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National Review Writer: Conservatives Should ‘Beat’ Young People

DC Comics’ New Gay Character Is Green Lantern Alan Scott

Doctor Refuses To Provide Rape Victim With Emergency Contraception

Politics

Campaign Of ‘Acid Hurling’ Spokesman Responds, But Does Not Apologize

By Annie-Rose Strasser on Jun 1, 2012 at 7:30 pm

Rep. Nan Hayworth’s (R-NY) office has responded to outrage over her spokesman’s suggestion of “hurl[ing] some acid at those female democratic Senators.”

In the statement from Friends of Nan Hayworth, the campaign defended Townsend’s comments, saying that he was speaking as a private individual and not a campaign staff member (which he also is):

This is a manufactured controversy by a campaign operation that has, for months, hurled offensive rhetoric and imagery at Nan Hayworth on various Facebook pages, including the one mentioned today.[...]

The comment receiving the attention was not made on behalf of the Congresswoman or her campaign and was clearly not meant to be taken literally. Meanwhile, this morning’s dismal employment report proves yet again that the Becker campaign is doing all it can to distract attention from the real issues that mean everything to the future of our Hudson Valley. [...]

It’s not too much to insist that the media responsibly analyze context and perspective rather than simply broadcast hysterical and irresponsible attacks from a campaign that is purely seeking to score political points against a Representative who has a consistently strong and positive record as an advocate for every citizen she serves.

Campaign manager Bruce Harvie also pointed out to ThinkProgress that the moderator of the Facebook thread on which Townsend’s comment was originally ridiculed is a paid staffer for their opponent’s campaign. He said similar comments were posted by opponents of Hayworth’s — and pointed out one comment suggesting that Nan Hayworth be thrown in a pot of boiling oil — but none of those comments were covered by the press, or called out by the moderator.

However, the campaign could not point to a comment by a paid staffer that was as violent or sexist as Townsend’s remark.

Justice

Good News: California Assembly Passes Bill Allowing Citizens To Register To Vote On Election Day

By Scott Keyes posted from ThinkProgress Justice on Jun 1, 2012 at 6:45 pm

The California Assembly passed a major piece of voting rights legislation Thursday, bucking the trend of new voter suppression laws that have passed in other states like Texas and Florida.

AB 1436, which passed the Assembly by a 47-26 vote, would remove restrictions on when Californians could register to vote. If it becomes law, citizens would also be able to register at the polls on Election Day.

The AP has more:

Californians who forgot to register for next week’s election may have better luck next time if a bill passed by the Assembly becomes law. [...]

Assemblyman Mike Feuer, a Democrat from Los Angeles, said he wrote the bill to address the state’s chronically low voter participation rate.

Right now, Californians are only allowed to register up to 15 days before an election. Passing AB 1436 would change that and significantly boost voter turnout in the Golden State.

In the nine states (plus Washington DC) that currently allow Election Day registration, studies have shown the legislation boosted voter turnout by seven percentage points. Most states that have implemented Election Day registration are small or medium-sized; California could pave the way for large states to embrace this important step in voting rights.

AB 1436 will now advance to the Senate, where Democrats enjoy a 25-15 advantage.

Health

GOP Congressman: Women Who Undergo Abortions Should Face Criminal Charges

By Igor Volsky posted from ThinkProgress Health on Jun 1, 2012 at 5:59 pm

Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-FL) unwilling admitted to MSNBC’s Chris Matthews on Friday afternoon that he believed women who receive abortions should face criminal charges. “I think the punishment should certainly be very serious,” he said. “It should be more than a civil case. It should be something very serious”:

MATTHEWS: So it should be a criminal matter for the woman as well as the doctor?

STEARNS: I think so. You are killing an embryo and in some cases you are killing an embryo that is four or five months into gestation.

