Pab Sungenis
Pab Sungenis's Journal
If Chris Christie wants a referendum on whether or not I can get married
I want a referendum on whether or not he can eat pie.
Hey, Uncle Sam! You owe us $1,500.00 in tax refunds!
Just prepared our Form 1040X for 2010 and 2011 to amend our filing statuses to "Married, Filing Jointly." Reason for amended return in Part III? "Amended to change filing status for both parties as a result of Supreme Court decision in 'United States v. Windsor' on 6/26/13"
As a result of the change in filing status, we should have additional tax refunds coming of $302.00 for 2010 and $1,235 for 2011, making a grand total of $1,537.00 we were overtaxed because we were allowed (in fact, required) to file state taxes as "Married" but prevented from doing so for our Federal taxes.
I had these ready to go in case things went our way today. I will be preparing our 2012 amended returns in the next few days, but wanted to have these in immediately.
DOMA had no severability clause!
Nowadays, bills are usually written with "severability clauses," which state that if one section of the statute is struck down, the others remain in effect. This became a major issue during the fight against the Affordable Care Act, because ACA had no severability clause so the Court could have killed the entire thing with just one ruling against one part of it.
I just went back and reviewed the text of DOMA. It had no severability clause!
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/104/hr3396/text
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
SEC. 2. POWERS RESERVED TO THE STATES.
SEC. 3. DEFINITION OF MARRIAGE.
No severability. I didn't bother to quote the whole thing, even though it's only one page. Go read it for yourself to verify.
So even though the Courts have ruled that Section III is unconstitutional, the entire Act died today. In fact, the full text of the Windsor decision at http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/12pdf/12-307_g2bh.pdf specifically states that "the statute" is invalidated, not just Section 3.
That means that full faith and credit comes into play! We won the whole enchilada, although it might take a couple of other court cases to force some states' hands.
Tweet from August J. Pollak
https://twitter.com/AugustJPollak/status/349894181528944640
The only way to fix the Voting Rights Act decision.
Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to safeguard the right to vote.
Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled (two-thirds of each House concurring therein), That the following article is proposed as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which shall be valid to all intents and purposes as part of the Constitution when ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States:
"Article--
"Section 1: The right of citizens of sufficient age of the United States to vote shall not be denied, inhibited, infringed, nor abridged by the United States or by any State.
"Section 2: Congress shall have the power to enforce this Amendment by appropriate legislation."
Only an Amendment establishing an affirmative Right to Vote can protect us.
For the "blame Nader" crowd today, remember....
...there was no way that a Republican appointed Justice would have retired under Gore. In fact, there were no vacancies during Bush's first term, so there would have been no changes during Gore's term.
If he had been re-elected (which in and of itself is not a certainty), O'Connor would never have retired. At best, he would have had one appointment with Rehnquist's passing, which would have probably been filibustered by the Republicans anyhow. And then who knows who he would have appointed to the Court?
So if you want to deflect the blame from where it belongs (the Third Way DLC crowd who insist the Left has nowhere to go) maybe you should point it at John Kerry, who ran the most inept Presidential Campaign since Walter Mondale. After all, if he had beaten Bush we wouldn't have had Roberts or Alito, either.
And there goes the Voting Rights Act.
Section 4 unconstitutional. Voting to strike it down are Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, Kennedy, and Alito.
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