The Marriage Dead-Enders and Other Stuff

++While same sex marriage was celebrated this weekend,the resistance mounts. The religious right is trying to get assurances that religious organizations and institutions will be immune. Justice Kennedy had said that the First Amendments still protect those who are opposed to same sex marriage for religious reasons.

++Mississippi is trying to figure out a way that the state doesn't have to approve marriages at all. In fact, Rand Paul proposed yesterday to "privatize" marriage. Of course, marriage also includes some 1,100 legal benefits under the law. So will these disappear?

++My conservative e-mail is running hot and heavy about the Supreme Court being the election issue in 2016. I agree and I am sorry that the Right has waken up to this idea.

++Alabama is trying to put a 30-day hold on the marriage equality order because Justice Moore, he of the famous 10 commandments, can.

++Texas clerks are going ahead even though the governor and the attorney general has said they don't have to and that they will be provided lawyers to defend them.

++The real "religious" issue is that some religious organizations and institutions receive federal tax money. When asked whether they should fear the fate of Bob Jones University who was stripped of its tax free status when it refused to integrate, Solicitor General Verrilli said"that may become a problem." Watch for ferocious court battles like those over Obamacare on this one.

++The Court by 5 to 4 overruled President Obama's EPA for their plan to regulate carbon emissions on America's power plants. The conservative judges said that the EPA had to take into account the costs for doing so. It is not insurmountable but was a blow to the Obama admission to address climate change.

++The Court also ruled that the Texas abortion c;clinics can stay open. But the scary problem is that the Supreme Court is going to take up the whole abortion at the next session. While gay rights has been galloping into the forefront, women's reproductive rights have been hammered.

++The Court also ruled that independent commissions can rule on gerrymandering dealing a blow to Arizona and Texas Republicans. Earlier a vote rigging scheme by Republicans in North Carolina was voted down.

++Mike Huckabee was actually right when he said that same-sex marriage would not have gained such strength if the President,in this case President obama had not pushed it.

++Progressive bloggers over the weekend suggested that the defeats of the Right by the Supreme Court will galvanize the Right and provide them with the motivation to win in 2016. The idea is that only during FDR-Truman did the Democrats run the course and Reagan Bush afterwards. The Democrats will have it hard to win three in a row. Sadly with the polarized atmosphere in this country, this would be an utter disaster on every level--from foreign policy to domestic policy and to a cultural environment. There is no evidence as of yet that the GOP even considers we are in the 21st Century.

++This week we are coming up on the Iranian nuclear deal and the Beltway games are also getting dangerous to sabotage any deal. For your own edification, please read Jeffrey Goldberg's interview with former Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren about Obama and Israel. When you attack Leon Weseltier as a self-hating Jew, you have real problems. But Oren's view of the Iranian nuclear deal is scary because it reveals the mentality that is trying to defeat it.

Morning

++Linda Greenhouse ,the SCOTUS reporter for the New York Times, outlines why the Court ruling for the plaintiffs in the case against Obamacare subsidies violates every right-wing view of "literalism" and other constitutional hijinks. She argues that a ruling for the plaintiffs would be radical and push a lot of issues into no-man's land. Like many court observers, she notes that when ACA was upheld but with the proviso that states could opt out of the federal exchange no one ever thought and the law usually doesn't permit that individuals be penalized for that option. Others have argued that the sheer numbers affected by a negative decision will influence Roberts.

++The testimony from one of the "hijackers" in 9-11 that the Saudis bankrolled Al Qaeda and the 9-11 plot has again brought the section on Saudi financing from the 9/11 Report to a head. The New York Times puts this section of the 9-11 report front page. The plaintiffs in the case about Saudi liability in the 9-11 case want the section of the report de-classified for their argument. 

++A Federal judge is asking why the Pentagon is stalling on the release of the thousands of torture photographs that Leon Panetta had argued were a threat to national security. Good question. The ACLU has been per suing this case to the bitter end.

++Fox News is being hammered by the Guardian for showing the ISIS video of the Jordanian pilot being burned to death. The Guardian notes that ISIS is using the Fox News clip in all their social media.

++No, the Jordanian King did not fly jets to bomb Isis but he has struck out with multiple bombing runs. What people don't get and you won't read in the States was that the pilot came from an important tribe in northern Jordan so the reaction was intense.

++The UN reports that ISIS has been killing children and crucifying them. The religious leaders across the Sunni Moslem world have denounced all this and the burning to death of the Jordanian pilot as "un-Islamic". 

++President Obama spoke today at the National Prayer Day of why we have separation of church and state and why when someone proclaims their religion in the United States it is more honest and genuine than if they did this in a Theocratic state. 

++The Tennessee Senate began their session with a fundamentalist Christian prayer for God to abolish medicaid expansion in the state.

++Judge Moore of Alabama , Mr. Ten Commandments, has sent a letter instructing judges not to marry same sex couples. The Southern Poverty Legal Center has filed an ethics complaint against the Judge.

++Our Surgeon General has been appearing everywhere urging everyone to get vaccinated. And he lets on that marijuana can help certain medical conditions.

