Yesterday, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) single-handedly blocked the confirmation of 19 of President Obama’s judicial nominees, a power any single senator possesses under the Senate’s outdated rules. Sessions’ obstructionism is part of a concerted right-wing strategy to keep any of the president’s nominees from taking the bench. As a new Center for American Progress issue brief explains, judicial confirmations have fallen off a cliff since Obama took office:

Sessions attempts to dismiss this unambiguous data by claiming that Bush’s nominees waited longer than Obama’s for confirmation, but the data rebuts any claim that Bush’s judges were treated worse than the present president’s.

Judicial confirmations were unusually slow during the first two years of Bush’s presidency for reasons that are completely unrelated to Senate obstructionism. The Supreme Court didn’t install Bush until mid-December, giving the newly appointed president less time to plan for confirmations during his transition than prior presidents.  Additionally, the Senate flipped from Republican to Democratic hands during Bush’s first year, forcing it to delay all business while it reorganized. Despite these two very unusual events, judicial confirmations at this point in Bush’s presidency were still nine percentage points higher than they are under Obama, and Bush’s confirmation rate spiked much higher during his next two years in office.

There’s a simple explanation for why Obama’s confirmation rate is so low: abuse of the filibuster and similar tactics such as holds. As CAP’s issue brief explains, the Senate Rules are practically designed to create a confirmation crisis:

The Senate’s arcane rules require nominees to clear several procedural hurdles before they can be confirmed. Most importantly, the Senate must agree to a “motion to proceed” to debate that nomination, and they have to take a confirmation vote at the conclusion of debate. Senators can filibuster either the motion to proceed or the confirmation vote itself.

Once a filibuster is broken, Senate rules still permit up to 30 hours of floor debate before taking a vote. The minority can therefore filibuster both the motion to proceed and the confirmation vote itself, and require up to 60 hours of floor debate before confirming a single nominee.

Forty-eight of President Obama’s judicial nominees await confirmation. At 60 hours per nominee, the Senate would have to spend 2,880 hours—120 entire days—to act on each of these nominations. If Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) were to cancel all recesses on August 1 and require the Senate to work 24 hours a day, seven days a week, doing nothing but considering judicial nominees, the last nominee would not be confirmed until several days after Thanksgiving—and that’s assuming that the Senate passed no bills, confirmed no other nominees, and took up no other matters for this entire period!

Indeed, given such dysfunctional Senate Rules, the real surprise isn’t the fact that Obama’s nominees are being obstructed — it is that it took this long for such a confirmation crisis to emerge.

With just 12 days before Congress leaves for a month-long recess, two LGBT advocacy are pressuring the Senate to hold a vote on repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell in September. Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and the The Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN) are urging supporters in 10 states to contact their representatives and “tell them to repeal ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ and follow the lead of Chairman Carl Levin who will be managing the defense bill on the floor.” Levin had previously told supporters that he had hoped to vote on the defense authorization bill before the August break and later predicted that it would go to the floor last week.

The groups’ campaign, called Countdown 2010, hopes to “mobilize grassroots supporters of equality across the country through in-district meetings as well as a call-in and email campaign” and will also focus on passing the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) in the House:

HRC and SLDN’s efforts will be specifically focused on 10 states with key lawmakers whose votes on DADT repeal are critical: Arkansas, Indiana, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Virginia. HRC will also engage the LGBT community and our allies in those states on ENDA in addition to on-the-ground work for ENDA in North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Texas. Supporters of equality are encouraged to meet with Representatives and Senators while they are in their districts and states for the August Congressional recess.

To participate, individuals can sign up at countdown2010.hrc.org . There, they’ll find downloadable meeting toolkits, videos on in-district meetings and information on how to schedule a meeting and report back on how it went.

Advocates fear that pushing the vote past September, closer to “when the Pentagon’s working group study on implementation is due to be released,” would “provide an opening for detractors of repeal to scuttle support for the measure, whether through an overt effort to strip it from the bill or through a secondary amendment to broaden the certification requirement beyond the president, Defense secretary, and chairman of the Joint chiefs.”

Indeed, it’s still unclear if Democrats have enough votes to defeat a measure that would expand the certification process to chiefs who have publicly expressed support for the ban on open service. Yesterday, the Washington Blade’s Chris Johnson reported that Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), widely considered a swing vote on the issue, said that she would support the existing DADT repeal amendment, but “wouldn’t commit to a position on a possible floor amendment that would strip the language from the bill.” Lincoln actually has a surprisingly positive record on LGBT issues. She did not register a vote on the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996, supported DADT in 1993, but voted for the hate crimes bill 2009, and against cloture on a measure that would have prohibited individual states from recognizing marital status and/or legal benefits from any other unions other than that of a man and woman.

Last week at Netroots Nation, the group GetEqual stopped traffic to protest Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-NV) failure to pass ENDA and Lt. Dan Choi presented Reid with his West Point ring, urging the Senator to repeal DADT.

Throughout its 23-city “Summer for Marriage Tour 2010,” the National Organization For Marriage (NOM) has gone to great lengths to portray itself as a tolerant organization of Christians driven to oppose same-sex marriage by their religion. NOM has argued that its members are in a great “civil rights” struggle against intolerant LGBT counter protesters who have sabotaged its tour and threatened its members. Former NOM President Maggie Gallagher has described her supporters as “very peaceful and prayerful and respectful of the law, because that’s who our people are” while painting LGBT activists as “a real face of hatred.” “It isn’t just ‘we disagree with you, we’re supporting our point of view,” Gallagher quoted the counter protesters as saying, “it’s ‘you’re wrong, you’re haters, you’re bigots.’”

