Archive for March 23rd, 2013

Saturday Open Thread [3.23.2013]

Filed in Open Thread by cassandra_m on March 23, 2013 • 5 Comments

So how are your NCAA brackets doing? I was reminded by President Jed Bartlett via Twitter that there is no Federal Disaster assistance for your brackets. Oh well.

The PDD/DL Vote Tracker for the week ending March 22, 2013. Where is the Marriage Equality Bill?

Filed in National by Delaware Dem on March 23, 2013 • 1 Comment

Here is the third update to the PDD-DL Vote Tracker, to reflect the action that has taken place since the General Assembly returned from the Budget hearing recess during February and early March.

One bill you will not see on the chart below is the Marriage Equality Bill. But that is only because it has not been filed yet. It has been reported that Rep. Melanie George Smith will introduce marriage equality legislation during this session. The session ends on June 30, 2013 at midnight. Interestingly, the Supreme Court will likely issue its ruling in two marriage equality cases (Hollingsworth v. Perry is about the constitutionality of California’s Proposition 8 and United States v. Windsor argues that the so-called Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional) on or about the same day, as the Court usually holds its most important or controversial decisions for the very last day of its term, which also ends at the end of June (remember last year with the Obamacare ruling, it was on June 28). One thought I had was that Rep. Smith would wait until the ruling to introduce the legislation as the worst the Court could do is return the issue of marriage equality to the states. But I would think Smith and other advocates would not want to wait until to last minute to introduce and then vote on the bill.

So we are probably looking at April, after the Easter break. Come inside for the full chart.