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LGBT

NOM Admits Its Anti-Gay Mission Moving Forward Is Entirely Religious

By Zack Ford on Nov 7, 2012 at 4:25 pm

NOM's stock photo-banner defending 'marriage as God designed it.'

Earlier today, the National Organization for Marriage admitted that it lost its various fights, but that it still believed it had a winning case to make. It followed up this afternoon with a message to its supporters that included some new language — namely, that its entire crusade against same-sex marriage is based on religious ideas:

But make no mistake: we are disappointed, but we are not defeated! We are fighting for a true and just cause—God’s institution of marriage. This is a social compact that is not only ordained by the Almighty, it has served society very well. It’s a cause worth fighting and with your support we will continue to do just that. [...]

Though we are disappointed over these losses, we remain faithful to our mission and committed to the cause of preserving marriage as God designed it. Marriage is a true and just cause, and we will never abandon the field of battle just because we experienced a setback. There is much work to do. With your continued support and with faith in God, we begin that process now.

NOM used to distinguish itself from more obviously “Christian”-affiliated groups like the Family Research Council by not using religious rhetoric. Instead, NOM claimed it was protecting “traditional marriage,” and argued that same-sex marriage would somehow negatively impact children, fidelity, and the “institution” of marriage. In this low moment, the organization has made clear that those arguments are all spin and that its true goal is to impose one set of religious values upon the entire country. This isn’t a surprising reality, but it is a notable admission.

Justice

Why Americans Actually Voted For A Democratic House

By Ian Millhiser on Nov 7, 2012 at 4:21 pm

Speaker Boehner: The Supreme Court built that

Although a small number of ballots remain to be counted, as of this writing, votes for a Democratic candidate for the House of Representatives outweigh votes for Republican candidates. Based on ThinkProgress’ review of all ballots counted so far, 53,952,240 votes were cast for a Democratic candidate for the House and only 53,402,643 were cast for a Republican — meaning that Democratic votes exceed Republican votes by more than half a million.

Two caveats are necessary in considering these numbers. The first is that all ballots have not been counted, so these numbers will change somewhat as more returns trickle in. (Because the remaining ballots are more likely to be from Democratic-leaning west coast states, it is likely that the Democrats’ margin will increase somewhat over time.) The second caveat is that these numbers include several California districts where two members of the same party ran against each other, and they do not include districts where a single candidate ran unopposed. Nevertheless, the fact remains that the nation is very closely divided over which party should control the House, with Democrats appearing to enjoy a slight edge.

The actual partisan breakdown of the 113th Congress will be very different, however. Currently, Republicans enjoy a 233-192 advantage over Democrats, with 10 seats remaining undecided. That means that, in a year when Republicans earned less than half the popular vote, they will control a little under 54 percent of the House even if Democrats run the table on the undecided seats.

There is a simple explanation for how this happened: Republicans won several key state legislatures and governors’ mansions in the election cycle before redistricting, and they gerrymandered those states within an inch of their lives. President Obama won Pennsylvania by more than 5 points, but Democrats carried only 5 of the state’s 18 congressional seats:

Similar stories played out elsewhere. Obama won Virginia, and Democrats took 3 of 11 House seats. Obama won Ohio, but Democrats carried only 4 of 16 seats in Ohio’s House delegation.

Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), however, cannot simply thank Republican state lawmakers for enabling him to keep his job. He can also thank the conservatives on the Supreme Court. Partisan gerrymandering exists for one purpose: to cut off the ability of people who disagree with a state’s ruling party to influence future elections. It is a a clear violation of the First Amendment, which absolutely prohibits viewpoint discrimination. Yet the Supreme Court abdicated its responsibility to end this discrimination in its 5-4 decision in Vieth v. Jubelirer, where the conservative justices tossed out a lawsuit alleging that Pennsylvania’s congressional districts were unconstitutionally drawn to maximize Republican representation in Congress.

Americans voted for a Democratic president, a Democratic Senate, and, barring significant shifts in the vote tally, a Democratic House. Instead, they will get a House majority similar to the one that held the entire nation hostage during last year’s debt ceiling hostage crisis. If the American people wanted this to happen, they would have said so at the polls on Tuesday. Instead, Republican state lawmakers took away their right to democratically legitimate leadership — with a big assist from the conservatives on the Supreme Court.

ThinkProgress intern Nate Niemann contributed to this report.

Economy

How Grover Norquist’s Radical Anti-Tax Pledge Sunk Top Tier Republican Senate Candidates

By Josh Israel and Jeff Spross on Nov 7, 2012 at 3:55 pm

Grover Norquist

Grover Norquist

Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform boasted that 279 Congressional incumbents — and another 286 challengers — signed his “Taxpayer Protection Pledge” to never vote for any tax increases under any circumstances.