Watch it:

Stearns was appearing on the program to talk about the GOP’s recent effort to ban sex-selective abortions. That bill, the Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act or PRENDA, failed earlier this week and would have fined and imprisoned doctors who knowingly aborted fetuses based on racial or gender discrimination.

The congressman sought to defend the measure by arguing that “if all of Europe and most of Asia has this same rule, that you cannot have sex selection as an abortion, why can’t we in the united states pass the same bill?” But Matthews responded succinctly, saying, “it’s always amazing when you guys on the right want to import the values of other countries. Any time we do it, any time a liberal tries to do it, you say they’re bringing foreign values into this country.”

Media

Newspaper Runs Ad Suggesting President Obama And Democrats Want To Murder Christians

By Adam Peck on Jun 1, 2012 at 5:15 pm

The Daily Advertiser, a Gannett-owned paper serving central Louisiana, is standing by its decision to run an advertisement today in which a far-right extremist group suggests that President Obama and Democrats are conspiring to murder Catholics and Christians.

The ad shows a photograph of a Catholic priest who was shot and killed in Mexico in the 1920s, and suggests that President Obama and Democrats would do the same. It was posted by a user on Reddit this morning.

The ad copy is no better:

“AMERICA is under siege by the same evil (obama and democrats) as history shows over and over…We must learn from it or we are doomed to repeat it. We must be triumphant over terror.”

As with most newspapers, The Daily Advertiser says it does screen advertisements to ensure that blatantly false, overly offensive or otherwise inappropriate content is kept out of the paper. But the paper’s president and publisher Karen J. Lincoln told ThinkProgress that the newspaper stood by its decision to run the ad. “We look at all of the ads, and the decision is made by each market,” she said. “This ad did meet our standards. The decision to run it was approved.” Lincoln also says that another ad from the same organization will run in tomorrow’s paper.

See the ad below.

NEWS FLASH

CHARTS: Corporate Profits Have Skyrocketed Over Last Three Years | After dipping during the Great Recession, corporate profits have now skyrocketed past their pre-recession levels, Business Insider’s Joe Weisenthal notes. After-tax profits and corporate profits as a share of gross domestic product (GDP) are now higher than they were in the middle of the last decade, after a similar vertical spike. Despite massive profit gains, however, corporations are adding more jobs overseas than they are in the United States and paying one of the lowest effective tax rates in the developed world.


Alyssa

DC Comics’ New Gay Character Is Green Lantern Alan Scott

By Alyssa Rosenberg posted from ThinkProgress Alyssa on Jun 1, 2012 at 3:45 pm

DC Comics has been teasing the reveal of a major gay character for some time, and they’ve finally revealed who it will be: Alan Scott, known as Green Lantern, a media mogul, will be revealed to be gay in a story that resets his character. When this news came out, I said it would be best if the supposedly-iconic character DC was going to have come out was someone for whom the revelation that he or she was gay helped tie together things we’d always known about the character and their personality, much as J.K. Rowling did with Albus Dumbledore. I’m not sure if a pure reset of an existing character quite does that. And over at Topless Robot, Rob Bricken explains that the move isn’t as bold as DC insisted it would be, in part because Scott is not even the most prominent Green Lantern in comics today, and in part because his arc as a gay man will be taking place in an alternate DC Comics universe, rather than altering our sense of the core universe, where a straight Alan Scott presumably is still going about his business.

DC Comics was never going to turn one of their genuinely iconic characters gay. An out and proud Batman would have been a great joke on moralists like Frederic Wertham, the psychiatrist who saw sexual perversion everywhere he looked in comic books. A gay Superman would have been a fascinating exploration of what it means to feel like an alien in human society. But it’s hard to imagine that DC would have done something so bold simply to demonstrate its commitment to diversity, or to compete in a market where Marvel Comics, and even Archie Comics, are directly selling themselves both to gay readers and to straight readers who live among and love the gay people in their lives.

