Just when we thought nothing would happen Congress, the Senate at least, passed a bill. They were able to agree on an immigration bill by a sizeable majority, 68-32. And we didn’t think they could get a 60+ vote to agree on what time it was.
Of course, all is not sweetness and light on Capitol Hill. Speaker John Boehner, ever the obstructionist, said the House had no intention of agreeing to the Senate bill. That’s just so much political posturing; an ever decreasing effort to give the illusion that he is in control of his own party.
Virtually no bill proposed by either arm of Congress is approved without going to a conference committee. The law requires that the two houses pass the identical bill and that requires that even minor wording has to be ironed out by the conference committee. There are representatives of both chambers, usual senior members of standing committees who will hash out something on which all can agree, and then the bill will be passed.
Despite Mr. Boehner’s blustering the House will put something on the table that the committee must grind into a compromise. Even the House Republicans recognize that not to pass some form of immigration reform will be a suicidal gesture in next year’s House election. Failure of immigration reform and the Tea Party tide of 2010 will be turned into a great gurgle as it is washed down the drain.
To be sure, the more than 1200 page bill passed by the Senate is far from perfect and will need reworking by the conference committee but something will pass both branches and the President will sign it. It’s late in coming but better late than losing the election for years to come.
Then the Supreme Court came through with three rulings that are as important as any in recent memory. The ill-founded Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) passed during the Clinton administration was appropriately struck down with a 5-4 vote, with Justice Kennedy being the swing vote. This leaves in place the prohibition of same sex marriage in 36 states, Virginia unfortunately among them.
The trend is clear: the repeal of the ban against same sex marriage now seems to have an irreversible momentum. Those states that persist in forbidding it will soon be in the minority and the flight of young people who have partners of the same sex will be a huge drain on the talent pool of the recalcitrant states. I hope that Virginia will recognize that and repeal the amendment to our constitution that was passed in the 1990s.
A second 5-4 ruling, read by Chief Justice Roberts upheld the California court’s ruling that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional in outlawing same-sex marriage. That ruling was based on the technicality that the activists filing Hollingsworth v Perry (no relation) had no standing to be heard by the Supreme Court. Even to a non-lawyer one would have thought that would have been obvious before it ever got to the Supreme Court. One might suspect that it will be back, but DOMA sets a precedent that the Supreme Court is going to leave that issue to the states.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 took a hit when the Court by a 5-4 decision with Chief Justice Roberts reading the opinion that freed nine states, mostly southern, to allow amending their election laws without prior federal approval. This was a key part of the original act, but the Court ruled that the data on which such a provision was written are now out of date, therefore invalid. It will be up to Congress to re-write the law to be sure that there is no slippage of voting rights in the states where egregious violations were the local law of the land. That was fifty years ago. Times have changed and no thinking person should believe we’re going back to fire hoses and dogs.
It was a momentous week in Washington and one which will long be remembered. Much work must yet be done. We should all be comforted that the process is working. We may well not agree with some of the decisions, but no one took to the streets with torches. Dissenting comments have been heard far and wide, the print sometimes has been smoking, but no one has been arrested. Democracy does work. It is, as Winston Churchill said, “Democracy is the worst form of government . . . except for all the rest.”
This Fourth of July, let us all remember what it has been sacrificed for us to reach this freedom and never take it for granted.
– Hayden Hollingsworth