NEWS FLASH

UPDATE: Komen confirms continued involvement of Ari Fleischer on Planned Parenthood strategy | Yesterday, ThinkProgress exclusively reported Ari Fleischer’s involvement — dating back at least to December — with the Komen Foundation, including issues related to Planned Parenthood. Tonight, the Washington Post reports that Komen is now publicly confirming that Fleischer, a prominent right-wing pundit and former press secretary for George W. Bush, will help “on crisis communications” related to Planned Parenthood. Komen stressed that Fleischer, who is a long-time critic of Planned Parenthood, “had nothing to do with the funding decision.”

Update

The Washington Post updated their story with the following: “Fleischer said Saturday night that he had not been asked but that if he could help, perhaps he would.” Separately, Fleischer confirmed to ThinkProgress that he is in regular contact with Komen CEO Nancy Brinker and she had sought his counsel on the Planned Parenthood issue.

Economy

VIDEO: Protester Struck By Police During OccupyDC Raid, At Least Eight Arrested

By Travis Waldron on Feb 4, 2012 at 8:22 pm

Police officers at McPherson Square Park

United States Park Police bearing riot gear and on horse back raided Occupy DC this morning and throughout the day, removing tents that were deemed to be in violation of a no camping rule at McPherson Square. Park Police spokesperson Sgt. David Schlosser said the raid did not constitute an eviction and that protesters would be allowed to continue activities at the park as long as they complied with the no camping rule.

Six protesters had been arrested as of about four o’clock this afternoon — two for crossing a police barricade and four for violating police orders — but the majority were “very cooperative” as police moved through the park, Schlosser said. Two more were arrested later, according to various reports. Park Police moved methodically through the park, closing sections at a time while the rest remained open, using riot shields and sticks to move protesters as Park Service employees in hazardous materials suits cleared and removed tents.

At different times, small groups of protesters collided with police, who pushed protesters back with riot shields. One police officer was struck by a brick in the face and taken to the hospital. At one point, multiple protesters were struck by riot sticks as they clashed with police moving through the park. Watch:

One protester said Police had offered a compromise, telling Occupy DC that if they removed the giant tarp covering the statue at the center of the park — known as the tent of dreams — police would not confiscate tents. Schlosser would not confirm or deny that such a deal had been proposed, saying only that notices had been provided to protesters telling them that noncompliant tents were subject to removal.

According to the notice, tents must be free of sleeping materials and remain open on one side at all times to stay in compliance with Park Police regulations.

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Justice

Republican Indiana Secretary Of State Convicted Of Voter Fraud

By Josh Israel on Feb 4, 2012 at 4:29 pm

Indiana Secretary of State Charlie White (R)

Though President Ronald Reagan called the right to vote the “crown jewel of American liberties,” many Republicans around the country have begun demanding increased voting restrictions in the name of fighting “voter fraud.” Though actual cases of voting fraud are so rare that a voter is much more likely to be struck by lightning than to commit fraud at the polls, one Republican official in Indiana has proved that lightning can strike himself.

Yesterday, a jury found Indiana Secretary of State Charlie White (R) guilty on six felony counts of voter fraud, theft, and perjury. The conviction cost White his job, though he plans to ask the judge to reduce the charges to misdemeanors and hopes to perhaps regain the position.

In a statement, Gov. Mitch Daniels (R) announced White’s deputy will take over on an interim basis:

I have chosen not to make a permanent appointment today out of respect for the judge’s authority to lessen the verdict to a misdemeanor and reinstate the elected office holder… If the felony convictions are not altered, I anticipate making a permanent appointment quickly.

But a second court case could ultimately give the job to Democrat Vop Osili, who lost to White in November 2010. A judge’s December 2011 ruling — currently on hold, pending appeal — held that due to the voter fraud charges, White’s election was invalid. Should that ruling survive the appeals process, Osili would assume the office.

Ironically, White’s now-removed 2010 campaign website listed election integrity as among his top concerns, and promised he would “protect and defend Indiana’s Voter ID law to ensure our elections are fair and protect the most basic and precious right and responsibility of our democracy-voting.”

Update

In 2005, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels signed “the strictest voter ID requirements in the nation,” and Republicans said at the time that it was “needed to guard against voter fraud.”

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Climate Progress

Drought May Cause Shutdown of Texas Rice Production

By Joe Romm on Feb 4, 2012 at 4:05 pm

By Andrew Freedman, in a Climate Central repost

Although recent rains have put a dent in the Texas drought, a day of reckoning looms for the state’s long-grain rice growers, who pump millions into the economy in Southeast Texas each year and account for about 5 percent of America’s rice production. Come March 1, if there is less than 850,000 acre-feet of water in reservoirs along the Lower Colorado River, water managers will be forced to take the unprecedented step of withholding water from agricultural users, which will mean severe cuts to Texas rice production this year.

According to Bob Rose, chief meteorologist with the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA), it’s unlikely that enough rain will fall between now and March 1 to reach the 850,000 acre-feet threshold that was established by a recent agreement between the authority and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. An acre-foot is the amount of water required to cover one acre of land to a depth of one foot, and it amounts to about 326,000 gallons.

As of January 30, the highland lakes that serve as the area’s reservoirs held about 758,000 acre-feet.

“This is going to be a huge, huge deal,” Rose said during a presentation at the annual meeting of the American Meteorological Society in New Orleans. “What’s going to happen is that there will be no water for rice irrigation in the Lower Colorado River Basin this year.”

