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John Boehner Thinks Gay Marriage Should Be Banned Because Of Polygamy

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Paul Clement, a high profile attorney hand-picked by John Boehner — who is spending 1.5 million tax dollars to defend a federal ban on gay marriage —  is arguing DOMA must live because of polygamy.

Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, John Boehner, decided last year to invest $1.5 million — your tax dollars — to defend DOMA, the Defense of Marriage Act that bans the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages, after President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder both declared the 1996 law to be unconstitutional. Literally dozens of federal judges have weighed in since — and agreed with the President.

Speaker Boehner tasked the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group (BLAG) to defend DOMA, and appointed a handpicked high profile private attorney, Paul Clement, to defend challenges to DOMA in federal court. Clement’s batting average for all the DOMA cases he’s defended is .000. Clement, who also famously lost the fight to strike down Obamacare, is a a former United States Solicitor General who served under President George W. Bush.

Now, Paul Clement, hand-picked by John Boehner, is arguing that DOMA must live because of polygamy.

In the heartbreaking case of Windsor v. United States, Edie Windsor, an 83-year old widow who is fighting — and has won in several federal courts — a “death tax” of $363,000 that, if the federal government recognized her legal marriage to her wife who passed away, she would not have pay. Windsor married Thea Syper two years before her death, although the couple had been together for 40 years.

“The lawyer [Paul Clement] for House Republican leaders had to reach all the way back to 1885 today when asked where the ‘traditional understanding’ of marriage could be found in federal case law — referring to a case dealing with polygamy in the Utah territory,” Chris Geidner, writing at Buzzfeed yesterday, reported on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals trial in New York:

That case, decided about polygamy in Utah before women were guaranteed the right to vote, came only 20 years after the end of the Civil War and more than 80 years before the court would strike down bans on interracial marriage. Today, it was one of the underlying arguments in House Republican leaders’ case that the Supreme Court recognizes a “traditional understanding” of marriage that the Defense of Marriage Act is seeking to uphold.

…

The arguments were at points similar to arguments heard in April before the First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston, which determined that the law is unconstitutional. Today’s arguments, however, included an admission by Clement that if courts decide that laws targeting gays and lesbians should be viewed skeptically, like those based on race or sex, then it would be more difficult to justify DOMA.

“That said, I’ll try it,” Clement told the judges, noting that “there’s no way to preserve the definition of marriage [as one man and one woman] other than by preserving the definition. It becomes somewhat circular.”

Geidner examines broad issues of DOMA and scrutiny — how the courts decide what standards to use in determining whether or not DOMA is unconstitutional — and concludes with this:

More than 30 years before the U.S. Constitution would be amended to prohibit voting discrimination based on sex, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of a law that required those in the Utah territory to take an oath that included a statement that the male was violating bigamy or polygamy prohibitions.

The case, which cited the infamous Dred Scott Supreme Court decision declaring that slaves were not citizens under the U.S. Constitution as evidence of governmental powers in the territories, was mentioned by Clement. It’s the case, he told Judge Chester Straub, a Clinton appointee to the bench, where the Supreme Court referenced the “traditional understanding” of marriage.

The 1885 case takes a hard line on the role of marriage in the post-Civil War nation, in reference to the practice of polygamy in the Utah territory.

The court wrote that “no legislation can be supposed more wholesome and necessary in the founding of a free, self-governing commonwealth … than that which seeks to establish it on the basis of the idea of the family [is] consisting in and springing from the union for life of one man and one woman in the holy estate of matrimony.”

That definition of marriage, the court wrote in 1885, is “the sure foundation of all that is stable and noble in our civilization; the best guaranty of that reverent morality which is the source of all beneficent progress in social and political improvement.”

Steven Thrasher, writing “For Elderly Gay Widow Edith Windsor, The GOP Is All For High Taxes,” today in The Daily Beast, notes:

“When Barack Obama proved unwilling to hound an octogenarian widow for a tax bill she never should have been charged, House Speaker John Boehner proved more than willing to take up the task—even at a cost to taxpayers of far more than the money she owed.”

Death and taxes, and GOP hate and ignorance. Four things that you can aways count on.

Image circa 1877, via Wikipedia: Brigham Young’s 12 widows lament. Caricature in a newspaper about Mormon polygamy. Text: “In memoriam Brigham Young. And the place which knew him once shall know him no more.” It references the apocryphal “long bed” story (and illustration) found in chapter 15 of Mark Twain‘s 1872 book Roughing It.

