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Justice

Paul Ryan’s Still Carrying Todd Akin’s Mantle, Will Co-Sponsor New Fetal ‘Personhood’ Bill

By Ian Millhiser on Jan 10, 2013 at 5:30 pm

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) with former Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO)

Long before Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) convinced most of the House Republican caucus to vote to phase out Medicare, and long before former Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO) ended his political career by claiming “legitimate rape” is a form of contraception, the two men were partners in pushing anti-woman legislation. Ryan and Akin were original co-sponsors of the so-called “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act,” a bill which, among other things, introduced the nation to the term “forcible rape.” And they partnered on a so-called “personhood” bill that would criminalize all abortions.

Todd Akin’s no longer an elected official, but Paul Ryan is still carrying Akin’s mantle in the new Congress:

Despite the deep unpopularity of fetal personhood bills in 2012, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) has again decided to cosponsor the Sanctity of Human Life Act, a bill that gives full legal rights to human zygotes from the moment of fertilization.

Ryan, who reportedly has 2016 presidential ambitions, had to de-emphasize his opposition to abortion without exceptions during the 2012 election to align his position with presidential candidate Mitt Romney. But this year, Ryan has been tapped as a keynote speaker for the anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony List’s sixth annual Campaign for Life Gala, and he is re-upping his support for the most extreme anti-abortion legislation in the country.

The personhood bill, first introduced in 2011 by Rep. Paul Broun (R-Ga.) and reintroduced by Broun last week, specifies that a “one-celled human embryo,” even before it implants in the uterus to create a pregnancy, should be granted “all the legal and constitutional attributes and privileges of personhood.” Similar legislation has been rejected by voters in multiple states, including the socially conservative Mississippi, because legal experts have pointed out that it could outlaw some forms of birth control and in vitro fertilization as well as criminalize abortion at all stages.

In the previous Congress, a total of 65 members of the House joined Akin and Ryan in co-sponsoring this bill.

LGBT

Right Wing Goes Crazy After Anti-Gay Pastor Withdraws

By Josh Israel on Jan 10, 2013 at 5:30 pm

Pastor Louie Giglio

Pastor Louie Giglio

A chorus of right-wing leaders Thursday decried the withdrawal of Pastor Louie Giglio from President Obama’s second inauguration ceremony, suggesting a left-wing conspiracy to force him off of the program. His withdrawal came a day after ThinkProgress exclusively reported that in the 1990s, Giglio had given a lengthy sermon in which he advocated for dangerous “ex-gay” therapy for gay and lesbian people, referenced a biblical passage often interpreted to require gay people be executed, and impelled Christians to “firmly respond to the aggressive agenda” and prevent the “homosexual lifestyle” from becoming accepted in society.

Their outraged comments included:

  • “[T]he administration’s inclusivity only goes so far. It’s not inclusive of those who disagree with them.” [Richard Land, Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission]
  • “This president appears determined to stir division and create two Americas: One America that holds to a biblical view of sexuality and another that offers tolerance so long as you embrace its redefined view of sexuality.” [Tony Perkins, Family Research Council]
  • “It is the ultimate hypocrisy for the Obama administration to pretend it supports diversity and yet denounces anyone who dares to disagree with its radical homosexual agenda. Rev. Giglio’s comments about homosexuality from more than a decade ago were not hateful but represent the historical teachings of the world’s three major religions. Apparently the Obama administration’s definition of tolerance is only broad enough to include its own views.” [Robert Jeffress, First Baptist Church, Dallas, Texas]
  • “The intolerant Left claims another scalp.” [Kirsten Powers, Fox News political analyst]
  • “Louis Giglio, a popular orthodox evangelical pastor whose views are mainstream Christian cannot pray the Inaugural benediction.” [Erick Erickson, RedState]
  • “The bully bigots at Big Gay win huge victory for fascistic intolerance.” [Bryan Fischer, American Family Association radio host]

Watch Fischer’s rant on his radio show:

These critics seem not to understand that respecting different opinions does not require giving a platform and a microphone to those whose promote discrimination and division. Though Pastor Giglio is completely free to believe as he chooses and to preach the harmful message of “pray away the gay” therapy, a public ceremony like the presidential inauguration is not the place for him to do so.

Economy

Moving In The Right Direction: Ratio Of Unemployed Workers To Job Openings Hits Four-Year Low

By Pat Garofalo on Jan 10, 2013 at 5:15 pm

Dealing yet another blow to the theory that “uncertainty” because of the so-called “fiscal cliff” was holding back the economic recovery, the ratio of unemployed workers to job openings hit a four-year low in December, according to the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. There are 3.3 unemployed workers for every available job — the lowest ratio since November 2008 — down from a high of 6.7 to 1 in July 2009. Compared to November, “employers laid off 17,000 fewer workers than in October, and posted 11,000 more job openings. Some 46,000 more workers quit their jobs — a sign they see the job market as improving.” The economy created 155,000 jobs in December, while hourly earnings also rose.

