JC Penney stated that it “stands behind its partnership with Ellen DeGeneres.”

Herndon Graddick, Senior Director of Programs and Communications at GLAAD stated “This week Americans spoke out in overwhelming support of LGBT people and J.C. Penney’s decision not to fire Ellen simply for who she happens to love, but while Ellen has the nation on her side, in 29 states today, Americans can still be legally fired just for being gay. Our elected officials should use this incident as yet another example of the support for legal protections for all hard working employees.”

In a press release, GLAAD also noted that:

Blogs including Joe My God, Think Progress, Lez Get Real and Towleroad first broke the news about the American Family Association’s demands to fire Ellen and joined GLAAD in calling on community members and allies to thank J.C. Penney. In an overwhelming display of support, a poll on the Los Angeles Times site shows 94% of readers polled agree that Ellen should not only maintain her post as J.C. Penney’s spokesperson, but call Ellen “a symbol of equality.”

Jeremy Hooper of Good As You notes that “One Million Moms- a project of the American Family Association” has a long history of working to strip LGBT people of vital protections, including actions against Johnson & Johnson after the company extended domestic partner benefits to LGBT employees and Cracker Barrel after the chain added workplace protections for gay and lesbian employees.

JC Penney has shown guts in standing up to the people who have a strong hatred for LGBT Americans.

While Komen has backed down somewhat and said that they will consider grants to Planned Parenthood, they have not made it completely clear that they will actually approve those grants which go towards the screening for breast cancer for many low income women.

Of course, we are finding out more about Susan G. Komen lately, and that includes the fact that their Vice President is Karen Handel. For those unfamiliar with her, she is the former Secretary of State for Georgia and is a Fundamentalist Christian and Republican who has a virulent hatred for LGBT Americans as well as a downright hatred for women who have to have an abortion.

Over at the Daily Kos, they wrote:

Choice excerpts Aravosis dug up from an interview during her ill-fated, Sarah Palin-endorsed run to govern the great state of Georgia:

KH: I’ve been very clear. And you know, as a Christian, marriage is between a man and a woman. I do not think that gay relationships are — they are not what God intended.

Do you and God talk to a lot?

KH: I am against gay adoption.

What is more, ThinkProgress noted that Ari Fleischer, the former spokesman for President George W. Bush, was involved in the strategy by Komen to try and hurt Planned Parenthood. They wrote:

Fleischer’s relationship with Komen and the Planned Parenthood controversy was previously undisclosed. He confirmed to ThinkProgress his recent role in filling a key communication position at Komen. Fleischer stressed, however, another communications firm (Ogilvy PR) was retained by Komen to deal with crisis communications over the last few days and he has not been involved.

This entire situation is likely to leave a lot of bruised egos and other issues. It is unlikely to die down any time soon, and Komen has now managed to piss off just about everyone who has supported them along the line.

"Pastor" Terry Jones at hearing in Dearborn, Michigan, April 21, 2011 (Getty Images)

“Pastor” Terry Jones, whose March, 2011, Qur’an burning set off riots in Afghanistan that cost the lives of nine United Nations aid workers, is planning a series of events for 2012. His first one will be a rally in front of the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn, Michigan, on April 7. The rally will be on Holy Saturday, the day before Easter. Last year, Jones wanted to hold a rally at the ICA on Good Friday, but the city refused to grant him a permit because of the proximity to so many Christian churches that would be holding Good Friday services. Jones’ final rally will be held in Gainesville, Florida, on September 11, and is being billed as the “International Judge Muhammed Day.”

The Wayne County, Michigan, prosecutor’s office filed a complaint against Jones and an associate named Sapp last year over the planned rally. A jury at the 19^th District Court in Dearborn, found that Jones and Sapp were “likely to breach the peace.” They were ordered to pay a single dollar “peace bond” and stay away from the ICA for three years. The were jailed for a short period for refusing the order. On appeal, the requirement for them to stay away from the ICA was overturned.

Jones has held two previous demonstrations in Dearborn that ended in counterprotesters storming the rallies and people being arrested.

“Pastor” Terry Jones is not affiliated with any organized religion. He simply declared himself to be a pastor and set up a “church” in his home. He is fanatical in his hatred of Islam, considers Allah to be a demon instead of the Arabic word for the same God that Christians and Jews worship, considers all Muslims to be murderous terrorists who should be deported, preferably to hell. He announced last fall that his “church” was bankrupt and he was losing his home. He refused to see any connection between his actions and the deaths in Afghanistan because he believes Muslims of all nations and sects build bonfires with Bibles.

Ever since 9-11, there have been small pockets of fundamentalist evangelicals who call Allah the “Monkey God” and say that Mohammed was a child molester because his third wife was only a child when he “married” her. They refuse to admit that Islam is based on both the Old and New Testament, with Muslims claiming descent from Abraham’s son Ishmael by the Egyptian servant Hagar. In Islam, Jesus is a prophet, not the son of God. Aisha was the daughter of one of Mohammed’s generals and somewhere between six and ten years old when the marriage ceremony was conducted. The fanatics will not listen to the facts, that the marriage was political, that it was a common practice in that time, that Aisha lived with her parents until she reached puberty and that with a life expectancy of only 35 years for men and less for women, a girl being married at 13 or 14 made perfect sense. Facts, reason and historical perspective make no difference to these people. Their hatred of Muslims is total and all one billion Muslims around the world are responsible for 9-11.

Terry Jones is more than a loose cannon. He is a danger to our troops and to aid workers in the Middle East. There are people in Islam who are just as fanatical as Jones is, and they will blame some innocent doctor or nurse for Jones’ actions.

Free speech is a Constitutional right, but I have to wonder if James Madison and his colleagues ever considered the impact of hate speech, and if they would have altered the First Amendment to exclude speech that carries the potential of inciting the murder of innocents.

Related articles

• Quran burning reverend Terry Jones makes appearance at USF Republican debate (digitalbullpen.com)
• Detroit Prayer Rally Rattles Muslim Community (lezgetreal.com)
• Judge overturns Dearborn’s useful idiots, rules they violated Terry Jones constitutional rights (creepingsharia.wordpress.com)
• WATCH: ‘All-American Muslim’ Shines Spotlight On Dearborn (huffingtonpost.com)
• Mad fundies plan to cleanse Detroit of its ‘demonic spirit’; Muslims aren’t happy (freethinker.co.uk)

It boils down to this…they can still fund Planned Parenthood, but that does not mean that they will fund Planned Parenthood. Literally, Komen is saying “We will continue to fund existing grants, including those of Planned Parenthood, and preserve their eligibility to apply for future grants, while maintaining the ability of our affiliates to make funding decisions that meet the needs of their communities.”

They will cut funding, though, for those being investigated criminally.

As Americablog points out “If Komen is serious, they can simply approve the application Planned Parenthood has already submitted. Yes, they turned it down once, supposedly because of the now-old rule about investigations. Fine. If the rule is gone, then approve the grant.”

Planned Parenthood is under attack from Social Conservatives who claim that life begins at conception. This is in violation of the Bible, which says that life begins at the Quickening, which is either at the first sign of movement in the womb or at birth. The claim that life beings at conception dates back just to the 1870′s, and is based on a Papal edict. A variety of religious have differing ages as to when life begins, up to three months of age.

Douglas W. Elmendorf, Director of the CBO

The Congressional Budget Office has verified what we all suspected – the Republican outrage over the corporate tax rate is disingenuous. The current corporate tax rate is 35%. Some companies like General Electric and Bank of America paid no taxes at all last year, and others like the oil companies get so much in tax breaks and whatever that we pay them instead of them paying us. The people paying the 35% corporate tax rate tend to be small companies that don’t qualify for all the special interest tax breaks.

The CBO released the latest tax figures. The average corporate tax rate based on taxes paid between October 1, 2010, and September 30, 2011, is 12.1%, the lowest level since 1972. From 1987 to 2008, the average rate was 25.6%.

Corporate profits (and tax revenues) fell during the recession, but in the past two years the profits have risen sharply while the tax revenues have not.

Republicans are demanding a reduction in corporate tax rates. It seems more obvious that what we need is to eliminate all those special tax breaks and tax credits first, then reduce the tax rate. It is unfair that small businesses pay the full rate while larger companies do not.

Related articles

• Obama will propose corporate tax rate reductions (sfgate.com)
• Corporate Tax Rates, Then and Now | The Big Picture (tribuneofthepeople.com)
• “Do Low Corporate Tax Rates Attract Inward Investment?” (economistsview.typepad.com)
• Americans Look to Corporate Tax Breaks to Increase Jobs (247wallst.com)
• Bartlett: Cutting the Corporate Tax Rate Is No Economic Panacea (taxprof.typepad.com)
• Eliminate the Complexity (citizeneconomists.com)

Christie laughably called this the “bargain of their life”.

Christie, at a town hall meeting in Denville, NJ, stated “I’ve called upon every Republican in the state legislature to vote to put it on the ballot. Well, you need three-fifths to put it on the ballot. The Republicans have two-fifths in the legislature. So that means the Democrats only need to come up with one-fifth of the legislature. This is the bargain of their life. I’m giving you two-fifths! And the polls they show me say that if it goes on the ballot, it will lose. How much more magnanimous can I be? What else do you want me to do? Go campaign for it too? Look, I’m doing the best I can here!”

Christie has been trying to make the case that same-sex marriage should be put to a popular vote, including taking the step of claiming that Civil Rights leaders would have longed to have Black rights put up for a vote. It was later pointed out by a variety of people, including Representative John Lewis of Georgia, that Civil Rights leaders were opposed to referenda being used and knew that only a legislative solution was viable. Christie had to back down, but refuses to back down on this issue.

The rights of the minority have never been put to a popular vote. Had the Founding Fathers put the rights of Catholics to a vote, it would have been rejected. People were still, broadly, hostile to Catholics right up until the mid-1950′s, and there are still people who oppose Catholics having rights even today. Putting Black rights up to a vote in the 1950′s and 1960′s would have been a debacle.

New Jerseyites broadly support same-sex marriage in polling, but that does not mean that a ballot initiative would succeed in granting marriage rights to same-sex couples. Christie is hostile to same-sex marriage rights, instead, choosing to be heavy handed and dictatorial in his decision to push government into the lives of its citizens.

Via Huffington Post

Elizabeth Warren

This news must have the Republicans and the Tea Partiers freaking out. America’s employers have started stepping up hiring this past January. This has brought the unemployment rate down for the fifth month in a row down to 8.3%. Employers have added some 243,000 jobs this past January, according to the Labor Department, and that is a pick up of some 40,000 jobs since December when the job market added some 203,000 jobs. The job growth was stronger than analysts expected. They had projected that there would be 130,000 jobs added last month. They expected that unemployment would tick upward, in fact.

Financial information company Sageworks’ CEO Brian Hamilton said “This is an optimistic jobs report, especially in light of very poor jobs reports for almost three years. We don’t know if the positive jobs trend will continue, but it is definitely a good trend.”

Politically, this is bad news for the Republican Party who have based their entire election cycle on a bad economy. While the economy is still not superb, it appears to be leveling out. It may take a while for people to finally feel the effects of the economic recovery, however. The bigger problem is that the Republicans may try very hard to derail the recovery in the next few months by allowing tax increases on the Middle and Lower Classes. That, again, plays into the hands of President Obama during his reelection campaign since that makes Republicans look like tax increasers.

Via CNN

In the last several days, the story as to why Komen chose to defund Planned Parenthood differed between the spokeswoman for the group and the head Nancy Brinker, who chose to claim that they were just trying to change the direction of their grant giving. The spokeswoman claimed that the reason was because Planned Parenthood was under investigation by Congress. Planned Parenthood has been under investigation by Congressional Republicans because of pressure from the anti-women/anti-abortion groups.

Pressure to reverse course came in as Senators Lautenberg, Murray, Mikulski, Boxer, Cantwell, Gillibrand, Menendez, Wyden, Blumenthal, Shaheen, Begich, merkley, Tester, Akaka, Sanders, (Sherrod) Brown, Leahy, Baucus, Cardin, Feinstein, Franken, and Kerry sent a lengthy letter to the head of Komen. In the letter, the Senators state:

We write to express our disappointment with Susan G. Komen for the Cure’s decision to cut funding for breast cancer prevention, screening, and education at Planned Parenthood health centers. This troubling decision threatens to reduce access to necessary, life-saving services. We urge Komen to reconsider its decision.

Planned Parenthood is a trusted provider of health care for women and men. More than 90 percent of the services provided by Planned Parenthood are primary and preventative including wellness exams and cancers screenings that save lives. Each year, Planned Parenthood health clinics provide 750,000 breast exams, 770,000 pap tests and nearly 4 million tests and treatments for sexually transmitted diseases. Twenty percent of all women in the U.S. have visited a Planned Parenthood health center.

Brinker released the following statement reversing course on this particular event:

We want to apologize to the American public for recent decisions that cast doubt upon our commitment to our mission of saving women’s lives.

The events of this week have been deeply unsettling for our supporters, partners and friends and all of us at Susan G. Komen. We have been distressed at the presumption that the changes made to our funding criteria were done for political reasons or to specifically penalize Planned Parenthood. They were not.

Our original desire was to fulfill our fiduciary duty to our donors by not funding grant applications made by organizations under investigation. We will amend the criteria to make clear that disqualifying investigations must be criminal and conclusive in nature and not political. That is what is right and fair.

Our only goal for our granting process is to support women and families in the fight against breast cancer. Amending our criteria will ensure that politics has no place in our grant process. We will continue to fund existing grants, including those of Planned Parenthood, and preserve their eligibility to apply for future grants, while maintaining the ability of our affiliates to make funding decisions that meet the needs of their communities.

