I hope everyone is having a beautiful spring weekend! You shouldn’t be inside looking at your computer, but if you are here’s an open thread to play in.
Hooray for sanity in Arkansas!
Circuit Judge Chris Piazza ruled today that Act 1, an initiated act approved by voters in 2008 that bans any unmarried person living with a partner from serving as an adoptive parent, is unconstitutional, and amounts to an unwarranted invasion of privacy. Jerry Cox of the Family Council, the group who sponsored Act 1 and fought for its passage, called the decision “judicial tyranny” and says they plan to appeal the decision to the Arkansas Supreme Court.
Here is a copy of Judge Piazza’s order. Piazza writes, “Due Process and Equal Protection are not hollow words without substance. They are rights enumerated in our constitution that must not be construed in such a way as to deny or disparage other rights retained by the people.”
Holly Dickson, with ACLU Arkansas, says the ban on adoption was too broad and excluded potentially good foster parents. “This is going to allow the state of Arkansas to consider all potentially good homes for kids who are in state custody that sorely need them. At this point, considering that Arkansas courts have twice found that bans like this do not protect children, I would hope that we could move on past this issue.”
Denying homes to children because you feel icky about LGBT people is just wrong and counterproductive.
It’s about time that someone paid a price in the financial collapse. The SEC is charging Goldman Sachs with fraud:
The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged Goldman Sachs with defrauding investors by allegedly “misstating and omitting key facts” in the marketing of a financial product linked to the performance of subprime mortgages right as the housing crisis was beginning to unfold.
The complaint comes down just as the attention of Washington is turning fully to financial reform.
“The product was new and complex but the deception and conflicts are old and simple. Goldman wrongly permitted a client that was betting against the mortgage market to heavily influence which mortgage securities to include in an investment portfolio, while telling other investors that the securities were selected by an independent, objective third party,” said SEC enforcement chief Robert Khuzami in a statement.
In other words, Goldman Sachs was explicity selling CDOs to people while also making bets that these CDOs would fail. They were intentionally selling bad products and I’ll bet it’s all legal. That’s why GS is being charged civilly instead of criminally.