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Climate Progress

Apparently Unaware of Global Warming, L.A. Times Remains “Perplexed by the Mild Weather Across the U.S.”

By Joe Romm on Feb 4, 2012 at 3:11 pm

One thing you can say about the Los Angeles Times, they are consistent in their miscoverage of global warming.

On January 27, they committed “journalistic malpractice,” as climatologist Michael Mann tweeted, for omitting any mention of global warming whatsoever in their article seeking to explain why the U.S. “seems to have largely escaped winter.”

On Groundhog day, coincidentally enough, they did it again. Hmm. Maybe this is like the movie and they are just going to keep making the same mistakes over and over and over again…..

As the L.A. Times “explains” in the article:

“It’s mild,” said Pastelok, a meteorologist from AccuWeather, in one of the bigger understatements of the season.

“The departures have been way above normal this season, maybe in a top five or top 10 category,” he said when asked to rank how unusual the winter from the Plains eastward had been in terms of temperatures and lack of snow.

The situation has stymied forecasters, who study previous years’ patterns to predict the future. This year has been unique because even when there have been cold snaps, they have been extremely brief and followed by long, mild stretches.

If only scientists had predicted years ago that spewing billions and billions of tons of heat trapping greenhouse gases into the air would cause more frequent extreme heat waves — ones that covered a bigger area and lasted far longer than before.

And no, confusionists and their enablers, those scientists didn’t say that global warming would be responsible for 100% of all heat waves. But we are now pushing so far beyond the historical norm that we are seeing unprecedented uber-extreme heat waves (see Hansen et al: “Extreme Heat Waves … in Texas and Oklahoma in 2011 and Moscow in 2010 Were ‘Caused’ by Global Warming”).

The good news is that while the L.A. Times remains clueless, NBC news got the story just right — global warming piles the heat on top of whatever natural variability, like La Niña, we see. Here’s their excellent story on the heat wave so unusual, people were “calling it JUNuary”:

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Politics

VIDEO: Mitt Romney And Donald Trump — A Match Made In Heaven

By Jeff Spross on Feb 4, 2012 at 2:00 pm

Donald Trump endorsed Mitt Romney on Thursday in a high-profile ceremony in Las Vegas. And while they’ve had their differences in the past, in many ways, the two have a lot in common. In honor of the occasion, we produced this video documenting the values that Romney and Trump share:

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NEWS FLASH

U.S. ‘Disgusted’ As Russia And China Veto U.N. Resolution On Syria | Amid brutal violence in Syria, Russia and China vetoed a resolution before the 15-member body to support an Arab League plan to end the crisis. Earlier, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave dueling speeches in Munich, Germany. “As a tyrant in Damascus brutalizes his own people, the U.S. and Europe stand shoulder to shoulder…alongside the Arab League, in demanding an end to the bloodshed and a democratic future for Syria,” Clinton said. President Obama also threw his support behind the resolution and, going even farther, ended his statement by saying: “The suffering citizens of Syria must know: we are with you, and the Assad regime must come to an end.” But Russia and China blocked the resolution. U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice, who tweeted that she was “disgusted” by the veto, said on the Council floor: “This intransigence is even more shameful when you consider that at least one of these members” — Russia — “is still delivering weapons to Syria.”

NEWS FLASH

Tens Of Thousands Protest In Russia: ‘Down With The Cold, Down With Putin’ | Tens of thousands of Russian protesters defied sub-zero temperatures in Moscow to keep alive the blossoming protest movement against Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s bid to reassert himself as president and allegedly fraudulent elections. The third such large-scale protest in Moscow — following a December 10 outing and a massive December 24 rally (amid other smaller actions) — made light of temperatures of minus 17 degrees Centigrade (minus 1 Fahrenheit) after the authorities waged a bizarre propaganda campaign to discourage people from going out in the cold. Organizers, though, waged a sometimes light-hearted counter-campaign, and claimed 120,000 people came out to demonstrate (police put the number at 35,000). Their signs read “Down with the cold, down with Putin,” “They froze our democracy” and “We are frozen in solidarity.” Here’s an AP picture of bundled-up protesters run by the New York Times:

Politics

Arizona GOP Lawmaker Wants A State Holiday To Celebrate White People

By Tanya Somanader on Feb 4, 2012 at 8:15 am

Arizona’s unremitting campaign against its Hispanic communities has certainly reached an extreme, with the state GOP initiating a spate of radical anti-immigrant laws, banning Mexican-American and other ethnic studies, and ensuring that Spanish-speakers will never hold elected office. But one lawmaker is intent on turning the party’s xenophobic paranoia into a full-blown caricature.

Reacting to a Democratic colleagues apparently incendiary request to celebrate a Latino American day, State Rep. Cecil Ash (R) declared that he’d support the idea as long as there’s a holiday for white people too. “I’m supportive of this proposition. I just want them to assure me that when we do become in the minority you’ll have a day for us,” he said. Ash was “trying to lighten things up,” but when CBS 5 asked if he was serious about a Caucasian holiday, he offered an unequivocal “yes”:

ASH: Yes, I think it was appropriate. It was appropriate for the mood that was in the House and I think that if and when the Caucasian population becomes a minority, they may want to celebrate the accomplishments and the contributions of the Caucasian population the same way.

You can watch the report here. As CBS 5 notes, some Arizonans were supportive of the idea. “Good idea,” said one woman. “Like they have Cinco de Mayo for Mexicans. We need something for whites.”