It is our hope and we believe it is time for everyone involved to pause, slow down and reflect on how grants can most effectively and directly be administered without controversies that hurt the cause of women. We urge everyone who has participated in this conversation across the country over the last few days to help us move past this issue. We do not want our mission marred or affected by politics – anyone’s politics.

Starting this afternoon, we will have calls with our network and key supporters to refocus our attention on our mission and get back to doing our work. We ask for the public’s understanding and patience as we gather our Komen affiliates from around the country to determine how to move forward in the best interests of the women and people we serve.

We extend our deepest thanks for the outpouring of support we have received from so many in the past few days and we sincerely hope that these changes will be welcomed by those who have expressed their concern.

The sentencing kept being put off time and again due to problems with lawyers and timing.

According to Edge on the Net “In a statement, the Commission for Gender Equality says the Cape Town court’s ruling is a lesson to perpetrators of homophobic violence. The commission said it would work to stop ‘this continued violation of gays’ and lesbians’ rights.’”

Unfortunately, the sentence is going to be seen as being too light by most people who will be wondering why a violent hate murder has been treated with such a relatively light jail term.

Amy Hunter, the President of Equality Michigan Pride PAC stated “Michigan voters elected Rick Snyder because he had a plan to fix our state’s economy. He was going to help keep the best and the brightest here and position Michigan as an economic leader. Unfortunately, somewhere along the way, the Governor has made compromises we find disappointing. After nearly a year-long policy debate, Snyder has put hardworking couples and their children into harm’s way by eliminating important health care coverage. Michigan’s gay residents are fed up, and this is one way that we’re pushing back.”

They have set up two sites. The first is www.talkbacktorick.com where an open letter can be signed opposing the stripping of rights from LGBT Michiganers as well as to help buy airtime for the radio ad which can be heard at www.talkbacktorick.com/ads-in-your-town .

Sen. Scott Brown

Two years ago, while campaigning in the special election to replace the late Ted Kennedy as Massachusetts Senator, Scott Brown vowed to be the 41^st vote to stop the health care law. Once in the Senate, he forced deletions of critical portions of the Dodd-Frank Act weakening our oversight of the financial services industry. He was elected with the support of the Tea Party and he was goose stepping in line with their policies.

That was then. This is now. Now Brown is facing the normal cyclical election for his seat and his probable opponent will be the irrepressible, passionate, articulate, down-to-earth, almost irresistible Elizabeth Warren, the woman charged with creating the mechanisms of the financial reform bill and whose appointment to head the new consumer protection bureau was blocked by Brown and his fellow Republicans. Warren is determined to restore the so-called Kennedy Senate seat to the Democratic Party. From December 1960 to November 1962, the seat was held by the appointed Benjamin Atwood Smith II. That two year interval was just a bump in the 54 years that the seat was held by a Kennedy brother.

Now, Brown is facing three problems to get re-elected. The first is the fact that he is part of a Congress that has a 13% approval rating, the lowest in the history of polling. Second is a general sense of buyers’ remorse across America over the Tea Party. It is one thing to espouse an ideology. It is quite another to watch that ideology virtually shut down Congress. Though Brown may be a reasonable man, there were too many crazies who were running as Tea Party candidates in 2010. Lastly, Massachusetts is starting to feel picked-upon. Even Mitt Romney has disavowed RomneyCare. It may not be the perfect health care plan, but 84% of Massachusetts residents are satisfied with it. That is an impressive majority, and one that makes the Republican promise to repeal ObamaCare and the constant harping on Romney for signing their health care system into law very difficult for Brown.

Brown is trying to separate himself from his own party. He is presenting himself to Mass voters as deeply committed to bi-partisanship. The President has called for a bill banning insider trading by members of Congress. Brown has sponsored such a bill, and after the State of the Union Address, urged the President to talk to Majority Leader Harry Reid about bringing the bill to the floor. The exchange was caught on camera and the video is being used in Brown’s campaign. He voted against his party for the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, and has supported the recess appointment of Richard Cordray to the post denied to Elizabeth Warren. Brown said “If we’re going to make progress as a nation, both parties in Washington need to work together to end the procedural gridlock and hyper-partisanship.” Dangerous words for a Republican. His party may want to hold his seat to maintain their ability to filibuster everything that comes from the President, but taking such a bi-partisan line could cost Brown support from the right wing media.

Elizabeth Warren

Elizabeth Warren would be a formidable opponent even in a state less devoutly Democratic than Massachusetts. She has a quick mind, a dry wit and an ability to talk with anyone without talking down to anyone that makes one wish there were more college professors like her. I certainly never had a college professor who could have made Jon Stewart double over laughing. No one can fake the passion Warren brings to her beliefs and her policies. Though there are other Democrats on the March 6 primary ballot, Warren is considered the winner already, and she has the war chest to prove it. She raised most of her $6 million campaign fund in just three months. Brown has $12.8 million in his coffers, but it is a gap Warren should be able to close easily.

Though Massachusetts is considered a Democratic state, the majority of Massachusetts voters are registered independents, something that Brown hopes will work to his favor if he stresses his “independent streak” But in the end, Brown is not running on his record, which is more Republican than independent, but is running against his own party.

Related articles

• In Mass. Senate race, GOP’s Brown embracing Obama (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Scott Brown Embraces Obama (huffingtonpost.com)
• Massachusetts Republicans launch blatantly dishonest video attacking Elizabeth Warren (dailykos.com)
• Washington Is Rigged – by Elizabeth Warren (jhaines6.wordpress.com)
• In Op-Ed, Elizabeth Warren Hits Scott Brown and Mitt Romney For Opposing The Buffet Rule (thinkprogress.org)
• Elizabeth Warren shows how elections are won (americablog.com)
• Elizabeth Warren Is No Longer Just A Candidate, She’s A Cause And She’ll Be Almost Impossible To Beat (businessinsider.com)

OMM, which is an affiliate of the American Family Association, is up in arms over the hiring of Ellen Degeneres as JC Penney’s spokeswoman.

They also wrote:

It is absurd to think that a company would find treating customers in this fashion an acceptable behavior. Our members stated their concerns in a kind, professional manner. Insulting customers by ignoring us will not be tolerated. OMM members can shop elsewhere if JC Penney does not appreciate our business. Unless JC Penney decides to be neutral in the culture war and listen to customers in a considerate fashion, their brand transformation will be unsuccessful.

Degeneres is not a true representation of the type of families who shop at the retailer. The small percentage of customers they are attempting to satisfy will not offset their loss in sales by offending the majority.

Of course, the only way for the company to be neutral in the ‘culture war’, as one reader of LGR pointed out, is if they manage to find someone who is either completely asexual or a eunuch to handle their advertising. The reality is that most of the customers that JC Penney’s is reaching these days are younger, more tolerant individuals who are supporting LGBT rights, and for whom Degeneres is a wonderful comedienne.

As for ‘treating their customers in this fashion’, it is unlikely that their members are stating their concerns in a kind, professional manner. As someone who has had to deal with the religious fanatics that tend to be part of OMM, I can certainly say that they are not open to listening to anything other than the sound of their own voices.

Well, since they cannot harangue the corporate headquarters, they have decided to go locally. It is unlikely that this will have any actual affect on the national decision to hire Degerenes. Still, here is how you can find the local stores so that you, too, can voice your support for Ellen.

Mitt Romney

“FoxSpeak” is that peculiar manner in which conservatives managed to twist a liberal’s statements 180° to mean something that was not said, just so the statement can be vilified. Though Repubican presidential nominee candidate Mitt Romney may suffer from too many incidents of letting his mouth get in the way of his political brain, yesterday he proved that he has mastered the art of “FoxSpeak.”

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta laid out for the press on a trip to Brussels the very thing so many have been calling for for the past ten years – an exit strategy for Afghanistan. While campaigning, President Obama had promised us not just an exit strategy, but an exit from Iraq and Afghanistan. When he took up occupancy of the Oval Office, the facts prevented him keeping that promised immediately. We are now out of Iraq, and Panetta told Congress that the administration “hopes” it will be able to withdraw our combat troops from Afghanistan during 2013, and leave a small contingent to continue training the Afghans. The whole exit strategy depends on two things – the situation on the ground and the decisions of the Afghan government, which is very clearly determined to create its own internal peace and get the American troops out quickly.

The key word in Panetta’s presentation was “hope”

Romney used a visit to a Las Vegas factory to criticize Secretary Panetta. He told the factory workers, “The president’s mistakes, some of them are calculated on a philosophy that’s hard to understand, and sometimes, you scratch your head and say, ‘How can he be so misguided and so naive?’ Today, his secretary of defense unleashed such a policy. The secretary of defense said that on a day certain, the middle of 2013, we’re goint to pull out our combat troops from Afghanistan. He announced that. He announced that. So, the Taliban hears it, the Pakistanis hear it, the Afghan leaders hear it. Why in the world do you go to the people that you’re fighting with a tell them the date you’re pulling out your troops? It makes absolutely no sense. His naivete is putting in jeopardy the mission of the United States of America and our commitments to freedom. He is wrong. We need new leadership in Washington.” Romney has said that any decision he makes in Afghanistan would be based on the advice of the generals on the ground.

It was perfect “FoxSpeak” – create words that were never said so the administration can be called weak, incapable of defending our country, incompetent, naive. In the thrall of some foreign philosophy. “FoxSpeak” requires their audience to ignore facts like the deaths of Osama bin Laden and most of the top ranks of al Qaida. It requires ignoring the successful end of the war in Iraq. It ignores the way in which the United States is standing toe-to-toe with Iran waiting for them to blink. Like every other criticism of the administration, Romney’s rebuke is dependent upon having listeners who are programmed to believe the worst of any Democrat, Progressive or liberal.

Secreatary Panetta did not say anything new on that flight to Brussels. The 2013-14 timeline has been discussed for a couple of years already. Romney’s remarks can be interpreted as both his own ability to deny the true words of those in the administration and as an indication that the right wing media has managed for two years to never disclose to their viewers and listeners that this timeline existed.

Related articles

• Romney: Panetta’s Withdrawal Announcement ‘Misguided’ (abcnews.go.com)
• Pentagon pushes to leave Afghanistan as soon as possible (rt.com)
• Romney: Afghan troop announcement “naive” (cbsnews.com)
• Plan for early end to US combat role catches Afghan officials by surprise (csmonitor.com)
• Mitt Romney hauls out the weak-on-defense canard over Afghanistan withdrawal plans (dailykos.com)

Newt Gingrich by Gage Skidmore

By his own staff’s admission, if Newt Gingrich had won the Florida primary he would not be questioning the allocation of delegates. But he didn’t win, so he’s pulled out the rule book and is demanding that Florida follow it.

The state’s Republican Party decided that Florida is a winner-take-all-the-delegates primary state. But last year, the Republican National Committee decided that any state that wanted to play jump-the-gun with their primary date, specifically, holding the primary before February 1, would have to allocate their delegates according to the percentage of votes won. That was in addition to forfeiting half their state’s “elected” delegates to the national convention. (States have a certain number of delegates who are elected officials and party leaders, and the “elected” delegates from the primary process.) Florida awarded all fifty delegates to Mitt Romney.

Going into the Florida primary, Gingrich had 27 delegates, Paul 10, Romney 16 and Santorum 7. Romney’s win in Florida brought him up to 66 delegates. But if the delegates are pro rated, Gingrich would have 43, Paul 13, Romney 39 and Santorum 13. There would be one delegate left over from Florida unless the RNC has some provision for half-delegates. The pro rating of Florida’s delegates would turn the primaries upside down again, with Gingrich regaining the lead. Shifting 27 delegates isn’t a big thing, with 1,144 delegates needed to take the nomination, but it would be a huge psychological boost for Gingrich’s campaign and improve his fundraising.

Related articles

• Gingrich to Challenge Florida Results? (outsidethebeltway.com)
• Gingrich May Challenge Florida Delegate Count (tampa.cbslocal.com)
• Gingrich Wants Florida to Change Allocation of GOP Delegates – Wall Street Journal (blog) (blogs.wsj.com)

According to the language of House Joint Resolution 22, “Marriage in this state shall consist only of the union of one man and one woman. A marriage, civil union or similar relationship entered into by persons of the same sex that is recognized by another state or foreign jurisdiction is void and shall not be recognized for any purpose in this state. In the exercise of the state’s police power and recognizing the state’s strong interest in governing the relationships between married persons, the provisions of this section shall apply retroactively.”

When it comes to respecting marriage, though, Chavez has a pretty spotty record. In October 2010, Chavez was accused of domestic abuse, and his wife filed for divorce. The two were married for four years and two months.

This is a consistent theme. Many of the politicians who oppose same-sex marriage have problems with marriage. They tend to be divorced repeatedly or have problems with domestic abuse, and so forth.

According to Politico, Brinker “never mentions Planned Parenthood by name. But she says the organization is trying to focus on ‘higher impact programs’ and get rid of ‘duplicative’ grants — and she says the ‘scurrilous accusations’ about the change have been ‘profoundly hurtful to the organization.’”

Of course, part of the problem here is that Leslie Aun, a spokeswoman for Komen, made it clear that the cut in grants had to do with Planned Parenthood being investigated by Congress, and not some gobbledegook about ‘higher impact programs.’ The House is investigating Planned Parenthood on behalf of the anti-women groups opposed to abortion, and is lead entirely by Republicans on a witch hunt to destroy Planned Parenthood.

Politico also reported that

Brinker said she initiated “a comprehensive review of our grants and standards” in 2010 to put “more stringent eligibility and performance criteria” in place and insisted there was nothing unusual about it.

“These changes mean that we will be able to do more to help women and advance the fight against breast cancer,” Brinker said. “We are working to eliminate duplicative grants, freeing up more dollars for higher impact programs, and wherever possible we want to grant to the provider that is actually providing the lifesaving mammogram.

“We have the highest responsibility to ensure that these donor dollars make the biggest impact possible,” Brinker said. “Regrettably, this strategic shift will affect any number of long-standing partners, but we have always done what is right for our organization, for our donors and volunteers.”

