ThinkProgress Logo

NEWS FLASH

Bill O’Reilly Apologizes ‘For Being An Idiot’ | Bill O’Reilly predicted the Supreme Court would strike down the Obamacare mandate and, if they didn’t, he’d “apologize for being an idiot.” Tonight, O’Reilly said he wasn’t “really sorry,” but did come through with an apology anyway.

Watch the video, via Media Matters:

Justice

Will Obama Follow Latin America’s Lead And Decriminalize Petty Drug Possession?

By Aviva Shen on Jul 2, 2012 at 6:30 pm

Today in GQ, Marc Ambinder reports on Obama’s second-term plans to tackle the War on Drugs. But Colombia may have already jump-started the process. On Friday, Colombia’s Constitutional Court approved a government proposal decriminalizing possession of small amounts of cocaine and marijuana.

This reform has been in the works for at least a year, when the Supreme Court threw out former President Alvaro Uribe’s draconian drug laws, including a ban on personal recreational use. Now that the government’s proposal has been approved, anyone caught with less than 22 grams of marijuana or one gram of cocaine for personal use may be treated for intoxication but may not be prosecuted or detained.

Colombia also has a bill in the works to legalize drug crops like marijuana, coca and poppy. Since 1961, the U.S. has led the mass herbicide spraying of coca and poppy crops in Colombia. By legalizing the crops, Colombia would almost certainly halt this practice, as Peru did last year, perhaps forcing the U.S. to rethink its tactics.

In the meantime, Obama might look at Colombia’s decriminalization as a model for U.S. policy reform. Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, pointed out how current U.S. drug policy is out of step with the rest of the world:

The United States clearly lags far behind Europe and Latin America in ending the criminalization of drug possession. Momentum for reform is growing with respect to decriminalization of marijuana possession, with Massachusetts reducing penalties in 2008, California in 2010, Connecticut in 2011 and Rhode Island earlier this year. All states, however, treat possession of other illegal drugs as a crime.

The tide is turning rapidly. Last year, a Gallup poll found support for marijuana legalization at a record-high 50 percent. Just a few months ago, New York Governor Anthony Cuomo tried to decriminalize small amounts of marijuana earlier this year, with the blessing of Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the NYPD. Last week, Rahm Emanuel and Chicago’s City Council succeeded in a vote to decriminalize 15 grams or less of pot. Even one of Obama’s top advisers on drug policy recently said that drug addiction should be treated as a public health issue, not a crime. And Colombia, along with other Latin American countries increasingly hostile to the War on Drugs, are not likely to let the issue lie for long.

NEWS FLASH

McConnell: ‘It’s A Lot Harder’ To Undo Obamacare | Republicans have pledged to fully repeal the Affordable Care Act if the party regains control of the Senate and presidency in 2012. But Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is less than confident about the probability of eliminating the law. Speaking to a small group in Elizabethtown, Kentucky on Monday, McConnell admitted, “If you thought it was a good idea for the federal government to go in this direction, I’d say the odds are still on your side. Because it’s a lot harder to undo something than it is to stop it in the first place.” Indeed, Republicans face an uphill battle in undoing the measure.

NEWS FLASH

Regulators Missing Many Wall Street Reform Deadlines, As GOP Cuts Their Budgets | According to a new report, more than one-third of the new rules mandated by the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law have yet to be written. The Securities and Exchange Commission has missed 71 percent of its rule-writing deadlines. At the same time, Congressional Republicans are attempting to cuts the budgets of Wall Street regulators, even though the Republican House Financial Services Committee Chairman admitted the regulators don’t have enough resources to do their jobs. President Obama has threatened to veto efforts to defund Wall Street reform.

Health

Mitt Romney vs The GOP: Is The Mandate A Tax?

By Jeff Spross on Jul 2, 2012 at 5:54 pm

Last week, the Supreme Court ruled that the mandate in President Obama’s health care reform functions as a tax, making it constitutional under the federal government’s taxing power. Republicans and conservative media figures immediately jumped on this point, accusing the Obama administration of a massive tax hike. This puts Mitt Romney, the GOP’s presidential candidate, in an awkward spot. He signed precisely the same kind of mandate into law in a health care reform bill in Massachusetts, and his top campaign adviser Eric Fehrnstrom has explicitly insisted that mandate was not a tax.

ThinkProgress has the video. Watch it:

Climate Progress

We Are All ‘Climate Test Dummies’ Now, Providing Data On How Humans Respond To Extreme Weather

By Joe Romm on Jul 2, 2012 at 5:41 pm

crashtestdummy_1293127881We have turned ourselves into test subjects for the single most terrifying “crash” the world will ever know — the crash of a livable climate.