The blog NOM Tour Tracker has worked to expose the thin veil of NOM’s tolerance throughout their tour and has noted that NOM has coached its supporters to focus on the movements message of “love” when speaking with reporters. Yesterday, the blog cross-posted an item by Good As You‘s Jeremy Hooper, which uncovered the homophobic record of pastor Brad Brandon, one of the speaker’s NOM’s rally in Minneapolis. Brandon had previously warned supporters that gays would teach children how to masturbate and compared gays to alcoholics, pedophiles and Hitler:

COMPARES GAYS TO ALCOHOLICS: “If you had an uncle who was a drunk and he was destroying his marriage and he was destroying his life and he was dying from problems that come along with drinking….Would you love him to go up to him and say, ‘oh, it’s okay, what you’re doing is alright?’ ….no you wouldn’t… But yet when it comes to the issue of homosexuality, all of the sudden, we have to keep our mouths shut, and we cannot say anything when it comes to this issue.”

COMPARES GAYS TO ADULTERERS, PEDOPHILES: “On the 17th, the ELCA convenes to vote on whether to allow homosexuals to be clergy. I mean, to me that’s like asking somebody who is living an open adulterous lifestyle to become a pastor. To me, that is like asking a pedophile to become a pastor.”

BELIEVES IN REPARATIVE THERAPY: “We need to preach Christ, the love of Christ, the saving grace of Jesus Christ. Get These homosexuals saved and get them out of this lifestyle.”

Listen:

Ironically, Gallagher has criticized LGBT leaders for failing to condemn the counter protesters’ “disruptive” tactics, but has yet to issue a statement distancing NOM from Brandon’s controversial remarks or the now infamous noose placard that appeared at NOM’s rally in Indianapolis. “I mean, what kind of people do that, first of all, and what kind of movement doesn’t step up and say, ‘No, this isn’t what our movement is about,’” Gallagher asked of the LGBT movement.

As Judge Vaughn Walker prepares to issue a verdict in Perry v. Schwarzenegger, the landmark case against California’s Proposition 8, a new poll released last week by Public Religion Research Institute finds that a significant percentage of Californians, including people of faith across the California religious landscape, “say they have become increasingly supportive of gay rights over the last five years”:

– Only one-in-five (22%) Californians believe the passage of Proposition 8 was a “good thing” for the state.

– One-in-four Californians report that their views on rights for gay and lesbian people has become more supportive over the last five years, compared to only 8% who say they have become more opposed.

– If another vote similar to Proposition 8 were held tomorrow, a majority (51%) say they would vote to allow gay and lesbian couples to marry, compared to 45% who say they would vote to keep same sex marriage illegal.

– An overwhelming majority of Californians say they favor laws that would protect gay and lesbian people from job discrimination and favor allowing gay and lesbian people to serve only in the military (75% and 69% respectively). A majority (56%) favors adoption rights for same-sex couples.

Interestingly, the poll also found that “although concerns about the impact of legalizing same-sex marriage on children figured prominently in arguments by Proposition 8 supporters during the 2008 campaigns, few Californians view this as a concern.” Sixty percent actually “disagree that children would be more likely to experiment with homosexuality if same-sex marriage were legal.”

Californians were also more willing to support marriage if reassured that “no church or congregation would be required to perform marriages for gay couples” and that the law “only provided for civil marriages like you get at city hall.” When these assurances were made, support for marriage increased by a 12 to 19 points. The poll also found a correlation between how Californians saw God and support for same-sex marriage. Californians who say they are extremely likely to identify with specific images of God as judge, father, or liberator are more likely than those who less strongly identify with these specific images of God to say they would vote to keep same-sex marriage illegal.” Similarly, Californians “who believe the Bible is a book written by men and is not the word of God” were more likely to support rights for gays and lesbians.

A Field Poll released a day before the Public Religion Research Institute survey also found that “if a vote was held on Proposition 8 now, 51 percent of all Californians would vote it down.”

A graduate student in Georgia is suing Augusta State University for threatening “to dismiss her from its counseling program when she refused to participate in a remediation plan to increase her tolerance” towards gays and lesbians. The student, Jennifer Keeton — who says that her views against homosexuality are motivated by her Christian beliefs — is charging that ASU violated her “constitutional rights of speech, belief, and religious exercise” by forcing her to participate in the course.

“While I want to stay in the school counseling program, I know that I can’t honestly complete the remediation plan knowing that I would have to alter my beliefs,” Keeton said. “I’m not willing to and I know I can’t change my Biblical views.” According to the lawsuit, Keeton had said both in class and in writing assignments that “she believes sexual behavior is the result of accountable personal choice” and “faculty have also received unsolicited reports from another student that [Miss Keeton] has relayed her interest in conversion therapy for GLBTQ populations.”

The Alliance Defense Fund, which is backing Keeton’s lawsuit, is claiming that the counseling department is “ruthlessly attempting to cleanse Christian belief from its students,” but during a segment this afternoon on CNN, Gregg Nevins of Lambda Legal explained that ASU had to ensure that Keeton met the state’s accreditation standards and was simply requiring her to set aside her personal religious beliefs in the interest of the client:

DAVID FRENCH (ALLIANCE DEFENSE FUND): You have a counseling department that is ruthlessly attempting to cleanse Christian belief from its students….This counseling department has imposed its values, violating its own code of ethics on these students, telling them they have to change their religious beliefs, that their religious beliefs are wrong.

