After two female legislators were banned from the Michigan House floor last week after saying “vagina” during a debate about an anti-abortion measure, a massive crowd has gathered at the state capitol for a reading of “The Vagina Monologues.” There are an estimated 5,000 people in attendance.
Picture via @eclectablog:
NEWS FLASH
BREAKING: Obama Would Veto Pro-Mercury Pollution Resolution | The White House has threatened to veto a Congressional Review Act repeal of the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, if S.J. Res. 37 is presented to President Obama. Today, the Executive Office of the President released a statement disapproving of Sen. Inhofe’s (R-OK) resolution that would prevent the EPA from limiting mercury and other air toxins from power plants. Inhofe’s bill would block the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards that protect children, seniors, the infirm, and everyone else from air pollutants from air pollution such as mercury and arsenic that are emitted from coal-burning power plants. The standards “will prevent as many as 11,000 avoidable premature deaths and 4,700 heart attacks, annually. The annual value of these health benefits alone is estimated to be as much as $90 billion.” The veto threat makes it easier for moderate Democrats and Republicans to oppose Inhofe’s resolution because they can argue that S.J. Res 37 will never become law, so its futile debate and vote on it.
– By Matt Kasper
Two years after Senate Republicans defeated the bipartisan DREAM Act by claiming that Congress must “secure the borders first,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) floated the idea of introducing a GOP alternative to DREAM. Rubio spent three months talking up the concept on cable news, but failed to offer a bill before President Obama announced an administrative directive to protect DREAM Act-eligible students from deportation.
In unveiling the initiative on Friday, Obama cited Congress’ inability to “fix our broken immigration system” as a reason for issuing the Department of Homeland Security directive. What he didn’t expect, however, is that Republicans would respond to the news by reinforcing his message and abandoning their reform efforts.
Republicans accused Obama of politicizing immigration and the party’s new spokesperson on the issue announced that he is closing shop on any efforts to tackle the immigration question. Rubio told the Wall Street Journal on Monday that he thinks Obama’s announcement “sets back our efforts to arrive at a balanced and responsible approach to this issue. It poisons the well. It leads to mistrust.”
But the truth is that Republicans had never seriously considered comprehensive immigration reform or any new solutions for helping young people stay in the country:
– House Judiciary Committee Chairman Refused To Hold DREAM Act Hearing: Even if Rubio had introduced a bill and if the Senate had approved it, a version of the DREAM Act would have immediately stalled in the House because of Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX). The congressman chairs the Judiciary Committee and said he would not hold a hearing on the DREAM Act, which he called an “American nightmare.”
– Original Republican Sponsor Of DREAM Act Didn’t Vote For It In 2010: In 2003, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) sponsored the DREAM Act when it was first introduced. But when the Senate voted on a more conservative version of the bill in 2010, Hatch skipped the vote and dismissed it as a “cynical exercise in political charades” by Senate Democrats.
– Republican Claimed Democrats Used DREAM Act To Make Republicans ‘Look Bad’: After 41 mostly Republican senators stopped the DREAM Act from passing in 2010, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) claimed that Democrats had pushed the DREAM Act to hurt the GOP’s reputation among Latinos. The bill “passed without the ability to amend to try to make Republicans look bad with Hispanics,” he said. But Graham ignored the number of Republican senators from Latino-heavy states who previously supported the DREAM Act and voted against in 2010, and he failed to mention his own floor comments telling young undocumented immigrants who visited his office that they were “wasting their time.”
Republicans can claim that President Obama went around Congress to give protection to undocumented students, but it was the failure of congressional Republicans that forced him to act.
At a recent event, Republican Wisconsin U.S. Senate candidate Eric Hovde said that he is exasperated with media coverage of “sad personal stories” about Americans who have been affected by the Great Recession. Evidently tired of reading about low-income or homeless individuals unable to access basic needs, Hovde expressed his disdain for such “sob stories,” while pointing to a reporter:
I see a reporter here. I just pray that you start writing about these issues. I just pray. Stop always writing about, ‘Oh, the person couldn’t get, you know, their food stamps or this or that.’ You know, I saw something the other day — it’s like, another sob story, and I’m like, ‘But what about what’s happening to the country and the country as a whole?’ That’s going to devastate everybody.
Watch it (relevant clip begins at 13:47):
According to Hovde, more important issues include lowering the corporate tax rate and the national deficit. Hovde’s comments come after a May 2011 study conducted by the National Journal, which reviewed how often the words “unemployment” or “deficit” appeared in the nation’s five largest newspapers. The findings clearly show that the deficit was covered significantly more than the unemployment in major American news outlets.
