Month: August 2007

A close call in Iraq leaves me wondering ‘what if?’. What if this attack had succeeded?

Congressional sources confirmed late Thursday that a military transport plane carrying three Republican senators and a Democratic representative was attacked by either missiles or rocket-propelled grenades after taking off from the Baghdad airport.

Sens. Richard C. Shelby, R-Ala., James M. Inhofe, R-Okla., Mel Martinez, R-Fla., and Rep. Robert E. “Bud” Cramer, D-Ala., were uninjured after their C-130 transport plane took evasive measures and dispatched flares to avoid the incoming fire.

Shelby recounted the incident in a conference call with reporters. “I saw the red glare of a shell or a missile coming up toward our plane,” he said, “Then I saw a flare pop out and our plane just started moving and changing directions and trying to move.”

I’m pleased that the congressional delegation escaped with their lives, but I can’t help but wonder what effect it would have had if they had not.

The thing about Sen. Larry “Wide Stance” Craig (R-Idaho) that’s been bothering me the most is the way he’s been treated by his own party. Odds are good that he needs to be changing his nickname from “Wide Stance” to “Last Chance”.  His days may be numbered to the point of being hours, certainly this would a prime Friday News Dump with a long weekend coming.

On second thought yeah, I know.  “Sympathy for the Devil” and all.  He’s a hypocritical self-hating Gooper closet case.  Any United States Senator who gives a press conference to announce to the world that he’s not gay…is gay.  You’re not fooling anybody.  But being a closet case isn’t a crime.  Soliciting sex in a public restroom is a crime, but not anywhere close to the scale of, say, the massive public corruption and graft charges facing Sen. Ted “Series of Tubes” Stevens (R-Alaska).
Now, keep in mind the reasons why ol Larry is being shown the door here, according to hisgood buddy Mitt:

“I think at this stage, the right course is for him to make this decision looking at his own conscience, talking to the people of Idaho, talking to his colleagues in the Senate,” Romney told CNN’s John King in South Carolina. “I’m not one of those. I’m going to let him make that decision.”

Sure Mitt, but you want him gone.  You’re not fooling anyone either.

His distinguished colleagues in the Senate are much more direct:

On Wednesday, three Republican lawmakers, including Sen. John McCain, called on Craig to resign.

Their statements came a day after Craig made his first public statement about pleading guilty to a disorderly conduct charge relating to allegations the Idaho Republican solicited sex in a Minneapolis airport bathroom.

“I believe that he pleaded guilty, and he had the opportunity to plead innocent,” said McCain, of Arizona. “So, I think he should resign. My opinion is that when you plead guilty to a crime you shouldn’t serve.”

“Sen. Craig pled guilty to a crime involving conduct unbecoming a senator. He should resign,” said Minnesota Republican Sen. Norm Coleman.

Republican Rep. Pete Hoekstra of Michigan added: “The voters of Idaho elected Sen. Craig to represent their state and will decide his future in 2008 should he fail to resign.

“However, he also represents the Republican party, and I believe he should step down, as his conduct throughout this matter has been inappropriate for a U.S. senator.”

He’s being served up on a platter for his “crimes.”  The reasons given are of course “conduct unbecoming a Senator” and “pleading guilty to a crime” but the real reason he’s being shown the door has been the fact he’s  gay, and the GOP is violently hostile to gays, period.  They are to be used as a cudgel to enforce “morality” at best case and purged from the party at worst, and nobody in the GOP deserves any sympathy for that systemic bigotry and hatred.

And while that’s a huge problem, my real issue is this: Some have even gone so far on the right to accuse Craig of hypocrisy on being a “values” candidate and are trying to shame him out of office.  To these people, allow me to beat you over the head with the actions of one Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska.

Stevens downplayed the current FBI investigation, which included a raid of his home while he was still in Washington. He also added some new, if sketchy, information to the public record.

 maybe you don’t know that, but I have been involved in them, and we weathered the storms,” Stevens said.

Stevens said this time around he doesn’t know if he’s the target of the investigation.  

“I’m not sure I’m a target yet. I’ve not been told I’m a target. But as a practical matter, the situation — I shouldn’t have answered that question either,” Stevens said. “I was not a target of those other investigations, is what I was saying.”    

Whatever the case now, Stevens said he will be the same senator he has been for Alaska.

“I am focused and effective,” Stevens said. “I think it’d be very difficult to detract any senator from doing his job when he’s in Washington.”    

