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Buzz, perspectives, insight and news from AlterNet

Catholic Church Threatens to Stop Taking DC's Money if Officials Don't Bow to its Demands on Same-Sex Marriage
Posted by Melissa McEwan, Shakesville on November 12, 2009 at 5:44 PM.

God is love, bitchez:

The Catholic Archdiocese of Washington said Wednesday that it will be unable to continue the social service programs it runs for the District if the city doesn't change a proposed same-sex marriage law, a threat that could affect tens of thousands of people the church helps with adoption, homelessness and health care. 

Under the bill, headed for a D.C. Council vote next month, religious organizations would not be required to perform or make space available for same-sex weddings. But they would have to obey city laws prohibiting discrimination against gay men and lesbians.

Fearful that they could be forced, among other things, to extend employee benefits to same-sex married couples, church officials said they would have no choice but to abandon their contracts with the city.

"If the city requires this, we can't do it," Susan Gibbs, spokeswoman for the archdiocese, said Wednesday. "The city is saying in order to provide social services, you need to be secular. For us, that's really a problem."

Just so we're all on the same page, the Catholic Church doesn't want to extend partner benefits to same-sex married couples, because they view homosexuality as a sin. The Catholic Church also believes that all of its employees are sinners, by virtue of its doctrine viewing all humans as sinners. But they're not arguing that they shouldn't be compelled to extend benefits to those sinners, nor would they argue that providing healthcare coverage to people whose bad health habits they regard as sinful (gluttony! sloth! lust!) is a tacit endorsement of those sins. It's a special argument reserved especially just for the very special case of gay people and their specialized sin.

Catholic Charities, the church's social services arm, is one of dozens of nonprofit organizations that partner with the District. It serves 68,000 people in the city, including the one-third of Washington's homeless people who go to city-owned shelters managed by the church. City leaders said the church is not the dominant provider of any particular social service, but the church pointed out that it supplements funding for city programs with $10 million from its own coffers.

"All of those services will be adversely impacted if the exemption language remains so narrow," Jane G. Belford, chancellor of the Washington Archdiocese, wrote to the council this week.

Ah, it reminds me of those lovely words spoken by the Savior during his Sermon on the Mount: "And lo I beseech you to fuck over the homeless if the gays get too uppity."

Councilperson David Catania, who sponsored DC's same-sex marriage bill and chairs the Health Committee, sniffed at the church's threat: "They don't represent, in my mind, an indispensable component of our social services infrastructure." Councilperson Mary Cheh was even less generous, saying the church's behavior was "somewhat childish."

News Flash: Latest Right-Wing Conspiracy Theory About Obama Just as Silly as Previous Ones
Posted by Adam Shah, Media Matters for America on November 12, 2009 at 3:57 PM.

A post by RedState.com's Erick Erickson that Rush Limbaugh is hyping falsely claims that a memorandum from the federal Office of Personnel Management (OPM) will "purge the federal government of Republican civil servants" and "forc[e]" former Bush administration political appointees who currently have positions in the federal civil service "out of their jobs."

In fact, the OPM memo does nothing of the sort. It merely beefs up current OPM rules aimed at preventing political appointees from "burrowing in" to the civil service, thereby receiving the job security benefits that civil servants -- but not political appointees -- receive. While the memo states that agencies must seek permission from OPM to hire people as civil servants if they have been political appointees "within the last five years," nothing in the memo creates authority for anyone to fire current federal employees. Therefore, the OPM memo does not "purge" anybody.

Transgender Asylum-Seeker Caught in Immigration Detention Hell
Posted by Staff, RestoreFairness.org on November 12, 2009 at 3:18 PM.

Courage comes in many different forms. For Esmeralda a transgender asylum seeker from Mexico who faced horrific circumstances in immigration detention, it came in the form of seeking justice. Kept in a segregated cell with other transgender detainees, Esmeralda never realized that her experience in detention would match the trauma of discrimination she had faced back home. But her story is also one of hope for change.

Esmeralda: A Transgender Detainee Speaks Out from Breakthrough on Vimeo.

