wow

[winterbadger]

http://www.aclu.org/LesbianGayRights/LesbianGayRights.cfm?ID=16142&c=101

That's about as far as I can go in describing my astonishment. Some congressmen think they can pass a law making it unlawful for the Supreme Court of the United States to review a piece of federal legislation or state courts' action on it. I don't know whether to be angry at their arrogance and bigotry or pity them for their stupidity. The former, I think, because I have to assume they're not actually stupid and are offering the legislation for propaganda purposes because they think their constituents will be stupid enough not to know it's unconstitutional prima facie.

Wow.

Comments

[winterbadger]

I am even more distressed to hear that this passed the House today, at least as reported by NPR (that doesn't seem to be what I'm reading on the HoR website, but I'm not fully conversant with the language they use to describe action on legislation.)

In reading the transcript of the hearing on the bill (http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/cpquery/?&db_id=cp108&r_n=hr614.108&sel=TOC_85298&), I see that the sponsor of the bill (technically an amendment) was at least willing to admit that he believes Marbury v. Madison was wrongly decided. And one of the bill's supporter's is willing to concede that this bill will make the 5th and 14th Amendments unenforceable.

So it's not total ignorance that's behind this, just a desire to overturn 200 years of American jurisprudence just so as to disenfranchise gay people.

I confess I was momentarily amused, however, by Rep. Weiner referring tot he conservatice memebers of the current Court and "meshuggahs". :-)