GREG NEVINS (LAMBDA LEGAL): That’s ridiculous. Is there any evidence that Augusta State is it taking a different position towards an anti-gay person who is not basing it on their religious beliefs? Because that would be religious discrimination if she were being singled out, but somebody else said ‘I don’t want to deal with gay people because I think they’re awful and it has nothing to do with my religion’ that would be religious discrimination. [...] Even Augusta State is a public institution, they are trying to train people for professional accreditation. They have a responsibility and it’s been upheld by the courts including a case that you lost on Monday in Michigan that’s been held that they have a responsibility to train people properly to be good counselors.

Watch it:

Indeed, ADL lost a very similar case against Eastern Michigan University “where a graduate student said she was kicked out of a master’s program after refusing to counsel a homosexual client.” In that case, U.S. District Judge George Steeh ruled that, “Plaintiff was not required to change her views or religious beliefs; she was required to set them aside in the counselor-client relationship — a neutral, generally applicable expectation of all counselors-to-be under the ACA (American Counseling Association) standard.”

The university “had a right and duty to enforce compliance” with professional ethics rules barring counselors from being intolerant or engaging in discrimination, and no reasonable person could conclude that a counseling program’s requirement that students comply with such rules “conveys a message endorsing or disapproving of religion,” the judge wrote.

Lez Get Real is reporting that of the “40,000 of the surveys that the Pentagon sent out to servicemembers have been completed since they were emailed out on 7 July to a mixture of active duty and reserve personnel.” “That is roughly ten percent of the 400,000 that they sent out, and Department of Defense officials need to hear from the rest regarding the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell“:

The 200,000 active duty, and like number of Guard and Reserve, personnel have until 15 August to return the completed survey. The participants were selected randomly. Admiral Michael Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that the Defense Department needs objective information and that the survey is the only way to get that. He emphasized that no one is drawing conclusions about the survey until it is finished. Admiral Mullen stated “To reach out at this point and try to predict either what they might say or what the results might say, I just think it’s too early with respect to that.” Unfortunately for Admiral Mullen, the survey may not bring in a large number of recipients due to a number of problems associated with online surveys. The number of turn ins have probably not been helped by the negative publicity that has surrounded the survey.

I wasn’t sure what to make of this news and unsure if the 40,000 surveys are a statistically significant amount from which the military can then extrapolate and reach some conclusions. Ryan McNeely tells me that it depends if the 40,000 represent a cross section of the 400,000 servicemembers or if those people were more likely to respond for some other unrelated reason. Without knowing that, it’s difficult to say if the results are representative of the force as a whole.

The point is that the servicemembers have until August 15th to fill out the survey and the Pentagon is encouraging them to do just that. The Defense Department disputes the 10% figure and says that the survey had to overcome several technical issues which has now resulted in an uptick of responses. They’re not putting out a specific number about what they expect the take-up to be or what they’ll consider “statistically significant,” but given that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates personally doubled the sample size, they seem intent on at least giving everyone the opportunity to weigh in on this, even if they won’t. And that’s of course precisely the problem with this kind of open-ended questionnaire: the only people who write back are those with the most extreme views and you end up knowing nothing about what the so-called “moderate middle” thinks. So who those 40,000 people are and how much weight the Pentagon lends to their opinions are all very significant.

In April 2009, the Iowa Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriages over the objections of conservative activists, who predicted that gay people would undermine the institution. Now, one year later, preliminary data from the Iowa Department of Public Health finds that marriage rates are up and divorces are down:

- Iowa posted the lowest number of divorces since 1970.

- 21,139 marriages occurred in Iowa last year – the most since 2000 and the first increase since 2005. The 1,573 jump in marriages over 2008 included the first-ever same-gender unions.

- 2,020 same-sex couples – 728 male partners and 1,292 female partners — were married during that time span while 16,869 opposite-gender marriages were recorded.

It’s unclear to what extent same-sex unions are responsible for the spike — the economic downturn also contributed to the statistical change — but what is certain is that the doomsday predictions of extending marriage to same-sex couples are as unfounded in Iowa as they are in Massachusetts. Change.org’s Michael Jones points out that Massachusetts — which extended marriage to same-sex couples in 2004– recorded the “the lowest divorce rates in the entire country.” “In fact, divorce numbers were so low in the Bay State last year, they rivaled statistics stemming all the way back to World War II.”

Allowing gay people to marry will certainly lead to more marriages, but I suspect that the future of the institution is shaped by far more complicated economic and social factors. If the family values groups are so convinced that marriage is the most effective social arrangement for children and adults, they should probably spend most of their time dealing with those factors rather than trying to prevent people from entering into the institution. But then again, that kind of work would create far less sensationalism, fear, or donor dollars.

The National Organization For Marriage (NOM) has embarked on a disastrous 23-city “Summer for Marriage Tour 2010,” spreading the gospel of one-man-one-woman marriage to tens of supporters and encountering well organized counter protests in almost every city. Yesterday, the The Bilerico Project’s Bil Browning attended a NOM rally in Indianapolis, Indiana and found that while “over 250 LGBT and allied folks protested the rally,” “only 40 fundies showed up.” Among the small crowd of so-called traditional marriage supporters was a man holding a sign reminiscent of the Jim Crowe era. It showed two yellow nooses and a bible passage suggesting that gay couples should be put to death:

Over NOM’s objections, a NOM tour tracker from the Courage Campaign interviewed Larry Adams, the man holding the sign, who revealed that he had struggled with homosexual tendencies before discovering the bible:

NOM STAFFER TO ADAMS: We don’t want anything inflammatory, we’re here in love. [...]

ADAMS: If homosexuality was punished like it was supposed to be, there wouldn’t be so much homosexuality out here….

COURAGE CAMPAIGN: Have you ever had that temptation?

