AP report at Stuff:

A US federal appeals court has declared California’s same-sex marriage ban to be unconstitutional, putting the bitterly contested, voter-approved law on track for likely consideration by the US Supreme Court.

A three-judge panel of the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 that a lower court judge correctly interpreted the US Constitution when he declared in 2010 that Proposition 8 was a violation of the civil rights of gays and lesbians.

I think this is a bad decision. While I disagree with their decision, the people of California voted in a referendum to ban same-sex marriage through a state constitutional amendment.

The way to legalise gay marriage should be winning a future vote on the issue, not having three Judges over-turn a referendum.

The argument of course is that gay marriage is a constitutional right, under the Bill of Rights. I don’t agree. I think it is something that should be legal, and should be allowed. But I do not think it is a constitutional right, just as I don’t think abortion is either.

Again – don’t get me wrong. I support laws which make abortion safe and legal. But these should be determined by legislatures or voters – not a handful of judges.

One reason for this is that you have massive ongoing resentment, when judges determine things, rather than the people. Take for example giving women the vote. This was done by way of constitutional amendment. The result is that no one alive in the US seriously disputes that women shouldn’t have the vote.

But if the Supreme Court had not waited for the law to be changed, and had by themselves declared women have a right to vote (and of course they do), that decision would probably be as contentious today, as Roe v Wade is.

I do support the courts being able to strike down laws which conflict with basic human rights. But I think this is a power that should be used rarely and when there is almost no other option. Otherwise one should try and achieve change through the democratic process of electing Parliaments and referenda.

We’ve shown in NZ you can do it that way.  Several states in the US have allowed gay marriage through the democratic process. That is how the issue should be resolved in California, not by the courts.

As it happens, the issue will now head to the Supreme Court of the US. I pick a reversal by at least 6-3.

The Daily Mail reports:

Extracts from her memoir have detailed how she was shocked when on her fifth day as a White House press aide he led her away from co-workers who were having cocktails down the hall to his wife’s bedroom where they had sex for the first time.

Her fifth day? Clinton didn’t do anything with Monica until around four months in.

Miss Alford said she saw President Kennedy for the final time at The Carlyle hotel in Manhattan on November 15, 1963, just a week before his assassination in Dallas.

At this point she was due to be married to her college sweetheart, Tony Fahnestock.

‘He took me in his arms for a long embrace and said, ‘I wish you were coming with me to Texas.’ And then he added, ‘I’ll call you when I get back.’ I was overcome with sudden sadness. ‘Remember, Mr President, I’m getting married.’

”I know that,’ he said, and shrugged. ‘But I’ll call you anyway.”

Obviously a committed Catholic, JFK was.

In the five primaries and caucuses to date Romney has averaged 41%, Gingrich 31%, Santorum 14% and Ron Paul 11%. Romney is estimated to have 97 delegates out of 131.  You need 1,144 to win.

The Maine caucuses are underway, but have only 24 delegates. Romney won then by 31% in 2008.

Colorado with 36 delegates is on the 7th. Romney won that by 42% in 2008 but the latest poll has him 14% ahead of Santorum. Minnesota with 37 delegates also on the 7th. Santorum is on 29%, Romney 27% and Gingrich 22% in latest polls there.

The third one on the 7th is Missouri. 36 delegates.

After that you have Arizona and Michigan on the 28th of February and Washington on 3rd of March. That is the last one before Super Tuesday on 6 March.

Arizona has Romney on 48% and Gingrich 24%. 29 delegates. Michigan has 30 delegates.Washington has 43.

Super Tuesday is not as big this year – down from 24 states to 10 states. However 437 delegates up for grabs. So you don’t need as much money as previously to stay in the race and buy advertising time.

An Oklahoma lawmaker has proposed legislation to ban any use of foetuses in food in one of the more bizarre twists in the emotive US battle over abortion.

The bill comes after wild rumors began circulating online and among anti-abortion groups that soft drink giant, Pepsi, was using aborted foetuses in its products.

I always wondered why I preferred Coke to Pepsi. Obviously I don’t like the taste of aborted foetuses!

I wonder if some evil Coke executive was responsible for starting the urban legend. You can just imagine the marketing team brain-storming ideas, and one of them saying “Hey, why don’t we start a rumour that Pepsi uses foetuses in their products”.

The company has denounced the urban legend as completely false.

“PepsiCo does not conduct or fund research that utilises any human tissue or cell lines derived from embryos,” spokesman Peter Land told AFP.

They would say that, wouldn’t they.

Oklahoma state senator Ralph Shortey said he has been researching the issue for about a year and is concerned there are no rules preventing the use of embryonic stem cells or fetal tissue in food and other products.