Checking the box and including a gay character in your universe, whether you frame them as a stereotype or develop them well or not, isn’t really enough to earn a company points anymore. And I actually think the somewhat disappointed reaction to this revelation is a good thing because it suggests that our expectations are getting more ambitious. If companies want credit for doing something different and genuinely brave, rather than simply meeting their basic obligations to represent the world around them, they need to tell stories or highlight kinds of characters that no one else has the courage to represent. The L.A. Complex gets points for portraying gay characters who aren’t white and male, the standard television default. Happy Endings gets credit for showing us a gay man who’s chubby, romantic, semi-downwardly mobile. Maybe DC Comics will do something genuinely exciting with Alan Scott, but it’s fine not to shower the company with gratitude for simply nodding towards a diversity quota, and doing so with the same kind of gay person who’s been acceptable in pop culture for years: rich and white.

NEWS FLASH

Trayvon Martin Shooter George Zimmerman Misled Court, Has 48 Hours to Surrender | The judge in George Zimmerman’s second-degree murder trial revoked his bond and ordered him to surrender within 48 hours because he misled the court about his finances. Zimmerman’s wife testified during his original bond hearing that the Zimmermans had limited funds, and failed to disclose that more than $200,000 had been donated to Zimmerman through a website. Prosecutors argued that the Zimmermans conspired to lie about money. Zimmerman also failed to disclose the fact that he had a second passport, which he did not surrender to the court.

–Alex Brown

Update

Read the prosecution’s motion to revoke Zimmerman’s bond here and the transcript of the original bond hearing here.

By Guest Blogger on Jun 1, 2012 at 3:09 pm

Politics

National Review Writer: Conservatives Should ‘Beat’ Young People Who ‘Think Socialism Is Better Than Capitalism’

By Igor Volsky on Jun 1, 2012 at 2:01 pm

The National Review’s Jonah Goldberg is claiming that 18-year-olds should be denied the right to vote because they are “so frickin’ stupid about so many things.” In a video first posted by the Daily Caller, Goldberg laments the culture’s obsession with youth and argues that conservatives should “beat out” young people’s belief that “socialism is better than capitalism.” Goldberg is the third National Review writer in two months to face controversy:

GOLDBERG: Personally, I think the voting age should be much, higher, not lower. I think it was a mistake to lower it to 18, to be brutally honest….[I]t is a simple fact of science that nothing correlates more with ignorance and stupidity than youth. We’re all born idiots, and we only get over that condition as we get less young. And yet there’s this thing in this culture where, ‘Oh, young people are for it so it must be special.’ No, the reason young people are for it because they don’t know better. That’s why we call them young people. [...]

The fact that young people think socialism is better than capitalism. That’s proof of what social scientists call their stupidity and their ignorance. And that’s something that conservatives have to beat out of them. Either literally or figuratively as far as I’m concerned.

Watch it:

The magazine fired popular conservative columnist John Derbyshire in April after he topped off a long history of racism and sexism by advising children to avoid “concentrations of black.” It later ended its relationship with Robert Weissberg, who had ties to the white nationalist group American Renaissance.

NEWS FLASH

Global Cancer Rates To Increase 75 Percent By 2030 | Cases of cancers worldwide are expected to rise by nearly 75 percent in 20 years, according to a study published Friday in the Lancet Oncology. Demographic and lifestyle factors, such as more people adopting a “western” diet higher in sugar, starch, and meat, are driving the increase. International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) researchers say the number of cancer cases will jump to 22.2 million by 2030 from 12.7 million in 2008, with 90 percent of the growth happening in poor countries. Along with expanded vaccinations, early detection, and effective treatments, “[t]argeted interventions can lead to a decrease in the projected increase,” the IARC reports.

