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LGBT

Boy Scouts Vote To Allow Gay Scouts, Continue Discrimination Against LGBT Leaders

By Josh Israel on May 23, 2013 at 6:05 pm

Jen Tyrrell and George Takei

Former Den Leader Jen Tyrrell and former Boy Scout George Takei protest the BSA's anti-gay ban, at the 2012 New York City Pride parade

The roughly 1,400 voting members of the Boy Scouts of America’s (BSA) National Council voted 61-38 percent Thursday to end the ban on gay youth participating in the program, but reaffirmed their policy of mandatory discrimination against LGBT leaders and volunteers.

The move — suggested by the national leadership as an attempted compromise — represents a modest step forward, but still comes as a disappointment to the thousands of Eagle Scouts,1.8 million Change.org petition signers, and the 56 percent of Americans who want the BSA to end its anti-LGBT discrimination.

While the policy change will permit openly gay Scouts like Ryan Andresen to receive their Eagle Scout awards, it will still prevent openly lesbian parents like former Cub Scout Den Leader Jen Tyrrell from volunteering with their parent’s Scout units.

BSA President Wayne Perry wrote, in a USA Today op-ed Wednesday, that allowing LGBT leaders “would have conflicted with the majority of our partners, 70% of which are religious organizations, and would have disrupted our ability to deliver Scouting.” But in the same statement, he noted, the organization was “unaware of any major religious chartered organization that believes a youth member simply stating he or she is attracted to the same sex, but not engaging in sexual activity, should make him or her unwelcome in their congregation.”

This admission and the rule change seem to contradict the BSA’s long-standing rationale that “homosexual conduct is inconsistent with the requirements in the Scout Oath that a Scout be morally straight and in the Scout Law that a Scout be clean in word and deed, and that homosexuals do not provide a desirable role model for Scouts.” By finally admitting that being LGBT is not, itself, incompatible with being “morally straight” or “clean,” the justification for excluding adults purely on the basis of their sexual orientation seems to now be reduced to “some religious organizations prefer discrimination.”

The BSA’s Honorary President Barack Obama and former BSA national board member Mitt Romney agreed in their 2012 presidential campaign that the organization should stop discriminating based on sexual orientation — a view shared by corporate CEOs and more than 7,000 Eagle Scouts.

Security

Obama Outlines Initial Steps In Renewed Effort To Close Gitmo

By Ben Armbruster on May 23, 2013 at 6:00 pm

(Credit: AP)

President Obama on Thursday in a major speech outlining his administration’s counterterrorism policies also detailed plans on how to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay.

Amid a growing hunger strike among Gitmo detainees that gained national attention after one described the harrowing process of being force-fed, Obama said last month that he would renew his administration’s efforts to close Guantanamo.

“I once again call on Congress to lift the restrictions on detainee transfers from Gitmo,” Obama said in his speech today. And while some media outlets previously reported that part of Obama’s plan would involved authorizing the transfer of Yemeni detainees that have been cleared for release, the president expounded on some of the initial details of his plan:

OBAMA: I have asked the Department of Defense to designate a site in the United States where we can hold military commissions. I am appointing a new, senior envoy at the State Department and Defense Department whose sole responsibility will be to achieve the transfer of detainees to third countries. I am lifting the moratorium on detainee transfers to Yemen, so we can review them on a case by case basis. To the greatest extent possible, we will transfer detainees who have been cleared to go to other countries. Where appropriate, we will bring terrorists to justice in our courts and military justice system. And we will insist that judicial review be available for every detainee.

“I know the politics are hard,” Obama said of closing Gitmo. Indeed, the president is already facing fierce resistance from Republicans in Congress. Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) said Obama’s plan amounted to a “victory” for terrorists. “GITMO must stay open for business,” he said. Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) in a press conference after Obama’s speech said they want Guantanamo closed but said they wanted a plan (and didn’t appear eager to offer one themselves). House and Senate Democrats, however, are sounding a more supportive.

“Imagine a future – ten years from now, or twenty years from now – when the United States of America is still holding people who have been charged with no crime on a piece of land that is not a part of our country,” Obama said, seemingly pre-empting those who will resist his plan. “Look at the current situation, where we are force-feeding detainees who are holding a hunger strike. Is that who we are? Is that something that our Founders foresaw? Is that the America we want to leave to our children?”