A Wisconsin hedge fund manager and businessman, Eric Hovde is one of four candidates looking for the GOP nomination for the state’s U.S. Senate seat. The winner would run against Democratic candidate Rep. Tammy Baldwin. But perhaps Hovde simply doesn’t want the media to write about food stamps because then people might notice that Republicans are trying to cut them. (HT: Amanda Terkel)
Even though college students have grown up with the internet, a new study finds that the majority of them don’t know how to use it to locate accurate information about emergency contraception such as Plan B.
The Northwestern University study asked first year students to search online to find a solution for a hypothetical scenario: “You are at home in the middle of summer. A friend calls you frantically on a Friday at midnight. The condom broke while she was with her boyfriend. What can she do to prevent pregnancy? Remember, neither of you is on campus. She lives in South Bend, Indiana.” Although two-thirds of participants concluded that their friend should seek emergency contraception, just 40 percent were able to correctly identify that their friend could purchase Plan B over the counter at a pharmacy.
Eszter Hargittai, the lead author of the study, explained that the study points to the obvious fact that college students need to be taught about contraception before they find themselves in a situation that requires them to rely on their knowledge about it:
HARGITTAI: These results suggest that despite their highly wired lifestyles, many young adults do not have the necessary skills to navigate the vast amounts of information available online with expertise. [...] Students who did not seem to have prior knowledge of emergency contraception often used a variant of the search term ‘prevent pregnancy’ and did not do a very good job at locating information about emergency contraception. Those who already knew the answer or had some knowledge came up with the search terms ‘the morning after pill’ or the drug ‘Plan B’ and did a better job of finding information.
Respondents’ incorrect answers included “wait it out,” “wash genitals,” “adoption,” “RU-486,” “ascorbic acid,” visiting a gynecologist in an incorrect locale, taking a pregnancy test, and purchasing another condom.
Emergency contraception, also known as the morning-after pill, is restricted for those under 17 years old, but remains available without a prescription to everyone over 17. Assuming the average college student is well beyond this threshold, there is no reason they shouldn’t be fully educated about the range of contraceptive methods available to them. However, because of the prevalence of abstinence-only education programs across the nation, many young adults are woefully under-educated about birth control. When it comes to both internet search engines and reproductive health, young adults need to know how to effectively use all the tools at their disposal.
Right?
I also think it’s fascinating that we just can’t get over Bill Clinton’s affair. There were, after all, other things that happened during his presidency that resonate today much more than his extramarital dalliances and the resulting impeachment trial, including an attempt to reform the health care system, the patchy bridge of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, or the attempts to take out Osama bin Laden. But no, what we’re fascinated by is the affair.
This is a review of The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches From the Front Lines by Michael Mann.
by Chris Mooney, via Desmogblog
I first became familiar with the name Michael Mann in the year 2003. I was working on what would become my book The Republican War on Science, and had learned of two related events: The controversy over the Soon and Baliunas paper in Climate Research, purporting to refute Mann and his colleagues’ famous 1998 “hockey stick” study; and a congressional hearing convened by Senator James Inhofe, at which Mann testified. Inhofe tried to wheel out the Soon and Baliunas work as if they’d dealt some sort of killer blow against climate science. In fact, just before the hearing, several editors of Climate Research had resigned over the paper.
I went on to stand up for Mann, and his work, in Republican War. Little did I know, at the time, that he himself would become the leading defender of his scientific field against political attacks.
Recently, Mann came out with a new book about his travails entitled The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches From the Front Lines, detailing his decade long battle against political attacks and misrepresentations. The response has been all too predictable. For months, conservatives have been giving it one star reviews on Amazon.com, some of which suggest that they probably haven’t read it.
What is most fascinating to me is that the science the right is attacking Mann over—principally, the 1998 hockey stick study and its 1999 extension, as prominently exhibited in 2001 by the IPCC—is relatively old news. Indeed, and as Mann himself explains in the book, “attacks against the hockey stick …were not really about the work itself.” That work has been supported by other researchers—there is now a veritable “hockey team,” Mann notes—and anyways, the case for human caused global warming never depended on the validity of the hockey stick alone. It was always just one part of a far broader body of evidence.
