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LGBT

Audience Boos Gay Soldier At GOP Debate, Santorum Promises To Reinstate Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

By Igor Volsky on Sep 22, 2011 at 10:59 pm

The audience at Thursday night’s GOP presidential debate in Orlando, Florida commemorated this week’s repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell by booing Stephen Hill, a gay soldier, as he asked Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) about open service in the military. Without condemning the audience reaction, Santorum responded to Hill’s question by proclaiming that “any type of sexual activity has absolutely no place in the military” and promising to reinstate the 1993 policy. He also characterized open service as a “special privilege”:

SANTORUM: The fact that they’re making a point to include it as a provision within the military that we’re going to recognize a group of people and give them a special privilege and removing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, I think tries to inject social policy into the military and the military’s job is to do one thing — and that is to defend our country. We need to give the military, which is all volunteer, the ability to do so…and I believe this undermines that ability.

KELLY: So what would you do with soliders like Steven Hill. Now he’s out…so what would you do as president?

SANTORUM: Look, what we’re doing is playing social experimentation with our military right now and that’s tragic. I would just say that going forward, we would reinstitute that policy if Rick Santorum was president. Period. That policy would be reinstituted and as far as people in, I would not throw them out because that would be unfair to them because of the policy of this administration, but we would move forward in conformity to what was happening in the past, which is — sex is not an issue. It should not be an issue. Leave it alone. Keep it to yourself — whether your’re heterosexual or homosexual.

Watch it:

Update

GOProud says Santorum owes gay soldiers an apology: “Stephen Hill is serving our country in Iraq, fighting a war Senator Santorum says he supports. How can Senator Santorum claim to support this war if he doesn’t support the brave men and women who are fighting it?”

Update

Former Utah Governor Jon Hutsman tells TPM that the boos were “unfortunate” and that with Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell repealed, “we all salute the same flag.”

Politics

Live-Blog Of Fox/Google GOP Presidential Debate

By ThinkProgress on Sep 22, 2011 at 8:50 pm

10:55: The debate is now over. Watch the highlight of tonight’s debate:

10:54: Moderators did not ask candidates about the death penalty, one day after a Georgia man who may have been innocent was executed. Were they trying to avoid another “cheering death” moment from the audience?

10:53: When asked would would be the perfect VP, these were the answers given by the candidates (name of responder listed first):

Johnson/Paul

Santorum/Gingrich

Gingrich/ “Somebody who could be President”

Paul/ “I’ll tell you when I’m winning”

Perry/Herman Cain-Newt Gingrich Mutant Hybrid

Romney/ “I’ll think about it if I’m lucky enough to get far enough.”

Bachmann/ “A constitutional conservative who’s not just not Obama”

Cain/Romney + 999 plan OR Gingrich

Huntsman/Cain

10:52: Bachmann falsely claims Obama has the lowest approval ratings of any modern president. Actually, that honor goes to George W. Bush who left office with only 22% of Americans behind him.

10:50: Rick Perry suggest that a perfect Vice Presidential candidate would be the offspring of the mating of Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich. Hermewt Cainrich? Newman Gingain?

10:47: Santorum says he would pick Gingrich as his running mate. Gingrich does not return the favor.

10:47: Gary Johnson delivers the joke of the night: “My next door neighbor’s two dogs have created more shovel ready jobs than this current president.” The joke was plagiarized from Rush Limbaugh, who said virtually the same thing earlier today.

10:45: Ron Paul says “the government destroys jobs, the private sector creates jobs.” Apparently, he missed the fact that in his state, under Perry, government created jobs twice as fast as the private sector.

10:42: Baier makes a subtle allusion to the fact that thousands of people are protesting Wall Street this week for impoverishing 60 million Americans. None of the candidates touch it — they depend on Wall Street’s big contributions.

10:41: That “liberal columnist” referenced by Bret Baier who wrote “we’ve lost our mojo” was the Washington Post’s Richard Cohen.

10:40: A plurality of participants in Fox News’ immigration poll approve of a pathway for citizenship for undocumented immigrants.

10:38: Romney concedes: “There are a lot of reasons not to elect me.”

10:37: Now Perry is saying that he is not moving “an inch” from the positions in his book. Just one hour ago, he backed off his book’s claim that Social Security is unconstitutional and can only be done by the states.

10:35: For at least the fourth time tonight, Romney replies to a challenge from Perry with, “Nice try.”

10:35: Perry bombs at trying to deliver a hit on Romney.