But when Democrats fought back against the anti-tax zealotry of Norquist and his Republican minions, many voters reacted positively, rejecting the pledge and its adherents. In fact, the notion of asking billionaires to contribute a little more was a key argument for President Obama’s re-election and Democratic victors around the country.

ThinkProgress has the video report. Watch it:

While not all races have been called, at least 55 Republican House incumbents or candidates who signed the pledge — and 24 Republican Senators or hopefuls — lost on Tuesday. Linda McMahon (R-CT), Senator Scott Brown (R-MA), Treasurer Josh Mandel (R-OH), Secretary of State Charles Summers (R-ME), former Gov. Tommy Thompson (R-WI) all signed the pledge and were attacked by their Democrats opponents in face-to-face debates over the issue. All five were defeated in their Senate bids.

State Sen. Tony Strickland (R-CA), Rep. Bob Dold (R-IL), State Sen. Richard Tisei (R-MA), and Rep. Frank Guita (R-NH) were also attacked by their House race opponents in debates for signing the pledge in this campaign or in the past. All four were also defeated.

In fact, of the fifteen-plus House Republican incumbents who apparently lost re-election, every single one had signed Norquist’s pledge.

Norquist’s group spent more than $15 million on independent expenditures. This included hundreds of thousands on ads explicitly defending candidates like Ricky Gill (R-CA) and State Rep. Lee Anderson (R-GA) against criticisms over their having signed the pledge. Both lost.

ThinkProgress War Room special assistant Emily Seldin contributed to this story.

Health

Five Ways Obamacare Will Help Americans Now That The Election Is Over

By Sy Mukherjee on Nov 7, 2012 at 3:50 pm

One of the biggest victories in last night’s election went to President Obama’s landmark health reform law. Now that the Supreme Court has upheld the vast majority of the law and the president has been reelected, Obamacare is here to stay — and the upcoming months and years will see a flurry of major changes to the U.S. health care system aimed at protecting American consumers.

Although certain Obamacare measures — such as allowing young adults to remain on their parents’ insurance until the age of 26 and requiring insurance companies to use 80 percent of their premiums for actual health care rather than their own profits — have already been implemented, the bulk of the law will go into effect over the next two years. Here’s what Americans can expect to see from Obamacare in the near future, and what it means for their health and financial security:

1) Statewide health insurance exchanges. States will soon decide whether to institute their own insurance exchanges, an exchange operated jointly with the federal government, or one run entirely by the federal government. And in 2014, those exchanges will allow individual Americans, small businesses, and eventually large businesses to purchase insurance on large marketplaces where they can leverage their purchasing power to get more affordable coverage. Plans under these exchanges must meet federal benchmarks across ten essential benefit categories, including maternal care and mental health services, helping to provide Americans with affordable insurance options that actually meet their medical needs. Members of Congress must also purchase their insurance plans from these exchanges starting in 2014.

2) An end to insurance company discrimination against Americans with pre-existing conditions. While Obamacare has already barred insurance companies from denying insurance to children with pre-existing conditions, this highly popular consumer protection will be extended to all Americans by January 2014. This means that Americans suffering from a host of genetic and chronic ailments that are completely beyond their control will no longer be relegated to expensive and inefficient high-risk pools, or be forced to forego critically needed health coverage entirely.

3) Prohibitions on lifetime and annual benefit caps. Also beginning in 2014, insurers will be completely prohibited from imposing lifetime and annual benefit caps on Americans. The provision will give much-needed peace of mind to Americans who require constant or expensive medical care due to a critical or ongoing health condition. During this year’s Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, speaker Stacy Lihn spoke movingly about how her young daughter — who suffers from a congenital heart defect — would have gone through half her lifetime benefit cap by the time she was six-months-old if it were not for Obamacare protections. Soon, all Americans will share in that potentially life-saving security.

4) Increased access to affordable contraception. Obamacare’s contraception mandate requiring employer-based insurance plans to cover contraception without a co-pay — a provision that studies have shown to benefit low-income women and reduce abortion rates — went into effect this past August. But the health law granted religious institutions some extra time to prepare for the birth control mandate. That time runs out in August 2013, when religious organizations will start implementing this aspect of the law through a workaround that shifts the cost of birth control services onto insurance companies.