So while Alaskans wonder where the public corruption probe will end, Stevens seems to have said all that he’s going to say about it.

Yeah, let’s look at Ted here.  “I’ve been involved in other investigations in my 39 years,” he says.  Well gee, that makes me like the guy, 40 years in the Senate and he’s facing a major bribery and corruption charge, and there are of course zero calls for him to step down from McCain or Norm Coleman.  

Let’s review the major fucking malfunction of the GOP.

Lewd behavior in an airport bathroom: Grounds for resignation.

Having your home doubled in size by a contractor in an obvious graft scheme:  Perfectly fine.

Touching a cop’s foot in the crapper:  Out the door, you pervert.

Giving aforementioned contractor services company a $170 million dollar no-bid contract in an area they have zero experience in:  A-OK.

Where’s the outrage against Ted Stevens?  What the hell is wrong with a group of people that will force you to lose your job because you touched a cop’s foot in a bathroom, and will let millions in graft and kickbacks walk scot-free?  If you want to know why people thing the GOP is a bunch of repugnant bigoted jagoffs, you have no further to look than the treatment of Larry Craig versus that of Ted Stevens.

We’ve got a party that will give one of their own the heave-ho for bathroom shenanigans, but four decades of pork, graft, corruption, scandal, and payola?  You get to keep your job through 8 presidential administrations.

Jagoffs.  All of them.

I volunteered for Bill Bradley in 2000. I thought it was absolutely critical that he deny Al Gore the nomination. I believe history has vindicated that appraisal. I know Gore has legions of fans these days, but he still lost to Bush (or won…whatever). In Bill Bradley’s new book, The New America Story, he has a chapter called Why Democrats Don’t. The following excerpts are on the trauma of Reagan’s presidency and the rise of the DLC in response. It shows that Bradley understands the roots of our current problems.

After Reagan won in 1980 and nine Democratic senators were defeated, giving control of the Senate to the Republicans, Democrats lost not just their confidence but some of their convictions as well. Indeed, their pro-government stance of the previous forty-eight years was said to be the cause of the party’s defeat. Ronald Reagan had tapped into the anxiety that many taxpayers felt about the nature of the federal bureaucracy, portraying it as too big, too intrusive, and too wasteful. A kind of Democratic panic ensued. It was as if ‘government’ had become a bad word. Republicans had successfully defined the political moment, and we Democrats increasingly sought to be Republican lite. At the time, few of us seemed to understand the depth of our party’s problem. “In politics,” the late political scientist David Green wrote in The Language of Politics in America: Shaping Political Consciousness from McKinley to Reagan, “real intellectual victory is achieved not by transmitting one’s language to supporters but by transmitting it to critics.” When you adopt your opponents’ definition of the situation, including their premises and even some of the substantive analysis, effective opposition becomes difficult. By 1984, when former vice president Walter Mondale ran, Democrats were no longer in control of the dialogue.

Do you feel like we are in control of the dialogue today? We’re constantly battling a phantom war on terrorism, which is clearly a proxy for a war for influence and resources. Moreover, look at the media. Bradley continues:

The Democratic Party’s reaction to Ronald Reagan shaped a generation of Democratic politicians, as we sought to differentiate ourselves from both Reagan and FDR- Reagan because he was a Republican and FDR because he was a “big spender.” Instead of creating something new that was true to our origins, we tried to split the difference between the legacy of FDR and the political potency of Reagan. The key to doing this was public relations- managing and targeting the message. We became the party of intentions, not results- intent on proclaiming that one or another initiative would improve people’s lives; whether it actually did or not was never determined. If you couldn’t admit the importance of government, then you couldn’t talk about the big things government could do- just talk about a lot of small things important to different segments of the electorate, but don’t risk talking to the electorate as a whole.

In today’s terms, this means tinkering around the edges of the Global War on Terror, but never questioning the underlying premises. It means not asking for single-payer health care, but trying to just enroll more children in some kind of HMO.

One of the early efforts to distance ourselves from the FDR legacy was the Democratic Leadership Council, formed out of discontent with the Democratic National Committee and the perceived necessity to move to the middle- far away from FDR. It started with only a few people. It’s activities consisted primarily of holding conferences that gave politicians a platform to espouse middle-of-the-road positions and generating research papers that sought to bridge the gap between FDR and Reagan. The DLC solicited Democratic officeholders as members and rich, business-friendly Democrats as contributors.