Since we have done so wittingly, and continue blissfully subjecting ourselves to the impending climate crash without making any serious effort to stop it in spite of the gravest warnings from the most credible sources, that makes us little better than crash test dummies:

Crash test dummies are full-scale anthropomorphic test devices (ATD) that simulate the dimensions, weight proportions and articulation of the human body, and are usually instrumented to record data about … velocity of impact, crushing force, bending, folding, or torque of the body, and deceleration rates during a collision for use in crash tests…. Crash test dummies remain indispensable in the development of … all types of vehicles….

I offer this definition of the other CTDs and ATDs:

“Climate test dummies are full-scale anthropocene test dummies (ATDs) that simulate exactly the dimensions, weight proportions and articulation of the human body, and usually record or complain about the impact of off-the-charts heat, rainfall, floods, snow, fire, dust or drought during a collision with extreme weather for use in climate tests. Or, rather, climate test, because we only get one and unlike cars we don’t get to go back and redesign the planet or the energy system to avoid the otherwise easily preventable suffering.”

If you want to know how humans respond to 115° temperature, you don’t have to wait a few decades — just drop by Hill City, Kansas:

“Hell, it’s the hottest place on earth,” Allen Trexler, an 81-year-old farmer who introduced himself as Old Man Trexler….

On Saturday, Mr. Trexler loaded three heifers into a maroon trailer and trundled them 70 miles to Oakley to sell them.

“We’re just going to have to sell,” said his son Brad, 58. “There’s no way out. Every time they take a bite of that grass, it’s gone. It doesn’t come back. There’s nothing to farm right now. Nothing will grow.”

… “We’ve still got two more months of this crap,” [another farmer] said.

I know you’re thinking that we really didn’t have to subject ourselves to all this misery in order to figure out how unpleasant and self-destructive it is. But you’re “thinking” like some sort of homo sapiens sapiens. Whereas CTDs must at least drop one of those “wise” appellations and make the other one provisional, as in homo “sapiens.”

If you want to know how humans respond to a super-charged derecho that knocks out power to millions during the worst June heat wave on record — “the largest non-hurricane-related power outages in Virginia’s history and more damage in the Midwest than Hurricane Ike in 2008″ – come to DC! Or wait a few years, I’m sure something similar will happen in your area.

Radar sequence of derecho thunderstorm complex. Storm traveled about 600 miles in 10 hours at an average speed of 60 mph. (Storm Prediction Center)

Capital Weather Gang meteorologist Jason Samenow has a good article (source of above image), “Derecho: Behind Washington, D.C.’s destructive thunderstorm outbreak, June 29, 2012.” He explains how the record smashing heatwave fueled the superstorm, which leads him to ponder the climate connection:

Read more

LGBT

Anderson Cooper’s Coming Out Reminds How Society Still Confuses ‘Sexuality’ With ‘Sex Life’

By Zack Ford on Jul 2, 2012 at 5:28 pm

It was no secret that George Washington was straight, at least as evidenced by having been married to a woman — whom most Americans can even name. The same could at least be superficially assumed for 43 of the 44 presidents. James Buchanan was a bachelor and is assumed by many to have been gay, and plenty of rumors persist about the actual sexual orientation of other presidents (including Washington). But the important lesson is that disclosing one’s heterosexuality has never been considered a violation of anyone’s privacy.

Today, Anderson Cooper disclosed publicly for the first time that he is gay. It wasn’t a particular surprise, because Cooper has lived in a so-called “glass closet.” He never denied that he was gay, and he’s been photographed with his boyfriend (who owns a gay bar) on numerous occasions at public events. Still, by taking the important step of coming out, Cooper can now be even more of a role model to LGBT youth and help people across the country become just a bit more familiar with people who are gay.

The Guardian is running debating stories today about the lead-up to Cooper’s admission: Was Cooper bullied to come out or was pressuring him to do so important for combating anti-gay stigma? The problem with the question is that it has a faulty premise — or at least it should. Sexual orientation is a basic dimension of a person’s identity, just like sex or race. In the absence of homophobia, a same-sex orientation ought not warrant any more “privacy” than an opposite-sex orientation. The problem is that for as long as the current understanding of homosexuality has been visible in society (a little more than a century), anti-gay activists have insisted that it be identified solely by behavior.

The reason Cooper and others might still feel that coming out is revealing too much of their “personal life” is because anti-gay stigma depends on reinforcing the “ick” factor. When people acknowledge that they are gay or lesbian, they are immediately identified by (and judged for) who they have sex with — and inherently how. The same is surprisingly untrue of heterosexuals, who often even produce proof of their sexual deeds in the form of children. As acceptance for the LGBT community continues to grow at its breakneck pace, this distinction should disappear. Gay people should no more be identified by their sexual behavior than anybody else.

