Justice Kennedy Suggests Children Of Same-Sex Couples Suffer ‘Immediate Legal Injury’ From Ban

Early in this morning’s Supreme Court oral argument over the constitutionality of the California ban on same-sex marriage, Justice Anthony Kennedy suggested the children of same-sex couples suffer “immediate legal injury” from Proposition 8, according to Bloomberg. “They want their parents to have full recognition and status,” Kennedy said, adding that the “voice of those children” is important.

Kennedy, who is likely the swing vote, also suggested he was very uncomfortable striking down Proposition 8, according to a tweet from SCOTUSblog. Kennedy raised dismissing the case, which would leave in place the lower court ruling invalidating the same-sex marriage ban, but would not set any precedent about equal rights or marriage equality.

In response to Kennedy’s assertion, Justice Antonin Scalia questioned whether children would actually be harmed by Proposition 8, saying there is “considerable disagreement” about the “consequences” of same-sex marriage. “I take no position on whether it’s harmful or not, but it’s certainly true there is no answer to that scientific question,” he said, according to tweets from the Huffington Post’s Ryan Reilly.

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Boehner Agrees With Obama: The Debt Crisis Is Not ‘Immediate’

The arrival of budget season has brought debt panic back to the Beltway. But President Obama threw cold water on the matter last week, telling ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that the United States does not face “immediate crisis in terms of debt.” And this morning, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) essentially told ABC’s Martha Raddatz he agrees with Obama, calling the debt crisis “looming,” but not “immediate.”

“We do not have an immediate debt crisis,” Boehner said on ABC News’s “This Week With George Stephanopoulos.” “But we all know that we have one looming. And we have — one looming — because we have entitlement programs that are not sustainable in their current form. They’re gonna go bankrupt.” [...]

“[President Obama's] point, as he went on to say in that interview, is that we don’t — we don’t really need to do anything at this point. And I would argue that we do need to do something,” said the House speaker.

Debt is already projected to remain at or below its current share of the economy for the next decade, and it’s good that Boehner is standing in agreement with the president on that point.

Unfortunately, the budget the House Republicans just released does not reflect this realization. It cuts all spending that isn’t Medicare, Social Security, or the military down to near-historic lows over the next ten years. America’s economy remains in the doldrums, leaving the unemployment rate at 7.7 percent (it has never been that high for that long since the Great Depression) and all the real-world evidence we have indicates that austerity in depressions cripples economic growth. If everyone agrees the debt crisis is not immediate, then job growth and economic revival should be topping deficit reduction on the country’s list of priorities.

Nor is there a great deal of evidence to back up Boehner’s distinction between an “immediate” and “looming” debt crisis. The long-term projections of mounting debt he and other D.C. lawmakers rely on are in fact riddled with dramatic assumptions and uncertainties about the future behavior of both Congress and the economy.

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PHOTOS: 35,000 Protesters Demand Immediate Climate Action At ‘Largest Climate Rally In U.S. History’

Credit: 350.org

On Sunday, an estimated crowd of 35,000 people joined the Forward On Climate rally in Washington, DC, where protesters delivered a clear message to President Obama: Take immediate action on climate change by rejecting the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. Organizers of the rally described as the “largest in U.S. history” also called on the president to issue overdue Clean Air Act standards to limit carbon pollution from power plants.

At the rally, 350.org President Bill McKibben said the “easiest, simplest, purest action” Obama could take on the climate is to reject”this long fuse to one of the biggest carbon bombs on earth,” the Keystone XL pipeline.

View more photos from today’s rally:

Credit: Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP

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