The Civil Rights Agenda executive director Anthony Martinez stated “We at TCRA supported the Civil Union bill as an initial step to providing rights and benefits to same sex couples, but separate is never equal. Marriage has always been one of the principal goals for our organization and we are pleased to finally be able to move forward towards achieving that goal. We thank the leadership of Representative Harris, Cassidy and Mell, and look forward to supporting their efforts. TCRA will work tirelessly to ensure that Illinois recognizes that all families deserve to be equal.”

Washington State is also voting on marriage equality this year, and it is likely to pass their Assembly later this month.

It is difficult to pinpoint any specific recent actions that may have led to the continuing deterioration in Congress’ image, particularly because much of the political attention in January and early February has focused on the Republican presidential race. Congress at this point is again wrangling over the extension of the payroll tax holiday and unemployment benefits — both of which were temporarily extended late last year in a short-term fix that expires at the end of February. It is notable that President Obama has continued to make criticism of Congress a part of his broad presidential re-election strategy.

Democrats gave Congress 11% and Republicans gave it 12%. What brought it down to 10% is that only 8% of independents support the job that Congress is doing.

These are bad numbers going into the election cycle. Currently, Republicans control the House and they hold enough seats in the Senate to filibuster a lot of legislation. The House is up for reelection this cycle, and the Senate has a third of its members of for reelection. With the collapse of the Tea Party, Democrats could find the situation favorable, especially since many of the voter identification initiatives are ending up hurting Republican voters rather than Democratic voters.

Rep. Kingston was actually ready for the ambush. He explained that the beach refurbishment that was done on Tybee Island off the coast of Georgia is a long-term project., dating back to the last couple of hurricanes that sideswiped Savannah. He did err in comparing the beach erosion to the damage in New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina while explaining how deep sand beaches help protect the properties on a barrier island. New Orleans isn’t on the beach. It was destroyed by the failure of the levees that protect the below-sea-level portions of New Orleans from the Mississippi River and the Industrial Canal. Kingston explained that is little bungalow on Tybee is a full 300 yards from the refurbished beach area that he earmarked $6.3 million for, so it doesn’t impact his little bungalow, which isn’t even on the beach front. Bashir countered that anything that improves the island will raise the value of Kingston’s property. Like most of Georgia, Tybee Island has seen home values plummet since 2006. That $6.3 million for sand could have been better spent trying to save some of the foreclosed homes in Georgia, where the sub-prime mortgage brokers got so out of control the state legislature had to pass a predatory lender law. It is not the sand that has clogged up Tybee’s economy, but the fact that in this recession people aren’t traveling and Tybee’s economy is entirely based on tourism. (It is also home to one of the neatest ladies I’ve ever met. She is the mother of a friend of my younger daughter, rides a Hog and has “Bike Dyke” printed on her helmet. Drives the natives nuts.)

A warning about this list – one of the criteria for getting on this list was that the earmark had to be for a project situated within three miles of property owned by the legislator. Some of them are a stretch for showing a personal connection, like a traffic light a mile from someone’s home. Others are no-brainers like completely upgrading the street where the legislator lives. The list is alphabetical, so you can scan down to find out if your own representative is on the list. Forty-five Congressmen and Senators made the list, out of 535 total representatives in Washington. That kind of refutes the idea that every one in Congress is a crook who is funneling money to his or her own benefit. All the geeky bean-counting statistics analysis follows the list.

So, here it is, the Washington Post’s bi-partisan Hall of Shame, the Ledger of Legerdemain, the Roll Call of High Rollers……

Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-Alabama) Since 2008, $440,000 for the University of Montevallo, while his wife was on their board of trustees.

Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-Maryland) Since 2005, $4.5 million in improvements for I-270 and Buckeystown Pike, which are near his home, farm and rental properties which earn him up to $150,000 a year.

Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), $2.98 million for widening three miles of the U.S. 287 Bypass in Ennis. Barton owns two homes there.

Rep. Robert Bishop (R-Utah) 2007-10, $1.5 million for Weber State University in Ogden, where his sone is a state government lobbyist. Was investigated and cleared by the ethics committee.

Rep. Sanford Bishop, Jr. (D-Georgia) 2008-09, $200,000 for a middle school mentoring program that employed his stepdaughter and her husband.

Rep. Corinne Brown (D-Florida) 2005-10, $21.9 million for six clients of her daughter’s lobbying firm.

Rep. G.K. Butterfield (D-North Carolina) Over the past few years, $817,000 for revitalizing buildings in Wilson, N. C., within 1,320 yards of his 19 properties.

Rep. Ken Calvert (R-California) 2004-09, $1.2 million for the Corona Transit Center, near seven Calvert-owned rental properties. Calvert consulted with the ethics committee on this and it was approved.

Rep. Danny Davis (D-Illinois) 2005, $800,000 for a study that recommends building a deck over the Dwight D. Eisenhower Expressway in Oak Park, 1.4 miles from his home.

Rep. Norman Dicks (D-Washington) 2008, while chairman of the appropriations committee, $1.82 million for Puget Sound Partnership, an environmental agency whose executive director is Dick’s son and from 2008-11, $15 million to the EPA which gave it as a non-competitive grant to the same agency.

Rep. Joe Donnelly (D-Indiana) $935,000 to dredge Michigan City Harbor, two miles from Donnelly’s shore-front home.

Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas) Since 2001, $51.9 million for a make-over for downtown Fort Worth and rerouting the Trinity River. Her son is the director of the group supervising the project and until 2010, they co-owned a condominium building a half-mile south of it.

Rep. Doc Hastings (R-Washington) 2009, $750,000 to replace a railroad underpass with a new bridge in Pasco. He owns land and a building three blocks west of the project, which houses a janitorial business owned by his brother.

Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-New York) 2005, $960,000 to upgrade the village of Saugerties’ downtown; 2009, $800,000 for the sewer lines, is a partner in a hotel development in the village.

Rep. Rubén Hinojosa (D-Texas) 2009, $665,000 to widen a road next to his family’s commercial property and near the family food processing plant in Mercedes.

Sen. James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma) Since 2008, $1.8 million to study widening U.S. 169 near commerical property co-owned by his wife in Owasso.

Rep. Steve Israel (D-New York) 2008 $490,000 to study a bypass to ease congestion on a commercial road that borders Israel’s neighborhood in Dix Hills. Project is stalled and money has not been released.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-California) 2007-09 $815,000 to widen a road less than a mile from a medical building owned by Issa. Didn’t help. Issa purchased the building for $16.6 million in 2008, lost $1.6 million when he sold it last month.

