Eideard

Turning their backs on Catholic women
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

Seeking to allay the concerns of Catholic leaders and head off an escalating political storm, President Obama on Friday announced an adjustment to the administration’s health-care rule requiring religiously affiliated employers to provide contraceptive coverage to women.

Women still will be guaranteed coverage for contraceptive services without any out-of-pocket cost, but will have to seek the coverage directly from their insurance companies if their employers object to birth control on religious grounds…

Religiously-affiliated non-profit employers such as schools, charities, universities, and hospitals will be able to provide their workers with plans that exclude such coverage. However, the insurance companies that provide the plans will have to offer those workers the opportunity to obtain additional contraceptive coverage directly, at no additional charge.

Churches remain exempt from the birth-control coverage requirement. And their workers will not have the option of obtaining separate contraceptive coverage under the new arrangement.

The administration’s decision to make an adjustment reflected the high political stakes of an issue that had generated intense criticism in recent days from a growing chorus of Catholic and Republicans leaders, as well as some Democrats. In Congress and on the campaign trail, leading Republicans attacked the Obama administration’s position as a war on religion.

The article carries on with the usual blather about even-handedness, reflection, blah, blah, blah.

I thought I was only being pressed to vote against the evil of two lessers in the coming election. It appears I haven’t even that much of a choice. If I only get to choose between a reactionary politician and an opportunist who won’t stand up to reactionary politicians – I can refuse to vote for either one.

Forget jobs and spending cuts. Ask around online, and it seems Americans just want the right to get high.

Marijuana legalization has been the top issue on the White House’s new “We the People” petition site since it launched last month as a way for citizens to lobby for issues that matter most to them.

The marijuana petition already has more than 55,000 signatures — 20,000 more than any other issue on the site and much more than the 25,000-signature threshold administrators set to warrant an official response. The White House has not yet responded to the marijuana petition.

And so it has been each time the Obama administration engaged voters online: Marijuana legalization was among the most popular questions raised on Twitter, YouTube and Change.gov, the president’s transition site…

“The political mind is pretty simple: What can you do for me, what can you do to harm me. … We’re not effectively casting that in either direction,” said Allen St. Pierre, executive director for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, which started the White House petition…

“We are not nearly as organized [or wealthy enough] to put together the type of donations and PACs that arrest and immediately catch the attention of the elite body politic,” St. Pierre said.

Obama and all the other safe and secure ideologues need to realize that the majority of the American electorate know from experience that marijuana is no more of a public danger than beer – and probably less than a lot of other deleterious substances from cigarettes to PAC commercials.

What happens to transparency when the people speak and the president thinks its a joke?

The Obama administration decided on Tuesday to appeal a judge’s rulings that prevented the U.S. government from banning same-sex marriages, a move that could undermine support among President Barack Obama’s traditional liberal base ahead of a key election.

The Obama administration filed a notice of appeal with the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts in support of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, that barred gay marriages, even though Obama had previously opposed the law.

Although Obama opposes the law, a Justice Department spokeswoman said that the administration was defending the statute because it was obligated to defend federal laws when challenged in court.

Predictable hogwash offered up by the administration. The reality is that the rationales are designed to appeal to homophobes and reactionaries who want the DOMA to continue to be the law of the land.

That’s not leadership. That’s collaboration.

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Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

A federal judge has ordered the reinstatement of an openly lesbian former Air Force major who was dismissed from the military under the government’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy.

Judge Ronald Leighton of Tacoma, Washington, made his ruling Friday. It is the latest legal and political setback for the Obama administration, which is seeking to end the policy through a legislative and executive solution.

Uh, I would have to interject, here, that Obama is trying to dump it off on Congress. He knows, you and I know, that will accomplish nothing. Especially before the fall election. There is nothing “executive” happening.

And he apparently hasn’t the integrity to live up to his promises to the Gay and Lesbian community made during his presidential campaign.

