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LGBT

North Carolina Lawmaker Flip-Flops On Discriminatory Amendment He Supported

By Zack Ford on Apr 26, 2012 at 4:40 pm

North Carolina Rep. Jim Crawford (D)

North Carolina Rep. Jim Crawford (D) was one of 10 Democrats who voted in favor of placing Amendment One on the May 8 ballot, a measure that would ban not only same-sex marriage, but also civil unions and domestic partnerships. He sponsored an almost identical amendment in 2009, and co-sponsored a similar amendment in 2010. Now, though, he says he opposes the measure because “it goes too far” and claims he never favored the version that passed:

CRAWFORD: When this legislation was introduced, it did not have the contract problems that the bill has now, and I told Elaine the other day that I would vote against this bill because it does go too far. I think it’s only right that these folks [same-sex couples] can have a contract or an agreement so that they can look after each other in the hospitals, have insurance, and the other benefits. The legislation that has my name on it — it got changed considerably, and I would not support that legislation and I would definitely vote against it.

Watch him change his position in response to a recent confrontation with a lesbian constituent:

Given that Crawford voted for the amendment in its final form, he bears responsibility for all the changes that were made to it. His past support for banning same-sex marriage suggests his sudden flip-flop has little to do with an actual change of heart. Due to redistricting, Crawford faces a Democratic primary against fellow incumbent Rep. Winkie Wilkins (D), who voted against Amendment One. This is little more than political pandering from a well-documented opponent of LGBT equality.

NEWS FLASH

‘Farewell Intercourse’ Law Sparks Fury In Egypt | Egypt’s National Council for Women is urging Egypt’s parliament not to approve two controversial laws reducing the minimum age of marriage to 14 and allowing a husband to have sex with his dead wife within six hours of her death. Egypt’s Islamist dominated parliament is to introduce the legislation which critics say is anti-female and “catastrophic.” The Council charges that “marginalizing and undermining the status of women would negatively affect the country’s human development.” Lawmakers are also seeking to eliminate decade old reforms which allowed women to end unhappy or abusive marriage without interference from their husbands.

Update

The Christian Science Monitor’s Dan Murphy reports that “The chances of any such piece of legislation being considered by the Egyptian parliament for a vote is zero.” Murphy warns that “extreme, not to mention inflammatory claims” about the law are spreading across the Internet.

By Eli Clifton on Apr 26, 2012 at 4:39 pm

Alyssa

Boston Bruins Fans React to Overtime Loss to Washington Capitals With Racist Tweets

By Alyssa Rosenberg on Apr 26, 2012 at 4:37 pm

By now, it’s not exactly news to anyone that major events in culture bring out the ugly on Twitter in a big way, but it still made me so sad to see Bruins fans react to their team losing to the Capitals in overtime on a goal by Joel Ward, one of not very many black players in the National Hockey League, with ugly racist outbursts. Sports history in Boston are a mixed bag when it comes to racial equality. The Bruins were the team that integrated the National Hockey League, and the Celtics were the first integrated National Basketball Association team. The Red Sox were the last Major League Baseball team to integrate, giving Jackie Robinson a tryout only under pressure from the Boston City Council, and when they did bring on a black player, deliberately choose Pumpsie Green, who didn’t have the chops to be a first-stringer. Their loss in the 1967 World Series may have been in part due to the team’s lingering racism and failure to go after the best players. One of the smartest things the team’s current ownership group ever did was decide to discuss that legacy directly and to take actions to rebuild the Red Sox relationship with Boston’s black community. But it’s easier to clean house on an institution than to move all the people with ties to or affection for that institution forward. This kind of reaction is a disgrace to the Bruins legacy, and it might be nice if Bruins players and management spoke up and said as much.

Update

I missed this while I was in a screening, but a reader is kind enough to point out that the Bruins have stepped up with a statement: “”The Bruins are very disappointed by the racist comments that were made following the game last night. These classless, ignorant views are in no way a reflection of anyone associated with the Bruins organization.” Good on them for speaking out, and for naming these kinds of outbursts for precisely the pathetic things they are.

NEWS FLASH

Connecticut House Passes Medical Marijuana Legalization | Fresh off passing a new law preventing any new people from being sentenced to die, the Connecticut House voted 96 to 51 last night to allow doctors to prescribe medical marijuana for certain medical conditions. If this bill ultimately becomes law, it will eliminate state enforcement of anti-marijuana laws against patients with valid prescriptions. Federal marijuana laws will remain in effect until Congress modifies or repeals them.