While the Obama administration has pledged to reform the detention system, its promises do not go far enough. Spread over a patchwork of more than 500 county jails, privately run prisons and federal facilities, immigration detention is a $1.8 billion business estimated to hold 442,941 detainees in custody in 2009 alone.

Transferred far away from their homes and families, stories are rife of how detainees are denied visitation, access to lawyers, medical care, and are subject to physical and verbal abuse. Many vulnerable people, including asylum seekers, pregnant women, children, lawful permanent residents and even U.S. citizens are among those detained.

Listen to Esmeralda’s voice of courage and take action now to fix a broken detention system.

Hey, I've Got a "Moral Objection" to Health Insurance Covering Viagra
Posted by Digby, Hullabaloo on November 12, 2009 at 2:00 PM.

I have a moral objection to paying for any kind of erectile dysfunction medicine in the new health reform bill and I think men who want to use it should just pay for it out of pocket. After all, I won't ever need such a pill. And anyway, it's no biggie. Just because most of them can get it under their insurance today doesn't mean they shouldn't have it stripped from their coverage in the future because of my moral objections. (I don't think there's even been a Supreme Court ruling making wood a constitutional right. I might be wrong about that.)

Many of the men who are prescribed this medication are on Medicare, so I think it should be stripped out of that coverage as well.

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Right Swoons Over Bush's Widely Publicized "Unpublicized" Visit to Fort Hood
Posted by Steve M., No More Mister Nice Blog on November 12, 2009 at 1:04 PM.

There's some buzz in the right-wing blogosphere in response to this post on a PUMA blog (yes, PUMA blogs are still around) and this one by Jerusalem Post columnist and editor Caroline Glick, both praising George W. Bush for his "unpublicized" trip last week to see wounded Fort Hood soldiers.

An excerpt from Glick's post:

Missing George W. Bush

A couple of days ago I heard the news that George and Laura Bush paid a private visit to the wounded soldiers at Fort Hood. They specifically requested that the base commander not inform the media of their visit. They came. They comforted the wounded soldiers and the Fort Hood community for a couple of hours. And then they left. And they never had their pictures taken saluting the troops or holding their hands.

When I heard the news, I felt this pain that hasn't gone away. It's a pain that I have been feeling fairly often since last November....

When I heard the news, I was struck by the fact that I heard the news. Isn't it odd how fast word of this "private" visit got around -- on Fox News the next morning, and ultimately all over the media? Darn that base commander, or whoever it was, who informed the press of the visit even though Bush specifically requested that it not be publicized!

A cynic, of course, would say that there's an effort in Bushworld to sell him as a guy who not only visits troops but shuns any publicity for those visits -- and what do you know, there was a story publicizing Bush's aversion to publicity in the Bush-friendly Washington Times last December, just about when Bushies were devoting considerable energy to making the case in the media for his "legacy":

EXCLUSIVE: Bush, Cheney comforted troops privately

For much of the past seven years, President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have waged a clandestine operation inside the White House. It has involved thousands of military personnel, private presidential letters and meetings that were kept off their public calendars or sometimes left the news media in the dark.

Their mission: to comfort the families of soldiers who died fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and to lift the spirits of those wounded in the service of their country....

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Rep. Steve King Calls Obama Administration the 'Gangster Government.'
Posted by Faiz Shakir, Think Progress on November 12, 2009 at 12:00 PM.

Rep. Steve King (R-IA), one of the right wing’s most shameless hate-mongers, has propagated all sorts of baseless attacks on Obama. For example, he has said Obama will make America a “totalitarian dictatorship,” that Obama was raised by polygamists, and that “radical Islamists” would be “dancing in the streets” if Obama was elected. In an interview with the Washington News Observer, King offered his latest diatribe, calling Obama’s team of advisers the “gangster government”:

Valerie Jarrett is a product of Chicago politics. This is power politics through Rahm Emanuel and Barack Obama, son and daughter of Saul Alinsky, linked up with Mayor Daley, the one that actually hired Michelle Obama and put her into that link, which may have well been the link that put Barack Obama into that machine. The Chicago Machine, we know what it is. Someone called it gangster government. In Chicago, you have gangester government and Valerie Jarrett’s been in the middle of that. She’s been brokering power for a long time.

