Billionaire Lifts Marco Rubio, Politically and Personally
Marco Rubio and Norman Braman at a bipartisan rally for Israel in 2012. Positions on Israel helped bring them together. Credit via Greater Miami Jewish Federation
Norman Braman, a Miami businessman, signaled support as Senator Marco Rubio announced his presidential candidacy. Credit Joe Raedle/Getty Images
By MICHAEL BARBARO and STEVE EDER MAY 9, 2015
MIAMI — One day in the State Capitol in Tallahassee, Marco Rubio [ http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/04/14/us/elections/marco-rubio.html ], the young speaker of the House, strayed from the legislative proceedings to single out a lanky, silver-haired man seated in the balcony: a billionaire auto dealer named Norman Braman.
This man, Mr. Rubio said in effusive remarks in 2008, was no ordinary billionaire, hoarding his cash or using it to pursue selfish passions.
“He’s used it,” Mr. Rubio said, “to enrich the lives of so many people whose names you will never know.” As it turned out, one of the people enriched was Mr. Rubio himself.
As Mr. Rubio has ascended in the ranks of Republican politics, Mr. Braman has emerged as a remarkable and unique patron. He has bankrolled Mr. Rubio’s campaigns. He has financed Mr. Rubio’s legislative agenda. And, at the same time, he has subsidized Mr. Rubio’s personal finances, as the rising politician and his wife grappled with heavy debt and big swings in their income.
Now, with Mr. Rubio vaulting ahead of much of the Republican presidential field, Mr. Braman is poised to play an even larger part and become Mr. Rubio’s single biggest campaign donor, with an expected outlay of approximately $10 million for the senator’s pursuit of the White House.
A detailed review of their relationship shows that Mr. Braman, 82, has left few corners of Mr. Rubio’s world untouched. He hired Mr. Rubio, then a Senate candidate, as a lawyer; employed his wife to advise the Braman family’s philanthropic foundation; helped cover the cost of Mr. Rubio’s salary as an instructor at a Miami college; and gave Mr. Rubio access to his private plane.
The money has flowed both ways. Mr. Rubio has steered taxpayer funds to Mr. Braman’s favored causes, successfully pushing for an $80 million state grant to finance a genomics center [ http://www.med.miami.edu/news/view.asp?id=888 ] at a private university and securing $5 million for cancer research at a Miami institute for which Mr. Braman is a major donor.
Even in an era dominated by super-wealthy donors, Mr. Braman stands out, given how integral he has been not only to Mr. Rubio’s political aspirations but also to his personal finances.
Mr. Rubio, 43, is unabashed in acknowledging the influence of Mr. Braman, a commanding and litigious figure with so much clout in Miami that he almost single-handedly recalled a sitting mayor.
In an interview, Mr. Rubio described Mr. Braman as a father figure who had given him advice on everything from what books to read to how to manage a staff. After Mr. Rubio’s father died in 2010, Mr. Braman called every other day to check in.
Pressed on his financial ties to Mr. Braman, Mr. Rubio said in an interview that he saw no ethical issue. “What is the conflict?” he asked. “I don’t ever recall Norman Braman ever asking for anything for himself.”
He acknowledged that Mr. Braman had approached him about state aid for projects, such as funding for cancer research, but said that he had supported the proposals on their merits.
The reliance on Mr. Braman is likely to put a spotlight on the finances of Mr. Rubio, who ranks among the least-wealthy candidates in the emerging Republican field. Mr. Rubio left the Florida House of Representatives in 2008 with a net worth of $8,351, multiple mortgages and $115,000 in student debt. In his latest financial disclosure form, for 2013, he reported at least $450,000 in liabilities, including two mortgages and a line of credit.
Mr. Braman and aides to Mr. Rubio have declined to say how much personal financial assistance he has provided to Mr. Rubio and his wife, directly or indirectly, but it appears to total in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
In a series of interviews at his office in downtown Miami, above showrooms of shiny BMWs and Rolls-Royces (he also sells Cadillacs, Audis and Bugattis), Mr. Braman praised the Rubios. He recounted what he described as “excellent service from them” over the years, and said he wanted nothing in return for his financial help.
“I’m not going to be an ambassador or anything like that,” he said.
“I also have a yacht,” Mr. Braman said, “that Senator Rubio has never seen.”
Mr. Braman has the manner of a man accustomed to getting what he wants, a trait that has endeared him to many in Miami as he battles against public subsidies for sports stadiums and ugly skyscrapers.
He was vacationing in France one summer when the mayor of Miami — not the one he had recalled from office — informed him that he would seek to raise taxes. Mr. Braman hung up the phone, turned to his wife and declared: “Goodbye, I’m heading back to Miami to fight this.” He returned home and led a successful campaign to block the increase.
“If you’re going to do something, you do it all the way,” he said.
As early as 2008, Mr. Braman made a bold prediction, captured in a video tribute to his friend: Mr. Rubio would be the first Hispanic president of the United States. Seeing that through in 2016, Mr. Braman said in one of the interviews, is “part of my legacy.”
The partnership began in the early 2000s when a Miami lawmaker introduced them. Mr. Braman, himself the son of immigrants, was instantly drawn to the story of Mr. Rubio, a child of struggling Cuban immigrants. By 2004, Mr. Braman and his wife had donated $1,000 to Mr. Rubio’s State House campaign, the first of many contributions.
Mr. Rubio quickly emerged as a dogged champion of Mr. Braman’s most cherished cause: state funding for a Miami cancer institute that bears the Braman family name [ http://sylvester.org/braman-institute/ ].
Florida’s governor, Jeb Bush, had vetoed the funding in 2004, incurring Mr. Braman’s public fury. “Frankly, as a very active Republican, I’m ashamed of him,” Mr. Braman said then of Mr. Bush.
Mr. Rubio did not let it happen again. The next year, he secured the cancer funding over Mr. Bush’s objections. “Marco,” Mr. Bush wrote in a somewhat grudging email to a lobbyist at the time, “strongly wanted the Braman Cancer money.”
Soon, Mr. Rubio became a regular visitor to Mr. Braman’s office on Biscayne Boulevard. By the time Mr. Rubio was elected speaker of the House, the youngest in Florida’s history, Mr. Braman felt close enough to show up at the 2005 celebration in Tallahassee and deliver a memorable — and valuable — token of affection: a framed Revolutionary War-era American flag. It hung, on loan, in Mr. Rubio’s office for the entirety of his tenure as speaker.
In Mr. Braman, a Republican with a strong distaste for wasteful government spending, an ardent commitment to Israel and a seemingly limitless bank account, Mr. Rubio found a devoted sponsor.
When Mr. Rubio geared up for re-election to the House, more than a dozen individuals and companies linked to Mr. Braman, including his Honda and Cadillac dealerships, gave Mr. Rubio $500 each, the maximum donation allowed under Florida law.
When Mr. Rubio decided to write a book laying out a conservative vision for Florida’s future, Mr. Braman said, he chipped in money to pay for its publication.
When Mr. Rubio announced his signature legislative goal, an initiative to slash property taxes and raise the sales tax, Mr. Braman contributed $255,000 to the advocacy group lobbying for the changes, becoming by far its largest donor.
Mr. Rubio said the flow of donations from Mr. Braman had no effect on his decision-making as House speaker, adding that he would never give preferential treatment to a donor. But in 2008, when Mr. Braman sought the $80 million for the genomics institute at the University of Miami, a large taxpayer grant to a private college, Mr. Rubio delivered the opposite message: Mr. Braman’s request, he said, had tilted the scales.
Usually, Mr. Rubio said at a news conference at the time, he would have laughed off such an eye-popping pitch. “But when Norman Braman brings it to you,” Mr. Rubio said, “you take it seriously.”
Later that year, when Mr. Rubio left state government, determined to shore up his finances before running for the United States Senate, he landed a teaching job at Florida International University, agreeing to raise much of his salary through private donations.
Mr. Braman gave $100,000, according to records he shared with The New York Times. Dario Moreno, who oversaw the university center where Mr. Rubio worked and who taught classes with him, confirmed that Mr. Rubio had raised the money from Mr. Braman.
In the spring of 2010, as Mr. Braman was donating heavily to Mr. Rubio’s Senate campaign, his company, Braman Management, hired Mr. Rubio as a lawyer for seven months. According to records provided by Mr. Braman, the company paid Mr. Rubio until a week before he was sworn in as a senator.
Four months after Mr. Rubio left the payroll, Mr. Braman hired Mr. Rubio’s wife, Jeanette, who had little professional experience in philanthropy, and her company, JDR Events, to advise the Braman foundation. Mr. Braman declined to discuss her compensation.
Mr. Rubio said the offers of work from Mr. Braman had a simple motivation: “We are close personal friends. They trust us.”
Mrs. Rubio’s job, fielding and vetting requests for donations to one of Miami’s biggest charitable foundations, has given her a major profile in the world of Florida philanthropy.
An internal Braman foundation document makes clear that Mrs. Rubio has become a crucial gatekeeper. “On hold,” read a notation next to a pending donation. “Wait to hear from Jeanette.”
At times, the foundation’s work has coincided with Mr. Rubio’s own globe-trotting political needs. In 2013, when Mr. Rubio traveled to the Middle East [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/20/marco-rubios-foreign-poli_n_2727871.html ], Mrs. Rubio joined him, with the Braman foundation paying for her travel. According to Mr. Rubio’s aides, she was conducting work for the foundation abroad.
On four occasions, Mr. Rubio has traveled on Mr. Braman’s private plane, reimbursing him each time.
Mr. Braman acknowledged seeking the occasional “small favor” from Mr. Rubio’s Senate office. There was the daughter of the woman who does his nails, Mr. Braman recalled, who had an immigration problem, and the student from Tampa who wanted a shot at military school. In both cases, he said, Mr. Rubio’s staff was quick to respond. (Mr. Rubio’s staff said it had decided not to recommend the Tampa student.)
Mr. Braman seemed conflicted about his reputation as civic power broker, at once boasting of his ability to draw a high-ranking Miami official to his office with a single phone call and seeming anxious that he not be viewed as entitled.
“I don’t consider myself a fat cat,” he said. “Don’t make me out to be a fat cat.”
As he spoke in his office, an aide interrupted, presenting Mr. Braman with a yellow sticky note. The Florida Senate was about to vote on a bill he had sought, granting auto dealers like himself greater leverage over car manufacturers.
“That was fast,” Mr. Braman said.
Moments later, another adviser popped his head in, declaring victory. “Thirty to four,” he said of the vote, with a fist pump.
Correction: May 9, 2015 A previous version of this article misspelled an auto make sold by Norman Braman. It is Bugatti, not Buggatti.
During the 2010 campaign for governor, Scott Walker famously promised to create 250,000 jobs in his first term.
Toward this end, one of his first acts as governor was to privatize the state's economic development agency. Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC) opened its doors in July 2011. After a series of damning audits, which highlighted mismanagement and incompetence, and news reports of special treatment for Walker donors, this week Democratic state lawmakers called for a federal investigation [ http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/scott-walker-seeks-to-downplay-questions-over-job-agency-b99502337z1-304123551.html ] of the scandal-plagued entity.
Walker missed his jobs goal by 43 percent. Now we know why.
Scott Walker, Chairman of the Board
When Walker created WEDC in 2011, he named himself Chairman of the Board.
Although it was a privatized agency, WEDC was in charge of a staggering amount of taxpayer dollars: $519 million in bonds, grants, loans, and tax credits in 2011-2012 alone, and the WEDC board is ultimately responsible for those dollars. While experts debate the role state government plays in job creation, one set of jobs Walker can more precisely lay claim to are those created by the economic development corporation he governs.
In 2012, new reports indicated WEDC had lost track of $12 million in loans because it never asked businesses to pay back them back. The federal housing authority demanded changes at WEDC after determining it had spent some $10 million in federal funds without authorization [ http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/state-economic-development-board-not-told-of-federal-criticisms-hk70p2p-171375561.html ]. A damning 2013 audit [ http://legis.wisconsin.gov/lab/reports/13-7full.pdf ] by Wisconsin's professional, nonpartisan state audit bureau made headlines when it documented dozens of ways in which the new agency was breaking the law. The audit showed that WEDC made awards to ineligible recipients, for ineligible projects, and for amounts that exceeded specified limits.
WEDC promised to clean up its act and reported to the legislature and the state audit bureau in October 2013 it had addressed all the concerns raised in the May 2013 audit.
WEDC Can't Account for Jobs Created and Isn't Even Trying
In 2014, the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) spent weeks analyzing data [ http://host.madison.com/news/opinion/column/mary-bottari-only-actual-jobs-from-walker-s-wedc/article_d4f3f937-6e5b-5734-b08c-694431b18f06.html ] and determined that for a two-year period (FY 2012 and FY 2013), WEDC could only lay claim to creating some 5,860 jobs. During the same period, the agency misled the legislature and the public by claiming to have created 60,000 jobs. Instead of counting the "actual" jobs created, the agency used the cooked-up phrase "impacted." CMD's report documented how jobs lost to plant closings in the state over the same period (13,616) trumped the job creation numbers.
A new audit by the state's audit bureau helps explain why.
The new audit details that WEDC failed to demand that jobs be created with each contract. WEDC failed to make sure that projects hit wage targets. And it failed to demand sufficient documentation, such as payroll records, to show that jobs were actually being created or retained.
In one instance, WEDC executed a $4 million contract and allowed $1.6 million of it to be used for debt repayment. WEDC would not answer CMD's inquiries on the topic, but a check of the WEDC data base suggests this award was made to SHINE Medical Technologies of Monona, who pled "business sensitive information" when contacted by CMD. In another instance, WEDC gave a business $517,000 in tax credits for "retaining" jobs even though it determined that the business employed 307 fewer eligible employees than a year earlier. A check of the WEDC database finds Plexus Corp. of Neenah, a company that has come under fire [ http://www.wkow.com/story/25977283/2014/07/09/wedc-award-recipients-outsourced-wisconsin-jobs-to-foreign-countries ] for taking taxpayer support then offshoring jobs, recording a 307 job drop.
On the jobs numbers, the audit gives us an update on the 5,840 CMD previously recorded.
Table 14 shows that in FY 2011-2012 WEDC programs were expected to create 8,754 jobs, but firms self-reported only 4,391 to WEDC. In FY 2012-2013, WEDC programs were expected to create 10,552 jobs, but firms reported only 3,503 to auditors. The 7,894 total is far less than the 19,296 promised.
State auditors had little patience for the numbers game, noting incredibly that "some information that should remain constant, such as expected results associated with contracts in previous years, changed in the online data from one year to the next." Auditors pointed out one mysterious 607 drop in expected jobs that should have remained constant.
Shar Habibi, Research Director for In the Public Interest [ http://www.inthepublicinterest.org/ ], a nonprofit group that studies the impact of privatization, told CMD: "Substantial time and trained personnel are necessary to monitor contracts to make sure taxpayer dollars are not being wasted. Like other privatized economic development authorities, WEDC has failed to provide the transparency needed to hold contractors accountable to their failure to create jobs. Without the professional staff at the state's audit bureau, these abysmal findings may never have come to light."
Habibi also noted that Walker has a history of failed privatizations reaching back to his time as Milwaukee County Executive.
In 2009, Milwaukee County Executive Walker declared an economic emergency and used his special authority to lay off the union security workers at the county courthouse. He then replaced them with Wackenhut officers at a time when the firm was already under heavy criticism [ http://www.jsonline.com/news/milwaukee/40761362.html ] for failing to protect the public while patrolling the Milwaukee transit system. In 2011, an arbitrator reversed Walker's outsourcing of courthouse security and the county ended up having to cover back pay [ http://www.jsonline.com/news/milwaukee/117276913.html ] for the wrongfully laid off union workers, costing taxpayers an extra $430,000.
Tax Credits Awarded for Jobs Created in the Past Is "Parade Jumping" Say Experts
The audit examined WEDC's management of $88 million in tax credits.
WEDC failed to evaluate the financial soundness of one company reviewed and failed to evaluate whether proposed projects would occur anyway without the tax credits.
But the standout finding of this audit is that in 36 of the 42 contracts examined, WEDC allowed recipients to earn tax credits for projects that began before the contracts were executed. CMD had noted this trend when it wrote about WEDC in 2014, but the audit shows that the problem is systemic. Auditors conclude that 14.9 percent of jobs were created before WEDC executed contracts with recipients.
"This looks like 'parade jumping,' when politicians pay companies to do what they were going to do anyway--or in this case, to do what they've already done. It suggests the state wants to take credit for free market forces instead of addressing so-called 'market imperfections' such as the credit crunch still plaguing small businesses," said Greg LeRoy, executive director or Good Jobs First [ http://www.goodjobsfirst.org/ ], a non-profit research group based in Washington, D.C.
