Republicans Confront Lady Problems in Congress Republicans have struggled to approach the growing number of female Democratic representatives, even though they hold the House majority. GOP groups are scrambling to expand outreach to women, as party operatives fear gender gap could grow. August 6, 2013 http://www.nationaljournal.com/politics/republicans-confront-lady-problems-in-congress-20130806 [with comments]
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Rick Perry Vetoed Texas Equal Pay Bill Under Pressure From Macy's, Kroger's 08/06/2013 Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) vetoed a bill this summer to help prevent wage discrimination after receiving letters against the measure from retailers like Macy's and Kroger Food Stores, according to documents newly obtained by the Houston Chronicle. The bill would have brought Texas state law in line with the federal Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/lilly-ledbetter-fair-pay-act ] ... [...] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/06/rick-perry-macys_n_3714546.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
Two years ago, Lang accidentally fired his gun inside a Madison motel room located near a Planned Parenthood clinic. Police were called to the scene, and he was arrested after telling them that he was going "to lay out abortionists because they are killing babies [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/26/madison-abortion-clinic-mass-murder_n_867822.html ]."
In May, he was convicted of attempted first-degree intentional homicide.
McNamara said that Lang did not consider the lives of those at the Planned Parenthood clinic when he planned to kill a doctor and told the 65-year-old defendant, "That lack of consideration is what makes you dangerous."
The judge also noted that Lang had not expressed remorse despite many opportunities, leaving the impression that he would attempt the plot again if he were freed. During his testimony, Lang had said he wished he had a machine gun "to mow down" the clinic doctors.
In addition to 10 years in prison, Lang was also sentenced to 10 years of supervision and will not be allowed within a mile of any abortion or reproductive health clinic during that period. The length of the prison sentence fell between Assistant District Attorney Robert Kaiser's request for a 20-year sentence and defense attorney Eric Schulenburg's suggestion of three years.
Lang had faced federal charges, which were later dropped, for use of a firearm to intimidate or interfere with those using a program that receives federal funds and for use of a firearm during a violent crime. Federal prosecutors said they could reinstate the charges if the state's prosecution proved insufficient. U.S. Attorney John Vaudreuil for the Western District of Wisconsin told the Wisconsin State Journal [id.] that it was too soon to know whether the federal charges would be reinstated.
Rick Scott Plans To Resume Voter Purge Effort In Florida [ http://www.berfrois.com/2012/02/thank-you-governor-scott/ ] 08/06/2013 [...] In a letter sent to Florida election supervisors last week, Maria Matthews, Florida's director of elections, said a renewed effort to "ensure due process and the integrity of Florida's voter rolls" was being planned. "This is all part of our ongoing and continuing efforts to identify potentially ineligible registered voters," Matthews said. Scott, a Republican, is preparing to run for re-election next year. He has repeatedly said the aim of any purge is to protect the integrity of the voter rolls. Advocacy groups called the review of non-citizens a thinly veiled attempt to disqualify Hispanic and African-American voters, who tend to vote for Democratic candidates. A disproportionately large number of those identified in 2012 were either Hispanic or black, the groups said. Last year, Florida officials said they had drawn up an initial list of 182,000 potential non-citizens. But that number was reduced to fewer than 200 after election officials acknowledged errors on the original list. [...] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/06/rick-scott-voter-purge_n_3710323.html [with embedded video report, and (over 11,000) comments]
Ted Cruz gets confused by a BuzzFeed post Cruz cited a post by the Heritage Foundation as proof that "the left-wing site" BuzzFeed turned on Obamacare Aug 5, 2013 [...] The post was created by a Heritage Foundation contributor to the Community vertical on BuzzFeed. As Nieman Journalism Lab describes [ http://www.niemanlab.org/2013/05/they-put-the-u-in-ugc-buzzfeed-builds-a-community-vertical-as-a-talent-incubator/ ], anyone can join BuzzFeed Community for free, as “a content-producing vertical of its very own, complete with featured posts by community members and a leaderboard with the latest on whose posts are getting the most traffic, likes, comments, and badges. It’s a competitive place, and anyone can join and enter the fray.” [...]