ADAMS: Oh yea…I know it is from the devil so I avoided it….I was all confused myself until about 40 years old and started reading the bible…and now I know what’s right and what’s wrong. The bible says, then I believe it.

Watch it:

Ironically, NOM has been portraying itself as a victim of LGBT activists who claim that the group’s supporters are bigoted or intolerant. During an interview on the Lars Larson show on Thursday — before the Indiana rally — former NOM CEO Maggie Gallagher said she was “really proud of our supporters.” ” If you look at the tape, they remain very peaceful and prayerful and respectful of the law, because that’s who our people are.” LGBT activists “want us treated like racists in the public square and it’s wrong and it should stop.”

Gallagher also criticized LGBT leaders for failing to condemn the counter protesters’ “disruptive” tactics. “I mean, what kind of people do that, first of all, and what kind of movement doesn’t step up and say, ‘No, this isn’t what our movement is about.’

Earlier this month, Missouri Governor Jay Nixon (D) signed Executive Order 10-24, “adding employment protections based on sexual orientation to the Executive Branch of Missouri state government.” The measure, which went largely unreported in the press, does not explicitly extend protections for gender identity, but PROMO, the state LGBT group, told me they received assurances from the Attorney General that discrimination against gender would not be tolerated. From the text:

The executive branch of the State of Missouri shall ensure that all present and prospective employees are afforded equal opportunity at all levels and phases of employment within state government with respect to, but not limited to, hiring, recruiting, training, benefits, promotions, transfers, layoffs, demotions, terminations, rate of compensation, and recalls from layoffs. It shall be the responsibility of the State Office of Equal Employment Opportunity to monitor all departments of the executive branch of state government and assist them to ensure equal employment opportunity. The State of Missouri shall work to ensure that there will be no vestiges of discrimination against persons on account of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, ancestry, age, sexual orientation, veteran status, or disability; not only in employment practices but in the provision of services and the operation of facilities.

PROMO see the order as a big step forward for a state that became the first in the nation to ban same sex marriages in 2004 (that amendment “picked up 70 percent of the vote and was endorsed in every county but St. Louis city”), and believes that it signals the governor’s support for The Missouri Nondiscrimination Act (MONA), a measure that would extend anti-discrimination protections to public and private institutions.

But the governor’s spokesperson, Scott Holste, cautioned me against viewing this as a move in that direction. “The Governor believes that Missouri should work to ensure that there won’t be any vestiges of discrimination,” Holste said, but stressed that Nixon has not expressed support for a broader anti-discrimination measure that goes beyond the Executive branch. “That’s an issue that we will have to address at another time,” he said. Nixon’s order is the first of its kind in Missouri.

Earlier this year, the Arizona legislature eliminated funding for KidsCare, the state health program covering 38,000 children of the working poor, to help close the state’s $5 billion budget gap. By ending the program, the state forfeited billions of dollars in federal matching funds and left uninsured children with few health care options. After health care reform passed — the law requires states that want to continue receiving federal health care funds to maintain eligibility in Medicaid and CHIP — Gov. Jan Brewer (R-AZ) realized that the cuts would have meant that the state would lose millions in federal matching funds and “urged legislators to restore the programs.”

Unfortunately that wouldn’t be the first time the state of Arizona cut vital services in an effort to balance the budget and then was forced to reverse course. Last September, in yet another effort to plug a spending hole, Brewer “eliminated health benefits to the spouses of domestic partners – gay or straight,” adversely affecting same-sex couples who “cannot marry in the state.” Now that too will be revered.

On Friday, a federal judge rejected the state’s claim that “the elimination of benefits will not harm the families of gay and lesbian employees because they may still be able to obtain insurance privately, through Medicaid or via the employers of the non-public employee partner.” From Lambda Legal, which sued the state on behalf of 10 state employee “who rely on health benefits from their employers to safeguard their families’ health“:

“Even assuming that is true,” Sedwick writes, citing a 9th Circuit Court ruling in Lambda Legal’s ongoing case In re Golinski, “the Ninth Circuit has recognized there is ‘an inherent inequality’ in allowing some employees to participate fully in the State’s health plan, while expecting other employees to rely on other sources, such as private insurance or Medicaid. ‘This back of the bus’ treatment relegates plaintiffs to a second-class status by imposing inferior workplace treatment on them, inflicting serious constitutional and dignitary harms that after-the-fact damages cannot adequately address.”

“This injunction removes the sword that’s been hanging over the heads of hundreds of state workers and their families,” said Tara Borelli, the Lambda Legal staff attorney who argued the case on June 28.

There is one other interesting point about all of this. The state’s effort to deny government-sponsored health care benefits to domestic partners coincided with its campaign to undo health care reform in the state. Arizona is both challenging the constitutionality of health care reform in court and hopes to eliminate the individual health insurance mandate through a ballot measure in November. Had the Judge not issued his injunction and these repeal measures were at all successful, gay couples in Arizona would actually have very few health care choices.

The New York Times reports on a pair of studies, one of which studies Supreme Court voting paterns since 1937, which find that the Roberts Court is the most conservative Supreme Court in recent history:

Four of the six most conservative justices of the 44 who have sat on the court since 1937 are serving now: Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Alito, Antonin Scalia and, most conservative of all, Clarence Thomas. (The other two were Chief Justices Burger and Rehnquist.) Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, the swing justice on the current court, is in the top 10.

The Roberts court is finding laws unconstitutional and reversing precedent — two measures of activism — no more often than earlier courts. But the ideological direction of the court’s activism has undergone a marked change toward conservative results. . . .