And not only Democratic contributors. It quickly became a way for business-friendly people to hedge their bets and play both sides of the system.

The organization has been run for some twenty years by the same man, Al From, a bright, aggressive former Democratic staffer in the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives. From its beginning, he positioned the organization as the anti-DNC and its members as the new Democratic conservatives. Above all, the DLC has sought to move the party to more eclectic policies that embody modest aspirations. That way, Republicans couldn’t attacks us as big spenders. The DLC attempted to ingratiate itself with business by supporting deregulation in areas of the economy, such as utilities, that had been under government regulation since the 1930’s. It advocated welfare reform, along with an assortment of experimental policies that wouldn’t cost very much. These new Democrats took positions on Social Security and Medicare, on pension policy and health care, elementary and secondary education, and tax reform, but most shied away from using government as a tool to make the country stronger and more just. Sometimes the DLC seemed more anti-liberal than anti-Republican. It was a haven for younger politicians who wished to distinguish themselves from the Old Democrats of the DNC, the custodian of what remained of the old coalition.

Bradley’s analysis is spot-on. The Clintons rose to power on the back of this non-ideological ideology. And Hillary Clinton remains their standard bearer. Above all else, it is this timid political philosophy that is responsible for the Democrats inability to stand up to Bush.

I volunteered for Bill Bradley in 2000. I thought it was absolutely critical that he deny Al Gore the nomination. I believe history has vindicated that appraisal. I know Gore has legions of fans these days, but he still lost to Bush (or won…whatever). In Bill Bradley’s new book, The New America Story, he has a chapter called Why Democrats Don’t. The following excerpts are on the trauma of Reagan’s presidency and the rise of the DLC in response. It shows that Bradley understands the roots of our current problems.

After Reagan won in 1980 and nine Democratic senators were defeated, giving control of the Senate to the Republicans, Democrats lost not just their confidence but some of their convictions as well. Indeed, their pro-government stance of the previous forty-eight years was said to be the cause of the party’s defeat. Ronald Reagan had tapped into the anxiety that many taxpayers felt about the nature of the federal bureaucracy, portraying it as too big, too intrusive, and too wasteful. A kind of Democratic panic ensued. It was as if ‘government’ had become a bad word. Republicans had successfully defined the political moment, and we Democrats increasingly sought to be Republican lite. At the time, few of us seemed to understand the depth of our party’s problem. “In politics,” the late political scientists David Green wrote in The Language of Politics in America: Shaping Political Consciousness from McKinley to Reagan, “real intellectual victory is achieved not by transmitting one’s language to supporters but by transmitting it to critics.” When you adopt your opponents’ definition of the situation, including their premises and even some of the substantive analysis, effective opposition becomes difficult. By 1984, when former vice president Walter Mondale ran, Democrats were no longer in control of the dialogue.

Do you feel like we are in control of the dialogue today? We’re constantly battling a phantom war on terrorism, which is clearly a proxy for a war for influence and resources. Moreover, look at the media. Bradley continues:

The Democratic Party’s reaction to Ronald Reagan shaped a generation of Democratic politicians, as we sought to differentiate ourselves from both Reagan and FDR- Reagan because he was a Republican and FDR because he was a “big spender.” Instead of creating something new that was true to our origins, we tried to split the difference between the legacy of FDR and the political potency of Reagan. The key to doing this was public relations- managing and targeting the message. We became the party of intentions, not results- intent on proclaiming that one or another initiative would improve people’s lives; whether it actually did or not was never determined. If you couldn’t admit the importance of government, then you couldn’t talk about the big things government could do- just talk about a lot of small things important to different segments of the electorate, but don’t risk talking to the electorate as a whole.

In today’s terms, this means tinkering around the edges of the Global War on Terror, but never questioning the underlying premises. It means not asking for single-payer health care, but trying to just enroll more children in some kind of HMO.

One of the early efforts to distance ourselves from the FDR legacy was the Democratic Leadership Council, formed out of discontent with the Democratic National Committee and the perceived necessity to move to the middle- far away from FDR. It started with only a few people. It’s activities consisted primarily of holding conferences that gave politicians a platform to espouse middle-of-the-road positions and generating research papers that sought to bridge the gap between FDR and Reagan. The DLC solicited Democratic officeholders as members and rich, business-friendly Democrats as contributors.

