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Disgraced Scholar Responds On Race, IQ, And His Dissertation

Congressman: Woman Should Have Given Birth To Her Brain-Dead Fetus

LGBT

EXCLUSIVE: Zach Wahls On The Boy Scouts’ Decision To Reconsider Anti-Gay Discrimination Policy

By Zack Ford and Josh Israel posted from ThinkProgress LGBT on Jun 8, 2012 at 2:30 pm

Today, ThinkProgress caught up with Zach Wahls, who has been advocating for the Boy Scouts of America to change their policy discriminating against LGBT scouts and scout leaders. Last week, he delivered over 275,000 petition signatures from individuals opposed to the policy, a response to the ousting of Ohio mom Jen Tyrrell as a den leader because she is a lesbian. BSA announced today that it will reconsider allowing gay scouts and scouters next year, and Wahls is hopeful that the prospect of change is legitimate, not just a public relations ploy:

WAHLS: It’s not a smokescreen. This proposal was made after Jen Tyrrell’s pettion on Change.org. So even though this has been brought up in the past, it’s never gotten nearly the level of attention that it has today. And as another departure from the past, there’s never been a group — which I actually launched in coordination with a number of other Eagle Scouts today called Scouts For Equality — and we’re going to be working with a number of different groups to really build a community of scouts — Eagle scouts, former scout leaders, that sort of thing — we’re really going to work toward making this policy change.

Watch the full exclusive interview:

Alyssa

Oliver Stone Tells Gavin Newsom Of New Drug War Movie ‘Savages’: “We’re A War Country. It Hasn’t Worked.”

By Alyssa Rosenberg posted from ThinkProgress Alyssa on Jun 7, 2012 at 10:42 pm

It looks like Gavin Newsom’s Current TV interview with director Oliver Stone at 11 PM tomorrow about Stone’s new movie Savages is going to be a doozy. Stone, explaining both the movie’s plot and his opposition to the drug war starts out with the genesis of the film: “We have the best weed inthe world—I’m telling you that from my own experience for 40 years,” he tells California’s Lt. Governor. “We started on Vietnamese weed, Thai weed, Jamaican weed, Sudanese weed and it was all great stuff. But now, actually, because Americans are so technically-minded and mad chemists—they have really taken the Afghan seeds from the Afghan war—that’s the hypothesis of our movie—and brought them to California, rededicated themselves and made the finest seeds in the world, the finest grass you could smoke.” Current gave me an exclusive first look at the interview:

It is, of course, an illustration of the disparities of the drug war that a prominent white director can talk so extensively about his drug use without fear of prosecution. But I’m more intrigued by Savages, which apparently is about border violence and the rise of drug cartels as well as Blake Lively living in a threesome with two drug-dealing brothers, than I was before I saw this interview. The more the drug war and the militarized culture it enables loses cultural credibility, the happier I am.

Election

Bush’s Latino Attorney General: Some Republicans Are ‘Anti-Hispanic’

By Annie-Rose Strasser posted from ThinkProgress Election on Jun 7, 2012 at 6:05 pm

Alberto Gonzalez, the first Latino United States Attorney General, said on Thursday that Mitt Romney needs to do more to connect with the Latino community. In an interview with Yahoo News, Gonzalez questioned whether Romney has really made an effort to reach out to Latinos, even as the campaign has tried to woo Latino voters:

“I think that members of our party have spoken about this in a way that’s not only anti-immigration but anti-Hispanic, and I think that’s harmful to the long term future of the party,” Gonzales said [...]

“Policy is important, but the tone is equally important,” he says. “He has to find some way to make a personal connection to the Hispanic community. Bush was able to do that. … Many of us had the sense that Bush understood us. He believed in us and we believed in him,” he said.

“I think [Bush] was able to make a personal connection, and I’m not sure that Governor Romney has done that yet.”

Romney’s position on issues important to Latinos, including the DREAM ACT and overall immigration policy, tend to differ from those of the majority of the Latino community. Gonzalez, on the other hand, is an advocate for some version of the DREAM Act and opposes Arizona’s SB 1070.

The former attorney general also reiterated that he did not believe Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), the prominent Latino vice presidential favorite, is ready to be president, saying, “What I try to emphasize is that I think a presidential nominee should look [for] someone who can be president on day one.”