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) 2009-10 $5.25 million for the University of Houston while her husband was vice-president of student affairs and vice chancellor of student affairs for the state’s university system.

Sen. Tim Johnson (D-South Dakota) 2008, with 7 other senators, added $4 million to Pentagon’s budget for the math and science education program known as STARBASE, where his wife was a contract employee evaluating the program.

Rep. Jack Kingston, see above

Rep. Robert Latta (R-Ohio) 2009-10, $2.8 million co-sponsored for water and wind research at Bowling Green State University while his wife was a senior vice-president.

Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-California) 2004-08, $2.7 million to redevelop Barracks Row with an improved Eastern Market Metro stop and two parks, just four blocks from Lewis’ Washington, D.C. home.

Rep. Daniel Lipinski (D-Illinois) 2005, co-sponsored $2.5 million for rail projects overseen by Chicago Transit Authority, a lobbying client of William Lipinski former congressman and Daniel’s father. Daddy received $766,330.20 in fees from CTA since 2007.

Rep. Frank LoBiondo (R-New Jersey) Since 2008, $4.68 million for beach monitoring and nourishment in Ventnor City, 850 feet from his beach home.

Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Massachusetts) Since 2003, $2.3 million for two community programs in Boston tied to his wife. Mrs. Lynch is director of marketing and development for the South Boston Community Health Center, which received $1.2 million for teen substance abuse treatment. Lynch sought the opinion of the ethics committee and was cleared for this.

Rep. Candice Miller (R-Michigan) 2006, $486,000 for a 14-foot wide bike lane to a new bridge on the Clinton River, 300 yards from her home.

Rep. Gary Miller (R-California) 2005, $1.28 million to repave, re-landscape and install new drains on Grand Avenue in Diamond Bar, which also upgraded an access road for a residential and retail development co-owned by Miller and a campaign donor. Miller sold the property after getting the money for it.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) 2005-09, $6.9 million for a road that began near property she purchased at a reduced price. Murkowski sold the property back to her developer friend after the Alaska media got hold of the story.

Rep. John Oliver (D-Massachusetts) 2003-08, $5.1 million for a road project and intersection near Hampshire College. The project is 209 feet from Oliver’s 15-acre home and adjoining properties.

Rep. Ed Pastor (D-Arizona) 2005-10, $4 million diverted from an Energy Department agency which was supposed to be securing the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile for a program for at-risk teens at Maricopa Community Colleges, run by his daughter.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-California) 2001-11, $50 million for a light-rail project for direct access to Union Square and Chinatown in San Francisco. Her husband owns a commercial building near Union Square.

Rep. Nick Rahall (D-West Virginia) 2005, $20 million for a parking garage, bus and taxi facility in downtown Beckley. Within a mile’s radius, Rahall owns a commercial property, a home and his son owns a home.

Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nevada) 2004-05, $21.5 million for a bridge over the Colorado River connecting gambling resort town of Laughlin with Bullhead City, Arizona where Reid owns 160 undeveloped acres.

Rep. Harold Rogers (R-Kentucky) Since 2002, $7.1 million to bury utility lines, rebuild sidewalks, pave street, install driveway aprons, curbs and decorative lamps and narrow College Street in Somerset right in front of his own home.

Rep. Mike Ross (D-Arkansas) 2005, $2.6 million for construction of a railroad trestle in Prescott 600 yards from a building he owns.

Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Maryland) 2008, $187,000 for a beach replenishment survey for the Ocean City shoreline where he owns two condos.

Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Illinois) 2008, $290,663 for Beloved Community Family Services in Chicago, which he co-founded and where his wife is an unpaid volunteer board member.

Rep. Linda Sánchez (D-California) 2009, $475,000 for seven traffic lights. One within a mile fo her home and three within a half-mile radius of her district office.

Rep. Richard Shelby (R-Alabama) Over $100 million for downtown development in Tuscaloosa, where he owns an office building. Phase II of the project will repave his street.

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) 2009, $950,000 for road improvements near San Antonio-Fort Sam Houston military base for three high-traffic intersections, including one a few blocks from Smith’s home.

Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Massachusetts) 2010, $900,000 to resurface roads in Hinds County, including a quarter-mile residential loop in Bolton where Thompson and his daughter own homes.

Rep. John Tierney (D-Mass) Since 2005, $3.5 million for a 950-space parking garage and commuter rail station in Salem, a quarter-mile from a commercial building co-owned by Tierney.

Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Mississippi) While in the House in 2003, $1.5 million to study the relocation of railroad tracks in downtown Tupelo, less than a half-mile from his home.

Rep. Bill Young (R-Florida) Since 2001, $73 million for companies that employed his sons, Science Applications International Corp. in St. Petersburg and the National Forensic Science Technology Center.

There are 5 Senators on this list, but one was in the House of Representatives when he got the earmark. The other 40 are in the House. Twenty-three Republicans earmarked $295,592,000 (66% of the total) and six of the projects directly benefitted family members. Twenty-two Democrats earmarked $149,282,660and seven of those benefitted family members. One Congressman was investigated and cleared on ethics charges, and two cleared their involvements with the ethics committee in advance. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee has been the subject of an on-again-off-again ethics investigation.

Only five of these earmarks were started after President Obama took office. The other 40 were done or started during the “spend it as fast as you can borrow it” Bush administration.

As I said, some of these are pretty petty. They were listed because the projects might improve the value of a piece of property. Even Rep. Richard Shelby’s whopping $100 million is only peripherally impacting his property. Every one of the infrastructure projects can be justified with jobs created and necessary work being done.

There are 13 of them, 30% of the total, that resulted in funds for organizations that directly or indirectly involved family members and those deserved full-out ethics investigations. Only Jackson Lee has even been asked about the connection between her earmarks and her husband’s job.

Related articles

• Disgusting (cafehayek.com)
• Luxury Living Tybee: Oceanfront Vacation Rental Homes Now Offers Seasonal Getaway Rates to Coastal Travelers (prweb.com)
• Open Thread: Earmarks as Means of Personal Enrichment? (newsbusters.org)

Rick Santorum at the 2011 CPAC (photo by Gage Skidmore)

With 30% of the votes counted, MSNBC has declared Missouri for Rick Santorum. This primary is not the official distribution of delegates for the state. They will hold caucuses on March 17 to assigned their delegates. At 9:50 p.m. Eastern, Santorum leads with 54%, Mitt Romney has 26%, Ron Paul has 12% and “uncommitted” has 5%. Newt Gingrich is not on the ballot in Missouri.

