A hue and cry has risen against Indiana since Governor Mike Pence signed the state’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which exempts individuals from laws that conflict with their sincerely held religious beliefs. Critics say it amounts to legalizing discrimination against homosexuals. Pence called that claim “a smear” and insists the law merely reiterates the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993. In the interview with George Stephanopoulos above, however, the governor refused to say whether it would be legal for a Christian florist in Indiana to refuse to serve a gay wedding. He refused repeatedly. Stephanopoulos’s vain attempt to get him to answer yes or no begins around 1:25 and continues for four minutes, during which Pence hedges like a damn juniper. He simply will not say whether Indiana’s bill legalizes discrimination.
Close Reading: MT House rejects religious freedom bill on 50-50 vote
Montana Rep. Carl Glimm (R–Kila), his family, and their certainty
Last Thursday, Indiana passed a bill authorizing business owners to refuse service to gays and lesbians based on sincerely held religious beliefs. The state immediately became a laughingstock. I guess laughingstock is the wrong word for this civil rights issue; Indiana became a cryingstock, or maybe just a boycottingstock. Regardless, it was a disaster. The very next day, the Montana House took up its own religious freedom bill, sponsored by Rep. Carl Glimm (R–Kila.) That bill failed on a 50-50 vote, after a contentious debate that saw Glimm brandishing his camouflage Bible on the House floor. He also said this:
[The U.S. Constitution] is the word of God, and the First Amendment says I have freedom of religion, not freedom from religion.
Literally no part of the sentence is true, and yet it tells us so much. Close reading after the jump.
Friday links! Good-enough Morgan edition
Children climb on the Vietnam War women’s memorial in Washington, DC.
I learned a sweet expression yesterday: good-enough Morgan, an issue or talking point used to influence voters temporarily, particularly in the period before an election. For example, gay marriage became a good-enough Morgan in 2004, driving evangelicals to the polls so they would vote for George W. Bush and then vanishing from the national Republican agenda. But the best part of “good-enough Morgan” is the etymology. William Morgan was a former Freemason who planned to write a tell-all book before his mysterious disappearance in 1826. When Thurlow Weed, organizer of the nascent Anti-Masonic Party, found a body floating in the Niagara river in 1828, he said it would be a “good-enough Morgan” until after the election. Today is Friday, and the people must be tricked into wisdom somehow. Won’t you misidentify the bodies with me?
Missoula water system is a wreck in court but a deal in committee
Missoula Mayor John Engen
Here’s a fun fact: Missoula is the only major city in Montana that does not own its water system. Mountain Water is owned by the Carlyle Group, a $35 billion private equity firm that purchased the utility in 2011. One condition of the sale was that Carlyle would entertain purchase offers from the city in good faith, but it has since rejected all of them—possibly as a result of ideological objections to public ownership among its executives. Under Mayor John Engen, the city has tried to buy Mountain Water for the last year, only to meet vigorous resistance from The Carlyle Group, which has simultaneously arranged to sell to Algonquin Power. It’s a tangled web, and last week the city took Carlyle to court for condemnation proceedings—a process originally projected to cost $400,000, whose combined legal fees now stand at $2 million.
That’s okay, though, because Mountain Water is a deal at any price. That’s been the city line all year, but last week an expert witness hired by same testified that the system could need as much as $95 million in capital improvements to meet industry standards. That’s more than the total purchase price we offered Carlyle last year. The more Missoula argues in court that Carlyle has mismanaged Mountain Water, the less it seems like a great idea to buy it. That’s the gist of my column in this week’s Missoula Independent, which is some hardcore local stuff but still of interest to those of you who like to see how small-town politics work. Basically, how it works is that the most charismatic dude in the city comes up with a plan, and we follow him into what is hopefully an elysian future. Or it’s a public debt dystopia—we’ll find out when we get there.
Hey, how’s that 114th Congress going?
John Boehner had your killa tape, but then n-words came over with 40s and blunts…
Remember the 113th Congress, whose purpose was to thwart President Obama’s legislative agenda so that Republicans could retake the Senate and get stuff done in the 114th? It tuns out single-party control only works when the GOP is a single party. Over at the Times, Neil Irwin suggests that this week will tell us whether Boehner and McConnell can manage the tea party wing of their caucus, and things aren’t looking good. He points out that the House only avoided a DHS shutdown earlier this month by passing a stopgap bill at the last minute with Democratic votes. Meanwhile, Pelosi and Boehner agreed on a doc fix for Medicare but may not bring their parties along. And a bill to fight human trafficking has been derailed by a redundant anti-abortion amendment, which has in turn left nominated Attorney General Loretta Lynch with the longest wait for confirmation in US history. So next on the list is a federal budget.