Climate Progress

Tar Sands Production In America Is Closer Than You Think

By Public Lands Team on Apr 26, 2012 at 3:55 pm

Coming to a state near you?

By Tom Kenworthy

Before long the tar sands issue won’t be just about imports from Canada via pipeline.

Utah, which has never met a dirty fuel it didn’t love, has been encouraging efforts to develop a home-grown tar sands industry. Construction on a project located on state lands in the eastern part of the state could begin by the end of the year, according to a story in Environment and Energy Publishing’s Energy Wire:

“It’s not just something that’s up in Canada,” Utah Tar Sands Resistance member Raphael Cordray told E&E. “People don’t know it’s here in Utah. Our goal is to get the citizens of Utah to recognize that there’s a proposed tar sands site in Utah that could become the first commercial site in America, and what is at stake.”

Utah has about a third of the roughly 36 billion barrels of tar sands oil thought to be located in the U.S. Not all of that is estimated to be technically or commercially recoverable, however.  Tar sands contain a form of petroleum called bitumen that can be refined into gasoline. But the process is costly, energy-intensive, and on a life-cycle basis releases far more global warming pollutants than conventional oil refining operations.

U.S. Oil Sands, the Canadian based company that is working to develop the Utah deposits, has leases on about 32,000 acres of land in the state. The company was granted permits to begin production by the state in 2009. But it faces a legal challenge from an environmental group, Living Rivers, which fears tar sands production will harm Utah’s desert and mountain landscapes.

Meanwhile, supporters of another dirty fossil fuel, oil shale, have been making a political ruckus in a number of counties in Utah, Colorado and Wyoming — organized by a former Bush administration Interior Department official who now directs a Utah state office focused on energy development on federal lands in the state.

A number of county boards in the region have approved, or considered approving, a resolution taking the Obama administration to task for scaling back plans by the Bush administration to develop oil shale resources. Combined with efforts on Capitol Hill, this represents the beginning of an all-out election year push by Republicans to agitate for massive developments of dirty and impractical fossil fuels.

Oil shale – not to be confused with shale oil deposits like those in the Bakken field in North Dakota – is an energy developers’ pipe dream. Though oil shale deposits in Colorado, Wyoming and Utah may contain an estimated 1.5 trillion barrels of recoverable oil, it has never been proven to be commercially viable in the U.S.

Oil shale is a rock that contains kerogen and must be heated to very high temperatures to release a synthetic oil. It has “one-third the energy density of Cap’n Crunch!“ Shale oil is conventional oil trapped in reservoirs found in shale rock formations.

Development of oil shale could have a significant impact on already stressed western water supplies, according to a 2010 study by the General Accounting Office. And a recent report by Western Resource Advocates shows that oil shale development would take huge amounts of energy, would have emit large amounts of global warming pollutants, and would increase air pollution problems in the interior West.

Tom Kenworthy is a Senior Fellow with the Center for American Progress Action Fund

NEWS FLASH

Poll: 83 Percent Of Americans Support Medicare Reform | Eighty-three percent of Americans believe Medicare must be reformed in order to keep the program affordable and sustainable and 51 percent say a “great deal of change” is required, a new Harris Poll finds. A majority are reluctant to fund the necessary changes out-of-pocket, but do support changing the way providers are reimbursed for care — provisions that are included in the Affordable Care Act.

Interestingly, 48 percent of respondents — including 46 percent of Republicans — said they “support the Medicare program we have now, where people can choose the government run program or a plan from a private health insurance company.” Just 13 percent — and 26 percent of Republicans — would favor “a Medicare program solely run by private insurance companies.” The other results:

– 53 percent were opposed to raising taxes

– 60 percent opposed “increasing co-pays and deductibles so that out-of-pocket costs will increase”

– 72 percent support cutting the price Medicare pays for prescription drugs

– 57 percent are in favor of having people with higher incomes pay more for their Medicare benefits than people with lower incomes

– 54 percent support the proposal that doctors and hospitals be paid “based on quality and results, rather than the volume of care provided”

Currently, over 15 percent of the federal budget goes toward funding Medicare, and that number is expected to increase to roughly 18 percent by 2020.