And not only Democratic contributors. It quickly became a way for business-friendly people to hedge their bets and play both sides of the system.

The organization has been run for some twenty years by the same man, Al From, a bright, aggressive former Democratic staffer in the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives. From its beginning, he positioned the organization as the anti-DNC and its members as the new Democratic conservatives. Above all, the DLC has sought to move the party to more eclectic policies that embody modest aspirations. That way, Republicans couldn’t attacks us as big spenders. The DLC attempted to ingratiate itself with business by supporting deregulation in areas of the economy, such as utilities, that had been under government regulation since the 1930’s. It advocated welfare reform, along with an assortment of experimental policies that wouldn’t cost very much. These new Democrats took positions on Social Security and Medicare, on pension policy and health care, elementary and secondary education, and tax reform, but most shied away from using government as a tool to make the country stronger and more just. Sometimes the DLC seemed more anti-liberal than anti-Republican. It was a haven for younger politicians who wished to distinguish themselves from the Old Democrats of the DNC, the custodian of what remained of the old coalition.

Bradley’s analysis is spot-on.

I volunteered for Bill Bradley in 2000. I thought it was absolutely critical that he deny Al Gore the nomination. I believe history has vindicated that appraisal. I know Gore has legions of fans these days, but he still lost to Bush (or won…whatever). In Bill Bradley’s new book, The New America Story, he has a chapter called Why Democrats Don’t. The following excerpts are on the trauma of Reagan’s presidency and the rise of the DLC in response. It shows that Bradley understands the roots of our current problems.

After Reagan won in 1980 and nine Democratic senators were defeated, giving control of the Senate to the Republicans, Democrats lost not just their confidence but some of their convictions as well. Indeed, their pro-government stance of the previous forty-eight years was said to be the cause of the party’s defeat. Ronald Reagan had tapped into the anxiety that many taxpayers felt about the nature of the federal bureaucracy, portraying it as too big, too intrusive, and too wasteful. A kind of Democratic panic ensued. It was as if ‘government’ had become a bad word. Republicans had successfully defined the political moment, and we Democrats increasingly sought to be Republican lite. At the time, few of us seemed to understand the depth of our party’s problem. “In politics,” the late political scientists David Green wrote in The Language of Politics in America: Shaping Political Consciousness from McKinley to Reagan, “real intellectual victory is achieved not by transmitting one’s language to supporters but by transmitting it to critics.” When you adopt your opponents’ definition of the situation, including their premises and even some of the substantive analysis, effective opposition becomes difficult. By 1984, when former vice president Walter Mondale ran, Democrats were no longer in control of the dialogue.

Do you feel like we are in control of the dialogue today? We’re constantly battling a phantom war on terrorism, which is clearly a proxy for a war for influence and resources. Moreover, look at the media. Bradley continues:

The Democratic Party’s reaction to Ronald Reagan shaped a generation of Democratic politicians, as we sought to differentiate ourselves from both Reagan and FDR- Reagan because he was a Republican and FDR because he was a “big spender.” Instead of creating something new that was true to our origins, we tried to split the difference between the legacy of FDR and the political potency of Reagan. The key to doing this was public relations- managing and targeting the message. We became the party of intentions, not results- intent on proclaiming that one or another initiative would improve people’s lives; whether it actually did or not was never determined. If you couldn’t admit the importance of government, then you couldn’t talk about the big things government could do- just talk about a lot of small things important to different segments of the electorate, but don’t risk talking to the electorate as a whole.

In today’s terms, this means tinkering around the edges of the Global War on Terror, but never questioning the underlying premises. It means not asking for single-payer health care, but trying to just enroll more children in some kind of HMO.

One of the early efforts to distance ourselves from the FDR legacy was the Democratic Leadership Council, formed out of discontent with the Democratic National Committee and the perceived necessity to move to the middle- far away from FDR. It started with only a few people. It’s activities consisted primarily of holding conferences that gave politicians a platform to espouse middle-of-the-road positions and generating research papers that sought to bridge the gap between FDR and Reagan. The DLC solicited Democratic officeholders as members and rich, business-friendly Democrats as contributors.

I volunteered for Bill Bradley in 2000. I thought it was absolutely critical that he deny Al Gore the nomination. I believe history has vindicated that appraisal. I know Gore has legions of fans these days, but he still lost to Bush (or won…whatever). In Bill Bradley’s new book, The New America Story, he has a chapter called Why Democrats Don’t. The following excerpts are on the trauma of Reagan’s presidency and the rise of the DLC in response. It shows that Bradley understands the roots of our current problems.