Maj. Margaret Witt, a decorated flight nurse with 20 years of service, had sued to return to the Air Force Reserve. She was honorably discharged in July 2007 on the grounds that she had a six-year relationship with another woman, a civilian…

“Her discharge from the Air Force Reserves violated her substantive due process rights under the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution. She should be restored to her position as a flight nurse with the 446th AES as soon as is practicable,” wrote the judge…

She was described in employee reports and by trial witnesses as an “exemplary officer” who was an effective leader, caring mentor, and skilled clinician. She had hid her homosexuality for years…

Witt’s lawyers from the ACLU argued the Spokane native’s sexuality never led to any problems within her unit. Several members of her squadron had testified they would welcome her back.

“Today we heard the hammer of justice strike for Major Margaret Witt,” said ACLU of Washington Executive Director Kathleen Taylor. “We look forward to the day when all members of our military can serve our country without invidious discrimination. To discharge her simply because of her sexual orientation was entirely unfair to her and unwise for the military, which needs her significant skills.”

The saddest thing is that the Democrats and Obama are a slightly better alternative to the intellectually and ethically corrupt thugs in the Republican Party and their teabagger Brown Shirts. On some issues.

I can’t be moved to vote for the evil of two lessers.

After a tough two days following his sweeping Republican Senate primary victory in Kentucky, Rand Paul canceled on Meet the Press.

“He committed on Wednesday and is now wanting to cancel,” the show’s Executive Producer Betsy Fischer tells First Read. “We are hoping he will reconsider and keep his commitment.”

His campaign told the show he’s “exhausted.” Paul agreed to do the show on Wednesday before backing out late Friday afternoon.

Fischer said Paul is only the third major guest in 62 years to have canceled on the show. The other two were Louis Farrakhan (1996) and Saudi Prince Bandar (2003).

Solid company.

An evangelical leader is calling for a boycott of Glenn Beck’s television show and challenging the Fox News personality to a public debate after Beck vilified churches that preach economic and social justice.

The Rev. Jim Wallis, president of Sojourners, a network of progressive Christians, says Beck perverted Jesus’ message when he urged Christians last week to leave churches that preach social and economic justice.

Wallis says Beck compared those churches to Communists and Nazis.

Wallis says at least 20,000 people have already responded to his call to boycott Beck. He says Beck is confusing his personal philosophy with the Bible…

“He’s afraid of being challenged on his silly caricatures,” Wallis says. “Glenn Beck talks a lot when he doesn’t have someone to dialogue with. Is he willing to talk with someone who he doesn’t agree with?…”

For some Christians, practicing economic and social justice means that churches should practice charity: setting up soup kitchens, assisting victims of natural disasters, and helping people find jobs.

For other Christians, practicing economic and social justice also means trying to change the conditions that cause people to be poor or unemployed. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. subscribed to this definition of biblical justice.

The Rev. Jim Wallis is the president of Sojourners, a network of Christians.

That concern for justice is what helped convert him, says Wallis, president of Sojourners. Wallis, who counts King as one of his faith role models, says the Bible isn’t just concerned with feeding the poor — it’s concerned about the conditions that create the poor…

“The Bible just didn’t say take care of the victim — it talks about justice,” says Wallis…

Meanwhile…he’s waiting for that public debate with Beck. “I’ll have it,” Wallis says, “anywhere he wants.”

Har! Demagogues like Beck aren’t especially long on individual courage. Or integrity.

What do you feed a Blue Dog Democrat?

Evan Bayh learned early that liberalism and ambition don’t always mix in a red state like Indiana.

It was 30 years ago that Bayh, then a 24-year-old law school student, helped run the re-election campaign of his father, Senator Birch Bayh. An unrepentant liberal with national aspirations (he’d run for president in 1976), the elder Bayh was targeted by a then-emerging network of “New Right” activists and fundraisers, who pilloried him as a big spender and slammed his support for abortion rights, gay rights and school busing.

As expedient as it might have been, Birch Bayh refused to back down from his principles in that campaign, an honorable stand that hastened his demise. On Election Day, he was defeated — handily. By Dan Quayle. At 52, his political career was over.