Watch it:

 

 

King’s attack on Valerie Jarrett comes on the heels of Glenn Beck’s repeated screeds against her on his show.

 

GOP Lawmaker Cao: Obama Administration 'Has Been Tremendous' For New Orleans on Katrina Recovery Effort
Posted by Ben Armbruster on November 12, 2009 at 11:00 AM.

Last month, President Obama visted New Orleans for the first time since taking office and touted his administration’s focus on assisting the area’s still on-going recovery effort four years after Hurricane Katrina. “I’m pleased to report that we’ve made good progress,” he said. “We’ve got a long way to go, but we’ve made progress.”

But conservatives such as Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) criticized Obama’s visit calling it a “drive-through daiquiri summit,” while others “criticized the president for not touring the battered wetlands.”

Yesterday during an interview with Rep. Joseph Cao (R-LA) — the lone Republican to vote for the House health care bill last week — Washington Times radio channeled the GOP criticism. “He didn’t even stick around very long during his trip,” the host said. But Cao defended what the administration has done for the area:

CAO: Well, I just want to set the record straight, that even though the President only visited New Orleans once since his election, it was a brief stay, but this administration has been tremendous for the people of the 2nd district. Secretary Napolitano has been down here three or four times, the secretary of HUD, the secretary of Education, they have been down here numerous times. [...]

So I guess for me, it’s not that important to have the visit of the President, its much more important for me that I have a good working relationship with the administration and have the commitment…from the administration to push all the recovery issues of the 2nd District forward and they have been doing that in the last 9 months.

Listen here:

Paul Rainwater, the executive director of the state-run Louisiana Recovery Authority, agrees with Cao’s approach. “I would say it’s more important to have your cabinet secretaries down here,” he said last month. Indeed, the White House said there were 22 visits by senior administration officials to the area from March to August, 13 of them by cabinet secretaries.

 

ACORN Suing U.S. Gov Over Defunding Law Pushed by GOP
Posted by Joshua Holland, AlterNet on November 12, 2009 at 9:51 AM.

Remember that whole 'separation of powers' dealio? Congress writes the laws, and the courts punish those who break 'em. Neat system; worked OK so far.

If Congress passes a law punishing someone for doing something it thinks wrong, it's usurping the role of the courts, and the Constitution frowns on it! Legislators aren't empowered to punish wrong-doers, both because the "Founders" appreciated the value of a good trial and because they understood that politicians are often motivated by considerations other than the rule of law (shocking, I know!).

So they prohibited the passage of "bills of attainder" -- laws singling out specific groups or individuals for retribution. Which is double-plus good today, when our Congress includes frothing-mad right-wingers shouldering massive grievances and not a few members who are dumb-as-the-proverbial-box-of-rocks.

Speaking of which, you'll recall that the GOP pushed hard back in September to pass a bill that prohibited any federal funding from going to ACORN, the right-wing bogeyman-of-the-day [correction: the bill passed in the House but is still in committee on the senate side). Perhaps sensitive to the Constitutional issue, they wrote the law so broadly that it could apply to just about any contractor, and some suggested at the time that in theory it could, if applied consistently, lead to the entire military-industrial-complex being "defunded." Proponents said it passed Constitutional muster because it applied to everyone.

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Obama, Democrats Face Liberal Fundraising Boycott
Posted by Ari Melber, The Nation on November 12, 2009 at 9:31 AM.

Politico's lead story today tracks how both progressive and conservative activists are using intramural fundraising threats to challenge the party establishment.