Thus, conservatives who fixated on Mann, and continue to do so, tell us through their own actions that this is not really about scientific inquiry at all. If it was, then they’d be doing something quite different from giving Mann one star Amazon reviews.
But of course, climate researchers have been making observations like these for years. It hasn’t mattered nearly as much as it should, though, because they’ve often lacked the communication skills to get their point across. If anything, their scientific training has tended to hobble them in a brass knuckles fight such as this one. And that, to me, is where Mann’s new book matters the most: It shows that he has developed the communication skills to match his unquestionable scientific talent—and moreover, that he has done so because the right forced him to.
That’s why Mann is such an inspiring example for all who care about the climate issue—and why his book is required reading. From the early “hockey stick” battles all the way up through “ClimateGate” and the Ken Cuccinelli inquiry, Mann didn’t give an inch. He didn’t back down; to the contrary, he showed what toughness actually means. And in the process, from the founding of RealClimate.org in 2004 up through the publication of this book, he evolved into a passionate communicator and advocate. Having had him on my podcast Point of Inquiry and heard him lecture, I can assure you that many scientists should take a lesson from him. Read more
NEWS FLASH
Anti-Austerity Parties Won Majority Of Votes In Greek Elections | Even though the New Democracy party won a plurality of votes in yesterday’s Greek parliamentary elections, and will attempt to form a government that sticks to austerity measures demanded of Greece in return for a financial rescue, anti-austerity parties actually secured a majority of the votes cast, winning 52 percent. Slate’s Matt Yglesias argues that New Democracy’s win amounts to a “booby prize,” as the party will be “presiding over a combination of foreign domination of Greek policymaking and mass unemployment,” leaving the main opposition party, Syriza, well situated for future elections.
Abdul Awkal with his attorney David Singleton
All the experts who testified agree that Abdul Awkal suffers from a severe mental illness: schizoaffective disorder, depressive type–a form of psychosis. This diagnosis was supported by the defendant’s repeated statements, made in various contexts and over more than a decade, claiming that he had provided information to the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the White House, and the presidential campaign of John Kerry and John Edwards, offering advice as to the conduct of the fight against Osama bin Laden and Al-Quaeda and the prosecution of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and that he would receive coded replies via news articles in U.S.A. Today and other media sources. All the experts further noted a depressive component to that diagnosis. . . .
Based upon an exhaustive review of all the evidence before it, including the evaluations of five acknowledged expert mental-health professionals, the Court is forced to conclude that, as a result of severe and persistent mental disease (schizoaffective disorder, depressive type), Abdul Awkal presently lacks the capacity to form a rational understanding as to the reason the state intends to execute him on June 20, 2012. Accordingly, . . . Abdul Awkal may not be executed unless and until he has been restored to competency.
Despite this order, Awkal could still be killed should he eventually become more lucid. Indeed, the order suggests that he could possibly be “subjected to forced medication for the purpose of restoring him to competency to be executed.” Moreover, it concludes that Awkal’s execution will not be stayed until after the state supreme court signs off on a stay — although the state is not opposing Awkal’s request for the state supremes to do so.
There’s no good reason why Awkal should be thrust into this kind of limbo. The Constitution forbids executions of juvenile offenders and the mentally retarded because diminished mental capacity makes it harder for an offender “to understand and process information, to learn from experience, to engage in logical reasoning, or to control impulses—that also make it less likely that they can process the information of the possibility of execution as a penalty and, as a result, control their conduct based upon that information.” The same rationale should also apply to people like Abdul Awkal.
NEWS FLASH
Eagle Scout Renounces Award Over LGBT Ban | Twelve years ago, a group called Scouting for All — dedicated to pushing Boy Scouts of America (BSA) to end its discriminatory policies — invited former Eagle Scouts to turn in their badges in protest. More than 60 did so. Now, with the recent controversy over the removal Ohio mom from her position as a Cub Scout leader because she is a lesbian and the BSA’s announcement it will consider eliminating its ban on openly gay Scouts and leaders, another former Eagle Scout has joined in the effort. This weekend, Naka Nathaniel announced on in a Daily Beast editorial and an MSNBC interview that he has renounced his Eagle Scout award. Nathaniel explained “I hope that the national organization does the right thing and strikes down its discriminatory positions. Until that happens, I can’t soar with the Eagles. Instead, I skulk in shame with my fellow Eagles who haven’t stood up for what’s right.”
Watch the video:
[Full disclosure: the author of this post was one of the more than 60 Eagle Scouts who returned his Eagle Scout award, in 2000.]
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