Oh my God. This is urgent. Imagine all the products out there which may have been using fetal tissue in their products. I mean, does anyone know what really is in a mince pie?

There could be other rules needed also. I’ve been researching the issue for about three minutes and there are also no rules preventing the use of human brain tissue in food products. Shockingly, not a single rule prevents a chef from cutting out his own heart, and including it in a tasty curry.

I’m reserving judgement on the issue, until details of the alleged offences are known more fully. I would make the point that to my mind there has always been a significant difference between someone who accesses a file-sharing site or torrent in order to (for example) see the latest episode of a TV show not available in NZ, and those who are commercially making money from infringing copyright, or assisting others to infringe.

Whether or not Dotcom and others have broken the law, will of course be a matter for the courts. It is worth noting that the NZ courts will not extradite unless the charges are for something that is also an offence under NZ law. So if for example there was an arrest warrant out for you because you took part in (adult consensual) oral sex in Utah, they would not extradite as thankfully oral sex is not illegal in NZ. Not sure if it still is illegal in Utah, to be honest – just using this as an example.

I’ve been saying for sometime that copyright issues will be a massive battle involving the Internet for the next decade or more.

In this case the US are not necessairly on the wrong side of the argument. I’m not saying their actions are justified either – it really depends on the details of the case. But few would argue that making money out of infringing other people’s copyright is a good thing (if that is what they have done). There is an argument they were just providing a service that “pirates” used. Again, will depend on what is revealed in court.

In other copyright news (and no I don’t think the timing is deliberately related), it looks like the SOPA and PIPA bills in the US Congress are dead. Senators have been dropping their co-sponsorship of PIPA as millions of Americans signed an online petitions and e-mailed their representatives on it.

Also of note is all the remaining Republican candidates for President have come out against the bills. So chalk this victory up to people power.

For the second time in as many weeks, the U.S. military has rescued distressed Iranian sailors, despite the extremely high tensions between the two nations.

According to the Navy’s account, at about 3 a.m. local time an American Coast Guard patrol boat in the north Persian Gulf was hailed by flares and flashlights from an Iranian cargo ship whose engine room was flooding. Six Iranians were rescued from the ship, fed halal meals in accordance with Islamic law, and later taken to shore.

I suspect if the situation was reverse the rescued sailors would be accused of being spies, put in jail, given a mock trial, and sentenced to die.

Last week, the U.S. Navy rescued more than a dozen Iranian sailors who had been held hostage by pirates in the Arabian Sea for weeks. American sailors on a “visit, board, search and seizure team” were able to free the sailors and take 15 suspected pirates into custody without incident on Jan. 5, the Navy said.

Not bad for the Great Satan.

Both rescues come in the midst of an especially tense time between the U.S. and Iran. Most recently, the International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed Monday Iran has been enriching uranium in a highly-protected underground bunker as part of the nation’s nuclear program — a move the U.S. State Department said was a “further escalation of their ongoing violations with regard to their nuclear obligations.”

Over the weekend, an Iranian court handed down a death sentence to an American former Marine accused of spying for the CIA in Tehran. Both the U.S. government and the 28-year-old’s family have repeatedly called the Iranian allegations “fabrications.”

One day Iran will be free.

AP reports on 52% of the votes:

1. Romney 37%
2. Paul 23%
3. Huntsman 17%
4. Gingrich 10%
5. Santorum 10%

Romney leads in the polls for South Caroline and Florida. But Gingrich is not far behind in Florida, and will be out for blood.

Ron Paul is not a libertarian. He

• rejects the Jeffersonian principle of a “wall of separation” between religion and government;
• is anti-immigration (“to the right of most Republicans” says Vodka Pundit Steve Green);
• is anti-abortion (Paul describes “the rights of unborn people” [sic] as “the greatest moral issue of our time,” and “abortion on demand” as “the ultimate State tyranny”);
• “plays footsie” with racists and kooks;
• is a hypocritical supporter of pork-barrel earmarks for his own congressional district;
• is opposed to free-trade agreements (like NAFTA); and
• is appallingly “blame-America-first” on  foreign policy.

I don’t count his writings of 20 years ago too much against him, or even his foreign policy. I even understand his earmark rationale. And even libertarians disagree on abortion. The lack of commitment to religion and state being separate, the opposition to immigration and opposition to free trade agreements (he says note pure enough, but perfect is the enemy of good) is what I regard as the biggest marks against him.

