Well, the long knives are coming out from the recesses of the Republican Party, while, luckily, their actual delegation in the United States Senate appears willing to keep their objections to a big stink followed by a narrow cloture vote.

We’re going to hear a lot of coded language from the GOP: "Empathy" being the most recent one, which is a blatant cipher for "woman" or, more precisely, "stupid bitch."   The assumption here is that men are the only capable justices, because they lack emotions, feelings, and empathy and therefore would issue the kinds of cold, rational interpretations of the law you might expect from a Justicebot 5000.  Women, by this logic, would always rule in favor of the side that would make the best Lifetime movie.

This reasoning is why Republicans constantly wonder why they do so poorly with women every election.

Then there’s going to be ‘temperament.’  This is similar, except instead of ‘woman’ it means "Hispanic," with the reasoning being that, since their homeland is full of jungles, sunshine, and chile peppers, all Latin Americans have the kind of fire in the blood that characterized Desi Arnaz’s character on I Love Lucy.  A Hispanic judge would ignore the law in favor of physical fights and screaming matches, and often be blinded with rage when they took a personal interest in a case and decide thusly.

 This reasoning is why Republicans constantly wonder why they do so poorly with Hispanics in every election.

Finally, there’s going to be ‘unqualified."  This means "minority" and assumes that any minority who would receive a job offer when there were capable white men interested in the position got it exclusively because the employer was more interested in diversity than in selecting for quality, and as every member of the GOP knows, the most qualified candidates are always white men.  

This reasoning is why Republicans constantly wonder why they do so poorly with minorities in every election.

So, just to recap:

Empathy by Rich Lowry, National Review:

Impartiality has been supplanted by empathy. The old-fashioned virtue of objectivity — redolent of dusty law books and the unromantic task of parsing the law and facts — is giving way to an inherently politicized notion of judging based on feelings. Lady Justice is to slip her blindfold and let her decisions be influenced by her life experiences and personal predilections.

 Ahem.

Temperment, by Michelle Malkin:

-Substantial questions also persist regarding Judge Sotomayor’s temperament and disposition to be a Supreme Court justice. Lawyers who have appeared before her have described her as a “bully” who “does not have a very good temperament,” and who “abuses lawyers” with “inappropriate outbursts.”

 Anonymous lawyers, naturally.  And I’ll note that ‘temperament’ is an issue for Sonia Sotomayor, but remarkably, not for John McCain, whose bad temper once led him to call his wife a cunt in public.  What’s the difference?

And finally, ‘unqualified‘:

Her opinions, although competent, are viewed by former prosecutors as not especially clean or tight, and sometimes miss the forest for the trees…

Some former clerks and prosecutors expressed concerns about her command of technical legal details.

That’s Jay Rosen, of course, who helpfully concluded with:

I haven’t read enough of Sotomayor’s opinions to have a confident sense of them, nor have I talked to enough of Sotomayor’s detractors and supporters, to get a fully balanced picture of her strengths.

 So yeah, dog whistle season is in full effect!

He means that he’s going to filibuster female justices. 

John McCain, you’ve drawn yourself a primary challenger:

Chris Simcox, a leading figure in the nativist extremist movement, has resigned as leader of the vigilante group Minuteman Civil Defense Corps (MCDC) to run for U.S. Senate.

 Yes, Rush Limbaugh’s dreams have come true, and a wacko, nativist, MINUTEMAN LEADER has decided to run against John McCain in the 2010 Republican Senate primary.  It will be very interesting to see if Michael Steele can keep the party’s last standard bearer safe from the hordes of hate-fueled Palinites who may rally round Simcox.

 Continuing news from the Southern Poverty Law Center:

For the past three years, however, Simcox has been widely denounced by former followers within the movement for alleged financial mismanagement, including failing to account for $600,000 the MCDC reportedly raised in 2006 for an “Israeli-style” border fence that has yet to be built.

Additionally:

“Simcox is a con man and a pathological liar,” wrote Glenn Spencer of the hate group American Border Patrol on his website late last month.

So maybe he won’t have universal support from the Haters after all.

Looking at his website:

As a grassroots, border security activist and founder of the original Minuteman Civil Defense Corps (MCDC), Chris has done more to make Arizona a safer and better place to live than most of the sanctimonious career politicians in Washington, D.C.

 Sending a common sense, conservative leader to Washington, D.C., is what’s desperately needed at this critical time in our nation’s history.

Look out, Senator McCain, this guy’s what you dredged up with your campaign last fall.  He’s coming for YOU.

The Republicans keep sending out Newt Gingrich to whine about the Obama Administration and the Democratic Congress.  Does he convince people?  Gingrich is a singularly unpopular politician, run out of office in the 90s after he decided the most important thing in government was Bill Clinton’s personal life.  He decided to run the GOP on the politics of personal destruction and was rewarded with a shrunken caucus before resigning in disgrace.

