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NEWS FLASH

Over 300,000 Thank President Obama For Marriage Equality Support | When President Obama announced his support for marriage equality two weeks ago, many organizations invited supporters to join in expressing thanks for his evolution. Yesterday, these organizations combined their more than 300,000 signatures and presented a thank-you card to the administration, which was accepted by White House LGBT Liaison and Associate Director of Public Engagement Gautam Raghavan. GetEQUAL also gave a gift of 300 pens to make sure the President would have one to sign an executive order protecting the LGBT employees of federal contractors from discrimination. Pictured below are representatives from AVAAZ, GetEqual, Credo, and ThinkProgress’ own Zack Ford:

LGBT

WATCH: White House Hounded By Questions About Obama’s Same-Sex Marriage Position For 21 Minutes

By Igor Volsky on May 7, 2012 at 3:44 pm

Reporters grilled White House Press Secretary Jay Carney on President Obama’s support for same-sex marriage Monday afternoon, just one day after Vice President Joe Biden told NBC’s Meet The Press that he is “absolutely comfortable with…men marrying men, women marrying women.”

Carney had little to say and reiterated the administration’s claim that both Obama and Biden believe that all couples who are married “are entitled to the very same rights and very same liberties,” but don’t, at the present time, support the right of gay and lesbians to marry. The press responded by accusing Obama of laying the political groundwork for eventually embracing marriage rights and pushed back against Carney’s redundant talking points, asking marriage-related questions for 21 of the 44 minute press conference. Significantly, the press secretary could not explain if Obama agrees with Biden’s claim that he is “comfortable” with “men marrying men” or if he believes that marriage is a “civil liberty.” Below are some highlights:

Q: Why does the president oppose same-sex marriage?
CARNEY: I would just point you to what the president has said in the past, both during his campaign for president in 2008 and in answer to a question in 2010. I really don’t have an update for you.

Q: Is the president comfortable with the fact of men marrying men and women marrying women?
CARNEY: The president is comfortable with same-sex couples, as the Vice President said, being entitled to the same rights and the civil rights and civil liberties as other Americans.

Q: Is marriage a civil liberty?
CARNEY: You have to ask civil libertarians or lawyers.

Q: He opposes bans on gay marriage, but he doesn’t yet support gay marriage?
CARNEY: The record has long been clear that the president opposed divisive and discriminatory efforts to deny rights and benefits to same-sex couples.

Watch a compilation:

Update

The Washington Post notes that “More than 50 times, reporters pressed spokesman Jay Carney on President Obama’s position on gay marriage at Monday’s White House briefing.”

Related Posts

Alyssa

The Funniest White House Correspondents Association Dinner Guests

By Alyssa Rosenberg on Apr 26, 2012 at 10:07 am

I don’t know about the rest of y’all, but I will be spending my White House Correspondents Association Dinner watching punk rock documentaries and drinking wine. But the whole thing is a hilarious spectacle, particularly the rush by news organizations to secure high-profile guests at their tables. And these are the funniest, most revealing guests each of the outlets have scored this year—that we know of so far.

ABC: Christa Miller and Bill Lawrence of Cougar Town. The network keeps the show in limbo forever, but hey, it’ll throw the folks involved some rubber chicken!

AFP: Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage of Mythbusters. Oddly appropriate for a newsgathering organization.

Atlantic Media: Sex and the City‘s Darren Starr. Did Carrie ever score a byline in The Atlantic? Her fights with big would fit her in just fine among some of the magazine’s other female regulars.

Bloomberg: Zooey Deschanel. Clear win for odd couple of the evening

CBS: Homeland star Claire Danes. Blatant, but brilliant, Obama-pandering.

Fox: Lindsay Lohan. Not that Fox engages in tabloid journalism or anything.

Huffington Post: True Blood stars and parents-to-be Anna Paquin and Stephen Moyer, who will also edit HuffPo’s Vampire Parenting section.

The New Yorker: Portlandia stars and New Yorker profile subjects Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein, who presumably will enquire after the welfare of their rubber chicken.

Newsweek/The Daily Beast: Reese Witherspoon, who will totally play Tina Brown in the inevitable biopic.

People: Peeta, we mean, Josh Hutcherson, who will be a mystery to the core WHCA dinner demographic.

POLITICO: MPAA Chairman Chris Dodd and Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt who should make for the evening’s most awkward table pairing.

USA Today: Kelli Garner of Pan Am. Well, maybe not anymore. But I guess they could have bet on the Playboy Club?

And though I’m generally loath to yield them pride of place, the Washington Times totally schools the Washington Post. The latter scored Pierce Brosnan. The former, The Artist scene-stealer Uggie.

Alyssa

The President’s Man: A Eugene Allen Biopic Moves Forward

By Alyssa Rosenberg on Mar 9, 2012 at 9:51 am

There’s been some talk of this for a while, but it sounds like Lee Daniels is moving forward with The Butler, a biopic about Eugene Allen, the butler who served eight American presidents. And Forest Whitaker is in talks to star in it. We talk a fair bit about the isolation of presidents from the real world, whether it’s George H.W. Bush’s supermarket scanner gaffe or the weird conservative attempts to paint President Obama as out of touch because he doesn’t currently own a car.