Santorum is also leading in Minnesota and Colorado at this time, but not enough votes have been reported for the races to be called.

UPDATE: 10:20 p.m. Eastern.  MSNBC has declared Rick Santorum the winner in Minnesota.  With 23% of the vote reported, Santorum has 44% of the votes, Ron Paul 27%, Mitt Romney 17% and Newt Gingrich 11%. 

FINAL UPDATE:  1 a.m. Eastern, Wednesday, February 8 — The Chairman of the Republican Party in Colorado announced to CNN that Rick Santorum took the state with 40.2% of the vote.  Mitt Romney won 34.9%, Newt Gingrich won 12.8% and Ron Paul won 11.7%. 

The visit is campaign related, but details are sketchy right now.

Vermont overwhelmingly voted for Obama in 2008, and will likely vote for him again this year. It would, of course, be nice if President Obama toured more of Vermont than just Burlington given that the state has some major successes as well as some failures. The area around Rutland City, for instance, has lagged behind the rest of the state in terms of job creation, and has seen a spike in drug related crimes of late.

New York has been told by the Courts that it is unconstitutional for them to rent out school space to religious groups while the schools are not in session. This means that this particular bill will end up in the courts and being struck down, to the detriment of the state.

Still, Diaz ignores all of this to say:

“Today the New York State Senate voted 55 to 7 in favor of legislation to permit public schools to allow worship services in schools when school is not in session.

I am disappointed that seven Senators: Senator Liz Krueger, Senator Daniel Squadron, Senator Velmanette Montgomery, Senator Toby Ann Stavisky, Senator Tom Duane, Senator Bill Perkins, and Senator Suzi Oppenheimer – all Democrats – voted against this bill. You need to know that the 160 religious groups, including churches that rent space in public schools for their activities are all located in Democratic areas, and mostly minority members of the Democratic Party.

It was the Republican Senate – spearheaded by Senator Marty Golden – who took the bill and quickly passed it through the Senate Education Committee to get it to the Senate Floor, today Monday, February 6, 2012 in order to give all 62 Senators the opportunity to vote yes or no. Every Republican Senator voted in favor of this bill, and 23 Democrats also voted in favor of it.

It is shameful that despite the effort of Councilmember Fernando Cabrera, the New York City Council, which is controlled by Democrats, has thus far been unconvinced, unable and unwilling to even approve a simple resolution about this serious topic that is so important to many New Yorkers.

Assemblyman Nelson Castro is also failing to convince his more than 100 Democratic colleagues in the Assembly to pass this important piece of legislation, knowing that Mayor Bloomberg has given a deadline of February 12th to expel all those groups from using public buildings.

But today in the Senate, we have done our part, and I appreciate and congratulate the 23 fellow Democrats that joined the Republicans in voting for this legislation. Special mention must be given to the eloquent and strong defense offered by Senator Malcolm Smith, Senator John DeFrancisco, Senator John Flanagan and Senator Martin Golden himself”

So, basically, Diaz is in favor of wasting money in the courts.

President Ronald Reagan

While President Barack Obama is alive and can respond to their use of him to try and attack the decision not to bring the bill up for a vote, the ads are most disrespectful of late President Ronald Reagan, who is not alive to defend their use of him in the above video. Right Wing Watch notes that the video shows what they have inserted into the mouth of Reagan as if he would have endorsed it at the Berlin Wall. While Reagan was anti-choice, it is still disrespectful to use his image in an ad and put words in his mouth.

Porter’s group has had a lot of problems with the Senate. Senators not long ago were presented a bunch of teddy bears which had the sound of fetal heartbeats embedded in them. They played if they were squeezed. The bears were manufactured in China, and were almost all returned to the organization because they could not be donated to children in need due to the sound mechanic.

Their second video, which is below, shows Obama as if he were declaring his support to stall the progress of the bill and “expressing his dream for his daughters to have abortions.” Amazingly, while most Liberals are pro-choice in terms of keeping abortion legal, the majority tend to declare that they, themselves, would not want to have an abortion nor to see one of their loved ones have one.

Porter is furious that the bill has stalled. Clergy who have tried to get it through have been pretty soundly rebuked. Many state Senators are worried about how much money it is going to cost the state to litigate a law that even many anti-choice groups like Ohio Right to Life Society have said is unconstitutional. At least one person lobbying against the bill has demanded that a provision be placed in the bill that would make defending it in court the fiscal responsibility of the clergy and groups who are lobbying for it.

It should be noted that Hoekstra rails against the departure of American jobs from the United States despite the fact that it is Republican policies that created that climate, and that he, as Senator, would perpetuate those same policies.

A coalition of ministers, mostly Black, from Detroit have already called on Hoekstra to apologize for the ad and an Asian-American group has said that it was “very disturbing.” The Huffington Post notes that:

The Michigan Republican began taking heat after his ad targeting Democratic incumbent Debbie Stabenow as “Debbie Spenditnow” ran statewide Sunday during the Super Bowl. Some detractors said the ad was racially insensitive, while national GOP consultant Mike Murphy tweeted that it was “really, really dumb.” Foreign Policy magazine managing editor Blake Hounshell called the ad “despicable.”

Reverend Charles Williams II of Detroit’s King Solomon Baptist Church said in a statement that “The Asian woman speaking in this video would be no different than him having a black person speaking in slave dialect. If Pete Hoekstra does not see any wrong in this commercial, he doesn’t deserve to be in the race.”

It should be noted that many Asians learn to speak English far better than most Americans, who seem to have a very poor grasp of syntax, grammar, and structure.

In the ad, the young Asian woman is seen riding a bike down a narrow path lined with rice paddies, or that is what it seems to be. The ad, created by Fred Davis of the California-based Strategic Perception Inc, not only opens with a gong, but appears to have been filed in Southern California. In the ad, the woman says “Thank you, Michigan Senator Debbie Spenditnow. Debbie spends so much American money. You borrow more and more from us. Your economy get very weak. Ours get very good. We take your jobs. Thank you, Debbie Spenditnow.”

Of course, just to point this out, the woman’s accent ruins the entire stereotype as she does not manage to speak even in a fake Chinese accent, just in broken English.

The Huffington Post notes that:

Hoekstra defended the ad, telling reporters during a Monday conference call that it has “jumpstarted the debate” over deficit spending. He said it’s only “insensitive” to the Democratic philosophy of Stabenow and President Barack Obama, noting the ad doesn’t criticize China. Asked about the woman in the ad, Hoekstra said that “her parents are 100 percent Chinese.”

