Discussion for article #240121
That’s what you call playing both ends to meet the middle.
If I were to neglect some portion of my job because I found it unpleasant and said “let someone else do the dirty work because it’s against my beliefs” I’d expect to be fired.
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I have a few laws I’d like to pass on, but that’s really not an option. Maybe for Trump it is because he’s super rich and the super rich are not like you and me, but for most of us, including 4 times married Kim Davis, the hypocritical serial adulterer (according to her own church), just passing on laws you don’t like is not an option. As she is now learning.
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maybe its time to make people running for President pass a Constitutional literacy test…
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And the people in the media asking them questions. As I understand it, since 1803 the right of the Supreme Court to have the last word in these things has not been a matter of opinion.
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Trump said that it is “a very, very sticky situation,” and that Davis should either be allowed to opt out of issuing same-sex marriage licenses, or gay couples should have to travel to a clerk nearby for a license.
Couples having to travel to a nearby clerk is the very definition of “separate but equal” that the Supreme Court found unconstitutional in 1954’s Brown decision.
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And maybe it can’t be said too often—she’s not going to jail because of her beliefs. She could assert and assuage her beliefs in any number of ways, but she chose the one that involved breaking the law and defying the entire court system of the United States. She went to jail because she chose to defy a federal judge. Anyone who does that can expect to go to jail, no matter what he or she believes about how the universe came about and so forth.
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Derp Walk! (or is it waddle?)
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I wanna take a pass on a law… the income tax law… Mmmmkay?
No…didn’t think so…rats!
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Hey, Donald, would you let one of your employees disobey the law?
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" or gay couples should have to travel to a clerk nearby for a license."
So they live in that county,pay taxes in that county and shouldn’t get the services they pay for ?
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Or refuse to do some aspect of their job?
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Is that like burning the candle at both ends?
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YEP!!!
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"take a pass."
Yea, like when King Whatshisname signed the Magna Kinda…
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In theory, a clerk should fulfill all the duties of her job. In practice, if she had taken the route outlined by Trump (and basically offered to her by Judge Bunning yesterday), we would not have this conversation.
If she had quietly retreated into her office, closed the door and let her staff handle any SSM licence there would be no issue to talk about. Everybody would be happy. Nobody would even have noticed. None of the same-sex couples whould have made a stink out of the “slight” of having her subordinates sign the licence. She could have been sick on that day. Or out of town, for all we would know.
SHE picked this particular fight by not letting her staff handle it in the reasonable way Trump suggested (as weird as it is to put the words “Trump” and “reasonable” in the same sentence). And I am pretty sure that something like this is currently happening in more than one clerk’s office around the country; finding practical solutions which are in tune with the Supreme Court’s authoritative interpretation of the constitution while also preserving the fragile sensibilities of the Christianists.
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She doesn’t want to "opt out’ you idiot! She wants it her way. If she had been willing to let the other clerks take care of the same-sex applications, she’d have slept in her own bed last night.
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Yes. Remarkably, Trump’s response here is as squishy as Jeb!'s is.
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Actually Trump is giving the same answer the judge gave.
Nobody was forcing Davis to issue the licenses personally. It wasn’t just that she wouldn’t issue them, it is unlikely the clerk does that herself very often. She wouldn’t let her staff issue them either.
Ultimately, if every person in the office took a personal exemption, Davis would be the one who had to issue a license because she is the person in charge. But that wasn’t the situation in this case.
Point is, Davis is not Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat, she is the manager of the bus company threatening to fire any driver who lets her sit down. She is a bigot and is paying the price for her bigotry.
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I notice the Donald and Jeb! gave essentially the same answer.