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VIDEO: How The Military Treats A Fallen Soldier’s Same-Sex Widow | Army National Guard Staff Sgt. Donna Johnson was one of three soldiers killed by a suicide bomber in Afghanistan on October 1, but she was the only one of the three whose spouse was not taken care of by the military after her death. Johnson’s wife, Army National Guard Staff Sgt. Tracy Dice, was not eligible to have her travel expenses to Dover Air Force Base covered, nor can she benefit from Dependency and Indemnity Compensation, the Survivor Benefit Plan, VA education benefits, or Tricare health coverage. The repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell allowed Johnson and Rice to be open about their marriage, but the anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act still prevents the military from legally recognizing their relationship. Watch an interview with Dice about losing Johnson and the mistreatment she has experienced as a same-sex spouse (HT: Towleroad):

Justice

Hungarian Court Tosses Out Voter Registration Requirement

By Ian Millhiser on Jan 8, 2013 at 4:10 pm

In the United States, ten states plus the District of Columbia allow voters to register to vote on election day — effectively removing the registration requirement as an obstacle to the fundamental right to vote. In the overwhelming majority of states, however, activists and political campaigns often have to race to register voters before a deadline. And conservative politicians have even raised artificial barriers to registration in an effort to reduce the franchise.

It does not have to be this way, however. To the contrary, a constitutional court in Hungary just struck down the conservative government’s attempt to impose an American-style voter registration system on its electorate:

[Prime Minister Viktor] Orban’s Fidesz-Christian Democrat alliance approved a new voting system in November in one of the most hotly contested steps of a flurry of reforms that included a new constitution and a swathe of laws that critics say entrench Fidesz’s power.

“Mindful of the practice of the European Court of Human Rights, the Constitutional Court has established that for those with Hungarian residency the registration requirement represents an undue restriction on voting rights and is therefore unconstitutional,” the court said in a statement.

It added that voter registration for Hungarians outside the borders was justified.

The changes would have required 8 million domestic voters to register in person or online at least two weeks before elections in 2014. Voters currently only have to turn up at polling stations on election day to be identified from an existing state-run database and cast their vote.

Automatic or mandatory voter registration systems are increasingly common in modern democracies. They are now the rule in Australia, Chile, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Israel, Italy, Norway, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Admittedly, such a system would be more difficult to implement in the United States, where voter rolls are maintained by many state governments rather than one central government, but same day registration achieves many of the benefits of automatic registration by similarly ensuring that registration will not be an obstacle to voting.

Security

Neocons Promote Iranian Propaganda In Anti-Hagel Campaign

By Ben Armbruster on Jan 8, 2013 at 3:47 pm

The neocon smear machine failed to prevent Chuck Hagel’s nomination as the next Secretary of Defense as President Obama announced on Monday that the former GOP senator is his choice to succeed Leon Panetta at the Pentagon. Fresh off their defeat, it seems like the neocons are getting desperate in their efforts to derail Hagel’s bid.

The Iranians today responded to the Hagel nomination and used it to take a backhanded slap at the United States: “We hope there will be practical changes in American foreign policy and that Washington becomes respectful of the rights of nations,” the Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson said.

“Hagel nomination cheers Iran, worries Israel” a CBS headline to the story read, and with that, the neocons gleefully promoted Iran’s participation:

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who was previously Hagel’s best friend in the Senate but now has concerns about his nomination, tweeted out the the story as well, which AEI’s Danielle Pletka retweeted.

And if that CBS headline sounds a bit misleading, it is. The one worried Israeli the story quoted was a right-wing Likud Party member. In another piece on what Israelis think of the Hagel pick, Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon said of the Nebraska Republican: “I have met him many times, and he certainly regards Israel as a true and natural U.S. ally.”

The first question we have is: who cares what Iran thinks about Chuck Hagel? But it’s sad the neocons have become so desperate in their anti-Hagel smear campaign that they’re now promoting anti-American propaganda from Iran’s foreign ministry to make their case.

Alyssa

Black Wealth, Racial Disparities In Movies, And Why We Don’t Have A Harriet Tubman Biopic

By Alyssa Rosenberg on Jan 8, 2013 at 3:34 pm

Writing about Harriet Tubman, who’s been a subject of his in recent days, Ta-Nehisi Coates took up a subject near to my own heart, the lack of support for biopics about people of color. And he identifies an important point about one of the hurdles for getting such movies made:

Moreover, movie-making is risky and expensive. Any discussion of the lack of a Harriet Tubman biopic should begin with the shameful fact that median white wealth in this country stands at $110,000 and median black wealth stands at around $5,000. It would be nice to think that this gap reflected choices cultural and otherwise, instead of the fact that for most this country’s history its governing policy was to produce failure in black communities, and most of its citizens supported such policies. It would be nice if Hollywood were more moral and forward-thinking than its consumer base. But I would not wait around for such a day.