“We knew we were taking an aggressive approach on this. But this is a time where the people in Michigan and across the country are fed up with the spending, and we wanted to capture that frustration that they had with Washington, D.C.,” he said. “This ad … hits Debbie smack dab between the eyes on the issue where she is vulnerable with the voters of Michigan, and that is spending.”

Of course, part of the problem for Hoekstra is that, as a nine term Representative, he voted repeatedly to run up debt with China. Michigan Democratic Chairman Mark Brewer stated “Hoekstra ran up our debt to countries like China by voting for the $700 billion Wall Street bailout, and for trillions in unfunded giveaways to billionaires and special interests. Debbie Stabenow has been one of our strongest leaders in cracking down on other countries’ illegal trade violations.”

Stabenow is planning a conference call that aims to “‘discuss evidence that the Chinese are strong-arming Michigan businesses’ into handing over intellectual property and technology as a cost of doing business in China.”

The nonpartisan Asian & Pacific Islander American Vote’s Michigan chapter stated “It is very disturbing that Mr. Hoekstra’s campaign chose to use harmful negative stereotypes that intrinsically encourage anti-Asian sentiment.”

Clark Durant and Gary Glenn, who are running against Hoekstra in the primary, issued statements that question Hoekstra’s fitness to be the Republican candidate.

Charlie White and wife leaving court (photo by Kevin Elliott)

Well, the Republicans who have pushed new voter identification laws to prevent voter fraud have been proven right. There is widespread vote fraud in Indiana and it was perpetrated by their very own Republican Secretary of State Charlie White.

White was convicted by a Hamilton County jury of six felony counts on Friday. He was found not guilty of a seventh charge. The charges, including fraud, perjury and theft, stemmed from the fact that White was not living in at the address he gave on his voter registration form in May 2010. The address he gave was that of his ex-wife in Fishers Town while he was living in a condo outside the town limits with his fiancee. He collected his $1,000 a month Fishers Town Council salary even though he no longer lived in the town and was supposed to resign his office when he moved. At the least, his attorneys will argue that because the charges are all Class D felonies, they could be reduced to misdemeanors to avoid a full appeal.

Half an hour after the verdict was read, Governor Mitch Daniels appointed Chief Deputy Secretary of State Jerry Bonnet to act as Secretary of State on an interim basis. Daniels’ statement read: “This is an exceptionally busy time in the Secreatary of State’s office as signatures for president, U.S. Senate and governor or are being certified this month. Jerry, a Yorktown native, has agreed to serve until I either select someone else to serve the remainder of the current term, or until the prior occupant is reinstated. I have chosen not to make a permanent appointment today out of respect for the judges’ authority to lessen the verdict to a misdemeanor and reinstate the elected office holder. If the felony convictions are not altered, I anticpate making a permanent appointment quickly.” Felony convictions are an automatic dismissal from office in Indiana. Jerry Bonnet has been with the Secretary of State’s office since 2005 in a non-political capacity. Though an Indiana native, Bonnet and his family moved to New Orleans in 1999. They returned to Indiana after Hurricane Irene, intending the move to be temporary. His work in the Secretary of State’s office has included supervising polling place monitors and representing victims of domestic abuse. He helped implement the new voter ID law, but had previously helped set up the provisions of the Help America Vote Act, which is pretty much diametrically opposite to the new ID laws.

Indiana Democrats are hailing the jury verdict as a vindication of the law over politics. White’s address fraud had been known state wide for over a year. They are calling for Daniels to appoint White’s opponent in the election to the post. The Indiana Attorney General has assured the public that his office had no role in defending White and their only involvement is in advising Daniels of his course of action in the aftermath of the convictions. The entire matter has been an embarrassment for Mitch Daniels, who is having a bad time right now with protests against the new “right to work” law and the voter ID law. If every voter in the state must prove his or her citizenship and address, the very least the Republican Party should have done was make its candidates live up to the same criteria.

Related articles

• Indiana Election Chief Guilty of Fraud (time.com)
• Indiana secretary of state guilty of election fraud (sfgate.com)
• Republican Indiana Secretary of State Convicted of Voter Fraud (thinkprogress.org)
• More Actual Voter Fraud By Yet Another Republican (angrydd.wordpress.com)
• Indiana Election Chief Found Guilty Of Voter Fraud (huffingtonpost.com)

Rep. Ron Paul

Isn’t it lovely to hear Ron Paul really not understand much about the issue of rape? The erstwhile GOP candidate recently told Piers Morgan that“If it’s an honest rape, that individual should go immediately to the emergency room, I would give them a shot of estrogen.”

One has to wonder what he means by ‘honest rape’.

Ron Paul, though, apparently does believe that life begins at conception, but does not want to base his abortion position on just that saying “A person immediately after rape? Yes, it’s a tough one. And I won’t satisfy everybody there.”

Representative Paul has remained in third place throughout the process of the primary process. Paul has, by and large, taken a hard Libertarian line

He has issued a slick new website which is, well, full of bites and bits, but hardly anything substantial to back his allegations up. Which is not unusual, right? This is politics, after all.

So, what else should we know. . .well, Hoekstra is the former Republican Congressman who claimed that WMD’s were found in Iraq when the Pentagon said that he was lying. He hates Muslims, from a lot of his statements, and he lost to now very unpopular Rick Snyder for the Governorship of Michigan.

Of course, if Republicans really cared about jobs in the US, they would do things to punish those corporations which are shipping jobs over seas in order to increase their profits and pay their CEO’s astronomically high salaries.

Won’t happen, though.

Mitt Romney

Mitt Romney has won the Nevada Caucuses in what was, well, pretty much expected. Coming in second was Newt Gingrich, third was Ron Paul, and fourth was Rick Santorum. Romney took 42.5% of the vote, Gingrich 24.5%, Paul 19.8% and Santorum 13.2%. By and large, the results were not unexpected, and not likely to change much of the race just yet.

Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney was expected to cruise to victory in Nevada due to its heavy Mormon population. Unfortunately, his results are down from last election cycle when he won with over fifty percent of the vote. February is a rather thin month when it comes to the whole primary run.

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

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)

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)

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.”

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.

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

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)

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.

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.