Justice

Florida Governor Rick Scott Defends Voter Purge: We’re ‘Doing The Right Thing’

By Igor Volsky posted from ThinkProgress Justice on Jun 1, 2012 at 12:45 pm

Florida Governor Rick Scott (R) denied that his effort to purge voters from the rolls disproportionately targets minorities who support Democratic candidates on Friday morning, even as independent investigations have confirmed that 58 percent “of those flagged as potential noncitizens are Hispanics.” “The Secretary of State’s office is doing the right thing,” Scott told the Miami Herald in defending his effort, before insisting that the administration is “absolutely not” targeting minorities.

Asked if he was planning to heed the Department of Justice’s request that the state abandon its voter-cleansing program, Scott said that the Secretary of State is still reviewing the matter.

“The Secretary of State’s office is going to review what the Department of Justice has said,” he said “And then we’re going to make a decision.”

In a letter released on Thursday, the federal government claimed that Scott’s purge violates the 1965 Voting Rights Act — which requires the state to seek federal approval of its campaign — and the National Voter Registration Act. That measure says that “a State shall complete, not later than 90 days prior to the date of a primary or general election for Federal office, any program the purpose of which is to systematically remove the names of ineligible voters from the official lists of eligible voters.” As a result, Florida should have finished the process by May 16.

But while Scott is still considering his options, a growing number of election officials have already rejected his error-ridden voter purge list. A ThinkProgress analysis of several county supervisors in Florida has also found that a large number of the voters on the list are indeed eligible voters, including at least two World War II veterans.

Tell Gov. Rick Scott to put a stop to Florida’s voter purge by adding your name here.

Economy

As Job Growth Slows, Will Republicans Double Down On Austerity?

By Pat Garofalo posted from ThinkProgress Economy on Jun 1, 2012 at 11:46 am

The Bureau of Labor Statistics today reported that the economy created a disappointing 69,000 jobs last month, and that the unemployment rate increased to 8.2 percent. The job creation totals for March and April were both revised downward.

At the same time, borrowing rates for the U.S. government have hit lows never before seen:

Investors stampeded into U.S. government bonds Thursday, driving the interest rate on the 10-year Treasury note as low as 1.54 percent, a record…The record low rate beat the previous mark of 1.55 percent, which was set in November 1945. That was just after the end of World War II, when government price controls kept interest rates artificially low to preserve financial stability.

As Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman explained today, “When the private sector is frantically trying to pay down debt, the public sector should do the opposite, spending when the private sector can’t or won’t. By all means, let’s balance our budget once the economy has recovered — but not now. The boom, not the slump, is the right time for austerity.”

Instead, Congress, driven by a cut-happy Republican House, has pursued austerity, leading to hundreds of thousands of public sector job losses. Last month alone, 7,000 state and local level education jobs disappeared.

It makes no sense to sustain these sort of economic body blows when the government can borrow on the cheap and use it to put people back to work. Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH), though, responded to the jobs report by criticizing the supposed “‘stimulus’ spending binge” (the existence of which is a myth), and Republicans have made no indication that serious job creation efforts are on their agenda.

Boehner, of course, neglected to mention that the spending cuts the GOP demanded in return for raising the debt ceiling will stifle job creation, and that the GOP refused to pass the Obama administration’s American Jobs Act, which economists said would create millions of jobs. In fact, Boehner has already indicated that he and the GOp will demand more spending cuts as the nation approaches its borrowing limit again later this year.

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Justice

Elections Officials Throughout Florida Refuse To Use Rick Scott’s Inaccurate Lists To Purge Voters

By Josh Israel posted from ThinkProgress Justice on Jun 1, 2012 at 11:00 am

Volusia County Supervisor of Elections Ann McFall (R)

Volusia County Supervisor of Elections Ann McFall (R)

On Wednesday, Palm Beach County Elections Supervisor Susan Bucher (D) told ThinkProgress her office has rejected the error-ridden list of alleged non-citizen voters sent to county officials by Gov. Rick Scott’s (R-FL) administration. Now, as the Department of Justice has told Florida to stop its illegal purge, other county elections officials across Florida have confirmed their counties will not comply with the state’s effort:

– Sarasota County: Joyce Soltis, administrative assistant to Supervisor of Elections Kathy Dent (R) told ThinkProgress that the county received 14 names of from the state as sure-fire non-citizens. At least two to three of them have already proved their citizenship to the county and one was removed after indicating that he or she was not an eligible voter. Soltis said that while the remaining 10 or 11 voters have not responded, due to the significant inaccuracies on the list, the office has decided “we are not purging anyone” from that group.