Health

Young Evangelicals Slowly Shifting Away From Traditional Abstinence-Only, Anti-Contraception Views

By Amanda Peterson Beadle on Jan 10, 2013 at 5:15 pm

After the failure of abstinence-only education policies, evangelical leaders and institutions have begun to consider promoting preventative measures to combat the country’s rates of unintended pregnancy and abortion. The National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) sparked controversy when it accepted a grant from the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, but the organization defended its decision by saying it is concerned about the abortion rate in the evangelical community. And a wider range of evangelical leaders are beginning to concede that contraception is “a valuable tool in the abortion reduction toolkit.”

And the shift to embrace more comprehensive education that includes forms of contraception may actually be part of a larger shift among younger evangelicals, according to BuzzFeed:

A study released in December by the National Association of Evangelicals found that 44% of unmarried 18-29-year-old evangelicals had been sexually active — but the study defined “evangelical” as someone who attends church at least monthly, believes Jesus Christ is the only path to salvation, and believes the Bible “is accurate in all that it teaches,” requirements that may leave out some who still consider themselves part of the group. Another study puts the figure at 80 percent. And a recent poll found that 44% of 18-29-year-old evangelicals favor same-sex marriage, lower than the national figure but much higher than their elders.

Jonathan Merritt, author of A Faith of Our Own: Following Jesus Beyond the Culture Wars, sees a shift from an older ideal of virginity — where “you either had it or you didn’t” — to a new ethic of purity which acknowledges that lapses may happen. And he sees a bigger change afoot: “The last generation was very focused on personal holiness. This generation also focuses on the outward expressions of the faith.”

In addition to evolving opinions about contraception and sex before marriage, the increasing number of young evangelical Christians who support marriage equality lines up with other polls showing that most people who say they are religious, including Catholics and mainline Christians, also back marriage equality.

And this is situated within a larger shift away from stringently abstinence-only policies. Even deeply conservative states like Alabama and Mississippi that have opposed comprehensive sexual health instruction for decades are showing some signs of progress in this area.

LGBT

Obama Endorses Rhode Island Marriage Equality As Governor Rebuffs Proposed Referendum

By Zack Ford on Jan 10, 2013 at 4:54 pm

Today, President Obama endorsed legislative efforts to pass marriage equality in the state of Rhode Island. White House spokesperson Shin Inouye provided the following statement to the Washington Blade:

INOUYE: While the President does not weigh in on every measure being considered by the states, he believes all couples should be treated fairly and equally, with dignity and respect. As he has said, his personal view is that it’s wrong to prevent couples who are in loving, committed relationships, and want to marry, from doing so.

Obama similarly expressed support for marriage equality legislation in Illinois last month.

In addition to the House and Senate bills to pass marriage equality in Rhode Island, state Sen. Frank Ciccone (D) plans to introduce a bill to put the question to a voter referendum. This option would lead to expensive campaigns that damage the mental health of the state’s LGBT community. As such, Gov. Lincoln Chafee (I) has said that he would veto a referendum bill because he believes lawmakers are elected to make such decisions.

Recognizing that the state’s civil unions were a “complete failure,” Chafee issued an executive order last May requiring state agencies to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states. An October poll showed that 56 percent of Rhode Island voters support marriage equality.

Climate Progress

Video And Charts Make Clear The Planet Is Still Warming — And There’s Only One Way To Stop It

By Joe Romm on Jan 10, 2013 at 4:30 pm

The planet just keeps warming, as NASA data makes clear (via Tamino).

Perhaps you thought that the whole “planet isn’t warming” meme was killed by record-smashing Arctic ice loss and off-the-charts heat waves and extreme weather. Maybe you thought the deniers would move on to another strategy after last summer’s bombshell Koch-funded study. After all, it found ”global warming is real,” “on the high end” and “essentially all” due to carbon pollution.

Sadly, the disinformers have a strategic single-mindedness that would make a hedgehog jealous. What has set them rolling up into a spiny ball this time is the UK Met Office, which recently revised its near-term temperature prediction (through 2017) down slightly. If that new projection comes true (which I doubt), then the planet’s apparent warming compared to the super El-Nino year of 1998 will be modest.

I say apparent warming because the overwhelming majority of manmade warming goes into the oceans, which just keep warming (see charts below) — and because even the land-based temperature clearly show the warming trend continued unabated. Skeptical Science has an excellent new video on this last point:

[O]nce the short-term warming and cooling influences of volcanic eruptions, solar activity, and El Niño and La Niña events are statistically removed from the temperature record, there is no evidence of a change in the rate of greenhouse warming. This replicates the result of a study by Foster and Rahmstorf (2011) under slightly different assumptions.