Brinker, though, went on to say “We will never bow down to political pressure. The scurrilous accusations being hurled at this organization are profoundly hurtful to so many of us who put our heart, soul and lives into this organization. But more importantly, they are a dangerous distraction from the work that still remains to be done in ridding the world of breast cancer.”

The problem for Brinker and Komen is that they have already bowed their heads to the political pressure coming from those who wish women to be placed back in the kitchen, and who would rather cut women’s health coverage to the bone. Simply put, Brinker and Komen have no one to blame but themselves for the loss of life that will come from their decision, and for the damage that they have already done.

Given that it is their own words that say that they are cutting grants to those who are under investigation by Congress, it is not going to help Komen if Brinker gets up there and lies to try and mitigate the damage. It will only make matters worse.

Typical stack for college course (Creative Commons, Flickr)

The explanation for why college textbooks are so expensive is simple. The books are very big, requiring a lot of paper, and very few of them are sold at any given time. As a consequence, textbook costs for college student can quickly approach $400 a semester just for survey courses. Once a student gets into more specialized classes, textbook costs easily top $1,000.

But what if the textbooks didn’t have to be physically printed? What if they could be purchased for a Kindle or Nook or other reader? Wouldn’t they cost a lot less?

Take that idea down to public school level. I graduated from a very, very small high school in Vermont. We bought our own textbooks. To save money, we had a system for selling good used textbooks to the next grade for three of the four major subjects, math, history, science and English. One of those four was completely replaced every year. That meant that our textbooks were never more than four years old, and more up-to-date than most of the schools where the books were provided by the districts. And yes, there was a fund to assist those who could not afford the books.   One of the reasons textbooks chosen by the Texas School Board are so important is because they buy so many books, it lowers the cost for other states to buy the same books. 

Too many school systems are struggling with the cost of books. Too many students are stuck using books that are out-of-date and forced to supplement those books with outside materials. And on the other side of the world, students are being supplied with extremely cheap computers by One Laptop Per Child, founded in 2006 by Nicholas Negroponte.

The devastation in Joplin, Missouri, led that school system to replace hundreds of thousands of lost textbooks with laptops. Digital learning is being used in Florida, Idaho, Utah and California. The biggest deterrent is the lack of national broadband capacity. It is also a transition that is front-heavy for expense.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan and the Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski announced on Wednesday that they are challenging America’s schools to transition to digital textbooks in the next five years. This comes two weeks after Apple announced it will sell electronic versions of a few standard high-school textbooks for the iPad.

The United States is lagging behind countries like South Korea in the transition to digital textbooks. Digital textbooks, on a device that can also access the internet, holds enormous potential for improving education. Chairman Genachowski explained, “When a student reads a textbook and gets to something they don’t know, they are stuck. Working with the same material on a digital textbook, when they get to something they don’t know, the device can let them explore, it can show them what a word means, how to solve a math problem that they couldn’t figure out how to solve.” A digital format also makes the material adaptable for the individual student. Some children learn best through pictures, others through words, still others through interaction. A computer makes it possible for a student to explore a subject in the method that works best for the student.

American schools spend $8 billion annually on textbooks, and that’s an amount that reflects the “cost cutting” system of keeping textbooks going in a school as long as the books hold together. Though textbook companies have been working to transform the industry, it isn’t enough. The schools aren’t ready in many cases. Few schools are wired for broadband in ways that allow every student to access the connections needed for digital learning. There is also the problem, not being addressed in this challenge, of how children will do homework in a digital mode in homes without internet access or in neighborhoods where the computer might be a target for a criminal.

Joplin, which received donations from the United Arab Emirates to supply the computers, is a perfect showcase for this type of learning. Some students have had problems making the transition, according to the district’s Assistant Superintendent, Angie Besendorfer, but they are hoping that as their eighth graders progress through the system, they will be textbook-free. What Joplin is learning from this is that not only is a mind a terrible thing to waste, but it is also a terrible thing to regiment. When a 14-year-old has trouble adapting to a new way of learning, that child has spent too many years locked in a box, limited in what he or she can learn because it must be learned in a particular manner. Hopefully, those who are advocating this transition will recognize that it is best done by changing the way children learn in kindergarten through third grade first, possible going as high as fifth grade if the students respond to it, then let the new method rise to top with the students. It would, unfortunately, take years. Educational reform is notorious for trying to change all the students at once, not acknowledging that we force children into patterns of learning that are hard to break.

Digital learning can do so much to improve America’s competitive position against countries which are pouring more money into their schools and more technology into their teaching. The only thing standing in the way, besides the money and broadband access, is a right wing resistence to any proposal that would destroy their ability to tightly control what their children learn.

Related articles

• Challenge to schools: Embracing digital textbooks (sfgate.com)
• Challenge to schools: Embracing digital textbooks (mysanantonio.com)
• Download Textbooks (college-textbooks.co)
• Digital Textbooks Go Straight From Scientists to Students (almacen13.wordpress.com)
• Apple’s e-textbooks do not look so world-changing to educators (teleread.com)
• Apple Digital Textbooks: iBooks 2 Revealed (VIDEO) (blippitt.com)
• Apple sees over 350K digital textbook downloads, report says (venturebeat.com)

That is how much is currently unaccounted for – $2,000,000,000. No one knows where it went. The problem is, this wasn’t our money. In 2004, the Iraqi government gave the United States Department of Defense $3 billion for Iraqi-related expenses. Somehow, the “bulk of the records are missing.” Now, you ask anyone who has ever been in the military and they will tell you that you can’t take a dump or fire a single bullet without filing the paperwork in triplicate. How the hell they could misplace the records for $2 billion in expenditures is just inconceivable.

The Iraqi Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction audit also notes that “From July 2004 through December 2007, DoD should have provided 42 months reports. However, it can locate only the first four reports.” Defense Under Secretary Mark Easton acknowledged, in a letter responding to the audit that “a records management issue” exists.

The Iraqis, bless their hearts, don’t think we are guilty of fraud, they just think we are really incompetent in our record keeping. At least, that’s the official line.

The money has been a problem from the beginning, when the Bush administration offered up the reconstruction contracts before we even invaded. We gave those “cost plus three percent” contracts to favored companies like Halliburton (which received a multi-million dollar contract to do exactly the same work they had just completed under the United Nations Food for Oil program) and its subsidiary RGB. Contractors brought in Americans to do the work at salaries up to twice what they could make for similar jobs in America, while denying work to the Iraqis, who had built their country before we bombed it. There was a story in the Florida Times Union about 8 years ago about a cement factory in Baghdad. The army said it would take two years and two million dollars to restore the factory. They gave the owner $20,000 and told him to make it look like something was being done. He took that $20,000 and the existing inventory in the factory and in three months had that factory operating at a higher capacity than before the invasion. That is what the Iraqis could have done on their own without our interference. The reconstruction could have cost us a tenth or less of what it did and the Iraqis would have had better built schools, roads and housing without our shoddy contractors. Letting the Iraqis rebuild their own country would also have defused the insurgency and reduced our casualties, both military and civilian.

It isn’t bad enough that we got screwed by our contractors. Now it turns out, we can’t account for Iraqi money. And people wonder why they don’t love us in Iraq.

Related articles

• Billions to Defense Contractors in Iraq unaccounted for (thetruthhaschanged.com)
• Watchdog says U.S. cannot account for Iraqi billions (vancouversun.com)
• Pentagon lost $100 million in Saddam’s palace (rt.com)
• Massive amounts of money still missing or unexplained in Iraq (americablog.com)
• New Government Audit can’t account for billions given to US Defense Dept for Iraq projects????? (bonjupatten.com)
• Investigating Iraqs stolen money (thecurrencynewshound.com)

On Thursday, Feb. 2, GetEQUAL — a national, direct-action lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) civil rights organization — will protest “The Family” and their agenda of persecuting LGBT people around the world, by demonstrating outside the National Prayer Breakfast. The National Prayer Breakfast is an annual event — often keynoted by the President and always attended by members of Congress, business leaders, and international heads of state. It is co-organized by certain members of Congress and a secretive, shadowy religious group to which they belong called “The Family” (also known as “The Fellowship” or “The Fellowship Foundation”), which pursues a viciously homophobic agenda in the United States and around the world. Members of “The Family” are tied to the Ugandan lawmaker who authored Uganda’s “Kill the Gays” bill.

While some people may believe that the National Prayer Breakfast is an inclusive gathering without a particular policy agenda, the truth is that “The Family’s” aim is to influence political systems worldwide. They use the support and prestige gained from events such as the National Prayer Breakfast to promote their worldwide campaign of bigotry against LGBT people.

Beginning at 7 a.m. ET in front of the Washington Hilton Hotel (1919 Connecticut Avenue, NW), members of GetEQUAL and their families, friends, co-workers, and supportive members of the community will gather outside of the National Prayer Breakfast to demand that Members of Congress, the President, and leaders of all kinds take a stand against the hatred and bigotry that the National Prayer Breakfast organizers have promoted worldwide.

GetEQUAL will make the point that attendance at the Breakfast helps prop up this fringe group, and implies an endorsement of the anti-LGBT agenda of “The Family.” Demonstrators will make the case that “The Family’s” role in the persecution of LGBT people worldwide must be exposed for the harm it continues to cause. They will call out purveyors of hate like “The Family,” whose words and actions incite the daily LGBT suicides, bullying, gay-bashings and murders that our community faces. And they will point out that separation of church and state is a guiding principle of our nation, and requires that privately-held religious beliefs not be used as justification to impose discriminatory legislation and the denial of equality to others.

What: GetEQUAL Protests “The Family” and their anti-LGBT agenda outside the National Prayer Breakfast

Who: GetEQUAL and their families, friends, co-workers and supportive members of the community

When: Thursday February 2, 2012, 7 – 10 a.m. (ET)

Where: Outside of the Washington Hilton, 1919 Connecticut Avenue, N.W., Washington, DC

“Demonstrators from GetEQUAL will remind ‘The Family’ and all those attending the National Prayer Breakfast that Jesus taught love for everyone, and anyone who hates and persecutes others in his name is grossly misguided,” said Michael Dixon, a lead organizer for the DC chapter of GetEQUAL. “People die and families are destroyed when ‘The Family” is allowed to advance its agenda of anti-LGBT hatred and discrimination. We’re going to remind our elected representatives and others that the whole world is watching.”

Tom Morgan, a GetEQUAL State Lead from Ohio and a planned attendee at the protest, remarked, “As Bishop Desmond Tutu once said, ‘If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor….’ We face injustice and oppression everyday. We will not remain neutral.”

Home ownership and sub-prime origination, 1987 through 2007

Have you ever heard someone say that the stock market is going through “an adjustment”? They are describing a situation in which stock prices have been inflated beyond the real value of companies and stock prices fall to more accurately reflect what a company is worth.

As hard as this is to accept, the housing market collapse may eventually prove to be the same kind of adjustment.

Americans tend to equate new home construction with a good economy to the point where construction is one of the prime indicators of our economic health. But what if new home construction exceeds the need for new homes? What if the new homes being constructed are priced too high for the average family? What if new home construction is adding to our economic problems, not indicating a healthy economy?

Comparisons of incomes and prices across time are normally adjusted into their equivalent in today’s dollars. That’s not monkeying around with the beans. In purely numerical terms, the median income in 1967 was $6,156 per year, but today, the same income would be equal to $40,770 in purchasing ability.

So, back to that 1967 number….the median income is the absolute center of the income spectrum in a population. In 1967, the U. S. median income was $40,770. The median house price was $25,000. In 2007, when the housing bubble was collapsing, the median income was $52,820 but the median house price was $250,000. In forty years, the median house price went from 61% of median income to 473% of median income. Economists have long used a simple measurement to determine if one can afford a house. The price should not exceed 150% to 200% of income. By 2007, using that standard, one would have needed an income of $125,000 to $166,667, 2.4 times to 3 times the median income.

Naturally, house prices vary widely across the country, but so do incomes. One place where this whole thing is very easy to see is Atlanta. Back in 2007, you could drive around the suburbs of Atlanta and see dozens of housing developments and the cheapest house price was $175,000. More normal was $300,000. But drive into the city and you found a huge swath of the city with dilapidated houses, certifiable slums, too many owned by absentee landlords. The amount of housing between those two points was not equal to the number of people who were at the median income level. Older neighborhoods with relatively affordable houses were occupied by older people who had bought those houses twenty, thirty years previously or by tenants. Some older neighborhoods were being “gentrified” by young professionals. The affordable housing market for the family with a median income was practically non-existent, and for a family with one median income, absolutely non-existent. There was a horrific case about a decade ago involving a young family who had downgraded their housing so the wife could go to school. The husband became the victim of a random shooting in a convenience store parking lot in front of his two young children. They could not afford for the wife to go to school and stay in the more safe neighborhood they had lived in. The shooter was a ten-year-old gangsta-wannabe.

Since the housing bubble burst in 2007, house prices have fallen. It’s a particularly bad situation for those who bought those inflated homes during the 2000s. Too many now have mortgages higher than their houses are worth. It is conventional wisdom to blame the bursting housing bubble on everything starting with a law passed during the Clinton administration that forbid banks making mortgage decisions based on the zip code of the house instead of the financial stability of the purchaser. The practice was called “red lining.” Red lining contributed to deteriorating neighborhoods as those people who might have held off urban blight were kept from buying in neighborhoods on the brink. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are blamed. But the worst abuse is blaming people who “bought houses they couldn’t afford.” No one ever thinks to blame the housing bubble on people who thought they were entitled to have their houses double in value in five years, or the never-ending construction of grossly over-priced houses. No one wants to see that when people cannot find houses they can afford, they are forced to buy houses they cannot afford or live the rest of their lives in rentals that are inadequately maintained and allowed to crumble. And they also don’t want to see the impact of a President who pushed for an “ownership” culture, as George W. Bush did.

