Not to say "we told ya so," but...well...

In February of 2004, in the 15th article we ever posted to The BRAD BLOG, in a short piece headlined "Gay Marriage. Done Deal." we wrote rather presciently (even if we say so ourselves) and seemingly against all odds at the time: "The wall seems to be finally coming down, and the GOP and DNC are as powerless to stop it as East German Chancellor Erich Honecker was to stop the Berlin Wall from toppling in '89."

While the institutional barriers erected against marriage equality didn't fall quite as quickly as the Berlin Wall was finally toppled, today's U.S. Supreme Court ruling [PDF] in Obergefell v. Hodges, determining that marriage is a fundamental Constitutional right in all fifty states in the union, came faster than almost everyone had could have predicted, certainly 11 years ago.

In September of 2010, in the midst of some seemingly dark days for the nation, but even as the first of many federal court cases began to reveal the utter moral bankruptcy of the case against equal rights for all, we reminded readers once again that rights always win and haters always lose...eventually.

Here's what we wrote at the time...

On today's BradCast, I was joined by Seth Stoughton, former cop and now asst. professor at the University of South Carolina School of Law, to discuss the "Guardian v. Warrior" cop mentality as displayed in this past weekend's viral video of a pool party gone bad in suburban McKinney, TX.

Stoughton, who teaches criminal law and police regulation, analyzed the video for Talking Points Memo and explained what lessons might be learned from both the behavior of the helpful ("guardian") cops seen in the video and the other ("warrior") cop mentality as displayed by McKinney Officer Eric Casebolt who is seen inappropriately roughing up and threatening a number of African-American teens during the incident.

"Originally the warrior mindset referred to the mental tenacity, the sheer determination that an officer had to have to survive a life and death struggle," Stoughton tells me. "Now what we see, the warrior mindset refers to a more hyper-vigilant, often-aggressive approach to policing where everyone that the officer deals with is a potential threat."

But our discussion is much broader than all of that, as we talk about how these lessons apply to police everywhere in the U.S., whether the spate of recent videos of racist and/or rogue cops might actually be good news over all, and what are some steps that may improve things for everybody in the future.

Also today: Quantifying the startling epidemic of shootings by police in the U.S.; Former U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert pleads "not guilty"; Breaking news about marriage equality out of Arkansas; And climate change deniers gather to continue deluding themselves at a "climate change conference" sponsored by fossil fuel-funded Heartland Institute loons in Washington, D.C...

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You'll be shocked to hear on today's BradCast about the completely predictable blow-back from the GOP after Hillary Clinton displayed the temerity to call for restoring and even expanding voting rights for all American citizens 18 years of age and older. (As we covered in depth on yesterday's BradCast.) Yes, Republicans really do not care for democracy, apparently.

And, yes, a new Progressive Age is dawning, whether you've realized it or not --- even as "conservatism" is quickly disappearing. (Which also explains why Republicans hate democracy.)

Speaking of the dawning of a new Progressive Age, former Ohio state prosecutor Dan Riffle of the Marijuana Policy Project joins us to discuss this week's remarkable "Marijuana Vote-a-Rama" in Congress, and the Republicans and Democrats who are finally coming on board to end the government tyranny and prohibition. A fascinating discussion of where we've been, where we now are and how we got here.

Plus: A very moving --- and ironic --- lesson one blogger improbably learned via Caitlyn Jenner...

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Good news and bad today on The BradCast. As is too often the case, mostly bad.

We get the good news out of the way early. Namely, the overwhelming approval by voters for a Constitutional amendment for marriage equality in the very Catholic nation of Ireland over the weekend. The mandate was loud and clear and, thanks to publicly hand-counted, hand-marked paper ballots in Ireland, unmistakable.

Then, horrific, deadly flooding in Texas and Oklahoma on the heels of a years-long drought there. Mashable.com's Science Editor Andrew Freedman joins us to discuss the ongoing disaster and the influence of climate change on events like this --- which we seem to be seeing more and more of...just as climate scientists have been warning for decades.