Rand Paul Gets Combative Over Jack Hunter Questions
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) was combative in an interview on "On Point" when asked about a controversial former aide. (Pete Marovich/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
By Ryan Rainey Posted: 08/06/2013 7:15 pm EDT
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) took a combative tone Tuesday when the host of a radio interview pressed him on his former aide Jack Hunter and whether his ideology is "racist."
Paul, on the public radio show [ http://onpoint.wbur.org/2013/08/06/rand-paul ] "On Point," bristled at questions from guest host John Harwood of CNBC about a recent Economist blog post [ http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2013/07/libertarian-populism (next article below)] that criticized Paul's ideology and said it was "little surprise that a man styling himself a 'Southern Avenger'" would be an aide to Paul. Hunter, who quit Paul's office last month, wrote columns sympathetic to the Confederacy before Paul hired him.
Paul swiftly interrupted Harwood and said he wasn't going to respond to "every yahoo in the world who wants to throw up a canard."
"Why don't we talk about Rand Paul and what I'm trying to do to grow the party, and then we might have an intelligent discussion," Paul said.
Paul also defended libertarianism against the Economist post's assertion that libertarian movements have allied themselves with "racist and nativist movements." He argued that his commitment to civil liberties often brings him in line with the Senate's progressive members on racial issues.
"I will stand up there with the most progressive members of the caucus in the Senate and say, 'You know what? Civil liberties are important,'" Paul said. "And they're important particularly because of some of the egregious things that happened in America's history."
When Harwood began questioning Paul more broadly about the future of libertarianism, Paul took an equally defensive tone. Harwood pressed Paul on libertarians who oppose reforming government programs like Social Security, but Paul called the questions "straw man" arguments.
"You're rewriting history to your own liking so you can debate something that's not there," Paul told Harwood.
“a strain of thought that moves from the standard grassroots conservative view of Washington as an inherently corrupt realm of special interests and self-dealing elites to a broader skepticism of “bigness” in all its forms (corporate as well as governmental), that regards the Bush era as an object lesson in everything that can go wrong (at home and abroad) when conservatives set aside this skepticism, and that sees the cause of limited government as a means not only to safeguarding liberty, but to unwinding webs of privilege and rent-seeking and enabling true equality of opportunity as well.”
Mr Douthat examines the budget blueprint of Rand Paul, a Republican senator from Kentucky frequently identified with the libertarian populist programme, and sees a "reform of the welfare state that would dramatically reduce the tax burden for the wealthiest Americans while dramatically stripping down benefits and tax breaks for the poor and working class", and he quite reasonably doubts that this will prove at all popular among the disaffected working-class white voters libertarian populism is meant to mobilise.
Yet I don't think this gets to the core of the problem with libertarian populism. I see two problems. First, right-wing populism in America has always amounted to white identity politics, which is why the only notable libertarian-leaning politicians to generate real excitement among conservative voters have risen to prominence through alliances with racist and nativist movements. Ron Paul's racist newsletters were not incidental to his later success [ http://www.newrepublic.com/article/94477/ron-paul-distorted-libertarian-ideology ], and it comes as little surprise that a man styling himself a "Southern Avenger" numbers among Rand Paul's top aides [ http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/07/09/rand-paul-aides-past-as-southern-avenger/ ]. This is what actually-existing right-wing libertarian populism looks like, and that's what it needs to look like if it is to remain popular, or right-wing. Second, political parties are coalitions of interests, and the Republican Party is the party of the rich, as well as the ideological champion of big business. A principled anti-corporatist, pro-working-class agenda stands as much chance in the GOP as a principled anti-public-sector-union stance in the Democratic Party. It simply makes no sense.