It is the ideological direction of the decisions that has changed. When the Rehnquist court struck down laws, it reached a liberal result more than 70 percent of the time. The Roberts court has tilted strongly in the opposite direction, reaching a conservative result 60 percent of the time.

The Rehnquist court overruled 45 precedents over 19 years. Sixty percent of those decisions reached a conservative result. The Roberts court overruled eight precedents in its first five years, a slightly lower annual rate. All but one reached a conservative result.

If anything, this data understates the Roberts Court’s rightward drift.  Because the Supreme Court largely gets to choose which cases it wants to hear, a conservative Court will not simply move the law to the right by handing down conservative opinions, it will also do so by hand-selecting cases that achieve conservative results.  In 2008-09 term, for example, the Supreme Court handed down five decisions cutting back environmental law.  Such an event could not have occurred without the justices taking the unusual step of agreeing to hear five environmental cases in a single term.

Moreover, even though American now suffers under the most right-wing Supreme Court in seven decades, right-wing lawmakers are demanding a Court that is even more extreme.  Conservatives repeatedly attacked Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan for taking positions on health reform and the Second Amendment that are also embraced by ultraconservative Justice Antonin Scalia.  And some senators even embraced a discredited “tenther” view of the Constitution that would declare child labor laws, the federal ban on whites only lunch counters and potentially even Social Security unconstitutional.

It remains to be seen how far the Roberts Court will go in embracing this deeply radical agenda.  John Roberts has only been Chief for five years — and he could have many decades left to replace hard-fought laws with his own right-wing values.

Our guest blogger is Sam Fulwood III, a Senior Fellow with the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Maybe Sen. James Webb, the Democratic senator from Virginia, didn’t understand that what he was saying in a bizarre and unfortunate opinion article published in Friday’s Wall Street Journal made him sound like a mossback from the last century. I’m being charitable because surely the Democratic senator from Virginia didn’t mean to sound as bigoted as the article makes him seem. No, surely he wasn’t arguing that white Americans suffer from federal policies that favor everyone but themselves.

“Those who came to this country in recent decades from Asia, Latin America and Africa did not suffer discrimination from our government, and in fact have frequently been the beneficiaries of special government programs,” Webb wrote, arguing for a retreat from those unspecified federal programs. “The same cannot be said of many hard-working white Americans, including those whose roots in America go back more than 200 years.”

Beyond being grossly ignorant about the current effects of what he calls “present-day diversity programs,” Webb is engaging in reckless racial inversion. While he carefully exculpates black Americans, whom he describes as “still in need,” Webb makes a scurrilous case that white Americans – southerners and Baptists, in particular – are being harmed by nonwhite groups who receive “special consideration in a wide variety of areas including business startups, academic admissions, job promotions and lucrative government contracts.” His solution is a call for white people to unite and end “government directed diversity programs.”

Clearly, Webb is unaware that affirmative actions programs have been effectively dismantled by the Supreme Court. But worse, he’s oblivious to the fact that his screed treads dangerously close to the discredited divide-and-conqueror tactics of the Southern strategy. In this new formation, Webb pits the sweeping and swelling segments of America’s immigrant population against native-born Americans with the aim of rallying the nation’s “white cultures.”

If he thinks this is a necessary step toward racial healing, especially after the week the nation’s just had, then he’s even more misguided than his article reveals. Somebody, perhaps one of his congressional colleagues, needs to tell Sen.Webb to get his head out of the last, sad epoch of covert racist talk and join the rest of America in the 21st century.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), who is expected to become the Senate Judiciary Committee’s lead Republican next year, explained yesterday that his vote against Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan signals his desire to engage in even more obstruction of President Obama’s nominees:

He also said he would maintain a more partisan profile toward judicial nominees as the Republican leader of the Senate Judiciary Committee if he is re-elected in November. . . .

There has been pressure from voters to step back from bipartisanship, he said.

“Then the people at the grass roots of America see that and wonder how come Republicans are going to do it the way it’s always been done for 225 years but the Democrats aren’t,” Grassley said.

To a certain extent, it’s a good thing that Grassley is being so honest about his intentions.  Last year, Grassley pretended to negotiate with Senate Finance Committee Chair Max Baucus (D-MT) for months over the Affordable Care Act, even though Grassley was only doing so to delay the bill.  Hopefully, his admission that he plans to play a highly partisan role on the Judicary Committee will keep other senators from engaging in sham negotiations with Grassley in the future.

But Grassley is not telling the truth when he claims that Democrats engaged in unusual opposition to President Bush’s nominees — or that GOP obstructionism is anything new.  Indeed, during the Clinton and Bush II Administrations, GOP senators repeatedly manipulated the Senate rules to ensure that only right-wing judges could be confirmed.  The late Sen. Jesse Helms (R-NC) went so far as to block every single Clinton nominee from North Carolina.

Moreover, it’s not exactly clear how Grassley could be more obstructionist than he and his right-wing colleagues are already being.  Because the Senate rules require the Majority Leader to spend limited floor time to confirm a nominee if just one senator threatens to filibuster, Republicans have objected to nearly all of Obama’s nominees in an effort to run out the Senate’s clock.  None of these filibusters are rooted in serious objections to the nominees, as evidenced by the fact that many of Obama’s judges were confirmed unanimously after the filibuster against them was broken.

In other words, Grassley’s announcement can be summed up in nine words: “meet the new boss, same as the old boss.”  At least Grassley’s decided to be honest about the fact that he doesn’t negotiate in good faith.

