"discrimination - I do not think this word means what you think it means, Gov. Pence" - Inigo Montoya
— @DemFromCT
Now Pence is screwed. The left is after him as a bigot and the right as having no balls.
— @dick_nixon
Jill Lawrence:
If there’s one takeaway from Indiana Gov. Mike Pence’s “religious freedom restoration” debacle, it’s that Republicans ignore today’s cultural environment at their peril.
Conservatives can continue to live in a bubble if they want to, but they should expect blowback, because outside that bubble is a far different reality.
Pence seems shocked by the widespread perception that his state’s new Religious Freedom Restoration Act invites businesses and individuals to discriminate against gay people on the grounds that serving them would, or might, infringe on the religious owners’ beliefs. But what other conclusion is there?
Hunter Schwarz:
Your guide to all the people and businesses protesting Indiana’s ‘religious freedom’ law
Includes Hoosier icons Reggie Miller and NASCAR.
Gov. Dan Malloy:
If we stand idly by while states legalize bigotry, we are responsible for allowing it to happen. Yesterday, Connecticut took action to stop discrimination against any of our citizens. I signed my 45th executive order, which made our state the first in the nation to ban state-funded travel to Indiana.
The law is disturbing, disgraceful, and outright discriminatory. Governor Mike Pence knew what he was doing. He knew this legislation would allow discrimination against American citizens. He signed it anyway.
Jackie Kucinich:
Indiana Republicans Were Warned About Their Anti-Gay Bill
Insiders say Mike Pence was told about amendments to strengthen LGBT protection
before he signed the bill into law. Now he’s trying to “fix” what he broke.
Governor Mike Pence promised Tuesday to “fix” a controversial law with anti-gay undertones in an attempt to stop the constant hammering the state has received since he signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act into law last week.
“I don’t believe for a minute that it was the intention of the general assembly to create a license to discriminate or right to deny services to gays, lesbians or anyone else in the state, and it certainly wasn’t my intent, but I can appreciate that has become the perception,” Pence said.
But advocates for changes to the law said if Pence didn’t know this would turn into a public-relations dumpster fire, he was either willfully ignorant or simply didn’t care.
Pence isn't just ignorant, he's flat out
stupid.
AP:
Religious freedom laws like the one causing an uproar in Indiana have never been successfully used to defend discrimination against gays — and have rarely been used at all, legal experts say.
However, past may not be prologue in these cases, since gays have only recently won widespread legalization of same-sex marriage, and religious conservatives are now scrambling for new legal strategies to blunt the trend.
"There's an inability to look to the past as a reliable predictor of the future on this," said Robert Tuttle, a church-state expert at George Washington University School of Law. "If what you're saying is that it can be certain it won't be used — you can't know that because this is now a different situation."
CNN:
NASCAR joins backlash over Indiana religious freedom law
Matt K Lewis:
What Jeb Gets That Walker Doesn’t
Without an Embrace of Optimism, the GOP Is Dead
Specifically, I’ve noticed these two men are currently espousing very different messages. Bush is challenging the conservative base to be a more optimistic bigger tent, while Walker’s positions have evolved in the base’s direction—and, as of now, that is a decidedly less optimistic one. “One is a populist strategy that doubles down on turning out disaffected white men,” I told Martin. “The other is a gamble that conservatism can win in the free market of ideas amongst a diverse and changing 21st-century America.” This was not meant as a normative statement. Some smart observers, most notably RealClearPolitics’ Sean Trende, argue the smart strategic move for the GOP is to turn out more white voters. Others (count yours truly in this camp) believe that this is an unwise branding decision that will eventually prove mathematically untenable.
The point is that the Jeb vs. Walker matchup is about more than Jeb vs. Walker.
First Read:
Where 2016 Contenders Stand on Indiana's Religious Freedom Law
Max Fisher:
The nuclear negotiations with Iran started to make a lot more sense to me when I realized that a lot of the disagreements are over things that aren't actually that crucial.
In Washington, for example, you hear people insist — insist! — that any final deal make Iran's "breakout time" as long as possible; meaning that an agreement so limits Iran's nuclear infrastructure that, if Iranian leaders decide to construct a nuclear weapon, it will take them nine months rather than six, or 12 rather than nine. And American negotiators indeed appear to be holding up talks over this issue. But no one can really articulate why that's so important, what happens in those three additional months. Meanwhile, Iranian politicians in Tehran and Iranian negotiators in Switzerland are making their own bizarre-seeming demands.
To try to understand what was going on, I spoke to Jeffrey Lewis, the director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the Monterey Institute of International Studies (Lewis also runs an excellent arms control blog network and arms control podcast). He explained what's actually important to prevent Iran from building a nuclear bomb, what the negotiators in Switzerland are fighting over, and why those two sets of issues seem to be so different.
WaPo:
By a nearly 2 to 1 margin, Americans support the notion of striking a deal with Iran that restricts the nation’s nuclear program in exchange for loosening sanctions, a new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds.
But the survey — released hours before Tuesday’s negotiating deadline — also finds few Americans are hopeful that such an agreement will be effective. Nearly six in 10 say they are not confident that a deal will prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, unchanged from 15 months ago, when the United States, France, Britain, Germany, China and Russia reached an interim agreement with Iran aimed at sealing a long-term deal.