Economy

Rubio Misleads On Debt Ceiling In Floor Speech Blocking Budget Process

By Alan Pyke on May 23, 2013 at 5:46 pm

In a floor speech Wednesday, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) falsely claimed that the debt ceiling is critical to saving future generations from inheriting a crippling national debt. Rubio, who is widely expected to seek his party’s presidential nomination in 2016, insisted that the Senate forbid its budget conferees from including an increase to the debt ceiling in the conference report. “I’m not asking for some ridiculous thing,” he said. “This is the debt limit! Something that’s been called the single greatest national security problem facing the United States of America by a national security official.”

Later, speaking of his young children, Rubio said, “I’m gonna have to explain to them, what did you do, or what did you not do, when you were in the Senate? How could you have allowed this debt to move forward?” Watch the speech:

Rubio’s remarks conflated the debt limit and the debt itself. Preventing a debt ceiling increase does not reduce America’s debts. It constrains the country’s ability to borrow money to pay its obligations, including the costs of servicing the existing debt. Spending laws already on the books create debt, and failure to raise the debt ceiling doesn’t nullify those laws. Instead, it threatens to cause the government to default on those obligations, which would be economically catastrophic (and would actually increase the country’s overall debt burden).

Rubio also attributed his error to a former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, retired Navy Admiral Mike Mullen. Adm. Mullen is the national security official who called the national debt “our biggest national security threat” in 2010 and subsequent remarks prior to his retirement in 2011.

Rubio also claimed that “debt limit increases have become a matter of routine,” but the opposite is true. For 50 years, Congress routinely increased it as needed.  But in 2011, Republicans decided the debt ceiling was “a hostage worth ransoming,” in the words of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY). Republican brinkmanship caused the first-ever downgrade of the U.S. credit rating by Standard & Poor’s and cost the country a million jobs and about $19 billion. Republicans continue to use the debt ceiling as a point of negotiating leverage.

Rubio’s speech amounts a demand that Democrats enshrine the Republican tactic of using the debt ceiling as a legislative hostage in the budget reconciliation process. “If they fail to do that, we cannot move forward,” Rubio said.

Health

The Five Most Promising Uses Of 3D Printing In Medicine

By Sy Mukherjee on May 23, 2013 at 5:40 pm

(Credit: Extreme Tech)

On Thursday, the Associated Press reported that doctors had, for the first time, used a 3D printer to create a life-saving artificial airway for a baby boy. The Ohio child was born with a birth defect that cause his airway to collapse, putting him at constant risk of suffocation — until doctors asked the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for permission to print him a new one.

The FDA agreed, although it still hasn’t adopted an official policy on bioprinting body parts. But the agency will be forced to make a decision soon enough, as increasingly sophisticated 3D printers take the American field by storm. Here are five ways that 3D printers could be a game changer for U.S. health care:

1. Cutting down the backlogged kidney transplant list. 80 percent of the approximately 113,000 Americans on the organ transplant list need a new kidney — but only 30,000 transplants are performed in the U.S. each year, contributing to 4,000 annual kidney-related deaths. But with the use of “Bio-Ink” and 3D printers, that could all change. Researchers at the University of Iowa have been using a “bioprinter” to simulate living tissue structures. Dr. Ibrahim Ozbolat, who is heading the project predicts that fully formed, transplant-ready organs could be an impending reality. “The long-term goal of this [lab] is to create functioning human organs some five or 10 years from now. This is not far-fetched,” said Ozbolat.

2. Regulating diabetes by creating entirely new organs. As if creating organs from stem cells wasn’t enough, Dr. Ozbolat’s team has an even loftier goal in mind: the creation of entirely new organ structures to treat Americans’ medical problems. “One of the most promising research activities is bioprinting a glucose-sensitive pancreatic organ that can be grown in a lab and transplanted anywhere inside the body to regulate the glucose level of blood,” said Ozbolat of his goal. Considering the epidemic-level of diabetes in the United States — and the associated health care costs of the disease — that would be a true medical revolution, essentially nullifying the disease. And if Ozbolat’s team could create that kind of technology, it could potentially be modified to treat cancers and other chronic conditions.

