Open Thread

What do you know? Read More......

Today Show to Interview Gay Hating Mayor West from Spokane Tuesday Morning

So he's a media pig, too.

Spokane's anti-gay (but not gay, of course, even though he likes boys) Mayor Jim West is going to appear on the Today Show tomorrow morning the Spokesman-Review is reporting:

According to an e-mail from West’s attorney, Bill Etter, West agreed to appear on the NBC morning show in response to many national media interview requests.

West was accused earlier this month of molesting two boys while he was a Spokane County Sheriff’s deputy in the mid-1970s and of more recently abusing his mayoral office to solicit sex from young men.

Well, if Katie or Matt or any of their staff are reading this tonight, nail the bastard. Make sure you do your homework on his legacy of gay-bashing throughout his legislative career. The Spokesman-Review has the whole ugly history. And, while you are on their web page, take a gander at some of his on-line chats.

And, whatever you do, don't settle for that "I'm a victim" crap he's tried to peddle. And, if he pulls the "I'm reformed now" thing, really nail him. Read More......

Jonathan Alter: Launch the "Pro-Cure" Movement

Alter, who is apparently a cancer survivor, nails the political potential for the stem-cell issue in this week's Newsweek. As Alter notes, the innovative science presents a possible cure for a wide range of diseases from "cancer to Parkinson's to Alzheimer's..."

From there he notes:

After all, every American who has a relative with one of these diseases—which means nearly every American—is beginning to understand the issue in a new way: it's "pro-cure" versus "anti-cure," with the anti-stem-cell folks in danger of being swept into the medical wastebin of history.

But Bush is so beholden to the theocrats, he doesn't care. Nor do many of the members of the House who voted against the stem-cell bill....and the nuts in the Senate, like Brownback, are going to filibuster. This is going to be a political issue in 2006:

Unless there's another war [key caveat from Alter given the Bush crowd], stem cells will become one of the defining issues of the 2006 campaign. Look for smart Democrats to run ads with relatives of the afflicted ("My sister has Parkinson's," "My father has Alzheimer's") pointing out that Congressman X is so extreme, he voted against a bill supported by many Republicans to begin curing these diseases. This will inevitably lead to backpedaling and compromise and the victory of a broad-based "pro-cure movement" that may help save not just my life, but your cousin's or your mother's or your own.

I am part of the pro-cure movement. My 5 year old god daughter has been fighting leukemia for over a year now. And, there is so much cancer, diabetes and other diseases in my family and circle of friends -- and I know it's true for almost everyone -- that if the issue can be raised high enough, it can be decisive. As Alter says, quoting Tip O'Neill, "all politics is local."

Bush and the Catholic Church are so out of their minds on this one, they deserve to lose badly. Alter wrote a great piece for a great cause, but this was my favorite line:

Only Bush bitter-enders and the pope are in the perverse position of valuing the life of an ailing human being less than that of a tiny clump of cells no bigger than the period at the end of this sentence.

I have this feeling that the Democrats are getting a lot of gifts, like stem-cell nationally and coin-gate in Ohio. The question is whether they can and will capitalize on them. Read More......

Greetings from Atlanta

View of centenial park from my hotel room. Cold and rainy in atlanta. Off to the opening reception at 7. Anderson better be there :-) more later.

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Great Scathing Toledo Blade Editorial on GOP Coin-gate

This is good.

I have been so busy reading the Toledo Blade's amazing and ground-breaking coverage of the Ohio GOP Coin-gate scandal, I never took the time to read their editorials. Yesterday's was great. Apparently, the paper has been getting pummeled by critics, including the Governor.

Payback is sweet.

In the editorial, they smack Taft and other GOP leaders:

the resignation on Friday of James Conrad, director of the Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation, is grossly inadequate penance. His total lack of oversight aggravated this crisis, and he simply gets to walk away? No matter what, he must be held accountable.

But the buck didn't stop at Mr. Conrad's desk. Governor Taft belatedly accepted full responsibility for the scandal at a press conference Friday. Maybe he should follow Mr. Conrad's lead and get out.

He also should apologize - first to every citizen in this state for his utterly inept stewardship of public funds and his abuse of public trust, and second, to this newspaper for his verbal assaults on our reporting.

Ouch. Taft deserves it. Maybe he should just resign. And, he's not the only GOP leader wrapped up in this mess.