The auditors were so surprised to have their 2013 recommendations ignored that they took the unusual step of recommending the legislature make it crystal clear that 1) all tax credit recipients must be required to increase net employment in the state, 2) tax credits cannot be allocated for activities that occur before contracts are signed, and 3) auditors suggested it was now time for the WEDC board to take responsibility for reporting to the public the actual numbers of jobs created and retained.
Writing Off Loans for Campaign Contributors
In case you think the audit is all negative, it's not.
WEDC did reduce the amount of loans past due. $5.5 million in past due loans were decreased by a whopping $4.2 million in 2014. But the privatized corporation achieved this by amending 13 loan contracts to defer payments, writing off 9 loans entirely and forgiving 2 others.
One $500,000 unsecured loan that was written off was a bad risk from the get-go. WEDC approved the loan in 2011 even though the recipient firm was dragged into court for failure to pay its bills in 2010. Plus, the contract did not require that any jobs be created at all. CMD was the first media outlet to flag [ http://www.prwatch.org/news/2014/09/12597/walkers-snow-job ] this problem loan, disclosing that it was made to Walker donor Bill Minahan, owner of Building Committee, Inc. After it got the loan, the firm racked up $757,103 in judgments and liens.
One week later, and on the same day that WEDC released information about the failed BCI loan to the Wisconsin State Journal, Walker advanced the damage control by recommending to the legislature that they ax the $17 million WEDC grant program and the $19 million WEDC loan program.
In May 2014, One Wisconsin Now ran the numbers [ http://www.onewisconsinnow.org/files/WisForWEDC.pdf ] on WEDC loans and found that nearly 60 percent of some $975 million in assistance distributed by WEDC since 2011 went to firms that had contributed to Walker or the Republican Governor's Association.
"This new audit confirms that WEDC is the embodiment of the cronyism, corruption and incompetence of the Walker administration," One Wisconsin Now's Scot Ross told CMD.
Kansas Lawmakers’ Budget Links Court Funding to Judicial Decision
A 2014 law stripped the Kansas Supreme Court of some administrative authority, giving local courts control over their own budgets. Photo: Thad Allton/Topeka Capital-Journal/Associated Press
Judicial budget would self-destruct if any court blocks a 2014 law that gave local courts control over their own budgets
By Joe Palazzolo Updated May 19, 2015 7:10 p.m. ET
A budget advanced by Kansas legislators would eliminate funding for state courts if a judge strikes down a controversial law passed last year.
Republican senators and representatives agreed Monday on a two-year judicial budget that would self-destruct if any court blocks or overturns a 2014 law that stripped the Kansas Supreme Court of some administrative authority, giving local courts control over their own budgets and leadership.
A lawsuit pending in Shawnee County District Court, in northeastern Kansas, says the 2014 law violates the Kansas Constitution. The bill approved Monday says that if the law is “stayed or is held to be invalid or unconstitutional,” the other provisions including funding for the courts, “are hereby declared to be null and void.”
The legislation provides for $208 million for fiscal 2016 and fiscal 2017 combined and is expected to pass in the Republican-controlled legislature as early as this week. A spokeswoman for Gov. Sam Brownback, a Republican, declined to comment.
Legal experts said the legislation may be the first to peg the Third Branch’s budget to the outcome of an individual case, and public-interest groups described it as the most pointed challenge to judicial independence in recent memory.
“This is the first time I’m aware of in which funding for the courts is being specifically linked to courts’ decisions,” said William E. Raftery, an analyst for the National Center for State Courts who also runs a blog that tracks legislation affecting state courts.
Kansas Democrats said the bill was an attempt by Republicans to force the judiciary’s hand. “It says, ‘You do what we want you to do or we’re going to shut you down,’’ said Sen. Laura Kelly, a Democrat whose district includes Topeka.
Republicans denied that the language in the bill was directed at the lawsuit. GOP Sen. Steve Fitzgerald said the 2014 law and the language in the budget proposal were part of a push by the Kansas legislature to introduce more local control over the courts.
The language, known in legislative parlance as a non-severability clause, “just keeps the whole thing together so we can keep it as a package,” he said.
It is unclear what would happen if the clause were triggered. Democrats predicted court closures and a legal scramble to block the law. A spokeswoman for the Kansas courts system declined to comment on the litigation or the budget language.
Advocacy groups and Kansas Democrats say bad blood between the legislature and the courts has its origins in a dispute over education funding.
Twice in the past decade, the Kansas Supreme Court has ruled public-school funding was unconstitutionally inadequate. Soon after the most recent ruling, the legislature passed the law limiting the administrative authority of the court.
The suit challenging the law, filed in February by a Kansas judge represented by New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice, says it violates a 1972 amendment to the state constitution giving the Kansas Supreme Court “general administrative authority over all courts in the state.”
Richard E. Levy, a constitutional law professor at the University of Kansas, said a Kansas court could rule that the language in the budget bill is not binding, but it is unclear what would happen if the legislature refuses to recognize that ruling as binding in turn.
Mr. Levy said the budget bill runs headlong into constitutional problems, purporting to tell the courts what they must do and potentially defunding a co-equal branch of government.
“Right now relations between the judicial and political branches of the state are not cordial,” he said.
Rand Paul's New Hampshire political director licked a camera [ http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/rand-paul-presidential-campaign-staffer-licks-camera-democratic/story?id=30962547 (with comments)] May 11, 2015 Washington (CNN)—A top New Hampshire staffer for Republican presidential candidate Rand Paul licked a camera owned by a Democratic videographer during a campaign event Monday in Londonderry. That's not a figure of speech. He literally opened his mouth, stuck out his tongue and licked the glass with it. David Chesley, Paul's political director in the state, slathered his tongue over a video lens from American Bridge, an opposition research firm that follows and records Republican candidates. The camera operator had the device in record mode and was live-streaming the footage back to the group's headquarters in Washington. The group posted the footage on YouTube[ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3EAwGXE1vs (next below; with comments)].
“There is something about watching Fox News that leads people to do worse on these [factual] questions than those who don’t watch any news at all.” A political scientist on what Roger Ailes has wrought, including the problems he is creating for his own GOP.
James Fallows May 17, 2015
Let me recommend for your weekend reading, or for your weekday reading if you’re seeing it then, a detailed study by Bruce Bartlett called “How Fox News Changed American Media and Political Dynamics.” You can download the 18-page PDF [and/or just view it directly] from this page of the Social Science Research Network site [ http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2604679 ].
How Fox News Changed American Media and Political Dynamics
Bruce Bartlett
The creation of Fox News in 1996 was an event of deep, yet unappreciated, political and historical importance. For the first time, there was a news source available virtually everywhere in the United States, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, with a conservative tilt. Finally, conservatives did not have to seek out bits of news favorable to their point of view in liberal publications or in small magazines and newsletters. Like someone dying of thirst in the desert, conservatives drank heavily from the Fox waters. Soon, it became the dominant – and in many cases, virtually the only – major news source for millions of Americans. This has had profound political implications that are only starting to be appreciated. Indeed, it can almost be called self-brainwashing – many conservatives now refuse to even listen to any news or opinion not vetted through Fox, and to believe whatever appears on it as the gospel truth.
[...]
The idea that Fox News operates with different aims and by different norms from those of, say, the BBC is familiar. But this presentation is notable for two reasons.
The first is its source—for those who don’t know, Barlett is a veteran [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Bartlett ] of the Reagan and Bush-41 administrations and was an influential early proponent of supply-side / tax-cut economics. He also worked for Ron Paul. Since then he’s harshly criticized the Bush-43 administration, but in no sense does he come at this as a Democratic party operative.
The second and more important reason is Bartlett’s accumulation of detail showing (a) that Fox’s core viewers are factually worse-informed than people who follow other sources, and even those who don’t follow news at all, and (b) that the mode of perpetual outrage that is Fox’s goal and effect has become a serious problem for the Republican party, in that it pushes its candidates to sound always-outraged themselves.
I recommend the whole thing, but here are a few samples. First, on misinformation, a quote from an academic study:
People who watch Fox News, the most popular of the 24-hour cable news networks, are 18-points less likely to know that Egyptians overthrew their government than those who watch no news at all (after controlling for other news sources, partisanship, education and other demographic factors). Fox News watchers are also 6-points less likely to know that Syrians have not yet overthrown their government than those who watch no news.
“Because of the controls for partisanship, we know these results are not just driven by Republicans or other groups being more likely to watch Fox News,” said Dan Cassino, a professor of political science at Fairleigh Dickinson and an analyst for the PublicMind Poll. “Rather, the results show us that there is something about watching Fox News that leads people to do worse on these questions than those who don’t watch any news at all.”
Also:
Another problem is that Republican voters get so much of their news from Fox, which cheerleads whatever their candidates are doing or saying, that they suffer from wishful thinking and fail to see that they may not be doing as well as they imagine, or that their ideas are not connecting outside the narrow party base. As a recent academic study found:
‘Exposure to programs featured on Fox News, such as those hosted by Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity, resulted in a greater wishful thinking effect by Romney supporters. In other words, while Romney supporters were substantially more likely to predict their candidate would win the 2012 presidential election, watching Fox News programming exacerbated this effect.’
It may be that some Republican Fox viewers became complacent and didn’t work as hard as they might if they had been more aware of how badly Romney was doing in the final days of the campaign.
On mood, Bartlett includes this quote after the 2012 election from Lincoln Mitchell, a political scientist at Columbia:
‘Fox has now become a problem for the Republican Party because it keeps a far right base mobilized and angry, making it hard for the party to move to the center or increase its appeal, as it must do to remain electorally competitive....One of the reasons Mitt Romney was so unable to pivot back to the center was due to the drumbeat at Fox, which contributed to forcing him to the right during the primary season.’
None of this is “news” to people who have followed the evolution of the media. But it is put together in a lucid and cumulatively effective manner that gives the arguments new heft. Thanks to Josh Marshall for pointing it out [ http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/you-simply-must-read-this--2 ].
on election night 2012 (when Kelly was operating in atypical “let’s stop fooling ourselves” mode). When will Republicans who care about winning national elections, or actually governing, stop thinking of Fox as a help and start viewing it as a hindrance, and what will happen when they do?
Former Fox News Employee Newt Gingrich: Fox Is Biased And In The Tank For Romney
by Adam Peck Posted on April 12, 2012 at 10:00 am
Newt Gingrich, who just a year ago was on the payroll at Fox News channel as a political analyst, attacked his former employer at a private campaign event yesterday, accusing the conservative cable news channel of being in the tank for Mitt Romney.
“I think FOX has been for Romney all the way through,” Gingrich said during the private meeting — to which RealClearPolitics was granted access — at Wesley College. “In our experience, Callista and I both believe CNN is less biased than FOX this year. We are more likely to get neutral coverage out of CNN than we are of FOX, and we’re more likely to get distortion out of FOX. That’s just a fact.” […]
“I assume it’s because Murdoch at some point [who] said, ‘I want Romney,’ and so ‘fair and balanced’ became ‘Romney,’ ” Gingrich said. “And there’s no question that Fox had a lot to do with stopping my campaign because such a high percentage of our base watches FOX.”
Fox News ended its contract with Gingrich last spring as it became clear that the former Speaker intended to launch a presidential campaign.
The decision to admonish Fox News is a departure from other recent unsuccessful Republican presidential candidates, several of whom have converted their elevated prominence on the national stage into lucrative contracts with the network. Former Alaska Governor and Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin signed a deal [ http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2010/01/11/76771/palin-to-fox-news/ ] with the network, and 2008 candidate Mike Huckabee now has his own weekend show [ http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/huckabee/index.html ].
Update:
“This is nothing other than Newt auditioning for a windfall of a gig at CNN [ http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/newt-gingrich-cnn-less-biased-fox-news-141511492.html ]–that’s the kind of man he is,” a spokeswoman for Fox News responded in a statement to Yahoo News. “Not to mention, he’s still bitter about the fact that we terminated his contributor contract.”
We’ve fact-checked almost all of the statements they cited. For the record, we originally counted 49 claims, not 50. The Daily Show said No. 50 was left off due to a technical error. They've updated their Vine, which we've included here.
1. "In July 2010 the government said small businesses -- 60 percent -- will lose their health care, 45 percent of big business and a large percentage of individual health."
2. "And President Obama has offered to pay out of his own pocket for the museum of Muslim culture out of his own pocket, yet it's the Republican National Committee who's paying for this."
10. The Obama administration "manipulated deportation data to make it appear that the Border Patrol was deporting more illegal immigrants than the Bush administration."
13. Because of President Barack Obama’s failure to "push job creation," the black unemployment rate in Ferguson, Mo., is three times higher than the white unemployment rate.
20. "And finally tonight, although it pains me to say this, Jon Stewart? Comedy Central? He was right. Now on his program last night, he mentioned that we had played some incorrect video on this program last week while talking about the Republican health care rally on Capitol Hill. He was correct, we screwed up, we aired some video of a rally in September, along with a video from the actual event. It was an inadvertent mistake, but a mistake nonetheless, so Mr. Stewart. you were right, we apologize. But by the way, I wanna thank you, and all your writers, for watching."
22. The United Way and Enroll America, in Coral Gables, Fla., had "navigators going door to door, knocking on the homes of the uninsured … helping them navigate through the different plans that are available.
24. During the lead-up to the American Revolutionary War, "some guy in Boston got his head blown off because he tried to secretly raise the tax on tea."
32. If you log into the government's Cash for Clunkers website (cars.gov) from your home computer, the government can "seize all of your personal and private" information, and track your computer activity.
39. Seniors and the disabled "will have to stand in front of Obama's 'death panel' so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their 'level of productivity in society,' whether they are worthy of health care."
42. A new Colorado law "literally allows residents to print ballots from their home computers, then encourages them to turn ballots over to ‘collectors.’ "
49. "We're going to be looking at $8 billion a day that we're going to be pouring into foreign countries in order to import that make-up fuel that we're going to need to take the place of what we could have gotten out of the Gulf (of Mexico)."
After President Obama's second term is up, he and First Lady Michelle Obama will be leaving the presidential residence at the White House and moving to their own home, living as regular people. So how does she feel about the upcoming change?
Tuskegee University May 9, 2015 130th Annual Spring Commencement Speaker: First Lady Michelle Obama Introduction: Dr. Brian L. Johnson, 7th President Conferral of the Honorary Degree, Doctor of Humane Letters, Litterarum Humanarum Doctor
Pointing out that President Barack Obama could never have been voted into office with just the 11% of the U.S. population that is African-American, Beck said on his radio show Monday [5-11-15], “White people in droves, went out to vote for you, and you were somehow or another invisible so much that you became the president and first lady of the United States of America? Tell me about the troubles that you have seen!”
After playing a portion of the speech in which the first lady talks about feeling the “stings” of racism throughout her life, Beck chimed in, sarcastically, “Nobody else has.”
“The whites have never felt it,” the host continued. “I mean, the conservatives have never felt it! The jobs that we are suddenly bypassed for because we’re conservative, because of our viewpoint. The religious that are mocked on a daily basis and belittled. Yeah, we’ve never felt that. We don’t know what it’s like.”
Beck stressed that he is not comparing the plight of the religious, conservative white man to what black people suffered in the time of slavery or even what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. faced during the Civil Rights Movement. “But we are not the country of Martin Luther King’s time any more!” Beck exclaimed. “We are being dragged back to those days.”
From the May 11, 2015 edition of 'The Glenn Beck Radio Program' on The Blaze: Glenn Beck responds to Michelle Obama's racially charged commencement speech at Tuskegee University over the weekend.
Sean Hannity devoted the entire opening 20 minutes of his Fox News show Monday night [5-11-15] to Michelle Obama’s commencement address at Tuskegee University this past weekend.
"Back during slavery, when Black people like me talked to the slaves, they didn't kill 'em, they sent some old house Negro along behind him to undo what he said. You have to read the history of slavery to understand this. There were two kinds of Negroes. There was that old house Negro and the field Negro.
And the house Negro always looked out for his master. When the field Negroes got too much out of line, he held them back in check. He put 'em back on the plantation. The house Negro could afford to do that because he lived better than the field Negro. He ate better, he dressed better, and he lived in a better house. He lived right up next to his master - in the attic or the basement. He ate the same food his master ate and wore his same clothes. And he could talk just like his master - good diction. And he loved his master more than his master loved himself. That's why he didn't want his master hurt. If the master got sick, he'd say, "What's the matter, boss, we sick?" When the master's house caught afire, he'd try and put the fire out. He didn't want his master's house burned. He never wanted his master's property threatened. And he was more defensive of it than the master was.
That was the house Negro. But then you had some field Negroes, who lived in huts, had nothing to lose. They wore the worst kind of clothes. They ate the worst food. And they caught hell. They felt the sting of the lash. They hated their master. Oh yes, they did. If the master got sick, they'd pray that the master died. If the master's house caught afire, they'd pray for a strong wind to come along. This was the difference between the two.
And today you still have house Negroes and field Negroes!!"