10:31: Again, as President, Romney couldn’t provide a waiver from ObamaCare to all 50 states.

10:27: Rick Perry promises that he “will always err on the side of life,” except when executing people.

Read more

Climate Progress

Obama Offers GOP Leaders A Choice: Keep Oil Subsidies Or Rebuild America

By Brad Johnson on Sep 22, 2011 at 7:37 pm

“Mr. Boehner, Mr. McConnell, help us rebuild this bridge,” President Barack Obama declared today in front of the Brent Spence Bridge, which connects Cincinnati with the state of Kentucky. Obama’s challenge to Republican leaders Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) and Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) to support legislation that would pay for the rebuilding of the outdated bridge echoed Reagan’s famous exhortation to Mikhail Gorbachev (“Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”).

In his fiery speech, Obama also challenged Republicans to choose their priorities:

Would you rather keep tax loopholes for oil companies? Or do you want construction workers to have a job rebuilding our bridges?

The Brent Space Bridge is both in deteriorating condition and incapable of handling the volume of traffic in the area. United Parcel Service trucks “avoid the bridge as much as possible,” going far out of their way to avoid the bridge’s gridlock. American infrastructure is in rapid decline, falling to 16th in the world behind other industrialized countries and emerging economies. The Urban Land Institute and Ernst and Young estimate that the United States has $2 trillion in needed infrastructure repairs.

Obama’s challenge referred to the fact that his $447 billion jobs bill is partly funded by closing $40 billion in oil company subsidies.

The president is offering an alternative to the debate that conservatives want Americans to have, such as the false choice between a healthy economy and a healthy environment.

NEWS FLASH

Between 2007 and 2010, Deep Poverty Increased In 40 States | According to Census data released today that was analyzed by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, “deep poverty — that is, the share of the population with incomes below half the poverty line — rose by a statistically significant amount in 40 states (including the District of Columbia) from 2007 to 2010 and fell in none”:

Half of the poverty line is an income of $5,570 for an individual or $11,157 for a family of four.

NEWS FLASH

The debate will be live-blogged | As is our tradition, we’ll be live-blogging the festivities. The GOP debate begins at 9 pm on Fox News.

By Faiz Shakir on Sep 22, 2011 at 6:43 pm

Alyssa

The Awesome All-Women Crowd At Turkish Soccer Games

By Travis Waldron on Sep 22, 2011 at 6:38 pm

In an effort to curb fan violence at its soccer matches, the Turkish Football Federation decided to ban male fans from certain games — the first of which was Tuesday’s match between Manisaspor and Fenerbahce SK in Istanbul. More than 40,000 women and children showed up, and the result was wildly successful — the teams played to a 1-1 draw free of violence between their fans.

The most important takeaway from the game, however, wasn’t that female sports fans are less violent than their male counterparts. It’s that they’re just as passionate:

It’s not new here or abroad that sports are, stereotypically, a guy thing. But in international soccer, there are especially large barriers to women’s equal participation as fans or players. The Brazilian men’s national team is the pride of the country, but the women’s team barely receives enough funding to train. In Iran, women are banned not just from attending men’s matches, but from watching national broadcasts of them as well. FIFA, the sport’s international governing body, banned the Iranian women’s team from an Olympic qualifier because its members refused to play without wearing headscarves.

But even when countries and cultures make it harder for women to be fans and players, it’s amazing to see how female athletes and sports fans are pushing for equality. Brazil’s World Cup team narrowly lost to the well-funded American side in the quarterfinals of this year’s tournament. Iranian women risk severe punishment by dressing up as men to attend soccer matches there. And, now, as the 45,000 singing, chanting, jersey-clad Turkish women showed the world Tuesday night, passion for a sport or team isn’t just for the guys. No matter what barriers exist, women around the world keep showing that these are their games too.

Economy

Financial Reform Vindicated: Banks See Credit Scores Downgraded Due To Doubts They’ll Be Bailed Out

By Pat Garofalo on Sep 22, 2011 at 6:25 pm

Yesterday, three of the nation’s biggest banks — Bank of America, Citigroup, and Wells Fargo — had their credit scores downgraded by Moody’s. And the credit rating agency’s rationale for dinging the banks’ was simple — due to the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, it is less likely that the government is going to step in and bail out a mega-bank that is in trouble:

Now, having moved beyond the depths of the crisis, Moody’s believes there is an increased possibility that the government might allow a large financial institution to fail, taking the view that contagion could be limited.