Related:

Breaking: 145 House Democrats File Amicus Brief Denouncing DOMA

Breaking: DOMA Declared Unconstitutional Again — By A Bush Appointee

Fighting DOMA, Edie Windsor Now Takes Her Case To The Supreme Court

Breaking: DOMA Ruled ‘Unconstitutional’ In Lesbian Estate Tax Case

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RELIGIOUS EXTREMISM

Kellyanne Conway Is Now a Religious Right Crusader Using Christianity to Attack Democrats as a Paid Fox News Contributor

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October 5, 2022

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Former Trump 2016 campaign manager and Senior Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway has remade herself multiple times. A pollster who once had as a client Todd Akin – the GOP lawmaker who made the phrase, “if it’s a legitimate rape” infamous – Conway also did polling for Donald Trump when he was considering a run for New York governor.

Once inside the White House Conway was one of the newsiest officials, often appearing before the Fox News cameras almost daily.

Fox News viewers will once again get to see the former top Trump aide almost daily – this time as a paid Fox News contributor who is using her Christian faith as a sword to attack Democrats.

Conway is the latest Trump White House official to be hired by Fox News, and while she’s not Trump’s spokesperson any longer, she may wrangle the gig into getting her old one back. Puck reports she is being considered to helm Trump’s expected 2024 presidential run.

READ MORE: Watch: Herschel Walker Says if Georgia Voters Don’t Elect Him They Won’t Even ‘Have a Chance to Be Redeemed’

In fact, the two have something in common.

“I will tell you why he wants to run for president,” Conways told CBS News on Friday. “Donald Trump wants his old job back.”

Conway joins a long list of her former colleagues at what has become a far right wing media outlet catering to promoting anything Trump, while downplaying any negative news about the former president who is currently being investigated by prosecutors in Georgia and the U.S. Dept. of Justice for an array of possible felonies, reportedly including ones under the Espionage Act.

Conway will be right at home working alongside Kayleigh McEnany, Mike Pompeo, Larry Kudlow, and Trump’s daughter-in-law and former Trump campaign official Lara Trump.

READ MORE: ‘Everything Has Been a Lie’: Christian Walker Drops Damning New Video Blasting His Father’s ‘Lies’ Over Abortion

In April Vox reported that “while he hasn’t been hired by Fox, former Trump adviser Stephen Miller — known for helping to develop Trump’s nativist immigration policy — has become a fixture as a guest on Sean Hannity’s and Laura Ingraham’s shows.”

“Since the start of President Joe Biden’s term,” Media Matters reported in February, “Fox News has hired at least nine editors who previously worked for former President Donald Trump’s administration, Republican campaign offices, or Republican politicians. Many of those editors now cover politics for FoxNews.com.”

On Tuesday Conway appeared on Fox News and attacked Democrats, saying Hispanic voters “see a Democratic Party that’s openly hostile to religion. They can’t even give their thoughts and prayers when there’s a tragedy. It’s only thoughts now.”

The Washington Post‘s Philip Bump calls Conway’s analysis “overly simple and, in part, … explicitly dishonest.”

“Kellyanne Conway claimed that Democrats are hostile religion, something that will surprise the vast majority of Democrats, who are religious,” he adds on Twitter. “There’s a reason that ‘religious’ doesn’t automatically mean ‘Republican.'”

One day earlier, in a segment with a chyron that reads, “The Importance of Religion,” Conway told her former and now current colleague, Larry Kudlow on Fox Business, “People are afraid to make the sign of a cross before a meal in public, they’re afraid to express their — they actually think their religion could get them canceled now, not just their politics, and think about that.”

Conway, perhaps best known for her “alternative facts” flub, offered no proof of her claim.

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RIGHT WING EXTREMISM

Watch: Herschel Walker Says if Georgia Voters Don’t Elect Him They Won’t Even ‘Have a Chance to Be Redeemed’

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October 5, 2022

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Herschel Walker is now suggesting the souls of Georgians are in the balance, and if they don’t elect him to the U.S Senate they will not even “have a chance to be redeemed,” a Christian religious belief about being delivered from sin by God. Walker is also suggesting his right-wing son, who turned against him this week after reports he paid for an abortion, is a member of “the left.”

Appearing on Fox News Wednesday, Walker told host Brian Kilmeade, “If we vote for the people on the left, like the guy I’m running against,” Democratic U.S. Senator Raphael Warnock, “you’re not going to have a chance to be redeemed. He’s a minister and he don’t believe in redemption.”

“Right now, they’re trying to destroy America, they’re trying to destroy Georgia. It ain’t gonna happen on my watch,” the Trump-endorsed GOP nominee said.