There's a reason we see Republicans resort again and again to a fusion of racially-tinged American-nationalist Christian identity politics, empty libertarian rhetoric (an integral part of traditional white American identity), and the policy interests of high-tax-bracket voters. That's what works! Well-meaning, libertarian-leaning, small-government conservatives must find this awfully frustrating. I find it frustrating. Yet it seems to me a plain fact that there is no significant electoral faction in American politics that demands the joint reduction of government and corporate power. A subset of libertarian ideas has functioned historically with some effectiveness as a stalking horse for white identity politics, which has brought a few authentic and salutary libertarian ideas to public attention, but the integrated principled substance of the libertarian philosophy has never been very popular. Moreover, if it is ever to become truly popular—and I very much doubt it will—it won't be on the right.
Government opacity tempts conspiracy-minded danger
The Rachel Maddow Show August 6, 2013
Rachel Maddow shows how extremist hate groups prey on the weak minded with conspiracy theories and encourages government agencies, particularly the FBI, to be more transparent in order to not leave information gaps that can be readily filled by conspiracy theorists.
Increased FBI oversight sought as Boston bomber questions mount
The Rachel Maddow Show August 6, 2013
Congressman Bill Keating, member of the House Committee on Homeland Security, talks with Rachel Maddow about the need for greater transparency from the FBI and other law enforcement agencies, and the role of Congress in holding federal law enforcement accountable.
Last week House Republicans voted for the 40th time [ http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/08/02/19835524-recess-bound-house-votes-to-gut-obama-health-care-law-for-40th-time ] to repeal Obamacare. Like the previous 39 votes, this action will have no effect whatsoever. But it was a stand-in for what Republicans really want to do: repeal reality, and the laws of arithmetic in particular. The sad truth is that the modern G.O.P. is lost in fantasy, unable to participate in actual governing.
Just to be clear, I’m not talking about policy substance. I may believe that Republicans have their priorities all wrong, but that’s not the issue here. Instead, I’m talking about their apparent inability to accept very basic reality constraints, like the fact that you can’t cut overall spending without cutting spending on particular programs, or the fact that voting to repeal legislation doesn’t change the law when the other party controls the Senate and the White House.
Am I exaggerating? Consider what went down in Congress last week.
First, House leaders had to cancel planned voting on a transportation bill [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/04/opinion/sunday/republican-no-shows-in-the-budget-wars.html ], because not enough representatives were willing to vote for the bill’s steep spending cuts. Now, just a few months ago House Republicans approved an extreme austerity budget, mandating severe overall cuts in federal spending — and each specific bill will have to involve large cuts in order to meet that target. But it turned out that a significant number of representatives, while willing to vote for huge spending cuts as long as there weren’t any specifics, balked at the details. Don’t cut you, don’t cut me, cut that fellow behind the tree.
Then they held the pointless vote on Obamacare, apparently just to make themselves feel better. (It’s curious how comforting they find the idea of denying health care to millions of Americans.) And then they went home for recess, even though the end of the fiscal year is looming and hardly any of the legislation needed to run the federal government has passed.
In other words, Republicans, confronted with the responsibilities of governing, essentially threw a tantrum, then ran off to sulk.
How did the G.O.P. get to this point? On budget issues, the proximate source of the party’s troubles lies in the decision to turn the formulation of fiscal policy over to a con man. Representative Paul Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, has always been a magic-asterisk kind of guy — someone who makes big claims about having a plan to slash deficits but refuses to spell out any of the all-important details. Back in 2011 the Congressional Budget Office, in evaluating one of Mr. Ryan’s plans [ http://www.cbo.gov/publication/22085 ], came close to open sarcasm; it described the extreme spending cuts Mr. Ryan was assuming, then remarked, tersely, “No proposals were specified that would generate that path.”
What’s happening now is that the G.O.P. is trying to convert Mr. Ryan’s big talk into actual legislation — and is finding, unsurprisingly, that it can’t be done. Yet Republicans aren’t willing to face up to that reality. Instead, they’re just running away.
