Open thread

Another balmy day in the 90s in our nation's capital. Read More......

One year after Nicaragua outlaws abortion, 82 women dead

From the Guardian

This central American country has become the third country in the world, after Chile and El Salvador, to criminalise all abortions. It is a blanket ban. There are no exceptions for rape, incest, or life- or health-threatening pregnancies.

González was told at the hospital that any doctor who terminated her pregnancy would face two to three years in jail and she, for consenting, would face one to two years....

As a result of the blanket ban enacted last November at least 82 women have died, according to advocacy groups.

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Maine media unhappy with Susan Collins after she attacks Tom Allen for going to a funeral

She's just not Olympia. Read More......

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- Media Matters' campaign against Rush Limbaugh and his attack on our troops.

- Michael Clayton, a new movie from Warner Brothers - you can watch a trailer via the link.

- "Love and Pride" jewelry for gay men.

- MoveOn

Abandoning Our Troops: A Betrayal of Trust
This week, Senate Republicans blocked a real opportunity to support our troops—a bipartisan bill to make sure our troops have the downtime they need. We're launching an ad to highlight that in the Republican leader's home state, but we need your help to get it on the air. Can you chip in?

- And Robin Tyler's cruises for women. Read More......

Charlie Savage: Cheney Plotted Bush’s Imperial Presidency ‘Thirty Years Ago’

From ThinkProgress:

The Bush administration has long held that President Bush’s expanded executive power is justified due to 9/11. “I believe in a strong, robust executive authority and I think that the world we live in demands it,” claimed Vice President Cheney in 2005.

But in his new book, Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy, Boston Globe reporter Charlie Savage reveals that Cheney has been on a thirty-year quest to implement his views of unfettered executive power....

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Iran: destroying Iraq . . . except when it's not

Over the weekend, General Petraeus increased the belligerent rhetoric against Iran, claiming that Iran could be the biggest long term threat to Iraqi security. Iran, he explained, is getting weapons into Iraq, sending military and political officials into the country, and coordinating with militia groups.

This is pretty rich, coming from a military leader of a nation that . . . disburses an ungodly amount of weapons in Iraq (to the tune of $1.6 BILLION in contracts just last month), is occupying the nation and consistently meddling in military and political affairs, and is not only arming militia groups, but bragging that such programs to provide money and weapons to anti-government Sunni tribes are a huge success.

But leaving aside the hypocrisy, on the *very same day,* news came out that Iran had helped broker a peace deal between the two major Shia militias, the Badr Corps of SIIC (formerly SCIRI) and Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army. Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of SIIC, who is reportedly undergoing treatment for cancer in Iran, met with Sadr, a frequent rival for Shia following and control in Baghdad and oil-rich Basra province, to bury the hatchet. The plan reportedly has three primary elements: stopping the fighting between Iraqis, urging media to engender a spirit of friendship and forgiveness, and establishing commissions in each of Iraq's 18 provinces to oversee the peace initiative. The agreement was "in the spirit of" Ramadan, the Muslim holy month in which gestures of forgiveness and mercy are often made.

Now, who knows how long this agreement will last, or if it will even make an impact from the outset. Fighting between Mahdi and Badr has been fierce at times, and Hakim and Sadr are certainly rivals. On the other hand, they're also both Shia, both worked together in UIA (the umbrella Shia political party), and both cannot stray too far from Ayatollah Sistani, the highest-ranking Iraqi Shia cleric. There is at least equal incentive for the groups to cooperate as there is to fight. Further, if the "commissions" established in all 18 provinces have any substance, they might have the potential to become mini-governments in the absence of effective administration via the central government.

And again, they worked out the agreement in Iran. Not with U.S. officials (with whom Sadr refuses to deal), not with Saudi Arabia, not the UN. Iran. So when Petraeus says (quoting the CNN article, not the General directly) that, "sectarian fighting among militias fueled by Iran could be the biggest long-term challenge for Iraq," well, exactly what sectarian fighting among militias is he referring to? Why are these statement always so vague, so imprecise? *Which* militias? *Where* is Iran fueling fighting? I'm open to being convinced, but the dichotomy of Petraeus accusing Iran of fueling sectarian infighting at precisely the same time two major militia groups are agreeing to a peace accord in Iran doesn't bode well for his case. Read More......

