President Obama recently nominated Chai Feldblum to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.  She'll be the first openly gay person to hold that post.

Feldblum, a law professor at Georgetown University Law Center, previously served as legislative counsel to the AIDS Project of the American Civil Liberties Union, where she played a role in the drafting of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.

"She has also worked on advancing lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights" and "been a leading expert on the Employment Nondiscrimination Act," according to a biography released by the White House.

Her degrees are from Harvard Law School and Barnard College, and she went on to clerk for Judge Frank Coffin on the First Circuit Court of Appeals and Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun.

Of course, the Right Wing has lost no time at all in branding her "general counsel to the Forces of Darkness."  Stay classy, you guys.

Today, President Obama’s Justice Department, in a motion to dismiss a lawsuit against the Defense of Marriage Act, argued that DOMA is constitutional. The Administration argues that DOMA “does not impinge upon rights that have been recognized as fundamental.”

I remember the thrill I felt when candidate Obama condemned DOMA and promised to eliminate it. He even put that promise on the White House website. But several weeks ago, in lieu of eliminating DOMA, he instead eliminated the promise from the website.

And today, he argues that DOMA does not discriminate against gays and lesbians (or, to use the Administration’s language, homosexuals):

“DOMA does not discriminate against homosexuals in the provision of federal benefits. … DOMA does not distinguish among persons of different sexual orientations, but rather it limits federal benefits to those who have entered into the traditional form of marriage.” (motion to dismiss, page 30)

The Administration’s reasoning is as illogical as that used by segregationists to defend laws prohibiting interracial marriage. So it’s ironic that the brief was filed today, on the 42nd anniversary of the Loving v. Virginia decision striking down laws that would have barred President Obama’s own parents from marrying.

We need to remind President Obama of his promises. It’s long past time to Dump DOMA.

People For the American Way president Kathryn Kolbert appeared recently on the David Bender Show on Air America to talk about President Obama’s judicial nominees.

With George Bush and Dick Cheney finally out of power, our country is returning to its ideals so quickly and in so many ways that it’s dizzying. 

Recognizing the rule of law? Check.  Following the Constitution? Check.  Keeping politics out of law enforcement? Check.  Recognizing our right to know what our own government is doing?  Check. 

What about LGBT equality?  George Bush worked to enshrine discrimination against gay and lesbian Americans into the United States Constitution, supported laws that put gay and lesbian couples in prison for the crime of having sex in their own home, and fought to continue to allow workplace discrimination against LGBT Americans. 

And President Obama?  The White House website spells out President Obama’s agenda for LGBT equality, and it’s pretty terrific.  He: 

• Opposes a constitutional amendment to prevent gays and lesbians from marrying
• Supports expanded hate-crime legislation
• Supports a transgender-inclusive ENDA
• Supports civil unions (He’s still not with us all the way on full marriage equality, but we’ll keep pushing him on this one)
• Supports eliminating the heinous Defense of Marriage Act
• Supports legislation to ensure that same-sex couples have the same federal rights and benefits that opposite-sex married couples have

 But it’s not just the substance of the agenda that’s important:  Where it’s placed on the website tells us a lot. 

Rather than cravenly avoiding LGBT rights altogether or putting them in a category like “social issues” or “cultural issues,” as a number of others do, the White House places them exactly where they belong: as part of our nation’s civil rights agenda.  The Obama Administration is framing LGBT issues in a way that helps progressives set the terms of the conversation. 

The Radical Right dishonestly paints their anti-equality positions as pro-family, pro-values, and pro-religion, a dangerously deceptive framing that the mainstream media tends to blindly accept.  Thus, the Right has long set the terms of the national conversation. 

No more.  Using the bully pulpit of the White House, President Obama can make it clear that LGBT equality is nothing less than a civil rights issue. 

And that framing allows us to more effectively pin the Radical Right down by asking the threshold question:  What specific legal rights that you have should be denied to people who are gay, lesbian, or transgender?

Following up on my previous post about Sen. Feingold....

My main man Russ yesterday sent a letter to the President-elect "urging President-elect Barack Obama to take 'concrete steps' to restore the rule of law after the eight-year assault by the Bush Administration on the Constitution. In a letter to the President-elect, Feingold offered recommendations for action in four key areas – the separation of powers, excessive government secrecy, detention and interrogation policy, and domestic surveillance and privacy."