“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

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)

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

Rick Santorum, by Donkey Hotey, Creative Commons

Republican Presidential Candidate Rick Santorum has announced that Jill Latham of Iowa will serve as his deputy campaign manager going forward. Latham was a senior advisor to Santorum in Iowa, where he won the caucus earlier this month. In a statement issued by Santorum, he priased Latham’s work in getting him that Iowa Victory.

Santorum also said “When expanding our national team, there is no one who would better fit this role than Jill, because it was through her planning and diligence that we were able to craft the campaign to defeat both Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich in the Iowa caucus.”

Latham stated in the release that “I am honored to take on this role with the Santorum campaign. Rick is not only the hardest-working man in politics; he is the one candidate who has the conservative record to match his rhetoric. Rick won the Iowa caucuses the right way, traveling to all 99 counties, getting to know Iowans and understanding what they want in our next president – a man of conviction, honesty and the values we need in a president.”

While Santorum has won the Iowa caucus, the announcement that he had won came long after the victory had been given to Mitt Romney, and Santorum has not won a single primary that has been held since Iowa, dimming his chances of winning the nomination.

Rick Santorum

Former Republican Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum has received a lot of criticism for his decision to campaign for President while his daughter Bella is gravely ill. Santorum had to cancel an appearance on NBC’s Meet The Press as well as a campaign stop at a church in Miami. Hogan Gidley, a Santorum spokesman, stated “Rick and his wife Karen are admitting their daughter Bella to Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia this evening. Rick intends to return to Florida and resume the campaign schedule as soon as is possible.”

Isabella Santorum has Trisomy 18, a genetic condition which is caused by the presence of all or part of an extra 18th chromosome, and it is often fata. Bella was not expected to survive passed her first birthday.

While Santorum calls the decision to campaign “gut-wrenching”, he has received a lot of criticism for the decision to campaign. By and large, it is the same criticism that ultimately sunk Sarah Palin with regards to her Down Syndrom son. Both where hit for running on family values while showing little regard for their own special-needs children.

Via Huffington Post

Jon Voight

I’m never sure which is worse, being endorsed by Chuck Norris or by Jon Voight, but one would think with all the complaining Republicans do about “Libturd” Hollywood connections to the Democrats, they would avoid Hollywood endorsements themselves.

No surprise, Norris endorsed Newt Gingrich this time. Last time, he endorsed Mick Huckabee. And the winner of Jon Voight’s endorsement is…..Mitt Romney. Voight endorsed Rudy Giuliani in 2008 and is friends with Huckabee. Obviously, politics is another one of those things Voight doesn’t share with his daughter, Angelina Jolie, who had the whole Republican media going nuts when she and Brad Pitt quietly visited the White House last week.

And speaking of Jolie….

Romney was telling the audience that he wasn’t sure how to “chit chat with a famous actor” when he called Voight to ask for his endorsement. Excuse me? He actually sought out this man’s endorsement? Anyway, they got to talking about their kids, and, Romney says, “I started talking about my five boys. I said, you know, it’s easier to raise boys than girls. Well, after a long pause, he says ‘Tell me about it.’” Huge laugh from audience. If Romney had told that joke in front of an audience who knows that Voight was an almost totally absentee father, it might have fallen flat on its face. “Famous actor”? Yeah, thirty years ago he was famous for his acting, now he’s just famous for being such a total jerk towards his kids that they both dropped his name.  Legally.  Permanently.  

Zsa Zsa Gabor and Joshua S. Cosden, Jr., 1966

Romney was stumping with Voight, Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell and Sen. John McCain. The foursome was apparently trying to do the “White Collar Comedy Tour,” with everyone laying down their share of jokes. McCain looked at the rest of the quartet and quipped, “I feel a bit like Zsa Zsa Gabor’s fifth husband. I know what I’m supposed to do, but I don’t know how to make it interesting.” Fifth? Why are we picking on Joshua S. Cosden, Jr.? Whatever did that Oklahoma oil man do to deserve this attention?

And keeping the spirit of this story….do you know the difference between a philandering, deadbeat-dad Republican and a philandering, deadbeat-dad Democrat?  The Democrat never claims to be a “family values” candidate.   Never said it would be funny. 

Related articles

• Jon Voight Endorses Romney, Says Gingrich ‘Falls Short’ (abcnews.go.com)
• Jon Voight stumps for Romney (cbsnews.com)
• McCain and Jon Voight hit Newt (politico.com)
• Voight, McCain join Romney for lighthearted rally (politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com)
• At Romney Rally, Actor Assails Obama’s Path to ‘Socialism’ (thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com)
• Romney Vows to Build Up Military at Event in Pensacola, Fla. (blogs.wsj.com)
• Romney, McCain rally vets in Pensacola, Fla. (firstread.msnbc.msn.com)

The comment stunned and rankled Assembly Speaker Sheila Y. Oliver. In 2010, she became the first Black woman to head the Assembly. She stated in refutation of what Christie said:

“Gov. Christie better sit down with some of New Jersey’s great teachers for a history lesson, because his puzzling comment shows a complete misunderstanding about the civil rights movement. It’s impossible to ever conceive that a referendum on civil rights in the South would have been successful and brought justice to minorities. It’s unfathomable to even suggest a referendum would have been the better course.

“Governor – people were fighting and dying in the streets of the South for a reason. They were fighting and dying in the streets of the South because the majority refused to grant minorities equal rights by any method. It look legislative action to bring justice to all Americans, just as legislative action is the right way to bring marriage equality to all New Jerseyans.

“The governor’s comment is an insult to those who had no choice but to fight and die in the streets for equal rights. The governor needs to show the same courage. We do not shrug off civil rights. We do not pass on tough decisions.”

It should be noted that there is a difference between Civil Rights- which include where a person can live, work, assemble, and so forth, and Political Rights- which include being able to vote and hold office. The Civil Rights Movement of the 1950′s and 1960′s was actually about both Civil and Political rights. The LGBT Rights Movement and the Women’s Movement have been about Civil Rights alone.

Also taking Christie to task was Assemblywoman Bonnie Watson Coleman who stated:

“It’s difficult to understand what the governor was thinking. His words defy history and were extremely insensitive to the struggle for equality of African-Americans and other minorities in this country. Fighting and dying in the streets of the South was not a choice, governor, it was the only way.

“Anyone who lived through that time or took a history class in school understands it was an incredibly dangerous and hostile period for African-Americans and other minorities in the South. Basic human rights should never be decided by a referendum. But can you imagine the outcome if civil rights in this country, during this very racially charged time in our history, had been left up to a vote?”

