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By Chris Abani
$13.95
By Theodore Roszak
$12.89
$19
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Welcome to the Republicans who take over the House of Representatives this week. Since it is a new year, let us be optimistic about what this development means for our nation.
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White House / Pete Souza
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It’s not like nobody saw this coming, but Monday, one Judge Henry E. Hudson of Richmond, Va., kicked off the next round of attacks on what the right still likes to call “Obamacare” by contesting the constitutionality ...
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AP / April L.Brown
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By Stanley Kutler — In our post-factual world, history has become another battlefield, with far-flung hostilities over cultural and political differences as well as the imperial adventures abroad.
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Flickr / dherrera_96 (CC-BY)
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Texas is one of those states that would appear to be among the least likely to do away with capital punishment anytime soon, but as The Huffington Post’s Laura Bassett reports, a district court in the Lone Star State will reconsider the death penalty this Monday.
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Wikimedia Commons
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Contemporary Nicaraguan politics have always been mired in conflict, be it in response to natural disasters, U.S.-sponsored terrorism, or depressing and dire poverty. And now President Daniel Ortega is using a “contested interpretation” of the country’s constitution to try to stay in power, incensing his opposition.
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Fake news by Andy Borowitz —
“To tell you the truth, I don’t know if there’s anything about that in the Constitution,” she added. “In the version of the Constitution that I read, Big Bird didn’t mention it.”
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AP / Sue Ogrocki
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Some people in Oklahoma are either able to predict the future or they’re just anti-Muslim bigots. A measure on the ballot next week in the state will ask voters whether they want to pass, no joke, a constitutional amendment outlawing Shariah, or Islamic law.
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We’ve been trying to ignore a certain Senate candidate, but her latest display is so shocking (as the audience gasps during this debate confirm), it simply must be witnessed.
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Flickr / Fibonacci Blue (CC-BY)
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By The Rev. Madison Shockley — A debate has raged over the last 18 months as to whether the tea party movement is racist. I propose to put this debate to rest. The tea party is racist. Its followers have deployed a brilliant strategy to deflect charges of racism by using a form of the legislative provision known as severability.
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Flickr / Norbert Blech (CC-BY)
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A Florida appeals court has struck down that state’s draconian ban on gay adoption, the only explicit prohibition against adoptive gay parents in the country. The court really had no choice, since there’s nothing wrong with gay parents and they appear to raise superior children.
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AP / Pat Wellenbach
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By Larry Gross — We live in two simultaneous but radically incongruous realities, where undemocratic arrangements negotiated in the 18th century contend with commercial media industries that covet the enlightened youth.
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Here we have one Kathleen Gustafson, miffed resident of Homer, Alaska, making her displeasure with former Gov. Sarah Palin clear by invoking the Bible, calling Palin a “celebrity”—no, that’s not a compliment—and hoisting ... (continued)
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By Eugene Robinson — The 14th Amendment is a mighty sword, and U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker used it Wednesday to flay and shred all the specious arguments—and I mean all of them—that are used to deny full marriage rights to gay and lesbian Americans. Bigotry has suffered a grievous blow.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Rather than shout, I’ll just ask the question in a civil way: Dear Republicans, do you really want to endanger your party’s greatest political legacy by turning the 14th Amendment to our Constitution into an excuse for election-year ugliness?
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Flickr / CarbonNYC (CC-BY)
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A U.S. district judge in Massachusetts decided in two separate cases that the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act signed into law by Bill Clinton encroaches on the states’ right to regulate marriage and violates the equal protection clause of the Constitution.
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Flickr / Mr. T in DC (CC-BY-ND)
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — It should become the philosophical shot heard ’round the country. In a remarkable speech that received far too little attention, former Supreme Court Justice David Souter took direct aim at the conservatives’ favorite theory of judging.
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By Joe Conason — Rand Paul, tea party flavor of the month, is said to be avoiding “overexposure.” When he emerges from hiding and explains his most extreme positions, even many Republicans may think twice or three times before they vote for him.
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Flickr / LakelandChamber
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A national small-business lobbying group has tossed in with 20 states in their legal challenge to the Obama administration’s health care reform law. The mostly Republican push claims the health care overhaul violates states’ rights guaranteed in the Constitution.
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AP / David Goldman
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By Robert Scheer — What if Faisal Shahzad, the alleged Times Square car bomber, had turned out to be an illegal immigrant from Mexico? Imagine the fuel it would have provided to those who are using national security as an excuse for cracking down on hardworking immigrants in Arizona.
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AP / David Duprey
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By Marcia Alesan Dawkins — We can infer that Lloyd Marcus may be winking at us—saying that African-American may still equal un-American. After all, if African-American actually meant American and if race didn’t matter, then Marcus wouldn’t have to make the gesture. Let’s think about it.
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Ken Blackwell loves liberty. Jon Stewart loves liberty—liberty bells, the whole deal. Right around there is where their shared views, particularly about President Barack Obama’s governing style, come to an end.
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By Joe Conason — A serious debate on “constitutional issues” might reveal our fundamental differences: Republican extremists would use the Supreme Court to prohibit every social and political advance since before the Civil War.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli seems determined to use an attack on health care reform to bring us back to the 1830s.
