The ruling today, at the 9th Circuit, was no surprise. See the New York Times , ” Court Strikes Down Ban on Gay Marriage in California .” And from Maggie Gallagher, at National Review , ” Ninth Circuit to 7 Million California Voters: You Are Irrational Bigots .” (Via Memeorandum .) And still more at Legal Insurrection, ” 9th Circuit holds Prop. 8 violates 14th Amendment .”
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California’s Proposition 8 Ruled Unconstitutional
I saw ” Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close .” I went yesterday afternoon. I was intrigued by this film from the moment I saw the preview, just days before Christmas. It came out in limited release in order to qualify for the Academy Awards. It opened Christmas Day. Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock star, and of course that had something to do with my interest. Tom Hanks is probably my favorite actor, and I say probably because I don’t really rate actors all that much. Hanks is on the left of the spectrum politically, but he’s not progressive in the sense of the mainstream Democrat Party establishment today. Hanks is what a “liberal” used to be — someone patriotic who believes in the positive role of America in the world in the defense of freedom. I imagine Hanks is also “liberal” in the old sense of believing that governmental institutions can leaven markets and help solve collective action problems (while not specifically attempting to destroy capitalism). And of course, Hanks’ advocacy for the memory of the World War II generation is a major contribution to contemporary American life. So it was no surprise to me that he’d be playing a lead role in a film which takes the September 11 attacks as the foundation of the story. I went into the movie with only the vaguest details of the story, since I frankly just skimmed the reviews in the most obligatory manner at the time. I knew I wanted to see it for the reasons stated above. Now that I have I confess to being more profoundly moved than I thought I’d be, and I say that with the confession that I did expect to be moved a little bit. I’m a hopelessly emotional sap when it comes to stuff like this. I think I’ve mentioned it before but the movies are the only place where I’ll really cry. I don’t get that emotional most other times. But the movies sometimes open me up and I wish I’d brought a box of tissue. This movie doesn’t really have that one emotionally devastating scene where you can’t hold it in any longer. The gushy scenes kind of ratchet up until the film’s crescendo toward the conclusion. I was wiping my eyes a little by that time, but it wasn’t a gusher or anything. Mostly I was just amazed at how well the story was all tied together. The main character is Oskar, the 11-year-old boy who loses his dad (Thomas, played by Hanks) on 9/11. Thomas was in one of the towers, caught above the impact zone 100 stories or so near the top of the skyscraper. Thomas calls home and leaves messages on the answer machine. Oskar’s school is closed because of the emergency and he comes home to hear the his father’s voice. It’s hard early in the movie to figure out how significant those taped messages are, but it’s a powerful scene when we learn what happened. Oskar is beyond precocious. He and his dad play together like best friends and Thomas designs games and adventures to challenge his son and help build his character. It’s a love story between a boy and his father. There’s some craziness in the pacing of the movie. The flashbacks between the present and the past are hard to separate temporally since the flashbacks only flash back a year to two before the present. And parts of the movie seem improbable: Oskar finds a key that belonged to his dad and he’s convinced the key holds some magical significance. No doubt it’s closure, but most 11-year-olds probably wouldn’t be able to walk across all of New York City to track down the people, hundreds of people, who might have an answer to the mystery. (What does that key open?) But movies sometimes require a willing suspension of disbelief, and this one is so realistic in other respects — and we love and trust the actors so much already — that it’s not hard to do. It’s a great film. It’s nominated for best picture, although I can’t say it’s the best of 2011, having only seen one or two others that were nominated. However, it’s a much more powerful movie than “War Horse” (which I saw a couple of weeks back and meant to write something about but procrastinated). There’s an emotional closeness to “Extremely Loud” that’s at once both endearing and devastating. “War Horse” was much less intense in that regard, although it’s a great movie that