It’s absolutely true that there isn’t an African-American or Latino equivalent of Megan Ellison, the daughter of Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, and the head of Annapurna Pictures. In 2012 alone, Ellison gave us two movies that I think would have been hard-pressed to be financed by more conventional production companies, and certainly not at the length and pacing that they’ve made it into theaters, Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty, and Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master. Part of what makes Ellison important is not just that she can afford to finance pictures like these in the first place, but that she can afford to lose money on some of them. That’s actually the most necessary criteria to get truly daring movies made, because it means there’s space to focus on a figure who isn’t necessarily a four-quadrant subject, to approach someone who might be broadly fascinating from a novel perspective, as Anderson did with the founder of Scientology in The Master, to give a filmmaker the space they need to tell a story with nuance and completeness, or to accept an unusual arc that doesn’t hit the emotional beats of a conventional three-act structure.

George Lucas, at least with Red Tails, showed that he was prepared to spend $58 million—which doesn’t actually count as an enormous amount of money for an action movie anymore—to tell an under-explored historical story. But that’s not the same thing as spending money repeatedly, or pulling together other groups of investors to commit to a series of projects aimed at building an audience for a different kind of movie.

And at the end of the day, financing the production of a movie is only half the battle. Movies need to find distributors who will put them in theaters, or to find video on demand placement. Advertising costs, which aren’t built into production budgets, are enormous—Reuters estimated in 2010 that studios were spending between 55 and 58 cents for every dollar they spent on movie production and release costs on marketing. That’s a daunting hurdle for movies that are being made and distributed outside of that system: word of mouth about a movie’s excellence or importance go only so far when they’re up against reams of television spots, wrapped buses, and giant billboards.

With, say, a Harriet Tubman biopic (if such a movie could get made without Zoe Saldana in the starring role, and without being turned into a ludicrous action picture), it would be nice to get the movie made in the first place, but the real goal should be to get that film in front of a whole bunch of people. And it takes more than some rich people and some visionaries to achieve that. It takes an infrastructure that’s willing to take risks and absorb losses with people like Ellison because they want to be in business with those rich people and those visionaries, and to be associated with the critical buzz and awards that can come from working with those people, even if the financial returns aren’t there. Black wealth is part of the equation. But the infrastructure part of the lift is heavy, too.

Climate Progress

‘Sprawling Heat Wave Of Historical Proportions’ Brings ‘Horrendous’ Wildfires To Australia

By Jeff Spross on Jan 8, 2013 at 3:30 pm

A “dome of heat,” has settled over Australia since the start of the new year, creating an historic heat wave. The temperatures have nurtured fires in five of Australia’s six states, including at least 90 wildfires throughout New South Wales in southeastern Australia, as well as the Island of Tasmania. In the latter case, the fires consumed over 100 homes and other buildings, 60,000 hectares of land (approximately 148,000 acres) and left up to 100 people unaccounted for as of January 6.

“We saw tornadoes of fire just coming across towards us,” one Tasmanian survivor said. “The next thing we knew everything was on fire, everywhere, all around us.” Another local resident said that “the trees just exploded” as he tried to help fire crews in the township of Murdunna, which was mostly destroyed by the blaze.

The heat wave is also setting new records: On Monday the national average temperature hit 40.33 degrees Centigrade (104.6 degrees Fahrenheit), topping the previous December 21, 1976 record 40.17 degrees Centigrade.

“It’s been a summer like no other in the history of Australia, where a sprawling heat wave of historical proportions is entering its second week,” wrote Jeff Masters of the Weather Underground today.

The Bureau of Meteorology even added new colors to its weather forecasting chart to account for the record heat levels. And by the end of Tuesday, by all accounts, seven of Australia’s 20 hottest days on record will have been set in 2013. As the New Scientist summed up matters yesterday:

Temperatures reached almost 48 °C on Monday at the Oodnadatta airport in South Australia, and 43 °C on Tuesday in Sydney. The typical January high is 37.7 °C at Oodnadatta. [...]

At least 90 fires were sweeping through New South Wales by Monday, and 100 people remained unaccounted for in Tasmania following major fires covering 60,000 hectares. Bushfire experts warned that things could get worse. “The current heatwave is unusual due to its extent, with more than 70 per cent of the continent currently experiencing heatwave conditions,” says John Nairn, South Australia’s acting regional director for the Bureau of Meteorology, in comments to the Australian Science Media Centre.

