Inside Prop 8 Baseball

There are a lot of complicated legal issues within the Prop 8 case. The Bay Area Reporter unpacks the bag of issues and scenarios:

Foremost among the lawyerly wrangling is whether the backers of Proposition 8, the voter-approved ban against same-sex marriage, have standing to bring forth an appeal of Chief U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker's ruling striking down the ballot initiative. In a stinging rebuke to Prop 8's supporters, Walker found that they had failed to "advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license."

The attorneys for Protectmarriage.com, the group behind the Prop 8 campaign, have already notified the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals they intend to appeal Walker's decision. Yet there is some question as to whether they can indeed carry the fight to the appellate level.

Polling Gay Marriage

Results of a new CNN poll on gay marriage have been released:

Nearly half of all Americans think the Constitution provides same-sex couples the right to marry, according to a new CNN/Opinion Research Corporation Poll.

Mid-term Election Gay Marriage Bait

In a pretty clear attempt to get individual congressmen on the record on gay marriage, Rep. Lamar Smith has sponsored a bill in the U.S. House of Representatives disapproving of Judge Walker's ruling on the Prop 8 case. Co-sponsors include Michele Bachmann, Steve King, Peter Hoekstra, and Missouri's own Todd Akin. In other words, the usual suspects. The disapproving language of the bill is not available online yet. To keep track of this legislation, you can follow it here.

A feature on the Gao brothers from the LA Times:

Their weapons are brushes; their battlefields are canvases. And here in China, where political dissent often leads to prosecution, the works of avant-garde artists can sometimes appear as threatening as a mass protest.

Enter the Gao brothers, Qiang and Zhen, soft-spoken siblings who have long used startling images of Mao Tse-tung as a focal point for their sculptures, paintings and performance pieces.

The brothers' work will be at the Kemper Museum of Art in Kansas City starting September 17.

Levi Johnston's New Goal

First, mayor of Wasilla, next - vice presidential candidate?

From the Huffington Post: Levi confirms he is running for mayor of Wasilla, Alaska and he's ready to talk about his plans. On his intention to run for his hometown's highest office, he says "It's for real. I'm going to go there and do what I can. Obviously that's where I grew up and that's my home. It's always going to be home to me. [My son] Tripp's going to grow up there and I want to change a few things."

Real-Life Drama

Terry Teachout in the Wall Street Journal takes Elie Wiesel to task for shutting down Deb Margolin's play Imagining Madoff:

Why on earth did Mr. Wiesel, of all people, threaten to drop the big one on Ms. Margolin and Theater J? Not only is he prominent and admired, but he is also a celebrated human-rights advocate who has famously declared that "indifference, to me, is the epitome of evil." Yet he has proved himself utterly indifferent to the rights of a serious artist and a well-regarded theater company to make art as they see fit, merely because their art portrays him in a way he doesn't like. I wouldn't go so far as to call that hypocritical—not quite—but I have no doubt that it's unworthy of a great man who ought to know better.

For background on the case, the New York Times covered the story of Ms. Margolin's play and the controversy.

Exuberant Incoherence

From the foreword to Jacob Weisberg's new book, Palinisms, The Accidental Wit and Wisdom of Sarah Palin:

So far as I can tell, Sarah Palin has four core beliefs:1. Things go better with God. 2. Yay, Alaska! 3. Let's drill that sucker. 4. Curse you, political establishment.

Weisberg was also the chronicler of "Bushisms" from George W. Bush.