When it comes to fiscal policy, then, Republicans have fallen victim to their own con game. And I would argue that something similar explains how the party lost its way, not just on fiscal policy, but on everything.
Think of it this way: For a long time the Republican establishment got its way by playing a con game with the party’s base. Voters would be mobilized as soldiers in an ideological crusade, fired up by warnings that liberals were going to turn the country over to gay married terrorists, not to mention taking your hard-earned dollars and giving them to Those People. Then, once the election was over, the establishment would get on with its real priorities — deregulation and lower taxes on the wealthy.
At this point, however, the establishment has lost control. Meanwhile, base voters actually believe the stories they were told — for example, that the government is spending vast sums on things that are a complete waste or at any rate don’t do anything for people like them. (Don’t let the government get its hands on Medicare!) And the party establishment can’t get the base to accept fiscal or political reality without, in effect, admitting to those base voters that they were lied to.
The result is what we see now in the House: a party that, as I said, seems unable to participate in even the most basic processes of governing.
What makes this frightening is that Republicans do, in fact, have a majority in the House, so America can’t be governed at all unless a sufficient number of those House Republicans are willing to face reality. And that quorum of reasonable Republicans may not exist.
NRA President James Porter Wins 'Conservationist Of The Year' As Smear On Wildlife Nonprofits Begins Unidentified quail hunter in Alabama. NRA president James Porter was honored as "Conservationist of the Year" on Friday by the Alabama Wildlife Federation, hours after the NRA added other conservation groups to its enemies list. 08/06/2013 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/06/nra-james-porter_n_3715361.html [with comments]
Creationists May Be Helping To Choose Biology Textbooks In Texas
By Rebecca Klein Posted: 08/06/2013 7:25 pm EDT | Updated: 08/06/2013 9:58 pm EDT
It seems as though creationists could have a sizable influence in the decision over what biology textbooks students in Texas will use in the coming years.
According to the Texas Freedom Network, some of the textbook panelists with a history of creationist beliefs include Raymond Bohlin, who is a research fellow at an institute that promotes intelligent design [ http://www.discovery.org/p/53 ], and Walter Bradley, a retired professor who co-wrote a book about creationism [ http://www.discovery.org/p/50 ]. Bohlin and Bradley did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
According to the Texas Education Agency, the Lone Star State is one of 22 states with formal procedures for textbook adoption [ http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/textbooks/adoptprocess/overview.html ]. The process requires publishing companies to submit sample textbooks to the Texas Education Agency, textbook review panels and regional education service centers. The textbook review panels consider submissions and make recommendations to the state's commissioner of education about which books to adopt.
The Texas State Board of Education solicits nominations for textbook review panelists before it selects a final group [ http://www.tea.state.tx.us/index2.aspx?id=2147485614 ], according to the Texas Education Agency website.
Josh Rosenau, the programs and policy director for the National Center for Science Education [ http://ncse.com/ ], charged that creationists have disproportionate representation on the Texas panel because of board member influence.
“I know a lot of people who are professors and teachers [who were nominated], but somehow there was more room for creationists because [state education] board members have been able to say ‘I want these people,’” Rosenau told HuffPost by phone.
The political leanings of review panelists are especially noteworthy because Texas textbooks have the power to influence students not only in the state, but also across the country.