Joking that unlike Hannity’s first four guests she would offer the “black perspective” on Obama’s speech, Coulter declared, “I think she’s just letting out her Reverend Wright now.” The pundit proceeded to denounce the “predator class” in the black community and deny the existence of “peaceful protesters” in Baltimore.
“Yes, America does owe black America for slavery, for the Democratic policies of Jim Crow,” Coulter admitted. “I think we’ve — we’re making it up now, when you’re getting admitted to Princeton when you can’t read, is that enough yet?” Even Hannity was forced to correct her logic on that one.
“Oh my gosh, this nonsense about, oh, so many blacks are in prison, well how did they get there?” Coulter asked later. “In addition to the peaceful Baltimore protester I want to put on a milk carton, — have you seen this? — I want to see the innocent person in prison.”
First lady Michelle Obama demonstrates her workout routine, ranging from plyometrics, to weights, to kickboxing, as part of the White House’s “Let’s Move” campaign to combat childhood obesity.
Michelle and Jim Bob Duggar, stars of 19 Kids and Counting, finally come forward to tell their side of totally covering up their son Josh's sexual molestation scandal.
By Wende Benner, HA Editorial Team Posted on May 23, 2015
Content Warning: Spiritual Victim Blaming
The recent revelation that Josh Duggar admittedly [ http://www.people.com/article/josh-duggar-molestation-accusations-duggars-respond ] molested five young girls as a teenager has taken over social media for the last two days. There has been a wide array of reactions and speculations. But, for many who were raised in the same quiverfull and patriarchal homeschool world, this has been a time of reliving their own traumas brought about by that dysfunctional culture. Those who lived it know all too well how the teachings and attitudes that are part of the Duggar family’s life affect families, victims, and even offenders.
The Duggar family’s involvement in Bill Gothard’s Advanced Training Institute (ATI) homeschool program adds complexities to this story which are unknown to the average person. The underlying principles and beliefs the Duggars have built their lives around actually help groom and shame victims, help hide grievous abuse, and even keep offenders from receiving needed help.
Also, from a young age the children are instructed in God’s plan for their gender. Strict gender roles are the foundation of a patriarchal system. Girls learn their role is to be wives, mothers, and keepers at home. Most people know that for the Duggar family this includes the expectation of having as many children as possible. Michelle Duggar is also outspoken about her beliefs on a wife’s subservient role [ http://www.patheos.com/blogs/faithgoespop/2012/02/michelle-duggars-tips-for-a-happy-marriage/ ] and need to be sexually available [ http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2014/02/13/michelle_duggar_s_secret_to_a_happy_marriage_with_jim_bob_never_say_no_to.html ] to her husband. Children learn by watching their parents that men hold the power. This is detrimental for both boys and girls. Neither learns to have a healthy relationship without the power differential already in place.
All of this is accompanied by one of Bill Gothard’s 7 Basic Principles, Authority [ http://billgothard.com/about/whatiteach ] (these principles are the foundation to his Institute in Basic Life Principles seminar). This concept is taught with a diagram of umbrellas, which represent protection.
Notice the man has authority over the entire household. The teaching claims that as long as the father has no holes in his umbrella-sin in his life, then nothing bad can happen to the rest of the family. However, any member of the family can step out from under the father’s protection if they sin. Then all manner of evil can happen to that person. Therefore, if something bad, like a sexual assault, happens to you and your father hasn’t done anything wrong, it must be your fault. Knowledge of this fact keeps many from even disclosing their abuse. They are aware that questions about sin in their life are likely to follow any revelation of their violation.
In Gothard’s world there are many other ways in which sexual abuse can be the victim’s fault. At the ATI student’s Counseling Seminar students are taught Gothard’s method of helping victims of sexual assault. The handout pictured here is part of the teaching material.
With this teaching a case can easily be made to blame the victim in some way. The feelings of arousal the offender felt must have been caused by some fault of the victim.
Defrauding is not the only way a victim can be at fault. Gothard also teaches that if a victim fails to “cry out” or be alert (one of the 49 required character traits everyone should have) enough to have anticipated the assault, then the victim bears responsibility. The story of Tamar, daughter of King David, is used to illustrate [ http://www.recoveringgrace.org/2012/04/character-sketches-or-sketchy-characters-dinah-and-tamar/ ] this point. It is easy to see how these teaching have set up a system where the victim bears the blame. Anyone raised with these beliefs is set up to struggle with a lifetime of shame and guilt while still bearing the scars of their abuse.
This teaching is also echoed in the handout from the Counseling Seminar. Victims are to be reminded that their soul has more value than their bodies, so forgiving the offender must be the priority. Any suffering caused by the assault is then brushed aside.
The Duggars assured the public Josh’s victims have received counseling. Yet, the type of counseling taught in their world does not promote healing. It teaches shame. How can these young people be expected to heal from such a violation with these principles guiding the process?
The Duggars also claim that Josh received counseling. It is reported this counseling was done over three months at an old VA hospital in Little Rock, AK. While there he did construction work. The old hospital was donated to Bill Gothard [ http://www.arktimes.com/arkansas/a-day-shelter-in-the-old-va/Content?oid=865453 ] for use as a training center. The Integrity Construction Institute was at that time a part of this facility. Evidence that manual labor is an effective treatment for sex offenders is hard to come by. Construction work alone would be a disservice to someone seeking help.
It is important to note that any counseling received from someone associated with ATI would be driven by the belief that mental disorders do not exist [ http://www.cellsea.com/video/detail/V525469cbb76ef.htm ]. This approach to counseling would be ineffective to address the very nature and needs of a serial molester.
With close examination it becomes clear that the boy referenced learned a lesson on shifting blame. The victims were blamed for their lack of modesty. The parents were blamed for their lack of teaching. The offender learned to see how others have failed and have caused his problems. This approach would not bring any lasting change in someone needing serious help.
Josh Duggar’s situation as a teen was critical. Studies [ http://www.smart.gov/SOMAPI/sec2/ch5_treatment.html ] show that young offenders who are able to get the right kind of help reduce their probability of reoffending by more than 50%. Yet, as far as we can tell, that kind of help was not available to him. The ATI system of counseling not only fails the victims but the offenders as well.
This toxic system of beliefs originated with Bill Gothard, a man who had to resign from his own ministry last year when faced with dozens of allegations of sexual harassment and abuse. Even though Michelle and Jim Bob were aware of this, they still continued to use these teaching in their home and promote them using their fame. They also continued to speak and teach at the annual ATI family conferences [ http://issuu.com/iblp/docs/2015_conference_guide_final/1?e=6576605/11202285 ]. They have failed to see how their own system of belief has contributed to the devastation in their own family and in the ministry they promote.
The secrets the Duggar family hid all these years have tragic and devastating effects. The lives of five victims will be permanently altered. ATI only helped cover their abuse. ATI also was unable to provide the necessary counseling that Josh Duggar desperately needed at that time. The consequences of that failure could have changed to course of his life.
Bill Gothard’s cult creates a world in which abuse thrives in secret, and those that need help the most are silenced and shamed.
Education Program Used By Duggars Has 'Horrific' Sex Abuse Teachings, Ex-Student Says
WASHINGTON - SEPTEMBER 17: Michelle (L) and Jim Bob Duggar of The Learning Channel TV show '19 Kids and Counting' speak at the Values Voter Summit on September 17, 2010 in Washington, DC. The annual summit drew nearly two thousand people to advocate for conservative causes. (Photo by Brendan Hoffman/Getty Images)
By Hilary Hanson Posted: 05/26/2015 4:44 pm EDT Updated: 05/28/2015 1:59 am EDT
The home education program used by the Duggar family teaches disturbing, victim-blaming lessons about sexual abuse, a former student of the program says.
One document, “Counseling Sexual Abuse [ http://www.recoveringgrace.org/2013/04/how-counseling-sexual-abuse-blames-and-shames-survivors/ ],” strongly suggests that victims are to blame for their own abuse. The guide instructs victims to ask themselves “Why did God let it happen?” and offers potential reasons like “immodest dress,” “indecent exposure” and “being with evil friends.”
The handout was originally posted by Recovering Grace [ http://www.recoveringgrace.org/ ], an organization dedicated to “helping people whose lives have been impacted” by ATI and IBLP, in 2013 -- long before the allegations against Josh Duggar made headlines.
John Cornish, one of the team members who runs Recovering Grace, told The Huffington Post that he remembers attending an ATI convention as a teen in 1997 and personally hearing Bill Gothard, the IBLP founder, going over the "Counseling Sexual Abuse" document.
“At that point in time, I barely even knew what sexual abuse was,” Cornish recalled. “However, I remember that he was basically telling us that sexual abuse wasn't all that terrible because it only affected one's body, and not the more important parts of our being: soul and spirit.”
Cornish called Gothard's advice "horrific," noting that program's guidelines not only "question whether the abused was at fault," but also try to convince a victim that being abused was a good thing.
Cornish added that “for the thousands of families in the ATI program, Gothard would be the first place they would turn” in a case of sexual abuse.
Gothard resigned from the institute last year in the wake of accusations from 34 women that he sexually harassed or assaulted them, though he maintains [ http://billgothard.com/content/statement-bill-gothard ] he is innocent.
Recovering Grace also posted a second document, called “Lessons From Moral Failures In A Family [ http://www.recoveringgrace.org/2015/05/gracenote/ ],” which tells the story of family dealing with the consequences of their son sexually abusing some of this younger siblings. It includes a statement from the boy in which he blames his behavior on laziness, a lack of moral purity and, most disturbingly, the “immodest” behavior of his young sisters:
My younger sisters used to wear dresses often, but as they were young and not aware of modesty, they did not behave in them as they should … Little people do not realize their nakedness right away.
The boy also cites having to change his sisters’ diapers as contributing to his actions.
The authors of the document seem to agree with the boy’s assessment. Following the boy’s statement, the document offers some guidelines for “precautions” that families should take “so that a similar tragedy will not happen among their children.” Those guidelines include insisting on “modesty,” prohibiting boys from changing diapers and not “tolerating laziness.”
Cornish said he does not personally remember going over the second document, noting that Recovering Grace has collected thousands of pages of documents over the years. However, he said there is no doubt in his mind that it is authentic.
“The layout and design, the verbiage, the content -- it’s Gothard,” he said.
“Lessons From Moral Failures In A Family” was distributed in the late 1990s, according to a post by Recovering Grace. A police report [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/23/josh-duggars-record-destroyed-police_n_7428762.html ] indicates that the first time Josh Duggar was accused of molesting a girl was in 2002, so it’s unlikely that the story is about the Duggar family.
When asked to confirm whether the documents were indeed ATI publications, an ATI representative told The Huffington Post that the organization has “no comment” on the matter.
What You Need To Know About The 'Quiverfull' Movement
In this Aug. 2, 2007 file photo, Michelle Duggar, left, is surrounded by her children and husband Jim Bob, second from left, after the birth of her 17th child in Rogers, Arkansas. (AP Photo/ Beth Hall, File)
"19 Kids And Counting" stars Michelle and Jim Bob Duggar found themselves in the spotlight for dark reasons this week after reports surfaced that their oldest son, Joshua, molested several young girls [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/21/josh-duggar-apologizes-child-molestation_n_7417688.html ], including some of his sisters, during his teenage years. With 19 children, the Duggars are frequently associated with the "Quiverfull" movement -- a contingent of conservative Christians who shun contraception -- though Michelle and Jim Bob have said they do not formally consider themselves "Quiverfull" Christians.
Even if the family doesn't openly embrace the ideology, their lifestyle mirrors many of its core principles. To remind you exactly what the movement is all about, here are a few key facts you should know:
The name comes from a passage in the Bible.
Psalm 127 [ https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm+127 ] states: “Children are a heritage from the Lord, offspring a reward from him. Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are children born in one’s youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them. They will not be put to shame when they contend with their opponents in court.” A quiver, in the old English sense of the word, is a case for holding arrows [ http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/quiver ].
Many couples in the movement believe God won’t give them more children than they can handle.
Families that follow Quiverfull ideals refrain from using contraception, believing that it is only God who “opens and closes the womb,” as adherent Kelly Swanson told NPR [ http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102005062 ]. Another adherent told BBC [ http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-22526252 ] in 2013 that her husband "saw it wasn't such a scary thing to do after all, and that God wouldn't overwhelm us with more than we could handle. One baby at a time arrived, and we were handling it, so we felt our marriage was being blessed by this choice and we continued."
A woman's ability to bear many children, like Michelle Duggar has, depends partly on overall health and partly on genes, Dr. Karen V. Wells from the Center for Women's Health at Evergreen Hospital in Washington told NBC News [ http://bodyodd.nbcnews.com/_news/2009/09/09/4380078-are-some-women-superbreeders ]. The outlet noted that after five or six children, women are more prone to post-partum bleeding or hemorrhaging, though one doctor told NBC that having many kids can help protect women from breast and ovarian cancer.
Some Quiverfull adherents believe they are building an army for God -- or at least an army of conservative Christians.
“It is the womb that conceives and nourishes the ‘godly seed’ who will come forth to be the light in the darkness and who will destroy the works of Satan in this world. God is looking for an army. ... The womb is a powerful weapon against Satan. Some women fear to bring babies into this evil world, but this is one of the greatest reasons for having children--to be the light in this dark world!” she wrote [id.].
Joyce described the Hess' thinking: "But if just eight million American Christians began supplying more 'arrows for the war' by having six children or more, they propose that the Christian Right ranks could rise to 550 million within a century."
The Duggar family may hold many of the same beliefs, but they do not self-identify with the Quiverfull movement.
In their book, A Love That Multiplies: An Up-Close View of How They Make It Work, Michelle and Jim Bob Duggar wrote [ http://www.amazon.com/Love-That-Multiplies-Up-Close-View/dp/1439190631 ]: “Even though Wikipedia and some Internet blogs report that we are part of a QuiverFull movement, we are not. We are simply Bible-believing Christians who desire to follow God’s Word and apply it to our lives. God says children are a gift and a blessing, and we believe it.”
But the heart of the lifestyle, which the Duggars demonstrate, is what Garrison calls the practice of “biblical family values.”
The Quiverfull movement is anti-feminist and encourages a patriarchal system.
Doug Phillips, the former president of Vision Forum Ministries who is frequently described as a leader of the Quiverfull movement, has preached a message of “biblical patriarchy,” according to Religion News Service [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/07/doug-phillips-affair_n_4235191.html ], stating that a man should “rule over his household” and “the God-ordained and proper sphere of dominion for a wife is the household.”
Some of the most prominent advocates of the movement have been women.
Mary Pride's 1985 book, The Way Home: Beyond Feminism, Back to Reality, helped set the stage for the Quiverfull movement. In the book, Pride called family planning [ http://www.amazon.com/dp/1453699309 ] "the mother of abortion."
The movement has been linked to sexual assault before.
In the wake of the news that Joshua Duggar admitted to molesting underage girls, he released a statement on the family website [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/21/josh-duggar-apologizes-child-molestation_n_7417688.html ], saying, “Twelve years ago, as a young teenager I acted inexcusably for which I am extremely sorry and deeply regret. I hurt others, including my family and close friends.”
Quiverfull leader Phillips found himself mired in controversy in 2013 when he admitted [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/07/doug-phillips-affair_n_4235191.html ] to “a lengthy, inappropriate relationship with a woman” who was not his wife. “While we did not ‘know’ each other in a Biblical sense,” Phillips wrote on the Vision Forum Ministries website [ http://www.visionforumministries.org/ ], “it was nevertheless inappropriately romantic and affectionate.”
The following year, the woman came forward to sue Phillips and Vision Forum [ http://www.slate.com/content/dam/slate/blogs/xx_factor/2014/Douglas_Phillips_lawsuit.pdf ] for mental distress caused by what she said was an abusive and manipulative relationship. Lourdes Torres-Manteufel alleged [id.] in a lawsuit that she met Phillips in 1999 when she was 15 years old and that he manipulated her into moving into his home in 2007. There, she charged, Phillips would repeatedly enter her room at night to touch her body, masturbate and ejaculate on her, despite her protests.
But what does Jim Bob think of his own response to his son’s familial abuse? In a brief statement to People, Jim Bob and Michelle said last week that “that dark and difficult time caused us to seek God like never before.” Maybe that’s because Jim Bob publicly stated during his 2002 campaign for U.S. Senate that he thinks incest should be punishable by death.
Jim Bob’s platform on his campaign website—preserved via web cache [ http://web.archive.org/web/20030210014933/http://www.jimbob.info/position.html ]—states that he believes “rape and incest represent heinous crimes and as such should be treated as capital crimes.” Jim Bob offered this belief to explain his position on abortion (only acceptable if both the mother and the baby were going to die anyway, of course):
Jim Bob lost the Republican nomination for Senate to Arkansas’ incumbent Senator Tim Hutchinson. His son Josh remained very much alive and went on to molest several underage girls including some of his sisters from 2002-2003.