On Tuesday, the Wonk Room traveled to the National Archives to recover some of the surveys the military conducted about the troops’ attitudes towards black people between 1942 and 1946. Despite the surveys’ clearly racist results, the military pushed forward and integrated the forces. We also discovered that although the racial polls were smaller, they shared common questions with the recently distributed Don’t Ask Don’t Tell survey. Both questionnaires operate from the majority perspective, on the disquieting assumption that there something inherently problematic with minorities.

Yesterday I returned to the National Archives to recover a military survey administered between 1946 and 1947 about troops’ attitudes towards not only black people, but also Jews. In one part of the survey, non-Jewish, white troops were asked to mark “agree” or “disagree” to a series of statements “mostly about stereotypes” of Jews.

Consider these:

“There is nothing good about Jews.” (Agree: 86%, Disagree: 13%)

“Jews are out to rule the world.” (Agree: 27%, Disagree: 73%)

“The Jews always get the best of everything.” (Agree: 30%, Disagree: 70%)

“You can always tell a Jew by the way he looks.” (Agree: 61%, Disagree: 39%)

“Jews are the biggest goldbricks in the Army. (Agree: 51%, Disagree: 49%)

“A Jew will always play you for a sucker.” (Agree: 48%, Disagree: 52%)

It’s interesting that these questions were even asked, since — as the survey itself notes — “no official Army action was being considered with respect to Jewish soldiers.” About 8 of the 13 statements on Jews presented to the troops bear a disturbingly negative connotation.

Read the entire survey:

Survey on Jews

- Nina Bhattacharya

Yesterday, right-wing provocateur Andrew Breitbart posted a now-infamous video on his “Big” media empire.  Although Breitbart’s carefully-edited video appeared to depict USDA official Shirley Sherrod admitting that she denied government services to a poor farmer because he was white, we now know that Sherrod was telling a twenty-four year old story about how she came to embrace this white farmer’s cause — enabling him to save his farm after two years of Sherrod’s hard work.

And Breitbart’s actions do not simply reveal his already well-known aversion to reality, they may also place his Big empire in deep legal jeopardy.

Under the First Amendment, it’s not easy to win a defamation lawsuit, and for good reason.  Democracy depends on a robust and unafraid media, and reporters who live in constant terror of being sued into oblivion are far less likely to report unpleasant truths. Nevertheless, the First Amendment’s protections are not unlimited, and they simply do not apply to publishers whose callous disregard for the facts paint others in a false light.

As a general rule, when a publisher’s false statements force another person into the public spotlight they are liable for defamation if they knew or should have known that their claims were false.  In other words, if a publication fails to take the most minimal steps to ensure that their content is true, they risk an expensive lawsuit if their content turns out to be false.

But Breitbart appears to have taken no steps whatsoever to verify the video’s context before he posted it alongside a rant accusing Sherrod of the most vicious racism:

In her meandering speech to what appears to be an all-black audience, this federally appointed executive bureaucrat lays out in stark detail, that her federal duties are managed through the prism of race and class distinctions. . . .

Sherrod’s racist tale is received by the NAACP audience with nodding approval and murmurs of recognition and agreement. Hardly the behavior of the group now holding itself up as the supreme judge of another groups’ racial tolerance.

Of course, it’s now up to Sherrod and her lawyers to decide whether they want to pursue what could be a very strong defamation case against Breitbart, but other media outlets should not think that they are off the hook.

In most states, a publication or other news source can be held liable for republishing another person’s defamatory statement if they “know or ha[ve] reason to know of its defamatory character.”  And all media sources now have more than enough reason to know that any story touted by Breitbart cannot be trusted.  Beyond his shameful behavior in the Sherrod incident, Breitbart is, of course, most famous for publishing a deceptively edited video which falsely suggested that the now-defunct ACORN violated the law.

None of this means that reporters cannot republish Breitbart’s claims if they conduct their own investigation and determine those claims to be true, but far too many reporters (and, tragically, White House officials) failed to conduct any meaningful investigation into the Sherrod video.  If a commitment to the truth wasn’t enough to inspire such an investigation this time, maybe the threat of a legal sanction will suffice the next time around.

Since Congress passed Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell in 1993, American society has began accepting gays and lesbians both legally and socially, relegating support for the ban to some fairly radical corners of the political spectrum. As a result, social conservative groups like the American Family’s Association (AFA), Family Research Council (FRC), and the Center for Military Readiness are becoming increasingly irrelevant, but they are no less inflammatory. Over at Pam’s House Blend, guest blogger and former AFA insider Joe Murray reveals how these organizations have continued to manufacture fear to make money and hold on to what’s left of their constituency:

There is no denying that homophobia became a worthwhile business for many on the right and has yielded a number of straw men struggles. The battle for marriage, the fight against Heather and her two mommies, and the fictional “homosexual agenda” were created for one reason – it produced a cash cow. [...] Need to see how the cow works? Look no further than the American Family Association (AFA).

In its battle to keep patriots from serving in the U.S. Armed Forces for no other reason than their sexual orientation, the AFA is preparing to educate supporters about the importance of Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell (DADT)….When the reader opens the AFA email, he cannot help but see a picture of what appears to be a U.S. soldier sitting alone on a Middle Eastern street. The solider looks exhausted, isolated, and desperate. His picture is centered and on his right (viewer’s left), are the words “DON’T ASK” and on his left (viewer’s right) are the words “DON’T TELL.”

The insinuation is clear – thanks to the power of the “homosexual” lobby and a complacent administration, U.S. soldiers are left stranded on the battlefield as a new batch of recruits are soon to be inducted into the military under the rainbow flag. In other words, the image is an unfortunate manipulation of U.S. troops to further a profitable political message.

