.  Poor Snowden – being hounded for leaking front page stories from 2007.

Government is gathering and storing every piece of data that ever existed?  Not a problem – we have checks and balances.  Yes, but that check hasn’t balanced – ever.

While the Tea Baggers have spent all their time trying to burn down Congress, the Executive branch has been only too happy to leap into the breach and take all the powers that they find laying about.   [Read more…]

University Avenue: The Best Opportunity to Show What Cycling in San Diego Can Be

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North Park – Mid-City Bicycle Meeting – Tues., June 25 6pm

SANDAG seeks community input for selection of route and infrastructure to make East-West bicycle connections

By John P. Anderson

Tuesday evening SANDAG (San Diego Associations of Governments) will host the 3rd Community Advisory Group Meeting to discuss the North Park – Mid-City (NPMC) Bicycle Corridors Project.  Members of the public are invited to attend and voice their opinion on which routes would be best and which type of infrastructure is preferred (sharrows, bicycle lanes, cycle tracks, etc.).  The meeting will be held from 6:00 PM to 8:30pm at 5450 Lea Street, San Diego, CA 92105 (Teen Challenge Center).   [Read more…]

Rush to Judgment in San Diego: The City Attorney’s ‘Performance Art’

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By Doug Porter

The significance of the struggle between City Attorney Jan Goldsmith and Mayor Bob Filner continues to become more apparent with each passing day.

Last week Goldsmith released edited transcripts purporting to show Filner as an irrational angry man who used his ‘taxpayer funded bodyguard’ to expel an ‘innocent attorney’ (how’s that for an oxymoronic word combo?) from a closed hearing of the San Diego City Council. By playing on the Mayor’s well-known unwillingness to suffer fools, Goldsmith and his cronies have sought to add to a undercurrent of resentment over the mere fact of Bob Filner occupying the top job.

For those of you unfamiliar with all the machinations of this high profile ruckus, the short version of what’s going on here is that all these headlines are symptomatic of a much larger behind the scenes battle between a progressive Mayor and downtown special interest groups used to dictating policy at City Hall.   [Read more…]

Corporate Censorship in 2012: All the News They Didn’t Deem Fit to Print

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By Jim Miller

In last week’s column, I discussed Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman’s propaganda model and noted how it was even more relevant today than it was when they first published Manufacturing Consent in 1988 as the concentration of media ownership they decried in the eighties has only continued to increase dramatically.  I ended that column by referring to Project Censored, an organization that has been monitoring the news media and putting out a list of the top 25 “censored” stories of the year since 1976.

Recently when I mentioned this project to a former journalist friend of mine he objected to the use of the word “censorship” because he didn’t think it applied to the news media, a group of people who, in his estimation, are far more driven by market forces than by the desire to monitor ideas.  With that objection in mind, let’s consider Project Censored’s definition of the term “censorship”

We define Modern Censorship as the subtle yet constant and sophisticated manipulation of reality in our mass media outlets.

Eds. Note: Originally Posted December 10, 2012. We’re re-running some of the best of his columns while Jim takes this ‘vacation’ thing we keep hearing about.   [Read more…]

The Stench in Mission Valley: UT-San Diego’s Open Warfare on Mayor Filner

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By Doug Porter

What started out as sour grapes over their preferred candidate losing last fall’s mayoral contest has now become an all-out jihad.  Frequent insolent editorials and a newsroom motivated by the need to prove their worth to a management team driven by desire to impose their agenda upon San Diego will no longer suffice.

Now it’s open warfare. Any pretense of the fairness hoped for by traditionalists in the public for the daily newspaper are gone. Now it’s yellow journalism– stinking, piss yellow– invective rolling off the presses at UT-San Diego.

Three examples will suffice for today, although there’s plenty more to be had lurking in the recent archives of the paper.   [Read more…]

A Mindful Walk Through the Mayor’s Office

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By Norma Damashek

Turns out that mindful walks aren’t guaranteed to be soul-soothing.  But one thing’s for sure — they’re invariably eye-opening.  Once you start noticing, you’ll find plenty of things you never noticed before.

