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It's one of those rare weeks in Washington where Congress deigns to actually do their job and vote on some stuff... before lapsing back into their default status, which is of course: "taking weeks and weeks off, on vacation."
Ireland may be about to make some history. At the end of this week, citizens of the Republic of Ireland will vote to either give same-sex marriages full and equal rights with opposite-sex marriages, or they will vote the idea down and continue the status quo of not allowing gay people to get married. If the referendum passes, Ireland will become the first country to vote for full marriage equality by means of direct referendum in the entire world. The "Yes" vote is currently polling better than 2-to-1 against the "No" vote, so the chances of passage at this point have to be seen as pretty good.
There's a crass and cynical formula for any given political candidate to follow, when any political issue is being discussed. It goes something like this (yes, I made up all this terminology, so please bear with me):
After a somewhat disappointing March in public opinion polling, President Obama has regained ground in April. His monthly average job approval was up, and his job disapproval numbers went down even more. All around, it was a pretty good month, but to put it in perspective he's really just roughly gotten back to where his numbers were in February. Let's take a quick look at the new chart.
Last week, the field of officially-announced Democratic presidential candidates doubled in size, from one person to two. This week, the Republican presidential field is likewise going to double, from three candidates to six. Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and Marco Rubio have all previously officially announced their candidacies, and this week they will be joined by Carly Fiorina and Ben Carson (who announced today), and Mike Huckabee (scheduled to announce tomorrow).
We've got everything from hippies to Satanists to cover this week, so let's just dive right in, shall we?
The Supreme Court heard a monumental case on marriage equality, which could indeed be their last case ever on the subject (if Justice Kennedy votes the way many expect him to, resulting in gay marriage in all [...]
We've had a President Jimmy and a President Ronnie, so why not a President Bernie?
Sorry, I do not mean to make light of the historic nature of today's case, far from it in fact. I have to admit being personally stunned at how fast events have developed. Almost exactly two years ago I wrote a column predicting that America had reached the tipping point on marriage equality. I've re-run this column a few times, and last October I pointed out that when I wrote the original article, the following was true:
The Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments on a marriage equality case tomorrow. At this point, it almost seems anticlimactic. Either the Supreme Court will rule that gay marriage is a constitutional right everywhere in America, or they'll try to punt and say that all states have to recognize all marriages from other states, but don't have to perform their own gay marriages if they don't want to. Either way, gay marriage will become a reality in some awfully conservative states (whether couples have to take a vacation to another state to achieve it or not). The only question now is whether marriage equality will achieve a final and total victory, or just a partial victory. Either way, losing the progress that has already been made seems almost inconceivable at this point.
We'll get to other political news in a moment, but since last week contained the date 4/20, we're going to first run down all the marijuana news. Coincidentally or not, there was a lot of it this week. So let's just begin by "getting into the weeds" of politics, as it were (the ponies come along later, never fear).