Year: 2015

[C]onservatives have little choice but to accept legal and political setbacks over marriage equality, but they’re making it as clear as ever that given the opportunity they’d reverse those trends, ban gay marriage all over again and probably bring back the sodomy laws to boot. Look at the huge field of Republican proto-candidates for president. Do any of them actually support marriage equality? Sure, they’ll not talk about it or mumble about it being a state matter or engage in various other evasions, but they’re a long way from “surrendering.” And that’s even more obvious on the abortion issue where (a) the only meaningful difference among 99% of Republican politicians is about whether 99% or 100% of abortions should be banned; (b) Republican controlled state governments are beavering away at new restrictions that strike mainly at the availability of any abortion services; and (c) the right to choose hangs by a thread in a Supreme Court that any Republican President would be lynched for failing to tilt with his or her next appointment into a reversal of Roe v. Wade. All this weepy talk of being attacked while trying to surrender also misses the even more obvious point that conservatives are hardly impotent politically; they do sorta control Congress and a majority of states. So no, there’s no real “surrender” going on here, and Lord knows conservatives aren’t withdrawing from political combat[.] What they are doing is better understood as a strategic retreat: unable to outlaw or (increasingly) even to stigmatize gay behavior as a matter of law, they’re working to protect private discrimination. It’s what a big part of their constituency expects of them, and it’s the obvious next front—not some sort of Appomattox—in the culture wars.

The Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen threatens to turn what has been a civil war between competing branches of Islam into a wider regional struggle involving Iran. It could also destroy any hope of stability in Yemen. Even before the Saudis and their Arab allies started the bombing, Yemen was in severe distress; on Tuesday, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights warned that it is now on the brink of collapse.

Senator Thomas "Tom" Carper (D-Del.) announced Wednesday morning that he would not seek reelection in 2016. Carper, 68, is the senior United States Senator from Delaware, serving since 2001. His surprise departure at the end of the term could set off a scramble among his top Delaware politicians to succeed one of the longest-serving elected officials in the state. A towering figure in Delaware politics, Carper served in the United States House of Representatives from 1983 to 1993 and was the 71st Governor of Delaware from 1993 to 2001.