KJ

It's probably cheating for so many of my posts this month to be about my Mega Flare progress, but it is the main focus of my time and attention right now, so maybe not? I can't decide.

Anyway. Got some good editing done yesterday and today, maybe halfway through this first editing run, and once this post is done, I'll dive back in. Current wordcount is 26,483; I haven't discovered any gaps yet, but I've flagged a few sections for possible rewrite. It would be in great shape if I had about a week longer, or at least if I weren't completely booked this weekend. As it is, well. We'll see.

In other news, bleah. If Ed Lee wins outright, I am going to be Very Irritated. Can San Francisco politics get nothing right?

All right, enough of that. Back to work. If you see me on Twitter or Tumblr, smack me on the hand, will you? Thanks.

Oh, like I could resist that subject line when we just had two noticeable earthquakes less than six hours apart. Supposedly they were about the same magnitude, 4.0 and 3.8 respectively, but the second was much scarier to me, probably because it lasted a lot longer, maybe a whole 10-15 seconds. (That may not sound long, but in earthquake terms, that's awhile. The 1989 quake was 30 seconds, and it felt like an eternity.) They were also in about the same place, along the Hayward fault in the East Bay; the news is calling the second one an aftershock. No real damage anywhere, just a little nerve-wracking.

In other news, iPhone 4S! The sharp screen is pretty sweet, although I'm not sure how I feel about the edge ridges. I liked the curvier feel of my 3GS. Also, I would prefer if TweetDeck did not crash all the time, thanks. That might be an iOS 5 problem, because it got a bit crashy on my old phone, too, after I upgraded it. Let's hope that gets resolved soon.

I've been around, just busy, spacey, tired. Way behind on my writing schedule. Feeling alternately oppressed by and excited about world events, between the goings on in the Middle East and the political malarky at home. It feels like we're on the cusp of something, something really wonderful or really terrible, or maybe both at once.

Also it's a concert week, which will be eating my life as usual. We had our last piano rehearsal last night and we're sounding really good. Let's hope it holds up when we meet up with the orchestra tomorrow!

Finally, in media news, T and I are finally playing Dragon Age, which I expect will get a post of its own sometime soon. Enjoying it so far, for sure, although I always get a little nervous when I play a game this open, worrying I've missed some major quest or plot point by not talking to every single NPC, or by choosing the wrong option in a conversation. Non-linearity is overrated.

For complicated reasons having to do with my school's schedule, my President's Day holiday is this upcoming Friday. I cannot wait, even though the three-day weekend will be dominated by concerts and other events. But it will be worth it.

Though I haven't talked about it much, I've continued to follow the various Proposition 8 trials and tribulations with great interest. Right now it's at the appeals stage; the hearing was about a month ago, at the federal courthouse about a block from my workplace. I happened to head that direction for lunch that day -- not on purpose, just by chance -- and I walked right through the anti-equality protest that had set up shop. One of the protestors was a man with a bullhorn who proclaimed that the morning rainstorm represented "God's Judgement on the city of San Francisco".

Considering that we've had a few drought years and need all the rain we can get, I wonder what message we're actually supposed to be taking, here.

Anyway, so the trial happened, and today we finally got some news: a punt of sorts. The Court of Appeals did not issue a ruling; instead, they sent the case back to the California Supreme Court to determine whether the proponents even have "standing" -- in other words, the right to appeal the original ruling that declared Prop 8 unconstitutional. (If you're not familiar with the standing issue, this is a pretty good summary.) If the quotes from this Daily Kos article are any indication, the Court of Appeals seem to think that the proponents ought to have standing, but given the lack of case law in California on this issue, they want the state courts to make the final ruling. Which is logical, even if it does draw the case out even further.

So I find all this interesting, as I have found all the twists and turns in this case interesting, but that's not actually why I linked to the article. Another issue that came up on appeal was whether one of the judges, Stephen Reinhardt, ought to excuse himself from the case because his wife is an executive at the ACLU. He dismissed this charge entirely, in a memo that includes this awesome quote (pulled from the Kos link, above):

My wife’s views, public or private, as to any issues that may come before
this court, constitutional or otherwise, are of no consequence. She is a strong, independent woman who has long fought for the principle, among others, that women should be evaluated on their own merits and not judged in any way by the deeds or position in life of their husbands (and vice versa). I share that view and, in my opinion, it reflects the status of the law generally, as well as the law of recusal, regardless of whether the spouse or the judge is the male or the female....

When I joined this court in 1980 (well before my wife and I were married), the ethics rules promulgated by the Judicial Conference stated that judges should ensure that their wives not participate in politics. I wrote the ethics committee and suggested that this advice did not reflect the realities of modern marriage–that even if it were desirable for judges to control their wives, I did not know many judges who could actually do so (I further suggested that the Committee would do better to say “spouses” than “wives,” as by then we had as members of our court Judge Mary Schroeder, Judge Betty Fletcher, and Judge Dorothy Nelson). The committee thanked me for my letter and sometime later changed the rule. That time has passed, and rightly so.