The human contribution to global warming over the last 16 years is essentially the same as during the prior 16 years. Human-caused greenhouse warming, while partially hidden by natural variations, has continued in line with model projections. Unless greenhouse gas emissions are brought under control, we will see faster warming in the future.

I’ll repeat the analogy (from my previous debunking of this myth) to the notion it hasn’t warmed from the El-Nino-fueled summer of 1997 through the La-Nina-cooled summer of 2012. Imagine your kid got 11 B’s and 1 A+ in 9th grade science class. Then, in 10th grade science, she gets 9 A’s and 2 A+’s — but her last grade was “just” an A. Would you say she is doing better in science class or worse in science class? (Dan Braganca did a nice charticle on that analogy.)

You can’t slow global warming with either cherry-picking or hand-waving (see “The Radiative Forcing of the CO2 Humans Have Put in the Air Equals 1 Million Hiroshima Bombs a Day“). You need to rapidly deploy carbon-free energy to do that  (see Study: We’re Headed To 11°F Warming And Even 7°F Requires “Nearly Quadrupling The Current Rate Of Decarbonisation“).

Read more

Justice

Firearms Training CEO: If Gun Violence Prevention Goes ‘One Inch Further, I’m Going To Start Killing People’

By Rebecca Leber on Jan 10, 2013 at 4:20 pm

Tactical Response CEO James Yeager

Pro-gun extremists have reached hysterics since reports that Vice President Joe Biden’s task force will consider executive orders to combat gun violence. The CEO of Tennessee-based Tactical Response, a firearms training company, delivered threats on YouTube that White House action would “spark a civil war.” CEO James Yeager said if gun violence prevention goes any further he would “start killing people”:

I’m telling you that if that happens, it’s going to spark a civil war, and I’ll be glad to fire the first shot. I’m not putting up with it. You shouldn’t put up with it. And I need all you patriots to start thinking about what you’re going to do, load your damn mags, make sure your rifle’s clean, pack a backpack with some food in it and get ready to fight. I’m not fucking putting up with this. I’m not letting my country be ruled by a dictator. I’m not letting anybody take my guns! If it goes one inch further, I’m going to start killing people.

The video was replaced with an edited version, but Raw Story has the original:

The Drudge Report only fed conservative outrage yesterday by comparing President Obama to Hitler, and Stalin. And NRA board member Ted Nugent claimed gun owners are the true victims, likening them to civil rights hero Rosa Parks.

The reality is no one will take away Yeager’s guns. Any executive order would likely strengthen background checks, a safety measure most gun owners endorse. A ban on assault weapons and the gun show loophole would require congressional action.

Update

TPM reports that Yeager’s training credentials are fraudulent. “I have confirmed with our Handgun Unit that Mr. Yeager is not a Department of Safety and Homeland Security certified handgun instructor and Tactical Response is not a department certified school,” a DHS spokesperson told them.

Climate Progress

Climate-Informed Development: How To Rebuild In A Warming World

By Climate Guest Blogger on Jan 10, 2013 at 3:30 pm

by Mindy Lubber

“Rebuild smarter.” That’s the constant refrain in the wake of Superstorm Sandy, as New York, New Jersey and Connecticut work to repair the devastation to seaside communities, businesses and the infrastructure that ties them together.

Policymakers and thought-leaders at the local, regional and national level are warning that plans to rebuild must take into account the likelihood that more, and stronger, storms like Sandy will hit again – whether on the East Coast, Gulf Coast or West Coast – in the not-too-distant future.

“You don’t have to be a believer in climate change to understand the dangers from extreme weather are already here,” said New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg at a recent press conference. “Whether or not one storm is related to climate change or is not, we have to manage for risks, and we have to be able to better defend ourselves against extreme weather and natural disasters.”

Insurers, who absorbed an estimated $25 billion in losses from Sandy, are sounding the alarm, too.

“We need to figure out how to close this climate resiliency gap,” Zurich Financial Services’s Lindene Patton said, referring to outdated infrastructure ill equipped for higher sea levels and bigger storm surges. “What we have today is a series of physical assets which are becoming less and less appropriate given the changing weather patterns that we face. You don’t want to assume something’s going to last 30 years only to have it blown away in 10.”

Rebuilding smarter means finding ways to keep people, and vital infrastructure, out of harm’s way. It means strengthening power systems with smarter designs to prevent the multi-day outages that left hundreds of thousands in the cold and dark for days following the storm. It means revitalizing the natural systems, such as creating wetlands, which once helped protect our shores from storm surges and flooding.