For Democrats, the fight is about accountability for campaign promises. For Republicans, sophisticated grassroots fundraising is a tool in the ideological squabbles over new congressional candidates and party leaders. The story suggests conservative strategists have led the way:

For months, most of the action was on the Republican side, where conservative activists targeted the National Republican Senatorial Committee for its recruitment of moderate candidates and the National Republican Congressional Committee for its role in supporting a liberal GOP nominee in an upstate New York special election. But now Democratic officials are also feeling the lash, with the [DNC] coming under fire for allegedly not working hard enough on a recent Maine ballot initiative to repeal same-sex marriage and the [DCCC] taking flak for supporting incumbents who voted against the health care bill. In each case, activists have dispensed with the pleasantries and gone straight to the committees' wallets--a move guaranteed to raise alarms at party headquarters.

 

Actually, liberal online activists have been using donor strikes for a long time, around issues ranging from torture to campaign finance reform to health care. (And since Democratic candidates rely more on low dollar online donations than the G.O.P, these efforts can get more traction on the Left.) What's different now, however, is that the current wave of strikes and rumblings on gay rights might turn into an ad-hoc, financially relevant coalition.

Unlike other donor strikes by a single blog or organization, the "Don't Ask, Don't Give" campaign is swiftly attracting allies and attention in the political media -- including that lead Politicoarticle today. (Obama's top aides pay attention to Politico, even though they claim otherwise, as David Plouffe's new bookrevealed.) Some of the allies are explicitly striking for gay rights, like blogger and pundit Jane Hamsher, The Stranger's Dan Savage and blogger Pam Spaulding, while others are pushing strikes against Democratic Party committees based on broader grievances about Democrats voting against core party priorities, such as health care. Daily Kos blogger Markos Moulitsas recently told his readers to "skip any donations to the DCCC," in retaliation for the House Dems who tried to scuttle health care reform. (See more from my colleague Ari Berman on those "Just Say No Democrats.")

In all the progressive debates about the Obama era, from wonky panels to the Sunday shows to local coffee shops, the atavastic question is how to support The President and push for bolder reform. Fundraising activism is only one tool -- not even viable for most citizens -- but it increasingly looks like a way to amplify policy pressure and get Washington's attention between elections.

With research by Shakthi Jothianandan

 

 

Rick Perry 'Hell Bent' on Pleasing Right-Wing Base
Posted by Steve Benen, Washington Monthly on November 12, 2009 at 8:48 AM.

PERRY 'HELL BENT' ON PLEASING RIGHT-WING BASE.... It's funny to think about now, but Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) used to be a Democrat. In 1988, he even endorsed Al Gore's presidential candidacy. It was just two decades ago.

Now, however, Perry isn't just a right-wing Republican, he's proving to the state party's base just how radical he can be. In the midst of a gubernatorial primary, Perry feels the need to say truly insane things, which this year has included talk of secession and crypto-confederate notions of "nullification" of federal laws.

Yesterday, the governor went even further, going full-on crazy to impress the Tea Party crowd.

Texas GOP Gov. Rick Perry accused President Barack Obama on Wednesday of "punishing" Texas and being "hell-bent" on turning the United States into a socialist country. [...]

Perry ... accused the Obama administration of intentionally dumping illegal immigrants from other western states in Texas, recalling a conversation he had with local officials notifying him that illegal aliens that were caught in Nogales, Arizona were being dropped off by federal authorities in Presidio, Texas.

"Friday a week ago, I got not a phone call from Washington, not a letter from Washington and as a matter of fact, I don't think any member of our congressional delegation was even notified. The first time we were contacted was by the superintendent of the school and the county judge of Presidio County," Perry said.

"They said, 'do you all know what's fixin' to happen?' I said, 'well, no. What's going on?' They said 'the government has just called us and said for us to get ready for an influx of illegal aliens who were captured illegally crossing the border.'"

"It's called the alien transfer-and-exit program," Perry told the crowd, "trucking them from Nogales, past El Paso down to our western border in Presidio."

 

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Pentagon Paying Taliban Who Are Killing US Troops
Posted by Bruce Wilson, Talk To Action on November 12, 2009 at 8:44 AM.

"It is an accepted fact of the military logistics operation in Afghanistan that the US government funds the very forces American troops are fighting." - Aram Roston, The Nation

Why has president Obama chosen to reject all options, on Afghanistan, presented by his national security team ? Perhaps he's come to believe that the American military enterprise in Afghanistan may be untenable.