As Duggar Dad Ran On A Political Platform Saying Rape And Incest Merited Capital Punishment, He Was Covering Up His Son's Actions
By Katie Sola Posted: 05/26/2015 7:16 pm EDT Updated: 05/27/2015 8:59 am EDT
In 2002, Jim Bob Duggar argued that rape and incest merited the death penalty. But that same year, one of his own sons reportedly committed incest, and Duggar allegedly covered it up.
When asked if he believed abortion should be legal if a woman had been raped, Duggar said, "If a woman is raped, the rapist should be executed instead of the innocent unborn baby. ... Rape and incest represent heinous crimes and as such should be treated as capital crimes."
A police report [ http://imgur.com/a/zqPMi#13 , http://imgur.com/a/zqPMi#0 ] suggests that the first victim who came forward lived in the same home as Josh. In March 2003, more minors accused Josh of touching their breasts and genitals. The police report suggests that four of the five total victims were Josh's sisters.
Duggar did not alert authorities. He reportedly did not punish his son at all, except to send him to live and work with a family friend for a while.
When Josh returned, his father allegedly took him to speak with Arkansas State Trooper Jim Hutchens, who gave the boy a "very stern talk." According to In Touch, Hutchens is now serving 56 years in jail for child pornography.
The authorities first heard about the allegations in 2006, when an anonymous woman contacted "The Oprah Winfrey Show" with details of the accusations. The police launched an investigation, and In Touch reports five victims confirmed that Josh had touched their breasts and genitals.
Reportedly, the police did not press charges because the statute of limitations had expired.
The Duggar family could not be reached for comment. TLC did not respond to a request for comment.
The logistics of Noah's Ark. People actually believe this story. It's time for a dose of reality. The YouTubers known as KaseyAkira, Bluetrilobite, and Vashcat encouraged me to debunk the story of Noah's Ark.
Duggar Breaking News: Disgraced Cop Who Didn’t Report Molestation Shoots Down Jim Bob’s Story
(Photo Credit: Getty Images)
(Photo Credit: Arkansas Department of Corrections)
(Photo Credit: Getty Images)
by In Touch Weekly May 27, 2015 12:09PM
The disgraced Arkansas state trooper who was first alerted to the Josh Duggar molestation allegations is contradicting the story Jim Bob Duggar later told Springdale, Ark., police, In Touch Weekly is reporting exclusively in the new issue that goes on sale today.
In 2006, Jim Bob told Springdale police that he took Josh to see State Trooper Joseph Hutchens and that Josh “admitted to Hutchens what [Josh, redacted] had done,” according to the police report, obtained exclusively by In Touch through the Freedom of Information Act. At this point, there were five victims and multiple molestations by Josh.
But Hutchens, in his only interview since the Duggar scandal has been uncovered, says that Jim Bob told him about only one incident of molestation and that, in part, is why he decided not to report Josh to the abuse hotline.
Hutchens is serving 56 years in prison for child pornography and admits his “reputation is shot.” He was interviewed by a representative of a local law firm at In Touch's request and promised nothing in return for his recollections.
Hutchens' failure to report the abuse caused the police to halt their 2006 investigation because the statute of limitations ran out.
In the new interview from prison, Hutchens said he was told by Jim Bob and Josh that “Josh had inappropriately touched [redacted] during the time she was asleep. He said he touched her through her clothing and he said it only happened one time.”
He said the fact that it was a one-time incident influenced his decision not to report it. “I did what I thought was right and obviously it wasn’t,” he says. “If I had to do it over again, I would have told him immediately I am going to call the hotline and contacted the trooper that worked those cases and have a full report made. I thought I could handle it myself.
“I have lost a lot of sleep over it. I am a Christian myself and I worry that something else may have happened. I would be responsible for it, in my opinion, by not reporting it. The young girl should have been my first priority.”
For the full interview and troubling new facts about the Duggar molestation scandal, pick up the latest issue of In Touch Weekly, on newsstands now.
The Arkansas state trooper who reportedly gave the young Josh Duggar a “very stern talk” once had a Yahoo profile in which he detailed his own sexual interest in children, according to a 2009 court document.
Hutchens added that he regrets his actions (or lack thereof). “I did what I thought was right and obviously it wasn’t,” he said. “If I had to do it over again, I would have told him immediately I am going to call the hotline and contacted the trooper that worked those cases and have a full report made. I thought I could handle it myself."
A few years later, in 2007, Hutchens pleaded guilty to eight counts of possessing child pornography after authorities searching his home computer found multiple images of “prepubescent children” being sexually abused, according to the Pulaski County document.
The document states that Hutchens’ Yahoo profile username was “dadsluv2002” and that his profile listed such interests as “Kinki Kids,” “Child Play series,” “Strangers with Candy,” “Puberty” and “Preschools.” The report also states that between 2004 and 2005, Hutchens “spent considerable time on his computer viewing child porn.”
Hutchens was initially sentenced to five years in prison, but by early 2010 he had been released on a suspended-sentence agreement. In March 2010, he was arrested again on child pornography charges. This time he wound up pleading no contest to 10 counts of distributing, possessing or viewing child pornography [ http://www.nwaonline.com/news/2012/jun/01/retired-trooper-sentenced-56-years/ ], the Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette reported, and was sentenced to 56 years behind bars.
Though Jim Bob Duggar reportedly knew as early as July 2002 that his son had assaulted a girl, he did not contact Hutchens around a year later, by which time multiple girls had said Josh molested them. Prior to the meeting with Hutchens, the Duggar parents had sent Josh to counseling at a Bible-based facility whose affiliated homeschooling program has been criticized for its “horrific” teachings [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/26/duggars-homeschooling-sex-abuse_n_7445238.html (above)] about sexual abuse.
The Duggar family went on to star in the TLC reality show “19 Kids and Counting” -- originally known as “17 Kids and Counting” -- beginning in 2008.
The first assault took place in July 2002, with a second occurring in March 2003.
Although many details in the police report are redacted, based on the ages of his siblings and the dates of the molestations as described to police, one of Josh's victims was as young as five-years-old when Josh touched her private parts. It was part of an escalating series of attacks by Josh.
Duggar Molestation Case — Another Bombshell Revealed: Josh Sued the Arkansas Department of Human Services
(Photo Credit: Getty Images)
(Photo Credit: Getty Images)
by In Touch Weekly May 27, 2015 7:59AM
The Josh Duggar molestation case did not end when Springdale, Ark. police closed their investigation in 2006 because the statute of limitations had run out, In Touch Weekly is reporting exclusively.
Police referred the matter to the Families in Need of Services agency, which has jurisdiction over minors. The Department of Human Services (DHS) was then brought into the case, In Touch has learned. Nine months after those agencies entered the Duggar molestation case, Josh Duggar sued the Arkansas Department of Human Services. A trial was held on August 6, 2007.
The results of the investigation into the Duggars and Josh’s trial are sealed. But a source familiar with the Duggar investigation told In Touch it was likely that Josh “appealed the DHS decision or finding from their investigation.” The source notes that DHS had the authority to apply “restrictions or stipulations about him being at home with the victims.
“Josh would be considered an in-home offender, giving DHS the authority to do an investigation. As part of your appeal rights you can request a DHS hearing to challenge what they found and their ruling.”
The Duggars are refusing to comment on the intervention by either department and Josh’s trial against DHS. They also are refusing to say if their family was monitored by a state agency after the 2007 actions and forced to undergo counseling by a licensed mental health professional.
Jessa Duggar’s mother-in-law and father-in-law have both shared their thoughts about the Josh Duggar sexual molestation scandal, but does Ben Seewald agree with his parents?
As the Inquisitr previously reported, Jessa Duggar’s father-in-law [ http://www.inquisitr.com/2116741/jessa-duggars-father-in-law-defends-josh-says-jim-bob-and-michelle-should-be-commended-for-handling-of-molestation/ ], Michael Seewald, recently penned a lengthy essay in response to Josh Duggar’s shocking confession that he sexually molested four of his sisters and one other girl. Seewald’s screed was mostly a defense of Josh and Jessa’s parents, and he even wrote that Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar should be praised for the way they handled the horrible ordeal that Josh put their daughters through. Michelle and Jim Bob allowed Josh to continue living with his victims, they did what they could to ensure that their son would not be prosecuted for his crimes, and they sent him to a religious institution that has been under investigation by local Child Protective Services.
Jessa Duggar’s mother-in-law [ http://www.inquisitr.com/2114490/jessa-duggars-mother-in-law-supports-abuser-josh-by-siding-with-mike-huckabee/ ], Guinn Seewald, also showed her support for Josh, Jim Bob, and Michelle by sharing Mike Huckabee’s defense of the Duggars on her Facebook page. Huckabee basically complained about the Duggars’ dark secret being uncovered, wrote that Josh should be forgiven, and stated that he still believes the 19 Kids and Counting stars are good people.
However, Ben Seewald [ https://instagram.com/p/2igHuDgJhU/ ] might not be quite as forgiving as his parents and Mike Huckabee have been. In an Instagram post that he shared on Mother’s Day, Ben hinted that he has a huge problem with parents who don’t properly protect their children. He even mentioned abuse in the post.
“A little late in posting, but I had a wonderful Mother’s day with my Mom and wife! I want to give a shout out to my Mom and Dad,” Ben wrote. “They’ve been loving, caring, and provided us with a good home and many happy memories. While many parents are abusing their children, earning the condemnation of God, my parents have always been protective of us and by God’s grace have made our home a safe haven.”
Jessa Duggar’s husband went on to share some more words that seem an awful lot like condemnation of Jim Bob and Michelle for letting Josh get away with abusing his sisters.
“They loved us enough to have standards, rooted in Scripture, and stick by them even when it would’ve been easier for them just to let us do whatever we wanted to. They loved us too much for that. That’s a lot to say in this culture where parents who care enough to set standards for their kids are mocked and dishonored and where the ones who yield to their rebellious children in compromise are praised as ‘loving.'”
It’s possible that Jessa Duggar informed Ben Seewald about her brother’s past before they got married, but there’s also a chance that Ben only found out about it recently. Some Duggar fans on the Free Jinger website have been speculating that Josh Duggar knew [ http://www.freejinger.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=87&t=26066&sid=9e1a0f9df3fb50189ea9b0fb1603e562&start=40 ] that someone was digging into his past, and he starting preparing for the fallout weeks ago. The evidence they point to is Josh’s recent purchase of a home in Arkansas.
“I still want to know why Josh bought a house in Arkansas recently. Did he somehow know this was going to happen?” one commenter wrote.
According to RadarOnline, Josh and Anna Duggar [ http://radaronline.com/photos/josh-anna-duggar-buy-new-house-arkansas/photo/1034557/ ] bought a new house in Siloam Springs, Arkansas earlier this year. Perhaps Josh knew that someone was digging into his past, and maybe he was ready and waiting to resign from his position with the Family Research Council in D.C. Now that he’s jobless, he might have to work for his dad back in Arkansas.
If Josh somehow knew that his dirty secret was about to be shared with the world, perhaps he tried to give his family fair warning about what was coming. It’s possible that Ben and Jessa were alerted earlier this month, and maybe an angry Ben was thinking about Josh when he shared his harsh words for bad parents. If Jessa’s husband is upset, it might not just be because the Duggars let their son get away with something terrible — now Ben and Jessa are in danger of losing whatever money they make on 19 Kids and Counting [ http://www.inquisitr.com/2112176/did-tlc-cancel-19-kids-and-counting-network-says-they-are-deeply-troubled-by-duggar-allegations/ ].
Do you think Ben Seewald’s Mother’s Day post was meant to be a scathing criticism of Jessa Duggar’s parents?
NATIONAL HARBOR, MD - FEBRUARY 28: Josh Duggar speaks during the 42nd annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the Gaylord National Resort Hotel and Convention Center on February 28, 2015 in National Harbor, Maryland. Conservative activists attended the annual political conference to discuss their agenda. (Photo by Kris Connor/Getty Images)
By Joel L. Watts Posted: 05/28/2015 4:13 pm EDT Updated: 05/29/2015 1:59 pm EDT
Dear Duggar Family Children:
This is for Jana Maria, John-David, Jill Michelle, Jessa Lauren, Jinger, Joseph, Josiah, Joy-Anna, Jedidiah, Jeremiah, Jason, James, Justin, Jackson, Johannah, Jennifer, Jordyn-Grace, and Josie. Even you, Josh. This is for you when you finally leave your home, in thought and in deed.
I want to welcome you to a world that is far brighter than you've led to believe it is. I want to welcome you to a chance to truly experience all of God's creation, as something more than sex objects, as something more than husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, baby-sitters, and anything else that you were told you could only be. No doubt, you are going to be afraid.
Then you are going to be mad at your parents, at yourselves, at each other, and finally at God. As someone who has escaped a cult, let me tell you now: you are absolutely right to feel every bad thought you are feeling right now. The pain is real. Even if no one can see it, it is real and maybe even more real than if you had just been torn asunder. Your entire world is breaking down and you simply have no one left to turn to you give you the firm assurance you once had. If someone promises to restore to you a black and white world, don't believe them. Find someone though, whether it is a real counselor, a priest, a pastor, a friend -- find someone who will listen.
If you are reading this, you are now "free" of Quiverfull and a host of other systems imprisoning you. In truth, as I have learned, you will never be truly free of things that have happened to you or that you have done to others. Don't worry. I understand that. Do not let anyone judge you for this, especially yourself. You can be your own worst critic. And you should be, but don't believe everything you tell yourself. To be honest, it wasn't your fault. You were trained to think and believe and act a certain way. You couldn't have left if you tried. You are only now leaving because your psyche cannot handle any more walls and mental gymnastics between what you know and what you see. It is exhausting to continue to build those walls up. At one time, you had help. Your parents and church elders helped to reinforce those walls. But they are gone. They may return, but they will never return to a place that allows you to go back from whence you came.
You are going to be mad at God. You may reject Christianity. I don't blame you. I did myself, really. What you are told is Christianity is not Christianity, I assure you, but you will have to decide that for yourself. Right now, don't give up on believing in God. Just because the god of Quiverfull and your parents may not be in the box you were given, it doesn't mean God does not exist. In fact, I found out -- like many before me -- that God can never fit into a box. If you find someone who tells you they have God all figured out, don't believe them. There is no answer, proof, or concept of God that is healthy to have for too long. If, in the end, you reject Christianity altogether, and even the concept of a deity, I don't blame you. No one can because everything done to you was done in the name of the Christian God.
For me, I choose to believe in God because I cannot believe in a world of this much evil without a good deity as the redeemer. I have to believe that life matters because I have seen real beauty. I choose to believe in God because of personal experience and the marvels of the universe. I believe in orthodox Christianity because theology is a theory and as a theory, I find orthodox Christianity the best of all worlds, one where God became human so that we could become divine. Only orthodox Christianity provides for me the love of a God that I believe this world needs... that I need.
You aren't going to be fine; you are going to be different. You are going to be a different person because there is simply no other way you can exist as the person you were before. You will have the same name, experiences, friends and family (if you choose to have the last two, that is). Yet, you will see them differently. You will see them almost like they exist in a movie. But, they will be real to you. The foods won't taste the same. The clothes won't feel the same. You will get squeamish when people pray, joke, or attempt to understand what you are going through. This is part of the new life you have now. It is not easy, but it is worth it.
A couple of words of advice.
• Get into a real counseling program. Whatever state you land in, find a licensed counselor through that State. Go. Go as often as you want. Be honest with your counselor about everything you are feeling.
• Breathe. You are exhausted. You will remain exhausted for a long time. You will be depressed. Find a real way to handle this.
• Don't rush. You can't rush this. If you do, you will find that you have established more walls, but that this time they block out other stuff, like getting the help you need.
• Take the ruin and the ashes around you and salvage the good, discard the bad, and rebuild.
• Never think this is easy. You have come from a cult. Many of you were physically harmed, some sexually harmed, and all of you emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually abused in this. Some of you are in a part of your lifespan where maturity has set in. That means you have learned certain things that you will have to first fight to unlearn and then attempt to learn a better way. This is just not going to be easy, but if you decide it is worth it, you will make it.
• Don't be afraid to be by yourself. But, try to be near to people who love you -- they usually won't understand you -- and will care for you. You need more than bodily care; you need soul care.
Whatever brought you to this point, you are here now. You will not return. Stay with us and let us help you. Many of us have been where you are right now, coming from a cult and into a world that we are not ready for -- a world we do not want. Yet, we have made it. You will too.
What if original sin had never occurred? I think you'll find that the fantasy concept known as "sin" is actually quite integral to our physical structure and success as a species. So, whether you take Genesis literally or not - if you believe we were designed by God - who is truly to blame for our "nature"?