We can talk openly about the stock market “adjusting” and how the “tech bubble” bursting weeded out the dead weight in the industry, but we are reluctant to discuss the housing market “adjusting” or the “housing bubble” bursting as a means of correcting something that went very wrong. We lost sight of the fact that people need decent, affordable housing.

Mitt Romney has suggested that we should deal with the foreclosure crisis by allowing developers to buy up those houses, renovate them and rent them out. No. We do not need more absentee landlords. We need a way to stabilize the housing market so that people can afford homes again they way they did in the 1950s and 1960s. We have to decide if we are going to lower the river or raise the bridge. We can lower home prices until they are in line with incomes or we can raise incomes so that people can afford them. There are no easy solutions to this, but we cannot determine solutions if we refuse to acknowledge the totality of the causes.

Related articles

• Where home prices are headed in 2012 (freedommortgage.com)
• David Coates: Republican Truth and Real Truth: GSEs and the Housing Bubble (huffingtonpost.com)
• Positive market conditions fail to spur rapid home buying demand (freedommortgage.com)

That is simple. It has to do with why the South has so many people searching for pornography. They are a bunch of repressed individuals who need to have sex- even gay sex- but feel so guilty about it because of their religion and culture that they have to do it in the dark.

As one Celtic Queen told Empress Julia of Rome “We make love to our best in the light while you are debauched by your worst in the dark.”

As the Edge notes:

In fact, when you look closer at the cities where the term “gay sex” is searched for the most on Google they are in areas that are known to be more gay-friendly, like Miami. So it would seem like that term isn’t central to a concentrated town or city of these Bible belt states, but spread out over the entire region.

Although the locations of internet traffic for that term are thought provoking, the real surprise comes when you look at not where these searches are taking place, but in what language the searchers speak, themselves. The number one language for this search is, believe it or not, Arabic, followed by English and then Spanish.

By and large, people like the Baptists want to hide things like gay sex away from the world out of shame. They are ashamed to be human, really. They hate being born with human failings like the need to go ‘pearl diving’. Unfortunately, this is common with Christianity.

They note that this number is based on 33% of workers nationwide saying that their employers are hiring workers as well as expanding the size of their workforce. They note that the job market is still best in the Midwest with the South coming in second, the West third and the East fourth. That can be deceptive since some states are growing faster than others.

Gallup notes that:

January’s increase in Gallup’s Job Creation Index is good news about job market conditions. The index is not seasonally adjusted and the job situation usually deteriorates at this time of year, making the improvement last month even more impressive.

The index also seems consistent with the government’s weekly report on jobless claims, which are running under 400,000. Over time, the Job Creation Index has tended to correlate with this government report.

Politically, this could be bad news for the Republicans who have been doing what they can to stall the recovery and hurt the chances of President Barack Obama’s reelection.

As GLAAD notes in their press release

The call for support comes after a group known as “OneMillionMoms.com, a Project of the American Family Association” — an organization designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) — told its supporters to call J.C. Penney and demand that the company replace Ellen as its new spokesperson because she is openly gay. According to SPLC, hate groups have beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics.

GLAAD launched an online action for fans and community members to stand up for Ellen and thank J.C. Penney: www.glaad.org/standupforellen

Sites including Joe My God, Think Progress, Lez Get Real and Towleroad broke the news and are also calling on readers to voice support for J.C. Penney.

Indeed, we got the story up soon after getting the word from OMM that they were doing this.

Herndon Graddick, Senior Director of Programs and Communications at GLAAD stated “While designated hate groups try to start ‘culture wars,’ it’s clear that a vast majority of Americans today support Ellen as well as their LGBT friends and family members. Selecting an out performer who has inspired and entertained millions, is not only a smart business practice, but a reflection of how LGBT Americans today are an integral and valued part of the fabric of our culture.”

GLAAD notes that, as of 2011, 53% of Americans support marriage equality. As LGR noted earlier today, the younger nation that JC Penney is banking on to revive its fortunes is far more tolerant than those represented by OMM.

Degeneres made history when she came out of the closet both in real life, and on her television show at the time. She became one of the first lesbian characters to appear on a Prime Time network television show. Nigh on two decades later, many lesbian and gay characters have followed.

For those who want to see JC Penney’s keep Degeneres as their spokeswoman, the numbers are “972-431-8200 (customer service) and 972-431-1000 (corporate headquarters).”

Related articles

• Ellen Degeneres As JC Penney’s Spokeswoman Has Hate Group Furious (lezgetreal.com)

The suit challenges the constitutionality of DOMA as well as the law that governs the Department of Veterans Affairs policy on these matters.

Severicemembers Legal Defense Network Executive Director Aubrey Sarvis welcomed the lawsuit. The Army veteran stated “SLDN welcomes today’s filing by the Southern Poverty Law Center and looks forward to coordinating in any way they deem appropriate. We have worked with the plaintiff, Tracey Cooper-Harris, in the past, and we believe that her case is compelling. This filing today advances the cause of equality for gay and lesbian service members and veterans.”

Christine P. Sun, the deputy legal director for the SPLC, stated “The government’s refusal to grant these benefits is a slap in the face to the gay and lesbian service members who put their lives on the line to protect our nation and our freedoms. Especially given the recent repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, it’s shocking that the federal government continues to demean Tracey’s years of service and the service of many others in this way.”

The SPLC Notes that:

While in the Army, Tracey reached the rank of sergeant and served in Kyrgyzstan and Kuwait in support of Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom. She received more than two dozen medals and commendations and was honorably discharged in 2003.

Five years later, she married her partner, Maggie, in Van Nuys, Calif. In 2010, she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS), which the VA has determined is connected to her military service. There is no known cure for MS, a disabling disease that attacks the brain and central nervous system.

Tracey received disability benefits, but the VA denied her application for additional compensation to which married veterans are entitled – benefits meant to help ensure financial stability for spouses – even though her marriage is legally recognized in California. The denial also means the couple will not be permitted to be buried together in a national veteran’s cemetery.

This all began because JC Penney announced that Ellen Degeneres will be the company’s new spokesperson. She has had some pretty successful commercial runs in the past, so this makes some sense. Where this hate group affiliate fails is when they stated “Funny that JC Penney thinks hiring an open homosexual spokesperson will help their business when most of their customers are traditional families. More sales will be lost than gained unless they replace their spokesperson quickly. Unless JC Penney decides to be neutral in the culture war then their brand transformation will be unsuccessful.”

JC Penney has been focusing on the younger family these days, which are far from the traditional family that OMM claims to be their big demographic. There are families that tend to be far more socially liberal, and less likely to be older in age. While the choice of Degeneres may not be perfect given her lack of children, her being lesbian is likely to not have any actual affect on their brand except to drive away a few people who hate lesbians and gays. What is more, given the perception of the number of childless lesbian and gay couples out there, and that they have more money to spend, it is unlikely that OMM is going to be as successful in getting much in the way of change to occur here, especially if the LGBT Community speaks out in favor of Degeneres as a spokesperson.

Michael Francis, the President of JC Penney, said in a press release “Importantly, we share the same fundamental values as Ellen. At JC Penney, we couldn’t think of a better partner to help us put the fun back into the retail experience. Moving forward, we’ll be focused on being in sync with the rhythm of our customers’ lives and operating in a ‘Fair and Square’ manner that is rooted in integrity, simplicity and respect. We’re thrilled that she’s joining our team to help convey the exciting transformation under way.”

DeGeneres said in an accompanying statement “They have an incredible vision for the future and are completely re-inventing themselves to become America’s favorite store.”

Of course OMM states “By jumping on the pro-gay bandwagon, JC Penney is attempting to gain a new target market and in the process will lose customers with traditional values that have been faithful to them over all these years.”

Of course, if those customers with traditional values had been faithful to JC Penney’s over the last decade, the company would not have nearly collapsed in recent years and been forced to undergo a massive transformation.

One Million Moms is an affiliate of the American Family Association. The AFA has been designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center due to its constant and consistent use of misinformation and lies to support homophobic, transphobic and racist ideals.

For those who want to see JC Penney’s keep Degeneres as their spokeswoman, the numbers are “972-431-8200 (customer service) and 972-431-1000 (corporate headquarters).”

Mitt Romney

Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney may want to really consider just which party he is in. In a CNN interview Wednesday morning, Romney was asked about his economic plan, and he said repeatedly that he is not concerned about the very poor in America because there is a social safety net there to catch them. Instead, he wants to help the middle class.

The Washington Post pointed out that:

Romney explained that he was confident that food stamps, housing vouchers, Medicaid and other assistance would keep the poor afloat — he pledged to fix holes in that safety net “if it needs repair.” He repeated past statements that his main focus is the middle class because those people, in his opinion, have been hardest hit by the recession (President Obama also has focused many of his efforts on the middle class).

Romney stated specifically that “I’m not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs repair, I’ll fix it. I’m not concerned about the very rich, they’re doing just fine. I’m concerned about the very heart of the America, the 90 percent, 95 percent of Americans who right now are struggling.”

Soledad O’Brien then pointed out that the very poor are struggling too, to which Romney replied “The challenge right now — we will hear from the Democrat party the plight of the poor. And there’s no question it’s not good being poor and we have a safety net to help those that are very poor . . . My focus is on middle income Americans … we have a very ample safety net and we can talk about whether it needs to be strengthened or whether there are holes in it. but we have food stamps, we have Medicaid, we have housing vouchers, we have programs to help the poor.”

Two weeks ago, Romney, though, said “I’m concerned about the poor in this country.”

This is Romney in a nutshell. He is not necessarily saying something that, is at its core, different from one spot to the next, but his inconsistency in phraseology is such that it makes him look like he is. It also makes Romney look out of touch since this shows he lacks both a sense of nobless oblige and any sense of what it is like to be poor living on that safety net. This is one of the things that is turning many voters off towards him.

Making matters worse for Romney is the fact that the social safety net is one of the big targets of the Republican Party. They have a desire to take down and dismantle the social safety net as quickly as possible or turn it over to the private sector to plunder. Fixing it is not something that Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum are interested in, and as far as Ron Paul is concerned, getting rid of the whole system is primary to his belief system.

It is understandable to see why the Republican Party is growing fearful of not only losing the White House, but Congress as well.

Via Washington Post

Republicans hold veto-proof majorities, with votes to spare, in the House and Senate. The state Republican Party platform defines marriage as “the legal union between one man and one woman” and opposes “all other forms of civil unions, regardless of where such unions were formed.”

The problem, of course, is the fact that, in 2010, the Republican Party’s divisions became greater than they had ever been, and that is what is undermining their efforts. The Republican Party has, since Ronald Reagan, melded the Christian Conservatives, the Libertarians and the Fiscal Conservatives. In 2010, the Christian Conservatives waned while the Libertarians gained a larger amount of power in the Republican Party.

State Senator Fenton Groen, a Republican from Rochester, said last week that “It is certainly disappointing to me. I think that, in the House particularly, we have a significant libertarian caucus within the Republican Party. . . . And there are some Republicans who differ on that within that caucus.”

While it is likely that the Assembly Republicans are going to pass the measure, Governor John Lynch has vowed to veto the bill, and it is unlikely that the Republicans will have enough to overturn the veto. Representative Steve Winter, a Republican from Newbury, opposes repeal and stated “I’m for liberty and freedom, leaving people alone so long as they don’t harm or defraud other people.” The 73-year-old retired airline captain considers himself to be a “fiscal conservative and a social libertarian. He also said “I believe what people do with their lives, how they select their mates, is none of my business and none of the state’s business.”

Representative Seth Cohn, a Republican from Canterbury, also opposes repeal saying that “I know for a fact, based on people I’ve talked to, that if Gov. Lynch vetoes it, that veto is not override-able.” Cohn plans on introducing an amendment to the repeal legislation which would take government out of marriage entirely and give all couples a civil union.

All together, as the Concord Monitor notes, this is one of those battles that could really hurt the Republicans given the fact that close to two-thirds of New Hampshirites oppose repeal of same-sex marriage, and it could trigger an expensive court battle.

The split between the two charities is hard on a lot of people who have worked hard for both groups. Patrick Hurd, the CEO of Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Virginia, stated “We’re kind of reeling. It sounds almost trite, going through this with Betsi, but cancer doesn’t care if you’re pro-choice, anti-choice, progressive, conservative. Victims of cancer could care less about people’s politics.”

Hurd’s wife Betsi is a veteran of several Komen fundraisers and is currently battling breast cancer. His branch of Planned Parenthood received a grant from Komen back in 2010.

Last year, Komen grants totaled some $680,000 and went to at least 19 affiliates in order to provide breast-cancer screening and other breast health services.

The Huffington Post reports that:

Komen spokeswoman Leslie Aun said the cutoff results from the charity’s newly adopted criteria barring grants to organizations that are under investigation by local, state or federal authorities. According to Komen, this applies to Planned Parenthood because it’s the focus of an inquiry launched by Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., seeking to determine whether public money was improperly spent on abortions.

Cecile Richards, the president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America notes that Stearns’ probe is politically motivated, and said about the split with Komen that “It’s hard to understand how an organization with whom we share a mission of saving women’s lives could have bowed to this kind of bullying. It’s really hurtful.”

Democratic Senator Patty Murray and Representative Michael Honda issued statements denouncing Komen’s actions. Honda stated “I am stunned and saddened. I call on Komen to reconsider this decision, stand strong in the face of political pressure and do the right thing for the health of millions of women everywhere.”

For its part, Komen has made no reference to the reaction and cited its new grant-making riteria saying “While it is regrettable when changes in priorities and policies affect any of our grantees, such as a long-standing partner like Planned Parenthood, we must continue to evolve to best meet the needs of the women we serve and most fully advance our mission.”