3. Grafting skin onto burn victims. The current process of skin grafting requires the painful removal of skin from an unaffected area of the patient’s body. But researchers at the University of Toronto have developed a method of loading skin cells and various other polymers into a 3D printer to artificially create thick layers of skin. Strikingly, the team used a simplified 3D printer that costs far less than the average $200,000, and claim that their printer can produce tissue for 1/1000th of that cost “even by the most conservative estimates.”

4. Making prostheses resemble the original missing limb. This is a field in which there has already been significant progress with 3D printers — and garners major potential for patient satisfaction and quality of life. The trouble with many prostheses is that they wear down, don’t perfectly conform to patients’ limbs, and can present a stigma for patients who need them. But scientists at Bespoke Innovations have created prosthetic coverings “that perfectly mirror the sculptural symmetry and function of the wearer’s remaining limb,” and can even be customized to conform to the patient’s fashion style. Actually creating an entirely new limb would be ambitious — but considering that doctors recently replaced 75 percent of a man’s skull with a 3D-printed implant, that might not be out of the question, either.

5. Addressing poor Americans’ dental health needs. One aspect of U.S. health care that gets overlooked is the meager availability of dental coverage, especially for the poor. But the use of 3D printing in orthodontics could help change that by making dental procedures cheaper and more efficient — or at the very least could help rectify some the medical consequences of paltry dental coverage. A digital scan of the inside of a patient’s mouth and a 3D printer is all that’s needed to create crowns, bridges, and dentures. It also makes the process less invasive and more accurate by making it unnecessary to create physical molds of patients’ mouths.

Justice

Louisiana Passes Measure To Criminalize Reporting On Gun Owners

By Nicole Flatow on May 23, 2013 at 5:30 pm

(Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

In the latest move by Louisiana to plow ahead with looser gun laws, the state legislature passed a measure that would criminalize journalists for publishing information about gun owners. Under House Bill 8, which now goes to Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) for his signature, those who “release, disseminate, or make public” any information contained in a handgun permit or about the identity of the permit-holder, including journalists, may be subject to a $10,000 fine and/or six months in jail.

The law comes in response to anger over the publication by a local New York newspaper of the names and addresses of gun permit holders. But as Mother Jones reports, the law goes beyond most others that merely forbid the release of gun permit information, to one punishing journalists for publishing it, in likely violation of the First Amendment.

The seminal Supreme Court case upholding the New York Times’ publication of the Pentagon Papers said government attempts to impose a “prior restraint” on journalists’ reporting is unconstitutional. And while some First Amendment scholars concede an argument could be made that this law does not impose prior restraint but merely punishment after the fact, even that sort of First Amendment restriction would have be accompanied by an unusually compelling justification for so severe an infringement on First Amendment rights.

“I find it very ironic that the very people who screamed the loudest about attempts to limit their Second Amendment rights are here eager to limit my First Amendment rights,” newspaper editor Carl Redman said during a May 7 hearing.

Other bills passed by both houses of the Louisiana legislature this week would allow for lifetime gun permits, and allow off-duty officers to carry their weapons onto college campuses.

The state Senate is set to consider four additional gun bills Monday, including one to nullify federal gun law that even its sponsor admits is likely unconstitutional. The state passed a constitutional amendment by ballot initiative last November that arguably makes state gun rights even broader than the Second Amendment.

Alyssa

Read Todd VanDerWerff On What Makes Ray Bradbury’s Science Fiction So Distinct And Wonderful

By Alyssa Rosenberg on May 23, 2013 at 5:01 pm

As part of his Nerd Curious series, in which he goes back and explores artifacts of culture he missed in his youth, my friend and the AV Club’s television editor Todd VanDerWerff took a deep dive into Ray Bradbury’s short stories and emerges with what I think is one of the best summaries of what makes Bradbury’s work distinct, the element of nostalgia and emotional irrationality in decision-making, even in science fiction where we’re supposed to be enhanced–or at least, where rationality is supposed to rule:

In The Martian Chronicles, as happens so often in Bradbury’s work, people don’t look at the destruction of their world and run as far as they can from the mushroom clouds or the astronauts bearing chicken pox. Instead, they run toward them, trying in vain to preserve something that’s already gone. The Earthlings who have settled Mars decide to go back to Earth after nuclear war erupts there. That seems a very curious decision—wouldn’t those who had escaped such destruction by virtue of being so very far away count themselves lucky?—until it is situated in the context of Bradbury’s bibliography. The characters are haunted by memories of a past they can’t ever shake. In that context, their actions make perfect sense. They aren’t driven by practical sense; they’re driven by emotional sense, until both worlds are mostly dead and barren, a handful of survivors of two species straggling out a life on the margins.

