I don't want to do forecasts

“While the court is thinking”; “Sequester is not so terrible to hell”; "Russian officials - piece goods"

The US Supreme Court listened to the arguments of the parties in two cases on the problems of same -sex marriages and retired for a long, many -month meeting. Commentators do not undertake to predict what conclusions the judges will bear, they only declare that the wind of public changes blow in the sails of supporters of the recognition of the rights of homosexual families. The well -known sociologist Jonathan Last Samukes with colleagues in unwillingness to make forecasts.

Until the turning point in November last year, writes Jonathan Last on the Blog of The Weekly Standard Blog, supporters of same -sex marriages lost thirty -two campaigns that they led to the abolition of laws of different states that proclaimed marriage by the exclusive prerogative of heterosexual couples. These failures did not discourage the LGBT move. In the same way, the author believes, traditionalists should not despair after the defeats that they suffered in Minnesota, where they promoted a “marriage” amendment to the Constitution, as well as in Maine, Washington and Meriland, which same -sexing marriages are legalized. According to the expert, these victories might not have been if it were not for the open support before the elections from the Barack Obama popular in the listed states. But even with his support for the initiatives put forward by the LGBT community, it voted from two to eight percent less voters than for the president himself. By the way, before Minnesota, the conservatives did not lose a single plebiscite, which affirmed the monopoly of heterosexual marriage. Judging by the surveys, Jonathan Last points out if the Republican Mitt Romnie took the candidate for vice presidents of Governor Minnesota Tim Paleti, then the presidential battle could have been behind them, although Obama would still get in the universal election of Minnesot.

Public trends are ambiguous and changeable, the scientist notes, although the adherents of a particular movement are always trying to present his success as irreversible and the failures are random. In such a hyperliberal state as Washington, only 53% of voters approved the legalization of same -sex marriages. Four years earlier, 58% of Washington residents spoke in the approval of euthanasia, but I do not observe something surplus of public sympathy for the promotion of suicide, Last writes. In his conviction, disputes about family and marriage will not subside for a long time in America, because they are faced with two irreconcilable concepts of personality freedom - sexy and religious.

Before the first March, when sequestration entered into force, a compulsory five percent reduction in all articles of the federal budget, the press replicated apocalyptic forecasts about what would happen to the employment and income of the Americans if the congress and the administration do not retreat from the course of confrontation. The future was drawn in gloomy colors, reminds in its note on the RealClearpolitics website, President of the Harry Shapiro household Association of household electronics.

Almost a month has passed, and nothing, the republic has not fell, the businessman states. Moreover, for the first time in a century, the budget process was initiated not by the White House, but by Congress. It is also impressive that the Senate finally presented his budget version, which he avoided doing since 2009. Harry Shapiro wants to believe that this is the result of lobbying by the No Labels organization, to which he belongs to the law, which provides for the termination of salaries to deputies until they agree on the final version of the budget.

The chances of this, however, seem ghostly ghostly, Shapiro admits. Republicans in the lower house are unlikely to find points of contact with the Senate version of the budget, which reflects the priorities of left -wing democrats who do not want to consider the reform of expenditure articles and oriented exclusively to increase taxes.

After about two weeks, we will learn the names of Russian officials included in the “Magnitsky List”, as well as the names of those who, for considerations of state security, did not fall into the register of fines recommended by Congress, the Reuters correspondent Suzan Cornvel reporters.

The Obama administration regarding the "Law of Magnitsky" has different positions. Some suggest making the list long, the latter is short. Some advise you to draw up two lists - separately for those officials who will be subjected to visa sanctions, and for those to whom financial sanctions will apply. “In fact, this is a split between those who do not want to be in the need for the need for an angry Russia, and those who do not want to be in excess of the need to enjoy Congress,” an employee of the State Department, who wished the journalist, told the journalist.

Member of the House of Representatives from Massachusetts, the co -author of the Magnitsky Law Democrat James McGovern sent a letter to President Obama, in which he warns him against emasculation of the prosperction, into which the deputy inserted two hundred thirty names, including high -ranking officials of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs. “The extraction of the names from the list would be an absolutely incorrect signal in the light of the ongoing attack of the Putin regime on human rights organizations,” McGovern said in an interview with Reuters.

Congress, explains Suzan Cornel, interprets the law expandfully, demanding to include in the list of all those who can be reliably qualified as human rights violators. The administration is inclined to use a more strict criterion developed by the Ministry of Finance. According to this criterion, the enrollment of the official even on the basic list of all -round cannot occur if his sins are not “drawn” to the arrest of material and financial assets.

Congressman McGoverne believes that at first, at first, the two hundred and thirty names in the registry will remain in the registry, but that in the future it will be replenished - and not only by persons involved in the Magnitsky case, but also those who were related to the death of Anna Politkovskaya and the condemnation of Mikhail Khodorkovsky.