The Roman Catholic Church has been the big pusher for this bill given that they lost a lot of money when they were forced to shut down their adoption and foster services because of the civil union bill.

Anthony Martinez, executive director of The Civil Rights Agenda, stated “This is the same bill that we have been fighting for a year now. It is just another attempt to codify into law the ability to discriminate against Gay people. The separation of Church and State is absolutely imperative to this argument, because these agencies are State funded. They are funded with tax payer’s money, so they should have to follow the laws like every other State funded agency. The fair-minded voters and elected officials of Illinois do not allow discrimination, and this should not be the exception.”

Many people are starting to feel that it is important for religious groups to follow the law if they take taxpayer dollars.

Mitt Romney

With 56% of the votes counted, Mitt Romney has been declared the winner in Florida at 48% of votes. Newt Gingrich came in second with 31% and Rick Santorum has 13%, Ron Paul 7%. The percentages are not expected to shift by much. Florida is a winner-take-all primary, so the numbers for the other candidates don’t really matter. Romney has taken all 50 Florida delegates.

At the moment, Romney has 70 delegates for the nomination and Gingrich has 23. Santorum has 11 and Paul 6. The magic number is 1,144 delegates of the 2,286 who will be at the convention in August. Saying that anyone has wrapped up the nomination with only 70 delegates is really stretching it. He has 1,074 to go. Gingrich has vowed to continue the fight all the way to the convention.

Next up are the Nevada and Maine caucuses which begin Saturday, February 4. Nevada’s is a single day and Maine’s runs until the 11^th. In the middle of that are the Colorado and Minnesota caucuses on February 7, next Tuesday, and the completely irrelevant Missouri primary which awards no delegates and just sets the stage for the caucuses there in March. It is in the caucuses that Ron Paul is a real threat to the balance, which is why he has concentrated on campaigning in Maine instead of Florida.

Let’s start with the most un-secret Super PAC in this election cycle – Steven Colbert’s “Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow.” The FEC disclosure is anti-climatic for Colbert’s donors. He has run the names of his donors on a ticker during his show. Most were under the disclosure requirement of $200. Among those who topped that number were California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsome, and actors Bradley Whitford of The West Wing and Laura Sangiacomo of Hot In Cleveland. Colbert has raised a total of $1.2 million in small donations, all for the purpose of teaching Americans what Super PACs are and how they function. He has spent a small portion of the money on a few select ads and his “Colbert for President of South Carolina” campaign that suggested people who supported him should vote for Herman Cain in the primary there last week. Colbert has not announced any plans for the rest of the money.

Colbert’s Super PAC is an educational tool, the others are tools of manipulation and power.

As Colbert has shown us, Super PACs are not supposed to “co-ordinate” their activities with candidates. At least not directly. What Super PACs do, and do well, is buy advertising time for attack ads. Over 90% of the ads in Florida were Super PAC attack ads. The “don’t co-ordinate” rule allows the candidates to disavow the most heinous of these ads, while benefitting from them.

The Plain bus

A few of the Super PACs filed early, so we already know that the Jon Hunstman-”leaning” Our Destiny group raised $2.7 million in the last quarter of 2011, $1.9 million from Huntsman’s father. Sarah Palin’s isn’t doing too well. SarahPAC only raised $752,000 in the second half of 2011, almost a million short of the $1.7 million it raised in the first half. Guess her donors finally figured out she isn’t running. Or maybe the magical mystery history bus tour finally showed people what an idiot she is. And Gingrich’s Winning Our Future group got $5 million each from Las Vegas billionaire Sheldon Adelson and his wife. Adelson is #13 on the Forbes 400 top billionaires.

Among Romney Restore Our Future Super PAC donors are former Bain executive Edward Conrad ($1 million) and Marriot CEO J. W. Marriot, Jr. (half a million). Restore Our Future spend $14 million on attack ads in the first four primary/caucus states while Romney’s campaign has only spent $12 million.

In addition to advertising, the Super PACs have also paid for direct mailings, phone calls and get-out-the-vote efforts.

Not all donors will be disclosed. Super PACs can establish no-profit arms that shield donors and concentrate on issues ads…you know, the kind of scare-the-hell-out-of-voter ads that allege President Obama is coming for our guns ads. Karl Rove’s American Crossroads has a very strong non-profit side.

The FEC filings will also show how much money is being spent on the support structure of the Super PACs and campaigns, on payroll and travel and even wardrobe if they have a candidate or candidate family member with as little personal taste as the Palin family.

The Republicans and their Super PACs claim that the groups are necessary to open the campaigns to a free discussion of ideas and to counteract the money that is being made available to the President and the Democratic Party. All by itself, that says the most about the situation. The Republicans have to rely on millions of dollars donated by a few people while the Democrats are relying on a few dollars donated by millions of people (okay, there are also some big donors and the union PACs in there). The disclosures may give us a solid comparison of the 99% versus the 1%.

There will be some immediate release of names by the press, but it should be a couple of days before the full extent of the disclosure is made public and analyzed.

Rep. Dan Burton, Indiana

It is really discouraging to see how much press is being given to the “retirement” plans of Senators and Congressmen this year. Granted, this is a very important election and it is less about the presidency than about retaking the House and Senate. But, seriously, gushing in any direction about retirements in a census-dictated redistricting year is ludicrous.

Senators, obviously run statewide and are not impacted by redistricting. They are, however, impacted by shifts in demographics and the realities of their own lives. After they pass seventy, retirement is a constant possibility. It all depends on how much of a workaholic the Senator is and how their previous elections have gone. Bernie Sanders is 70, but most Vermonters suspect that he would die if he retired. Besides, he won his Senate seat by a 2 to 1 margin. Pat Leahy is 71 and we thought he might retire two years ago, but with the deaths of Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd, Pat is in that rarified air of senior statesman.

It is Congressmen who are most hurt by redistricting. Even states that don’t lose or gain Congressional seats are redistricting to reflect population movement and a change in control of the states’ legislatures. Dan Burton of Indiana is the latest Congressman to say he is retiring, and his campaign two years ago was a vicious one. He has also been redistricted. This would have been his 16^th term of office. At 73 and after 30 years in the House, with an undisclosed health problem in his family, Burton has decided to pack it in.

On the Republican side, seven Congressmen are retiring and seven others are running for higher office. That removes 14 Republican incumbents so far. On the Democratic side, eleven are retiring and eight are running for higher office. The Dems are down 19 incumbents so far.

Related articles

• IN-05: Veteran Republican Dan Burton to retire (dailykos.com)
• Burton Will Retire In Face of Tough Primary (politicalwire.com)
• GOP Rep. Dan Burton of Indiana to Retire (newser.com)

She later clarified saying “I didn’t want his hate in my restaurant. I told him he wasn’t welcome here. … I feel like he’s gone from being stupid to being dangerous, and I wanted to stand up to him.”

There were some who praised Boggs’ actions saying “You didn’t unfairly discriminate against Stacey Campfield. You have the right to refuse service to anyone, especially a poorly educated bigot.” And those who did not with one person saying “Denying service to a man because you don’t agree with his opinions is no different than denying service to a man because you don’t like his skin color.” Actually, no. One cannot choose what color one’s skin is, but one can choose to be an uneducated bigot.

Last week, Campfield showed his ignorance when he told Michelangelo Signorile:

“Most people realize that AIDS came from the homosexual community — it was one guy screwing a monkey, if I recall correctly, and then having sex with men. It was an airline pilot, if I recall. My understanding is that it is virtually — not completely, but virtually — impossible to contract AIDS through heterosexual sex…very rarely [transmitted].”

Of course what Campfield seems to ignore is that, while the percentage of gays with HIV/AIDS is higher than straights, straights have far higher numbers of people with HIV/AIDS, at least in the United States. HIV/AIDS is most commonly transmitted among straights in many places including Africa.

Via Huffington Post

Ethic composition of Muslim Americans

University of Windsor (Canada) law professor Julie MacFarlane has published a survey of 200 North American Muslims on the subject of Sharia Law, the Islamic law system that, in varying degrees of severity, is part of most Islamic countries. Three-quarters of the survey participants live in the United States, with the rest residing in Canada. There was no difference in responses based on nation of residence.

Imposition of Sharia Law in the U.S. and Canada is the anti-Muslim scare tactic being pursued by the right wing. Oklahoma, Tennessee and Louisiana passed laws or referendums banning state judges from considering Sharia or any other foreign law in making rulings, and over 20 other states have debated such laws. New Gingrich wants a Federal law to ban Sharia and Rick Santorum called Sharia an “existential threat” to America.

The right wing plays up the stories from the severest Sharia countries: women being stoned to death for adultery, thieves having hands chopped off, executions by decapitation (shades of the guillotine!), women being attacked for going to school or driving or showing a quarter inch of skin. They ignore the majority of laws covered under Sharia, many of which resemble Jewish laws (no pork) or Mormonism (no alcohol) to make Sharia scarier than it actually is, when applied in more moderate countries or limited to specific areas of life, like inheritance.

MacFarlane has stressed that the study should not be used to generalize about all American Muslims, but offers an insight into Muslim attitudes. The survey, published by the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, interviewed 101 Muslim men and women, 41 imams and 70 Muslim community leaders about their use of Islamic law in everyday life.

The study was inspired by a 2003 case in Toronto, where a small group of Muslims petitioned for equal treatment in family court cases. Toronto has separate “family tribunals” for Catholics and Jews to hear family law issues. Islam has a very complex set of inheritance laws, which are very different from the civil laws of both America and Canada and may have prompted the request. The request was denied. It set off protests, not just in Canada but in London, Vienna and Paris, with protesters insisting such a tribunal violated the principle of separation of church and state. The contradiction of that, in a city which has two religion-based family law tribunals, was lost on everyone. In America, the right wing has warned of “creeping Sharia” and claims that Muslims want to infiltrate our court system and replace our constitutional and common law with Sharia. Not a small feat for less than 1% of our population to pull off.

When the survey asked if American courts should apply Islamic law to non-Muslims, everyone said “no.” Three imams thought it would be a good idea to have a parallel family law court to handle Muslim family issues, but the rest of the imams are perfectly

Let’s get our comparisons in a row here. Civil law says that two people, once married legally in any state, can get a divorce. Catholic law says they can only divorce if they get a dispensation for a divorce from the Church. A Catholic can choose to obey church law and not obtain a divorce, or choose to follow civil law and get the divorce. There is a parallel to Sharia law here. Under Sharia, a couple marries within their faith and divorces within their faith. To have a legal marriage and divorce, they must do so with the civil authorities. Separate ceremonies, separate contracts. Gee, great idea. The survey participants believe that the two, religious marriage and civil marriage, should be separate, just the way Catholics do it in Monaco. We should not have blurred the line between them and allowed clergymen to certify civil marriage licenses.

MacFarlane wrote, “For most American Muslims, Sharia represents a private system of morality and identity, primarily focused on marriage and divorce rituals.” There is one aspect of Sharia law that might appeal to some of the retro-Mormons out there. On rare occasion, an imam will permit the use of an Islamic marriage contract, a nikah, to take additional wives. No civil laws are broken by this practice, while the Sharia law which encourages multiple wives is satisfied.

MacFarlane said that her sampling was not representative of the Muslim community as a whole. Over 70% of the participants were immigrants and almost half had college degrees. Half were South Asian, 30% Middle Eastern descent, 10% African descent and 10% Caucasian converts and African Americans (African-Americans make up around 35% of all American Muslims.) A follow-up survey would be welcomed, one more closely paralleling the demographics of Muslims in America. It would also be interesting to see a similar survey of Jews and Catholics, both of whom have legal systems within their faiths that are different from the civil laws of our country.

The publication of MacFarlane’s study comes at a very important time in the debate over Sharia. In the most extreme cases, Islam allows the murder of a female family member who “dishonors” her family in some way. It is a cultural aspect of Islam that has been exploited in warfare between Muslims and non-Muslims as in Bosnia and the Sudan. Rape becomes a weapon that is equal to killing the woman, because she will either take her own life or be killed by her male family members.

Hamed and Mohammad Shafia, Tooba Yahya (photo by Graham Hughes, Canadian Press for AP)

In Kingston, Ontario, three members of an Afghan family were found guilt of murder in the deaths of three teenage sisters and their step-mother. The family considered them honor killings because the girls were living as Canadians and not adhering to their father’s strict rules of Islamic life. All four were drowned and their bodies placed in two separate vehicles which were then placed in canals to fact accidents. Mohammad Shafia, his wife Tooba Yahya and their son Hamed were each found guilty of four counts of first-degree (premeditated) murder with each count carrying a no-parole 25-year sentence. Justice Minister Rob Nicholson denounced honor killings as “barbaric and unacceptable in Canada.” American courts have come to the same conclusion.

We have had Muslims in America from the very beginning. The percentage has grown in recent years because of wars in their homelands, something that is very common with any immigrant group. But in two centuries, only rarely has anyone made an issue of the imposition of anyone’s religious laws on our civil laws. It was never something suggested by the members of a faith, but a scare tactic used by others, as it was with the non-issue of John Kennedy’s Catholicism.

There is another aspect of Sharia Law that MacFarlane didn’t ask about – how many of those immigrants actually came to North America to escape countries with severe Sharia? There is more to the First Amendment than just being able to practice one’s faith. It is also a guarantee that the state will not impose a religion or a form of a religion that is in violation of one’s personal beliefs. My mother’s Bavarian ancestors were Catholics who came here to escape a state-imposed Protestantism. My paternal grandmother came her to escape a country where Catholic canon law dictated civil law and forbid her divorce from the husband who abandoned her. The Irish came here because being Catholic barred them from civil rights including jobs and educational opportunities in a Protestant country. My husband’s French Canadian parents came here for the same reason. Most Americans get that whole First Amendment thing backwards. Freedom FROM state religion comes before freedom OF religion in the First Amendment.

