Month: July 2014

Judge Overturns Florida’s Ban on Gay Marriage in Monroe County

Buck Banks

The Miami Herald is reporting this story:

Monroe County Circuit Judge Luis Garcia overturned Florida’s 2008 constitutional gay-marriage ban on Thursday, and ordered that two Key West bartenders and other gay couples seeking to wed be allowed to marry.

The judge ordered the Monroe County Clerk’s Office to begin issuing marriage licenses to gay couples Tuesday morning.

“The court is aware that the majority of voters oppose same-sex marriage, but it is our country’s proud history to protect the rights of the individual, the rights of the unpopular and rights of the powerless, even at the cost of offending the majority,” Garcia wrote in his opinion, released about 1 p.m. Thursday.

The judge gave the clerk’s office several days to prepare “in consideration of… anticipated rise in activity.”

It was unclear early Thursday afternoon whether the state will appeal the ruling. The decision applies only to Monroe County, because it was filed in front of a state judge who has jurisdiction only in the county where he sits. A judge in Miami-Dade County has yet to rule in a similar case.

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The GOP Has a Huge Hurdle to a Senate Takeover

Buck Banks

If Republicans are to win the Senate, they probably are going to have to do something they haven’t done since 1980: beat more than two Democratic Senate incumbents in November. … In that Reagan Revolution election — one of the best for the Republican Party in its entire history — the GOP flipped 12 seats held by a Democratic incumbent who sought another term … Incredibly, in the 16 Senate elections since then, the Republicans have flipped only 12 Democratic Senate seats where the incumbent was running again: It’s taken them three decades worth of elections to match the achievement of that single 1980 effort.

— Kyle Kondik, writing for Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics.

We’re Number One! But Did the Voters Cheat?

Trish
The Florida sigil created by anthonybooyay

A recent pronouncement that Florida is the scariest of all 50 states leaves us conflicted. I mean, hey, we’re number one at something! But looking closely at the criteria used, you can’t help but find the competition rigged.

Realtors awarded this distinction, based on 15 things that incite fear, and placed Florida first in three categories: hurricanes, tornados, and shark attacks.

Here at the real estate search site Estately we know there are hundreds of worries when choosing where to buy a home, so to help house hunters make a more informed decision we’ve mapped out where Americans’ darkest fears are most readily found.

But do realtors know their natural disasters? If they did, they’d give Missouri the first place ranking for tornados. Joplin, anyone? Instead, Missouri was given first place in meth labs, an enterprise usually associated with Alaska, or since Breaking Bad, New Mexico.

Earthquakes didn’t make the list. If they had, Oklahoma, which thanks to fracking recently surpassed California in temblors, would excel. Mud slides, another California specialty, were also not even counted. The nearest California got to a category header was number two — for spiders. And number six for dentists.

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GOP Voted to Delay Employer Mandate One Year Ago

Jon Ponder

The infographic above shows how House Republicans voted last July on H.R. 2667, a bill to require Pres. Obama to delay implementation of the Affordable Care Act’s employer mandate.

Now, just one year later, these same House Republicans are suing Pres. Obama in order to lay the groundwork to impeach him on grounds that he delayed individual mandate.

This is, of course, hypocrisy piled on top of hypocrisy. The individual mandate, which forms the basis of the Affordable Care Act — and which Republicans now despise — was a Republican invention. It was developed at the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank that has sponsored Rush Limbaugh’s show, and first implemented by the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, in 2006 when he was governor of Massachusetts.

Here is a repost of Romney himself describing how he worked with Heritage to come up with the plan that is the basis for Obamacare:

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