I am not a fan of marriage ...

K

kirk wallace

kirk wallace
But really nice to see SCOTUS do the right thing. But Justice Thomas's dissent is chilling. In any event, Mark & I got an extra kick of pleasure at lunch in Copenhagen when the news came. After more than 30 years we could even be married in Alabama.

BTW, thanks to Oswaldo, I went for the '97 Poyeux for the red. Hauntingly beautiful on first sip and then after 90-110 minutes in the decanter, it was great on all fronts . No doubt many years ahead, but what a great wine even now. (By the further way, if you get the chance at all, Geranium is a truly magnificent restaurant. I am not going to rank it versus noma, but both give huge pleasure in different ways.)
 
My favorite reactions were over on the WB Politics board:

CB: I'm keeping Scalia's dissent, in case I ever swallow poison and have to induce vomiting.

HC: I am generally ok any time Scalia is writing a dissent.

And I started crying after reading this:

"No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.

The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit is reversed.

It is so ordered."
 
I've said as much on FB already, but I prophesy that that paragraph will go down in history as one of the court's most memorable. And Clarence Thomas's dissent will stand as Exhibit A for why he was a bad choice for a Supreme Court justice.

Mark Lipton
 
Gratz to Kennedy for swinging the right way. Among the naysayers I found Alito's dissent far more objectionable than Scalia's showboating or Thomas' peculiar oneupsmanship.
 
originally posted by MLipton:
I've said as much on FB already, but I prophesy that that paragraph will go down in history as one of the court's most memorable. And Clarence Thomas's dissent will stand as Exhibit A for why he was a bad choice for a Supreme Court justice.

Mark Lipton
Click to expand...

i consider the appointment of clarence thomas to the supreme court the single most cynical act by an american president in the last 30+/- years.

if i recall correctly, (always a question) the aba gave thomas a d-minus rating at the time of his nomination and bush said he was the most qualified person he could find for the job.
 
I've been eyeing a bottle of 97 regular CR ("clos"); I take it I should pull the trigger?
 
originally posted by .sasha:
I've been eyeing a bottle of 97 regular CR ("clos"); I take it I should pull the trigger?
Click to expand...

Yes. Here's my note from August 2012 (it may be a little overly enthusiastic, but the 1997 Clos is the most memorable wine I've had in the past 5 years):

Wow. Just . . . wow. The previous wine [1998 CRB Cot] was a monument to pure fruit, this was an even more impressive monument to wine's ability to express fruit with flavors and aromas having nothing to do with fruit. The first sign that we were sharing something special was the wave of silence that followed the bottle around the table, in a couple of cases as speakers cut off mid-sentence.

Waves of leather and herbs soar from the glass, and it takes me a few minutes before I can tear myself away and take a sip. It is totally seamless and constantly changing, flashing different expressions of non-fruit elements like an annoyed octopus. A touch of bell pepper, as it does in New Orleans trinity, brings complexity without overwhelming the other elements, then olives and smoke pop in.

I find myself swirling constantly, frequently lifting the glass to inhale another breath of this intoxicating perfume. Words just can't do justice to the experience this wine provided.

After a long stretch of silence punctuated by exclamations of the next glorious non-fruit flavor or aroma to appear, we raised our glasses to toast the memory of Joe Dressner, who was responsible for so many of the wines we enjoyed, and especially for this almost perfect experience.
 
originally posted by robert ames:
originally posted by MLipton:
I've said as much on FB already, but I prophesy that that paragraph will go down in history as one of the court's most memorable. And Clarence Thomas's dissent will stand as Exhibit A for why he was a bad choice for a Supreme Court justice.

Mark Lipton
Click to expand...

i consider the appointment of clarence thomas to the supreme court the single most cynical act by an american president in the last 30+/- years.

if i recall correctly, (always a question) the aba gave thomas a d-minus rating at the time of his nomination and bush said he was the most qualified person he could find for the job.
Click to expand...

A majority of the ABA evaluation committee found him "qualified," while 2 members found him "unqualified." That said, the ABA evaluation committee has been marred for a long time by findings that seem more attributable to partisanship than an objective evaluation of a nominee's qualifications in a number of instances. From my recollection of Thomas's experience, a finding of "qualified" instead of "well-qualified" was probably reasonable; the finding of "unqualified" was questionable.

I'll add that Thomas's opinion was far from completely meritless, as some of his criticisms of the Kennedy opinion were warranted (though others weren't, and his "dignity" statements were irrelevant as Kennedy was using the term in a completely different context). There are flaws in Kennedy's reasoning on both the due process and equal protection fronts. But the ultimate conclusion of Thomas's opinion was wrong, while Kennedy's was right. Despite some holes in his analysis, the Court's holding is a triumphant victory for freedom, equality, and love.
 
After a lot of discussion and analysis, the NAACP Legal Defense & Education Fund, Inc. (separate from the NAACP) opposed Thomas being confirmed. The press conference is here: http://www.c-span.org/video/?20443-1/opposition-judge-thomas-nomination It starts at about 5 min. Elaine Jones, as usual, is terrific. (IIRC, the LDF also released an outline of qualifications of all supreme court nominees going back to the Civil War (maybe at bit earlier even) and concluded that Thomas was the least well qualified. The conclusion was particularly difficult but important for them, given that Thurgood Marshal was both their first Director Counsel and it was Marshal's seat that Thomas was nominated to fill.
 
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