Via New Jersey News Room

In the conversation, Gingrich states “It’s pretty simple: marriage is between a man and a woman. This is a historic doctrine driven deep into the Bible, both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament, and it’s a perfect example of what I mean by the rise of paganism. The effort to create alternatives to marriage between a man and a woman are perfectly natural pagan behaviors, but they are a fundamental violation of our civilization.”

The problem is, as it has always been, that the battle over same-sex marriage is one over religion, and this is a nation built upon the notions of Freedom of and from Religion.  This has been ignored throughout the past, of course, with many Pagan Native American tribes being forced to convert to Christianity, often with government backing.

In actuality, Christianity is the violation of the cultural base of the Anglo-Saxon, Celtic and Norse fusion that is the English and American cultural bases.  Christianity, like Judaism and Islam, is native to the Middle East, and was introduced, often at the point of a sword, to the cultures that lived in Europe.

Of course, it should be pointed out that divorce was banned under Christianity for a long time, but it has its roots in Paganism.  In most Pagan cultures, marriage could be dissolved.

The decision to go after Paganism is also probably not one of the better ideas on the side of Gingrich.  While that was the target of the Religious Right back in the 1990′s, these days, they are more worried about Islam than the rise of Paganism.  You do not hear people offering more than a mild token objection to things like the erection of a stone circle on a military base while people are furious if someone so much as talks about setting up a mosque.

Via Huffington Post

Now, we get down to the important primaries and caucuses, where the entire delegation is at stake.

February 4: Nevada caucuses

February 4 through 11: Maine caucuses

February 7: Colorado and Minnesota caucuses and Missouri primary (non-binding for GOP)

February 28: Arizona and Michigan primaries

March 3: Washington caucuses

March 6 (Super Tuesday): Alaska, Idaho, North Dakota caucuses; Georgia, Massachusetts, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Vermont and Virginia primaries

March 6 through 10: Wyoming caucuses

March 10: Kansas and Virgin Islands caucuses

March 13: Alabama and Mississippi primary, Hawaii caucuses

March 17: Missouri GOP caucuses

March 20: Illinois primary

March 24: Louisiana primary

Seven weeks, thirteen caucuses, fourteen primaries, thousands of Excedrin and antacids. If we are incredibly lucky or very blessed, the GOP will settle this clusterfudge on March 6 and we will not have to go all the way to the August convention before they stop the Mitt-Newt-Rick-Ron roadshow.

Related articles

• What is a caucus, anyway? (oup.com)
• Running the GOP Numbers (garnetspy.com)
• Ron Paul Fights in Maine, Not Florida (reason.com)

Advocates for marriage equality are returning to the ballot box in Maine. They have delivered more than 105,000 signatures in an effort to trigger a Citizens Initiative, which would enact a marriage equality law. This push comes after two years of outreach and education efforts in the state. Currently 54% of Mainers support marriage equality.

EqualityMaine executive director Betsy Smith stated that “The number of signatures we gathered and the thoughtful conversations we’ve been having with voters tell us that Mainers are eager to speak on this question again. Our polling shows a 54% majority of support for same-sex marriage in Maine. Many Mainers have changed their minds and want a chance to bring equality and fairness to our state.”

Pastor Michael Gray of Old Orchard Beach United Methodist Church said “I grew up in Maine and always considered myself a conservative guy, but I have taken a journey toward supporting marriage for gays and lesbians. I really struggled with the issue of same-sex marriage, but through study, prayer, and patience, I can gratefully say that my faith now informs me differently.”

Also quoted in the article is Janet Spencer of Glenburn who said “Having grown up in an era where homosexuality was not often discussed, I had never given much thought to whether gay and lesbian couples should be allowed to marry, but in the past couple years I’ve learned why it’s so important to them. I came to see that, if gay and lesbian couples share the same love and commitment that my husband and I have for one another, there simply is no alternative to being able to marry the person you love.”

The WhyMarriageMattersMaine article explains:

The title of the proposed Citizens Initiative is “An Act to Allow Marriage Licenses for Same-Sex Couples and Protect Religious Freedom.” The proposed ballot question wording submitted to the Secretary of State in June of last year reads as follows: “Do you favor a law allowing marriage licenses for same-sex couples, and that protects religious freedom by ensuring that no religion or clergy be required to perform such a marriage in violation of their religious beliefs?”

Back in 2009, Maine passed marriage equality legislation only to have it be struck down by a People’s Veto. In the end, only 16,500 votes stood between those who voted ‘no’ and those who voted ‘yes’ on vetoing that law.

The Ohio Statehouse, Columbus

On Wednesday, the Ohio House approved changes made by the Ohio Senate to an anti-bullying bill, which was the last hurdle it faced before being sent to Governor Johnny FOX…sorry, John Kasich’s desk. Kasich plans on signing the law known as the Jessica Logan Act. It was named for a Cincinnati teenager who committed suicide back in 2008.

The bill will require schools to expand bullying policies and to include harassment and intimidation which is sent electronically over the internet or mobile phones. It will also extend to school busses.

Via Cincinnati.com

I once made the mistake of saying something nasty about Ronald Reagan. My mother informed that I was free to disagree with him, but I would, under penalty of hellfire, respect the office. Jan Brewer’s mother didn’t teach her any manners or any respect for the office. She got into a heated exchange with the President on the tarmac of the Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport and actually waggled her finger at him as though he were an errant little boy.

Brewer spent the rest of the day doing damage control. According to Brewer, she handed the President a letter, contents unknown, and wanted to talk with him about Arizona’s stunningly brilliant economic recovery. According to Brewer, he told her he was “disenchanted” with the description of　their 2010 meeting in the White House in her book Scorpions for Breakfast. She felt “minimized, to say the least.” She says she wants him to visit the border and see what her state has to contend with – you know, show him those headless corpses in the desert. In a Fox News interview last night, she called the talk a “terrible encounter” and called the president “thin skinned.” “I want our borders secured. I want our nation protected. He wants amnesty,” Brewer said. “We’re never going to agree. I don’t know why he was surprised by my book. Brewer claimed that by handing him a hand-written letter inviting him to the border, she was “trying to be very gracious,” but the president “reacted in a very negative manner… that kind of left me breathless.

The White House responded with a statement: “The governor handed the president a letter and said she was inviting him to meet with her. The president said he’d be glad to meet with her again, but did note that after their last meeting, a cordial discussion in the Oval Office, the governor inaccurately described the meeting in her book.”