After Reagan won in 1980 and nine Democratic senators were defeated, giving control of the Senate to the Republicans, Democrats lost not just their confidence but some of their convictions as well. Indeed, their pro-government stance of the previous forty-eight years was said to be the cause of the party’s defeat. Ronald Reagan had tapped into the anxiety that many taxpayers felt about the nature of the federal bureaucracy, portraying it as too big, too intrusive, and too wasteful. A kind of Democratic panic ensued. It was as if ‘government’ had become a bad word. Republicans had successfully defined the political moment, and we Democrats increasingly sought to be Republican lite. At the time, few of us seemed to understand the depth of our party’s problem. “In politics,” the late political scientists David Green wrote in The Language of Politics in America: Shaping Political Consciousness from McKinley to Reagan, “real intellectual victory is achieved not by transmitting one’s language to supporters but by transmitting it to critics.” When you adopt your opponents’ definition of the situation, including their premises and even some of the substantive analysis, effective opposition becomes difficult. By 1984, when former vice president Walter Mondale ran, Democrats were no longer in control of the dialogue.

Do you feel like we are in control of the dialogue today? We’re constantly battling a phantom war on terrorism, which is clearly a proxy for a war for influence and resources. Moreover, look at the media. Bradley continues:

The Democratic Party’s reaction to Ronald Reagan shaped a generation of Democratic politicians, as we sought to differentiate ourselves from both Reagan and FDR- Reagan because he was a Republican and FDR because he was a “big spender.” Instead of creating something new that was true to our origins, we tried to split the difference between the legacy of FDR and the political potency of Reagan. The key to doing this was public relations- managing and targeting the message. We became the party of intentions, not results- intent on proclaiming that one or another initiative would improve people’s lives; whether it actually did or not was never determined. If you couldn’t admit the importance of government, then you couldn;t talk about the big things government coud do- just talk about a lot of small things important to different segments of the electorate, but don’t risk talking to the electorate as a whole.

I volunteered for Bill Bradley in 2000. I thought it was absolutely critical that he deny Al Gore the nomination. I believe history has vindicated that appraisal. I know Gore has legions of fans these days, but he still lost to Bush (or won…whatever). In Bill Bradley’s new book, The New America Story, he has a chapter called Why Democrats Don’t. The following excerpts are on the trauma of Reagan’s presidency and the rise of the DLC in response. It shows that Bradley understands the roots of our current problems.

After Reagan won in 1980 and nine Democratic senators were defeated, giving control of the Senate to the Republicans, Democrats lost not just their confidence but some of their convictions as well. Indeed, their pro-government stance of the previous forty-eight years was said to be the cause of the party’s defeat. Ronald Reagan had tapped into the anxiety that many taxpayers felt about the nature of the federal bureaucracy, portraying it as too big, too intrusive, and too wasteful. A kind of Democratic panic ensued. It was as if ‘government’ had become a bad word. Republicans had successfully defined the political moment, and we Democrats increasingly sought to be Republican lite. At the time, few of us seemed to understand the depth of our party’s problem. “In politics,” the late political scientists David Green wrote in The Language of Politics in America: Shaping Political Consciousness from McKinley to Reagan, “real intellectual victory is achieved not by transmitting one’s language to supporters but by transmitting it to critics.” When you adopt your opponents’ definition of the situation, including their premises and even some of the substantive analysis, effective opposition becomes difficult. By 1984, when former vice president Walter Mondale ran, Democrats were no longer in control of the dialogue.

Crossposted from Left Toon Lane, Bilerico Project & My Left Wing

click to enlarge
In Parts One and Two, I discussed the support Kucinich has and the irrational fear also associated with electing Kucinich. In Part Three, I discussed Kucinich’s time as Mayor of Cleveland and how the GOP slander machine stating “he drove Cleveland into bankruptcy” is an out right lie. Today we are moving on to the real important stuff – issues.

I have heard a lot of talk from the candidates stating “any Democrat running for President will be better than Bush.” I believe that sentiment is true. But I also believe there are varying degrees of HOW MUCH BETTER they will be than Bush. In the comments in the previous parts of this series, there are claims that the changes we (The People) want to make to this country “can’t be done.” “The shift is too fast, these things will take time to change.” Oh I hope not.

