Political Hippo Circle Jerk - America, farg YEAH!

[ice grillin you]

i want names of people who would vote for that

[General_Failure]

Anyone who's middle name is -Bob.

[Rome]

It's gotten worse since the last election.  Barry only has two years left yet.  Can't they just wait it out until Hillary takes over?

[PhillyPhreak54]

The repubs heads will explode if a woman follows a black dude.

Imagine the amount of times they'll scream Benghazi on FauxNews

[Diomedes]

Federal judge on same sex marriage ban in Texas: it has no "rational relation to a legitimate government purpose." 

http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/26/politics/texas-same-sex/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

[General_Failure]

Delta Airlines: Arizona, your proposed law is dumb so don't do it

[Eagles_Legendz]

Federal judge on same sex marriage ban in Texas: it has no "rational relation to a legitimate government purpose." 

http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/26/politics/texas-same-sex/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

That's a bad legal argument.  It takes almost no effort to clear the rational relation bar.  The better assessment -- and what I wish the SCOTUS would explicitly do since they basically hold as much without officially saying so -- is that homosexuals are a protected class and you need to have more than a rational basis to discriminate against them.  Once the SCOTUS finally explicitly says that instead of tiptoeing around it, most of the gay marriage bans will fall with it.

[Diomedes]

This is why we need lawyers I suppose:  I didn't realize that "rational relation to a legitimate...etc." quote was legalese. I thought it was just the judge making a comment about how stupid the ban is.

[ice grillin you]

i dont know why we even need legalese when it comes to human rights

my judgment in any civil/human rights case would be the same every time: read the farging constitution.....all people are created equal

I didn't realize that "rational relation to a legitimate...etc." quote was legalese. I thought it was just the judge making a comment about how stupid the ban is.

i think its probably both

[Eagles_Legendz]

No it's a specific test.  Rationally related to a legitimate government interest is a test for a right or law that impacts a non-protected class of citizens.  Women since the 80s have been an elevated class.  Minorities are an elevated class etc.  Meaning you need to show more than just a rational relationship between the law and govt interest to discriminate against those groups.

Rational relation is an incredibly low bar to clear and has been cleared in almost every sexual orientation case when that's the test used because the govt can say they want to promote the creation of a family and child bearing.  Whether you want to say that's rational or not, courts have almost unanimously accepted that as enough to meet the rational bar. 

When the court has struck down gay discrimination they've done so by not really applying the rational basis test.  I just wish the court would finally say that gay people are a protected class ala women and minorities and get afforded a higher level of protection (intermediate scrutiny for women, strict scrutiny for minorities).  At that point the govt doesn't really have a claim for their discriminatory laws being rational and most will fall instantly.  The court when addressing gay people almost always does apply a heightened standard which you can see in their analysis they just don't explicitly state it as a rule and until they do state courts will keep discriminating.

[General_Failure]

Armed Standoff in Crimea as Ex-President Looks to Russia

Masked gunmen on Thursday seized government buildings in the capital of the Crimea region of Ukraine, barricaded themselves inside and raised the Russian flag, raising the specter of a separatist rebellion that could tear the country apart.

Further inflaming an increasingly volatile situation, Viktor F. Yanukovych released a statement Thursday saying that he remained the lawful president of Ukraine and appealed to Russia to protect "my personal safety." While his precise whereabouts remained a mystery, Russian news agencies reported subsequently that Mr. Yanukovych would hold a news conference on Friday in Rostov-on-Don, a city in southern Russia, six days after he was driven from power by mass protests and fled from Kiev, the Ukrainian capital.

[PhillyPhreak54]

http://abcnews.go.com/m/blogEntry?id=22705227&ref=http%3A%2F%2Ft.co%2FHDKmDEm08b

Romey's homie's people planned a second traffic jam in front of a rabbi's house

[Diomedes]

The Ukraine is looking worse by the minute.

[MDS]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horodenka

this place better be OK

the homeland for me

[General_Failure]

All the action's happening in Crimea (the peninsula that looks like an island) now, so that's probably safe.