have a court say, hey, this entity, although it is within the geographic boundaries of seattle tacoma, it s govred by something different so these voters don t get to speak on it. that was a legislative decision rather than a voter decision to carve out that jurisdiction. it s basically a jurisdictional issue. it will play out. i actually that s a hiccup along the way to the broader picture. one thing i want to highlight is let s notice the way in which the ballot initiatives, which i was so hard on, you know, last year with prop 8, you know, i m celebrating here, right. yeah. and i want to underscore i don t think there s hypocrisy there because i think the ballot initiative was created during the progressive era when legislators had been captured by special interests such that the people were not being hurt. it s the disenfranchised who were saying we re going to create a plebiscite in order to speak. more recently, unfortunately, the plebiscite has been used to trample on mino
and also cherilyn ibold, director of the council of the naacp legal defense fund. nice to have you here at the end of the year. good morning. i want to start with you, kenji, because it did feel like a year of a lot of defeats but the one bright moment was these decisions around the marriage of equality. will this be seen as a watershed year in lgbt rights? no question about it. i was in the studio when those decisions were handled down so that was a great privilege last june. what we learned is it was kind of a split decision, the federal defense of marriage act got struck down, but the states really punted on the issue of whether the bans were constitutional or not. what s happening now and what happened most recently in utah, why that is such an important decision, the federal decision,
things i heard you say is you got provider who is now patients who have to wait weeks, so we just hear from kenji here that there is this sort of legal standard about viability, and then obviously a set of strategies that are making it impossible for providers sometimes to provide these abortions in a short time period. does that actually end up bumping up against some of these viability questions? absolutely it does. you know, what we have here is there s a right that exists on paper, you know, a woman still has the right to make the decision to terminate a pregnancy, but if she can t access that right it s completely meaningless. without providers that are able to serve women safely and professionally, the right is just an abstract thing that exists on paper. what we re seeing is numerous women unable to exercise their right to a safer legal abortion both because they can t travel to where the clinics are open, you know, there s costs that are barriers for them, but also because
breaks, including a state tax. that is basically what eddie windsor was fighting for because she lost her wife and now able to recoup the money that she lost in a state taxes. let s look at this. teds estima usa today estimating that it could be worth. explain what this is for married couples now able to file jointly? the biggest part of this decision, thomas, was the fact that, as you mentioned, that even if you don t live in a state that recognizes your marriage, you are going to be recognized by the federal government if you are legally married. if a xup gocouple of goes to massachusetts and gets married and goes to iowa and gets married and returns to a state that doesn t allow them to get married, they are still going to be able to foil their taxes as a married couple and receive
on the ground in syria and activists saying a school was hit with a substance that looks like napalm. these are images captured by the bbc. you ve been advocating some type of action all along. earlier we heard from president bush who rarely speaks out on foreign policy issues. take a listen. mr. assad, he s a ally of iran and he s made mischief. the president has to make a tough decision. the president has to make a tough decision. what did the president say to you on the conference call last night? has it helped change your mind about the position that needs to be taken towards syria? well, it wasn t the president. it was secretary kerry and secretary hagel and susan rice. they said without any kind of doubt that gas was used and that the assad regime is the one who did it. and they are positively sure