++The new theme about how President Obama is making us weaker is that he is desperate for an Iranian deal and will settle for a weak one. Conservative newspapers quote as their authors the Revolutionary Guard Commanders of Iran. They also bring back a quote from Khamenei from a few months ago that Iran must prepare a "resistance economy" for the prospects of increased sanctions. Meanwhile, Democratic congress critters leaked to the AP how they read Israeli Ambassador Dermer the riot act on the Bibi-Boehner stunt.

++Senator Corker sought of let the end game on Iran out of the bag. He said it is unlikely there will be a deal and that leaving the interim deal in place would suffice for now.

Another BFD for Obama--Iran Deal

++The interim agreement with Tehran over its nuclear program was announced late last night. In the previous months, the United States had secretly negotiated the framework for the agreement without telling either Israel or Saudi Arabia.

++Yesterday's interim agreement was incredibly substantial, not just the "first step" that both Kerry and Obama referred to it as. Today's New York Times has a front-page story on most of the details contained in the deal. The White House last night issued a press release listing in great detail all the ingredients of the deal, which entails a six-month freeze on the nuclear program,a suspension of the plutonium reactor which France raised at the last meeting, conversion of the enriched uranium into a more oxidized version,the dismantling of the most modern centrifuges and invasive inspections by the UN at every nuclear site on a daily basis. And that's just sum of it. And that's probably all you will get to know as the media coverage goes into full throttle.

++John Kerry insists there is no right to enrich contained in the agreement. Most observers agree that Iran and the world powers agreed to fudge this issue. As a matter of fact, the Non-Proliferation Treaty to which Iran adheres allows them to enrich below weapon grade levels. Iran wanted this stated in the agreement but the Western countries balked. The concession from the negotiating powers is that some of Iran's frozen assets could be accessed. The number is estimated at $6-8 billion. But the structure of the Iranian sanctions remain and could be tightened if a full agreement isn't reached.

++So the interim agreement is far more extensive than anyone has a right to expect. But that hasn't stopped Bibi Netanyahu from proclaiming that this deal made the security of the world in worse shape than before. He basically called this the greatest diplomatic triumph of Iran since the Revolution and claimed that this allowed Iran to escalate the enrichment process, when in fact it reverses it. Bibi was quick to reach out to Time magazine to warn of a "suitcase bomb" exploding in Washington or Madrid in  five years time. (Five years seems to be the magic number starting when the nuclear program was revealed in 2002. So now we are up to 2019,pretty good.) At least it isn't has bad as Tony Blair's "only hours" warning about Saddam's nuclear weapon.

++In case you have missed it, the Administration has to figure out how to dispose of Syria's chemical weapons stockpile since al their weapon sites have been destroyed. The same people who are protesting this Iranian deal are the same who criticized Obama for making a deal with Putin over the chemical weapons. They are also the same people who opposed the President on his military plans to attack the weapons' sites. Yet,they are now the people objecting to the Iranian deal.

++The Republicans were first out of the gate, claiming that the Iranian deal was a distraction from Obamacare. Thinking this was wacky, it was repeated again this morning by the House Whip Who can't count McCarthy. Eric Cantor repeated Bibi's points that the agreement countered the Security Council resolutions on the Iranian nuclear plan. Jennifer Rubin mocked that uranium enrichment pays--referring to the part of the agreement where Iran could use its own money again.

++Since President Obama's nuclear agreement with the Russians, every diplomatic agreement reached by this administration has been opposed. In this case,they had to bring out Zbig and Brent Scowcroft to urge the Senate to support it for now. Unfortunately, neither man is identified as a supporter of Israel. 

++President Obama said in his remarks last night that he would not seek any further sanctions. But there are Senators on both sides of the aisle who will. 

++Chris Dickey of the Daily Beast, who was at the negotiations,hailed the Obama Administration for backing away from war and finessing involvement in the on-going Shiite-Sunni civil war. He did say that while this agreement might lead to greater stability in the region both Israel and Saudi Arabia are miffed at the United States.

++Watch the next few weeks of vitriol against the President for making this deal. There is going to be a full-court effort by AIPAC, the Religious Right and others to either endorse increased sanctions or just proclaim that Obama sold us out once again. Ari Fleischer,the former spokesperson for George W. Bush, claimed you can spell abandonment without Obama. John Kerry miffed by this on his return retorted that if the United States had taken up Iran's offer to negotiate on this in 2003, then the Iranian program would not be as large as it is today.

++We will experience people talking in bad faith. If someone objects to parts of the agreement,they should get in the weeds to argue that. But most of those who advocated negotiations in the first place really didn't think they would bear fruit and then The Devil would make us Bomb Iran. Now that there are bearing fruit,it seems to me those people should make it clear that they really want another war in the Middle East.

++Before this agreement, the majority of Americans wanted a deal. How that holds up in the upcoming attacks on it is anyone's guess. But Juan Cole, with whom I have few agreements, is right--the deal stops the Neo-Con agenda in its tracks. If democratization through war got trashed because of the last administration,the idea of regime change and wars of adventure just got sent to the ash heap of history.