Also today, a report on our own weekend encounter with private security guards at the scene of the Santa Barbara, CA oil spill after the rupture of a crude pipeline owned by a company named Plains All American.

An update on charges now filed against Doug Hughes, the postal worker who landed his gyrocopter on the lawn of the U.S. Capitol in April to deliver a message about the need for campaign finance reform (our full interview with Hughes from back in April is right here).

All that, and a few more items of note in today's BradCast!

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On today's BradCast we finally get the chance to catch up on at least one of the big items we missed last week while Baltimore was on fire: the landmark oral arguments at the U.S. Supreme Court in Obergefell v. Hodges, the case which is likely to result (finally!) in the whole big enchilada decision on marriage equality for all 50 states.

Constitutional law expert and reporter Ian Millhiser of Think Progress joins me to discuss the hearing, the history, the likely outcomes, who to watch, and what could happen thereafter.

Also, Huckabee joins the 2016 GOP nomination circus; Chris Christie begs for a subpoena in 'BridgeGate'; more on the Garland, TX 'anti-muslim' group shootings; and Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report with the climate positions of the three new candidates tossing their hats into the 2016 race...

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On today's BradCast: What's really going on in Baltimore? We discuss the riots and the reason and turn to Fox "News", of all places, for a bit of sanity! (No, really. Thank you, Shep Smith!)

Then, Doug Hughes, the U.S. postal worker who landed his gyrocopter on the lawn of the U.S. Capitol to bring attention to the need for campaign finance reform in the wake of Citizens United, joins me for a conversation that focuses --- for a change --- on why he actually did it. See his website TheDemocracyClub.org for more.

It's an "orgy of spending," Hughes told me, and he's hoping to see a "nonpartisan, ground swell voter rebellion" against it. He also talked about his cool gyrocopter, what his bosses at the USPS have done since his brush with infamy, and the failure on behalf of our national security apparatus to stop him. The letter he was attempting to deliver to 535 members of the U.S. Congress is now posted here.

Plus: Marriage equality is winning the day even on Fox 'News', but can it win once and for all in the U.S. Supreme Court?...

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You probably already heard about the Indiana pizza shop whose owners said, if asked, they would refuse to cater a same-sex wedding, and how the shop has since raised more than $840,000 in donations in the wake of the announcement.

Since then, a florist in Washington state who refused to sell wedding flowers to a same-sex couple has, so far, received "more than $85,000 in a crowdfunding campaign".

In a similar vein, I am herewith declaring that The BRAD BLOG will not sell our blogging services to any same-sex marriage ceremonies.

Our PayPal information follows below...

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It's kind of remarkable what seems to be going on in our country right now. Amidst the years-long ongoing Rightwing hissy-fit over "Obamacare", the GOP has, of late, been enjoying another one concerning immigration. That latest resulted in a completely pointless delay in Congressional funding of the Department of Homeland Security, as the Right pretended that because they really really want something to happen, it must happen. Ya know, kinda like a three-year old.

The GOP Congress gave up the ghost of that particular hissy-fit, at least the part where they pretended they wouldn't fund DHS because of it, earlier today. But there will be more ahead. "I also shudder for the future of this Congress," Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said after the House finally approved the clean funding everybody knew they eventually would.

And now, tonight, we've got a similar hissy-fit from the Alabama Supreme Court, as they pretend they can overrule the federal courts in regard to Constitutional equal rights protections...

Encouraging news out of the embattled Deep South...

[Hat-tip TPM...]

UC Irvine law professor Rick Hasen was among the first to notice the "strange rephrasing" of the questions the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear [PDF] when it combined four different marriage equality challenges on Friday.

The questions from the different appellate court challenges that the Court agreed to entertain --- after the 6th Circuit broke with every other federal appeals court in the nation and allowed restrictions to remain on marriage rights in Michigan, Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee --- were combined to just two questions on which the Supremes agreed to hear arguments:

Hasen described the way the first question was written as "quite odd", explaining: "Rather than ask about an equal right of gays and lesbians to marry same sex partners, it asks about the right of the states to deny same sex marriage."

