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Alabama Carries Out The Nation’s Third Execution In One Week | At 6:49 p.m. yesterday, Alabama executed 37-year-old Derrick O’Neal Mason after he had spent 16 years on death row. Mason was convicted of killing a woman during an attempted robbery and is the fifth inmate put to death in Alabama this year. He is also the third inmate to die this week, after Georgia executed the (likely innocent) Troy Davis and Texas executed white supremacist John William King on Wednesday. Mason is the 36th inmate the nation has executed in 2011 alone. Earlier this month, the judge who sentenced Mason to death urged Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley (R) to spare his life because “if he had tried the case as a more experienced jurist, he would have sentenced Mason to life without the possibility of parole.” Bentley denied his request.

By Tanya Somanader on Sep 23, 2011 at 6:10 pm

Education

FLASHBACK: Romney Used To Believe That The Department Of Education ‘Can Actually Make A Difference’

By Pat Garofalo on Sep 23, 2011 at 6:10 pm

This post was co-written by Jennifer Steck, an intern with the education policy team at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Last night’s GOP presidential debate included lots of shots at the U.S. Department of Education. “If you care about your children, you’ll get the federal government out of the business of educating our kids,” said Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX). “I would go over to the Department of Education, I’d turn off the lights, I would lock the door and I would send all the money back to the states and localities,” added Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN).

Former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA) got in on the action as well, telling the crowd that he wants to “get the federal government out of education“:

One, education has to be held at the local and state level, not at the federal level. We need get the federal government out of education.

Watch it:

But Romney hasn’t always felt this way. In fact, in a 2007 debate, he praised the Education Department for making “a difference” for students:

I’ve taken a position where, once upon a time, I said I wanted to eliminate the Department of Education. That was my position when I ran for Senate in 1994. That’s very popular with the base. As I’ve been a governor and seen the impact that the federal government can have holding down the interest of the teachers’ unions and instead putting the interests of the kids and the parents and the teachers first, I see that the Department of Education can actually make a difference.

While Romney may have flipped from his original position about education back in the 1990s — and now seems to be flopping back — he has certainly worked to ensure that the education system in Massachusetts is one of the best in the country. And his work shows. Granted, some of the success Massachusetts has experienced with their education system began before Romney’s term as governor, but in 2005 and in 2007, Massachusetts ranked first on all four test categories on “The Nation’s Report Card”.

Romney wasn’t the only candidate at the debate having a little trouble recalling his prior education record. Texas Gov. Rick Perry claimed that he was a “vocal opponent” of President Bush’s No Child Left Behind law when, in fact, he praised it, bragged about receiving money from it, and lobbied to preserve it when it faced cuts.

Climate Progress

Hottest Decade on Record Would Have Been Even Hotter But for Deep Oceans — Accelerated Warming May Be On Its Way

By Joe Romm on Sep 23, 2011 at 6:05 pm

A composite of all the major global temperature records via Skeptical Science.

The last decade was easily the hottest on record.  We’ve known that sulfate aerosols (from volcanoes and/or Chinese coal) and the “the deepest solar minimum in nearly a century” masked the rate of warming somewhat.

Even so, NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which probably has the best of the long temperature datasets, reported the 12-month running mean global temperature reached a new record in 2010.  As a NASA analysis found: “We conclude that global temperature continued to rise rapidly in the past decade” and “there has been no reduction in the global warming trend of 0.15-0.20°C/decade that began in the late 1970s.”

But other datasets appeared to show a slight slowing in the rate of warming, though even that may have been due to flawed data, as in the case of the UK’s Hadley Center.

Scientists have long known that the overwhelming majority of human-caused warming was expected to go into the oceans (see figure below).  And many have suspected that deep ocean warming has also been masking surface warming.

Now a new study led by led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) finds that may indeed be the case:

The planet’s deep oceans at times may absorb enough heat to flatten the rate of global warming for periods of as long as a decade even in the midst of longer-term warming….

The study, based on computer simulations of global climate, points to ocean layers deeper than 1,000 feet (300 meters) as the main location of the “missing heat” during periods such as the past decade when global air temperatures showed little trend. The findings also suggest that several more intervals like this can be expected over the next century, even as the trend toward overall warming continues….

“This study suggests the missing energy has indeed been buried in the ocean,” [coauthor Kevin] Trenberth says. “The heat has not disappeared, and so it cannot be ignored. It must have consequences.”