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The attorneys general of Alabama, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Louisiana, Michigan, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Washington and Virginia are suing over the health care reform bill, citing state sovereignty and alleging federal overreach under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution.
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Flickr / ajagendorf25
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Tea party loyalists may be situated at the right side of the political spectrum, but that doesn’t mean the upstart political movement is an adjunct to the Republican Party, no siree. As it evolves, the loosely unified conservative coalition may be moving farther away from the GOP’s orbit.
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AP / Rebecca Blackwell
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A military junta, the Supreme Council for the Restoration of Democracy, captured Niger’s President Mamadou Tandja and his Cabinet on Thursday in a coup d’etat welcomed by opposition leaders and potentially by a population frustrated with the government, which critics say has stayed in power past its legal term.
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By Ruth Marcus — No one would question an African-American judge’s capacity to preside over a race discrimination lawsuit or a female jurist’s handling of a sexual harassment case. Does it matter if the judge hearing the lawsuit challenging California’s ban on same-sex marriage is gay?
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Justice Samuel Alito’s inability to restrain himself during the State of the Union address brought to wide attention a truth that too many have tried to ignore: The Supreme Court is now dominated by a highly politicized conservative majority intent on working its will.
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Flickr / Gail Borden Public Library
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Some conservative opponents of President Barack Obama are trying to stir up a movement against the 2010 census, arguing that the census form asks too many personal questions and is one more example of the erosion of privacy.
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AP / Hadi Mizban
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Vice President Joe Biden expressed his personal regrets to Iraqi leaders and promised that the U.S. will appeal the dismissal of manslaughter charges against five Blackwater security contractors over a bloody Baghdad shooting in 2007 that killed 17 people.
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By Ruth Marcus — Law students may debate whether Congress has the right to mandate health insurance, but in the real world, it’s not a big worry.
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By Marie Cocco — If it wins an upcoming battle in the Supreme Court, the gun lobby is prepared to challenge every gun control law enacted at any level of government.
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ABR / Ricardo Stuckert
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After nearly three months in exile, ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya has reportedly returned to his home turf, although his exact whereabouts were unclear Monday. Meanwhile, the U.S. government is still putting pressure on current leader Roberto Micheletti and his camp to restore Zelaya to power.
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White House / Pete Souza
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Seven former heads of the CIA formally requested that President Obama halt an ongoing inquiry into suspect abuse (aka torture) by the agency, arguing that important CIA work would be hampered by such an investigation. Obama didn’t bite, claiming that “nobody’s above the law.” Except George W. Bush, it seems.
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AP / John Russell
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Did then-Attorney General John Ashcroft violate the Constitution in his handling of certain national security investigations shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks? According to the Los Angeles Times, a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has reason to believe that he did, and thus Ashcroft can be sued for prosecutorial abuses even this long after the fact, the paper reported Saturday.
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By David Sirota — The gun nuts showing up at rallies and town hall meetings should check the order of their amendments: The First guarantees people—whatever their politics—a fundamental right to participate in their democracy without concern for physical retribution.
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Given that the Wisconsin Constitution explicitly bars same-sex couples from marrying, the state’s newly instituted domestic partnership registry may seem cold comfort, but it does offer some rights, like hospital visitation and property-related benefits. Some couples are ready to sign up although bigger battles remain to be won.
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Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum
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The Supreme Court has spared the 1965 Voting Rights Act, agreeing by an 8-1 margin to leave a ruling on its more controversial parts for another day—and perhaps another court. The near-unanimous narrow decision came as a surprise, with justices apparently retreating from earlier divisions that led some court watchers to predict the legislation’s demise.
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np.edu.sg
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U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter is reportedly planning to retire from the bench at the end of the court’s current term. Souter’s decision to leave will likely not affect the political balance of the court, as his replacement by President Obama will likely be another liberal-minded justice.
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By William Pfaff — In 1935, Sinclair Lewis, the first American writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize, wrote a novel entitled “It Can’t Happen Here” to influence the 1936 presidential election. He was off by about 66 years.
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Beverly Gage’s new book exhumes a nearly forgotten tale of class warfare—call it 9/16.
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By William Pfaff — Justice Department documents that demonstrate the Bush administration’s view of the president’s constitutional power in a “state of war” tell us things we suspected but didn’t want to know.
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White House / Chris Greenberg
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President Bush’s memo fetish is well documented, but the Obama administration has just made public a series of memos that said the executive had extraordinary powers far beyond those traditionally considered legal. According to the crack legal minds of the Bush administration, the president could overrule the other branches of government.
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AP photo / Nikolas Giakoumidis
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By Chris Hedges — The daily bleeding of thousands of jobs will soon turn our economic crisis into a political crisis. Our empire is dying. How will we cope with our decline? Will we cling to the absurd dreams of a superpower and a glorious tomorrow or will we responsibly face our stark new limitations?
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Flickr / Johannes Roith
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Bolivian President Evo Morales, himself an Aymara Indian, has won a referendum on a new constitution granting special privileges to Bolivia’s indigenous people. The electorate split along racial lines, with the country’s elite white and mixed-race minorities largely opposing the measure.
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Quelle Surprise! Haiti on the Mend
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