Indeed, amid the jubilation following the narrow 2010 ruling by SCOTUS in the Windsor case, which effectively struck down the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), The BRAD BLOG's legal analyst Ernest Canning pointed out that "by limiting its decision...the court left open to future adjudication of two vitally important questions":

Note the difference in the wording of Canning's "unresolved questions" from 2010 and how the Court has subtly adjusted the issue raised in the first question to become one of state's rights, rather than of equal justice under the law for the same-sex couples to be married there.

Hasen observes that the Court's new wording also "leaves open the possibility that states could get out of the marriage business entirely," as unlikely as they may seem. Other legal experts, such as Ilya Shapiro at Forbes, agreed the re-wording of questions by the Court was "unusual". "Typically the justices simply decide whether to take a case based on the petitioners' articulation," he explained.

Hasen says the unusual reframing by the Court and the late hour in the day on Friday that their order was finally released, "raises the question of why were they rewritten" in the way they were, and "with an accompanying direct order --- I've not seen that before --admonishing the parties to stick with discussing these questions presented."

So, is something afoot here?...

As Florida prepares to become the 36th state in the union to follow the Constitution and allow marriage equality after midnight tonight, Jeb Bush is still trying to figure out how to win the 2016 nomination for President from the base of the Republican Party, while still maintaining viability for a national general election.

When asked over the weekend, after a round of golf, to comment on court rulings that will lead to same-sex marriage becoming legal across the Sunshine State on Tuesday (and already today in Miami-Dade County), Bush muttered to the Miami Herald:

After the comment was met with criticism from advocates of the Constitution as well as Miami-Dade's Republican mayor who said he "believes adults should be free to marry whomever they desire" and that he "respects anyone's right to marry, gay or straight," Jeb attempted a mulligan and offered the following, almost impossibly non-committal, have-it-all-ways official statement...

Well, that was cowardly. But I suppose it's better than hearing the cases and churning out another twisted, activist justification for discrimination.

Rather than hear appeals from cases in Utah, Indiana, Oklahoma, Virginia and Wisconsin where marriage equality bans were struck down, the U.S. Supreme Court shocked court watchers today by deciding to avoid the issue of marriage equality as a Constitutional right entirely for the time being. Effectively, that means the lower-court rulings stand in each of those states, so freedom, liberty and the conservative Constitutional value of equal justice for all wins the day in each of them.

Evan Wolfson, founder and president of Freedom to Marry, a national organization dedicated to the fight for equality in all fifty states, said after today's Supreme Court punt: "This decision by the Court is a huge step forward --- and a clear green light for full-speed ahead --- but it needlessly postpones the national resolution that together we've been working so hard for. Freedom to Marry is committed to finishing the job."

Couples in six other states where the Circuit Court of Appeals' decisions will likely also apply include Colorado, Kansas, North Carolina, South Carolina, West Virginia and Wyoming.

With the addition of those 11 states, the list of states where marriage equality for all will soon be recognized will jump to 30, continuing to beg the question of which state will disgrace the Union as the very last one to allow equality, in this measure, for all of its citizens.

Sari Horwitz and Al Kamen at WaPo suggest that Obama's current Solicitor General, Donald Verrilli, is at the top of the "short list" to replace outgoing U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder.

"We're hearing that Solicitor General (the No. 4 slot at the Justice Department) Don Verrilli --- formerly deputy White House counsel --- may be atop the list," they report. "He's smart --- many say 'brilliant' --- well-liked by Obama and was confirmed by the Senate three years ago on a 72-16 vote. And one of those 'aye' votes, as our colleague Ruth Marcus pointed out, was from Majority-Leader-in-waiting Sen. Mitch McConnell. (R-Ky.)"

That's all well and good, and might help make Verrilli more confirmable in the U.S. Senate than other, better choices. Naturally, someone that Republicans can approve of should be one of the highest priorities in selecting Barack Obama's next Attorney General. (Sigh...)

But, that said, this might be a good time to point you back to our piece from early 2013, written by our legal analyst Ernie Canning, headined, "Donald Verrilli: Obama's Incompetent Solicitor General, Muddled Middle or Both?"