deserves a nomination. So with that, I was a bit caught off guard (although not surprised, actually) at progressive hate-blogger Scott Lemieux’s attack on the movie, at the communist Lawyers, Guns and Money , ” Extremely Loud and Incredibly Shitty? “: This was truly a banner year for terrible movies…. But I was interested to see several critics in the New York survey mentioned Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close . About 15 seconds into the first time I saw the preview it was clear that it was going to be a major threat to be the Academy’s middlebrow doorstop of choice. And that was before I knew it had been directed by Stephen Daldry, the homeless man’s Lasse Hallström and the most obvious choice to produce the kind of kitschy “serious” films that simulate content without having any. It’s based on a prominent bad novel using one horrible historical event as a backdrop, and also invokes two other horrible historical events while telling you nothing you didn’t already know about any of them or about anything else. It has an annoying precocious kid, who encounters Noble African-Americans. It has Tom Hanks. I mean talk about your Oscar bait. So did it get nominated? Oh, yes, and I can’t imagaine anyone thinks this is surprising. Has anyone seen it? Could anything be as bad as it looks? All that and Lemieux hadn’t even watched the film. And the “several critics” mentioned are those cited at a New York article on the year’s worst movies. Reading those, along with Lemieux’s response, it’s not hard to figure out that these people simply can’t stand that September 11th is used as an historical anchor to a movie about family, grief, and recovery. Progressives think the U.S. deserved 9/11 and they hate the institution of the family. Why on earth would they give a fuck about a film that features these things as the subject matter? Perhaps read the LGM comments there as well, at least to get a feeling of what radical leftists think about cinema and annual Oscar pageant overall. These losers aren’t representative — not of regular Americans, of course, but not of people in the movie industry either. “Extremely Loud” got great reviews, or at least great reviews in respectable sources. Here’s Betsy Sharkey, at the Los Angeles Times , for example: “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” is a handsomely polished, thoughtfully wrapped Hollywood production about the national tragedy of 9/11 that seems to have forever redefined words like unthinkable, unforgivable, catastrophic. It has also redefined our expectations of filmmakers who try to examine the still aching wound — and perhaps explains why most films about 9/11 haven’t resonated with audiences. Mindful of that, director Stephen Daldry has taken great care in looking at it through the eyes of a precocious New York City boy in a film filled with both sentiment and substance. Finding the right balance was critical to making any adaptation of Jonathan Safran Foer’s provocative novel work. But this is a filmmaker who’s equally sensitive and bold in handling films with heavy emotional and political content as he has in “Billy Elliot,” “The Hours” and “The Reader,” all of which earned him Oscar nominations. He’s up to the task again with “Extremely Loud,” which opens Sunday. Like the novel that inspired the film, screenwriter Eric Roth (“Munich”) has brought things back to ground zero through the story of one family torn asunder by the World Trade Center attacks. So it seems a smart choice to put two quintessentially heartland stars in Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock at its center. It makes acceptance easier, offense harder. Keep reading . Manohla Dargis is more critical in her review at the New York Times , ” A Youngster With a Key, a Word and a Quest .” She writes: In truth, “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” isn’t about Sept. 11. It’s about the impulse to drain that day of its specificity and turn it into yet another wellspring of generic emotions: sadness, loneliness, happiness. This is how kitsch works. It exploits familiar images, be they puppies or babies — or, as in the case of this movie, the twin towers — and tries to make us feel good, even virtuous, simply about feeling. And, yes, you may cry, but when tears are milked as they are here, the truer response should be rage. Okay. Right. We should have rage. Personally, it’s enraging that we’ve had so few films of this caliber dealing 9/11 that we should bemoan kitsch and demand rage. That’s progress. In any case, Mandelyn Kilroy has an approving review at Philly Buzz , where she notes, it’s “a must-see movie, just make sure to pack the tissues.” That’s good advice.