You should really read the whole thing, which has too many big ideas to get into here. But I thought that was lovely and astute.

Climate Progress

The Congressional Budget Office Says We Need A Price On Carbon Emissions

By Jeff Spross on May 23, 2013 at 4:53 pm

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) thinks putting off efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions risks “catastrophic” losses for the United States’ economy and society. That’s according to a new report on the economic and environmental effects of a carbon tax CBO published Wednesday.

The CBO is the group of analysts tasked with modeling and projecting the consequences of Congress’ proposed laws, so that lawmakers can have some idea of what the likely consequences of their actions will be. You may recall the CBO from the big role its scores played in the debate over health care reform a few years ago. They’re a highly respected, methodologically cautious, and strictly nonpartisan outfit that’s widely viewed as the go-to authority for refereeing policy disputes in Washington.

With China on the verge of unilaterally putting a cap on its own carbon emissions, and with wide support for a carbon tax amongst voters, politicians, industry, economists and think tanks, the fact that CBO is using its position to highlight the risks of not addressing climate change is worth paying attention to.

Now, much of their report’s content wasn’t new. It projected that a price of $20 per metric ton on carbon dioxide emissions would bring in $1.2 trillion in revenues between 2012 and 2021, and cut emissions by roughly 8 percent over the same period, which came from work CBO did in 2011 (page 205). And the debate over what to do with the revenues from a carbon tax, which much of the report is dedicated to, is also familiar.

But one thing that is noteworthy is CBO’s blunt assessment that allowing climate change to continue unchecked could be very costly to both the United States and global society:

Climate change resulting from an increase in average temperatures is a long-term problem with global causes and consequences, including effects on humans and ecosystems. Significantly limiting the extent of future warming would require a concerted effort by countries that are major emitters of greenhouse gases. Nonetheless, U.S. efforts to decrease emissions would produce incremental benefits, in the form of incremental reductions in the expected damage from climate change.

Researchers have attempted to estimate the monetary value of the future damage from climate change associated with an increase in CO2 emissions in a given year — and thus the value of the benefits from a commensurate reduction in emissions — a measure referred to as the social cost of carbon (SCC)… Those values are highest when researchers attach significant weight to long-term outcomes and when they incorporate a small probability that damage from climate change could increase sharply in the future — causing very large, or even catastrophic, losses. Delaying efforts to reduce emissions increases the risk of such losses. Given the inherent uncertainty of predicting the effects of climate change, and the possibility that it could trigger catastrophic effects, lawmakers might view a carbon tax as a reflection of society’s willingness to pay to reduce the risk of potentially very expensive damage in the future.

Even CBO’s 2009 round-up of climate change science, which focused heavily on the uncertainty built into such projections, pointed out that the worst case scenarios for climate change “even if unlikely, would justify more stringent policies than would result from simply balancing the costs of reducing emissions against the benefits of averting damages from the expected or most likely degree of warming.”

As for the question of how to structure a carbon tax, the Center for American Progress’ Richard Caperton put forward a proposal last December for a tax of $25 per ton on carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. That ought to put us on a course to reduce those emissions by 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020, and 80 percent by 2050, though the tax would ultimately need to be expanded to the entire economy. Caperton estimated the revenue from this tax — more limited than the one envisioned by CBO — would be in the vicinity of $55 billion annually. That could be split between the roughly $20 billion annually needed to fund research and development of clean energy, deficit reduction, and support for low-income Americans.

That last aspect is especially important, because on its own a price on carbon has a regressive effect, imposing more costs on the poor and the working class than the well-off. Reductions in the payroll tax, or refundable income tax rebates, would do the most good, mainly because they target support to the very people who would most need help shouldering higher energy costs. But CBO’s new report also found that a price on carbon would reduce overall growth slightly by reducing incomes throughout the economy, and by working through income taxes those two options would counteract that drag.