Via Liz Goodwin At Yahoo News

Related articles

• Study: State Legislation Addressing ‘Sharia Threat’ Misrepresents Views Of Muslim Americans (thinkprogress.org)
• Why Americans Are Right To Be Concerned About Muslims (neosecularist.com)
• Growing use of Sharia by UK Muslims (theromangate.wordpress.com)
• AIG/Sharia Bailout Unconstitutional: Appeal Before Federal Court (atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com)
• How Far Advanced is “Creeping Sharia” in USA Classrooms? You Won’t Believe Your Ears. (biblicaltimes.wordpress.com)
• Muslims lobby for sharia in Pennsylvania, claim bill on sharia law unfair to Muslims (creepingsharia.wordpress.com)
• Activist Judges Are Traitors; Allow Sharia Law, Radical Islam, To Override American Law (neosecularist.com)

The South Dakota assembly has decided to go ahead and try and force their students to learn about the Bible in an academic setting without regards to the fact that this could be against the Constitution, and pretty much is against a variety of Supreme Court rulings.

They write:

“This bill is clearly intended to restrict the Constitutional liberties of gay, lesbian and bisexual service members, said Paul Dodd, retired Army chaplain and co-chair of the Forum. “Not only does it target some of our military heroes, it seeks to disenfranchise hundreds of law abiding chaplains who choose to minister to all service members and their families, regardless of sexual orientation.”

The proposed legislation would prevent chaplains from performing same-sex ceremonies in military chapels, which traditionally serve military members from many denominations.

“In the words of retired Army Chief of Chaplains, Major General Doug Carver, they are to be ‘A house of prayer for all people!’” noted Dodd. Dodd served 31 years in the Army Chaplaincy, including a tour as Command Chaplain for the Army Medical Command.

Army veteran and ordained Christian minister Rev. Elder Ken Martin, of Metropolitan Community Churches, called this latest attack “redundant, inflammatory and demagoguery,” insisting that chaplains who “wish to perform same gender marriages in military chapels should have every right to do so.”

Rev. Stephen Boyd, Minister for Chaplains and Specialized Ministers for the United Church of Christ, said “This bill is redundant. The rights of chaplains are already insured.”

Governor Beverly Perdue

It appears that the decision by Democratic Governor Beverly Perdue to not run for reelection has thrown a wrench into the plans of the Republicans to push their anti-Marriage amendment. The Associate Press is reporting that her departure could mean more voters who oppose the ban turning up at the polls.

Republicans were the only ones to have any real primaries this year as voters headed to the polls to pick Republicans candidates for President and Governor, but now, Democrats will be heading to the polls on 8 May to vote for a Democratic nominee for Governor.

According to Michael Bitzer, a professor of politics and history at Catawba College “I’m sure that supporters of the amendment thought that, strategically, putting the question on the May ballot was their best chance. That strategy just got blown out of the water.”

According to the AP “People on both sides of the question see the referendum here as having significant national implications: Gay marriage will either be banned in a clean sweep of the South, or there will be a stunning Dixie rejection.”

Michael Cole-Schwartz, a spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign, stated “Given the fact that this amendment won’t be decided by such a narrow slice of voters as it would have been previously, it increases the optimism from our side. It’s something we have to consider carefully in light of all the other issues in other states around the country this year.”

The rest of the analysis can be read here.

What it comes down to, though, is the fact that the outcome of this vote is now very hard to predict.

Ward was required to support the sexual orientation of her clients, as per the DSM IV. As a graduate student, she was assigned a client who needed counseling regarding a same-sex relationship, and she refused referring the client to another counselor. After trying to resolve the situation, she was expelled because she could not fulfill her academic requirements.

The appeals court ruled on 27 January that “A reasonable jury could conclude that Ward’s professors ejected her from the counseling program because of hostility toward her speech and faith, not due to a policy against referrals.”

Ward, who is an Evangelical Christian, was defended, in part, by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty whose litigation director Eric Rassback stated “No individual should be forced out of their profession solely because of her religious beliefs.”

The university noted that the court has not ruled in favor of Ward, but called for more legal consideration. They stated that “This case has never been about religion or religious discrimination. It is not about homosexuality or sexual orientation. This case is about what is in the best interest of a person who is in need of counseling.”

The American Psychological Association and the American Psychiatric Association do not consider homosexuality to be a disorder, and have backed the data that shows that homosexuality is innate to the person and that attempts to ‘cure’ homosexuality are damaging, and that those within their purview should treat lesbians and gays without prejudice.

Via Washington Post

“I’ve been married to my wife for 14 wonderful years. Like many couples out there, we’ve had our hardships, we’ve had our trials, but nothing like the LGBT has to go through. It pains me to see my family and friends blocked from the same rights, privileges, protections that my wife and I are granted, just because we are legally married. What does it say to the youth of Indiana when a whole segment of our society is treated like second-class citizens?”

H/T Towleroad

They write in their press release that:

The former general became controversial for statements in uniform to religious audiences such as “there should be no mosques in America”; Muslims worship an “idol”; “Islam is a totalitarian way of life, it’s not just a religion”; and “it should not be protected under the First Amendment.”

Boykin has also been vocal opposing gays and lesbians serving, saying after the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” that it was a “sad day for our country” and would lead to mass exits from the military.

“A prayer breakfast isn’t an academic discussion, where controversial views can be challenged and debated,” pointed out Tom Carpenter, former Marine and co-chair of the Forum. “Nor is it an appropriate place to present views, however cloaked, that disrespect those Muslims and gays who are honorably serving in the U.S. military.

“Chaplains are sworn to serve all in the military,” said retired Chaplain (Colonel) Paul Dodd, co-chair of the Forum. Dodd served 31 years in the Army Chaplaincy, including a tour as Command Chaplain for the Army Medical Command.

“It sends a poisonous message to have chaplains sponsor someone so strongly associated with speech that condemns one particular religious group.”

He is not exactly someone that should be counted upon to reflect the values of America’s military.

The Health and Human Services Department made the announcement earlier this month that they will not exempt church-linked groups from the requirements regarding contraceptive services. They will have more time to come into compliance, though. While church-related groups are not exempt from these rules, churches and any other employer that is explicitly focusing on a religious message.

In explaining the decision not exempt these church-affiliated groups from the rules regarding contraceptives, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebilius stated

“Scientists have abundant evidence that birth control has significant health benefits for women and their families, it is documented to significantly reduce health costs, and is the most commonly taken drug in America by young and middle-aged women. This rule will provide women with greater access to contraception by requiring coverage and by prohibiting cost sharing.”

“This decision was made after very careful consideration, including the important concerns some have raised about religious liberty. I believe this proposal strikes the appropriate balance between respecting religious freedom and increasing access to important preventive services. The administration remains fully committed to its partnerships with faith-based organizations, which promote healthy communities and serve the common good. And this final rule will have no impact on the protections that existing conscience laws and regulations give to health care providers.”

Republican presidential candidate and Catholic convert Newt Gingrich even used this to attack the Obama Administration and Mitt Romney. He stated on CBS This Morning “The Obama administration has just launched an attack on Christianity so severe that every single church in Florida had a letter read from the bishops yesterday all across the country – Cardinal [Timothy] Dolan was leading an effort to explain that, literally, freedom of religion in America is now being attacked by Obama. The Romneycare does the same thing. Romneycare has tax-paid abortions. Romneycare put Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion provider in America, in the bill. No right to life group’s in the bill. Planned Parenthood is. Romney himself approved taking away a conscience clause from Catholic hospitals.”

The Catholic Church is one of various churches to read similar letters attacking the Obama Administration and claiming that it “has cast aside the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, denying to Catholics our Nation’s first and most fundamental freedom, that of religious liberty.”

Of course, one has to wonder why offering to cover medicine that could be used for things other than preventing pregnancies violates the freedom of religion of an organization given that not everyone who is hired by a given church-related organization is a member of that specific religion. Apparently these churches do not trust the people they hire or their own parishioners to follow what they teach.

Here is the full letter from the Bishop of Marquette via CBS.

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ:

I write to you concerning an alarming and serious matter that negatively impacts the Church in the United States directly, and that strikes at the fundamental right to religious liberty for all citizens of any faith. The federal government, which claims to be “of, by, and for the people,” has just been dealt a heavy blow to almost a quarter of those people — the Catholic population — and to the millions more who are served by the Catholic faithful.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced last week that almost all employers, including Catholic employers, will be forced to offer their employees’ health coverage that includes sterilization, abortion-inducing drugs, and contraception. Almost all health insurers will be forced to include those “services” in the health policies they write. And almost all individuals will be forced to buy that coverage as a part of their policies.

In so ruling, the Obama Administration has cast aside the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, denying to Catholics our Nation’s first and most fundamental freedom, that of religious liberty. And as a result, unless the rule is overturned, we Catholics will be compelled to either violate our consciences, or to drop health coverage for our employees (and suffer the penalties for doing so). The Obama Administration’s sole concession was to give our institutions one year to comply.

We cannot–we will not–comply with this unjust law. People of faith cannot be made second class citizens. We are already joined by our brothers and sisters of all faiths and many others of good will in this important effort to regain our religious freedom. Our parents and grandparents did not come to these shores to help build America’s cities and towns, its infrastructure and institutions, its enterprise and culture, only to have their posterity stripped of their God given rights. In generations past, the Church has always been able to count on the faithful to stand up and protect her sacred rights and duties. I hope and trust she can count on this generation of Catholics to do the same. Our children and grandchildren deserve nothing less.

And therefore, I would ask of you two things. First, as a community of faith we must commit ourselves to prayer and fasting that wisdom and justice may prevail, and religious liberty may be restored. Without God, we can do nothing; with God, nothing is impossible. Second, I would also recommend visiting www.usccb.org/conscience, to learn more about this severe assault on religious liberty, and how to contact Congress in support of legislation that would reverse the Obama Administration’s decision.

Sincerely yours in Christ,

+Alexander K. Sample
Most Reverend Alexander K. Sample
Bishop of Marquette

Aubrey Sarvis

One of the biggest issues left since the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is the unequal treatment of the family of lesbian and gay service members. Today, Servicemembers Legal Defense Network Executive Director and Army veteran Aubrey Sarvis called upon Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to take action with regards to this inequality.

Sarvis wrote to Panetta saying “The year that has passed since the Department of Defense said it would continue to study this issue should have been more than enough time for it to come to agree with the Comprehensive Review Working Group’s view that fairness and equality should be the order of the day when it comes to allowing service members to designate a person of their choosing for existing military benefits wherever there is not a restriction imposed by the Defense of Marriage Act. To date, they have not done that, and for service members affected by this, every day they delay matters to them and their families.”

Last August, SLDN informed Panetta of the benefits that could be conferred to lesbian and gay service members without going into conflict with the Defense of Marriage Act. Sarvis wrote today “Given this background, we were surprised to read the details of the Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Program released last week. While we applaud your effort to expand this program to cover many more people in the military family, we are troubled that it continues this same sort of discrimination.”

The Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Program fails to include the spouses and partners of lesbians and gays. Sarvis continued to say “The repeal of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’ while an historic victory for equality, has created two classes of service members in the U.S. military – those who receive all available benefits and support and those who don’t. Secretary Panetta has the clear authority, within the confines of the law, to make same-gender married couples and their families eligible to take part in some of the programs that are available to all other service members, even while the Defense of Marriage Act is still on the books.”

The SLDN has already filed litigation challenging DOMA.

They have been ridiculed, certainly, but they have never been prosecuted. In fact, case law has said that religious leaders can preach against homosexuality, interracial marriages, etc, all they want. Still, these four men have filed a lawsuit to get the hate crimes law torn down. They have already had the suit thrown out once by the district court.

At the center of the lawsuit are Gary Glenn of the Michigan American Family Association and Pastors Jim Combs, Rene Ouellette and Levon Yuille. They are represented by the Thomas More Law Center.

At the center of this is something that Glenn stated:

“Homosexual activists have clearly and openly admitted that they want to see pastors and others who speak out against the homosexual political agenda criminally prosecuted as ‘accessories’ any time a violent crime is committed against an individual who engages in homosexual behavior or cross-dressing.”

“The concern is that simply making a statement on your radio program or from a pulpit could be interpreted at some point in the future as having induced or encouraged someone to commit an act of violence.”

While many LGBT Activists would like to see this occur, it cannot because of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, and several cases that have gone to the US Supreme Court have already ruled in favor of that. In other words, while hate speech can and does lead to hate crimes, under the First Amendment, no matter how vile the speech is, its speaker cannot be held criminally liable unless it is a direct threat or directly leads to the harm of a person.

Of course, that is not what this is about, but that is normal.

The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act explicitly talks about punishments for anyone who attempts to or “willfully causes bodily injury” to a person and “is motivated by prejudice based on the actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability of the victim.” Nothing in there about “thought crimes”, huh?

According to Talking Points Memo that the argument for the four men:

“primarily argues that the law is unconstitutional because it ‘elevates those engaged in certain deviant sexual behaviors to a special, protected class of persons under federal law.’ Or as George Orwell put it, the complaint says, creates a special class of people who are ‘more equal than others.’
“In another reference to Orwell, the suit fears that the law promotes ‘thought crimes,’ as it ‘criminalizes certain ideas, beliefs, and opinions, and the involvement of such ideas, beliefs, and opinions in a crime will make the crime deserving of federal prosecution.’”

“The suit calls hate crimes prosecutions ‘inherently divisive,’ and adds that the law ‘is intended to send a government-endorsed message to those persons who oppose the homosexual agenda on the basis of deeply held religious beliefs,’ and to ‘eradicate religious beliefs opposing the homosexual agenda from the marketplace of ideas by demonizing, vilifying, and criminalizing such beliefs as a matter of federal law and policy.’”