You’ll remember that last week I walked the walk in La Jolla.  A few days ago it was Mission Valley.  Yesterday it was downtown.  But I’m putting aside downtown and Mission Valley for the time being and inviting you to keep me company on today’s mindful walk… through the mayor’s office… figuratively speaking, that is.

Picture us on the 11th floor of City Hall.  Take a seat alongside me in the outer vestibule of the mayor’s suite.  Notice the elevators and toilets to our left.  Notice the worn carpeting and sullen lighting.  Now follow me into the inner sanctum.

Be mindful how you walk.   [Read more…]

Chunky Sanchez, a Living Legend Hero of Mine

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By Ernie McCray

Ramon “Chunky” Sanchez is a hero of mine and the why to that is because I love people who work to make the world a better place and that’s all I’ve ever seen him do, all over the place, ever since the late 60’s – right beside all us other “radicals,” carrying a guitar in his hands and songs in his imaginative mind filled with humor and bite and a Vato smile on his big round face – and we all went about the business of dealing with the problems in our communities, rising enrollments in gangs, cops cruising our streets with looks on their faces that didn’t do justice to any notions of “protecting and serving” that was detectible to the naked eye, schools waving white flags, lack of adequate social services and safe places for our children to play. The usual societal sins.

And it brought a tear or two rolling down my cheeks when I read the other day that in September this noble man with a heart of gold, this gifted musician who plays too many instruments to mention, will be honored with a National Endowment for the Arts’ National Heritage Fellowship. To borrow words from a classic Johnny Mercer tune, this is “just too marvelous, too marvelous for words.”   [Read more…]

Support Grows for NSA Whistleblower Edward Snowden

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Restore the 4th Protest Planned for San Diego in Balboa Park – July 4

Public support for NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden is growing across the country in leaps and bounds.

Already over 62,000 people – as of 10:30 am 6/20/13 – have signed an online petition in support of Snowden. The petition can be accessed here.

The online petition at RootsAction states:

Thank NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden

Our country is in the midst of a struggle between the growing surveillance state and our precious civil liberties. Now a whistleblower has boldly stepped forward to expose the National Security Agency’s vast spying on our phone records and online communications.

Explaining his actions, the 29-year-old computer expert said:

“I can’t in good conscience allow the U.S. government to destroy privacy, internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they’re secretly building.”

We thank Edward Snowden for his principled and courageous actions as a whistleblower, informing the public about vast surveillance by the National Security Agency that undermines our civil liberties.

  [Read more…]

The Carl DeMaio Campaign – Reform San Diego Koch Connection

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Tell your friends, DeMaio said, that they don’t have to “live in socialism.”

By Doug Porter

A report focusing on the thin line separating the Carl DeMaio for Congress campaign organization and the political advocacy group, Reform San Diego has shed new light on the former City Councilman’s relationship with Americans for Prosperity, a conservative 501(c)4 organization that spends money in support of Republicans and against Democrats. Funded by billionaire conservative brothers Charles and David Koch, the group spent about $36.3 million in the 2012 federal elections.

The KPBS/inewsource story, authored by Claire Trageser and Brooke Williams, starts out with a vignette from fundraiser for DeMaio’s long-time political advocacy group, Reform San Diego, held less than three months after his defeat in the mayoral race. DeMaio has described the group as a “grassroots 527 Super-PAC campaign organization.”

It turns out that Americans for Prosperity have been ‘members’ of DeMaio’s ‘coalition for reform’ for several years now.   [Read more…]

Should the Koch Brothers Own The Tribune Newspapers?

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By Jackie Tortora/AFL-CIO Blog

Some say the press is the fourth branch of government. It serves as a “check and a balance” to our elected and non-elected leaders and informs the public of news for the greater good. But what if that was compromised by a corporate power grab?

That’s exactly what the panel “Should the Koch Brothers Own The Tribune Newspapers?” will examine next Wednesday at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. As we’ve covered on the blog before, David and Charles Koch have expressed interest in buying the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, The Baltimore Sun and other leading newspapers owned by the Tribune Co.   [Read more…]

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