Economy

Study: Providing Housing For The Homeless Saves Government Money

By Guest Blogger posted from ThinkProgress Economy on Jun 7, 2012 at 4:00 pm

According to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority’s most recent data, there were more than 51,000 homeless individuals in Los Angeles county, which has one of the highest homeless populations in the country. But it turns out that programs to provide housing for these unlucky individuals actually helps LA save money.

A study conducted by a Los Angeles County research unit followed Project 50, which began in 2007 as a $3.6-million plan “to find the 50 people likeliest to die on skid row’s street — the hardest of the hard cases — and house them however possible.” Since the beginning of the project, “the number of participants has grown to 133.”

According to the study, the project yielded a net savings of $238,700, which is “equivalent to $4,774 for each apartment provided.” Zev Yaroslavsky, the project’s supervisor, articulated the logic of Project 50 in the following statement:

My notion was that front-end investment in social services and stable housing would not only prove to be vastly more humane, but less costly for the public treasury. This audit makes the case for accelerating the county’s efforts to house the chronically homeless and provide them with the critical social services they need.

The Department of Veterans Affairs, for one, began a program in 2011 modeled off of Project 50 that seeks to permanently house the “60 most vulnerable veterans.”

– Nina Liss-Schultz

Health

Michigan Legislature To Ram Through Radical Anti-Abortion Measures

By Annie-Rose Strasser posted from ThinkProgress Health on Jun 7, 2012 at 3:02 pm

A bill that would outlaw abortion after 20 weeks, regardless of the woman’s or fetus’ health, is being pushed through the Michigan legislature on Thursday. The measure does not include an exception for rape or incest.

A Michigan House panel approved the legislation, HB 5711, as well as two supplements that restrict abortion access beyond 20 weeks of pregnancy and impose new regulations that could force several abortion clinics in the state to go out of business.

The House has now taken up the measure just a week after it was introduced and it is expected to advance to the state senate.

Several states — including Georgia and Arizona — have recently banned abortion after 20 weeks of gestation. In fact, a Congressman from Michigan recently proposed enacting the ban in Washington, DC.

Justice

How A Radical North Dakota Ballot Initiative Could Allow The Religious Right To Ignore Traffic Lights

By Ian Millhiser posted from ThinkProgress Justice on Jun 7, 2012 at 2:10 pm

North Dakota ballot initiative says churchgoers can ignore these on Sunday morning

A North Dakota ballot intitative appears designed to allow anti-gay groups to openly defy bans on discrimination, and it is written so expansively that it could authorize thousands of North Dakotans to outright ignore everything from traffic lights to medical access laws — all in the name of supposedly protecting religous liberty. Under the proposed state constitutional amendment, which appears on state ballots June 12:

Government may not burden a person’s or religious organization’s religious liberty. The right to act or refuse to act in a manner motivated by a sincerely held religious belief may not be burdened unless the government proves it has a compelling governmental interest in infringing the specific act or refusal to act and has used the least restrictive means to further that interest. A burden includes indirect burdens such as withholding benefits, assessing penalties, or an exclusion from programs or access to facilities.

To translate this a bit, many states and the federal government exempt religious believers from some laws that “substantially burden” their religious faith. The North Dakota initiative, however, targets any law that merely “burdens” a person’s religious faith. In other words, even the most minor inconveniences to religious practices would be suspect under the initiative. A person who is running late to church could claim it is illegal to make them obey traffic lights.

Worse, the law could have severe consequences for gay men, lesbians and other groups disfavored by the religious right. As law professor Marci Hamilton explains, the initiative appears worded to bypass the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Christian Legal Society v. Martinez which held that anti-gay groups cannot force state universities to fund them in violation of the university’s anti-discrimination policy.

Nor is the initiative the only example of the religious right trying to be above the law. An appeals court in New Mexico recently rejected an argument by an anti-gay business owner which could have exempted New Mexicans from any anti-discrimination law — including bans on race and gender discrimination — that they have a religious objection to. Similarly, conservatives ranging from the Catholic Bishops to Speaker John Boehner claim that the Constitution gives them sweeping immunity from laws they disagree with. Even conservative Justice Antonin Scalia has rejected the bishops’ view.

ThinkProgress intern Angela Guo contributed to this post.

