Recent Comments

1. about 14 hours ago on Steve Breen

   Those who try to argue with “examples” (however inaccurate) from the “logical extreme” are always extreme and rarely logical.

   For an excellent (thought-provoking and sometimes humorous) discussion of late-term abortion, and some of the other fringe nonsense that is often thrown at the issue from the “Christian” Taliban:

   http://emerald7tfb.wordpress.com/2011/05/22/additional-issues-in-reproductive-freedom/

2. about 15 hours ago on Steve Breen

   Et tu, Steve Breen? I know you’re a conservative (and the political cartoonist for my home-delivered paper, the San Diego Union-Tribune), but I generally think of you as the responsible, principled conservative type, not the extremist wacko.

   Note to Breen: There is no place in the United States where there is such a thing as “born alive” abortion. There is no place in the United States where elective (or “convenience”) abortion is performed after the onset of EEG brain waves.

   There is no such thing as “partial birth abortion.” That is a LIE made up by those who want to control women. There is a procedure called D&X — dilation and extraction — which is the most efficient and least invasive method of performing a rare, tragic late-term abortion.

   The only abortions that are performed after that point, which comprise less than 1% of all abortions according to CDC data, are for extreme medical emergency, and virtually all of them are of WANTED, PLANNED pregnancies, the end of which is already a sad tragedy for disappointed families, to whom you add injury to injury.

   Stop the cruelty. Stop the vicious, hateful cruelty to women who are already suffering enough from the losses of planned, wanted pregnancies.

3. about 15 hours ago on Clay Jones

   Anti-choice extremists are NOT “pro-life.”

   If it were about life, they would care about children after they have been born. THEY DON’T.

   It if were about concern for the death of pre-sentient, pre-conscious embryos, they would support easy access to birth control. THEY DON’T.

   If it were about preventing unwanted pregnancy, they would support age appropriate, scientifically accurate sex education. THEY DON’T.

   It is not about life. It is not about concern for dead embryos. It is not about preventing unwanted pregnancies. They have proved that many times.

   It is 100% about male domination and control of women’s bodies.

4. about 24 hours ago on Bliss

   At high tide you get a waterbed.

5. 1 day ago on Tom Toles

   The non-proportional distribution of electors in the Electoral College should already be declared unconstitutional — in violation of the “equal protection clause” of the Fourteenth Amendment.

   A provision of the original Constitution is void if it is repealed by a later provision of a subsequent Amendment. Example: slavery and the 3/5 clause were repealed by the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments even though those Amendments do not explicitly mention that clause.

   The Fourteenth Amendment requires “equal protection under the law.”

   While it does not explicitly repeal the unequal distribution of electors by specific reference, which is the usual standard for defining a repeal, neither does the 3/5 clause which it is deemed to have repealed. The Fourteenth Amendment does require that every person be treated equally in public policy, and applies at both state and federal levels.

   A view espoused by Laurence Tribe (Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard Law School) and various other legal scholars maintains that since the Fourteenth Amendment applies to both states and the federal government, and already HAS been interpreted already as overturning unequal allocation of representatives in legislative apportionment at the STATE level (Baker v Carr (369 U.S. 186 (1962)) and Reynolds v. Sims (377 U.S. 533 (1964))), the same standard should be applied at the federal level, meaning the unequal allocation of electors in the Electoral College should be deemed repealed by the later provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment. Such a ruling would apply only to the disproportional allocation, not the Electoral College itself. (Not holding my breath that the current Supreme Court would apply such a view any time soon.)

   African Americans were not the moral equivalent of 3/5 of a European American, and a California voter is not the moral equivalent of 1/4 of a Wyoming voter.

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reynolds_v._Sims

6. 1 day ago on Tom Toles

   As for the 3/5 clause, the Northern states were fine with allowing blacks to have full representation — iF THEY WERE FREE. But property can’t vote. You call them property, you don’t get credit for them in the apportionment.

   The 3/5 clause was a compromise to accommodate slavery.

   So was the disproportionate allocation of electors in the Electoral College, weighted to favor the smaller states. While there were some small states in the North (such as Vermont), the large, industrial states were all in the North and, generally speaking, the South had smaller states. Certainly the total population of Northern states was far greater than the South.

   The South was afraid that the North could just dominate them and outlaw slavery nationally.

   Just as the 3/5 was an accommodation for slavery, so is the Electoral College.

7. 1 day ago on Tom Toles

   No, you are absolutely still missing my point, @Mullah of Moolah. The cartoon on this page, and my response to it, is about whether the timing is right — whether or not it is politically feasible — to begin an impeachment inquiry. Not introduce articles of impeachment, just begin the inquiry and start holding the hearings.

   My comment is a response to say that, no, we can’t do it because we could never get a conviction in the senate and, sure, we could never get a conviction in the senate if the vote were held today, absent having flushed out any evidence of crimes via PUBLIC HEARINGS.

   My comparison to Nixon is that it was far more unthinkable that Nixon could be convicted in the senate, because he was far more popular and “safe” than Trump. The 49-state victory does exaggerate the proportion of the win, but the reality is still that Nixon won with 61% of the vote, an outright majority and the most of any candidate, and Trump won with only 46% of the vote, not a majority, and not even the most votes.

   Yet less than two years later, after the evidence had been heard and showed Nixon to be obviously guilty, and after articles of impeachment had passed the committee in the House and were poised to pass the full House with broad bipartisan support, it was REPUBLICAN senators, led by Barry Goldwater, who went to Nixon and told him that they did have the necessary 2/3 vote supermajority to convict in the senate and remove from office.

   Yes, it is premature to introduce articles of impeachment; if articles of impeachment had been passed in the House before the PUBLIC HEARINGS revealed the crimes, Nixon would not have been forced out of office.

   No, it is NOT premature to begin an impeachment inquiry and hold the hearings.

   If Nixon could fall from a far higher position of popularity, yes, Trump can, too.

8. 1 day ago on Rob Rogers

   — will have to remember that one. One way to get the country to GO BLUE.

9. 1 day ago on Clay Jones

   — true that, Carson (who had been so nasty during the primaries) did the flip-flop and said nice things about him.

   But beyond that, Trump did not hire him in SPITE of being incompetent, he hired him (as with Betsy DeVos at Education, or Rick Perry at the Dept of Energy that he had said he wanted to dismantle) BECAUSE of being either incompetent or because they have the specific objective of destroying agencies that Trump (and conservatives) have long wanted to abolish.

10. 1 day ago on Mike Luckovich

    — stable genius? That would be Mr Ed, only he spoke out of the opposite end from where Trump’s prolific horse poop tumbles out.