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February 07, 2012 | | RULING A federal appeals court has ruled that California’s ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional, setting up a showdown in the Supreme Court. The state instituted the ban after voters narrowly passed Proposition 8 in 2008. But Tuesday’s panel affirmed by a 2–1 vote that a lower-court judge was correct when he said the referendum violated the U.S. Constitution. Supporters of Proposition 8 had tried to throw out U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker’s ruling that the ban was unconstitutional on the grounds that he had failed to disclose his sexual orientation. In a separate ruling Tuesday, the appeal court refused to set aside Walker’s decision. MARCH TO WAR Some of Israel’s leading soldiers and spies are warning against bombing Iran. The Daily Beast’s Peter Beinart says American Jews should listen to them rather than accept Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s apocalyptic claim that Tehran’s nuclear program is an existential threat to the state.
SUPER PAC WARS President Obama is taking heat from liberals for giving the go-ahead for Democrat-affiliated super PACs to get up and armed. On Tuesday, members of the administration tried to explain the decision to reporters, repeatedly raising the specter of a weekend Koch brothers conference at which big-shot donors pledged $100 million to defeat Obama. Obama advisers fear that number could grow up to half a billion dollars for Republican attack ads. “We recognize the political reality under the law we’re living in right now and we need to be realistic about that,” one official said. Obama still opposes the Supreme Court decision that gave birth to super PACs, and supports legislation to reform campaign finance, but his advisers made clear that they would have to play hardball to contend in November. EXIT Karen Handel, an executive at the Susan G. Komen Foundation, resigned on Tuesday. Handel, a former Republican candidate for governor, had been suspected as being the root of the breast-cancer charity’s controversial decision last week to pull funding from Planned Parenthood—and attracted attention after she re-tweeted a comment that it was “just like a pro-abortion group to turn a cancer orgs decision into a political bomb to throw. Cry me a freaking river.” In her resignation letter, Handel said she “fully acknowledged” her role in the decision to cut funding to Planned Parenthood, and she said that decision had been part of a “thoughtful and thoroughly reviewed decision” and that cutting the funding to Planned Parenthood would “have indeed enabled Komen to deliver even greater community impact.” Bloodshed Though Syria’s government has put up a wall of denial, Syrian activists report that the city of Homs is still in the grip of a brutal crackdown. CNN reports stories of children shot in public, snipers roaming the street, and even a field clinic set up by opposition forces bombed. “The doctors died, the patients died,” an anonymous protester told CNN. “We are getting killed every moment,” another said. Diplomats are still mired in stalemate: Russia’s foreign minister arrived in Damascus today to a warm welcome from President Bashar al-Assad’s supporters. The Arab League, though, has expelled Syrian ambassadors. | | 
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