PC says:

In short, then, and to repeat, he is not a libertarian: he is a “states-rights” religious conservative, with all the intellectual confusion that implies …

That he can masquerade as a friend to freedom at all demonstrates how far the intellectual battle for freedom still needs to travel.

Because the harsh fact about Ron Paul is that on the few occasions he takes off the tinfoil hat and talks Austrian he’s damn good. But when he’s wearing the tinfoil headwear, as he does the rest of the time, he’s rotten.

He is damn good on most economic issues. He is not a viable candidate for President in 2012 though, at the age of 77. I think it is good he flies the flag on many issues.

I was chatting to someone today about how it would be fun if the Republicans had no one get a majority and it was a brokered convention!

According to the second round of CNN entrance polling of caucus-goers: Paul and Romney are tied at 24% followed by Santorum at 18%, Gingrich at 13%, Perry at 11%, Bachmann at 7% and Huntsman at 1%

Huntsman is not contesting Iowa. If Ron Paul beats Romney, that is big news. Ron Paul is the latest choice of the large “Anyone but Romney” following. But this is just an entrance poll.

Thanks to the Tea Party, several radio interviews and a great plug from Glenn Beck, my book “Barack Obama and the Enemies Within” has jumped up to number 87 on Amazon (out of 600,000 titles).

Off to a good start. Hopefully we can maintain the momentum.

Making the top 100 on Amazon is a huge feat, especially for a Kiwi author. Of course the book is not on NZ politics, but US politics or specifically on Obama.

Having said that, I am very unenthused about the 2012 presidential election. I’d almost vote for Obama over Romney. Huntsman would be great, but he has little chance of winning the nomination.

Under rising pressure from fellow Republicans, United States presidential hopeful Herman Cain sought to muddy the reputation of one accuser, forcefully denied any and all allegations of sexual impropriety and vowed the growing controversy would not drive him from the race for the White House.

“Ain’t gonna happen,” he declared.

Cain flashed defiance one day after a woman publicly accused the candidate of groping her more than a decade ago, adding her voice to three other accusers with allegations that presidential rival Mitt Romney called “particularly disturbing.”

Speaking at a news conference, Cain vowed, “we’ll get through this,” as he sought to steady a campaign that has made him the leader in an unofficial race to emerge as Romney’s principal conservative rival.

At one point he said he would be willing to take a lie detector test, but then appeared to hedge his answer seconds later.

I bet he did.

I think one can survive one or two allegators (as John Key refers to them), but four and growing is a real problem even Bill Clinton would have trouble sliding out of.

This leaves Mitt Romney at 69% on Intrade to be the GOP nominee, and no one else over 10%. If Romney is the nominee, then I suspect there will be a third party candidate from the right, which will mean Obama comes through the middle and gets re-elected.

Labour leader Phil Goff says United States President Barack Obama is a great leader whereas Prime Minister John Key is a poor leader despite both nations having high unemployment and receiving credit downgrades since both leaders took office.

Unemployment in New Zealand has doubled and our credit rating has been downgraded twice by Standard and Poors since 2008.  

The United States’ unemployment has also doubled since before the global financial crisis and they have received a credit downgrade too.

Mr Goff told Firstline this morning that President Obama and Mr Key are incomparable because they inherited different fiscal situations.

A very popular video from three of the daughters of Jon Huntsman, who is seeking the Republican nomination for President. They have become minor celebrities.

President Barack Obama declared an end to the Iraq war, one of the longest and most divisive conflicts in US history. He said all US troops would be withdrawn from the country by the end of 2011.

This is a good thing. It will be interesting to see if armed conflict continues significantly without foreign troops there. Likewise whether the Iraqi troops and police will be up to the job of keeping Iraq under the rule of law.Hopefully in ten years time, Iraq will be a relatively peaceful and still democratic country.

The US military presence in Iraq stands at about 40,000. All US troops are to exit the country under a deal struck between the countries in 2008 when George W. Bush was president.

It is worth stressing that it was indeed Bush who put an end date to US troops. Obama merely moved it forward a few months.However he had the responsibility to stay committed to his timetable, which he has done.

I think Iraq has proven a lesson for the United States. It is one thing to topple a dictator. It is another to try and rebuild a country as happened post WWII with Germany and Japan. The US were too ambitious in Iraq, and getting rid of the Army and banning Baath party members from Government.

It may be the Libya “model” proves the better one. I’ve always thought that in Iraq what the US should have done is after destorying the ability of the Iraqi army to invade, then captured or killed the top 10 people in the Government, told No 11 he is now in charge and that if they don’t have fair elections within the next 24 months, Nos 11 to 20 will face the same fate as Nos 1 – 10.