Comcast accused of trying to kill MSNBC/Olbermann

From the Colorado Dems. Read More......

Top gay legal group misrepresents court case to prove ENDA position

Gay legal advocacy group Lambda Legal (basically the gay ACLU) wrote a letter recently to US Representative Barney Frank (D-MA). The letter argues to Frank that we must have "gender identity" in the ENDA non-discrimination law. Why? Because, according to Lambda, if the law only covered discrimination based on sexual orientation, and didn't also cover gender identity, then employers could claim that they love their gay and lesbian employees, they simply object to having employees who are too fey or too butch, regardless of their orientation - i.e., they object to their employee's gender identity (fey-ness or butch-ness) not their sexual orientation. So those employees could still legally be fired, even under ENDA - or so the argument goes.

And Lambda says this isn't just a hypothetical loophole. No, we've actually had numerous cases where courts have used this loophole to let anti-gay bosses off the hook. Wow, I thought. That's pretty bad. Maybe the gay-only ENDA is a bad idea. So I did a little more digging. You're not going to be pleased with what I found.

Here is an excerpt from Lambda's letter to Barney:

You stated that you were not aware of any instances where state laws that prohibit only sexual orientation discrimination and not gender identity discrimination have proven inadequate. Unfortunately, such cases exist. For example, just two years ago, a federal court of appeal ruled that a lesbian who claimed that she was discriminated against because she did not conform to stereotypical expectations of femininity did not to have a viable claim under New York state's Sexual Orientation Non-Discrimination Act (SONDA), which fails to include an express prohibition on discrimination based on gender identity and expression.

Wow, so there are numerous cases (note Lambda's use of the plural) proving that when you don't have gender identity included in the sexual orientation law, gay people can then be legally fired for being too fey or too butch because the state law is just too weak to protect us. Again, wow.

So, having borrowed $60,000 to get a law degree at Georgetown, I figured I'd make my parents happy and actually put that legal education to work. I got a copy of the case and read it for myself. The case is Dawson v. Bumble & Bumble, 398 F.3d 211. The salient parts of the decision are on the last two pages. Let me walk you through the case.

A butch lesbian works in a NY hair salon. She claims that while employed at the hair salon, several of her coworkers made disaparaging remarks about her not conforming to gender norms for a women, e.g., she claims that they said that she had a "dyke" attitude and they didn't like it. She was subsequently fired, so she sued under NY and federal non-discrimination laws. Only the NY law is relevant to our discussion here since it, alone, covers sexual orientation (but it does not include gender identity).

Here is what the court found.

1. There was a disagreement among witnesses as to whether or not the disparaging comments were made at all.

2. Even if the court accepted that the disparaging comments were made, the lesbian employee could not prove that the coworkers who made the disparaging comments played any role whatsoever in her firing.

3. The court therefore sided with the defendants (i.e., against the lesbian employee), ruling that the plaintiff/employee had no facts to prove her case.

The court did not find, as Lambda Legal implies, that NY's sexual orientation law is inadequate because it permits employers to fire someone for their dyke attitude. The court did NOT find that the NY law is too weak and has a massive loophole because it does not include "gender identity." The court simply found that the defendant couldn't prove her case, she had no facts to back her up. (I will add, however, that Lambda Legal just did a great service to the homophobes by claiming that under NY law you CAN legally fire a lesbian for having a dyke attitude - way to go, guys.)

I'm going to include the entire two pages of the opinion dealing with this, below, so you can read it for yourself.

This is the only case - the only case - that the "include trans in ENDA or die" crowd have to "prove" that you can be fired for being too fey or too butch under sexual orientation laws that don't include gender identity (i.e, under the gay-only ENDA that Barney Frank is proposing). They don't have "cases," as Lambda claims, they have a single case. And the single case they claim has nothing to do with what they claim it does. The case is not an example of a butch lesbian not being protected under the law without gender identity. The case is an example of a court throwing you out because you don't have any evidence to prove your case. It doesn't matter what the law says, it doesn't matter what categories of personhood the law covers, if you don't have any facts to back you up. You'll lose every time.

This is incredibly dishonest of Lambda Legal. I have a hard time believing that they're such sloppy lawyers that they misread this case. But if they're bad lawyers, they sure are great PR spinmeisters. Labmda has done a bang-up job of convincing people that this case, these caseS, are real, judging by the comments from our readers and judging by the repeated mention of this supposed-loophole in posts on other blogs.