Moody’s decision to assign a negative rating outlook reflects the possibility it may further reduce its systemic support assumptions in the future as a consequence of the process set in motion by the enactment of the Dodd-Frank Act. Under the rules recently finalized by the FDIC, the orderly liquidation authority included in Dodd-Frank demonstrates a clear intent to impose losses on bondholders in the event that a systemically-important banking group (such as Citigroup) was nearing failure. If fully implemented, the provisions in Dodd-Frank could further lower systemic risk by reducing interconnectedness among large institutions and could further strengthen regulators’ abilities to resolve such firms.

Moody’s is not entirely certain that Dodd-Frank’s resolution authority — which is designed to dissolve systemically risky banks that are failing, without needing to resort to a bailout — will work, and it added that there is still a high probability that the government will rescue a failing firm. But due to Dodd-Frank, the iron perception that troubled banks will be bailed out has taken a blow.

“I am glad that Moody’s recognizes that such large institutions are not ‘too big to fail,’” said Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), whose name graces the financial reform law. However, in recent weeks, several Republicans, including those seeking the GOP’s presidential nomination, have said that they want to repeal Dodd-Frank, resetting the regulatory system to 2007.

“Repealing that Dodd-Frank act is one of the first things that we need to do,” said Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R). “We cannot go forward with Dodd-Frank,” agreed former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman (R). But repeal would set the financial system back to its pre-crisis status quo, ensuring that the only option when a big bank gets in trouble is shoveling in boatloads of taxpayer dollars.

NEWS FLASH

Santorum: Honoring God Is Essential To National Security | Ahead of tonight’s GOP debate, the presidential candidates are gathering at a rally sponsored by the Faith and Freedom Coalition in Orlando, Florida. In his bid to be the favorite of social conservatives, former Sen. Rick Santorum (PA) took his typical religiously-inspiring rhetoric to new heights, saying belief in God is essential to preventing “foreign aggression”:

SANTORUM: Because this country is a moral enterprise and unless we honor God, our country will not be held up by God and protected in any way. Whether it’s from foreign aggression or from problems here within.

Watch it:

By Alex Seitz-Wald on Sep 22, 2011 at 6:20 pm

Justice

As GOP Cracks Down On Student Voters, Study Finds Zero Student Voter Fraud

By Marie Diamond on Sep 22, 2011 at 6:15 pm

A study on voter fraud pushed by Maine Republicans concluded that there is absolutely no evidence of student voter fraud in the state — but the GOP has pledged to crack down on it anyway. Like conservative state legislatures across the country, Maine Republicans have been pushing a Voter ID law, ostensibly to prevent non-existent voter fraud. As ThinkProgress has documented, these laws are a transparent attempt to disenfranchise Democratic voters, especially students, the poor, and minorities.

The Maine secretary of state’s office began the investigation in July after Maine Republican Party Chairman Charlie Webster gave him a list of 206 out-of-state students attending public Maine universities he suggested were voting there illegally. Secretary of State Charlie Summers then broadened the investigation to go back several years and look into noncitizens as well:

After a two-month investigation into possible voter fraud by college students and noncitizens, Maine Secretary of State Charlie Summers said Wednesday his evidence showed that none of the students committed fraud and only one noncitizen voted in Maine.

Nevertheless, Summers said his investigation confirmed his belief that Maine’s election system is “fragile and vulnerable,” and he vowed to submit legislation in January to fix some of the problems.

“I feel very strongly based on what I’ve laid out here today that we have a situation in the state of Maine that if we don’t try to modernize our election practices and procedures eventually it will lead us down the road where something breaks down,” Summers said.

Although no students were found guilty of legal violations, Summers says they are still under scrutiny and sent letters to dozens of them warning them that if they intend to remain residents of Maine, they will need to register their car in the state.

State GOP Chair Webster shed light on his true motivations in June when he said that it was important for the state to make it more difficult to vote because “Democrats intentionally steal elections.” He also said recently that students should have to pay taxes if they want to vote.

Yglesias

Wild Flag

By Matthew Yglesias on Sep 22, 2011 at 6:14 pm

I stopped doing daily music links when I turned 30 because I figured I’m now too old to be reliably staying on top of the scene. But someone emailed yesterday asking me to bring them back so that he doesn’t need to rely on Paul Krugman for his indie rock recommendations. Well, I may be 30, but that’s still younger than Krugman! So here’s Wild Flag’s

Wild Flag – Romance from Merge Records on Vimeo.

Anyways, I’ll be live-blogging tonight’s GOP debate with the rest of the ThinkProgress team over on the main page.

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