Yes We Can!

It has been an outstanding couple of days for progressives. Yesterday the Senate passed a jobs bill that will help over 250,000 public sector employees. That is teachers, firefighters, police officers etc. etc. will not be laid off due to budget cuts. The fact that this bill is deficit neutral, being paid for with budget cuts and corporate tax increases (closed loopholes?) did not sway Republican deficit hawks. Only Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine had the balls to stand for the American middle class. Now Nancy Pelosi has called an emergency session of the House in order to get this legislation on the President's desk by the end of next week.

Yesterday U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker decided that California's Proposition 8, the CA constitutional amendment defining marriage as one man and one woman, was a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. He also found that the law violated the LGBT community's right to due process. In his incredibly well written decision, Judge Walker considers any potential benefit such a law would provide the state to justify a civil transgression against gays and lesbians. He found none. The 138 page decision reflected everything fellow advocates of marriage equality have said over the last several years.

Today the full Senate voted 63 to 37 on the confirmation of Solicitor General Elena Kagan as the 112th member of the Supreme Court of the Unites States. Kagan becomes the fourth woman to be nominated and confirmed as an Associate Justice (that's just a tad under 4% for those keeping track) and there are now the most women ever seated at the same time on the SCOTUS bench... THREE! (also three Jews)

Finally, challenges to the proposed site of the Cordoba House, a Muslim cultural center and mosque were unanimously rejected. Vehement arguments from detractors were met with the calm resolve of Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and an interfaith coalition of religious leaders. The Imam argued that the greatest way to fight extremism is to prove that they do not represent the majority. The freedom to build a church of any faith wherever the faithful want it was what was attacked on 9/11. Every American knows the pain that was caused that day, but to succumb to the noise the mosque opponents made would be a victory for the extremists.