I’ve just made a fairly good amount of money in iPredict

I doubt she could have won the nomination, let alone the election, so it is a good choice by Palin. As a non-candidate she’ll continue to be influential, and in fact may become the endorser-in-chief. If she throws her support behind a GOP candidate, that will give them tens of thousands of activists and volunteers.

Palin has stated that she will (finally!) announce whether or not she’s going to jump into the Republican primary race by the end of this month.

Expectations were high that she might just announce her intentions a week ago, at an appearance at a Tea Party event in Iowa. Once again, Palin declined to do so.

Palin’s got three options, in essence. Number one, throw her hat in the ring and vie for the Republican presidential nomination against the field.

Number two, announce it’s been a big tease all along, and she won’t be running — and, likely, that she’s going to hold off endorsing any candidate “for now,” in a naked effort to keep her teasing of the media going strong for months to come.

But there is a third option she might opt for, which seems (upon examination) to have a lot of potential upsides for Palin, and relatively few downsides: running as a third-party candidate.

Running as an Independent would seem — to most political commentators and Washington establishmentarians — as a huge mistake for Palin. This is yet another upside, seen from the point of view of Palin herself. She can’t standthe pundits and the insiders, remember. She isn’t afraid of bluntly letting them know this, either. Confounding these two inside-the-Beltway groups would be a source of continuing delight for Palin. She would revel in the opportunity to play the cat among the pigeons, once again. Defyin’ the lamestream media, and defyin’ the Washington bigwigs would be lotsa fun, oh, you betcha!

Let us begin by confessing that, if Sarah Palin surfaced to say something intelligent and wise and fresh about the present American condition, many of us would fail to hear it.

That is not how we’re primed to see Ms. Palin. A pugnacious Tea Partyer? Sure. A woman of the people? Yup. A Mama Grizzly? You betcha.

But something curious happened when Ms. Palin strode onto the stage last weekend at a Tea Party event in Indianola, Iowa. Along with her familiar and predictable swipes at President Barack Obama and the “far left,” she delivered a devastating indictment of the entire U.S. political establishment — left, right and center — and pointed toward a way of transcending the presently unbridgeable political divide.

Really? What did she say?

The next day, the “lamestream” media, as she calls it, played into her fantasy of it by ignoring the ideas she unfurled and dwelling almost entirely on the will-she-won’t-she question of her presidential ambitions.

This is a problem in NZ also. Too much reporting focuses on “process” stories rather than “policy” stories.

She made three interlocking points. First, that the United States is now governed by a “permanent political class,” drawn from both parties, that is increasingly cut off from the concerns of regular people. Second, that these Republicans and Democrats have allied with big business to mutual advantage to create what she called “corporate crony capitalism.” Third, that the real political divide in the United States may no longer be between friends and foes of Big Government, but between friends and foes of vast, remote, unaccountable institutions (both public and private).

Funnily enough, I’ve sometimes made a similar point to her last point. Very large corporates sometimes start to resemble Government Departments as they become entirely process-driven, and lose their innovation.

In supporting her first point, about the permanent political class, she attacked both parties’ tendency to talk of spending cuts while spending more and more; to stoke public anxiety about a credit downgrade, but take a vacation anyway; to arrive in Washington of modest means and then somehow ride the gravy train to fabulous wealth. She observed that 7 of the 10 wealthiest counties in the United States happen to be suburbs of the nation’s capital.

The recent spending cuts agreed to, will not in fact reduce the deficit. They will just stop it growing as fast.

Ms. Palin’s third point was more striking still: in contrast to the sweeping paeans to capitalism and the free market delivered by the Republican presidential candidates whose ranks she has yet to join, she sought to make a distinction between good capitalists and bad ones. The good ones, in her telling, are those small businesses that take risks and sink and swim in the churning market; the bad ones are well-connected megacorporations that live off bailouts, dodge taxes and profit terrifically while creating no jobs.

Strangely, she was saying things that liberals might like, if not for Ms. Palin’s having said them.

“This is not the capitalism of free men and free markets, of innovation and hard work and ethics, of sacrifice and of risk,” she said of the crony variety. She added: “It’s the collusion of big government and big business and big finance to the detriment of all the rest — to the little guys. It’s a slap in the face to our small business owners — the true entrepreneurs, the job creators accounting for 70 percent of the jobs in America.”

Is there a hint of a political breakthrough hiding in there?

That is a fascinating message she is pushing, and more nuanced that I thought Palin was capable of. I still think she is more likely to not run than run. To run and get the nomination, she needs to give Perry supporters a reason to choose Palin over Perry. As polls show Perry could beat Obama but Obama would thrash Palin, that is a tough job – but she is starting to mark off a niche area.