Lambda should stick to the law and leave the disingenuous PR spin to others in their coalition. Here are the two pages from the case covering NY law on sexual orientation. Read it for yourself, you don't need to be a lawyer, it's that clear.

UPDATE: Oh, it gets worse. I just re-read the footnote at the bottom of the first page, below. The footnote makes clear that nasty comments about the lesbian employee could have possibly proven sexual orientation discrimination, but that the actual comments in question were too "ambiguous." If the court wanted to rule that nasty comments weren't covered by the state ENDA, it would have said the comments were irrelevant regardless of whether they were ambiguous or not. Instead, the court ruled that the comments were too ambiguous - meaning, less ambiguous comments might have been sufficient to prove a case of sexual orientation discrimination. That is the exact opposite of what Lambda alleges the court decided.

(click images to see larger versions)


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Voters warming to Hillary

The article notes that her staff is planning more and more small get togethers for Hillary, that she does better at those. I'd agree. I saw her speak at the winter meeting of the DNC and she was bad. It was just a boring stilted speech. On the other hand, I got to talk to her for about 30 seconds at some event on the Hill and she was very personable, intelligent, and there in the moment (well, as much as you can be in a 30 second conversation). She was not the distanct, aloof, cold, boring persona she often projects in front of large audiences. Interestingly, she's done a good job at the debates. I think she comes off quite presidential, and quite human, at them. I'm not sure why the debates are good for her, but large speeches are bad - I'd also argue that she's not great at one-on-one interviews on TV. Or at least, she's not great when she's being interviewed from afar, is in a different city than the interviewer and thus is in a small room looking at a camera. In any case, this article gives a sense as to what may be happening, and why, in terms of people warming up to Hillary. Read More......

ENDA: A layman's perspective

I'm very much a layman when it comes to the ENDA debate -- sure, I'm relatively well-read and well-informed on the issues, and gays and lesbians are a huge part of my family and friend groups, but without the legitimacy of a personal stake in the debate, I've largely avoided weighing in. But the discussion of it here has been so interesting and provocative that I can't help but jump in to note my agreement with John and others who would rather see a GLB ENDA pass in Congress than a GLBT ENDA get voted down.

It's been baffling to me to *yet again* see Democrats, progressives, and activists ready to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Thirty years to get to this point. Thirty years! And people want a symbolic defeat? For what? For what? These things are wars of attrition; any movement one way or the other is important. You don't win wars by giving up territory because it's not big enough, and to put forth a bill that won't pass instead of an almost-as-good one that will is ceding territory. You don't give up a golden opportunity to benefit tens of millions of people just because it's not 100% perfect. Passing the ENDA bill as it's been written for decades isn't abandoning people, it's establishing a damn foot in the door.

It's fascinating to watch this argument play out, because to a large extent the two sides are talking about totally different things. Broadly speaking: On one side, people support including T because it's the right/moral thing to do. On the other, those who would accept a non-T ENDA say it's a good pragmatic, political move (which is its own moral argument, I think, if not specifically presented as such). Here's the thing: I haven't read a single persuasive argument that putting up a T-inclusive ENDA to get voted down in Congress (which it assuredly would, whereas a GLB ENDA would just as assuredly pass) would help the cause of T (not to mention GLB) rights, either in short or long term. Opposing a non-T ENDA is about the symbolism and ideals, rather than tangible benefit or strategy.

I'll take this one step further: Some commenters have opposed a non-T ENDA by asking the question, if ENDA covered, say, just lesbians, should we still support it? The question is meant rhetorically, as if the idea is too ridiculous to be contemplated, but I think one could make a persuasive case that the answer should be . . . yes! If that would pass Congress, and no more progressive alternatives would, you do it. If the most progressive bill you can get through Congress is to create legal protection for all lesbians named Jane in towns whose names start with "W" then you pass that. I'm not saying pass less than you can, but don't torpedo something by including something you *know* is a poison pill. You get what you can, when you can get it. Then when people see that the world hasn't ended, and there are benefits, and we haven't all immediately gone to hell, there's more room for even more advancement.

