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Politics

Maher’s 3rd Clip Features O’Donnell’s Spiritual Dabblings Beyond Witchcraft

By Faiz Shakir on Oct 1, 2010 at 10:50 pm

For the third week in a row, HBO Real Time host Bill Maher released a previously-unaired clip of Delaware GOP Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell from one of her 22 appearances on Politically Incorrect, a show that Maher also once hosted.

Recall, two weeks ago, Maher introduced a clip of O’Donnell saying that she “dabbled into witchcraft” and “had a midnight picnic on a satanic altar.” He also pledged to show a fresh clip of O’Donnell every week on his show until she agrees to appear again on his show. Last week, Maher revealed a clip of O’Donnell calling evolution “a myth” and asking “why aren’t monkeys still evolving into humans?”

Tonight, Maher aired a July 19, 1999 clip that referenced O’Donnell’s dabbling into witchcraft, but offered more insight into O’Donnell’s other dabblings:

O’DONNELL: I was dabbling into every other kind of religion before I became a Christian.

MAHER: You were a witch.

O’DONNELL: I was. I was.

MAHER: You were.

O’DONNELL: I was dabbling in witchcraft. I’ve dabbled in Buddhism. I would have become a Hare Krishna but I didn’t want to become a vegetarian. And that is honestly the reason why — because I’m Italian, I love meatballs.

MAHER: Boy, are you spiritual.

Watch it:

Interestingly, the first clip that Maher showed two weeks ago of O’Donnell dabbling into witchcraft was originally taped on Politically Incorrect in October 1999. Yet the clip that aired tonight — which includes a reference to witchcraft — was originally taped in July 1999 — before her famous witchcraft comments. Presumably, Maher must have heard O’Donnell discuss witchcraft before, publicly or privately. Perhaps there are more discussions of O’Donnell’s witchcraft practices that have yet to be revealed.

For more on O’Donnell’s record, check out our ThinkProgress report: The Old Adventures of New Christine.

Health

Can Feingold Save His Seat By Touting Health Reform’s Most Popular Provisions?

By Igor Volsky on Oct 1, 2010 at 6:00 pm

Jonathan Cohn makes the point I wanted to make after seeing Sen. Russ Feingold’s (D-WI) campaign ad touting the benefits of the Affordable Care Act. Recognizing that the long drawn out process of passing reform allowed Republicans to define the law as a grandmother killing, job shrinking, cost raising monstrosity and ignore some its more popular provisions, Feingold unwraps the latter from the whole and develops (what could become) a fairly powerful model for selling reform. From the ad:

Senator Feingold has always been on our side, fighting the insurance companies.

But Ron Johnson won’t even get in the ring for us.

Russ fought insurance companies to stop insurance companies from denying Wisconsin children health care due to pre-existing conditions.

Mr. Johnson would put insurance companies back in control. … Letting them raise premiums and increase our costs whenever they want.

Ron Johnson: Hands off my health care.

Hands off my health care.

[Feingold speaking] I’m Russ Feingold and I approve this message because you deserve a senator who’s on your side.

Watch it:

This is smart for several reasons. Not only does the public overwhelming support things like investing in preventive care, denying coverage for individuals with pre-existing conditions and eliminating annual and lifetime coverage limits, but the GOP also voted against these policies when the bill came up before proposing to repeal them and replace them with similar (although inferior) ideas in their own health care plans. Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) even took credit for the preventive coverage provisions in the law! Could you imagine some of these ads?

Of course Feingold is having this conversation in the context of an economic downturn, growing uninsurance and increasing health care costs — all of which is dutifully chronicled and then blamed on the health law. It’s difficult to argue that breaking up the bill into little pieces will turn around public opinion but at least it reiterates the law’s most popular provisions and allows Democrats to defend the law rather than run away from it.

Politics

Days After Shooting At University Of Texas, Perry Calls For Allowing Students To Carry Guns On Campus

By Zaid Jilani on Oct 1, 2010 at 5:45 pm

Rick2 Earlier this week, a distraught University of Texas Austin student opened fire on campus with an assault rifle — locking down the entire school for hours and bringing a heavy response from local police and military units. The shooter eventually killed himself.

As the students and surrounding community continue to reel from the effects of the shooting, Gov. Rick Perry (R) has started advocating for allowing students and faculty to bring concealed carried weapons on campus. Doing so would require a change in state law, which currently bans weapons on campus:

Under current state law, colleges and universities, like UTPB in Odessa, are gun-free zones. That means it’s illegal for anyone to bring a weapon onto campus, licensed or not. However, days after a gunman went onto the University of Texas campus in Austin and took his own life, Governor Rick Perry says he believes concealed weapons should be allowed. However, he only thinks it should be allowed if the owner is well-trained and licensed.