After Pat Robertson explained that the earth is more than 6000 years old, using dinosaur bones as evidence, Ian Juby responded by explaining how that can't be true because death didn't exist before Adam. "So, Mr. Robertson, was there death before Adam or not? Is the bible true or not? Jesus was supposed to bear the consequences of our sins, which is why he died on the cross; it was a consequence of sin. You have just nullified the reason for Christ's death." ~ Ian Juby This exchange occurs at 8:20 in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URP2WJ6st-E
The premise of this video was suggested to me by DaithiDublin and his wonderful video: "Re-Imagining Paradise (Poem)" Check it out and send him my best! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82RDXjIcysg
“I was very saddened by this result,” said Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican secretary of state, according to the Vatican Radio website. “I don’t think we can speak only about a defeat for Christian principles, but a defeat for humanity.”
The Roman Catholic Church opposes same-sex marriage [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/s/same_sex_marriage/index.html ] and regards homosexual relations as sinful, but many Catholics, especially young people in Western Europe and North America, pay little heed to the church’s teachings on the subject. In Ireland, where the vast majority of citizens consider themselves Catholic, the constitutional amendment to allow same-sex marriage passed easily, with 62 percent of votes in favor.
Cardinal Parolin’s comments were the first by a high-level Vatican official since the referendum. He said the church needed to register that reality “in the sense of reinforcing all its commitment, and make an effort to evangelize.”
Though the church has not changed its view of homosexuality, Pope Francis has been perceived as more open and compassionate on the subject than his recent predecessors, especially after a widely reported comment he made in 2013 concerning the sexual orientation of priests. “If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?” Francis told reporters then [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/30/world/europe/pope-francis-gay-priests.html ], during his first trip abroad as pope.
The pope has opened a two-year synod to discuss issues surrounding the family and better ways to preach to Catholics today. In a recent meeting in Rome, Catholic bishops said it was necessary to welcome gays into the church, though they continued to rule out same-sex marriage.
Before Francis became pope, the tone and language used by the church was sterner. The Vatican compared homosexuality to an “objective disorder,” and Pope Benedict XVI, when he was still a cardinal, defined it as a “tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil.”
Francis did not directly mention the Irish referendum in his regular weekly address to the faithful on Wednesday. But when he spoke about the importance of the engagement period before marriage, he repeated traditional church teaching, calling marriage a “love alliance between a man and a woman.”
Same-sex marriage is not legally recognized in Italy, which like Ireland is heavily Catholic, and even Italy’s progressive Democratic Party has struggled to find a unified position on the issue. A recent campaign by gay rights activists and local officials [ http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/24/world/europe/unable-to-marry-gay-couples-some-italian-mayors-rebel.html ] has led to cities formally registering same-sex marriages that were performed abroad. The government of Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has promised new legislation to allow same-sex couples to join in civil unions, but not marriages.
Catholic Archdiocese in Minnesota Charged Over Sex Abuse by Priest
Curtis Wehmeyer, a former priest in Minnesota, was sentenced in 2013 for criminal sexual conduct and possession of child pornography. Credit Minnesota Department of Corrections, via Associated Press
By MITCH SMITH JUNE 5, 2015
CHICAGO — Prosecutors in Minnesota filed criminal charges on Friday against the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, accusing church leaders of mishandling repeated complaints of sexual misconduct against a priest and failing to follow through on pledges to protect children and root out pedophile clergymen.
The charges [ http://stmedia.startribune.com/documents/Archdiocese+of+Saint+Paul+and+Minneapolis+6.5.15.pdf ] and accompanying civil petition, announced by the Ramsey County prosecutor, John J. Choi, stem from accusations by three male victims who say that from 2008 to 2010, when they were under age, a local priest, Curtis Wehmeyer, gave them alcohol and drugs before sexually assaulting them.
The criminal case amounts to a sweeping condemnation of the archdiocese and how its leaders have handled the abuse allegations — even after reforms were put in place by church leaders to increase accountability — and the charges are among the most severe actions taken by American authorities against a Catholic diocese.
“Today, we are alleging a disturbing institutional and systemic pattern of behavior committed by the highest levels of leadership of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis over the course of decades,” Mr. Choi said in a statement.
The six criminal charges filed Friday, misdemeanors with a maximum fine of $3,000 each, accused the archdiocese of failing to protect children. Mr. Choi also filed a civil petition against the archdiocese that he said was intended to provide legal remedies to prevent similar inaction from happening again.
The 44-page criminal complaint states that concerns about Mr. Wehmeyer date to the 1990s, when he was in seminary and supervisors suggested that his past sexual promiscuity and alcohol abuse made him a poor candidate for the priesthood.
Fellow clergy members and parishioners voiced repeated concerns about Mr. Wehmeyer after his ordination in 2001, prosecutors said. The archdiocese allowed Mr. Wehmeyer to continue as a priest [ http://minnesota.publicradio.org/features/2013/09/clergy-abuse/#timeline ], and even placed him in charge of his own parish, despite learning about his attempts to pick up young men at bookstores and his encounters with law enforcement at known “cruising” spots where men were known to meet other men for anonymous sexual encounters.
The charging documents also say that archdiocese officials knew that Mr. Wehmeyer used a boys’ bathroom at a parish elementary school instead of the staff restroom; tried to give an elementary-age boy a tour of the rectory in violation of policy; and took camping trips with boys where some of the sexual abuse was said to have occurred.
The archdiocese placed Mr. Wehmeyer in a monitoring program for priests facing complaints of abuse or other problems, but prosecutors said in court documents that the supervision and follow-through was “lax or nonexistent.”
“The archdiocese’s failures have caused great suffering by the victims and their family and betrayed our entire community,” Mr. Choi said in his statement.
Civil cases against the archdiocese and priests have poured in since 2013, when the Minnesota State Legislature passed the Child Victims Act [ http://www.startribune.com/abuse-law-unleashes-firestorm-on-church/260547781/ ], which opened a three-year window for filing lawsuits involving claims of sexual abuse that were beyond the criminal statute of limitations.
Many people have made such claims since that law’s passage, bringing new attention to decades-old cases, and creating public records of accusations against some priests.
David Clohessy, director of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, said he was pleased by the indictment, “but the credit goes to Minnesota lawmakers, not this prosecutor.”
An auxiliary bishop for the diocese, Andrew Cozzens, said in a statement Friday, “We deeply regret the abuse that was suffered by the victims of Curtis Wehmeyer and are grieved for all victims of sexual abuse.”
He added that the archdiocese would continue to cooperate with prosecutors. “We all share the same goal: to provide safe environments for all children in our churches and in our communities,” Bishop Cozzens said.
Criminal prosecution of an entire Catholic archdiocese is rare, but not entirely unprecedented, in American courts.
An Ohio judge in 2003 convicted the Archdiocese of Cincinnati of failing to report sexually abusive priests in the 1970s and ’80s. The judge fined the archdiocese $10,000, the maximum allowed, after the archbishop entered a no-contest plea.
But the Minnesota allegations are especially stark because the sexual abuse is said to have occurred relatively recently, long after sexual misconduct by priests had been widely reported and after Catholic institutions implemented programs aimed at preventing further abuse.
“Naming the archdiocese as a corporation implicates the wrongdoing and the failure to protect children by all of the top officials, past and present,” Jeff Anderson, a lawyer in Minnesota who has represented clergy sex-abuse victims, said in a statement.
Laurie Goodstein contributed reporting from New York.
Gay Activists Hail Vote, 3 Decades After a Fatal ‘Queer Bashing’ Hate Crime
By DOUGLAS DALBY MAY 23, 2015
DUBLIN — Many of the young voters so pivotal to the successful campaign to legalize same-sex marriage in Ireland were not even born when the country’s version of New York’s Stonewall [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/s/stonewall_rebellion/index.html ] Riots occurred. In 1982, Declan Flynn, a 31-year-old gay man, was kicked and beaten to death with sticks by a gang of four youths in Fairview Park in Dublin’s north inner city.
His assailants admitted they had attacked him because they had been “queer bashing.” The leniency of their sentences — between one and five years, all suspended — was the catalyst for the first widespread demonstration for gay rights.
Ireland’s paradigm shift from quasi theocracy to gay rights beacon has not happened by accident. It is the result of a calculated campaign for equality by gay activists and the coincidental decline of the Roman Catholic Church.
“Commentators just don’t seem to have grasped that this has been the culmination of a 10-year campaign to change attitudes in this country,” said Colm O’Gorman, chief executive of Amnesty International-Ireland and a leading gay rights campaigner.
“We stuck to our single message that this was about equality. We were determined not to get involved in vitriol or mudslinging and that this campaign would be joyful and positive.”
Mr. O’Gorman also said that the series of clerical pedophile scandals hastened the end of the Catholic Church hegemony over social affairs.
“There is no doubt the political and moral authority of the church was fatally undermined and this had a huge impact: It no longer had the sense of entitlement to direct people how to think and act.”
The veteran gay rights campaigner David Norris remembers Declan Flynn as a “shy, decent young man.” He recalls the crime and how the revulsion it engendered was compounded by the judge’s refusal to jail the four, who ranged in age from 14 to 19.
Afterward, about 900 people marched to the park to protest the crime and the sentence. Some 33 years later, Mr. Norris, who is now a government senator, was at Dublin Castle along with thousands of others celebrating Ireland’s transformation.
The next major step toward the successful referendum came in 2003 when a lesbian couple, Catherine Zappone and her partner, Ann Louise Gilligan, began a legal action to force the state to recognize the marriage vows they had taken three years earlier in Canada. Despite legal reversals, the case galvanized support for same-sex marriage, putting it on the agenda for the first time.
“Initially, we were a small determined group, but we grew to be a large determined group,” Mr. O’Gorman said.
In Dublin Castle on Saturday, Ms. Zappone and Ms. Gilligan were met with rousing cheers. Ms. Zappone said the result had robbed the couple of their day in court, but it was a loss they were more than happy to bear.
“People say it has happened in such a short time, but it feels like forever,” she said. “We would have loved to have been vindicated by the Irish Supreme Court, but this win has been even sweeter, no doubt about that — I’d have settled for this any day.”
After weeks of speculation about a so-called silent no vote, the size of the eventual margin — nearly two to one — took even the most optimistic yes supporters by surprise. After the surprising election results in Britain this month, few people trusted opinion polls that showed 70 to 30 in favor.
“Our door-to-door canvasses were reflecting the polls, so we were hopeful of their accuracy, and we were also confident about the existence of a ‘silent yes’ too, which had gone unreported,” said Brian Sheehan, co-director of the Yes Equality campaign who coordinated the strategic drive for constitutional change.
Yes Equality ran a campaign of military precision. They set up a network of support groups around the country, combining a grass-roots movement with the latest social media techniques to turn the once implausible into a landslide.
A registration drive brought in more than 100,000 new voters since last November, tens of thousands of doors were knocked on, extensive leafleting campaigns took place and posters were ubiquitous.
A series of powerful, emotional videos went viral and helped to bridge a perceived gap between generations.
“We also married online with offline, using campaigns such as ‘go ask your granny’ to vote, which really did work when it came to engagement,” Mr. Sheehan said. “Above all, we knew we needed to engage straight people, too, with a message that was about hope, tolerance, fairness and the kind of Ireland they and their children would want to live in.”
In 2012, the government set up the Constitutional Convention to recommend changes designed to bring the 1937 Constitution more up to date. Yes Equality lobbied hard for a specific amendment on same-sex marriage.
When the official result was announced, there were tears of joy and sadness at Dublin Castle. Many noted the absence of men like Declan Flynn and so many others who could not be there to see the day.
Sean Fieler Is Out And Proud About His Anti-Gay Marriage Donations Even As The Country's Opinion Shifts
Sean Fieler is one of the last remaining donors publicly writing large checks to anti-gay marriage initiatives. hrc.org
By Paul Blumenthal Posted: 06/05/2015 7:28 am EDT Updated: 06/05/2015 7:59 am EDT
WASHINGTON -- In an era when opponents of gay marriage have less and less political power, Sean Fieler has staked out a position as the leading funder of efforts to turn back the tide of marriage equality.
Fieler, president of the hedge fund Equinox Partners and the Kuroto Fund, has spent more than $4.6 million on state and federal political campaigns and super PACs since 2010, and millions more on anti-gay marriage groups and organizations that produce questionable studies of same-sex relationships. He and his wife, Ana Fieler, have also started funding anti-transgender rights efforts across the country.
A devout conservative Catholic, Sean Fieler is unabashed in his opposition to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. He once argued in The New York Times [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/30/us/in-shift-blankenhorn-forges-a-pro-marriage-coalition-for-all.html ] that gay marriage “promotes a very harmful myth about the gay lifestyle” because “it suggests that gay relationships lend themselves to monogamy, stability, health and parenting in the same way heterosexual relationships do. That’s not true.”
While Fieler’s name remains relatively unknown to the general public, he’s emerged as a major player in the movement. “Sean Fieler is a good man,” Brian Brown, president of the National Organization for Marriage -- arguably the most influential anti-gay marriage group -- wrote in a mass email to the group’s supporters in September 2012. “An investor and philanthropist, he supports dozens of good causes, including NOM's work to protect marriage.”
“Sean could have kept his support for marriage private,” Brown continued. Instead, he “refuses to be silenced or intimidated.”
hosted by the American Principles Project, on whose board Fieler sits, by declaring that he is “someone who will play an increasing role in our public life.”
In fact, Fieler’s public policy interests range from reviving the gold standard to opposing abortion. But it is his position as one of the few donors publicly increasing their investment in the gay marriage opposition, just as Americans are increasingly embracing marriage equality, that makes him stand out. Fieler declined to comment for this article.
The retreat of anti-gay marriage funders has left Fieler as one of the very few still aggressively pushing that agenda. “He’s very proud of his check-writing, where most of these donors have either stopped contributing or gone underground in their contributions,” said Fred Karger, a former Republican strategist turned gay rights activist who has tracked NOM over the last seven years.
Fieler supports NOM, as well as efforts to defeat Democratic lawmakers who back gay marriage. Perhaps more notably, he’s spending money to try to push the Republican Party to put conservative religious issues front and center again, and investing millions to defeat Republican candidates who either support gay marriage or appear squishy on the issue.
Much of Fieler’s activism flows through a series of nonprofits and a super PAC that funnel money into elections, policy debates, controversial social science studies and groups advocating against gay marriage in America and gay rights worldwide.
He is chairman and chief underwriter of the American Principles Project and American Principles in Action, a pair of nonprofits founded by Princeton professor Robert P. George. A Catholic co-founder of NOM and the leading intellectual voice opposing gay marriage, George is the mind behind the legal argument that the essential purpose of marriage is procreation. “The plain fact is that the genitals of men and women are reproductive organs all of the time -- even during periods of sterility,” he has written [ http://www.thenation.com/article/princeton-tilts-right ].
George has called for a fight to restore what he calls the traditional Catholic view of marriage. And Fieler, a father of four, has funded George’s nonprofits, although the total amount of those contributions is not known since the groups are not required to disclose their donors.
The American Principles groups also promote the work of anti-gay marriage activists like Maggie Gallagher, another NOM co-founder, and Luis Tellez, head of the anti-gay Witherspoon Institute and of the Princeton chapter of the ultra-conservative Catholic sect Opus Dei. Fieler also sits on the board of Witherspoon and, through his personal foundation, has donated more than $230,000 to the group. A spokeswoman for both Principles groups declined to comment.
Following the GOP's 2012 loss of both the White House and a number of Senate seats, American Principles in Action released a report [ http://www.americanprinciplesinaction.org/gop-autopsy-report-2013/ ] urging the party to continue pushing conservative social issues. To win, the nonprofit argued, candidates must embrace a principled stance against gay marriage and abortion.
“[B]ecause Romney and his associated PACs had pledged to run no ads on social issues, President Obama never had to pay the price in Ohio, Virginia, or elsewhere for embracing gay marriage. He could please the Left and be confident that the GOP would not make an issue of it,” the report says.
Two years later, the vast majority of Republican elected officials at the federal level remain opposed to same-sex marriage. But there is a growing movement encouraging GOP candidates to, if not change their view entirely, at least de-emphasize it as a campaign issue. There is also a shift among Republican voters toward support of same-sex marriage. A May 19 Gallup poll [ http://www.gallup.com/poll/183272/record-high-americans-support-sex-marriage.aspx ] found 37 percent of Republican voters support gay marriage, more than double the share a decade ago.
Fieler forcefully rejects this thinking. “When it comes to what are euphemistically referred to as the ‘social issues,’ we promise not to talk about life and marriage, the literal future and irreplaceable foundation of our society,” Fieler said at an American Principles Project event in 2012, referring to Republican efforts to downplay those debates. “To win, we need but to make one change -- to emphasize, rather than run away from, our principles.”
His political involvement at the federal level has mostly been conducted through the super PAC American Principles Fund. Fieler is by far the group’s biggest funder, donating more than $1.1 million since 2013. The group’s director is Sarah Huckabee Sanders, daughter of religious conservative presidential candidate Mike Huckabee.
American Principles Fund’s biggest splash came in the brief 2014 Republican Senate primary campaign in Wyoming. Liz Cheney, daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, was seeking to oust incumbent Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.).