Lack of rainfall in recent months has left soils completely dry and unable to release moisture that would take up heat from the air through evaporation. At the same time, vegetation across the continent that had been revived by rains over the past two years is now completely dried out. “Much of this grass is fully dried and is ready to burn,” says Gary Morgan of the Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre in Melbourne.

The severe fire conditions are expected to continue today. “Any fire that burns under the predicted conditions — 40C temperatures, below 10% humidity, winds gusting over 70km/hr (43mph) – those conditions are by any measure horrendous,” Rob Rogers, the deputy commissioner of the New South Wales rural fire service, told The Guardian.

In 2009, another flurry of wildfires hit the Australian state of Victoria, killing 173 people and causing $4.4 billion in damage. That same year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published predictions that days of extreme fire danger for southeastern Australia would increase 25 percent by 2020, and perhaps as much 70 percent by 2050.

Australia’s Prime Minister Julia Gillard also took up the theme in reaction to the fires: “You would not put any one event down to climate change,” she said, but “we do know over time that as a result of climate change we are going to see more extreme weather events and conditions.”

Here in America, a 2009 report noted a significant uptick in the scale of wildfires, starting around the mid-1990s. Global warming is combining increasing drought conditions with higher temperatures, while also causing warmer winters that reduce snowpack in areas like Arizona and Colorado. At the same time, human development is pushing more people into forested regions, thus increasing the risk of damage. Not surprisingly, local and national officials have noted all these concerns as areas where policy has yet to catch up with reality.

LGBT

Rush Limbaugh: Marriage Equality Is Helping To ‘Normalize Pedophilia’

By Zack Ford on Jan 8, 2013 at 3:18 pm

Blowhard Rush Limbaugh dedicated a lengthy diatribe on his radio show yesterday to the idea that there is a movement underway to try to “normalize pedophilia” by classifying it as a sexual orientation like heterosexuality and homosexuality. Limbaugh based his claims on an article in The Guardian that addresses questions science still has about the nature of pedophilia, but then he drew his own conclusions that normalizing same-sex marriage is similarly going to lead to normalizing the sexual abuse of children:

LIMBAUGH: There is a movement on to normalize pedophilia, and I guarantee you your reaction to that is probably much the same as your reaction when you first heard about gay marriage. What has happened to gay marriage? It’s become normal — and in fact, with certain people in certain demographics it’s the most important issue in terms of who they vote for. So don’t pooh-pooh. There’s a movement to normalize pedophilia. Don’t pooh-pooh it. The people behind it are serious, and you know the left as well as I do. They glom onto something and they don’t let go. [...]

What is their objective? They want us to all think that pedophilia is just another sexual orientation.  You know who’s gonna fall right in line is college kids, just like they have on gay marriage, just like they do on all other revolutionary social issues.  Their own definition of the cutting edge, civil rights, freedom, understanding, tolerance. So I’m just warning you here. You think it can’t happen. “Impossible!  Don’t be nutso and wacko on us, Rush.”

Listen to it:

But pedophilia is not considered a sexual orientation. It’s considered a psychiatric disorder and a paraphilia. The issue with pedophilia is that the target of the sexual impulse is children, who can be physically and emotionally scarred by such contact. Pedophilia, like other paraphilias, violates the consent of another entity, whereas sexual orientations do not. In fact, the moral condemnation of same-sex orientations is a judgment of who has the attractions, not who the attractions target. For example, a sexual orientation toward men can present in women or in men, but conservatives have only ever objected to men having that orientation. That judgment is based on religious dogma, not any intention to reduce harm to others.

Limbaugh’s tirade is dangerous and unnecessarily conflates homosexuality with pedophilia, as opponents of LGBT equality have done for decades. There is no way to compare two loving consenting adults to harming a child. If there were a valid reason to be concerned that society was no longer interested in protecting young people from sexual abuse, Limbaugh would have a compelling argument to make and many would surely rally around his cause. Instead, his words serve only to further demonize the LGBT community with archaic myths.

Health

Great Recession Forced All Americans To Cut Back On Their Health Care

By Tara Culp-Ressler on Jan 8, 2013 at 3:00 pm

Although the Great Recession has taken an outsized toll on African-Americans and Hispanics, new research suggests that the economic downturn has forced Americans across all racial groups to equally cut back on their medical services.

After researchers at the University of Maryland analyzed more than 54,000 U.S. adults’ health care use, they found that — despite their assumptions that the demographic groups struggling the most as the result of the Great Recession would also struggle the most to access health care — the declining economy impacted all Americans’ ability to get the care they need. During the recession, the average number of doctor visits and prescription drug refills dropped about the same amount for whites, African-Americans, and Latinos. Visits to the emergency room were also essentially unchanged across all groups.