These potential consequences include accelerated warming in the coming decade and melting of  the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Let’s take these two in order.

Read more

Alyssa

First Look: ‘Whitney’ And The Case For Domestic Partnership

By Alyssa Rosenberg on Sep 23, 2011 at 6:01 pm

In a sense, Whitney feels like the most conventional new sitcom to hit airwaves this fall (at least of the shows I’ve been checking out, and so I didn’t have extremely high expectations for it). Unlike 2 Broke Girls, also the product of Whitney creator and star Whitney Cummings, it doesn’t have a particularly strong frame narrative. And unfortunately, like Free Agents, it’s got a deeply annoying cast of backup characters including a piggish police officer, a drunk divorcee (who, to be fair, gets the great line when someone tells her she can’t wear pants to a wedding “I pay alimony to a husband who does spoken word for a living. I could wear cargo pants.”), and an irritatingly in love couple. Are we really getting less of Maulik Pancholy on 30 Rock so he can do this?

Fortunately, Cummings and Chris D’Elia, who plays her character’s long-term boyfriend Alex, have a really nice warm chemistry. The opening scene of them sparring over the bathroom mirror, eyeliner on Whitney’s temple, Alex using Whitney’s hoodie as a towel, all felt natural and fun, like an actual couple that’s been together for five years but still enjoys pushing each other’s buttons.

As for the rest of the show, Whitney feels like something that I’m glad exists, even if I don’t really feel engaged by it. Are there more dramatic, or funnier ways to illustrate the problems that couples, both straight and more particularly gay, face on things like hospital visitation than to have Whitney try to talk her way to Alex’s beside in the hospital while she’s wearing a sexy nurse’s outfit? Sure, but it’s still useful to have someone dramatize it. Is Alex declaring, “You can forget Cosmo studies, and your can forget your Mom, and forget all that stuff. This is about me and you. This is the best part of being together for so long. You can wear your hair up, or down, or hoodies, or whatever, I don’t care,” the last word in feminism? No, but it’s still the kind of thing that it’s good to have people say until women stop pressuring themselves about marriage.

NEWS FLASH

Lewis Black Takes On Fox News’ Keith Ablow Over Chaz Bono | Comedian Lewis Black appeared on The Daily Show last night to discuss “threats” to America’s children. He dedicated half the segment to the “controversy” of Chaz Bono appearing on Dancing With The Stars, pointing out plenty of DWTS candidates who actually should have created controversy, but didn’t. He also said what everybody has already been thinking about Fox News’ Dr. Keith Ablow: “I don’t know if letting your kids watch Chaz Bono will turn them into transsexuals, but I’m pretty sure letting them watch Keith Ablow will turn them into assholes.” Watch it:

NEWS FLASH

Bachmann Never Responds To Challenge To Prove Her Claim About HPV Vaccine | The deadline for the $10,000 HPV vaccine challenge that bioethicist Arthur Caplan issued for presidential candidate Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) expired today. After last week’s GOP debate, Bachmann said a woman came up to her and told her about how the vaccine led to brain damage in her daughter. Another bioethicist Steven Miles first challenged Bachmann to produce a person who had suffered from mental retardation after receiving the HPV vaccine Gardasil. Caplan upped the amount from Miles’ $1,000 to $10,000, to be given to a charity of Bachmann’s choice, if she could prove it. Bachmann never responded to Caplan’s challenge.

By Amanda Peterson Beadle on Sep 23, 2011 at 5:30 pm

Yglesias

More Policy Questions, Please

By Matthew Yglesias on Sep 23, 2011 at 5:28 pm

I certainly agree with Jonathan Bernstein that it would be nice for debate moderates (and, indeed, journalists in other contexts) to emulate “regular people” and ask more about policy and do fewer gotcha questions. I’m not normally the kind of person inclined to praise the simple homespun wisdom of the American people, but on this one the masses are right.

The underlying problem, I think, is that unlike most people political reporters tend to be interested in politics. It’s kind of like how hockey writers, unlike most people, are interested in hockey. The difference is that public policy is actually really important to people’s lives. So while ordinary people are hardly policy wonks insofar as they care about politics it’s because they have some concern about public policy. What I think debate moderates could most usefully do is raise some policy questions that are less obvious than the ones you get from the man on the street. We’ve five debates into this thing, and still nobody’s gotten a question about the eurozone crisis or the US-Taiwan-China relationship. It’s a big world out there, and most people don’t pay too much attention to it until disaster strikes and the domestic impact becomes obvious.