“There are good reasons, for persons to carry permitted, concealed weapons, and to use them when they feel threatened,” UTPB President, Dr. David Watts, said.

Watch News West 9′s report on Perry’s stance:

Perry isn’t alone in calling for a change in the law. Young Conservatives for Texas, a “conservative youth organization” and often ally to state Republicans, is also “once again calling on state lawmakers to pass a law allowing licensed students, faculty, and visitors to carry concealed handguns on state university property.”

The reaction to the Texas shooting is not unlike the reaction by major conservatives to the Virginia Tech shooting. Following that event, leading conservatives Michelle Malkin, John Gibson, and Andrew Napolitano all pushed to allow students to carry guns on campus.

Yglesias

More on Taxpayer Receipts

By Matthew Yglesias on Oct 1, 2010 at 5:28 pm

Stethoscope

For the record, all and sundry should note that Ethan Porter proposed the taxpayer receipt idea in Democracy way back before it was cool. Meanwhile, though liberals have generally been operating with the assumption that better public understanding of what the government spends money on would build support for higher revenue, card-carrying libertarian Peter Suderman says just the reverse would happen.

My guess is that in the real world almost nobody would pay attention, and also that almost nobody knows what the difference between Medicare and Medicaid is. What’s more, I don’t even think public opinion is that big a driver of these specific spending issues. I think if I were to say “let’s reduce out-of-control spending by cutting how much Medicare pays to low-quality hospitals” that everyone would say “good idea!” Then when the head of Randomville Community Hospital called a press conference surrounded by doctors and nurses to denounce me and talk about how my cuts would threaten life-saving services the local community relies on, everyone would condemn me. People trust health care providers and hate politicians which makes it extremely difficult for politicians to do anything that harms the interests of health care providers.

LGBT

In Bizarre Interview, Crist Pretends He Never Supported Florida’s Gay Adoption Ban

By Igor Volsky on Oct 1, 2010 at 5:00 pm

Before announcing his independent bid for the Senate, Republican Governor Charlie Crist had supported Florida’s ban on gay parent adoption because “children are best raised in a traditional family.” As late as February 2010, Crist told told the Palm Beach Post that he had “respect” for the current law. “I don’t advocate for a change,” he said, adding that he hoped it wouldn’t be overturned by the courts.

Last month, Crist’s Independent campaign issued a new position paper on LGBT issues, in which Crist suddenly declared his opposition to the ban. “We need to take politics out of adoption decisions,” the paper read. “That is why I oppose Florida’s current law that requires Family Law judges to ignore what is right for a child in order to adhere to what Florida law blindly demands.” Crist even proposed dropping an appeal of a lower court ruling that had found the ban unconstitutional, but after Florida’s Court of Appeals for the Third District unanimously upheld the finding, he appeared before the cameras to announce that Florida would stop enforcing the ban.

All that’s last month. Today, speaking before the very same Palm Beach Post editorial board to whom he had preached about the value of the “traditional family” in February, Crist denied saying he “liked” the law and pretended like he never held a personal opinion on the issue:

PBP: You also said you favored the gay adoption ban. And now you don’t.

CRIST: It was a law on the books. I was the former attorney general. I have a sworn duty…

PBP: That didn’t mean you had to like it.

CRIST: I didn’t say I liked it. I said I would enforce it.

PBP: (Cross talk) No, you said you thought that children do best in a home with a mother and a father.

PBP: That’s what you said. With that pen and in that chair. So has that changed?

CRIST: Has that changed?

PBP: Yes

CRIST: No. I think what’s changed is we have a court ruling that says that the law is unconstitutional. That’s what has changed. And I respect the law.

PBP: That ruling was in effect when you were here in February.

PBP: Not the DCA ruling.

CRIST: The DCA ruling…Okay…I’m referring to the DCA ruling.

Watch a compilation:

It’s hard to watch Crist feign consistency in his positions and pretend like he never supported the ban. But with most Floridians opposed to the policy, the governor is moving to the left on social issues to peel away votes from Democratic challenger Rep. Kendrick Meek (D-FL). To do that, he has to ignore his “traditional family” comments.

Politics

House Republicans Apathetic On Absence Of Earmark Ban In ‘Pledge To America’

By Scott Keyes on Oct 1, 2010 at 4:30 pm

GOP PledgeAfter House Republicans unveiled their anticipated “Pledge to America” last week, it quickly fell under heavy criticism for failing to include a ban on earmarks. Even right-wing groups are attacking Republican congressmen for this key omission. Matt Kibbe, president of one of the leading tea party groups FreedomWorks, called it “disappointing,” while the right-wing group Club for Growth said that without an earmark ban, “the Pledge has no teeth.” The Center Against Government Waste piled on as well, declaring that “if the Republicans regain control of the House and go back to their old earmarking ways it could be a VERY short majority for the Republicans.”

