Adam Serwer writes about the NAACP's newly taken stance against Proposition 8:
The NAACP still hasn't endorsed gay marriage -- but this is the strongest stance it has taken against laws that would prohibit the practice. The distinction is meant to alleviate tension between board members who are religiously opposed to same-sex marriage. But even so, several board members expressed displeasure with the letter [Chairman Julian] Bond wrote to the California Legislature. In the letter, Bond writes, "Proposition 8 subverts … basic and necessary safeguards, unjustly putting all Americans, particularly vulnerable minorities, at risk of discrimination by a majority show of hands."
Harold Meyerson argues in favor of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA):
The bill is essential to any sustainable economic recovery, as unions offer the nation its best chance to attain broadly shared prosperity. (After all, the only period in American history in which productivity gains were widely shared was also the only period of high unionization -- the three decades after World War II, which saw the creation of history's first middle-class majority.)
EFCA is an essential step toward simplifying organizing and restoring workers to the center of the process. It wouldn't eliminate the need for the corporate researchers or the community organizers or global campaigns. But it would give workers who want to form a union in their workplace a shot at doing it without the kind of years-long, worldwide struggles that are now necessary to enable workers to bargain collectively.
And Sarah Posner offers scenes from CPAC, the annual conference for conservatives:
[The] rhetoric at CPAC had [an] apocalyptic flavor. Sen. Jim DeMint, a Republican from South Carolina, complained, "A nation that raises its children in government schools cannot expect its people to stand for the principles of freedom." Rep. Paul Ryan, a Republican from Wisconsin, added, "The laws of nature and of nature's God are the only touchstones of truth," and "the purpose of government is to secure these natural rights." But when "government goes beyond its high mission," it "replaces nature's God with a regulatory state."
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--The Editors