The super PAC ran an ad hitting Liz Cheney, whose sister Mary is gay and married, for prior supportive statements she had made about same-sex marriage. “In Wyoming, Cheney campaigns as a conservative,” the ad’s narrator says. “In Washington, she appears on MSNBC to campaign against a marriage amendment and support government benefits for gay couples.” Cheney’s response that she was actually opposed to gay marriage opened a family rift, with her sister and her sister's wife publicly denouncing the candidate and declaring they wouldn’t be spending Thanksgiving with her. Cheney dropped out of the race three months later.
Fieler has donated to a range of other super PACs as well, including $50,000 to a super PAC supporting then-Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s 2012 presidential campaign, which featured one of the most strident anti-gay ads [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V78ReJbjdxo (next below; with {over 15,000} comments)]
ever. Another $50,000 contribution went to the pro-Mitt Romney super PAC Restore Our Future. And he’s donated $460,000 to Women Speak Out, which was launched by the anti-abortion Susan B. Anthony List.
Fieler has also invested heavily in state contests. He has backed anti-gay marriage politicians like Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and onetime Virginia gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli, and he has donated more than $350,000 to state Republican Party groups.
In New York in 2011, he spent nearly $30,000 to defeat Republican state senators who had supported legislation legalizing gay marriage. Fieler accused them of having “folded under pressure from the gay lobby.” The Fieler-backed candidate defeated pro-gay marriage Republican Roy McDonald in one primary challenge that year.
In 2013, Fieler was the top donor to City Action Coalition, a religious-right super PAC active in New York City council elections. A report by Gay City News found that the majority of City Action Coalition’s spending targeted just three candidates [ http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2013/09/surprise_anti-a.php ] for defeat: Rosie Mendez, Ritchie Torres and Carlos Menchaca. All three candidates are gay, and all three won.
Beyond his electoral spending, Fieler has donated millions to anti-abortion and anti-gay marriage advocacy groups, mostly through his Chiaroscuro Foundation. The nonprofit group, named after a Renaissance painting style favoring high contrast between dark and light, has received more than $19 million from Fieler since 2010.
The Witherspoon Institute (where Fieler serves as a trustee) funded that study. Regnerus also received $250,000 for his Austin Institute from the Chiaroscuro Foundation in 2013, after the controversy over the report. The Chiaroscuro Foundation donated another $237,500 to the Witherspoon Institute that year.
As American attitudes on sexual orientation and gender identity have been shifting overall, Fieler has also moved on to fighting the acceptance of the transgender community and has called upon Republicans to campaign against transgender rights. This is more fertile ground, Fieler argued recently [ http://www.newsweek.com/what-republicans-dont-get-about-lgbt-movement-336876 ], because “unlike the gay lifestyle, the transgender lifestyle has not been, and perhaps never can be, normalized. Americans still believe that a man, even a man who thinks he is a woman, is still a man.”
Fieler has already put his money to work against transgender rights in California. After the governor signed legislation giving transgender students the right to use the restroom of the gender with which they identify, Fieler pumped $200,000 into a 2014 ballot initiative campaign to impose strict new rules on transgender bathroom use. The so-called Privacy for All Act would have overturned the transgender students’ rights law [ http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-transgender-bathrooms-20150420-story.html ] and allowed people who felt their privacy was violated by transgender use of a restroom to file suit against the operator of that restroom. It would even have allowed those who chose not to enter a restroom due to their own discomfort with possibly encountering a transgender individual to file suit against the restroom owner.
The initiative ultimately failed to gain enough signatures to qualify for the ballot, and Fieler was forced to pay a fine [ http://www.fppc.ca.gov/agendas/2015/4-15/07%20Fieler%20-%20Stip.pdf ] for failing to properly report his donations to the anti-transgender rights effort.
But the battle isn’t over. Privacy For All, the group that had been backed by Fieler’s largesse, is planning another ballot initiative campaign for 2016. This time, it will call on California voters to pass an initiative requiring government buildings to allow restroom access based only on biological sex [ http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article19064163.html ].
Still, Fieler believes that if religious conservatives want to roll back the advance of gay marriage and other LGBT rights, they’ll need to start in the restroom. As he put it in Newsweek [ http://www.newsweek.com/what-republicans-dont-get-about-lgbt-movement-336876 ] last month, “principles of the Republican Party that would result in a return to America’s founding vision should hold more appeal for the American people than principles that will result in men in women’s bathrooms.”
Rubio Warns of 'Clear, Present Danger' to Christianity
Bt David Brody CBN News Chief Political Correspondent Tuesday, May 26, 2015
WASHINGTON -- Nearly eight years have passed since a young Democrat named Barack Obama captured the White House. Now, another up-and-coming politician has a chance to take a similar path.
This time it's a Republican and his name is Marco Rubio.
The Florida senator sees Iowa as the first stop on his road to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. It's the ultimate American dream, and for this 43-year-old, the future is now.
"I've been told, 'Why don't you wait? You could be the candidate of the future.' And I say, 'Well that's good news because this election is in the future,'" Rubio told a hundred gatherers at a local house party in Iowa.
That philosophy of the future will be the centerpiece of his presidential run. His campaign theme is "A New American Century." While on the road in Iowa, Rubio told CBN News his overall plan.
"We have to have policies, tax policies, regulatory policies, debt policies, healthcare policies that make us globally competitive," he explained.
"We are engaged in a massive global competition for investment and for innovation and we are falling behind because our government has policies that are holding us back," he charged.
An American Success Story
Rubio supporters see him as American success story. Raised in a Spanish-speaking home to Cuban-born parents, he grew up in a working class family. After arriving in America, both parents worked hard.
Their rich family spirit made up for any financial shortcomings. It's a lesson that sticks with the young senator to this day.
"The family is the original cell of society," Rubio told CBN News. "It is the first and most important government. It is the first church. The family is the singular most important institution in society. It existed before government. It existed before laws."
A strong faith is also key. He grew up Roman Catholic, though at one point the family tried Mormonism. Rubio says that didn't feel right.
"As I got more theologically aware and more engaged and learning about Catholicism, I wanted to go back and so we did," Rubio recalled. "I did first communion on Christmas Day in 1984. That was probably in 7th or 8th grade."
As a young adult, Rubio admits he fell away from his faith so his wife started attending a Baptist church. They went there for a number of years, but eventually Rubio felt a tug back to his Catholic roots.
"In an ironic way, the more I learned about the written Word, the more I fell in love with the Roman Catholic teachings and we ended up going back to that church," he told CBN News.
"And so today we're in a place where we are Roman Catholics, fully aligned with the theology and the Magisterium, the teaching authority of the Church – but also with a tremendous appreciate for, and often interaction with our brothers and sisters in Christ who attend other denominations," he said.
Christianity's 'Real and Present Danger'
Today, his deep faith drives public policy positions on social issues such as traditional marriage.
"If you think about it, we are at the water's edge of the argument that mainstream Christian teaching is hate speech," Rubio told CBN News. "Because today we've reached the point in our society where if you do not support same-sex marriage you are labeled a homophobe and a hater."
"So what's the next step after that?" he asked.
"After they are done going after individuals, the next step is to argue that the teachings of mainstream Christianity, the catechism of the Catholic Church is hate speech and there's a real and present danger," he warned.
Rubio said he's ready to face danger, here and around the world.
"You don't want to be engaged in every conflict on the planet. We're not the world's policemen," he said. "But I question - what would happen in the alternative? If America doesn't lead, what happens? Well, what happens is chaos."
A Bumpy Road Ahead
His positions and early standing in the polls put Rubio in a good position even this early in the race. His backers like a General Election scenario of a young Marco Rubio vs. Hillary Clinton, who's been around awhile.
That moment crystalized the importance of family in Rubio's life.
"I believe that at home my most important job is to be a husband to my wife and a father to my children. If I can't do that right, I can't lead a nation," he told CBN News.
"One day I will no longer be in politics. One day I will no longer be a senator or a president or anything else. But I will always be a father and I will always be a husband," he said.
As for president, he'll leave that up to the American people and almighty God.
"Ultimately my view of it is you go out and do the very best you can and ultimately it's going to turn out the way voters and God decide," he said.
A woman holds a Bible. Photo by Robertus Pudyanto/Getty
Matthew 25:34-40 New International Version (NIV) 34 “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’ 37 “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39 When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’ 40 “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’ [ https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2025:34-40 ]
By Steve Benen 05/30/15 08:50 AM
First up from the God Machine this week is an unexpected scriptural debate over how to read one of the more widely known verses in the Christian Bible.
Matthew 25:40 includes a phrase that many have likely heard, regardless of their faith tradition: “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” The phrasing is generally seen as championing the needs of the poor – to turn your back on those struggling is to turn your back on God.
Denny Burk, professor of Biblical Studies at Boyce College in Louisville, Kentucky, most certainly isn’t the first to make the claim [ http://www.dennyburk.com/the-least-of-these-are-not-the-poor-but-the-christian-baker-photographer-and-florist/ ] that the “least of these” is actually a reference to Christians who face struggles in sharing their faith, but his stated view on the matter is the most recent proclamation to spark interpretive discussion.
“This text is not about poor people generally. It’s about Christians getting the door slammed in their face while sharing the gospel with a neighbor,” Burk wrote. “It’s about the baker/florist/photographer who is being mistreated for bearing faithful witness to Christ. It’s about disciples of Jesus having their heads cut off by Islamic radicals.”
I see. So, against the backdrop of the right-to-discriminate debate, conservatives want “the least of these” to refer to themselves.
“If you think about it, we are at the water’s edge of the argument that mainstream Christian teaching is hate speech,” Rubio, who is Catholic, said Tuesday during an interview with CBN News [ http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/politics/2015/May/Rubio-Warns-of-Clear-Present-Danger-to-Christianity/ (just above)]. “Because today we’ve reached the point in our society where if you do not support same-sex marriage you are labeled a homophobe and a hater.”
“So what’s the next step after that?” he continued. “After they are done going after individuals, the next step is to argue that the teachings of mainstream Christianity, the catechism of the Catholic Church is hate speech. And there’s a real and present danger.”
It’s hard to imagine that even Rubio believes what he’s saying here, but who knows. Massachusetts has been issuing marriage licenses to gay couples since 2004, and, last I checked, the state hasn’t moved to raze its Catholic churches or strip Boston College of its charter. Ditto for seriously every other state that has legalized equal marriage.
Rubio’s “real and present danger” is an absurd claim, but it’s a line like that plays well with audiences like the people watching him on a conservative Christian network. But beyond the tired slippery slope argument, Rubio’s framing about his opposition to equal marriage not being hateful or homophobic is worth looking at, too. Particularly because it’s an increasingly popular refrain among conservative holdouts on the issue.
Mike Huckabee, newly declared in the GOP primary, likes to beat the same drum. In 2014 at the Iowa Faith and Freedom convention, Huckabee invoked the same defense while explaining while he wanted to continue to deny gay and lesbian couples equal protection under the law.
“I’m not against anybody. I’m really not. I’m not a hater. I’m not homophobic. I honestly don’t care what people do personally in their individual lives,” he said at the time [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/09/mike-huckabee-homophobic_n_5117775.html ]. “When people say, ‘Why don’t you just kind of get on the right side of history?’ I said, ‘You’ve got to understand, this for me is not about the right side or the wrong side of history, this is the right side of the Bible, and unless God rewrites it, edits it, sends it down with his signature on it, it’s not my book to change.”
The man’s got a point! Never once in human history has the legal or cultural definition of marriage ever once changed, so why start now? (Just kidding. Men in the Bible have multiple wives. They have children with other women when their wives can’t conceive. There are forced marriages and rape. Not to mention the fact that our cultural and political understanding of marriage as an institution has never been stable [ http://www.stephaniecoontz.com/articles/article25.htm ].)
But if Rubio and Huckabee are truly concerned about being labeled haters, but also very much want to stick to their interpretation of traditional marriage, they should probably change tactics and — rather than oppose equal marriage — start campaigning to ban civil marriage for everyone.
Civil marriage is a contract. As it stands, gay and lesbian couples who live in states without equal marriage can still marry in churches that recognize their relationships. (Presbyterian and Lutheran churches can perform ceremonies for same-sex couples, for example.) Churches also have discretion when it comes to straight couples: Catholics who get divorced can’t remarry in some churches unless they get an annulment.
But those same Catholics can get married many times over at their local court house. Because there’s a difference between a religious ceremony and a civil ceremony. One means something in the eyes of your faith, the other means something in the eyes of the state. But when it comes to tax breaks or getting a green card for your partner, only the latter matters.
So if guys like Rubio and Huckabee want to hold fast to their version of marriage, they should campaign to end a system that confers more than 1,000 rights and legal entitlements contingent exclusively on a contract you sign because you promise to have sex with the same person until you die. Unless, of course, they really like a system that actively excludes consenting adults from entering into legally binding contracts. Then, you know, they’re just haters and homophobes.
Conservative presidential hopeful Marco Rubio’s religion of many colors
Marco Rubio, who wants to be President, has been a Catholic, a Mormon, a Catholic again, then a fundamentalist Christian church member and a Catholic Church member. Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio is a Christian and a Catholic. SEBASTIEN BOZON/AFP/Getty Images
Republican presidential candidate Sen. Marco Rubio, a man of several religions, is seen here at the Georgia Republican Convention in May. David Goldman/AP
Republican presidential candidate is a Christian and a Catholic, he says, though he sharply criticized Pope Francis for helping renew diplomatic relations between Cuba, where Rubio’s parents were born, and the U.S. FILIPPO MONTEFORTE/AFP/Getty Images
The religious trail of GOP presidential candidate Marco Rubio included a stop in the Mormon faith when his family lived in Nevada. Rick Bowmer/AP
This 1980s photo shows Marco Rubio, second from left in back row, with his younger sister Veronica, right, back row, and their neighbors in Las Vegas, where the Rubios converted to Mormonism. Bonnie Thiriot/AP
GOP Sen. Marco Rubio has lost and found religion many times [tab headline]
BY Deborah Hastings NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Saturday, June 6, 2015, 11:51 AM
Republican presidential wannabe Marco Rubio, a conservative, anti-gay marriage candidate from Florida, has lost and found his religion several times.
As a child in Miami, he was a Roman Catholic. When his family moved to Las Vegas, he became a Mormon. When the family moved back to Florida he became a Catholic again.
And then, in 2000, he began attending Christ Fellowship in Miami, a fundamentalist mega church that is rigidly opposed to homosexuality and asks employees to sign a declaration saying they've never been in a gay relationship.
Now he attends both Christ Fellowship and a Catholic church, he says.
All of which has sparked intense debate over just what, exactly, Rubio believes when it comes to God. His coat of many religious colors has led political pundits to declare the baby-faced aspirant is courting voters of all conservative faiths.
If he can't decide something as fundamental as religion, experts say his changing beliefs could lead to questions about how he would run the country.
"Some voters may be put off that he can't seem to make up his mind and it's certainly possible that it's a political strategy," said Aubrey Jewett, a political science professor who specializes in theological issues at the University of Central Florida.
Political experts were hard pressed to identify another presidential candidate who regularly worshipped in two different churches.
"It is rare to have a candidate with so many faiths, and who now has one foot squarely in a major religion and one foot squarely in another", he said.
The 44-year-old son of Cuban immigrants, who was elected to the Senate in 2010, says he attends Christ Fellowship on Saturday nights and goes to Mass on Sundays at St. Louis Catholic Church.
A Rubio spokesman declined an interview request from the Daily News, saying the candidate was too busy on the campaign trail, where the number of GOP hopefuls seems to grow by the day.
But recent polls have shown Rubio leading the pack, including former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who is the presumptive frontrunner and has the greatest name recognition in a Republican crowd that includes Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, former New York Gov. George Pataki, former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum and Bobby Jindal, the outgoing governor of Louisiana.
Rubio is not the only politician who's changed his religion. Jeb Bush converted to Catholicism, his wife's religion, 20 years ago.
Being Catholic no longer has the divisive taint that John F. Kennedy experienced ; nor does belonging to a non-mainstream religion such as Mormonism, political experts say.
Chad Pecknold, a theology professor at the Catholic University of America, says religious voters may disagree over doctrine, but when it comes to morality issues, Catholics, Christians and other believers are united when it comes to what they deem to be great sins.
"There is a new alliance between evangelicals and Catholics," he said. Especially on issues such as "abortion, euthanasia and the nature of marriage."
Despite a recent Pew study that found one out of five people have no religious affiliation, Republican candidates have long known that they can't win without the support, and the votes, of the religious right.
Though Rubio has appeared to flit from one religion the next, he has done so without antagonizing its adherents, Pecknold said. Yet, he could be faulted by voters who see his faith as "vacuous because it's constantly changing."
Rubio's "never turned his back on the Mormons, He's never turned his back on the Catholics, and he's never turned his back on the evangelicals, which are very important to the Republicans," Pecknold said.