I guess the alternative is Dick Cheney.

So, we got a statement from the governor, saying he’ll sign the bill!

…IF…

 The if here is that if language is inserted into the legislation saying that religious groups are protected if they want to keep on discriminating against gays in all sorts of circumstances.  Fine with me.

Here’s the specific language:

I. Notwithstanding any other provision of law, a religious organization, association, or society, or any individual who is managed, directed, or supervised by or in conjunction with a religious organization, association or society, or any nonprofit institution or organization operated, supervised or controlled by or in conjunction with a religious organization, association or society, shall not be required to provide services, accommodations, advantages, facilities, goods or privileges to an individual if such request for such services, accommodations, advantages, facilities, goods or privileges is related to the solemnization of a marriage, the celebration of a marriage, or the promotion of marriage through religious counseling, programs, courses, retreats, or housing designated for married individuals, and such solemnization, celebration, or promotion of marriage is in violation of their religious beliefs and faith. Any refusal to provide services, accommodations, advantages, facilities, goods or privileges in accordance with this section shall not create any civil claim or cause of action or result in any state action to penalize or withhold benefits from such religious organization, association or society, or any individual who is managed, directed, or supervised by or in conjunction with a religious organization, association or society, or any nonprofit institution or organization operated, supervised or controlled by or in conjunction with a religious organization, association or society.

II. The marriage laws of this state shall not be construed to affect the ability of a fraternal benefit society to determine the admission of members pursuant to RSA 418:5, and shall not require a fraternal benefit society that has been established and is operating for charitable and educational purposes and which is operated, supervised or controlled by or in connection with a religious organization to provide insurance benefits to any person if to do so would violate the fraternal benefit society’s free exercise of religion as guaranteed by the first amendment of the Constitution of the United States and part 1, article 5 of the Constitution of New Hampshire

III. Nothing in this chapter shall be deemed or construed to limit the protections and exemptions provided to religious organizations under RSA § 354-A:18.

IV. Repeal. RSA 457-A, relative to civil unions, is repealed effective January 1, 2011, except that no new civil unions shall be established after January 1, 2010.

Apparently, nothing says clear, precise, standard written English like the New Hampshire legislature.  In any case, here’s the key parts:

a religious organization…shall not be required to provide services, accommodations, advantages, facilities, goods or privileges to an individual if such request is related to the solemnization of a marriage, the celebration of a marriage, or the promotion of marriage

Religious folks don’t have to let their churches be used to perform gay marriages.  Fantastic, they have been under no obligation to do that in Massachussets, and in fact, no church has ever been force to perform a marriage.  You don’t have to marry gays, bigots pastors, just like you don’t have to perform Jewish weddings, or Muslim ones, or different-kind-of-Christian ones.  Happy?  Happy.  You also don’t have to let anyone borrow your chuppas, Orthodox Jews, and wacky imams, you don’t have to celebrate anyone’s marriage if you don’t want to.  And radical pagans who are against the institution of marriage altogether, well, you don’t have to promote anybody’s with leaflets at your shrines.

These rights are, of course, all guaranteed by the First Amendment, but if the Governor insists they be restated here, well, it’s a tradeoff we’re willing to make.  Gay folks can get hitched, religious folks can pout about it and scowl as they lock their doors.  Everybody wins!

 The marriage laws of this state shall not be construed to affect the ability of a fraternal benefit society to determine the admission of members.

The Masons do not have to accept gay-married members.  Nor do the Elks, the Stonecutters, the Knights of Columbus, the American Legion, or the Loyal Order of Water Buffalo.  There’s at least still the Gay Mafia, though, which is similarly not required to admit straights.

She says that she just doesn’t believe in the pageant anymore.

 This of course, demands the question:  What in the hell was there to believe in an a stupid beauty pageant anyway?  Shanna Moakler (the person in question) seemes to be one of the good guys on the whole gay marriage debate, however, it’s remarkable to think anyone involved with Miss America could be surprised that the organization tended towards traditional gender norms.

Well, you’d think that since it’s been five days since it passed in the legislature, we would have triggered NH’s pocket-unveto rule and gay marriage would be law.  Evidently, the truth is that the five days have not actually started counting yet, since the cutoff apparently is when it gets all the right signatures, which has yet to happen.

But since Gov. Lynch hasn’t yet announced he’ll veto it, I think there’s hope.

I’ll note that this may lead to the gay marriage decision in New Hampshire lining up with the Dollhouse decision at Fox Studios.

While I don’t trust anyone involved in either situation to do the right thing, I’m still thinking it might happen.