Err, having courts decide the application of constitutional law is the entire fundamental foundation of the America rule of law.

Well, it wasn't an analogy but what you're saying here has more truth to it than I had considered.

YESSSSSS

lol the mad will be delicious

Can you elaborate on what this means to non-lawyers?

Well, governments give a ton of legal rights and privileges to spouses. And if the government says that straight people can have the spouse they want, while gay people can't, then that's a very different set of rights.

As a concrete example, I am a male federal employee currently stationed in Italy. If I were to be a straight man and fall in love and marry a woman, the government will pay for her to move here with all her stuff ($10,000 easily) and pay for us to live in a nice house here ($1500/month), put her on my military medical plan for free, pay her survivor benefits if I get killed in action ($12,000, I think), and let her visit me in a hospital and make end of life decisions if I am in a coma.

If I were to be a gay man and fall in love and marry a man, they will do none of those things.

So the government gives rights to straight men and women that they don't give to gay men and women, both monetarily and otherwise.

Congrats on establishing the most common argument among 14 year olds debating this issue.

So how many then?

UM HELLO MR ANTI-DEMOCRACY.

I think the most democratic option would be to have an election every time a death occurs so that each coroner can be tailored to the needs of the departed.

a law doesn't have to be explicitly discriminatory to be discriminatory.

interracial marriage is a good example. another example is the poll tax - there's nothing explicitly discriminatory, since everyone pays the same amount to vote. if you only read the language of the law, and ignore the context, it seems fair. but when you look at how it plays out in reality it becomes obvious that it's incredibly racist.

How many people are you willing to kill to make marijuana legal?

GOTCHA, Wookie!

pvn,

All of them.

Haha, I was considering posting PVN's link onto my Facebook page, but after reading this comment I'm pretty sure that combination would auto trigger some sort of response from homeland security.

Is there anything that can/should be done by the US in Syria?

http://www.cnn.com/2012/02/07/world/...ene/?hpt=hp_c1

I posted pvn's link to facebook. Remember, if I get droned, don't try to rescue me or treat my wounds; common decency to your fellow human may demand it but that'd be giving aid and comfort.

Obviously I'm going to get sporadically attacked for the next page or so for even mentioning this. But just wanted you to know I do read all this stuff and I am deeply disturbed by it. I think this is really sickening and disgusting and indefensible. I don't understand it.

Going for Nobel peace prize number two. o ba ma o ba ma o ba ma!!!!

Seems like it is our duty as Policemen Of The World to intervene.

Pick one side, a side that we really don't know much about, nor understand

destroy the other side

???

profit

It's wrong to think that there are two sides. One side is a despot slaughtering his people, the other side is just getting slaughtered.

you guys seen this?
http://teapartyjesus.tumblr.com/
here's a few

lol

lol those are so good

An inside look at an e-mail from a Syrian press attache at the UN to Assad about how to prepare for his interview w/ Barbara Walters

I actually intended to, but I after I started posting something came up and I had to leave the computer.

What standard a court uses when reviewing a given law is a huge part of constitutional law. When a court reviews the constitutionality of a given law, the laws are generally reviewed under one of three tests--rational basis review, intermediate scrutiny, and strict scrutiny. Generally, laws reviewed under rational basis are upheld because it's such a low standard to meet--the standard definition is that a law will be upheld if it is "rationally related to any legitimate governmental interest." "Rationally related" is easy to meet because the law doesn't have to even be a good way to uphold a certain policy; the law can be a very, very inefficient way to further a policy, but if it furthers that policy/government interest, it's satisfied. And by "legitimate governmental interest," essentially anything that the government can legislate over. (For states, health, morals, safety, etc.) And the governmental interest can be hypothetical--that's why it's "any" governmental interest. Even if the law wasn't actually passed to further that actual interest, but you can argue after the fact that the law furthers/is related to that interest, that will satisfy the test. So, overbroad, overinclusive, underinclusive, inefficient laws will be upheld as long as they are related (however tenuously) to some hypothetical interest the government can legitimately legislate.

One famous case of rational basis scrutiny resulting in a law being struck down is Romer v. Evans, a case where an amendment to the Colorado state constitution essentially prohibited any branch of the Colorado government from passing any law/ordinance/policy/etc. that would treat homosexuals as having a "minority" status or that would protect them from discrimination based on being a homosexual. The Supreme Court said that the interest the amendment furthered was basically animus toward a particular group of people. (It said a lot of things but this is one of them.) Animus toward a group just because they are different isn't a legitimate interest, the Court said.

(Without getting too much into things, some commentators have noticed that the Court will often use a more stringent version of the rational basis test, while still referring to it as rational basis. For instance, Colorado's stated justification wasn't actually "We just don't like teh gays,"--that was the court's own analysis.)

If you followed the "State senator denied service" thread, you might've noticed some people bringing up the phrase "protected class." Protected classes is an equal protection concept. Law discriminating against protected classes get either strict scrutiny (laws based on race and alienage, for example) or intermediate scrutiny (laws based on gender). The vast majority of laws that classify ("discriminate") are reviewed using rational basis (laws referring only to, e.g., drivers, businesses, children, married couples, etc.). Homosexuals are not a protected class, so laws classifying them are reviewed using rational basis, which puts homosexuals at a huge disadvantage when challenging laws.

A class of people are entitled to "protection" (a higher standard of review for laws classifying/discriminating against them) essentially because of a history of discrimination against them. Another phrase for these people are "suspect classes" because, historically, laws have discriminated against them, so new laws are "suspect." The only classes subject to strict scrutiny are race, alienage, and national origin. There are only two "quasi-suspect" classes getting intermediate review--gender and illegitimate children. Strict scrutiny is nearly impossible to pass, intermediate scrutiny is tough but not impossible.

Interesting, thanks.