Rubio addressed religion in his "Native Son" autobiography, saying he was baptized a Catholic in Florida, but when his family moved to Nevada when he was young boy, he embraced Mormon teachings, along with his mother and sister, taking comfort in the religion's sense of community.
He even chided his father, who was a bartender, about serving alcohol, a substance abhorred by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
By the time he was 13, the Rubios were back in Florida, the family returned to the Catholic Church.
In 2000, Rubio began attending the Miami megachurch with his wife. And for four years, he worshipped nowhere else, according to his book. A phone message left with the church by The News was not returned.
But then the politician went back to Catholicism, saying he missed the Eucharist, the rite of taking communion. And he's been going to both churches ever since.
"Some unifying principles bind all Christians: that God became a man and died for our sins, and that without that sacrifice, all of us would be doomed," he wrote in his book.
He strongly opposes gay marriage. He says Christianity is endangered by evil in the world. He believes Jesus Christ was, and is, the son of God, and that his crucifixion guarantees Rubio a place in heaven.
What he can't seem to pinpoint is a specific religion.
"He's got a complicated belief system," said Joe Carter, senior editor for the Acton Institute, a Michigan-based religious think tank. And without adhering to a single religion, Rubio may play well to millennials who haven't committed to a church, as well as the so-called spiritual "seekers," who still haven't found what they're looking for.
Rubio has "been very open about it. He could have easily just switched to one church," Carter said. "Whether you're a Christian or a Mormon or a Baptist, you believe that your rights come from God, not from the state."
The race for the 2016 presidency is filling up fast, especially on the Republican side. Now, it's ex-senator Rick Santorum's turn. So who is Rick Santorum?
Everybody hates Rick Santorum: How the former GOP heavyweight became a political irrelevancy http://www.salon.com/2015/04/09/everbody_hates_rick_santorum_how_the_former_gop_heavyweight_became_a_political_irrelevancy/ "As Americans brace themselves for Rand Paul's just-announced presidential campaign, it is appropriate to take a quick look at the increasing political irrelevancy of another likely candidate, one who less than four years ago nearly wrested the Republican nomination from Mitt Romney."
The fact this is taken from the Carnegie Hall recording produced several months after Hurricane Katrina and predates this election by half a decade proves, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Lewis Black is indeed a Jewish prophet of democracy akin to Abby Hoffman.
"It's not homophobic. It's a legal argument, and it's a correct legal argument. In fact, that's exactly what's happening. We went from Lawrence v. Texas to now a constitutional right to same-sex marriage and they're going into a constitutional right to polyamorous relationships. This is the slippery slope that we're heading down, and I can't buy it."
"In an appearance before a gathering of OK2A, an Oklahoma Second Amendment advocacy group, Rafael Cruz, father of freshman Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) said that atheism leads to sexual abuse of children.
In his talk, which took place earlier this month, the elder Cruz railed against atheism and secular humanism, which he said are two of the main ills facing our society...".* The Young Turks host Cenk Uygur breaks it down.
Download audio and video of the full two hour show on-demand + the members-only post game show by becoming a member at http://www.tytnetwork.com/member-options/ . Your membership supports the day to day operations and is vital for our continued success and growth.
Ted Cruz's dad, Rafael Cruz, in an effort to "reach out" to African-Americans for Republicans, says that "the average black does not understand” the minimum wage...
This clip from the Majority Report, live M-F at 12 noon EST and via daily podcast at http://Majority.FM
Rick Santorum made some radical remarks regarding Satan (aka, The Devil) and his attack on America, universities and Protestants. The 2012 Republican Presidential candidate and his radical Christian beliefs are discussed by The Young Turks host Cenk Uygur.
Sh*t Homophobic People Say: no spoofing necessary, 100% real commentary by antigay public figures.
Lambda Legal fights for the rights of LGBT people and people with HIV. Follow us on Twitter @lambdalegal and visit http://www.lambdalegal.org to learn more!
Santorum: "Raped Women Should Accept The Gift of A Child"
Published on Mar 16, 2012 by The Young Turks
Fox & Friends co-host Gretchen Carlson went on the O'Reilly Factor and said that Rick Santorum never said that if your raped you should have the baby, Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian show Rick Santorum's actual statement.
Clip from the Monday, August 5th 2013 edition of The Kyle Kulinski Show, which airs live on Blog Talk Radio and Secular Talk Radio monday - friday 5-7pm Eastern.
Rick Santorum Busted On Arguments Against Gays In The Military As Same Used Against Blacks
Uploaded on Oct 9, 2011 by SuchIsLifeVideos
Santorum: "It's not the same. And I know people try to make it the same, but it is not. It is a behavioral issue, as opposed to a color of the skin issue, and that makes all the difference when it comes to serving in the military,"
This episode featured the following amazing children. Lucas, age 5 Maxim, age 7 Samirah, age 7 Dash, age 9 Krischelle, age 9 Jayka, age10 Elle, age 11 Lydon, age 11 Derek, age 12 Dylan, age 12 Megan & Shannon, age 13 Troy, age 13
KIDS REACT #90 - Gay Marriage Kids React to Gay Marriage Kids React to Marriage Equality Kids React to Same Sex Marriage
Is porn (both gay and straight) more popular in the 'Bible Belt' red states of America (Utah, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, Alaska, North Dakota, and West Virginia)? Ana Kasparian and Cenk Uygur break it down on The Young Turks, with a mention of 2012 Republican Presidential candidate Rick Santorum's war on pornography.
Republican Rick Santorum has declared war on pornography on his website. Cenk Ugyur and Ana Kasparian discuss Santorum's post about the evils of pornography.
Santorum Vs Separation Of Church And State, JFK Speech
Uploaded on Feb 27, 2012 by The Young Turks
2012 Republican Presidential candidate Rick Santorum said a speech from former president John F. Kennedy involving separation of church and state made him want to throw up. Should religion and politics mix? Ana Kasparian, former prosecutor Steve Oh, and Jayar Jackson break it down on The Young Turks.
Liberals & Non-Christians: 'Get Out' of America! (Santorum Pastor Intro)
Published on Mar 20, 2012 by The Young Turks
Via RightWingWatch.org: "Greenwell Springs Baptist Church pastor Dennis Terry introduced presidential candidate Rick Santorum and Family Research Council president Tony Perkins tonight in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, with a rousing speech railing against liberals and non-Christians and condemning abortion rights, "sexual perversion," same-sex marriage and secular government. Terry said that America "was founded as a Christian nation" and those that disagree with him should "get out! We don't worship Buddha, we don't worship Mohammad, we don't worship Allah!" Terry, who has a long history of attacks against the gay community, went on to criticize marriage equality for gays and lesbians, and said that the economy can only recover when we "put God back" in government...".* The Young Turks host Cenk Uygur breaks it down.
It was just yesterday that the American Family Association's Bryan Fischer was calling for people with HIV to be quarantined in the name of protecting the public health. So naturally, Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum appeared on Fischer's radio program today to share his excitement at having partnered with the AFA on his most recent film "One Generation Away."
Clip from the Wednesday, September 10th 2014 edition of The Kyle Kulinski Show, which airs live on Blog Talk Radio and Secular Talk Radio monday - friday 4-6pm Eastern.
Former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) issued a passionate call for Bibles in public schools on Saturday during an appearance at a convention of social conservatives in Orlando, Florida.
"The reason Bibles are no longer in the public schools is because we let them take them out,” Santorum said to amens and applause at The Awakening conference, hosted by the right-wing Liberty Counsel...
Clip from the Monday, March 16th 2015 edition of The Kyle Kulinski Show, which airs live on Blog Talk Radio and Secular Talk Radio monday - friday 4-6pm Eastern.
“The perception that the media would like to give of Pope Francis and the reality are two different things…I’m a huge fan of his, and his focus on making sure that we have a healthier society…I support completely the Pope’s call for us to do more to create opportunities for people to be able to rise in society and care for the poor. That’s our obligation as a society.” […]
“I’ve said this to Catholic bishops many times — when they get involved with agriculture policy or things like that that are really outside the scope of what the Church’s main message is, that we’re better off sticking to things that are really the core teachings of the Church as opposed to getting involved with every other kind of issue that happens to be popular at the time.” […]
“The Church has gotten it wrong a few times on science, and I think we’re probably better off leaving science to the scientists and focus on what we’re really good on, which is theology and morality. When we get involved with political and controversial scientific theories, then I think the church is probably not as forceful and credible.”
Hahaha, yes, the Church HAS gotten it wrong on science, many times before! Like that thing they believe about how contraception causes abortion [ https://www.ewtn.com/library/MARRIAGE/CCLBC.TXT ], and that other thing where they condemned Galileo for saying the Earth revolves around the sun, for instance. But the difference this time, Rick Santorum, is that human-caused climate change is not a “political and controversial scientific theory,” but rather a thing that 97 percent of climate scientists around the WHOLE WORLD agree is true. The idiots here are the conservative religious people, like Santorum, who believe that real science is a liberal conspiracy.
Rick Santorum’s ugly Pope Francis bashing: Why the Catholic in the GOP field keeps maligning other Catholics
Pope Francis, Rick Santorum (Credit: Reuters/Max Rossi/AP/Nati Harnik/Photo montage by Salon)
First he attacked JFK. Now Pope Francis. Is that the way to win in a party controlled by evangelical Protestants?
Joan Walsh Wednesday, Jun 3, 2015 08:43 AM CDT
In 2012, long-ago Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum got attention as the only Catholic in the GOP presidential primary race. It’s sadly noteworthy: our country has had only one Catholic president in its history (Joe Biden is our first Catholic vice president). Rather than looking out for Catholics, though, Santorum made a big splash when he attacked that first Catholic president, John F. Kennedy, and lied about Kennedy’s famous speech in defense of religious freedom [ http://www.salon.com/2012/02/26/santorums_jfk_story_makes_me_want_to_throw_up/ ].
The speech “makes me throw up and it should make every American,” Santorum told ABC in February 2012. “Now we’re going to turn around and say we’re going to impose our values from the government on people of faith, which of course is the next logical step when people of faith, at least according to John Kennedy, have no role in the public square.”
Of course Kennedy said no such thing. In a historic speech tailored to address anti-Catholic prejudice head on, he insisted the “public square” should be safe territory for people of all religions, including Catholics like him, and Rick Santorum. Santorum himself should have been shamed from the public square for telling such clumsy and ugly lies about our 35th president. But Republicans can’t be shamed.
And it’s hilarious. Except it’s also sad. Pope Francis plans a papal encyclical on the dangers of environmental degradation, including climate change. Santorum says condescendingly the Pope should stick to “theology and morality.”
At more length, Santorum said Pope Francis would be better off “leaving science to the scientists and focus on what we’re really good on, which is theology and morality. When we get involved with political and controversial scientific theories, then I think the church is probably not as forceful and credible.”
Interestingly, virtually every credible scientist validates the view of Pope Francis: that climate change is real, and it’s caused by humans. So science is on the side of the pope. It’s funny Santorum should stand up for science anyway, since he seems not to be a big fan of higher education, having already inveighed against the notion that Americans should have the chance to go to college if they so choose. “What a bunch of snobs,” he said in 2012, maligning President Obama.
The larger issue is that the pope is becoming a huge problem for Catholic Republicans. They want to obey the pope as their faith requires, but they don’t like his pronouncements on pretty much anything: not his tolerance for LGBT Catholics, or his thoughts on climate change, or his insistence that prosperity is a fiction if it doesn’t include the poor.
In 2013 it was Catholic Republican Paul Ryan who dissed the pope [ http://www.salon.com/2013/12/27/paul_ryan_lectures_the_pope/ ] for his pronouncements on income inequality and global poverty, suggesting he doesn’t understand capitalism. “The guy is from Argentina, they haven’t had real capitalism in Argentina,” Ryan said (yeah, he called the pope “the guy”). “They have crony capitalism in Argentina. They don’t have a true free enterprise system.” Poor dumb pope.
Politico recently explored the GOP’s problems with the pope against the backdrop of the 2016 election [ http://www.politico.com/story/2015/05/popes-pronouncements-making-trouble-for-gop-catholics-118234.html ]. “In northwest Iowa, we are discussing this a great deal, and sometimes it’s hard for us to reconcile the pronouncements we read from the Holy Father with our conservative principles,” Sam Clovis, a Catholic GOP political activist told Politico last month.
In fact, Clovis suggested some Republican Catholics’ disdain for the pope could hurt Catholic-come-lately Jeb Bush. “It’s going to cause a lot of problems for Jeb Bush, because Republicans are simply not going to take him seriously,” he said.
Clovis didn’t mention Santorum, oddly, even though his 2016 calling card is having won the Iowa caucus (belatedly, after a recount).
Maybe Santorum thinks he’s got to bash the Pope to do well with Iowa’s large Protestant evangelical community. Bash JFK? Check. Bash Pope Francis? Check. Proceed to a higher tier of candidates? Don’t check just yet.
Of course Santorum, covering all of his political bases, also insists he’s a “huge fan” of the Pope. “He’s someone who is as committed to the nuclear family as I am,” the fourth-tier 2016 wannabe said. But he isn’t having the pope’s campaign against environmental degradation.
Nowadays Republicans are “cafeteria Catholics,” under the leadership of the compassionate, curious Pope Francis. They loved the authoritarian Pope Benedict. Of course, liberals aren’t suggesting they be excommunicated or muzzled, the way Catholic conservatives have crusaded against Catholic liberals on issues of women’s rights. Santorum’s condescending attack on Pope Francis won’t hurt the pope. But it shows Santorum to be an irrelevant afterthought in a circus-tent race where Donald Trump has more support [ http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/2016_republican_presidential_nomination-3823.html ].
Rick Santorum Tries To Explain Why He Can Weigh In On Climate Change But Pope Shouldn't
Alex Wong via Getty Images
By Amanda Terkel Posted: 06/07/2015 10:37 am EDT Updated: 06/07/2015 [c.] 2:37 pm EDT
WASHINGTON -- Former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) attempted to argue Sunday that it's more appropriate for him to be weighing in on climate change than it is for Pope Francis, who is not only a religious leader but also a chemist.
In an interview on "Fox News Sunday," Santorum attempted to defend his remarks. Host Chris Wallace pointed out that Santorum talks plenty about climate change, even though he doesn't even have a background in science, like the pope does.
"I guess the question would be, if he shouldn't talk about it, should you?" Wallace asked.
Santorum argued that politicians "have to make decision with respect to our public policy that affect American workers." He added that the pope "can talk about whatever he wants," but it might not be the best issue for him to "use his moral authority for."
"He would say he's protecting the earth," Wallace replied.
"I would say that that's important thing to do, but I think there are more pressing problems confronting the earth than climate change," Santorum said, adding that he is "someone who's trying to go out there and make sure we have a revitalization in manufacturing and energy production, things to create jobs and opportunities."
The pope has already been outspoken on the need to address climate change, but his encyclical is expected to elevate the issue far further around the world. According to The New York Times, the encyclical's release "will be accompanied by a 12-week campaign [ http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/28/world/europe/pope-francis-steps-up-campaign-on-climate-change-to-conservatives-alarm.html ], now being prepared with the participation of some Catholic bishops, to raise the issue of climate change and environmental stewardship in sermons, homilies, news media interviews and letters to newspaper editors."
The tree of life might seem like a stable design, appropriate for indelible ink. Plenty of people think so. An Internet search for “phylogenetic tattoos” turns up some showy skin art.
But the branches are shifting. Since a radial diagram based on 1990s genetics inspired a rush for tree-of-life tattoos, technical diagrams of life’s ancestral connections have been redrawn. And the simplified version of the tree of life memorized by schoolchildren for decades lags far behind what researchers depict today.
When Patrick Keeling at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver unveils a working scientist’s current diagram for his students, most have never heard the names of the major branches. “Kind of fun,” Keeling says.
In the new vision — based on increasingly sophisticated genetic analyses — people and other animals are closer cousins to single-celled choanoflagellates than to other multicellular organisms. Giant kelp that grow as wavering undersea forests off the California coast are closer relatives to single-celled plankton called diatoms than to multicelled red seaweeds or plants.
The old tree isn’t exactly wrong. The kingdoms that used to crown its top — plants, fungi and animals — still exist. But they’ve moved. In the new diagram, the tree’s former crowning glories shrink to mere side branches, three among hundreds, crowded by the vast diversity of complex single cells.
Biologists analyzing this treetop rarely use the word kingdom anymore. They talk of five or maybe seven bigger branches called supergroups. And the story of demoting kingdoms and introducing supergroups is far from over. A 2014 review noted [ http://cshperspectives.cshlp.org/content/6/5/a016147 ] five proposals for designating the most ancient stretch of supergroup branches, the bit that goes lowest on the new tree. A paper appearing [ http://www.pnas.org/content/112/7/E693.abstract ] in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in February described a new method for resolving this debate, and discussions continue.