It would be one thing if the ACLU were actively involved in this particular case, but they aren't. The only reason to think Reinhardt might have a conflict of interest is if you assume that married couples are incapable of holding independent opinions. This is an obnoxious assumption, and I'm always glad to see it smacked down.

justira asked me to rant about share my opinions on California politics.

The first thing an outsider needs to know is that California is not a monolith. Like most states, we have an urban/rural divide, and it plays out pretty predictably: staunchly liberal urban areas (SF Bay Area, Los Angeles), a few conservative urban enclaves thanks to wealthy suburbanites (Orange County) and/or a strong military presence (San Diego), aging hippies and libertarians along the rural coast and in the mountains, and a solid Red State interior. So there is a sharp political divide in California, but the lines are not all drawn where you would expect them to be. There are cultural differences between Northern and Southern California, to be sure. But they don't really show up in our political discourse.

Okay, now that's out of the way, I'm going to focus on the real subject of this post: California's proposition system, and why I hate it with the fire of a thousand burning suns.

(Technically, there are three kinds of propositions: propositions, initiatives, and constitutional amendments. There are technical differences between them, but on the state ballot they are all referred to as "Proposition N" where N is the identifying number, so I will use "proposition" as a generic term throughout the post.)

( Here's the deal. )

30 Days of... Project! Complete list of questions / Ask a question on LJ or on DW.

As anyone with an Internet connection probably knows by now, Proposition 8 was overturned today. Best comprehensive coverage is probably from the Los Angeles Times; best analysis is on Prop 8 Trial Tracker. The decision is long, so more analysis is likely to come, but the quick reaction seems to be that this was about the best outcome supporters of marriage equality could hope for: the proposition was found to be unconstitutional on multiple grounds, and there is some wonderfully strong language in the decision about legal marriage, for example:

Tradition alone, however, cannot form a rational basis for a law.... Instead, the evidence shows that the tradition of gender restrictions arose when spouses were legally required to adhere to specific gender roles. California has eliminated all legally mandated gender roles except the requirement that a marriage consist of one man and one woman. Proposition 8 thus enshrines in the California Constitution a gender restriction that the evidence shows to be nothing more than an artifact of a foregone notion that men and women fulfill different roles in civic life.

Outstanding.

It will be appealed, of course; the chances that this does not run all the way to the Supreme Court are pretty much nil. And I'll be shocked if there isn't some sort of stay on the ruling that will keep same-sex marriages from being performed until that happens. But it's one step closer. One giant, important, awesome step.

Health care reform: passed. Even if it turned out to mostly be health insurance reform, it's definitely a huge step forward.

This bill is flawed. For awhile, I was ready to declare it worse than nothing and wash my hands of the whole thing, thanks to the Stupak Amendment and the lack of a public option. Fortunately, I was talked down from that position: the expansion of Medicaid, the insurance exchanges, and most especially the new regulations that will block the insurance companies from dropping people once they get sick are all good and important, and we will be better off to have them.

This doesn't keep me from being irritated at how the Democrats let Obama's stubborn hope for "bipartisan support" (support that the Republicans were never going to provide) take over the process for so long, not to mention their total inability to get their message into the media (but what else is new?). And of course the whole Stupak/Nelson/abortion-as-political-football aspect of the negotiations makes me see red; please, Michigan Democrats, somebody please mount a primary challenge against this guy! It seems likely that history will judge this a victory for Obama and the Democrats, although how the voters will feel in November is anybody's guess.

But we can worry about that later. For now, we can thank Nancy Pelosi, and hope that the GOP's plan of total obstruction screws them over as badly in the long term as David Frum seems to think it will.

Today marked the opening of the biggest lawsuit against Proposition 8 yet. This is the biggie, the one that could open the floodgates and bring the walls a'tumbling down: the argument that Proposition 8, and by extension all laws banning same-sex marriage, violates the Equal Protection clause (the 14th Amendment) of the U.S. Constitution.

( Thoughts and discussions... )

So what do you all think? Crazy, doomed crusade, a sorely-needed change in direction for the movement, or some of each?

Meanwhile, we watch and wait. There's a number of livebloggers and live Twitter feeds for anyone interested in following along; I found the ACLU's live Tweets to be particularly informative and entertaining, but they also signed off halfway through the proceedings and it's not clear whether they're going to be back. A few other options: Firedog Lake, The Prop 8 Trial Tracker, The American Foundation for Equal Rights. Thanks to Jed for the New Yorker link as well as the live blogs/Twitter streams!

Scott Madin speaks for me.

I haven't been talking about this issue here much, because it would mostly mean dropping into incoherent rage a lot. (As people who've discussed it with me IRL can attest. Sorry, people IRL.) Just. So. Frustrating.