A new article in the November 30, 2009 issue of The Nation, by Aram Roston, should be a game changer. As Roston reveals, "US military officials in Kabul estimate that a minimum of 10 percent of the Pentagon's logistics contracts--hundreds of millions of dollars--consists of payments to insurgents."

Afghan government security officials told The Nation, "It's a big part of their income."

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

FOX News' Hannity Sort of Apologizes for Falsified Rally Report
Posted by Adele Stan, AlterNet on November 12, 2009 at 6:38 AM.

SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEO

Caught (dare we say it?) red-handed -- by those pinkos at The Daily Show -- falsifying a Hannity show report about last week's Tea Party rally on Capitol Hill, FOX News host Sean Hannity issued a grudging apology last night.

On the November 5 edition of his show, Hannity interviewed Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., who had convened a Capitol Hill rally of Tea Party activists to rail against health care and hate on the president that very day. I was there, and would estimate crowd to have been about 5,000. Not bad for a Thursday afternoon.

Not enough for Bachmann and Hannity, apparently. Bachmann claimed that between 20,000 - 45,000 for her three-hours-hate at the Capitol while Hannity showed as evidence footage from the 912 march -- a much larger event that drew about 70,000 -- passing it off as B-roll from the Thursday rally.

Someone on Jon Stewart's staff was watching Hannity that night. Busted! (And in a most delightful way -- see video below the jump).

Last night, Hannity issued a grudging apology. Here's the transcript, via The Brad Blog:

HANNITY: Finally tonight...Although it pains me to say this, Jon Stewart, Comedy Central - he was right.

Now, on his program last night he mentioned that we had played some incorrect video on this program last week while talking about the Republican Health Care rally on Capitol Hill.

He was correct, we screwed up - we aired some video of a rally in September, along with a video from the actual event. It was an inadvertent mistake, but a mistake nonetheless. So Mr. Stewart, you were right… we apologize… and by the way, I want to thank you, and all your writers, for watching.

VIDEO OF STEWART, HANNITY'S APOLOGY, AND HANNITY'S MISLEADING SEGMENT ALL AFTER THE JUMP.

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

No Actual Poll Results in First 8 Paragraphs of AP Poll Analysis
Posted by Jed Lewison, Daily Kos on November 12, 2009 at 4:00 AM.

Why Is Obama Caving to Fox?
Posted by Adam Bink, Open Left on November 12, 2009 at 1:00 AM.

Well, that was quick. Yesterday was the announcement that White House interim Communications Director Anita Dunn, who started this fight with FOX, would be leaving. Today is this:

President Obama will give an interview to Fox News' Major Garrett, Drudge reports.

The interview will take place in China next week and comes just one day after it was reported that Obama Communications Director Anita Dunn the so-called general in the administration's war against Fox News will be stepping down.

[...]

Fox News executive Michael Clemente met recently at the White House with Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, and since then the tensions between the two parties have cooled; senior adviser David Axelrod granted an interview to Garrett last week.

In response, Glenn Beck cackles and calls Anita Dunn a Communist. So, heckuva job, White House! Things have really changed.

I don't have any place to speculate that Dunn was forced out or this is some gesture to FOX or whatever, but it certainly doesn't look good. And how exactly have tensions cooled? Like I wrote back when this first started, this is akin to spanking FOX, sending them to their room, and expecting things to change. They are, and always will be, either the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican Party (and those aren't even mine, those are Dunn's words, speaking for the White House!). They were before Obama came. They will be after Obama leaves. This is a long-term issue, which doesn't justify the White House's "FOX is being mean to us so we spanked them and they'll do better" mindset.

And by the way, what about the rest of us out here? FOX's hosts will continue to smear ACORN, Alan Grayson, Democrats in Congress, SEIU, and on and on and on. Even if the White House argues that FOX will play nice with them from now on, the rest of us still get thrown under the bus.

So I said it before, and I'll say it again. This was a job half-assed.