– Fatima Najiy

By Guest Blogger on Apr 26, 2012 at 3:40 pm

Media

Fox News Contributor Mocks Sandra Fluke By Questioning Her Sexual Orientation

By Adam Peck on Apr 26, 2012 at 3:35 pm

Fox News Contributor Monica Crowley

Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown Law student who was dragged into the national spotlight after Rush Limbaugh referred to her as a slut, announced this week that she is engaged to boyfriend Adam Mutterperl. However, the happy news was quickly marred by Fox News contributor Monica Crowley when she sent out this tweet earlier this afternoon:

Crowley’s fake surprise that Fluke is not, in fact, a lesbian is especially ironic given the attacks that her network leveled against Fluke in February. For weeks, Fluke was criticized ceaselessly by the conservative media for demanding that health insurance providers cover contraception, ridiculed by Fox News hosts like Bill O’Reilly for not simply buying her birth control at Target for $9, and mocked endlessly by Limbaugh for having too much sex.

The vitriol that accompanied Fluke for weeks even rubbed off onto her new fiancé. Adam Mutterperl, a comedy writer and producer, was criticized by conservative websites like the Daily Caller for his family’s ties to Democratic politics. Today’s comments are just the latest controversy the Fox News host has found herself in. Back in 2008, Crowley was caught plagiarizing (again) someone else’s parody of progressive advocacy group MoveOn, and last year she called DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz “she of the angry perm.”

LGBT

Romney: ‘People Should Be Allowed To Participate In The Boy Scouts Regardless Of Sexual Orientation’

By Igor Volsky on Apr 26, 2012 at 3:32 pm

Since news broke that Ohio mom Jen Tyrrell was ousted as her son’s den leader from the Boy Scouts for being gay, more than 154,000 people have signed a Change.org petition asking for her reinstatement, and Tyrrell has appeared on multiple national media outlets to discuss the experience. Now, GLAAD digs up this clip of then-Senate candidate Mitt Romney saying that all people should be able to participate in the organization. Romney served on the National Executive Board of the Boy Scouts of America for nearly a decade.

ROMNEY: I believe that the Boy Scouts of America does a wonderful service for this country,” Romney says. “I support the right of the Boy Scouts of America to decide what it wants to do on that issue. I feel that all people should be allowed to participate in the Boy Scouts regardless of their sexual orientation.

Watch it:

Interestingly, Romney also banned the Boy Scouts from officially volunteering at the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics, although he said then that Boy Scouts couldn’t volunteer because most weren’t 18 years old, the mandatory minimum age the Olympics set for volunteers.

Justice

Sen. Mike Lee Adds The Violence Against Women Act To The Long List Of Things He Thinks Are Unconstitutional

By Ian Millhiser on Apr 26, 2012 at 3:30 pm

There aren’t many things Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) doesn’t believe to be unconstitutional. While it probably would not be possible to count every essential law or program that violates Lee’s tenther understanding of the Constitution, a short list includes Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, FEMA, the FDA, federal income assistance for the poor and national child labor laws.

So it’s really not that much of a surprise that he found yet another law he thinks is unconstitutional today. This time, it’s the entire Violence Against Women Act:

[The Violence Against Women Act] oversteps the Constitution’s rightful limits on federal power. Violent crimes are regulated and enforced almost exclusively by state governments. In fact, domestic violence is one of the few activities that the Supreme Court of the United States has specifically said Congress may not regulate under the Commerce Clause. As a matter of constitutional policy, Congress should not seek to impose rules and standards as conditions for federal funding in areas where the federal government lacks constitutional authority to regulate directly.

Watch it:

Once again, Lee might want to consider reading the Constitution before he behaves like he’s an expert in what it says. Although it’s true that Congress cannot prohibit domestic violence under its power to regulate commerce — unlike, say, a comprehensive regulation of the nation’s health care market, domestic violence laws are not economic regulation — the Constitution permits Congress to do a whole lot more than just regulate the nation’s economy. Specifically, the Constitution allows our national leaders to “to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States,” and there is simply nothing in the Constitution’s text that prevents Congress from providing for the general welfare by funding grants that states can use to combat domestic violence.

Lee, however, has made quite a political career out of ignoring the text of the Constitution — and wielding his fake Constitution to declare that pretty much any federal law that protects the sick, the unfortunate, the young, the old and, now, women is somehow unconstitutional.

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