In the piece, Canning offers a fairly devastating analysis of Verrilli's dismal performance before the U.S. Supreme Court in two landmark marriage equality cases last year. As he wrote at the time, if the side that Verrilli was on in those cases eventually prevailed (they did, in both cases) it would "be despite the half-baked arguments presented by the Solicitor General, not because of them."

We'll also note that Verrilli's performance in the Voting Rights Act case was similarly nothing short of dismal. The other attorneys who also argued on the same side in the case (most notably, the NAACP's Debo Adegbile, whose later nomination to head the Civil Rights division of DoJ was shamefully torpedoed by Republicans and several Democrats) argued their case smartly and persuasively. Verrilli, by stark contrast, was horrible during oral argument, just as we found him to be in the marriage equality cases. The voting rights case was ultimately lost and SCOTUS infamously gutted the Voting Rights Act in the bargain.

Perhaps Verrilli is a better attorney and/or administrator than his skills as a litigator in oral argument before the Supreme Court revealed. But, if not, based on those cases last year, at least, it seems he'd be a disastrous choice as the next AG. Just thought we should mention that.

On Wednesday, U.S. District Court Judge Martin Feldman became the first federal judge since the U.S. Supreme Court's 2013 Windsor decision to uphold a state marriage-equality ban. But it's hardly the first questionable ruling by Feldman.

On this week's KPFK/Pacifica Radio BradCast I was joined by BradBlog.com's legal analyst Ernest A. Canning to discuss his 2010 call for Feldman's impeachment after his ruling that lifted the temporary federal moratorium on off-shore drilling following the BP oil disaster in the Gulf. Feldman, it turns out, failed to disclose his many conflicts of interest in the case or recuse himself at the time.

(And speaking of corrupt federal judges with lifetime appointments who need to be impeached immediately, please do not forget this one!)

I also talked with Ernie about his belief that Photo ID voting restrictions will be struck down by the federal court in Texas, and then at the U.S. Supreme Court.

Other issues also covered on this week's show: rape and murder convictions tossed out after 30 years for two NC men on death row, thanks to DNA evidence; the CA 'recount' reform bill blocked by state Republicans after the close election in state history; the new report finding Citizens United has directly resulted in more Republicans elected to office; and much more, including, as usual, Desi Doyen and the latest Green News Report...

Download MP3 or listen online below [appx 58 mins]...

Today, a federal judge in Louisiana upheld that state's ban on marriage equality, making him the first to find that such bans are not in direct violation of the U.S. Constitution's Equal Protection clause since the Supreme Court's landmark Windsor v. U.S. decision.

Today's ruling follows an unbroken string of federal decisions --- in both U.S. District and Appellate courts --- striking down similar bans in state after state after the 2013 Windsor decision's determination that the U.S. government may not deny equal benefits to married same-sex couples.

In his ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Martin Feldman, wrote that the concept of same-sex marriage was "nonexistent and even inconceivable until very recently"; that the state had a "legitimate interest...in linking children to an intact family formed by their two biological parents"; and that marriages between two individuals of the same sex was based on "lifestyle choices".

And now, you'll be shocked to learn that Feldman --- a Ronald Reagan-appointee and a close friend of Justice Antonin Scalia (who wrote the Windsor dissent for the Court's minority) --- has a damning record of judicial corruption.

The BRAD BLOG's legal analyst and attorney Ernie Canning offered a damning case for Feldman's impeachment in 2010, after he struck down the federal moratorium on off-shore drilling instituted in the Gulf of Mexico following the deadly 2010 BP oil disaster there.

As Canning detailed at the time, despite financial holdings in the oil industry that would have been directly affected by his own ruling, Feldman failed to properly disclose those conflicts of interest and recuse himself from the case.

"Despite having served as a federal judge for 27 years, Judge Feldman is unfit to sit in judgment of others," Canning wrote in response to the evidence in June of that year. "The only appropriate recourse is for a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, who takes his or her oath of office seriously, to introduce articles of impeachment against Judge Martin Leach-Cross Feldman."

• Read Canning's detailed 2010 coverage and call for Feldman's impeachment here...