The suit was already dismissed by US District Judge Thomas L. Ludington who agreed with Holder’s argument that the “plaintiffs do not allege that they have been prosecuted under the Act, that they have been threatened with such prosecution or that they intend to engage in any conduct prohibited by the Act.”

Holder also wrote “The Act does not proscribe speech. It prohibits only violent conduct and includes specific provisions ensuring that it may not be applied to infringe any rights guaranteed by the First Amendment.” Ludington apparently wrote that “It is entirely speculative that Plaintiff’s conduct would be prosecuted under the Act.”

Public support for unions (red) union membership (blue)

In the late 1960s, a high school student in Pittsburgh could earn $11 an hour sweeping floors after school in the steel mills. At the same time, a legal secretary was considered well-paid if she made the equivalent of $2.25 an hour. The Auto Workers Union negotiated contracts that led to salaries for assembly line workers that hit the $100,000 a year mark, while quality was falling precipitously. The teachers’ union in New York City, in fact all of the New York City public sector unions, had contracts that were even more exorbitant. A maternity leave for a teacher ran to five years. Tenure was so unassailable that a teacher could be on the payroll, at over $100,000 a year and not teach a single class. There are still eight of those non-teachers in New York City drawing paychecks right now. When our economy was booming, the unions cut contracts that were outright outrageous, but sustainable because the companies were making enough money.

Funny thing about those unions. When the Chrysler Corporation was on the rocks in the 1979, it was not the wage scales in UAW contracts that CEO Lee Iacocca talked about the most. It was the cost of health insurance. Some unions had negotiated health insurance policies that are still mindboggling. Iacocca did not cite wages, but health insurance as Japan’s edge in the market. (He wasn’t entirely correct. It was Toyota’s practice of doing the market research first and building the car second that made the difference.) He didn’t mention pension systems, but they too were high-end.

As American industries were shipped overseas, it became a tenet of the right wing ideology that the unions were at fault. It absolutely could not be the fault of owners or shareholders. It had to be the unions, and in a simplistic way it was, through the health insurance policies and pension costs. But Iacocca was petitioning for nationalized health care, not an end to unions in 1979. He understood that what the UAW had negotiated was equivalent to the kind of health care that was available in Japan, France and Germany in their nationalized systems, at a much lower cost than the private insurance Chrysler was forced to buy.

Shifting blame away from business owners for the outsourcing of American industry has become second nature in the Republican Party. The best example is the textile industry. Many years ago, the suburbs of Boston all the way to Concord, New Hampshire, were filled with textile mills and clothing factories. Then, they all moved to the Carolinas to take advantage of the “right to work” laws there. The presence of a “right to work” law practically guarantees the absence of unions, unions wages and union safety requirements for workers. The Carolinas worked fairly well for a couple of decades, in spite of the attempts to “Norma Rae” the mills down there. But even the child labor restrictions, minimum wage requirements and OSHA regulations of Federal law were unacceptable to the mill owners. They packed up and moved to Central America, where a worker made as much in a week as a Carolinian made in an hour. It had nothing whatsoever to do with unions. There were no unions in the Carolinas. It was a management decision made to increase the profit margin and shareholder dividends. Just don’t try to tell that to a Republican. Even Carolinians find someone else to blame, usually Bill Clinton and NAFTA, though neither had anything to do with this. Bush41 negotiated NAFTA and Central America is not part of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

In the late 1940s and 1950′s private sector union membership was over 40% of the American workforce, the top tax rate was 90% and not only was our economy thriving, but we paid down the 125% of GDP national debt left from the Great Depression and World War II. The middle class exploded. City neighborhoods and small towns could not accommodate all the veterans who had spent the war dreaming of wives, babies and single-family homes, so the planned suburb was born and tens of thousands of homes were built. It was “The American Dream” and it was fed by those very unions that the Republican Party hates so much.

But the big factories closed and with them, the unions shrank until less than 12% of Americans belong to unions and those are mostly in the public sector, sports and entertainment.

It is against this background of “unions are bad” that Indiana passed a “right to work” law last week. It will be signed by Governor Mitch Daniels this week. Most civilians think of “right to work” laws as guaranteeing that a company or individual can hire non-union workers and not be boycotted by the unions that govern the industry involved. That’s just the surface part of “right to work” laws.

There are two different types of unions – labor unions that deal with employees of things like auto manufacturers, textile mills and mines, and trade unions that deal with people who work in a specific field like plumbers and electricians. In many ways, it is the impact that “right to work” laws have on trade unions that is the larger problem.

Trade unions provide a framework within which a person earns the right to call himself or herself a professional. They have steps, normally apprentice, journeyman and master, that define how far a person has come in the training process and what he or she is competently capable of doing. A trade union is a guarantee to the consumer that the person being hired can do what he/she is being hired to do. In short, in a state that has trade unions, there is less need for Angie’s List.

The standards for trade unions exceed state licensing standards in most cases. “Right to work” states can, and most do, have very lax standards for licensing of trade professionals. That means any jerk with a toolbelt can call himself a plumber, like that person who came to be known as “Joe the Plumber” in 2008. He was not a plumber, not even an apprentice plumber. But in several “right to work” states, he could call himself a plumber, take out an ad in the phone book, run a website and walk into someone’s home not knowing an intake valve from a u-joint. We ran into this in Georgia when we needed a “plumber” to verify that our incoming water line had ruptured, causing the $1,000 water bill, and had been replaced, to void the $1,000 water bill. We were literally told that anyone could sign the forms. We did not need a certified Master Plumber to oversee or do the work. There was no such thing as a certified Master Plumber in the whole county.

A “right to work” law is attractive for some because it means a homeowner or landlord can hire someone on the cheap and not have to pay the fees that the trade union has set for jobs. The cost cutting is welcomed, but the consequences are never taken into consideration. My hundred-year-old house has been wired and re-wired four times that we’re sure of. The first three did not involve trade union-trained electricians. That is part of why it cost so much for the fourth. No one could figure out where the freaking wires ran. Worse, some of them ran wrapped around copper plumbing lines and behind joists and rafters. A secondary circuit box had been jumped off the first instead of being installed separately. We have wires on top of wires strung all through the walls and ceilings. That this house didn’t burn down in the past fifty years is a testament to dumb luck, not to properly-done renovation work.

The least obvious impact of “right to work” laws is worker safety. People are unaware of the fact that unions were born on the graves of workers. OSHA is relatively new. It was unions who created the first safety standards for workplaces such as mills and mines. If you remember Norma Rae, you will remember that one of the primary issues was face masks for the mill employees to prevent them breathing in the fibers that are released into the air by the machinery. Those fibers cause “white lung” a disease no less deadly than a miner’s “black lung” because the fibers coat the inside of the lungs and prevent oxygen from being absorbed. Unions forced face masks in the northern mills long before OSHA was formed. Unions fought for the regulations that protect workers, and maybe that’s why the Republicans hate them so much.

The Walton family jokes that liberals blame Walmart for everything, well, in this case, they deserve it. Walmart began in the Southern “right to work” states and used the lack of unions and lax regulations to create a system of employment that has become the standard for retail and hospitality. States have thresholds for an employer to provide access to health insurance, typically between 32 and 36 hours per week for the employee. For this reason, there is no such thing as full time in retail. Without a union to fight for health insurance access, the retail and hospitality industries don’t offer it, except to salaried management. And that part-time employment thing is a real trap. It is rare for retail and hospitality employees to have very stable schedules. It would be so easy if one knew, okay, I work 9 to 1, Thursday to Monday, so I can schedule a doctor’s appointment for after 2 or on Wednesday. Doesn’t happen. Employees have to make appointments and then ask for the time off. Many retailers will absolutely not allow any requests for time off during “holiday periods,” like from the week before Thanksgiving to the week after New Years. And then there’s what happens if one is lucky enough to be with a company long enough to make, say, 50¢ an hour above starting pay. That person can expect to lose half their weekly hours while the company hires someone to work those lost hours at 50¢ an hour less than they pay the established employee.

There’s also the “discipline” forms. If one makes a mistake, one is expected to confess to it in writing. If one doesn’t sign the form, one is fired. There is a grace period in most companies where, if one is super good, the form will be expunged. But, if one racks up three or four or whatever number of them, one is fired and one’s signature on those forms bars one from collecting unemployment insurance. That’s being “fired with cause,” and it kicks in a waiting period for unemployment benefits. That benefits the company because it reduces their liability with unemployment insurance. Got all that? A worker keeps his/her job by confessing to doing something wrong, and forfeits unemployment benefits in the process. There is no appeal and no recourse without a union. The employee is always wrong, even in cases of customer complaint. There is no objective means of settling these things, just the subjective opinion of management that the employee is expendable.

“Right to work” laws result in lower wages for workers, fewer if any benefits, no guarantee of the competence of contractors, unchallenged abuses by employers, a reduction of safety standards for workers. The only people who gain anything from “right to work” laws are corporations that are freed to intimidate their employees to prevent unionization.

In the end, it is not about giving people the right to work. It is about giving those poor helpless corporations protection from the big, nasty, ugly unions that “destroyed” America. It is about “taking America back” to the 1890s and the sweat shops, child labor, workplace diseases and injuries, mine collapses and factory fires. When the Tea Party (or the people who created the Tea Party while convincing idiots that it was a grassroots movement) coined the phrase “take back our country,” they chose not to answer two questions: “Take it back from whom?” and “Take it back to when?” The answer is take it back from middle class and take it back to 1890.

Republicans are engaged in a double-whammy to create The Corporate States of America — bust unions and deregulate.  They might want to remember something.  When we had neither unions nor regulations to protect workers, that when we had class warfare in its purest sense, the workers’ riots and the Harlan County War in Kentucky. 

Related articles

• Indiana right-to-work law to get final push this week – Reuters (reuters.com)
• After 70 years, right-to-work issue remains a hot potato – USA TODAY (usatoday.com)
• Indiana joins GOP union-bashing with right-to-work law | Michael Paarlberg (guardian.co.uk)
• What Is a ‘Right to Work’ Law? (blogs.wsj.com)
• Anti-Union “Right-To-Work” Laws Really A Tax On Unions (seeingtheforest.com)
• Indiana passes right-to-work law and is now open for business – and jobs (winteryknight.wordpress.com)

Erbeen, Syria

An estimated 2,000 Syrian regime troops with tanks assaulted the dissident enclaves in the Damascus suburbs of Erbeen, Saqba, Hammouriya and Kfar Batna on Sunday. Though casualty rates for the civilian population are unclear, the nature of the attack is not. Someone placed the remnants of government armament on a rooftop in the suburb of Erbeen against a backdrop of smoke rising from apartment buildings and sent out the photo to prove the opposition’s facts. President Bashar al-Assad insists that his forces are not targeting his own “beloved” people, but only attacking foreign terrorists and foreign-backed Islamists. Enough foreign journalists entered the country with the Arab League monitors to verify the stories that have been sent out on cell phones and the internet by the opposition. Television reporters have filmed ransacked apartments that were used as bases by snipers who shot civilians in the streets and during funerals, and showed the sniper nests they built on rooftops.

The Arab League has withdrawn its monitors, and been denounced by the al-Assad regime for doing so. The League admitted it was simply to dangerous for them to continue, especially after a group of foreign journalists who accompanied them were shelled and French journalist Gilles Jacquier killed.

Damascus has been quiet throughout the ten-month protest movement, after having been the site of small protest marches in the beginning. It was assumed that the capital and the city of Aleppo were solidly al-Assad territory, but that appears to have been an illusion. Protests in the four suburbs last week ended with the Free Syrian Army, which is made up of army defectors, declaring themselves in control of the areas. The al-Assad regime struck back and has announced that they have regained control.

The United Nations Security Council on Friday held preliminary discussions of a European-Arab League proposal for a resolution to stop the bloodshed. It was hoped that a vote could be held this week. But in October, Russia and China vetoed a draft resolution. Russia has made it clear that they want a Syrian political solution and not an “Arab League-imposed outcome” or “regime change” as in Libya. That is not going to happen. Bashar al-Assad has been promising reform for ten months and absolutely nothing has come of any of his promises. Nine months ago, if he had instituted those promised reforms, he might actually have been fairly elected as president. Now, the majority of Syrians want him out, if not dead along with his brother Maher. The regime chose to put down dissent with violence, not understanding that today it is not possible to hide atrocities from the Syrian people or the outside world. The regime also does not see the irony in the fact that their only allies consist of Russia, which has spent years using the same violent tactics to repress Muslims in Chechnya, and Iran, which is the home of the Islamic Revolution that backs the very Islamist terrorism that al-Assad says he is fighting.

Related articles

• Arab League Gives Up On Syria (lezgetreal.com)
• One More Promise For Al-Assad To Ignore (lezgetreal.com)
• Arab League Advisors Say Withdraw Monitors (lezgetreal.com)
• Syria: ‘Terrorists’ Blew Up Pipeline (newser.com)
• Syrian forces tighten grip on Damascus outskirts (vancouversun.com)
• Syria unrest: Clinton and Hague back Arab League plan at UN (guardian.co.uk)
• Assad’s forces regain Damascus suburbs: activists – Reuters (reuters.com)

Here is what they say on their website:

Bobby Montoya was in the news in 2011 after seeking to join a local Girl Scout troop. Girl Scouts of Colorado released a statement supporting trans youth, saying “If a child identifies as a girl and the child’s family presents her as a girl, Girl Scouts of Colorado welcomes her as a Girl Scout.”

Bobby Montoya’s Girl Scout Cookie Drive

Bobby is a member of a newly-formed Girl Scouts Colorado Troop. Any donations made online will go toward cookies that will be distributed to their hometown charity, Mount Saint Vincent Home, which has assisted over 18,000 abused and neglected Colorado children since 1883. Proceeds will also go to Boots on the Ground, which distributes Girl Scout Cookies to active-duty military servicemembers.

You can get to the donations through this page.

