Let's play "Is Peter Married?"!

One of my favorite games these days is playing “Is Peter Married?” It’s fun because it’s tricky: the correct answer at any given moment depends not so much on the actions of Peter, but on his location, and on the status of some laws. At times, the answer cannot be discernible for months.

You see, Peter’s a friend of mine – among my eldest, in fact, a friend from my college days, and among my best friends (which is not an amazing achievement, as I’ve never been a particularly hoarder of friends. Bring me a donut and you can instantly get pretty high on the list.) Peter has indeed gotten married, I was there when he married Rob, during the period when California was willing to marry someone named Peter to someone named Rob. So following the wedding, while they were actually in the state, they were married. But they were only visiting. They live in DC, where there marriage was not recognized. However, they could travel, so if Peter were to drive through Massachusetts, suddenly he’d be married again until he reached the border.

But back in November, Californians voted for “Prop 8″, a state constitutional amendment which may — or may not — dissolve the marriage. The state supreme court is now considering whether that amendment does so, and part of that question will be when the marriages are considered dissolved. Will they be dissolved as of when the court rules, or will the dissolution actually have occurred the day after the election? So when Peter visited California a few weeks ago, even the most expert “Is Peter Married?” player could not have answered the question with confidence.

Now as I said, Peter and Rob live in DC. While there are some legal niceties that have to be completed, DC is on the way to recognizing such marriages performed in other states. Once this change takes effect, while at home, is Peter married? If California dissolves marriages before DC recognizes them, is Peter married? Can California dissolve the marriage of someone who is not in the state? If they make the dissolution retroactive, does it matter that Peter set foot in the state during the period after the election but before the decision?

Think you got it all down? Okay, here’s something to complicate it a bit. The California marriage? That was not Peter’s first time getting hitched. He got DC “domestic partnership” status earlier. Now, DC would not give that status to you if you were married when you got it, which Peter wasn’t. But he has since gotten married, which was not a problem when DC would not recognize that marriage. But if DC will now recognize his marriage, does that wipe out his domestic partnership? Or does his domestic partnership prevent recognition of his marriage? Or is he both married and a domestic partner at once? If so, does that make him a polygamist, even though he is both partnered with and married to Rob?

My pal Peter. He’s the Schroedinger’s Cat of marriage!

No news is not good news

Sometimes I make fun of the CNN.com RSS feed for the headlines they have… but now, I feel like ridiculing them for the headlines that they don’t have. I check the feed fairly often; it’s my default basic news source, although probably it shouldn’t be. Because one thing I’ve not seen over the past few days is any headlines about the legislative decisions in Vermont and DC. They did see fit to have a headline with some preacher proclaiming one man, one woman to be God’s prefered situation, but while CNN.com doubtlessly had articles on the decision, those weren’t deemed important or interesting enough for the feed.

Vermont!

Vermont!

(Dang those activist legislators who think it’s their job to pass laws!)

No idiots in Iowa

Poking around the Iowa Constitution, I find this:

No idiot, or insane person, or person convicted of any infamous crime, shall be entitled to the privilege of an elector.

They got rid of the section on deuling, but kept that?

SPOILER CITY: Life on Mars ending, and the Constitution

First off, let me say SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER – if you’ve not watched the ending of the US version of Life on Mars, and you plan to, stop reading here now.

First, I’ll make my quick qualitative comment — that was an ending that explained everything but excused nothing. Finding out it was all just a dream makes the exercise rather pointless. And seeing the manufactured dream populated by folks he knows in his present doesn’t make much sense since the initial dream he was having (2008) was not so populated. Had they sprung for getting Lisa Bonet in at the closing, I might’ve bought at least that aspect of it.

But there are actual Constitutional issues with the ending. We are told that the date is 2 March 2035. We are also told that “President Obama really wanted to be in the control room when you landed, but her father is seriously ill, so she and her sister went to Chicago to be by his side.” Presumably, we’re meant to believe that either Sasha or Malia Obama has followed in their father’s footsteps. But there’s a problem. Barring any Constitutional changes, the four-year term for president that includes March second, 2035 commences on January 20, 2033 – and Malia (the eldest of the two) will not be qualified to be president on that date. There is a Constitutional requirement that the president be at least 35 years old, and Malia (barring any future discoveries of irregularities with her birth certificate) will still be several months shy of that mark. She couldn’t even have been elected vice president on that round, since the central legal qualification for a VP is that they be qualified for the Presidency. So is the scenario we are seeing in Life on Mars impossible? No, and I’ll tell you why:

Malia Obama is Gerald Ford.

Ford, you’ll remember (if you’re old and cranky like me) never went through the traditional democratic election process to become president, at least not successfully. He was selected and confirmed as VP when Spiro Agnew had to step aside, then rose to the presidency when Nixon resigned. So Malia must’ve been named VP sometime mid-2033 or later, and ascended when some president stepped aside. (And yes, we know it’s Malia; Sasha would still not be old enough to be president when these events take place. And lest anyone suggest it, it cannot be President Michelle Obama, as her father is already deceased.)

Okay, okay, we’ve settled that. But elapsed travel is 2 years, 3 months, and 22 days. Which means that they left Earth (and presumably went into stasis) on November 10, 2032… two days after the presidential election. So shouldn’t there be at least a little reaction to the president named not having been the president or vice president elected? Even if it was an election-of-2000 scenario where the results weren’t settled by the time they left, you would still expect the president to have been a candidate, right?

Ah, Life on Mars. Never totally warmed to it, kept watching it… but now I’m concerned with its realism?

Iowa!

Iowa.

I mean… Iowa.

Badly chosen RSS feed headline number whatever

For this piece on Queen Elizabeth putting her arm around Michelle Obama press response thereto, the CNN.com RSS feed headline read First lady, queen embrace; tongues wag – which makes it sound like a full-on Mickie-on-Liz make-out session, staged for the cameras. I’m expecting this to be turned into some sort of direct-to-DVD flick, if you get my drift. “Michelle, you really are my first lady…”