The Filter: Immigration and Tuition, and Moral Insanity of Senators

Here is the video for Wednesday night’s segment of The Filter with Fred Roggin.

On this show, Fred asked me about two issues:

1. The first topic had to do with a case that reached the California Supreme Court on Tuesday in which 42 out-of-state students challenged the right of undocumented California kids to attend the state’s public universities—not for free—but to pay only in-state tuition as opposed to out-of-state tuition, which those who live OUT-OF-STATE have to pay. (Duh.) (For more background see the report by the SF Chronicle.)

For me this is a no-brainer. (Among other things, denying smart, high achieving California kids—legal or illegal—the possibility of affordable entry to college, is—as my mother would say—penny wise and pound foolish to the max. (Okay, she wouldn’t say “to the max.”)

But even if the 42 out-of-staters do not prevail with the California Supremes, the case will likely go to SCOTUS, which is more conservative than the California high court.

Anyway, watch the segment.

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2. The second topic was a set of remarks that South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint made six years ago in which he said that gays and unmarried pregnant women should not be allowed to teach in public schools.

At a rally on Friday he was confronted with the remarks, and rather than walking them back, astonishingly, he reaffirmed them. (Fox news has a story on the incident.)

Everything one needs to know about DeMint’s vile and arrogant bigotry can be summed up by the fact that at least 6–possibly as many as 9—American teenage boys killed themselves in the month of September because they had been harassed and bullied for their sexual preferences. Two of those boys were 13-years old.

How are boys and girls struggling to come to terms with their sexuality supposed to react when US senators are unapologetically vocal about their belief that gays and lesbians are somehow less than fully human?

So what do I think of what Jim DeMint said? I think he has blood on his hands. And the blood belongs to American kids. Our kids.

What do you think?

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AND IN OTHER NEWS……THE FUNERAL PROTESTERS CASE/FREE SPEECH CASE BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT

Nearly everyone who could pack into the SCOTUS courtroom was busy reporting on Wednesday’s hearing involving the hate-mongering funeral protesters.

But for my money, if you have to read only one bout of coverage on yesterday’s hearing (in which the court seemed to be siding, at least to some degree, against the Westboro Baptist Church), I’d opt for Dahlia Lithwick’s in Slate.

(And, if you have time for more than one report, there’s also Adam Liptak of the NY Times and David Savage of the LA Times.

Here are some clips from Lithwick:

Quick constitutional pop quiz: What do you hate? (And by you, I mean you.)

If you answered: homosexuals, Jews, Catholics, the military, the pope, and more or less everyone except Fred Phelps, who founded the Westboro Baptist Church and is thus your dad/uncle/granddad/third cousin, you are probably one of the 30-plus members of the church, which argued at the Supreme Court this morning for the right to vile, hateful protests at the funerals of fallen soldiers. If you answered: intolerance, incivility, people who glom onto the private grief of military families, or the Westboro Baptist Church, you probably sympathize with Albert Snyder, whose efforts to bury his son, Matthew, who died in Iraq in 2006, were marred by members of the Phelps family wielding signs reading “God Hates Fags,” “God Hates You,” and “Thank God for Dead Soldiers.”

(Oh, and just for the record: What I hate is tripping over a child holding a sign that reads “God Hates You” as I am trying to get to oral argument at the Supreme Court. There is a special charcoal briquette in hell for parents who teach kids to think that way….)