I pointed out last week that the Family Research Council claimed that Congressional Democrats were moving to repeal DOMA in order raise funds. And today, Kyle Mantyla of Right Wing Watch notices that Tony Perkins has invented the notion that President Obama has abandoned the term “religious freedom” in favor of “religious worship” to “completely secularize America.” Mantyla discovers that Obama used the phrase “religious freedom” just four days ago and that “a search of the White House website returns 124 uses of the phrase ‘freedom of religion’ compared to just 9 uses of ‘freedom of worship.’” Conversely, “a search of the George W. Bush White House website archive also returns exactly 124 mentions of ‘freedom of religion’ versus 33 uses of ‘freedom of worship,’” he notes.

This evening’s “Mission Compromised” webcast — which will certainly rely on similar tactics — will feature Senator Jim Inhofe (R-OK) and Representative Todd Akin (R-MO). Interestingly, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), the ranking member on the Senate Armed Services Committee and now a strong supporter of DADT, is not scheduled to appear.

A new report commissioned by the CDC and presented this morning at the International AIDS Conference in Vienna finds that “[p]overty is perhaps the most important factor in whether inner-city heterosexuals are infected with the AIDS virus.” The report, which excluded men who have sex with men and drug users, examined 9,000 heterosexual adults living in some 23 cities and detected HIV “in 2.4 percent of the people who were living below the federal poverty line” and a significantly lower 1.2 percent of people “who made more money than the federal poverty guideline.”

From CDC’s press release:

Prevalence was especially high in those with the lowest socioeconomic status. Within the low income urban areas included in the study, individuals living below the poverty line were at greater risk for HIV than those living above it (2.4 percent prevalence vs. 1.2 percent), though prevalence for both groups was far higher than the national average (0.45 percent)….The absence of race-based differences in this analysis is likely due to existing high prevalence of HIV in poor urban areas, which – regardless of race or ethnicity – places individuals living in these areas at greater risk for exposure to HIV with each sexual encounter.

Authors note that other factors associated with poverty also likely contribute to high HIV prevalence in these settings. Some of these factors include limited health care access, which can reduce utilization of HIV testing and prevention services; substance abuse, which can increase sexual risk behavior; and high rates of incarceration, which can disrupt the stability of relationships.

Of course, the absence of race-base differences doesn’t mean that they don’t exist; it suggests that black people are disproportionately affected by AIDS not because they are disproportionately poor. In fact, given that black and Hispanic Americans are more likely to live in neighborhoods with concentrated poverty than other racial and ethnic groups, the study’s participants were 77% black, 15% Hispanic and only 4% white.

As the Black AIDS Institute put it, “We believe this is essentially a difference without a distinction.” The gap in AIDS rates have been “driven by social determinants of health: socioeconomic status, high rates of sexually transmitted diseases, high rates of incarceration, man sharing (knowingly and unknowingly) due to gender imbalances, lack of access to healthcare, lack of a regular health provider and low HIV literacy.” Black people “are disproportionately poor” and “when Whites and Latinos live in poor Black communities, they are negatively impacted by the same social determinants that undermine the health of their Black neighbors.”

“Black people still bare the brunt of the AIDS epidemic in America today,” the organization notes. “This study demonstrates one of the reasons why. Race matters and so does poverty. Black people are disproportionately impacted by HIV; Black people are disproportionately poor. ‘You say tomato; I say tomato.’” The CDC’s own statistics demonstrate this reality:

Obama’s new AIDS initiative re-allocates “more attention and resources” to “populations at highest risk of HIV infection,” including Black and Latino Americans — many of whom are living in poverty. The initiative also instructs federal agencies to consider additional efforts to support housing assistance and community clinics and notes that under the health law, poorer Americans will be eligible for Medicaid coverage.

Right on the heels of Family Research Council’s George Rekers scandal, Truth Wins Out has a new video exposing how a major figure in the so-called ex-gay movement forced his male clients to touch themselves during “therapy” sessions:

Truth Wins Out (TWO) released an exclusive video statement today from two former clients of “ex-gay” life coach Alan Downing. The clients, Ben Unger and Chaim Levin, alleged that during individual therapy sessions, Downing (pictured) made them undress in front of a mirror and touch their bodies while the significantly older therapist watched. Unger and Levin call the sessions a “psychological striptease” and believe they were harmed by what they consider unprofessional behavior and sexual misconduct.

Downing, who admits he is still attracted to men, is a major player in the “ex-gay” industry and a practitioner of so-called “reparative therapy”. He is the lead therapist for Jews Offering New Alternatives to Homosexuality (JONAH) and is listed on the People Can Change website as a “Senior Trainer” for Journey into Manhood, which is a controversial “ex-gay” backwoods retreat designed to supposedly make gay men more masculine.

Watch the testimonials:

Major medical associations have condemned the ex-gay movement. “The potential risks of ‘reparative therapy’ are great,” the American Psychiatric Association warns, “including depression, anxiety and self destructive behavior, since therapist alignment with societal prejudices against homosexuality may reinforce self hatred already experienced by the patient.” “There is simply no sufficiently scientifically sound evidence that sexual orientation can be changed,” the American Psychological Association has concluded.

According to Truth Wins Out, the anti-gay movement grew in response to the flourishing gay communities in New York and San Francisco, which “presented a challenge to conservative churches.” “Influenced by the miracle-seeking Jesus Movement, the ex-gay ministries adopted name and claim theology. Essentially, this meant if you kept repeating you had “changed” — even if you had not — God would eventually grant you the miracle of heterosexuality as a reward for your faith.” Almost every ex-gay group has been rocked with scandal when their supposedly converted “straight” success stories are caught having sexual relations with other men. As Unger says in the video, “I’ve literally never met somebody coming out of that therapy who turned straight.”