This is the sales pitch for the book, written by Brewer herself: “Friends: America can no longer tolerate illegal immigration and my message to President Obama is simple: “Do your job! Secure our borders!” My new book Scorpions for Breakfast describes my on going fight against President Obama Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary Napolitano to stop the illegal immigration crisis facing our country. I will continue to fight until the border is secure for all Americans!” Even in print, she yells at the President.

Got all that? In that blurb, she accuses the President of not doing his job and says that she is fighting to secure the border for all of us. Forget the 400,000 illegals turned back at the border last year. Forget the 400,000 arrested and deported. Forget that the number of illegals getting across the border is at the lowest point in a generation. And, while you are at it, forget the fact that anti-Hispanic Senate leader Russell Pearce has been recalled and unelected and Sheriff Joe Arpaio is facing multiple criminal, civil and ethics charges for his actions. Forget that the newly elected director of school content was elected on a pledge to “stop la raza” and Tucson sent goons into classrooms to remove books written by Native Americans and Hispanics. Forget the fact that most of the sheriffs on the border don’t support the “papers please law” because it interferes with real crime fighting.

Brewer’s depiction of herself as a gun-toting defender of America against a tidal wave of criminals (who, by the way, only commit a misdemeanor by being in this country without papers) is essential to her political survival at this point. Everything else in her administration is turning out very badly.

Her cuts to Medicaid killed people who were waiting for life-saving transplants. The state suffered revenue losses when Hispanic businesses left after the “papers please” law was passed. Both the Hispanic and Native American populations – close to 40% of the state’s population – are furious over the removal of books by their authors from schools. And Brewer has just entered the anti-union brigade of the Republican Party by the sneakiest path possible.

She has offered state employees a choice between a 5% raise in salary or their rights as employees. If they will give up their right to appeal demotions and terminations without cause, she’ll give them the raise. Brewer has set aside $53.7 million of her $8.96 billion state budget to do what one state employee characterized as “blackmail.”

Of course, the Republicans are cooing about how no state employee who works hard has anything to worry about and all the ruckus is just the unions overreacting, but Arizona state workers have no collective bargaining rights as it is. In their view, changing the rules this way would put all their jobs in jeopardy and allow them to be fired without cause close to retirement, saving the state their pensions. The employees are citing the rules as protection against cronyism and discrimination in their workplaces. Cronyism is an accusation that could stick to Brewer since she “hired” a private contractor with deep connections to herself to operate Arizona’s prison system and the private management has ended up costing more than running the prisons as state operations.

Piece by piece, the Republican agenda is falling apart. One by one, those at the state level who thought they had a mandate to turn their states into corporate subsidiaries are facing strong opposition. And, finally, most of us have stopped laughing at the ludicrousness of the birthers and begun to see the depths of disrespect these people have for the office of the President of the United States. Disagree with the man all you want, but you will face hellfire for disrespecting the office.

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Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels

Here is the Daily Show’s take on Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels’ rebuttal to the President’s State of the Union Address, or what we like to call Mourning in America. Let us be honest, Daniels seems to have figured out that the only way for the Republicans to make in roads against President Obama is to tell Americans about how they should stop having hope for the future. In fact, they should just give up and crawl under their beds because the world of tomorrow is going to be worse than it is today. In fact, tomorrow, the Sith will take over world, Emperor Palpatine will destroy democracy, and there will be no hope for tomorrow.

Yes, the Republicans have decided that tomorrow is not brighter, and that America is screwed.

Rick Santorum

Despite being the third man on the totem pole and the second choice among Social Conservatives, Rick Santorum is still out there campaigning. While campaigning at Community Christian Academy in Stuart, Florida, a woman asked the former Pennsylvanian Senator and reactionary Catholic why her gay son does not deserve the same rights as straight people.

Santorum responded by saying:

“Everybody in America should have the same rights, and I would agree with that. Everyone in America should have rights that are endowed to them by the Creator, those are unalienable rights. And your son, just like everyone else here, has those unalienable rights.”

“There are certain things that government does that gives people privileges in order to promote activity that are healthy for society and are best for society. And those things we promote would give people advantages or benefits, government benefits because we think that is healthy activity. Mothers and fathers coming together, forming healthy marriages, having children and raising those children. Every American child has the right, and the government should support the right to have and know their mother and father and be raised by their mother and father.”

So. . .according to Santorum, we will have to ban everything that is unhealthy in society, right? Shall we ban alcohol, smoking, fast food, trans fats, bacon, sodas, sugar, high fructose corn syrup, bacon, make up, sex, and so forth. In fact, we would have to ban anyone from having children if they cannot prove that they are from a loving and stable family with no strife whatsoever and enough money to raise children. So, in order to make sure that we have a healthy society, Santorum would have to impose a society that makes George Orwell’s vision of the future look tame.

Santorum is trying to push this off on the idea along the lines of ‘think of the children’. If every child in America has a right to know their mother and father, then it would require that the government not only outlaw divorce, but ban many popular fertility treatments and stop any and all attempts by straight couples to have children if they are not naturally fertile. Simply put, Santorum is trying to find a way to justify his position without actually having anything to justify it upon.

Of course, in other campaign stops, Santorum talked about freedom attacking his family left in Italy saying “all of my family, all of my grandmother’s relatives, they still live in Italy, they never came. When I go back and visit them they are nothing like my grandparents, my parents and my relatives here. They are very, very happy being ruled. They are very happy having a welfare state, a European Socialist state. It’s what they know.”

Santorum tried to come up with some means of attacking President Obama by saying that the President was “King George III reincarnated.” Santorum, of course, knows less about British History than he does about American History, of which he knows almost nothing anything. King George III was, by and large, a figure head with next to no power. Following the Glorious Revolution in 1688, the British Parliament had the bulk of the power.

Santorum attacked Obama claiming that the President was waging a war on the wealthy saying “Mr. President, you’re the president of 100 percent of America, not 99 percent of America.” Of course, it should be noted that when the Republican Party is in power, they kowtow to the 1% without bothering to help the rest of the nation.

Via Post on Politics

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords

An emotional Debbie Wasserman Schultz introduced Arizona Democratic Representative Gabrielle Giffords as she offered her official resignation to Speaker John Boehner. Wasserman Schultz acted as the voice of Giffords, who has had trouble speaking as she has recovered from being shot in the head over a year ago.