ThinkProgress went to Capitol Hill this week to see why Republicans congressmen were against including an earmark ban in the Pledge. What we found was collective apathy on the issue. Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) told us tersely that “the pledge is a great beginning, and that’s all I have to say right now.” Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) said an earmark moratorium that expires before Republicans would even take power was sufficient and there was no need to go further. Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX) refused to address the issue altogether.

Prospects for earmark reform aren’t much brighter among Senate Republicans either. In an interview with National Review Online, Tea Party Godfather Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) said earmark reform wasn’t included in the GOP Pledge because “there was some pushback from the Senate.” Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) echoed this view in an interview with Fox News yesterday, telling host Neil Cavuto that Republican leaders in the Senate would not eliminate earmarks until they were forced to do so by rank-and-file members:

CAVUTO: But I don’t hear it out of the leadership. So I suspect, when I hear your party leadership rallying against earmarks, not under our watch, and then someone puts a question to them, so, will you end them all, well, well, not so fast. So, I hear the same B.S. out of them.

COBURN: [Americans] are going to see the foolishness that goes on up here, and rightly so. And that is why the vast majority of the people who are running on my side of the aisle for the Senate have said, I am not doing any earmarks. And that is 11 out of the 15 that are running. So, if we get those 11 people here, that’s going to make a big difference. And then we’re going to have leadership that is going to say that.

CAVUTO: If Mitch McConnell has not ruled out earmarks, would you vote for him to be your majority leader should Republicans assume control of the Senate?

COBURN: I think what has to happen is, we need to have the caucus say we’re not going to do earmarks. And when we vote that, then it is not going to happen. And he’s going to follow our lead.

An earmark ban wasn’t included in the pledge for a simple reason: establishment Republicans still love earmarks. Consequently, support for pork barrel appropriations is unlikely to abate should Republicans win control of Congress in November. Two weeks ago, Politico reported that “with their eyes on a House majority, Republicans are leaving the door open to allowing earmarks after a one-year party-imposed moratorium.” A week later, GOP whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) confirmed that Republicans are eyeing a return of earmarks if they retake the majority.

Though some Republicans like Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) have waged a lonely fight in the GOP against earmarks, only recently have other Republicans signed on to the issue with an election-year stunt. However, when the GOP had an opportunity to implement this idea in their Pledge, they balked. It’s increasingly clear that the House GOP won’t heed the words of country music star Toby Keith: “a little less talk, a lot more action.“

Yglesias

Exercise and Weight Loss

By Matthew Yglesias on Oct 1, 2010 at 4:28 pm

A castle of square plan surrounded by a water-filled moat. It has round corner towers and a forbidding appearance 1

Ta-Nehisi Coates writes some about losing weight:

I am sure this approach works for some people, but not for me. I’ve never been able to stick to a diet. I love bread, rice, potatoes and, to a lesser extent, sweets. I also fail at doing exercise that I don’t actually enjoy. A little pain is good. But it can’t be the kind of pain that makes me say “I’m glad that’s over.” In short, I couldn’t macho my way out of being fat. I couldn’t out-muscle obesity. [...]

It’s interesting seeing people on the street these days. The common reaction is “What did you do?” And the only honest response is “Shove less shit down my throat.” Weight loss, for me, is depressing in its essential passivity. When we talk about an obesitity epidemic, I strongly suspect that what we’re talking about is the cost of societal lifestyle choices presently made manifest. If we want to have food that is pleasurable, but we don’t want to expend time now–either in the form of money, or the form of actual time preparing and cleaning–expect that we will have to expend time later in the form of health problems.

I think that’s largely true. The biggest gym-related thing I’ve done to lose weight is that I did some sessions with a personal trainer who warned me up front that you can’t really lose weight in the gym—you need to eat less food. He helped me build some muscle and feel better about myself, but most of all the admission contrary to interest got me to focus more on what matters.

It is worth pointing out, though, that for all the apparent gluttony of the contemporary American lifestyle, Americans actually don’t consume a particularly large number of calories in historical terms. Estimates I’ve seen of medieval calorie consumption often go up to 4,000 a day or more. But it’s not that medieval peasants were fat, or that they were really rigorous about doing 40 minutes on the elliptical machine every day. Instead, they were engaged in constant physical activity for their daily livelihood. Check out the staggering number of calories you could burn by hand-chopping wood all day long.