As a result of societal progress already made, Cooper will likely not face any negative consequences from finally stepping out of that glass closet. The anti-gay people who attack everything gay will attack — and they have — but their impact is negligible. The excited media reaction today reminds us how prolific Harvey Milk was when he insisted that “every gay person must come out” over 30 years ago. Coming out as gay isn’t a disclosure of our personal lives or sex lives; it’s an admission that we as gay people have lives at all.

NEWS FLASH

Allen West: Obama Would ‘Rather You Be His Slave’ | At a campaign event on Sunday in Port Saint Lucie, Florida, Rep. Allen West (R-FL) told voters President Obama wanted to enslave them with government programs. ”He does not want you to have the self-esteem of getting up and earning and having that title of American. He’d rather you be his slave,” West said, according to WPTV. This is hardly West’s first reference to slavery; back in February he called government programs “the most insidious form of slavery.” In August 2011, he referred to himself as a “modern-day Harriet Tubman, to kind of lead people on the Underground Railroad, away from that plantation into a sense of sensibility.” Watch it:

Security

Mexico’s Election Provides Opportunity For Renewed U.S. Relationship

By Guest Blogger on Jul 2, 2012 at 5:15 pm

By Michael Werz

Enrique Peña Nieto

Yesterday’s Mexican presidential elections mark the culmination of a tremendous comeback-story. Ousted after over seven decades in power in 2000, the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, is back in control of “Los Pinos” and the Mexican government, determined to restore its image and broaden Mexico’s relationship with the United States.

The PRI had been a symbol of corporatism and entrenchment for decades, famously called the “perfect dictatorship,” for its grip of the Mexican economy and political stage. But the party has reinvented itself in recent years, eschewing its autocratic past and renouncing the party “dinosaurs” despised by many Mexicans. The PRI recorded a narrow victory with 38 percent of the vote on Sunday through a young candidate, Enrique Peña Nieto, who had few ties to the old regime. The closer-than-expected result at the polls failed to give the PRI the strong electoral mandate and Congressional majority for which it had hoped, meaning Peña Nieto’s first term will be a time for cooperation, conciliation, and pragmatic politics. President-elect Peña Nieto promised as much in his unthreatening campaign, and his legacy will be measured against this pledge and his ability to check the older factions within the PRI.

The election offers reason for cautious optimism; it was free, fair, and enjoyed over 62 percent voter participation. The result showcases Mexico’s tremendous progress implementing democratic procedures, which have made it one of the most transparent electoral processes in the Hemisphere despite the ongoing violence surrounding the war on drugs.

The election also provides an opportunity for the next American administration. The central problem facing U.S.-Mexican relations is the large gap that remains in U.S. public perceptions of Mexico, which are too often a breathtakingly simplistic focus on drugs, migration, and an outdated belief in building walls. This narrow perspective ignores the two countries’ interdependence and important changes in Mexican society.

Read more

Climate Progress

What The Press Isn’t Telling You About Abound Solar

By Climate Guest Blogger on Jul 2, 2012 at 5:08 pm

by Shauna Theel, via Media Matters

Following the announced bankruptcy of Abound Solar, which borrowed about $70 million against a $400 million loan guarantee from the Department of Energy, the Associated Press is giving oxygen to attacks from Republicans saying the clean energy program shows the Obama administration “wasting taxpayer dollars.” While passing along GOP talking points, AP forgot to report these key facts:

1. Abound Solar was one of the few higher-risk loan guarantees. Over 87 percent of the funds for the Department of Energy’s 1705 loan guarantee program went to low-risk power generation projects, which are required to secure contracts with power purchasers before receiving a loan guarantee, virtually eliminating the risk of default. Like Solyndra, Abound Solar built solar panels and struggled to compete with Chinese manufacturers.

2. Congress set aside $2.47 billion to cover defaults. For a loan guarantee, the DOE is only on the hook if the company defaults on the loan, and the DOE is not able to recover the funds during the bankruptcy process. Even if all of the higher-risk (non-generation) projects defaulted on the full amount of their loan guarantees and “no assets were to be recovered, the DOE would still have $446 million remaining to cover additional project losses,” according to a Bloomberg Government analysis. Here is a chart comparing the amount that Congress budgeted for the 1705 program versus the current losses:

Current losses were measured as $9 million for Beacon Power, $535 million for Solyndra and $60 million for Abound Solar. *Graphic has been updated.

Read more

Older

Switch to Mobile
ThinkProgress Signup Overlay Skip and Continue to ThinkProgress Skip and Continue to ThinkProgress

Sign Up