But we don’t really discuss the fact that the White House is the closest thing in America to Downton Abbey: a great house with a long-term staff dedicated to making the lives of its occupants as effortless as possible. Of course, unlike the occupants of Downton Abbey who, as Lady Mary put it “don’t have a life. We choose clothes and pay calls and work for charity and do the season. But, really, we’re stuck in a waiting room until we marry,” the residents of the White House are actually very busy leading the free world and representing the United States. And also unlike Downton, those residents leave every eight years: they don’t get dynastic possession of or attachment to the house, and some of them downright hate it.

Plus, there’s the added dynamic of having Allen, a black man, serve eight white presidents during years of remarkable racial transition in the country. If no man is a hero to his valet, I’d be curious to know if a white president can be a hero to his African-American butler.

NEWS FLASH

White House: ‘Medicare Advantage Is Stronger Than Ever’ | Despite Republican protests to the contrary, the White House is reporting on its blog today that Medicare Advantage and the choices it offers for seniors is “stronger than ever.” “As reported last year, 99.7 percent of people with Medicare still have access to Medicare Advantage plans,” writes Nancy-Ann DeParle, White House deputy chief of staff for domestic policy. She says that premiums for Medicare Advantage are lower and enrollment has been higher since the Affordable Care Act made the changes to Medicare Advantage the Republicans derided. “This is another myth from opponents of health reform debunked by results,” DeParle writes.

NEWS FLASH

White House Names New LGBT Liaison | The White House will appoint Gautam Raghavan as the new full-time LGBT liaison in the White House Office of Public Engagement, filling the role once held by Brian Bond. Raghavan is currently the deputy White House liaison at the Department of Defense and he helped manage the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

Climate Progress

September 16 News: White House Delays EPA Climate Rules, But Is Still “Very Much Committed” to Them

By Stephen Lacey and Joe Romm on Sep 16, 2011 at 2:15 pm

JR:  The White House is still “very much committed” to greenhouse gas reductions the way NBC was “Committed to Keeping Conan O’Brien” on the network in January 2010.  Too harsh?  Just wait and see.

EPA seeks to quell climate concerns as greens fret

The Environmental Protection Agency sought to quell concerns Thursday that climate change regulations will face the same fate as an ozone rule that the White House scuttled this month.

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said Wednesday that the agency would miss an end-of-September deadline to propose greenhouse gas standards for power plants, but insisted the rules are still on track.

She told San Francisco radio station KQED on Thursday that the agency will “absolutely” continue moving ahead with the standards. EPA officials say they will announce a new schedule shortly.

EPA is seeking to rebut the notion that the delay stems from White House or other influences outside the agency. Jackson told KQED that the delay was “not at all” a political decision, while spokeswoman Betsaida Alcantara told E2 that “we are very much committed to proposing the standards.”

I’d be slightly more reassured if they were committed to implementing the standards…..

Read more

Climate Progress

Even Cass Sunstein Says GOP’s Proposed Regulatory Moratorium Would Be “Like a Nuclear Bomb”

By Stephen Lacey on Sep 14, 2011 at 4:42 pm

http://frontpage.americandaughter.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/cass-sunstein.jpgWhite House regulatory czar Cass Sunstein has been working to change the Obama Administration’s stance on various regulations.  The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that Sunstein teamed up with Obama Chief of Staff Bill Daley to squash the long-delayed and much-needed ozone standard.

So if Sunstein thinks a regulatory moratorium would be catastrophic, that’s saying something.  Republicans, of course, have stepped up their attacks on regulations to unprecedented levels. Congressional Republicans and presidential hopefuls have made repeated calls for a moratorium on all regulations, and threaten to close the EPA on a daily basis.

Earlier this month, the New York Times reported that the White House was also considering a full moratorium on EPA regulations. But PoliticoPro reported today that Cass Sunstein, head of the Administration’s office of regulatory affairs, is denying those reports.

For one thing, “A moratorium would not be a scalpel or a machete, it would be more like a nuclear bomb, in the sense that it would prevent regulations that, let’s say, cost very little, and have very significant economic or public health benefits,” he said.

A moratorium would also block the executive branch from its duty to carry out laws passed by Congress, he added. “A moratorium would violate the requirement of laws to be faithfully executed, so it would have to be a highly qualified moratorium.” A time out on rules would also prevent some deregulatory efforts because they are considered regulatory actions, Sunstein said.

It must be said, however, that Sunstein’s own efforts have undermined the ability of  the president to make the case for regulations.  National Journal recently conducted a poll of energy industry insiders, who expressed concern that the smog decision will open up the door to more delays of Environmental Protection Agency standards: Read more

NEWS FLASH

Tar Sands Action Day 14: Canadian Native And American Indian Leaders Arrested During Protests On Indigenous Day Of Action | As the protests against the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline continued in front of the White House, police arrested leaders from American Indian tribes and the Canadian First Nations today. Deb White Plume, a Lakota grassroots leader from South Dakota, said her people worried about the pipeline potentially contaminating surface water and the Ogallala aquifer, about which Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman (R) has also voiced concerns. Chief George Stanley, regional chief of Alberta, said the First Nations of Alberta were concerned about the lack of consultation of the pipeline and tar sand expansion. “President Obama can do what’s right,” he said. “The President’s approval of this pipeline is not in the national interest of US or Canada.”

NEWS FLASH

White House will consider any online petition that gets 5,000 signatures. | Politico reports: “The idea behind ‘We the People’ – as the new program will be known – is that anyone with an idea or cause can go to the White House’s website, and make a public pitch for support. If the idea gets 5,000 backers within 30 days, said White House spokeswoman Sandra Abrevaya, a ‘working group of policy officials’ will respond.” You can check out the White House website HERE.

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