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‘Extremely Loud’
Attorney General Eric Holder castigated an Idaho congressman while testifying before the House Oversight Committee Thursday, accusing him of committing one of the “worst things I think I’ve ever seen in Congress.” Holder was on Capitol Hill to testify in an ongoing congressional probe into the failed Operation Fast and Furious, in which weapons sold to Mexican drug cartels were not tracked, resulting in the deaths of hundreds, including a U.S. Border Patrol agent. According to National Review Online , Holder was responding to a “grandstanding presentation” by Republican Congressman Raul Labrador that “cobbled together testimony from Holder going back ten years to establish a ‘pattern’ of Holder saying, in effect, ‘I don’t know’ in testimony.” “There’s a whole bunch of things that I could say about what you just did, maybe this is the way you do things in Idaho or wherever you’re from,” Holder said. “But understand something — I’m proud of the work that I’ve done as attorney general of the United States, and looked at fairly, I think that I’ve done a pretty good job.” He continued, “Have I been perfect? No. Have I made mistakes? Yes. Do I treat the members of this committee with respect? I always hope that I do. And what you have just done is if nothing else, disrespectful. And if you don’t like me that’s one thing. You should respect the fact that I hold an office that is deserving of respect.” “And you know, maybe you’re new to this committee, I don’t know, I don’t know how long you’ve been here. But my hope would be that we can get beyond that kind of interaction, that kind of treatment of a witness whether it’s me or somebody else because I think what you just did was fundamentally unfair, just not right,” Holder said.
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Holder Berates Rep. During Hearing: ‘Maybe This Is the Way You Do Things in Idaho or Wherever You’re From’
The New York Police Department is taking heat following revelations that a documentary about the threat of radical Islam was screened to nearly 1,500 officers during training.

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‘A Slander Against the Film’: Narrator Says Documentary Shown to NYPD Officers Isn‘t ’Anti-Muslim’
ContributorNetwork – The Keystone Pipeline project by TransCanada will be resurrected and brought to life. President Obama said that he denied the 1,700 mile long pipeline because the State Department did not have enough time to complete the review process. The decision to deny the application for the pipeline was applauded by environmental groups, but it took harsh criticism from lawmakers that want to reduce America’s dependence on Middle Eastern oil and create jobs.
Continue reading here:
Republicans Might Save the Keystone Pipeline
(ContributorNetwork)
There’s an editorial at Toronto’s Globe and Mail . And see the Los Angeles Times , ” Recording in cruise ship disaster casts captain in bad light .” Also, at London’s Daily Mail , ” Forget women and children first. Burly crew men led the race for the lifeboats .” And at National Review , ” In the Italian cruise-ship disaster, another death knell for the age of chivalry .” UPDATE : At New York Times , ” Captain of Stricken Vessel Says He Fell Overboard in Passenger Panic .”

Read more here:
The Cowardice of Captain Francesco Schettino
WASHINGTON (The Blaze/AP) — Religious workers can’t sue for job discrimination, the Supreme Court ruled Wednesday, saying for the first time that churches — not courts — are the best judges of whether clergy and other religious employees should be fired or hired. The Blaze originally covered this story in October. But the high court tempered its decision bolstering the constitutional separation of church and state by refusing to give a detailed description of what constitutes a religious employee, which left an untold number of workers at churches, synagogues and other religious organizations still in limbo over whether government antidiscrimination laws protect them in job bias disputes. It was, nevertheless, the first time the high court has acknowledged the existence of a so-called “ministerial exception” to anti-discrimination laws — a doctrine developed in lower court rulings. This doctrine says the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of religion shields churches and their operations from the reach of such protective laws when the issue involves religious employees of these institutions.
Chief Justice John Roberts
U.S. Supreme Court
Justice Clarence Thomas
Justice Samuel Alito
ContributorNetwork – President Obama will soon have to decide on the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. The Keystone XL pipeline project, from Canada to Texas, is designed to move Canadian crude from the Canadian oil sands project to U.S. refineries. Though environmental impact studies have been going on for three years, President Obama ordered a delay in construction, saying the project needed further review. The Keystone XL pipeline construction project raises key questions.
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Awaiting President Obama’s Keystone XL Pipeline Decision
(ContributorNetwork)