LGBT

Nevada Assembly Approves Marriage Equality Amendment

By Zack Ford on May 23, 2013 at 4:40 pm

Today the Nevada Assembly voted 27-14 to approve a constitutional amendment that would repeal the 2002 amendment banning same-sex marriage. Combined with the Senate approval from April, this completes the amendment’s first phase of approval. Both chambers must approve the measure a second time during 2015 legislative session, following which it will be advanced to the ballot in November, 2016.

Unless a constitutional amendment is repealed in the interim in another state, Nevada would be the first state to repeal its own constitutional ban on same-sex marriage.

Security

GOP Senator: Obama Speech ‘Will Be Viewed By Terrorists As A Victory’

By Zack Beauchamp on May 23, 2013 at 4:36 pm

Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA). (Credit: Politico)

Obama’s major speech outlining the Administration’s counter-terrorism policy on Thursday marked a win for al-Qaeda, according to Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA).

Chambliss’ comments referred to the president’s proposed changes to detention policy, which included asking the Department of Defense to find a place to conduct trials of suspected terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay inside the United States, lifting a moratorium on transferring Gitmo detainees to Yemen, and attempting to transfer all of the prison’s detainees that’ve been cleared for departure back to their home countries as part of an ultimate plan to shut down the Cuban site.

The senator suggested these measures constituted capitulation to terrorists:

The President’s speech today will be viewed by terrorists as a victory. Rather than continuing successful counterterrorism activities, we are changing course with no clear operational benefit. We knew five years ago that closing Guantanamo was a bad idea and would not work. Yet, today’s speech sends the message to Guantanamo detainees that if they harass the dedicated military personnel there enough, we will give in and send them home, even to Yemen. With the recidivism rate now at 28% and the increased threat from al Qaeda and its affiliates, including in Yemen, GITMO must stay open for business.

There is clear evidence that the military prison makes for an effective recruiting tactic for al-Qaeda, even in 2013. As former Air Force interrogator Matthew Alexander puts it, “the longer it stays open the more cost it will have in U.S. lives.”

Chambliss’ reference to “harassment” likely referrs to recent hunger strikes over conditions in the military prison. So far, the military’s response to the hunger strikes has been force-feeding the prisoners; detainees describe “the experience of having the [force-feeding] tube snaked down your throat as being like having a razor blade pulled down.” The detainees are striking in responses to searches of cells that they say involved guards mishandling Qu’rans.

The DNI’s office has only “confirmed” that 16.1 percent of released detainees (97 people) have engaged in terrorist activities after release, while it “suspects” another 11.9 percent have. The New America Foundation’s independent estimate finds, by contrast, that the confirmed number is only four percent, and the suspected number a scant 4.7 percent. Most of these transfers occurred during during the Bush Administration, with Congess’ consent.

The label “recidivism” is also somewhat misleading, as it implies that all released inmates were definitively engaged in some form of terrorist activity before being thrown in Guantanamo. Former Bush Administration official Lawrence Wilkerson estimates that 50-60 percent of Guantanamo inmates were innocent of any crime before being detained indefinitely without charge.

Immigration

Hours Away From Deportation, Undocumented Man Is Granted One-Year Reprieve

By Esther Yu-Hsi Lee on May 23, 2013 at 4:30 pm

(Credit: Miami Herald)

Last week, Rena Rivas was seven hours away from being deported when Congresswoman Frederica Wilson (D-FL) intervened and called an Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official to halt his removal. A week later on Monday evening, a final decision came in: Rivas had been granted a one-year deportation reprieve based on humanitarian grounds. He no longer has to stay in the ICE detention center where he has stayed for the past two months.

In 2010, ICE agents targeted his coworker who has a criminal conviction, but Rivas was also deported. Rivas was then charged with an illegal re-entry felony for trying to see his family. Released on a prayer and a plea, Rivas now has to wear an ankle-monitor and take drug tests.

A somber effect of family reunification, illegal re-entry for aliens has remained the top reason for deportation proceedings in the past three years. Of the daily 1,400 deported immigrants, Rivas remains a heartwarming yet rare case in which a public figure had come out to stop his return to Mexico. The happy tale ends there however as Rivas will still be deported in one year.

If passed, the Senate immigration bill could stop his deportation countdown since deportees without serious records would be allowed to return to the United States. The contentious measure could have far-reaching implications like potentially ending dangerous border crossings for migrants who are trying to reunite with their families. The House immigration bill will be released in June, but it also seeks to stop deportations of people like Rivas.

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