– Volusia County: Supervisor of Elections Ann McFall (R) told ThinkProgress that that county received 15 names from the state. One was not even sent a letter, because the voter is currently serving in the military and another has already proven citizenship. But she said they have no plans to remove any of the remaining 13 voters unless her office receives clear proof. “To say the least, the list is very suspect,” she explained.

– Hillsborough County: The Tampa Tribune reported today that Supervisors or Elections Earl Lennard (R) has also decided not to remove any voters on the unreliable list from the rolls without first receiving corroborating evidence that the voters are not citizens.

– Pasco County: Supervisor of Elections Brian Corley (R) told the Tribune that the state had told supervisors that this purge list was “the low-hanging fruit” with “rock-solid data that they were not citizens.” He expressed frustration that the state has put them in a catch-22, complaining “If we truly comply and remove those that don’t respond, then folks say we’re suppressing voter rights. If we don’t, we have people saying we’re allowing non-citizens to vote.”

– Marin County: Because it has proven to be anything but “rock-solid” data, Supervisor of Elections Vicki Davis (R), president of the Florida State Association of Supervisors of Elections, told the Tribune that she believes “most of the counties” have decided not to purge any voters without other evidence.

Tell Gov. Rick Scott to put a stop to Florida’s voter purge by adding your name here.

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Climate Progress

North Carolina Bill Would Require Coastal Communities To Ignore Global Warming Science

By Joe Romm posted from Climate Progress on Jun 1, 2012 at 10:02 am

Some North Carolina GOP legislators want to stop the use of science to plan for the future. They are circulating a bill that would force coastal counties to ignore actual observations and the best science-based projections in planning for future sea level rise.

King Canute thought he had the power to hold back the tide (in the apocryphal legend). These all-too-real lawmakers want to go one better and mandate a formula that projects a sea level rise of at most 12 inches this century, far below what the science now projects.

A state-appointed science panel reviewed the recent literature and reported that a 1-meter (39 inch) rise is likely by 2100. Many coastal studies experts think a level of 5 to 7 feet should be used, since you typically plan for the plausible worst-case scenario, especially with expensive, long-lived infrastructure.

The 2011 report by the National Academy of Science for the U.S. Navy on the national security implications of climate change concluded:

Based on recent peer-reviewed scientific literature, the Department of the Navy should expect roughly 0.4 to 2 meters global average sealevel rise by 2100, with a most likely value of about 0.8 meter. Projections of local sea-level rise could be much larger and should be taken into account for naval planning purposes,

Rob Young, a geology professor at Western Carolina University and a member of the state science panel, pointed out to the North Carolina Coastal Federation (NCCF) that this proposed law stands against the conclusions of “every major science organization on the globe.” Young notes, “Every other state in the country is planning on three-feet of sea level rise or more.” The Charlotte Observer notes:

Maine is preparing for a rise of up to 2 meters by 2100, Delaware 1.5 meters, Louisiana 1 meter and California 1.4 meters. Southeastern Florida projects up to a 2-foot rise by 2060.

Read more

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Politics

GOP Congressional Spokesman: ‘Let’s Hurl Some Acid At Those Female Democratic Senators’

By Annie-Rose Strasser on Jun 1, 2012 at 9:21 am

Jay Townsend

How do you deal with female political opponents? If you’re the spokesman for Rep. Nan Hayworth’s (R-NY) re-election campaign, you might “hurl some acid” at them.