Read it. It's good.

http://feingold.senate.gov/releases/08/12/20081210.html

The Supreme Court just rejected an appeal in a case challenging the validity of President-elect Obama's birth certificate, his citizenship and, in effect, his constitutional eligibility to assume the office of President. The fact that it took more than one split second to reject this preposterous, paranoid, conspiracy theory-based case is a little disturbing. A similar case had been thrown out this fall, but that did not stop Justice Clarence Thomas from circulating the appeal papers to his colleagues for consideration.

Read more here:

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/08/supreme-court-rejects-appeal-over-obamas-citizenship/?hp

In case you needed another reminder that the Right isn't going to go away quietly, here's a web site demanding impeachment procedures against President Barack Obama. (Via Ben Smith.)

The Austin-American Statesman has a story on a 109 year old woman – the daughter of a slave – who cast a vote for Senator Obama in this year’s election.

Jones' father herded sheep as a slave until he was 12, according to the family, and once he was freed, he was a farmer who raised cows, hogs and turkeys on land he owned. Her mother was born right after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed, Joyce Jones said. The family owned more than 100 acres of land in Cedar Creek at one point, she said.

Amanda Jones' father urged her to exercise her right to vote, despite discriminatory practices at the polls and poll taxes meant to keep black and poor people from voting. Those practices were outlawed for federal elections with the 24th Amendment in 1964, but not for state and local races in Texas until 1966.

Amanda Jones says she cast her first presidential vote for Franklin Roosevelt, but she doesn't recall which of his four terms that was. When she did vote, she paid a poll tax, her daughters said. That she is able, for the first time, to vote for a black presidential nominee for free fills her with joy, Jones said.

Something to think about if you’re stuck in a long line on Election Day.

If you haven't already gotten a chance, be sure to read Joan Biskupic's article on the Supreme Court in today's USA Today, a good primer on the choice that voters face on Election Day.

The appointment of life-tenured judges can be an administration's most consequential legacy, as Obama and McCain observed in last week's debate. Five of the nine Supreme Court justices are age 70 or older, so a new president might have to make multiple appointments.

Because the court is tightly split over issues such as abortion rights, race-based policies and the handling of Guantanamo Bay detainees, even a change of one justice could alter the law across the nation for decades to come.

The article does contain one line of very generous understatement.

[Palin] has invoked God on public occasions and suggested she does not believe in a high wall to separate church and state.

I think that's a pretty safe inference.

The website also offers a fun little SCOTUS quiz.  (I don't mean to brag, but I aced it.)

In all the effort to defend Barack Obama against the rumor that he’s secretly a Muslim, too may people have missed the real point. Why would it matter if he were a Muslim? The Constitution clearly states that ”no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States” but the anti-Muslim smear is usually only addressed as an afterthought, with a Sienfeld-esque “not that there’s anything wrong with that.”

In his interview on Meet the Press, Colin Powell elegantly swats down the rumor that Obama is a Muslim, without taking his eye off the real issue.

I’m also troubled by, not what Senator McCain says, but what members of the party say. And it is permitted to be said such things as, “Well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim.”

Well, the correct answer is, he is not a Muslim; he’s a Christian. He’s always been a Christian.

But the really right answer is, what if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer’s no, that’s not America.

Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president?

Yet, I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion, “He’s a Muslim and he might be associated terrorists.” This is not the way we should be doing it in America.

I feel strongly about this particular point because of a picture I saw in a magazine. It was a photo essay about troops who are serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And one picture at the tail end of this photo essay was of a mother in Arlington Cemetery, and she had her head on the headstone of her son’s grave. And as the picture focused in, you could see the writing on the headstone. And it gave his awards -- Purple Heart, Bronze Star -- showed that he died in Iraq, gave his date of birth, date of death. He was 20 years old.

And then, at the very top of the headstone, it didn’t have a Christian cross; it didn’t have the Star of David; it had crescent and a star of the Islamic faith. And his name was Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan, and he was an American. He was born in New Jersey. He was 14 years old at the time of 9/11, and he waited until he can go serve his country, and he gave his life.

A good reminder that the “correct answer” isn’t always the same as the “really right answer.”