I switched on CNN and spent three hours transfixed watching the towers get hit and then eventually collapse. To the end of my days, I will recall those awful scenes of human beings on the upper levels of the twin towers jumping to a quick death rather than face a certain slower death.

Within an hour it seemed half of New Zealand was awake – or at least half of my friends. We were texting and talking to each other in disbelief, and even then with some anger about who had done this.

Around 5 am I headed into work at Parliament. Most of the day we did nothing but watch the televisions. Around 7 am though I had an idea. I went to our NZPA/Reuters feed. Normally I set it to NZ Politics, but swapped it over to International General. This covers stories from anywhere in the world which may be of interest to New Zealanders.

I scrolled back five hours looking for the very first story on the attacks, and found it. A one sentence story that just reported a plane had how one of the WTC towers. A couple more bland stories followed and then the all important story reporting a second plane had hit the WTC, turning it from a possible accident to a certain attack. I read every story of those first few hours, as each new detail unfolded with horror.

So much has been written about the attacks, and how the world changed that day (and it did). But my thoughts remain of the 3,000 souls who perished. They were not part of any war. They were not in a war zone. They were just you and me – people at work, plus of course the brave fire fighters and police officers who died trying to rescue others.

And such a terrible blow at New York itself. You see New York is not really an American city, it is a global city. We have three global cities – New York, London and Hong Kong. They may be physically part of the US, UK and China but they are global hub cities, with workers from scores and scores of different countries.

I recall the inevitable black humour that emerged within hours. Maps showing a lake where Afghanistan used to be.  I also recall Yasser Arafat donating blood to help the American Red Cross out, Australia declaring under the ANZUS Treaty that they stand ready to help the US strike back, as was NATO under the NATO Treaty.

At the time the US was not engaged in any significant overseas wars. And it is long forgotten, but Bush had been an isolationist President. He was actually sceptical of US even getting involved in former Yugoslavia. I worry that tomorrow’s students will regard 9/11 as a response to Iraq and Afghanistan, when in reality it was the other way around.

Iraq is highly debatable, but few would dispute that the US couldn’t allow this attack on their homeland to pass without those responsible being held accountable. International law clearly allows you to strike back after you have been attacked. The notion that all the US could do was send polite letters to the Taliban asking for those responsible to be extradited was farcical. The US did of course ask the Taliban to hand over those responsible, but they refused.

But despite that I recall how the Greens organised a protest march for later that week. Not to protest the slaughter of 3,000 civilians. But to protest against the United States responding. I was outraged and angered. In my mind they were the latter day Neville Chamberlains. but worse than that, the timing was so appalling. The death toll was still rising daily, and these people were marching against the United States, not against the terrorists. They were marching on Parliament and I was determined that a message go out that not all Kiwis hated the US. So I managed to arrange a US flag. Not a normal size one, but the largest one my “supplier” could locate – off memory it was 60 feet long. When the protest arrived at Parliament we unfurled the flag from our balcony. It was so huge it needed half a dozen of us.

Sadly it only got to stay up for a few minutes as some tosser from (off memory) Marian Hobbs’ office complained to the Speaker, and he sent security to make us take it down.

Anyway 10 years on, and the world has changed forever. Apart from anything else, air travel will never be the same again. Osama bin Laden is dead, and Al Qaeda much weakened. Somewhat remarkably they have not managed another successful attack inside America again.

I often wonder what would have happened if 9/11 had not occurred. Bush may have stayed an isolationist and who knows how this may ave affected his presidency. He may have ended up a one term President, or he may have ended up a less controversial two term President.

But it is too easy to focus on the big global aspects of 9/11. Today my thoughts and memories are on the 2,977 who died in the attacks (excluding the hijackers) and their families. Special thoughts to the 100 or so nine year olds who were born after their fathers died in 9/11.

The other strong memory is the brave passengers and crew of United Flight 93. They knew their actions would probably lead to their deaths. Logically they knew they would probably die anyway, but it still takes courage to rush armed hijackers – not to save your life, but to save others. Thanks to them, the plane did not reach Washington DC.

Horribly, it might not have made DC anyway. Two F16s had been ordered to intercept it. But they did not have time to arm the jets, so if it were not for the passengers, the F16s would have had to ram the 757 which would have have been a terrible (yet necessary) act.

From the Wall Street Journal.

These are not of course all Obama’s fault. But it shows the challenge he will face with re-election. At present his best advantage is the comparative weakness of the Republican contenders.

Enjoy this mashup of John Belushi in Blues Brothers, with Obama talking about the credit downgrade.