5) Employer incentives for offering workers health care benefits. A little more than a year from now, Obamacare will require all employers with 50 or more full-time employees to provide workers with health benefits or risk paying a $2,000 per employee fine. Although 70 percent of Americans receive employer-sponsored health insurance, companies have been steadily shifting the cost of care onto their employees. Studies have shown that Obamacare’s employer mandates will actually lower health spending for small businesses and only modestly increase large companies’ health care costs, all while substantially helping low-wage and working Americans receive the affordable health coverage they need.

These are only some of the provisions that will eventually be in place under Obamacare. In order to actually deliver on the promise of affordable, quality coverage for all Americans, lawmakers on both the state and federal level must quickly begin laying the groundwork for Obamacare’s implementation. With last night’s affirmation of President Obama’s reform policies, Americans will soon experience first-hand the numerous landmark protections and benefits of Obamacare that have only existed in abstract terms up until now.

Justice

No. 2 Senate Democrat Endorses Filibuster Reform

By Ian Millhiser on Nov 7, 2012 at 3:50 pm

The single most important decision the Senate will make in the next two years will likely be whether to abolish or at least strictly curtail the minority’s power to veto any bill or nomination via a filibuster. This one decision, which Senate Democrats must make as soon as the new senators-elect are sworn in this January, is likely to decide whether President Obama can confirm a nominee — any nominee — to the Supreme Court, whether Obama’s next slate of cabinet officials represent the best public servants in the country or the best public servants who have never said a single word that can be used to embarrass the president, and whether Mitch McConnell — a man who said that kicking Obama out of office is his top priority — retains his iron grip on the Senate chamber.

In an interview with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow last night, Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) indicated that he gets just how important this decision will be:

MADDOW: If it turns out that Republicans don’t feel any differently about you guys than they did the past few years, is there a prospect for filibuster reform in the Senate?

DURBIN: It depends on the numbers of Democratic senators elected as to whether there will be filibuster reform. I have taken an look at some of the proposals. I think we need them. Consider in the last six years, we have had 380 Republican filibusters. In the six years of LBJ when he was the leader in the 60s, there was one filibuster. They’ve abused it to the point now where the Senate is a shell of its former self. It needs to be functional. We need reform that makes a filibuster count. Stick around. Don’t go out to dinner and tell us you’ll be back in 30 days — 30 hours — whatever it happens to be.

Watch it:

Durbin now joins Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) among the high-ranking Senate Democrats who support filibuster reform.

Alyssa

‘Sons of Anarchy’ Open Thread: Slim Offers

By Alyssa Rosenberg on Nov 7, 2012 at 3:36 pm

This post discusses plot points from the November 6 episode of Sons of Anarchy.

Sons of Anarchy is a show that’s always at its best when it puts aside complex arms deals, and the Galindo Cartel, and the CIA and focuses on a simple question: what does SAMCRO mean for the downwardly mobile white men and women who are affiliated with the club? Last night, while it had its share of exploding vans and poker club shootouts, and a setup for a devastating assassination, was primarily concerned with that question, and with the question of the aspirations that its main characters have seen slip out of reach.

Nero and Gemma discussed those questions most directly in a series of conversations that heightened their relationship even as Gemma finally reckoned with the fact that she would have to end it on Jax’s orders. “Ex-junkie, ex-con, those six-figure offers were kinda slim,” Nero explained to her of his decision to become a pimp rather than to go completely legitimate. “It’s hard to be a land baron on minimum wage,” Gemma agreed with him. And Nero gently probed the failure of her own dreams. “What about you, mama?” he asked. “Being an old lady’s your life’s ambition?” “My only ambition was to keep moving,” she told him, ruefully. “I was all in from that first ride. Knocked up two months later.”

Gemma’s not a stupid or incapable woman–quite the reverse. But unlike her daughter-in-law, Tara, she’s never had someone direct her considerable talents in a productive decision, or one that could have given her financial independence and legitimate leverage in her marriages. It’s heartbreaking to hear her tell her son, one who has the trappings of power that were his to claim as a man, and as a prince of the club, “I can count the times I’ve been really happy on one hand. You and your brother. Abel and Thomas…I like Nero, Jax. I haven’t felt light in a very long time.” Her price to return to the man who beat her down, and who she’d rather see dead, is pitifully small: a key to Jax and Tara’s house, and permission to see her grandsons. Whether you despise Gemma or admire her tenacity, there’s something crushing about the tiny scale of her dream, and the thought that she may not be able to handle even that. Clay’s predatory grin of triumph when she came home to inject his hands after the ride was a reminder of how high the cost can be for even the littlest ambitions.

