Ted Cruz V. Gay Marriage

Texas Republican Ted Cruz introduced a bill to the Senate Wednesday February the 12, 2014 to amend U.S. law "with regard to the definition of 'marriage' and 'spouse' for Federal purposes and to ensure respect for State regulation of marriage." The bill's authors sent out a release about the bill Thursday afternoon, saying "it will ensure the federal government gives the same deference to the 33 states that define marriage as the union between one man and one woman as it does to the 17 states that have chosen to recognize same-sex unions."  In the middle of a flood of recent court decisions striking down state gay-marriage bans, Senator Cruz and Senator Mike Lee, have introduced a bill to protect states’ rights to define marriage the way they want to. According to a press release from Cruz’s office, the bill “respects the definition of marriage held by the people of each state and protects states from the federal government’s efforts to force any other definition upon them.” This article written by Huffington Post’s Associate Politics Editor Luke Johnson clearly details the Ted Cruz’s stance on gay marriage. Senator Cruz and Mike Lee are pushing back against a recent Supreme Court ruling that struck down the heart of the Defense of Marriage Act and paved the way for the federal government to provide benefits to same-sex couples who were married legally. Since then, the federal government has allowed gay married couples to file jointly on federal tax returns regardless of state residence and has permitted the surviving spouse of gay married couples to collect Social Security benefits, along with an array of other benefits that were previously only available to heterosexual marriages. In this article Johnson gives the reader the impression that Cruz's bill has next to no chance of even coming up in the Democratic-controlled Senate, let alone being signed by President Barack Obama. The same sex marriage debate is a hot topic in today’s politics and gets people very fired up. Conservative persons believe that marriage is a bond between and man and a woman, and the U.S. government should not recognize that union. Current supporters believe that gay couples deserve the same rights that married couples have. 

What counrty is this? Oh by the way, I'm your new ambassador....

An editorial published by Henri J. Barkey on February 6, 2014 in the Washington Post goes to prove to Americans that "Obama’s ambassador nominees are a disservice to diplomacy".  The editor, Henri J. Barkey is a professor of international relations at Lehigh University. He served on the State Department’s policy planning staff from 1998 to 2000. In his reporting Barkey is highly concerned about the recently nominated Norwegian ambassador and rants on about the other nominees President Obama selected.  On January 16, 2014 George Tsunis, a businessman and lawyer from Long Island, NY, was confirmed by the senate and was made the future Ambassador to the Kingdom of Norway. Barkey begins his editorial by stating, “President Obama does a disservice to Norwegians, to himself and, above all, to the people of the United States by sending such an unqualified person to represent him and us in the capital of a long-standing NATO ally.” Although Barkey may come off critical of the new ambassador without giving him a chance to prove himself, it seems as though Tsunis put his “foot in his mouth” the day his great new position began. Barkey goes on to prove his point of view with incidents that happened while Tsunis’s confirmation hearings were taking place, “He was unaware of some of the most basic facts about Norway. He admitted never having set foot in the country, and he seemed to think that Norway, a monarchy, has a president. He also had no idea which political parties constituted Norway’s governing coalition, even though, as ambassador, he would be dealing with them.”  Barkey claims that the straightforward reasoning for Obama’s nomination of this incompetent ambassador was because Tsunis was a bundled contributor of $1.3 million dollars to Obama’s reelection campaign and other Democratic efforts in 2012. I feel as though Barkey does a great job logically proving to his readers that despite his lack of knowledge or qualifications, Tsunis's generous contributions to Obama and the Democratic Party have earned him the job. Even though such a practice has happened in previous administrations, Republican and Democrat, nothing has compared to this fiasco.