Jay Townsend, a longtime GOP communications director, proposed just that on a Facebook forum with constituents this week. The comment, which is still up here (as of the time of posting), is in reply to another commenter named Tom:

Acid throwing is not a joke. It is a serious and horrific form of gender-based violence. Seventy two percent of the time, victims of acid throwing are women. In fact, an attack occurred in Pakistan just four days ago– two women and one two year-old child were injured.

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Politics

Morning Briefing: Disappointing Jobs Report Calls GOP’s Austerity Policies Into Question

By ThinkProgress on Jun 1, 2012 at 9:00 am

– The U.S. economy added just 69,000 jobs in May, far below economists’ expectations. The report suggests that the GOP’s deep spending cuts and other austerity measures have undermined growth.

– President Bill Clinton will make a last minute appearance in Wisconsin this weekend to campaign for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tom Barrett, ahead of Tuesday’s recall election.

– The death of a Latino military veteran in Arizona was caused–at least partially–by Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s officers, who ganged up on the veteran, pinned him to the ground and repeatedly shocked him with a stun gun.

– The Obama campaign goes after Mitt Romney’s economic record while he was governor of Massachusetts:

– Between the ongoing debates over birth control, the Violence Against Women Act and the Equal Pay Act, you might think news organizations would speak to a lot of women for their stories. They’re not:

– And finally: If the presidential election were held today, President Obama would net a whopping 65 percent of the vote…from Canadians. Turns out Obama is still very popular with our neighbors to the north, where even the conservatives prefer Obama over Romney by a 2-1 margin.

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NEWS FLASH

BREAKING: Justice Department Demands Florida Stop Voter Purge | TPM has the story: “The Justice Department sent a letter to Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner Thursday evening demanding the state cease purging its voting rolls because the process it is using has not been cleared under the Voting Rights Act, TPM has learned. DOJ also said that Florida’s voter roll purge violated the National Voter Registration Act, which stipulates that voter roll maintenance should have ceased 90 days before an election, which given Florida’s August 14 primary, meant May 16.” More as this story develops.

Update

Ryan Reilly posts the full letter from the Department of Justice.

Update

Florida Department of State spokesman Chris Cate responds in a statement to ThinkProgress:

We just received the letter from DOJ this evening, and haven’t had a chance to thoroughly review it. Bottom line is we are firmly committed to doing the right thing and preventing ineligible voters from being able to cast a ballot.

Related Posts

Justice

White Supremacist With Ties To Neo-Nazi Groups Elected To Pennsylvania County GOP Committee

By Adam Peck posted from ThinkProgress Justice on May 31, 2012 at 7:02 pm

The newest member of the Luzerne County Republican Party Committee

Republicans in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania have elected Steve Smith, a lifelong white supremacist with close ties to neo-Nazi groups and groups like Aryan Nations, to the county’s GOP Committee.

The elections, which took place in late April, were certified by the committee two weeks ago, and Smith notified supporters of his victory last week by posting a message to the online forum White News Now.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has documented Smith’s participation with known skinhead organizations like Keystone State Skinheads, (now Keystone United) which he co-founded in 2001. And his racist activism extends far beyond violent rhetoric as well, into actual violence:

In March 2003, he and two other KSS members were arrested in Scranton for beating up Antoni Williams, a black man, using stones and chunks of pavement. Smith pleaded guilty to terrorist threats and ethnic intimidation and received a 60-day sentence and probation.

Smith is also an active member of local Tea Party groups, a network that he used to gain support for his bid for the committee seat. According to the SPLC, Smith referred to the Tea Party as “fertile grounds for our activists.”

Luzerne County is hardly a small rural county either. According to the 2010 census, over 320,000 people live in Luzerne, many in the county seat of Wilkes-Barre, a large city of over 40,000 people. And in an interesting juxtaposition with the election of an anti-immigrant bigot, Luzerne County saw the nation’s largest county-level increase of Hispanics between 2000 and 2010.

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