Saturday Email Bag - Terrorists, Greece and Same-Sex Marriage

It's the Sarurday email bag and a review of your comments and questions. The topics were varied but the themes seemed to narrow down to terrorism, Greece and yesterday, the US Supreme Court decision on same sex marriage. Remember that you can join us by sending your emails with comments, questions, quotes -- whatever you choose -- to casey.popshots@yahoo.com. Now, let's talk about this week's themes. ~~~~~ Terrorists beheaded a French small business owner, killed 36 European tourists in Tunisia and 28 shiite worshippers at a Kuwait City mosque on Friday. They also killed 200 civilians in Kobani, Syria, as ISIS fought to hold its grip on the town that was finally freed by the Kurdish military. It's one year since al-Baghdadi declared the ISIS caliphate. It has been a year in which we have seen many beheadings, suicide bombs, town sweeps in which innocent, trapped civilians were machine-gunned. We have also seen US-led airstrikes and several defeats of an Iraqi army that is trying to be simultaneously Iraqi, sunni and shiite while its government cosies up to Iran and hesitates to arm sunni militia who are in areas targeted by ISIS. There is no answer in sight for regrouping Iraq as a nation. But, in truth, Iraq was not a nation until the French and British cobbled it together after World War I. In this leadership vacuum, the Kurds - also not supplied with their military needs by the Iraq government - have consolidated their semi-autonomous territory in northern Iraq and Syria and are successfully combatting ISIS. The future looks grim until someone, undoubtedly a US President, decides to seriously lead the fight against terrorism. ~~~~~ In the case of Greece, late last night, Prime Minister Tsipras called for a national referendum on July 5 - if the Greek parliament agrees - so that Greeks can make their own decision on accepting very austere Eurozone/ECB/IMF conditions for continuing with the bailout program or rejecting those conditions and getting on with rebuilding the Greek economy and society brought down by bailout austerity. The Eurogroup late today decided that the bailout program will end on Tuesday, June 30. This leaves Greece in a sort of limbo, being dependent on the ECB to continue liquidity support for Greek banks until after the referendum. But in making the announcement, Eurogroup president Joroen Dijsselbloem said that Greece must live up to its prior commitments, while at the same time saying there is not yet a complete revised Eurozone program on the table. One wonders how Greece was supposed to agree to an incomplete Eurozone proposal. In any event, Greece has been shut out of currently ongoing Eurogroup talks even though Greek Finance Minister Varoufakis says that if negotiations continued, a deal might be reached by Tuesday. Whatever the outcome, we will see democracy at work in the land where democracy was born -- despite the Eurogroup leader seeming to look down on the democratic move by Tsipras. In fact, Varoufakis said today that the Eurogroup is being undemocratic in rejecting the idea of a referendum. Bravo to Prime Minister Tsipras. ~~~~~ The US Supreme Court decision on same-sex marriage is a dangerous step down a non-constitutional path. Let me explain. The US Constitution is very clear that all powers not specifically delegated to the federal government remain powers reserved to the states. Domestic issues, including marriage, are not delegated by the Constitution to the federal government. Therefore, marriage, including same-sex marriage, remains a power reserved to the states. What the Supreme Court Majority of five justices has done is to use the Fourteenth Amendment guarantee of equal protection to steal for themselves the power to decide who can marry -- a power clearly left to the states under the Constitution. The Majority has eliminated the power and right of each state to debate and vote through its legislature whether to permit same-sex marriage in its jurisdiction. As Justice Scalia put it in his dissent, American democracy was working well on the issue of same-sex marriage until yesterday, because the issue was actively being debated in every state and many (34) had already decided to permit same-sex marriage. The Supreme Court, in effect, cut off that constitutional process in favor of deciding itself that all states must permit same-sex marriage. Justice Scalia warned that this unconstitutional judicial decision-making weakens American democracy. As Chief Justice Roberts wrote in his powerful dissent : "If you are among the many Americans -- of whatever sexual orientation -- who favor expanding same-sex marriage, by all means celebrate today’s decision. Celebrate this achievement of a desired goal. Celebrate the opportunity for a new expression of commitment to a partner. Celebrate the availability of new benefits. But do not celebrate the Constitution. It had nothing to do with it. I respectfully dissent.” Amen, Mr. Chief Justice, Amen.