Kilmeade asked the embattled Senate GOP candidate why his son, Christian Walker, is “doing tremendous damage to you.”

READ MORE: Herschel Walker Raked in Hundreds of Thousands of Dollars Giving Paid Speeches While a Candidate for Senate: Report

Walker served up a confusing claim, suggesting his popular right wing social media influencer son is actually a liberal.

“Well, the damage he’s doing is letting people know that the left will do whatever they can to win the seat.”

“I told you when I got into this race, I’m gonna win this seat,” Walker continued, as he played the religion card. “People see someone seated here in front of you right now that have been redeemed. And I want America to know, I’m living proof that you can make mistakes and get up and keep going forward. But you can only do it in this country right here. But you can only do it, if we get this election correct this coming November.”

Christian Walker, once his top supporter, this week blasted his father in several online videos and tweets after The Daily Beast reported the former NFL star turned Trump-endorsed MAGA politician had paid for an abortion for one of his girlfriends.

READ MORE: ‘Everything Has Been a Lie’: Christian Walker Drops Damning New Video Blasting His Father’s ‘Lies’ Over Abortion

Kilmeade asked Walker if his son’s allegations – including forcing him and his mother to move to six different homes in six months, going out and sleeping with other women, and never being home to raise his own son – were true.

Walker never answered, instead, telling Fox News viewers he loves is son “unconditionally,” as Fox News repeatedly play a clip of Walker giving his son a hug and kiss at an event.

In a video posted to twitter Tuesday, Christian Walker blasted his father, saying, “I stayed silent as the atrocities committed against my mom were downplayed, I stayed silent when it came out that my father, Herschel Walker, had all these random kids across the country, none of whom he raised.”

“And you know, my favorite issue to talk about is father absence – surprise – ’cause it affected me. That’s why I talk about it all the time, because it affected me.”

“You have no idea what I’ve been through in my life,” Christian Walker added. “You have no idea what me and my mom have survived. We could have ended this on day one. We haven’t. I haven’t told any stories. I’m just saying don’t lie. Don’t lie on my mom. Don’t lie on me. Don’t lie on the lives you’ve destroyed and act like you’re some moral family man. Y’all should care about that, conservatives.”

“Family Values people: He has four kids, four different women, wasn’t in the house raising one of them,” Walker said about his father Herschel. “He was out having sex with other women. Do you care about family values? I was silent lie after lie after lie. The  abortion card drops yesterday – it’s literally his handwriting in the card. They say they have receipts, whatever. He gets on Twitter, he likes about it. Okay, I’m done.”

Watch Herschel Walker’s Fox News interview below or at this link.

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RIGHT WING EXTREMISM

Experts Sound Alarm as ‘Urgent and Heated’ Threats of Civil War Ramp Up Before Midterm Election

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October 5, 2022

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According to a report from the New York Times, analysts and experts who follow online trends with regard to threats of political violence are warning the U.S. is moving into dangerous territory as the 2022 midterm election day grows closer.

As the Times’ Ken Bensinger and Sheera Frenkel wrote, there have been upticks in calls for a civil war since the FBI initiated a search of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort seeking stolen government documents and then again when President Joe Biden called the former president and “MAGA Republicans” a threat to “the very foundations of our republic.”

Following the Mar-a-Lago search, “civil war’ talk on conservative social media platforms more than doubled and now “experts are bracing for renewed discussions of civil war, as the Nov. 8 midterm elections approach and political talk grows more urgent and heated.”

“Polling, social media studies and a rise in threats suggest that a growing number of Americans are anticipating, or even welcoming, the possibility of sustained political violence, researchers studying extremism say. What was once the subject of serious discussion only on the political periphery has migrated closer to the mainstream,” the report states before adding, “Social media platforms are rife with groups and boards dedicated to discussions of civil war. One, on Gab, describes itself as a place for ‘action reports,’ ‘combat vids’ and reports of killed in action in ‘the civil war that is also looking to be a 2nd American Revolution.'”

IN OTHER NEWS: ‘This isn’t going to work out’: Legal expert throws cold water on Trump’s latest effort to stall Mar-a-Lago probe

According to Robert Pape, a political science professor at the University of Chicago, “What you’re seeing is a narrative that was limited to the fringe going into the mainstream.”

Kurt Braddock, an American University professor who studies the recruitment techniques of fringe groups claimed the former president is not helping matters.

“Ideas go into echo chambers and it’s the only voice that’s heard; there are no voices of dissent,” he explained before warning, “The statements Trump makes are not overt calls to action, but when you have a huge and devoted following, the chances that one or more people are activated by that are high.”

You can read more here.

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