This is something that Illinois Bishop Daniel Conlon of the Diocese of Joliet has not learned. In a recent statement, Conlon tries to defend the Church’s views by asking rhetorically if Catholics are bigots. He said “Are a bigot? If you are a believing Catholic, chances are many people will consider you a bigot. To believe, as Catholics do, that homosexual acts are disordered, as well as immoral, is considered a form of prejudice against people with same-sex attractions.”

This, of course, makes most practicing Catholics non-believers since the majority of them believe in equality for lesbian and gay couples.

Conlon went on to say “Last summer, the state of Illinois deemed several Catholic dioceses, including Joliet, to be discriminatory against couples, of whatever stripe, living together without benefit of marriage. The dioceses wanted to continue their long-standing policy of placing foster and adoptive children only with couples in a traditional marriage. (The policy stems in part from the belief in marriage itself and from the well-demonstrated fact that children do best within a stable, marital relationship.)”

In fact, Conlon is splitting hairs here. It is a “well-demonstrated fact that children do best within a stable, marital relationship”, but research has also shown that, so long as children are raised in a relationship that is stable, it does not matter if they have two mothers, two fathers or one of each. In fact, so long as the household is stable, it does not seem to matter if they have more than two parents. What matters is not the composition of the parental unit, but the stability of the relationship, and the stability of same-sex relationships is undermined by a lack of equal rights and acceptance in society. In other words, Conlon’s is a good bout of circular logic.

Conlon continued by saying “For years, the Department of Children and Family Services had contracted with Catholic Charities to assist with funding for adoption and foster services. The married couples-only policy was not a problem. Then, one day the Catholic Church became a discriminatory organization, and its ability to function as a religious institution was curtailed.

“How does this happen? In my view, the United States, and the Western world in general, has thrown overboard its traditional moral values that are based on the Judeo-Christian code. Our modern culture, followed by our legislatures and courts, have replaced this code with one
value: the will of the individual. The old code is not just God-given. It is designed to protect and promote the common good. Marriage, for example, is not just for the benefit of the two persons involved.”

Or one could blame it on the overthrow of the ‘traditional value’ that the Pope was the head of the Church. That happened back in the 1530′s when Henry VIII overthrew a thousand years worth of tradition to name himself head of the Church in England. Or it could be when St. Brigid, St. Columncille, and so on overthrew 2000+ years of Celtic tradition to establish the Celtic Catholic Church. It could be when the Roman Catholics overthrew 1000 years of Roman tradition. Traditions are just an attitude that thousands of years of dead people cannot be wrong.

The Catholic Church could have done what the Diocese of Belleville did, which is to spin off their adoption agency so that it was no longer forced to follow the rules of the Church. Instead, Conlon chose to hurt the children and families that needed help because he would rather be a bigot than be a true Catholic.

Conlon continues “It benefits their children and society in general. Thus, traditionally, laws, such as a minimum age for marriage, the difficulty in obtaining a divorce, even laws against adultery, were all intended to strengthen marriage, because marriage was good for society. If marriage were just a matter between two people, the state would have little reason to involve itself in marriage.”

There is a reason for a minimum age for marriage- one that the Catholic Church once fought tooth and nail against, one might add. Many of my French-Canadian ancestors were buried young because they were married at 11, 12, 13 and forced to bear children, like a good Catholic girl. As for laws against adultery, those are no longer enforced, and at one time, divorce was banned- something that the Church wants reimposed.

Conlon continues to whine “Now, many people are trying to redefine marriage as simply a legalized friendship between any two people, with no connection per se to children, to fidelity, to
endurance or to society. All that matters is the individuals. Likewise with abortion: the child in the womb doesn’t matter; the father doesn’t matter; society doesn’t matter (think Steve Jobs, who was adopted). All that matters is the wish of the mother (or if she doesn’t want to be thought of as a mother, the woman).”

If this was a sticking point, than Newt Gingrich would have never been allowed to convert, and he would be excommunicated forthwith. As for children, many lesbian and gay couples have children even as many straight couples have opted to not have children. There in lies the problem, if this was really about the children, as Conlon complains, then he would be doing everything he can to protect the children of same-sex couples. It is even funny that while complaining about the fact that he cannot keep the money coming from the adoption agency, he slams adoption itself.

Let us continue with his ramblings “This approach to defining the moral values of society, besides being philosophically bankrupt, ends up pitting the rights of one citizen against the rights of another or a group of citizens (like a church). For example, not so very long ago, abortion was illegal. Then it became legal nationwide when the Supreme Court discovered the right to privacy in the Constitution. Now, so as not to discriminate against women who want to exercise their right to an abortion, the government wants to force pharmacists who oppose abortion to dispense drugs that cause abortions. We are not far from the government requiring private hospitals and insurance programs to provide for abortions, again, in order to avoid discrimination.”

If you are a pharmacist who opposes abortion, then you are in the wrong line of work. Your freedom of religion is not necessarily pretty here, I should add. If you oppose abortion as a pharmacist, then walk away from that profession and do something else. You see, either you do your job or you do something else where your religious beliefs will not interfere. That is, of course, the problem, is it not? Rather than taking a truly moral stand and walking away from your job, you demand that others follow your religious beliefs. There are jobs out there that I refuse to do because of my political or moral stances, but you do not see me making a huge fuss about that.

Conlon continued with “This may well include Catholic hospitals and insurance programs. So, it’s not just a moral system turned upside down. The Bill of Rights is in jeopardy. The First Amendment provides for the free exercise of religion. Already we have seen that freedom converted into freedom from religion. Look at the situation in public schools and town squares. Now we have the state excluding churches and religious organizations from participation in government-funded programs because their beliefs are suddenly ‘discriminatory.’ Next, we will have the state requiring churches and religious organizations to incorporate government regulations that violate their teachings. More and more, we hear people speak of the freedom of ‘worship’ instead of the freedom of ‘religion,’ as though religion involved only ritual.”

The Bill of Rights says flatly that there is freedom from and freedom of religion. The first clause of the First Amendment reads “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Of course, it should be noted that Conlon is, here, engaging in the usual fear mongering that his position has to rely upon.

It should be noted that, if taken seriously, the very first part of the First Amendment would mean that no religious group would get money from the State nor get any form of tax breaks since that would be seen as being Congress giving preferential treatment to the various churches and religious groups. Thus, hiding behind the First Amendment while taking lots of money from the State is rather hard to justify.

And, of course, we get to the crux of the problem here. Conlon states “We are long past the threat of any religion forcing its views on America. Just the opposite is happening. Our schools,
hospitals, nursing homes, Catholic Charities – anything that involves government licensing, regulation or even one dollar of government funding – are at risk of losing their First Amendment protection for the free exercise of religion. This is not the Tea Party speaking. This is the voice of religious liberty.”

This is about money. The thing is, churches and religious groups are given tax-exempt status because they are expected to do good works with that money. They are suppose to provide food for the hungry, shelter for the homeless, and support for the needy. They are suppose to do this on their own without a dime of taxpayer money because they are suppose to not pay taxes in order to do this. Instead, they get a lot of money from the State to help them run those charities- and that money comes with a caveat- the Church must obey the Law.

If the Catholic Church wanted to, they could quite easily discriminate against people just by giving up the money that they get from the government. Instead, they would rather discriminate and get the money. The Church has, though, been using that money to push their religious beliefs upon others through various means. They have squandered a lot of money fighting same-sex marriage. They have abused the very taxpayers that they rely upon for their money and tax exempt status in order to try and make their lives richer.

It comes down to greed and power, and they do not want to give up a single bit of those.

Conlon finishes up with “We Catholics are not bigots because of our beliefs. We are loyal Americans who, for 200 years, have stood up for the poor and the oppressed within our nation. We also accept truths revealed by God and handed on for centuries — truths that allow people to lead lives of integrity. One of those truths is our obligation to love and respect everyone. But
we need to fight for our right to religious freedom, for the sake of the Church and for the sake of the common good. We should certainly never be ashamed of our faith. Indeed, we should encourage one another and seek God’s strength.”

Until 1960, being Catholic was hardly something that people were proud of. Catholics were treated horribly. They were often denied jobs, denied promotions, and denied rights even with the First Amendment there. Perhaps the Catholic Church should learn their history and remember that, once, marriage between two Catholics was banned by law.

OutServe Magazine’s next issue will feature stories about these brave women and men who still have to serve in silence. Here is the press release regarding the upcoming issue which will go out on 31 January:

The fifth issue of the bi-monthly Magazine will offer a rare glimpse into the lives and struggles of currently serving transgender military personnel. Because of a strict ban on the service of any transgender individual, regardless of their military record, it has been virtually impossible to hear the voices of currently serving transgender personnel–until now. OutServe’s Katie Miller reaches out to several brave transgender service members and shares their stories in a heartbreaking article, “The New DADT: Transgender Service.”

In it, she writes: “As the LGBT movement, both military and civilian, has zeroed in on the marriage and partner benefits issues, transgender service members still find themselves living under the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” conditions many of us thought no longer existed. They struggle every day to pass as their biological sex and risk losing their careers if they are outed, despite the impressiveness of their service records.”

Laura, an active duty Army officer, details her struggle at West Point and long after. “I knew what I was, but still tried to cure myself. And the best way to hide or cure myself was to get married and maybe time, love, or parenthood would make me better.” Jessica, a Marine Veteran, says, “I just didn’t really think about it. Nobody ever knew or suspected. I was focused on training or my deployment and didn’t have time to think about [being transgender] until I laid down on my rack for the night. That was always the hardest.”

In addition to having one of the first comprehensive articles detailing transgender service, OutServe Magazine has added several new features to the line-up. A new War Journal and Commanders’ Log share insights and perspective from LGBT troops on the ground and in leadership positions. A section on fitness highlights nutrition and moves (in the gym) as the key to toning up that physique and passing the physical readiness test. A Power Players feature shines the light on prominent and not-so-prominent figures who have been shaking things up behind the scenes in the quest for full equality.

With an expanded list of features, fresh talent, and moving journalism, the Jan/Feb 2012 issue of OutServe Magazine is a must-read. Check out the latest issue of the Magazine starting Tuesday, January 31, at www.outservemag.com.

Tom Brokaw by David Shankbone

We know that Republicans have a habit of using songs without permission. The “cease and desist” list includes Michele Bachmann and Tom Petty’s “American Girl,” John McCain and John Mellencamp’s “Our Country,” George W. Bush and Sting’s “Brand New Day,” Bob Dole and a parody version of Sam & Dave’s “Soul Man,” George H. W. Bush and Bobby McFerrin’s “Don’t Worry, Be Happy,” and Bruce Springsteen blasting Ronald Reagan for using “Born In The U.S.A.” It seems their campaigns didn’t understand copyright law. But the Romney campaign has really crossed a line, even if technically what they have done is legal.

They have used footage from NBC News’ 1997 Nightly News report on the ethics committee reprimand of Speaker Newt Gingrich. The ad is running in Florida and is entitled “History Lesson.”

Former NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw is not amused. In a statement released by NBC, Brokaw said that he is “extremely uncomfortable with the extended use of my personal image in this political ad. I do not want my role as a journalist compromised for political gain by any campaign.” Republicans wouldn’t know about that aspect of journalistic ethics, since they have Sean Hannity and others out on the campaign trail for them.

NBC’s vice president of media law, David N. Sternlicht wrote to Matt Rhoades, Romney’s campaign manager, telling him that the footage was used without permission and “inaccurately suggests that NBC News and Mr. Brokaw have consented to the use of this material and agree with the political position espoused by the videos. Aside from the obvious copyright issues, this use of Mr. Brokaw and the NBC News name exploits him and the journalistic credibility of NBC News…As a news organization, NBC News objects to any use of NBC News journalists and our copyrighted material that suggests to the public that we or our journalists are taking sides with any individual or organization involved in a political campaign or dispute, and we request that your organization respect that concern.”

Eric Fehrnstrom of the Romney campaign said they are not likely to stop the ad. “We just received the letter. We are reviewing it, but we believe it falls without ‘fair use.’ We didn’t take the entire broadcast. We just took the first 30 seconds….We respect [Brokaw] as a newsman who has a lot of credibility, but we believe this falls within ‘fair use’ standards.” It really doesn’t matter whether it was 30 seconds or 30 minutes, the effect is still the same. It gives people the impression that Tom Brokaw approved of the use of his image in these ads. They “respect” him and so do a lot of other people. That’s why they used his broadcast. It had more impact that having someone else remind people of Gingrich’s ethics problems.

This is not the first time NBC has made this request of a political campaign. They are very jealous of their integrity and image and have disciplined employees who make contributions to political campaigns. Brokaw gave up the anchor desk to Brian Williams in 2004 after 21 years. He has remained as a special correspondent and has been somewhat more visible on the MSNBC/NBC networks lately commenting on the election.

The issue is ethics and integrity, not the legal definition of “fair use” and we already know how little the Republicans hold those two things in esteem.

Related articles

• New Romney ad: Let Tom Brokaw tell you about Newt’s ethics (hotair.com)
• NBC asks Mitt to remove Brokaw ad (politico.com)
• New Romney Ad Makes Tom Brokaw “Extremely Uncomfortable” [Election 2012] (gawker.com)
• NBC Demands Mitt Romney Remove Ad Using Tom Brokaw (huffingtonpost.com)
• New Romney Ad Angers News Agency (miami.cbslocal.com)
• Why Is NBC Complaining When Romney Runs a Truthful Ad? (my.firedoglake.com)

Wallace also stated that “They’re all stupid. . .It’s like you’re tuning into a car race, you really want to see if there’s a wreck.” Wallace has moderated two debates so far.

Wallace is not alone in his criticism about the number of Republican debates. Karl Rove criticized the number saying “debates have nearly crippled campaigns, chewing into the precious time each candidate has to organize, raise money, set themes, roll out policy and campaign.”

The next GOP debate is on 22 February.

Via Huffington Post