But it won’t happen quickly. By some estimates, it may take ten years, and tens of billions of dollars, before hard-hit areas like the Jersey Shore start to resemble their pre-Sandy outlines. Additional resiliency measures for thwarting more powerful storms will cost exponentially more. (One example of this: Consolidated Edison says it would cost $40 billion to put its electric lines underground.) One thing is certain: no one jurisdiction can do it alone. Extreme events like superstorms and super-droughts cross all boundaries, political and geographic. And solutions, both the financial costs and necessary policies, must cross those boundaries as well.

Read more

LGBT

Five People Of Faith Who Can Replace Louie Giglio For The Inaugural Benediction

By Guest Blogger on Jan 10, 2013 at 3:25 pm

Our guest blogger is Jack Jenkins, Writer and Researcher for the Center for American Progress Faith and Progressive Policy Initiative.

Bishop Minerva Carcaño

Now that Rev. Louis Giglio, the anti-LGBT pastor who had been announced to perform the benediction at President Obama’s second inauguration, has withdrawn from the official program, inauguration planners will be looking for someone else to fill his slot in the program.

Here are five progressive people of faith who could replace Giglio and deliver the benediction at the inauguration:

1. Bishop Minerva G. Carcaño – A bishop in the United Methodist Church, Carcaño has a long history of advocating for comprehensive immigration reform in the United States. She has also been a supporter of LGBT rights within the Methodist church, and publicly opposed Arizona Proposition 107 (2006), a bill that sought to ban gay marriage in the state.

2. Rev. Otis Moss III – Pastor of Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ, Rev. Moss is an ordained minister within both the Progressive National Baptist Convention and the United Church of Christ. He is an award-winning preacher and a strong advocate for reaching troubled inner-city youth. More recently, he has challenged his fellow pastors to be more accepting of marriage equality.

3. Very Reverend Gary R. Hall – Rev. Hall, an Episcopal priest and dean of the National Cathedral in Washington, DC, is fast becoming the face of faith-led support for gun control legislation, having recently declared “the gun lobby is no match for the cross lobby.” He also recently championed the Cathedral’s decision to begin performing same-sex marriages.

4. Brian McLaren – If organizers are keen on choosing someone with ties to the evangelical Christian tradition, then McLaren is a far more inclusive choice. A pastor, author, and speaker within the emerging church movement, McLaren is also an activist for the marginalized, and has stood with farm workers ion Florida in their struggle for fairer pray. He is also a supporter for LGBT equality, and recently oversaw his son’s same-sex marriage.

5. Someone who isn’t Christian – Although a variety of religious voices have been represented in presidential inaugurations in years past (Ronald Reagan’s inauguration, for example, featured a prayer from Rabbi Alfred Gottschalk), more recent inauguration ceremonies have privileged Christian voices. With this in mind, the Inaugural committee would do well to consider picking someone more representative of America’s religious diversity. Possible candidates could include Rabbi Denise Eger, Muslims such as interfaith activist Eboo Patel, or any number of representatives from the Sikh community, just to name a few.

Economy

During The Worst Flu Season In A Decade, Workers Across The Country Can’t Stay Home Sick

By Pat Garofalo on Jan 10, 2013 at 3:15 pm

The 2013 flu season is in full swing, and according to the Centers for Disease Control, it will be the worst in ten years. The New York Times reported that “the country is in the grip of three emerging flu or flulike epidemics: an early start to the annual flu season with an unusually aggressive virus, a surge in a new type of norovirus, and the worst whooping cough outbreak in 60 years.”

The CDC recommends that those who experience flu-like symptoms “should stay home and avoid contact with other people except to get medical care.” However, for a huge number of American workers, that option doesn’t exist due to a lack of paid sick days. 40 percent of private sector workers and a whopping 80 percent of low-income workers do not have a single paid sick day. One in five workers reports losing their job or being threatened with dismissal for wanting to take time off while sick.

This problem is especially acute in the food industry, with its high potential for spreading disease. 79 percent of food workers say they have no paid sick time.

Lack of paid sick time led to an estimated 5 million additional cases of H1N1 flu in 2009, according to a study in the American Journal of Public Health. And as the National Partnership for Women and Families noted, paid sick days don’t just benefit workers, but businesses and the economy as well:

Replacing workers can cost anywhere from 25 to 200 percent of annual compensation. Paid sick days result in reduced turnover, which leads to reduced costs incurred from advertising, interviewing and training new hires. This is particularly important in lower-wage industries where turnover is highest. Employers also reap the benefits of greater worker loyalty…Paid sick days help to decrease the productivity lost when employees work sick – known as “presenteeism” – which is estimated to cost our national economy $160 billion annually, surpassing the cost of absenteeism. The majority of human resources executives agree that presenteeism is a problem because of potential productivity loss and the risk of spreading infection.

For an average family, “missing work for just three-and-a-half days results in lost wages equivalent to an entire month’s grocery bill.” Paid sick days guard against that outcome, while ensuring that businesses stay productive.

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