NEWS FLASH

Four More Obama Cabinet Secretaries Come Out For Marriage Equality | Four Obama cabinet secretaries have followed the president’s lead and come out for marriage equality — joining a growing list of Democrats in embracing the freedom to marry for gay and lesbian people. “Secretaries Hilda Solis at Labor, Kathleen Sebelius at Health and Human Services, John Bryson at Commerce, and Timothy Geithner at Treasury” all support the policy, the Advocate’s Lucas Grindley reports. They join Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan, who supported same-sex marriage before President Obama announced his change of heart last month.

Justice

EXCLUSIVE: GOP Election Supervisor Rebukes Gov. Scott, Refuses To Continue Voter Purge

By Josh Israel posted from ThinkProgress Justice on Jun 7, 2012 at 12:04 pm

Pinellas County Supervisor of Elections Deborah Clark (R)

Though Gov. Rick Scott (R-FL)’s administration has now said it will not follow the Department of Justice’s order to end its voter roll purge, a Republican county elections supervisor’s spokeswoman told ThinkProgress she will not resume the purge effort.

Pinellas County Supervisor of Elections Deborah Clark (R) released a statement last Friday saying that her office would not continue the purge:

The accuracy of the voter registration database is of the utmost importance and we will continue our efforts to ensure the information is current. However, we will not use unreliable data.

When asked whether the Scott administration’s decision to defy the Department of Justice order changed anything, Clark spokeswoman Nancy Whitlock told ThinkProgress “No. Ms. Clark’s position remains as stated [on Friday].”

Pinellas County had initially purged 14 voters who the state suspected might not be citizens, but reinstated them when it became clear that Scott administration’s list of “sure-fire non-citizens” was riddled with a gigantic number of errors and the DOJ announced that the purge violated both the Voting Rights Act and the National Voter Registration Act.

Whitlock noted that Clark and other Florida elections supervisors had questioned “not only the accuracy of the information, but also the timing after learning that the state had the list of voters more than a year prior to distributing it.”

Economy

House Democrats Propose Increasing Minimum Wage To $10

By Pat Garofalo posted from ThinkProgress Economy on Jun 7, 2012 at 10:32 am

A group of House Democrats have proposed increasing the minimum wage to $10, which, as Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-IL) pointed out would allow the wage to “catch up” with where it would be had it been allowed to grow with inflation:

Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.) and 17 House Democrats, including several Congressional Black Caucus members, proposed legislation Wednesday that would increase the minimum wage to $10 an hour.

Jackson said his bill, the Catching Up to 1968 Act, is needed to give low-income workers a way to “catch up” to inflation, which continues to eat away at the current federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. He also said it would give these workers more income and boost overall demand for the struggling economy.

The minimum wage hit its peak buying power in 1968; to have the same buying power today, the minimum wage would have to be $9.92. If the minimum wage had been indexed to the Consumer Price Index since 1968, it would be approximately $10.40 today.

The current minimum wage is also covering a much smaller percentage of health care and tuition costs than it did just a few decades ago. Already this year, San Francisco has increased its minimum wage to $10, while 1.4 million workers are benefiting from scheduled increases in the minimum wage in eight states. According to the Economic Policy Institute, boosting the minimum wage particularly helps women and minorities, who make up a disproportionate share of minimum wage-earners.

Economy

Jeb Bush Blasts GOP, Says Party Is ‘Short-Sighted’ On Tax And Immigration Policies

By Igor Volsky posted from ThinkProgress Economy on Jun 7, 2012 at 9:30 am

During an interview with Charlie Rose Thursday morning, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) called for increases in revenues to help solve the nation’s debt problem, but admitted that he wouldn’t be able to hold that position were he running for office within the modern Republican Party.

Bush reiterated that he would accept a hypothetical debt deal that included ten dollars in spending cuts for every dollar in tax increases — which Mitt Romney said he would reject in August — and added that he hoped GOP leaders could embrace such an approach:

BUSH: Look, I can appreciate why they are reluctant to say that because commitments on spending are hard to implement. Commitments on raising taxes immediately happen…But if you’re asked a hypothetical question, which I was [...]

ROSE: And only you had the, as they say, courage to say, I wouldn’t go there.

BUSH: It was living proof I’m not running for anything…

ROSE: If they hadn’t been running they might have said something different?

BUSH: I hope so. Because we have unsustainable deficits.

Watch it:

Asked if he was “worried about the direction of your party,” Bush replied that the GOP’s immigration and tax policies were “short-sighted.”

While most Republicans are still holding true to their pledge of never raising taxes, a growing number have started to question the party orthodoxy and have signaled some willingness to offset spending cuts with increases in revenue.

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