Tara, by contrast, spends much of this episode in triumph. “You’re a persistent little gash,” Otto tells her when she returns to prison intent on getting him to recant the testimony that makes the RICO case against the Sons possible. “Yes, I am,” she replies. But one of the fascinating elements of Tara–though I’m not sure whether it’s a deliberate choice or an inability to read the character that’s produced this–is the extent to which being an old lady is a kind of role play for her, or a genuine identity that she’s chosen. When we first met Tara, her connection to Jax was reestablished by the fact that she was being stalked by a man who would eventually try to sexually assault her. Now, taking on the role of his old lady lends her a kind of cold power as she lets Otto masturbate to the sense of her perfume and the touch of her hand, telling her “Unhook my hand…Please. I’m not going to hurt you…Come to me. Hold my hand…I just want to feel a woman’s hand on me one more time. Please.” For someone who sought protection in the club against a rape, there’s something uneasy about watching Tara allow herself to be used as a sexual object for the sake of that club, to see her go home and tell Jax: “It’s just incredibly sad. He’s just emotionally broken. The perfume crushed him. He was sobbing. I think I got through to him.”
Read more

NEWS FLASH

Los Angeles County Votes To Require Condoms In Porn | Voters in Los Angeles County have approved a measure that would require any adult film stars filming there to wear condoms in their films. It’s an expansion of an already existing city ordinance in Los Angeles, designed to protect actors and promote safe sex practices among pornography consumers. Though opponents claimed that it would hurt the industry, the measure passed with 55.9 percent of the vote.

NEWS FLASH

CHART: Domestic Spending Already Projected To Hit Historic Lows | With the elections over, Congress’ next task (even if the choice is to do nothing) is dealing with the so-called fiscal-cliff, the set of spending cuts and tax increases scheduled for January 1st. Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) has already ruled out raising taxes on even the richest Americans. But non-defense discretionary spending, the money which Republicans always insist on slashing, is projected to hit historically low levels even without further cuts, as this chart from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorites shows. Simply put, these measures are already baked into the cake, yet Republicans may soon be calling for more:

Security

Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Embraces Direct Negotiations Between U.S. And Iran

By Hamed Aleaziz on Nov 7, 2012 at 2:45 pm

Today Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon became the most prominent Israeli official to embrace the idea of direct negotiations between the U.S. and Iran over the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program.

Previously, other Israeli officials have reportedly supported the idea of direct negotiations.

But now Ayalon spoke more directly when commenting on President Obama’s re-election, saying to Israeli press, “Obama, certainly in the short term, will be much more effective, because he already has a formulated policy. There could be direct negotiations with Iran.”

In October, the New York Times first reported that the administration had agreed “in principle” to direct negotiations with Iran after the election. Almost immediately, both the administration and Iranian officials denied the existence of any agreement. Michael Oren, Israel’s ambassador to the U.S., said “we do not think Iran should be rewarded with direct talks.” Ayalon’s comment today may suggest a different line of thinking in the Israeli government and comes on the same day that Mohammad Javad Larijani, an influential Iranian official, said it is “not taboo” to have direct negotiations with the U.S.

Several former high-level Israel intelligence officials, like Efraim Halevy, have welcomed the idea of direct negotiations as well. Halevy, speaking to Al-Monitor, said a few weeks ago:

“I realized that dialogue with an enemy is essential. There is nothing to lose. Although the claim was, if you talk to them, you legitimize them. But by not talking to them, you don’t de-legitimate them. So this convinced me, that we all have been very superficial in dealing with our enemies. Not everything you try succeeds. But you have to be willing to try.”

Others, like Amos Yadlin, a former high-level intelligence official in Israel, spoke positively of direct negotiations. Yadlin, in a paper co-written with Avner Golov, said of direct negotiations:

“This degree of backpedalling, a complete U-turn from its official policy, is indicative of the effectiveness of the pressure exerted on Iran, and a signal of its capacity to bring about real change in the country’s policy.”

Yadlin and Golov added that “If the negotiations fail, the argument that all other options have been exhausted will be stronger, and there’s no way to prevent Iran’s nuclearization except a military strike.”

Update

Back in August, Ayalon sounded much different about the prospects of talks between the West and Iran. Ayalon said back then that those nations involved in the Iran negotiations should “declare today that the talks have failed.”

NEWS FLASH

Ten Commandments Judge Gets His Old Job Back | In a night filled with progressive victories, one blow to the Constitution occurred when former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore won his old job back. Moore lost his job as the highest judge in his state nearly a decade ago after he defied a federal court order requiring him to remove an unconstitutional Ten Commandments monument from the Alabama Judicial Building.

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