Security

As Neocons Reverse Course, Pressure Is Mounting On Senate To Confirm Robert Ford As U.S. Ambassador To Syria

By Ben Armbruster on Sep 23, 2011 at 5:20 pm

Last year, Senate Republicans refused to confirm Robert Ford as U.S. ambassador to Syria, claiming — in an purely ideological sense presumably — that sending a high-level American envoy to Damascus would “reward” the Assad regime for bad behavior. President Obama recess appointed Ford anyway, and his bold visit to Hama last July amid the Arab Spring inspired anti-regime demonstrations symbolized the importance of his presence there (see amateur video of Ford attending the wake of a Syrian activist killed by Syrian forces).

Yet conservatives still wanted Ford out of Damascus. Many argued that the White House should withdraw the American envoy in response to Bashar al Assad’s bloody crackdown on pro-democracy activists there. However, the Obama administration, and even Ford himself, continued to make their case. “We owe it to them to remain supportive,” Ford said of the Syrians in his confirmation hearing last month. “Lower level diplomats are great, but they don’t carry the weight, they don’t carry the prestige of the president’s personal representative,” he told the Daily Caller this week.

However, some, like Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), who opposed Ford’s confirmation last year, and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), who called on Obama to recall Ford just last April, now see the wisdom in keeping him there. Now, the neocons are coming around too. Yesterday, Robert Kagan of the Foreign Policy Initiative — a group that as recently as July was still calling on Ford to be recalled — said “the Senate should confirm him as soon as possible.” And today in the Los Angeles Times, fellow right-wing hawk Max Boot followed suit:

Our embattled man in Damascus, Ambassador Robert Ford, is threatened not only by the Syrian regime but by Republican senators who are dragging their feet on confirming his appointment. Their opposition, which is founded on the premise that we should not dignify Bashar Assad’s regime with an ambassador, is understandable but misguided. Ford has been a profile in courage in opposing Assad. [...]

It is possible that Ford may be expelled by the Syrian government in any case, but as long as he can stay in Damascus, he will support the demands of the protesters. The Senate should give him the opportunity to continue his valuable work.

It’s still unclear what Republicans in the Senate will do. Ford will be forced to come home if he is not confirmed by the end of the year. An aide to Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) — who placed the hold on Ford’s nomination last year — signaled recently that he would do it again when his confirmation comes to a vote. Another Senate GOP aide told Foreign Policy, “You could potentially anticipate a number of senators putting holds on Ford.” But now that progressives and conservatives are speaking out with one voice calling for the Senate to keep Ford in Damascus, will Senate Republicans relent and make the right choice?

NEWS FLASH

Ann Coulter Tells Florida CPAC That Rep. Wasserman Schultz Is A ‘Hideous Beast’ | Today, the Florida Conservative Political Action Conference gave primetime billing to right-wing provocateur Ann Coulter. As is her style, she wasted little time hurling derogatory insults and venomous name-calling. Coulter called DNC Chairwoman Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) a “hideous beast who has a voice like a hyena getting an abortion,” eliciting wild cheers from the audience. Watch it:

In her comments, Coulter referenced Rep. Allen West’s (R-FL) sexist attacks on Wasserman Schultz from earlier this summer, in which he called her “the most vile, unprofessional, and despicable member of the US House of Representatives,” telling her to “shut the heck up” because “you are not a Lady.” ThinkProgress reached out to a CPAC spokesperson to see if they would condemn Coulter’s hateful comments. We have not heard back.

By Alex Seitz-Wald on Sep 23, 2011 at 5:12 pm

NEWS FLASH

North Carolina Legislator Concerned ‘Homosexual Agenda’ Could Become ‘Normal’ | North Carolina state Sen. James Forrester (R), one of the primary proponents of a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, appeared on the anti-gay Concerned Women for America radio this week to reiterate his opposition to LGBT equality. He explained that his goal is to “make it more difficult for the homosexual group to get their agenda recognized as being normal and getting it into schools and things like that.” Listen to it:

(HT: Right Wing Watch.)

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