Even as a work in progress, the new groupings offer benefits, such as help in searching for new medicines and insight into evolutionary puzzles such as the supposed wastefulness of sex. As the tree continues to morph, it will no doubt inspire new tattoos.
A new view of evolutionary branchings among organisms with cell nuclei is emerging. It spreads far beyond the old treetop kingdoms. Multicelled organisms mingle with singles. Some organisms (orphans, above) have not yet been placed in one of the seven or so supergroups. Clockwise from mushroom at bottom: Amanita muscaria, giant panda, Desmarella, Euglena, Giardia, Trichomonas, star sand foram, Allogromia foram, Globigerina foram, Colpidium ciliates, Stentor, dinoflagellate, Coscinodiscus, Stephanodiscus, giant kelp, Gephyrocapsa, Ceratolithus, Phaeocystis, Magnolia, Galaxaura red seaweed, Scenedesmus green algae, Entamoeba, Tubulifera slime mold, Chaos amoeba. Source: A. Worden et al/Science 2015
Over time, drawings of the tree of life have changed to keep up with evolving ideas about how to categorize life.
In 1735, Swedish physician and botanist Carl Linnaeus published the first edition of his classification system for nature, incorporating three kingdoms: plants, animals and stones. (Stones never caught on.) In that early scaffolding, evolutionary relationships between organisms didn’t matter. Linnaeus was just striving “to reveal God’s creation to mankind in an orderly manner,” says archivist Gina Douglas of the Linnean Society of London. Charles Darwin wouldn’t nervously publish On the Origin of Species for another 124 years.
By 1969, ecologist Robert Whittaker openly waved aside [ http://www.sciencemag.org/content/163/3863/150.short ] some evolutionary distinctions when describing his ideas for kingdoms, in Science (see illustration below). His approach to the top of the tree (home to eukaryotes, which wrap their DNA in membrane-bound cell nuclei) would rule biology classrooms for decades. Yet his system is based only partly on evolutionary relationships.
Classroom tree The outline of five kingdoms of life drawn from an influential 1969 Science paper was based largely on nutritional habits (bottom right) instead of pure evolutionary relationships. This system glorified multicellular kingdoms over single-celled Protista and Monera. J. Hirschfeld; Source: R. Whittaker/Science 1969
Whittaker crowned his tree of life with three kingdoms of primarily multicellular eukaryotes sorted in large part by nutritional style: plants (capturing light energy), fungi (absorbing nutrients by contact) and animals (ingesting their food). He recognized a fourth kingdom of eukaryotes: the Protista. It was a hodgepodge of single-celled organisms, differing in forms and lifestyles but lumped together largely for convenience. He said as much, acknowledging that none of the classification systems he discussed “can be wholly satisfactory.”
Today many scientists hope for biological categories that consist of a single ancestral lineage and all its evolutionary descendants. A tree of life built this way “actually changes how you interpret a lot of stuff,” Keeling says. Much of biology rests on information gleaned from one organism and hypothesized to be true for its close kin. Identifying relatives is important. “If you’ve got the tree wrong, then you could be wrong about a lot of things,” he says.
The challenge of getting that tree right looms sequoia-high, since so much of the diversity of life lies in complex microbes still unknown to science. Out of about 150,000 kinds of marine plankton detected during the Tara oceans expeditions, as reported [ http://www.sciencemag.org/content/348/6237/1261605.abstract ] May 22 in Science, researchers could genetically identify about a third only as some eukaryote. They couldn’t place them in any known group.
Great idea, but
The early attempts to see what genetics could say about the tree of life seemed to work beautifully. But “science doesn’t go in a linear path,” says Andrew Roger of Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada, who entered the field during the tumultuous 1990s.
Those first genetics-based trees of life for eukaryotes were built by comparing variations in the gene for small subunit ribosomal RNA across species. The result looked believable, with plants, animals and fungi on big branches at the top. Lower down, in the zone for more ancient branches, sprouted some oddball parasites such as Giardia (the bane of hikers who drink untreated water), sexually transmitted Trichomonas and tiny microsporidia, which attack many animals.
Engulfing another organism and turning it into an organelle has been important in the history of complex life. Even engulfers get engulfed themselves sometimes. J. Hirshfeld; Source: A. Worden et al/Science 2015
Researchers had begun to wonder if these bizarre parasites and their relatives could be living relicts of an early, pivotal time in eukaryote history. The organisms had no obvious mitochondria, the organelles that serve as the cell’s power stations. Perhaps the parasites had never had any mitochondria, Thomas Cavalier-Smith of the University of Oxford had suggested in 1983. This notion played off the idea championed by maverick biologist Lynn Margulis at Boston University in 1970 in The Origin of Eukaryotic Cells. She suggested that mitochondria came from a free-living microbe that some ancestor of eukaryotes had swallowed and put to work. Perhaps the parasites were relicts from before the Big Swallow.
To use these select parasites as glimpses of life before mitochondria “would be really, really interesting,” says Dalhousie biologist Alastair Simpson. “It was a lovely hypothesis. But then it all went to hell.”
One problem came when researchers expanded their analyses to look at more than one gene. Unexpectedly, says Roger, “we had different genes saying different things.”
The potential unraveling of the parasites-as-relicts hypothesis had a special zing for Roger. He was in the middle of a Ph.D. project based on the assumption that the parasites came from premitochondrial times. “It was one of those cases when you’re trying to work on the carpet that’s being pulled out from under you,” he says. “I thought it was pretty exciting.”
Yes, he said “exciting.” That view of eukaryote evolution based on analysis of a single gene “was in textbooks, and it was what many people had made their careers on,” he says. “It seemed like if it was going to fail, it was going to be something big.” He and his lab mates were going to be in on it.
Roger and his colleagues struck a blow to the old hypothesis by looking for genetic traces of bygone mitochondria lingering in the cell nucleus of select parasites. Even though mitochondria need some 700 to 1,000 genes to operate, only about 10 to 100 of them are inside the organelle itself. The rest reside in the cell nucleus and ship proteins to the mitochondria. The researchers detected some left-behind nuclear genes in supposed ancients, such as Giardia, Trichomonas and some microsporidia.
Various research groups eventually found the tiny, overlooked remnants of mitochondria themselves inside the fake relicts. The parasites looked very ancient only because their mitochondria had shriveled into hard-to-recognize bits.
Microsporidia, it turned out, were nowhere near being relicts. Examining a handful of genes, Keeling and other researchers demonstrated that the single-gene tree had put microsporidia in the wrong kingdom.
Microsporidia are “really nasty parasites, but fascinating,” Keeling says. Their tough spores enclose a coiled tube. To infect a victim, they pump inward such a rush of water that the pressure blows the top off the parasite and the tube shoots out like a harpoon. As much as 100 times longer than the spore, the tube-harpoon punches into its prey. The parasite cell nucleus and other internal parts are injected through the tube into the victim. Although they have this elaborate equipment for infection, microsporidia are simple cells with genomes that are “tiny, tiny, tiny,” Keeling says. Another misleading hint that they were ancient, simple creatures.
STRUCTURAL BEAUTY Ernst Haeckel’s remarkable drawings of microscopic organisms (radiolarians shown) introduced generations to the beauty of complex, single-celled life. Even in the 19th century, he protested biologists’ neglect of microbial marvels. Ernst haeckel/Kunstformen der Natur 1904
Keeling and his colleagues in the 1990s found evidence that the microharpooners didn’t belong at the bottom of the tree. They were fungi, a more recent and much more metabolically versatile branch of organisms. Before this revelation of misclassification, researchers accepted the simplicity of microsporidial cells by assuming that complicated traits hadn’t evolved in supposedly ancient, simple cells. After recognizing microsporidia as members of the fungal kingdom with all its elaborate metabolic tricks and lifestyles, biologists could see that microsporidia had been more complex at one time, but eventually lost fancy traits. “You have the exact opposite view of how they got to be the way they are, based on where they go on the tree,” Keeling says. “The tree matters.”
As evidence built that the supposed ancient parasites and their relatives weren’t so ancient, “smart people worked out that the molecular trees were just wrong,” Simpson says. The problem, now widely recognized, was the peril of “long-branch attraction.”
Lineages that change a lot end up as long-branch lines in an evolutionary tree. Younger branches that change fast can by chance develop similarities to genuinely old branches. In simple analyses, they end up closer than they should be at the base of the tree, as if they’ve “attracted” each other.
Supergroups
All the challenges to the first genetic tree of life “left us with a mess,” Keeling says. It became clear that the history of all eukaryotes cannot be reconstructed in any sensible tree based on one gene. “We ripped it all apart and put it back together. And it came together very differently.”
Instead of a crown of multicellular groups rising over relicts on long branches, the organisms “coalesced in a small number of very large groups,” he says.
The new arrangement, summarized [ http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1550-7408.2012.00644.x/abstract ] in 2012 by Sina Adl of the University of Saskatchewan and colleagues in the Journal of Eukaryotic Microbiology, makes a fabulous mix of convergence and divergence. Animals are close relatives of fungi. Both are opisthokonts, along with some one-celled cousins. A Phytophthora potato pathogen, once famous as the “fungus” that caused famine in Ireland in the 1840s, is not a fungus at all. It belongs in the same supergroup as the giant kelp. Red and green seaweeds join plants in a distinct group called the archaeplastids.
These are big, deep-history groups, but don’t call them kingdoms. “Alastair is allergic to kingdoms,” Roger says of Simpson. The two collaborated on a 2002 paper enumerating supergroups instead.
Simpson wanted a term no one would treat as a formal rank. “?‘Kingdom’ has such gravitas,” he says, not admiringly. Biologists assign kingdom rank based largely on subjective impressions, so he sees little information conveyed just by knowing something is a kingdom instead of some other rank in a hierarchy. To avoid the whole nonsense, he uses supergroup in a lighthearted nod to bands such as the Traveling Wilburys, which united (briefly) Bob Dylan, George Harrison and three other independently famous musicians.
Like Dylan and the others, each biological supergroup has its own illustrious story. The proposed one that Simpson found most surprising united all modern eukaryote groups that have algae with chlorophyll c. That’s a huge crowd with no other obvious trait in common. Although chlorophyll c organisms seem so different at first sight, Cavalier-Smith suggested that they all descended from one eukaryote that swallowed another, which became its photosynthesizing organelle. “It seemed a very bold hypothesis,” Simpson says.
Sequential swallowings are a big part of eukaryote history. Engulfers were themselves engulfed and in turn engulfed yet again. “Like matryoshka dolls,” Keeling says.
Some genetic evidence now links three big groups to a single ancestral engulfment of chlorophyll c, Simpson says. Stramenopiles, with giant kelp and potato pathogens, now join alveolates and rhizaria (even though they have no chlorophyll c) as what’s often abbreviated as SAR. Other chlorophyll c carriers are still under study, so the bold hypothesis might someday turn out to be right. “The really cool thing is, we still don’t know the answer,” Simpson says.
This and other eukaryotic mysteries may resolve more easily as geneticists refine a technique for deciphering DNA from one individual cell. Nature Methods called it “method of the year [ http://www.nature.com/nmeth/journal/v11/n1/full/nmeth.2801.html ]” for 2013.
The technique’s possibilities intrigue researchers because single-celled species can be difficult or impossible to grow in the lab. Roger lovingly describes radiolarians, some of which build skeletons of strontium sulfate while others manage to eat multicelled animals. “Just beautiful organisms,” he says, but “they’re a real pain actually to work on.” Single-cell DNA sequencing has helped in the study of bacteria, and papers here and there report results for eukaryotes. The technique revealed an interplay of chemistry between a termite-gut dweller and its own live-in spirochete bacteria in work published [ http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/05/14/1423979112.abstract ] May 15 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Practicalities and beyond
Reconstructing all this evolutionary history can have practical implications. Early in Keeling’s career, he investigated the peculiar discovery that malaria parasites have remnants of organelles that once carried chlorophyll. “Why would malaria have a chloroplast? They live in the dark,” Keeling says. The researcher, Iain Wilson, who originally proposed the notion was dismissed for a long time as ridiculously wrong. But evidence grew, and today scientists agree that a certain small bit in the parasite left over from a photosynthetic past still has some function in the dark. That finding helps explain the effectiveness of some formerly mysterious treatments for malaria: The drugs attack chloroplasts.
A realistic tree of life can also change the way researchers look at more theoretical questions, such as how in the world such a supposedly wasteful and irrational process as sex evolved. Only one of two partners can bear young, halving productivity from the start. Or so goes a long-running thread of research and debate (SN: 2/14/09, p. 16 [ https://www.sciencenews.org/article/most-private-evolution-0 ]).
Yet that furor is so multicellular. Simpson and Roger along with philosopher Maureen O’Malley of the University of Sydney in Biology & Philosophy in 2013 pointed out [ http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10539-012-9354-y ] that the basics of sex must have evolved long before birds, bees or anything else multicellular.
In single-celled organisms, reproduction does not require sex, nor does sex always produce offspring. Two ciliate cells can meet, mingle genes and remain only two cells. The eukaryote tree abounds with single-celled organisms practicing the basics that combine to make multicellular reproduction possible. The alleged wastefulness of sex is really a question of why the peculiar form of sex tied to multicellular reproduction persists in a few outliers.
Useful as a good tree of life can be, Keeling objects to the idea that eukaryotes should be appreciated just for their utility. People enjoy animals and plants for their own sake. “A giraffe won’t save your life, but people like giraffes,” he says. To him, one-celled eukaryotes are Serengeti charismatic, just smaller. Some species have a structure — similar to camera-like animal eyes — with a cornea-like outer covering derived from mitochondria and a light-sensitive inner cup from an engulfed red-algal organelle, Keeling and colleagues reported [ http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v523/n7559/full/nature14593.html ] July 9 in Nature. Several large dinoflagellate species hunt despite living inside a rigid shell. They push a stomachlike structure out a hole in the shell and digest prey larger than they are. Other single cells grow delicate, multipointed outer casings that eventually wash ashore, covering beaches with millions of miniature stars.
Knowing that the living world has so much invisible variety can change a person’s perspective, says Fabien Burki, who works with Keeling at the University of British Columbia. The supergroup tree offers the little back-of-the-neck shiver-thrill of realizing that every tomato patch, termite gut or beach bucket of seawater holds life much vaster and stranger than imagined. Says Burki: “It’s like the astronomers discovering there are planets around other stars.”
*
An opisthokont’s guide to supergroups
Kingdoms are so 20th century when it comes to the main evolutionary branches of the tree of life. Decades of increasingly clever genetic analyses reveal that the first organisms to wrap their DNA inside a cell nucleus have diverged into seven or so major branches of eukaryotes that researchers somewhat whimsically call supergroups.
Opisthokonts
You are here. Two whole kingdoms from the old tree, animals and fungi, share the same big lineage. Some single-celled organisms, such as the Ichthyosporea parasite, belong here too. They’re more closely related to the multicellular world of people, pandas and portobello mushrooms than to most other one-celled creatures.
Excavates
Several infamous pathogens live here, such as Giardia, a bane to hikers and travelers who drink untreated water. This supergroup was proposed as the dust cleared from the collapse of the late 20th century version of the treetop. The case for uniting the excavates rests on new genetic evidence plus details of cell structure?—?for example, the parts that form what’s called a feeding groove.
Amoebozoa
One of the most familiar genera of microbes, Amoeba, belong here. It evolved in a lineage with other soft shapeshifters, including the social amoebas, or slime molds. The form also arose independently elsewhere in the treetop.
SAR (Stramenopiles, Alveolates and Rhizaria)
This supergroup of supergroups is often nicknamed SAR for its components. Its members are so diverse that biologists built the case for uniting them mostly on genetics.
Archaeplastids
The whole plant kingdom fits here, along with red and green algae, but not kelps. The power to photosynthesize exists in a wide variety of branches in the treetop of life.
Source: F. Burki/Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Biology 2014
F. Burki. The eukaryotic tree of life from a global phylogenomic perspective [ http://cshperspectives.cshlp.org/content/6/5/a016147.full.pdf ]. Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Biology. Vol. 6, May 1, 2014, a016147. doi: 10.1101/cshperspect.a016147
R. Derelle et al. Bacterial proteins pinpoint a single eukaryotic root [ http://www.pnas.org/content/112/7/E693.abstract ]. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Vol. 112, February 17, 2015, p. E693. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1420657112
M.A. O’Malley, A.G.B. Simpson and A.J. Roger. The other eukaryotes in light of evolutionary protistology [ http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10539-012-9354-y ]. Biology & Philosophy. Vol. 28, March 2013, p. 299. doi: 10.1007/s10539-012-9354-y
A.Z. Worden et al. Rethinking the marine carbon cycle: Factoring in the multifarious lifestyles of microbes [ http://www.sciencemag.org/content/347/6223/1257594.short ]. Science. Vol. 347, February 13, 2015, p. 735. doi: 10.1126/science.1257594
This story appears in the August 8, 2015, issue with the headline "Strange Relations: Schoolroom kingdoms are taking a backseat to life’s supergroups."
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