Now that criminal charges are imminent, and prosecutors say they believe Mr. Noe may have converted a huge chunk of the public's investment to his personal use, we hear a much different tune from Mr. Noe's defenders.

Attorney General James Petro and Auditor Betty Montgomery kept their heads down for weeks, which provides an ironic twist to a quote by Ms. Montgomery in one of our Friday stories: "I hope my record will reflect after all these years that I am guilty of doing nothing."

Though she didn't mean it like it sounded, we couldn't have said it better ourselves. She and the attorney general did nothing until they were shamed into it. You can bet that the two of them have erased any trace of Tom Noe from their Palm Pilots; suddenly they are on the side of all that is good and righteous.

Both Petro and Montgomery are running for the GOP nomination for Governor next year. The third candidate is Secretary of State Ken Blackwell. He was also a big defender of Noe.

Imagine if there were a few more newspapers like the Toledo Blade in America. Imagine a press willing to stand up to elected officials. Imagine that.

Maybe the Toledo Blade could give a seminar on reporting to the White House press corps. Read More......

Lying on Memorial Day

Hey, why stop lying about Iraq just because it's a day to honor the dead?

Today, Bush gave a speech at Arlington Cemetery. AP has the story, but the key passages aren't about what he said today. They are the paragraphs that describe what Bush said two years ago:

Before his Memorial Day remarks in 2003, Bush had declared major combat operations at an end, the U.S. government confidently predicted that weapons of mass destruction would be found and American generals said troops were in the process of stabilizing Iraq.

At that time, some 160 American soldiers had been killed in Iraq. Today, the total is over 1,650.

In his remarks today, Bush talked about dead soldiers and their sacrifice. Of course, he used the same lying language he's used for years now:

"We must honor them by completing the mission for which they gave their lives; by defeating the terrorists."

Maybe Bush should have read his 2003 speech before he started talking today. Most Americans now understand that invading Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 or WMD or any of the other plethora of lies contocted by Bush and co. But he can't help spinning his lies....even on Memorial Day...even while talking about the soldiers who died in his war.

What a bastard.

Meanwhile, the mayhem in Iraq continues. Read More......

Open thread

I'm off to the airport to hit Atlanta for the next 24 hours. I'll be photoblogging from there, and Joe will be picking up the slack in about an hour when he returns from NYC. Later. Read More......

Photo from Paris - Poster of NON vote on EU Constitution

I'm testing captions now.

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Photo from conyers' panel

I'm testing a new feature on blogger, or at least new to me, where I can take a pic with my mobile phone and immediately post it to the blog with a headline. Cool. Not sure if I can also write text, but for the next day at CNN headquarters, I'll send anything cool I can find (maybe a pic of the panel while we're talking). Ain't technology fun. Read More......

NCFR professor speaks

And they thought we'd forgotten them...

Keep up those calls and emails. We've already proven we can't be ignored.

Professor William Doherty (bdoherty@che.umn.edu) of the University of Minnesota gets credit for being the first member of the NCFR anti-gay website team to speak, though you may not like what he said. And interestingly, it appears he's said one thing to his colleagues at U of M and another to us.

At the urging of AMERICAblog readers, B. David Galt, the Director of the University's GLBT Programs Office contacted Dr. Doherty, who will "identify existing and emerging community healthy marriage initiatives" for the anti-gay website.

Doherty responds:

On the propriety of the University's involvement in this project, I can say that University researchers frequently accept funding to study or work with subgroups in the population, excluding other subgroups. This is a judgment call about which reasonable people can disagree. I have chosen to accept funding for a project that will help many American couples, including GLBT couples, even though I regret the limitations of current federal law and policy.

So Professor Doherty regrets discriminating against gays, but not enough to prevent an anti-gay website from paying for ten percent of his salary. And he seems to think that a website that "as defined by ACF, has exclusive focus on heterosexual marriages" will help gay people, because basically, they can type in the same web address as straight people and see information that doesn't apply to them.

But there's SO much more.

When asked about the university's own non-discrimination policy, Doherty says:

There has been many questions why this research project was not reviewed by the Office of Equal Opportunity & Affirmative Action and the GLBT Programs Office. The simple answer is that as an institution that embraces academic freedom, research efforts by students and faculty are not restricted. There is no standard institutional process for review of research proposals that requires such consultation.