Five Things Christian Fundamentalists Just Don't Get 08/06/2013 Right-wing Evangelical Fundamentalism claims to "go back to roots of Christianity." In fact, the "literal" (i.e., the earth was created in seven literal days) reading of the Bible was invented in the 19th century [http://books.google.com/books?id=Dgkf1Y1AHD4C&q=176#/h (use the "Front Page", or "Contents", drop-down and go to "The Modern Period c 1759 to ...", then scroll down 4 pages to "Postmodernism and a new theological agenda" and read down through "Biblical interpretation")]. Few fundamentalists care about the early church, the Gospels, the Catholic traditions, Augustine, Arian heresies, encyclicals and councils. Rather, they blend Southern Conservatism, bastardized Protestantism, some Pauline doctrine, gross nationalism and a heavy dose of naive anti-intellectualism for a peculiar American strain of bullshit. As Reverend Cornel West has noted, "the fundamentalist Christians want to be fundamental about everything, except 'love thy neighbor.'" Here are some verses we liberal Christians wish they would get "fundamentalist" about: [...] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sean-mcelwee/christian-fundamentalists_b_3708416.html [with comments]
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Eric Brakey, Maine State Senate Candidate, Defends Swimsuit Dancing
Maine state Senate candidate Eric Brakey (R), pictured from an ad for Vita Coco coconut water (YouTube)
By Chris Gentilviso Posted: 08/06/2013 3:59 pm EDT
“The idea is … people drink it, they want to dance and be Brazilian so you’ve got people dancing in Brazilian Speedos," said Brakey, who is running in Maine's 15th district. "It was a real fun time and I stand behind the work."
“It shows that I’m a full human being with more experience than just working in politics,” Brakey said. “I think that’s something that people want. It shows I’m not just a career politician.”
The trial of Jesus Christ is back in court literally. Dola Indidis, a man suing as a friend of Jesus, has petitioned the international court of justice at the Hague to declare that the trial of Jesus and the subsequent nailing on the cross went against the principles of fair trial and should therefore be declared a mistrial. The international court of justice has apparently formed a pre-trial panel to study his petition and decide whether the matter should proceed to trial. Sylvia Chebet spoke with Indidis to understand his passion about the case, who he is suing, who his witnesses will be and whether the petition has any basis at all in law.
By NASSER ARRABYEE and ALAN COWELL Published: August 7, 2013
SANA, Yemen — A day after the United States and Britain moved to withdraw personnel from Yemen after days of embassy closures and security alarms, security officials said on Wednesday that the authorities here had foiled an audacious plot by Al Qaeda to seize an important port using militants in Army uniforms to kidnap and kill foreigners there.
At the same time, the officials, who spoke in return for anonymity because they were not authorized to brief reporters, said a fresh drone strike in the southeast of the country killed seven people on Wednesday. An earlier strike killed four on Tuesday.
The depiction of the foiled plot was the first indication of the reasons behind the growing Western concerns for the safety of their nationals. Intercepts of a secret correspondence between Ayman al-Zawahri, the leader of Al Qaeda, and Nasir ul-Wuhayshi, the leader of the Qaeda affiliate in Yemen, inspired deep concern inside the American government about a possible terrorist plot by the group.
Those fears prompted a mass closing of American and other Western diplomatic outposts. American government officials said that Mr. Zawahri used the communication to urge the Yemeni militant leader to carry out a large terrorist attack.
Yemeni security officials said part of the militant operation included a plan to take control of the Canadian-run Mina al-Dhaba oil terminal in the Mukallah region on the Arabian Sea in the southeast of the country. The officials did not say how the plot had been disrupted.
The plan would have involved many Qaeda operatives wearing Yemeni Army uniforms to seize the port and then attack, kill or kidnap foreigners working there, the officials said. It was not clear if the disruption of the purported plan was linked to a spate of recent American drone strikes.
The security officials said the latest attack hit members of a Bedouin tribe some 40 miles west of Attaq in the south-eastern Shabwah area. It was the fifth known American strike in the last two weeks, part of an intensified campaign to disrupt the suspected plots that led to the embassy closings.
The BBC earlier quoted a Yemeni government spokesman as saying the foiled plots were more extensive, involving plans to blow up oil pipelines and take over two ports in the south, threatening Yemen’s oil exports.
A spokesman for the Yemeni authorities said they had foiled plans to blow up oil pipelines and take control of key cities - including two ports in the south, one of which accounts for the bulk of Yemen’s oil exports.