I’m not really sure there’s any usable personal or policy advice in that insight, except to say that perhaps at some point in the future we’ll all be working at treadmill desks and possibly much healthier for it. The bulk of human history was spent with our bodies operating at a generally higher metabolic level than happens nowadays.

Climate Progress

Bill McKibben: Days that Suck

By Climate Guest Blogger on Oct 1, 2010 at 4:09 pm

(A response to the “No Pressure” Video)

Bill McKibben “” some-time guest blogger and the author most recently of the must-read book Eaarth — has asked me to post this response to a noxious video that some irresponsible folks in the UK put together.

I just climbed off an airplane at Boston’s Logan Airport. The day began in Monterrey, Mexico–and though I was tired, I was also feeling pretty good. Our big day of action on October 10th has been building to a crescendo: we yesterday broke our record from last year, registering more than 5500 actions for the big Global Work Party.

But I’d barely turned on my computer when that good feeling turned to a kind of quiet nausea. There were emails from people all saying the same thing: Have you seen this? This was a gross video making its way around Youtube, purporting to show people being blown up for not believing in climate change. It’s been “pulled” from Youtube by its creators, the British climate group 10:10, but of course nothing is ever really “pulled” from Youtube. If you want to watch it bad enough, I’m pretty sure you can find it. Or you can look at the stories by climate deniers assailing it as the latest example of eco-fascism.
Read more

Justice

Why The First Amendment Doesn’t Protect Anti-Gay Harasser Andrew Shirvell

By Ian Millhiser on Oct 1, 2010 at 4:00 pm

Anti-Gay Michigan Official Andrew Shirvell

Anti-Gay Michigan Official Andrew Shirvell

After spending much of the week refusing to discipline an assistant attorney general who launched a bizarre harassment campaign against the first openly-gay president of the University of Michigan student body, Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox (R) finally announced today that his subordinate would face a disciplinary hearing:

Cox spokesman John Sellek said, however, Andrew Shirvell will be the subject of a disciplinary hearing after he returns to work at an undetermined future date. . . .

Cox said he hadn’t earlier read all of Shirvell’s blog, “Chris Armstrong Watch,” which dogs Armstrong, the 21-year-old, openly gay president of U-M’s student government and accuses him of “anti-Christian behavior,” “mocking God,” promoting homosexuality and trying “to recruit your sons and daughters” into the gay lifestyle.

“I’m at fault here,” Cox said. “I’ve been saying for weeks that (Shirvell’s) been acting like a bully, that his behavior is immature, but it’s after-hours and protected by the First Amendment.”

Cox’s prior assertion that Shirvell enjoys First Amendment protection was always a little bizarre.  While the First Amendment does provide a fairly robust shield to public employees who engage in political advocacy during their time off, it should not apply to someone who engages in a public campaign of harassment and stalking a single individual because of their sexual orientation.

In Rankin v. McPherson, the Supreme Court established that even the most awful forms of speech on a matter of public concern cannot themselves be the sole basis for firing a public employee.  In that case, a clerical official in a local police station was fired after she commented to a co-worker that if someone tries to assassinate President Reagan again, she hopes they “get him.”  The Supreme Court deemed this to be protected speech, despite the inexcusable nature of the comment.  But that is hardly the entirety of the Court’s analysis.

As Rankin makes clear, “the manner, time, and place of the employee’s expression are relevant, as is the context in which the dispute arose.”  Most significantly for Shirvell’s case, statements which publicly discredit a government agency are much more likely to be firing offenses:

Nor was there any danger that McPherson had discredited the office by making her statement in public. McPherson’s speech took place in an area to which there was ordinarily no public access; her remark was evidently made in a private conversation with another employee. There is no suggestion that any member of the general public was present or heard McPherson’s statement. Nor is there any evidence that employees other than Jackson who worked in the room even heard the remark. Not only was McPherson’s discharge unrelated to the functioning of the office, it was not based on any assessment by the Constable that the remark demonstrated a character trait that made respondent unfit to perform her work.

Unlike the fired employee in Rankin, Shirvell has gone out of his way to publicize his views.  He launched a hate blog attacking a gay undergraduate student, did multiple press interviews and even appeared on prime time TV news.  Gay Michiganders should worry about the kind of justice Shirvell would advocate for on their behalf, and all Michiganders should worry that their legal interests are being advanced by an obviously unstable individual.

To be clear, just like the First Amendment protects inexcusible verbal attacks on President Reagan, it also permits state employees to hold anti-gay views and to express those views in most settings.  When a single state employee reasonably causes the state’s residents to doubt the competence and the motivations of an agency, however, that agency has the right to let him go.

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