Of course, that doesn’t mean Americans across all racial and economic groups have equal access to health services. There were significant racial disparities in medical care before the Great Recession hit — for example, while whites visited the doctor an average of about 7 times a year around 2005, the average rate was closer to 5.75 for blacks and 4.5 for Latinos during that time period. African-Americans were, and still remain, more likely to be hospitalized than other groups. Earlier reports from the Census Bureau have found that 40 percent of the Americans living in poverty did not visit a doctor in 2010, and confirmed that Hispanics were the least likely group to make a trip to the doctor’s office that year.

But, as the lead researchers for the new study point out, at least the growing economic inequality between whites and racial minorities during the recent recession hasn’t widened the gulf when it comes to health care. “Although minorities bore the brunt of the recession in terms of losses in employment, income and insurance, our findings suggest that trends in [medical] use patterns were similar across race and ethnicity,” the study concludes.

Justice

Supreme Court Allows Assault On Stem Cell Research To Die

By Ian Millhiser on Jan 8, 2013 at 2:40 pm

Two years ago, Reagan-appointed Chief Judge Royce Lamberth suspended all federal funding for embryonic stem cell research in a sweeping opinion that even invalidated funding permitted under President George W. Bush’s policies. Despite the fact that the Clinton, Bush and Obama Administrations all agreed that Judge Lamberth misinterpreted federal law, Lamberth relied on a federal law forbidding funding of “research in which a human embryo or embryos are destroyed” to hold that federal spending not only cannot fund the destruction of a new embryo, it also cannot fund research that builds on past research that resulted in the destruction of an embryo.

Lamberth’s decision was eventually reversed by a conservative panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The appeals court held, correctly, that even though Lamberth might have proposed a plausible reading of federal law, longstanding Supreme Court precedent generally requires courts to defer to an agency’s reading of a statute. As the appeals court explained, “the plaintiffs are unlikely to prevail because Dickey-Wicker is ambiguous and the NIH seems reasonably to have concluded that, although Dickey-Wicker bars funding for the destructive act of deriving an [embryonic stem cell] from an embryo, it does not prohibit funding a research project in which an [embryonic stem cell] will be used.” Yesterday, the Supreme Court announced it would not hear this case, effectively killing this challenge to stem cell research.

This is an important victory for science, and it is just as much a victory for judicial restraint. As the near-success of the Affordable Care Act lawsuits demonstrate, conservative judges and justices are increasingly willing to substitute their policy preferences for the law, even when they must rely on legal theories that, in the words of one of the nation’s most conservative judges, have no basis “in either the text of the Constitution or Supreme Court precedent.” The requirement that judges defer to agencies in interpreting ambiguous statutes is an important check on the judiciary’s ability to impose their policy views on the nation. Agency leaders change with each presidential election; judges do not. And so the power to interpret a genuinely ambiguous statute should rest with officials whose legitimacy flows more closely from the will of the people.

Climate Progress

4 New Year’s Resolutions For Transforming The U.S. Electricity System

By Climate Guest Blogger on Jan 8, 2013 at 2:28 pm

by Peter Bronksi, via the Rocky Mountain Institute

It’s that time of year when people make New Year’s resolutions, commitments to do things differently in the coming year that are going to have a positive impact on their lives. But what would New Year’s resolutions look like if the United States as a nation resolved to decrease its fossil fuel consumption and increase the adoption of efficiency and renewables?

I sat down with program director James Newcomb and principal Lena Hansen to find out. They offered up four New Year’s resolutions that can help make the United States’ electricity system more efficient, more resilient, and more planet-friendly sooner than later.

1. Invest further in end-use efficiency.

Energy efficiency is often considered one of the cheapest and most readily available energy sources. Investments in efficiency programs have been increasing around the country, but significant opportunity remains on the table and many utilities are still incentivized to sell more electricity, rather than to sell more efficiency. Taking end-use efficiency to the next level will require utilities and consumers to work more closely together than ever before. Utilities especially can take several steps to make that happen: a) improve efficiency program marketing to truly engage customers and increase participation, b) streamline program transaction costs, such as by implementing faster and simpler energy audits, c) adopt regulatory mechanisms that remove utilities’ disincentives and create incentives to sell efficiency, and d) embrace collaboration with other stakeholders, including regulators, NGOs, auditors, customers, and architectural and engineering firms.

2. Anticipate and head off friction over solar.

Read more

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