Wasserman Schultz was applauded when she stated “I am so proud of my friend. It will always be one of the great treasures of my life to have met Gabby Giffords and to have served with her in this body.” She went on to say “Even though I know we won’t see each other every day. We will be friends for life.” Wasserman Schultz then went on to read from Gifford’s letter to the Speaker in which she said “Even as I have worked to regain my speech, thank you for your faith in my ability to be your voice. . .Everyday, I am working hard. I will recover and will return, and we will work together again, for Arizona and for all Americans.”

giffordsresignation

Rep. Michele Bachmann, by Charlie Riedel for the Associated Press

Former Republican President Candidate Representative Michele Bachmann has announced that she will seek re-election to her seat from the 6^th District of Minnesota. She made the announcement during an interview with the Associated Press and said “I’m looking forward to coming back and bringing a strong, powerful voice to Washington, D.C.”

Representing her constituents hasn’t been her top priority for a long time, but if the 2010 election was any indication, her constituents don’t care.

In the Yahoo News comment streams, one of her constituents explained the problem. His name is Kevin and he lives in St. Joseph, Minnesota. He explained that her district is extremely gerrymandered to avoid any metropolitan areas. Most of her constituents are older and they vote on two issues – gay rights and abortion. She also, in spite of her big talk, pulled in loads of pork for her district for local businesses, construction projects, etc. Kevin predicts that the only way to dislodge her is through voter attrition – when the old folks die, the younger voters will not re-elect her.

However, the state is being redistricted because of the 2010 census. One plan would throw her district in with the one represented by Betty McCollum, a six-term Democrat who represents the St. Paul area. The redistricting panel is expected to issue their proposed map next month.

The single greatest mistake made by the writers of our constitution and those who have amended it was not adequately defining the manner in which Congressional districts would be drawn.

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Elizabeth Warren by David Shankbone

Elizabeth Warren appeared on the Daily Show last night to discuss in startling clarity exactly why the government has to be there, and how the government is suppose to be a major part of investing in America’s future. Warren stated “government is what we do together”. Speaking in terms that are not Liberal or Conservative but straight up and understandable. Even Stewart noted just how Warren seems to have this deep well of understanding when it comes to these government based issues.

Here are the clips:

He was nominated alongside Phil Kwon, who is Asian-American.

Christie has said that he hopes to remake the court, blaming them for stopping some of his less popular and more damaging measures such as to cut school finances and affordable housing. Still, there was praise for the move.

Steven Goldstein, the chair of Garden State Equality, said that “When I met with Governor Christie in 2010 at his request, he told me that though we would differ on some issues like marriage equality, he viewed the LGBT community as an important part of New Jersey, and that he wanted his administration to have a good working relationship with Garden State Equality. That has been the case every step of the way.”

The national Log Cabin Republicans also praised Harris’ nomination. R. Clarke Cooper stated “New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is the future of the Republican Party. This appointment is consistent with Governor Christie’s strong support for nondiscrimination, including signing the strongest anti-bullying legislation in the nation. As the New Jersey Legislature considers passing marriage equality this session, Log Cabin Republicans remain hopeful Governor Christie will continue his inclusive leadership by agreeing with Republican champions across the country that freedom means freedom for everybody.”

While there are contingents within the Republican Party who are gay, often times they face hostility from those who have chosen to support the Democrats over the Republicans. By and large, the Republican Party is anti-gay except in certain local areas where support for the LGBT Community is slowly growing.

Via GayCityNews

Aubrey Sarvis, the outgoing Executive Director of Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, stated:

“This is a clear victory in the fight to achieve full equality for service members. In his 2010 State of the Union, President Obama committed to repealing ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’ and indeed, it would not have been possible without his determination to do so. Even as we celebrate this milestone tonight, let us not forget that our work is far from done. While gay and lesbian service members may now serve openly if they choose, they are still not serving equally. They are without the same protections from harassment and discrimination that are afforded others, and legally married gay and lesbian service members do not receive the same recognition, support, and benefits for their families as their straight married counterparts. We must keep fighting until the mission is complete.”

Jake Burris, campaign manager of Arkansas Democratic congressional candidate Ken Aden, had been out for an evening with his four children. When they arrived home, the first child to reach the front porch found a horrific sight. The family’s mix-breed Siamese cat was lying on the porch, it’s head bashed in so severely its eye was hanging out of the socket. Painted on the side of the cat, in magic marker, was the word “Liberal.”

I debated whether or not I would include the photo of the cat with this story, and then decided I want this thing to go viral. I want our readers to tweet this and facebook this and e-mail this across the net. I want every liberal and progressive to know what the right wing is capable of and I want every conservative to see what their hate speech causes. And I want every one who can to e-mail this picture to their Congresspersons and Senators and flood the e-mail accounts of right wing radio hosts and Fox News personalities with this.

Every serial killer in history started out by hurting animals. What do we need – government employees and campaign staff found hanging from trees? We have already had campaign headquarters vandalized and burned. What’s next? We had a Federal office building bombed and 168 men, women and children crushed to death by a right wing fanatic during the last Democratic administration. Do we need to have another one before the right realizes this is what they have wrought upon our nation?

I think I’m going to go hug my cross-eyed, anti-social, precious, rescued cat and give thanks to God that I live in Vermont.

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The doctors discovered a “carotid artery dissection”, which is a separation of the artery walls. Kirk was then transferred to Northwestern Memorial Hospital where tests showed that he had suffered an ischemic stroke. According to a statement from his office “Early this morning the Senator underwent surgery to relieve swelling around his brain stemming from the stroke. The surgery was successful. Due to his young age, good health and the nature of the stroke, doctors are very confident in the Senator’s recovery over the weeks ahead.”

It may take several weeks before the results of the surgery can be known. The stroke was on the right side of Kirk’s brain, so it will affect the left side of his body. It is likely to leave Kirk’s cognitive functions intact, but it will likely be very difficult for him to use his left side for a long time.

Via Huffington Post

Of course, Beshear admits that the budget is “inadequate for the needs of our people. We should be making substantial investments in our physical and intellectual infrastructure to being transformational change to our state. This budget does not allow us to do enough of that.”

Well, that is nice. So, while Ark Adventure gets to have a huge tax break and a three-story tall, two-football-field long replica of Noah’s Ark. Oh, and speaking of infrastructure, the governor’s budget has also earmarked some $11 million to improve the highway interchange near the park.

The Huffington Post noted that

Ark Adventure is the brain child of Answers in Genesis, an evangelical group also behind the Creation Museum, another Kentucky attraction that has drawn millions of visitors since its opening in 2007.

Beshear, a Democrat, has long been a supporter of the project. The $172 million undertaking and its $43 million in tax incentives have made it through various state committees.