We have 50 million people in this nation without health care. The rest of us have health insurance that is precarious. My wife just got a letter from our policy holder, Blue Cross, asking whether her recent yearly physical was the result of a work related injury – she has been out of the workforce for over ten years, yet we had to go through the damn motions with these chuckle-heads to get the claim paid. If it was something serious like cancer, I can’t imagine the red tape that would get thrown at our face. With Americans daily needing health care that either allows them to live or die, this is not a problem we can gradually ease our way out of. We need swift, decisive legislation and leadership to get us out of this mess. Kucinich is the lone candidate that has universal health care for all as part of his platform – everyone else is offering “insurance.” I have enough of insurance. Haven’t you?

Our jobs are being sucked out of this country at an alarming rate. A very alarming rate. When I was growing up in the real town of Dobson, NC, the town of 1,200 people was teeming with textile mills. They were everywhere. Even the gas station across from the court house had rented out one of the car repair bays to a guy who was making socks day and night. Jobs were plentiful, parents could send their kids to UNC or NC State and there was enough money to retire at 60. That was the horrible days of the Carter Administration in 1980. When Reagan got into office, the borders began to open for business and the jobs from my hometown were siphoned off and weren’t replaced with new jobs. Now, the number one industry in North Carolina is logging. People in that Congressional District (NC-05) have had to go through “skill retraining” several times since then. You simply can’t have a single career anymore in rural America. Hell, you can’t even keep the same employer for more than four years – right about when you would receive matching funds for your 401K you find yourself out of work. Now, 27 years later, our economic base, the middle class has been pushed off a cliff and they (we) are tumbling toward a very nasty end. Our open border policies need to be clamped shut and not over the span of three decades. We need to exit NAFTA, CAFTA, GATT and the WTO today, now, 10 minutes ago. Which candidate has this as a policy? Take a guess. Kucinich. And oddly enough, this actually makes him appealing to conservatives.

This brings us to the mother-fucking war. BushCo wants another $50 billion on top of all the other requests. Hillary wants to keep troops there, Obama wants to take our time getting out of Iraq. Biden wants to split Iraq into three pieces and keep troops there (that means we will be fighting a six front civil war). No thanks. We need out, we need out now. Kucinich is the only one willing to state the obvious – the war was a failure and we need to get out. He was the only one in the race not snookered into voting for the damn thing to begin with. Hillary was for the war up until six months before the 2006 election. If it took her that long to figure out the war was an idiotic idea, then for me, she doesn’t have the mental capabilities to get this nation  out of the cesspool of despair we are in.

If you look at Kucinich’s voting record and his anthology of submitted legislation over the past 10 years, they read as if written by someone with prescient abilities. I am not saying he is a soothsayer or a prophet from Ohio, I am saying he is one smart guy and we need more of people like him in Congress, not less.

Our nation is in serious trouble and we have long since passed the point where half-measures would make any difference. Unless we get a President that is willing to actually take, Honest-To-God bold steps, we may be seeing the last days of Jefferson’s America.

Hillary, Obama and Edwards would be an improvement to what we currently have in the White House, but their histories show they are ill-equipped to handle the challenges ahead of us.

Only Dennis Kucinich has risked ridicule and even his political career to do the right thing. His political past has been nothing BUT a series of career-ending decisions, but every decision has been for the benefit for the citizens, never corporate interests. That is why he keeps getting re-elected.

He is the only one that has ever gone out on a limb for We The People. Now, I wonder how many VOTERS will join him? How many will join the Second American Revolution?

A little good news this morning.

Polk County Judge Robert Hanson struck down Iowa’s prohibition on same-sex marriage Thursday.

In his 63-page decision, Hanson wrote that the statute excluding same-sex couples from marriage “violates Plaintiff’s due process and equal protection rights for the aforementioned reasons including, but not limited to, the absence of a rational relationship to the achievement of any legitimate governmental interest.” Therefore the law is “unconstitutional and invalid.”

The case was filed by civil rights group Lambda Legal on behalf of six same-sex couples and their families. Each couple was denied a marriage license from Polk County officials on the grounds that they did not meet the gender requirements according to Iowa law.

Plaintiffs argued in court that the gender requirements violate the Iowa Constitution’s guarantees of equal protection and due process and that they inhibit the couples from taking care of each other and their families.

Next step, Iowa Supreme Court.