There's this idea that rights would go to GLB *at the expense of* T. I think that is a serious mischaracterization of the situation. This debate is not about whether transgender inclusion has to wait -- that is, unfortunately and sadly, a foregone conclusion. Either it will wait because it's not included, or it will wait because it is included and the bill resultingly fails. Again, a GLB passes in Congress, a GLBT bill doesn't. There is a chance, however, to move forward on rights for tens of millions, and it would be a shame (and a decided failure) to reject that opportunity.

Can you imagine if people had told black Americans they had to wait for the right to vote until women got it as well? After all, that's a similar oppression. Or if we had said a disabled person shouldn't have employment protections until gays could too? Partial victories set the stage for further victory; partial failures set the stage for further failures. The right understand that, but we forget it far too often. (On the opposite side, think about the choice battle: Abortion rights have been whittled down time and time again, and it certainly isn't because choice foes refused to pass bills unless they outlawed abortion altogether.)

It's important to note that I have nothing but respect for those who have honest and sound disagreements on this. I think the vast majority of people who reject a non-T ENDA do so for principled and idealistic reasons, and this is obviously an issue that friends disagree on. Still, I would much prefer an ENDA that passes Congress to one that goes down in flames. Read More......

White House leaked classified info to FOX News, tipped off al Qaeda to secret surveillance, destroyed year-long spy effort

Unbelievable. Seriously. Leaking national security info to Fox News and destroying a year-long surveillance of Al Qaeda should put someone from the Bush Administration in jail. We are in greater danger because of the continued incompetence of George Bush and his minions. From the Washington Post:

A small private intelligence company that monitors Islamic terrorist groups obtained a new Osama bin Laden video ahead of its official release last month, and around 10 a.m. on Sept. 7, it notified the Bush administration of its secret acquisition. It gave two senior officials access on the condition that the officials not reveal they had it until the al-Qaeda release.

Within 20 minutes, a range of intelligence agencies had begun downloading it from the company's Web site. By midafternoon that day, the video and a transcript of its audio track had been leaked from within the Bush administration to cable television news and broadcast worldwide.

The founder of the company, the SITE Intelligence Group, says this premature disclosure tipped al-Qaeda to a security breach and destroyed a years-long surveillance operation that the company has used to intercept and pass along secret messages, videos and advance warnings of suicide bombings from the terrorist group's communications network.

Okay, so we know that SITE has some amazingly important intel. They pass it on to the Bush administration. And, it ends up on Fox News:

Exactly what happened next is unclear. But within minutes of Katz's e-mail to the White House, government-registered computers began downloading the video from SITE's server, according to a log of file transfers. The records show dozens of downloads over the next three hours from computers with addresses registered to defense and intelligence agencies.

By midafternoon, several television news networks reported obtaining copies of the transcript. A copy posted around 3 p.m. on Fox News's Web site referred to SITE and included page markers identical to those used by the group. "This confirms that the U.S. government was responsible for the leak of this document," Katz wrote in an e-mail to Leiter at 5 p.m.

Al-Qaeda supporters, now alerted to the intrusion into their secret network, put up new obstacles that prevented SITE from gaining the kind of access it had obtained in the past, according to Katz.

So, how is it that the first thing some Bush staffer does -- and it had to be a high level Bushie -- how is it that the first thing they can think to do upon getting highly classified intel about al Qaeda is to call Fox News? Read More......

Tuesday Morning Open Thread

Fred Thompson makes his GOP debate debut this afternoon. That should be entertaining. The Republican debates are painful debate, but provide ample fodder for mocking.

Get cranking. Read More......

How did this happen?

The largest settlement in US history for air pollution from a power plant? In these times, I almost can't believe the Bush administration allowed anything like this to occur during their watch.

In the largest environmental settlement in Justice Department history, American Electric Power has agreed to install $4.6 billion in equipment to sharply reduce emissions at coal-fired power plants in five states, sources said.

AEP, one of the nation's largest power producers, owns coal-fired plants in the Ohio River Valley.

The record settlement comes eight years after the Justice Department, headed by then-Attorney General Janet Reno, filed suit alleging AEP and six other power companies had "illegally released massive amounts of air pollutants for years."

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Le Pen political party "in a severe financial crisis"

As Martin from the Simpsons might say: ha, ha. Better still, with Le Pen (79 years old) hinting at retirement, turmoil in the party continues with various factions fighting for control. Read More......