His son, it seems, was taking notes.

Evan Bayh inherited all of his father’s drive for national office but none of his progressive backbone. From his father’s defeat, he seemed to draw a lesson: You can dream big dreams if you’re a Democrat from Indiana — you just can’t be proud to be a Democrat. And that has been the defining principle (to the extent there’s been one) in Evan Bayh’s quarter-century political career, which began with a successful 1986 campaign for secretary of state in Indiana and which now may be ending, with his stunning decision to exit the Senate after two terms…

But now, at the age of 54, Bayh’s national window is closing. Three presidential cycles have come and gone since 1998 and he’s still in the Senate. Youth was always part of his selling point, but in 2016 — the next time the Democratic presidential and vice-presidential nomination are likely to be open — he’ll be 60. He can hear the footsteps behind him. It raised the question: What’s the point of staying in the Senate..?

24 years ago, Evan Bayh set out to prove voters that he wasn’t like his father. As his Senate career ends, we can safely say: Mission accomplished.

RTFA. Lots of detail.

Any bookies out there giving odds on which healthcare corporation, insurance company, Bayh will be fronting for in his inevitable return to Congress as a lobbyist? His wife hustled a couple million$ shilling for Wellpoint.

The government’s former chief drug adviser has accused the prime minister, Gordon Brown, of tightening the law on cannabis for political reasons.

Professor David Nutt warned that other experts on the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) could resign in protest at his sacking by the home secretary, Alan Johnson…

Nutt told the BBC today that Brown had “made up his mind” to reclassify cannabis despite evidence to the contrary.

“Gordon Brown comes into office and, soon after that, he starts saying absurd things like cannabis is lethal… it has to be a class B drug. He has made his mind up.

“We went back, we looked at the evidence, we said, ‘No, no, there is no extra evidence of harm, it’s still a class C drug.’ He said, ‘Tough, it’s going to be class B’…”

The decision followed the publication of a paper by the Centre for Crime and Justice at King’s College London, based on a lecture Nutt delivered in July. He repeated his familiar view that illicit drugs should be classified according to the actual evidence of the harm they cause and pointed out that alcohol and tobacco caused more harm than LSD, ecstasy and cannabis…

Richard Garside, the director of the Centre for Crime and Justice at King’s College London, accused Johnson of undermining scientific research.

He said: “I’m shocked and dismayed that the home secretary appears to believe that political calculation trumps honest and informed scientific opinion.”

No one in the United States would be “shocked and dismayed” over politicians locked into opportunism and butt-kissing for the Eedjit Vote.

Bible-thumping ignoramuses control a significant portion of the popular vote delimited by a 6th-grade education and 3rd-rate political parties. That the best politicians in world history were willing and able to lead a populace from the front means nothing to the craven and cowardly lot the Anglophone millenium has inherited.

Mike Mullen’s natural element – someplace you never saw Cheney
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

The top U.S. military officer on Sunday pushed for the closure of the Guantanamo Bay prison despite rising resistance in Congress, saying it serves as a “recruiting symbol” for America’s enemies. Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, rallied behind President Barack Obama’s move to close the detention facility at the U.S. naval base in Cuba, which is operated by the U.S. military…

“Well, I’ve advocated for a long time now that it needs to be closed. President Obama made a decision very early after his inauguration to do that by next January. And we’re all working very hard to meet that deadline,” Mullen added.

Obama has run into resistance, not only from Republicans but from his fellow Democrats who control Congress. Most of whom are paper assholes more concerned with how they get re-elected.

Obama said Guantanamo prisoners will be tried in U.S. courts and held in super-maximum-security U.S. prisons while others could be tried by in special military trials, but his speech on the issue left many questions unanswered.

I’ve touched on the history of questions like this – recently. The Red Herring dragged across the trail of torture and deceit leftover from the Cheney-Bush days isn’t worth considering except as an example of political spin vs. the truth.