In April, CNN invited “ex gay” Richard Cohen to ask if “homosexuality, is a problem in need of a cure.” After a grassroots campaign by LGBT bloggers and activists, the network admitted that “Richard Cohen was not the most appropriate guest to have on” and interviewed a psychologist who debunked the notion of reparative therapy.

Today, “the main financier and facilitator of ex-gay ministries is Focus on the Family, which hosts a quarterly symposium called Love Won Out.”

Reps. Chris Smith (R-NJ) and Trent Franks (R-AZ) are opposing a U.S. effort to convince the “U.N. Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) to grant ‘consultative status’ to the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC), a group “dedicated to human rights advocacy on behalf of people who experience discrimination or abuse on the basis of their actual or perceived sexual orientation, gender identity or expression.” In a letter to the UN, the two Congressmen say that the group’s belief that freedom of speech should not “violate the rights and freedoms” of gay people could impugn the rights of anti-gay groups or governments and are resisting a U.S. led campaign to bypass the NGO-approval committee and hold a vote before the 54-member ECOSOC.

Anti-gay countries like Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Egypt and Pakistan — where homosexuality is illegal and punishable by imprisonment, whipping, or death — have stalled the IGLHRC’s application in the NGO-approval committee for the last three years, which Smith and Franks support. From their letter:

Serious questions regarding the IGLHRC’s support for the internationally recognized rights to freedom of religion and freedom of express remain outstanding in the NGO Committee. Consequently, a forced, premature action in ECOSOC to approve the IGLHRC would potentially undermine these important rights, as well as the long established due process for NGO review. [...]

As per its responsibilities, the NGO Committee is currently reviewing the application of IGLHRC for “promotion and protection” of human rights, including those listed above. In previous answers, the IGLHRC has stated before the Committee that States should, “Ensure that the exercise of freedom of opinion and expression does not violate the rights and freedoms of persons of diverse sexual orientations and gender identities,” quoting the controversial Yogyakarta Principles, of which the IGLHRC is a strong advocate. Given this answer, the NGO Committee has asked the IGLHRC to clarify its position on the freedoms of religion and expression by asking the following question:

If a religion teaches that sexual relations other than between a man and a woman within wedlock is wrong, would the IGLHRC support the prosecution of a religious preacher for what he or she preaches against homosexuality, and would that be, in the organization’s view, consistent with the Articles 18 and 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights?

The IGLHRC has yet to answer this extremely important question that goes to the heart of human rights protected by the United Nations system.

A representative from IGLHRC told TPMDC on Wednesday that “the group has time and again affirmed that, as a human rights organization, they support human rights — including freedom of religion and freedom of expression. She also said the group respects countries’ rights to make their own laws.” That speech only becomes indefensible when it incites violence against gay people.

The blog gay in public notes that “the irony in Rep. Smith’s invocation of freedom of speech to try to quash just that is hard to swallow. IGLHRC, which does important work throughout the world protecting sexual minorities, deserves to be treated just like every other human rights organization that seeks consultative status.” Smith and Franks have done their best resist civil rights legislation in Congress, voting against repeal of Don’t Ask, Dont’ Tell, hate crimes legislation, and ENDA.

The Supreme Court rejected President George W. Bush’s claim that a president may lock up anyone he wants without giving them a meaningful opportunity to prove that they are wrongfully detained on four separate occasions. Nevertheless, a panel of conservative judges on the right-wing D.C. Circuit recently suggested that they will carve a hole in these four decisions that is so big as to render them absolutely meaningless.

One of the most important questions in any lawsuit is what “evidentiary standard” applies. In criminal cases, for example, the government cannot win unless they prove their case “beyond a reasonable doubt,” thus requiring them to present a very convincing case in order to achieve a conviction.

Shortly after the Supreme Court’s last major detention case, all of the judges on the DC federal trial court charged with hearing detainee hearings met and decided that these cases should be decided under a “preponderance of the evidence” standard, and the Justice Department agrees that this is the proper standard. In English, this means that the government may only detain an individual if it can demonstrate that it is more likely than not that the detention is justified.

This week, however, in a case called Al-Adahi v. Obama, a panel of three right-wing appeals court judges claimed that this “preponderance” bar should be replaced by one that is so low that it would be almost impossible for a detainee to be released:

[W]e are aware of no precedents in which eighteenth century English courts adopted a preponderance standard. Even in later statutory habeas cases in this country, that standard was not the norm. For years, in habeas proceedings contesting orders of deportation, the government had to produce only “some evidence to support the order.” In such cases courts did not otherwise “review factual determinations made by the Executive.” In habeas petitions challenging selective service decisions, the government also had the minimal burden of providing “some evidence” to support the decision. Habeas petitions contesting courts martial required the government to show only that the military prisoner had received, in the military tribunal, “full and fair consideration” of the allegations in his habeas petition. And in response to habeas petitions brought after an individual’s arrest, the government had to show only that it had probable cause for the arrest.

Many of the standards listed here would turn detainees’ right to challenge their detention into an empty charade.  If the government, for example, only had to show “some evidence” proving that a person was a terrorist, then even the weakest case against a detainee would be sufficient to keep them locked up forever.

There are, of course, many open legal questions concerning detainees’ habeas rights.  If a person who was previously associated with a terrorist group convincingly reputates that group and its tactics, for example, must they be freed?  One thing is clear, however.  All detainees must be given a meanful opportunity to challenge they detention.  Al-Adahi is simply wrong to suggest that a detainee’s tribunal can be nothing more than a sham.