Quote of the Day

"Nationwide, Joe Sullivan is one of only two thirteen-year-old children who received life-without-parole sentences for crimes in which the victims did not die...Both of these sentences were imposed in Florida, making Florida the only state to have sentenced a thirteen-year-old to die in prison for a non-homicide."

--Bryan A. Stevenson in a legal brief challenging the sentence of Joe Sullivan, a case now before the US Supreme Court. Stevenson's quote also reminds us that Florida may soon overtake Texas and California as the state with the most ass-backwards criminal justice system.

Quote of the Day

"The idea of living a multifarious identity is something that has always occurred to me to be absolutely the norm...You could say that everyone, at any one time, is a mother, a lover, a daughter, a sister, a neighbor, a colleague, an antagonist…I’m no more exotic than anybody else.”

Um, I beg to differ...

The exquisite Tilda Swinton interviewed by Amanda Fortini of The Daily Beast.

Quote of the Day

"What underlines so many of Obama's decisions is an attachment to the institutions that hold up American society, a desire to make them function better rather than to remake them altogether."

--George Packer in this week's New Yorker

Anyone who has wondered why Obama is bailing out the big banks rather than nationalizing them, or why Obama is creating a government run health care option rather than pursuing free universal health care, has noticed the President's seemingly unshakable faith in large institutions. The big question is what are the consequences to such a philosophy when major institutions of American society need to be remade rather than reorganized? It's one thing for Obama to temper and compromise audacious plans to meet pragmatic needs, it's another thing altogether for Obama to aim for pragmatic success in the short-term in order to avoid messy but much needed major renovations down the road.

Quote of the day

"We are firmly convinced the exclusion of gay and lesbian people from the institution of civil marriage does not substantially further any important governmental objective. The legislature excluded a historically disfavored class of persons from a supremely important civil institution without a constitutionally sufficient justification."

--Iowa Supreme Court, ruling a state law which defines marriage between one man and one woman is unconstitutional.

Has the legal case for gay marriage ever been phrased so eloquently?