But in an email to our fabulous AMERICAblog reader fabfemme, Doherty says:

First of all, it will be a virtual center - a Web site with information for the public. It will offer no training and conduct no original research.

When he's talking to university officials, he's pleading academic freedom. When he's talking to outsiders, he backs as far away from this thing as he can.

Doherty's own words. It's not research. "Academic freedom" doesn't apply when even the person conducting the activity says it's not research. Do people on college campuses engage in discriminatory activities that the people admit are NOT research? Do they avoid scrutiny?

Did Doherty tell his own GLBT office the anti-gay website isn't research? Of course not -- if it isn't research, he can't use his academic-speak effectively.

Also, by citing a letter he wrote back in October, Doherty clearly leaves Galt with the impression that the issue over including research on gay marriage is still under consideration.

In a letter and fact sheet dated May 3 from NCFR:

As defined by ACF, the project has an exclusive focus on heterosexual marriages.

Did Doherty tell his own GLBT office the decision had been made?

Oh, has there been any explanation why gays are so explicitly verboten? The closest we can come is from anti-gay NCFR executive director Michael Benjamin (mbenjamin@ncfr.org, (202) 659-1190) himself:

Everything is wrapped up in politics these days.

The one honest thing he's said. Read More......

Minneapolis Star Tribune obliterates Bush on Memorial Day

Wow.

....In exchange for our uniformed young people's willingness to offer the gift of their lives, civilian Americans owe them something important: It is our duty to ensure that they never are called to make that sacrifice unless it is truly necessary for the security of the country. In the case of Iraq, the American public has failed them; we did not prevent the Bush administration from spending their blood in an unnecessary war based on contrived concerns about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. President Bush and those around him lied, and the rest of us let them. Harsh? Yes. True? Also yes. Perhaps it happened because Americans, understandably, don't expect untruths from those in power. But that works better as an explanation than as an excuse....

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The Gay Goalie

Everyone's been bugging me for days about posting this story, so consider it posted. Interestingly, I was out yesterday and saw that ESPN has done an entire story on their cable network on this guy. Very cool.

Here's an excerpt:

There are a handful of gay professional athletes – David Kopay, Billy Bean, Esera Tuaolo – who came out after their careers ended. There are a number of talented gay collegiate athletes, some who play individual sports at the Division I level (such as California gymnast Graham Ackerman), others from team sports at the Division II and III levels.

But Andrew Goldstein, according to those who document these things, is the most accomplished male, team-sport athlete in North America to be openly gay during his playing career.

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Open Thread

What's going on? Day off? Read More......

So where does the EU Constitution go now?

The 40,000-word mega mess and sad excuse for a constitution tanked last night and today or tomorrow we're probably going to see Chirac do what all brave politicians do which is to sack his Prime Minister rather than step down himself. The current PM Raffarin was chosen to be Chirac's poodle because Chirac has been running scared over Sarkozy (surely the next President in France) for a few years now. The replacement PM rumor is for Dominique de Villepin to take the position which will probably infuriate the French even more since Villepin epitomizes the French/European ruling class. Villepin has always held power by appointment and is not elected.

Ultimately the problem with this constitution is that it has been trying to be all things to all people so every country reads into it what they want to read into it and perhaps everybody is right and everybody is wrong. Even many of the "non" voters believe in Europe (there's really no alternative) but there's a strong undercurrent of resentment about the Euro-ruling class jamming decisions through without consultation to the voters.

Chirac has so completely bungled this process I will be amazed if he can hold off until 2007 for the elections. He is so incredibly unpopular and he took for granted a "oui" vote and only reacted in the final weeks. His last minute brainstorm to bring in Gerhard Schroeder and other foreign leaders to promote the "oui" vote was even worse than Kerry's talk of foreign leaders who supported him. Chirac actually brought in these foreign leaders to speak in front of crowds which had to hurt him in the final days of the campaign.

So where now? Beyond a government shuffle, who knows? The EU is the only choice moving forward but it's hard to say where this will al go. Somewhere in the 40,000 word document is a pile of mushy-worded nothingness that gives some wiggle room for possible changes and of course there's always the possibility of another vote on the constitution. It's going to happen but it will be later rather than sooner. With the Dutch prepared to vote "no" as well on Wednesday changes will have to come. Read More......