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Your Daily Newt: The Case of the "Pouting Sex Kitten"

Tim Murphy — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 19:05:45 +0000

As a service to our readers, every day we are delivering a classic moment from the political life of Newt Gingrich—until he either clinches the nomination or bows out.

Gingrich's 1994 novel, 1945, presents a provocative alternative history in which Hitler invaded eastern Tennessee at the end of World War II. Most news accounts of the book didn't get that far, though. Instead, they focused on the sex scene in the novel's opening pages. But as Charlie Homans reports, that's really not Newt's fault; blame one of his co-authors, Jim Baen:

Baen's eagerness to secure a large audience for 1945, [Gingrich friend David] Drake believes, was to blame for the Nazi Sex Kitten Incident. Dissatisfied with the first draft that Gingrich’s new co-author, William Forstchen, turned in, Baen began rewriting much of the novel himself—including an opening scene in which a Nazi spy, posing as a Swedish journalist, seduces the American president's chief of staff in an effort to pry loose nuclear secrets. "Suddenly, the pouting sex kitten gave way to Diana the Huntress," he wrote. “She rolled onto him and somehow was sitting athwart his chest, her knees pinning his shoulders. 'Tell me, or I will make you do terrible things.'" Convinced the scene was the book’s strongest selling-point, Baen circulated an excerpt to political reporters and Hollywood producers.

The book, unsurprisingly, was a flop. As Homans notes, "When the speaker appeared at the Chicago Book Fair to promote To Renew America, Baen was reduced to handing out free copies of the novel to anti-Gingrich protesters outside, who tore the books to pieces on television."

Grand George Soros—Fox News Alliance Exposed at CPAC

Tim Murphy — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 18:06:19 +0000

Photo by Tim MurphyShona Darress has it on good information that George Soros, liberal financier, scourge of the right, quarterback of the no-huddle offensive against all that makes America great and holy—the Sultan of Slant, the Maharishi of Misinformation, the Big Bopper of Bias—is secretly controlling the flow of information at Fox News. This might come as a surprise to some of you, given Fox News' fairly unambiguous vendetta against Soros and the progressive causes he helps support. But it is apparently the reality we must deal with, and Darress has the charts to prove it.

When I approach her booth (sponsored by the group "America's Survival") deep in the bowels of the Conservative Political Action Conference, and ask how she possibly came to the conclusion hinted at by her display, she quickly points to a smiling face on a poster a few feet behind her. "This, here: Sally Kohn. She's Soros-funded." Darress points to the next face, right below. "Jehmu Greene. She's Soros-funded." Although Sally Kohn is, according to Darress' literature, "the new face of Fox News," I've never heard of her; Green's role at Fox is as the token liberal on Sean Hannity's nightly program, a position that seems to exist solely to give Hannity and his panelists someone to yell at. "They're publicly owned," she says when I ask how Soros came to control the country's leading outlet for conservative news. "It's not that they went to Fox News and said we want to buy your stock—they just did it." The pamphlet she hands me spells it out more clearly: "Most likely Fox knuckled under to blackmail. Soros went after Murdoch's Empire with the hacking investigation against News of the World using the left-wing Guardian newspaper."

All of which explains why she'a hawking the bumper stickers that drew me in to begin with—red ones with "Bring Back Beck" in big white letters. "Glenn got shoved out because of Soros. He was outing everybody, wasn't he? He wasn't shutting up about George Soros! Soros didn't really like that." As for Beck, "He'll stay undercover a little bit longer. But the news is out."

Spread the word.

Update: Sally Kohn tweets: "I am NOT nor ever have been funded by Soros, despite Right wing assertions to contrary."

Obama Didn't Cave on Birth Control

Nick Baumann — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 17:56:50 +0000

So did Barack Obama fold?

On Friday, after taking heavy criticism from Catholic groups and the political right over a regulation that would have required religiously-affiliated hospitals and universities (not churches) to offer their employees health insurance that covers birth control (with no copays), President Barack Obama went on live television to announce a shift. Now, insurance companies will have to offer employees of religious organizations the birth control coverage directly, without charging extra for it. (The details of the new birth control coverage plan are here.)

Some media outlets will no doubt call this a surrender by the president. But it's not. Here's why:

Everyone who was going to get birth control coverage before will still have access to it. Employees of Catholic schools and hospitals aren't always Catholic, and most sexually active women who aren't trying to get pregnant use birth control. The new rule will not allow the religious views of the leadership of religiously-affiliated organizations to dictate whether birth control is provided to their employees. The intent of the first version of the rule was to make birth control easier to get. The new rule will achieve that goal. "No woman's health should depend on who she is, where she works, or how much money she makes," Obama said in his statement. This policy ensures that.
The coverage will still feature no copayments. The insurance companies that are being required to offer birth control coverage directly to the employees of religious organizations will have to offer it for free. There will be no difference in cost between the plan that covers birth control and the plan that doesn't. The Obama administration justifies this by noting that studies suggest that covering birth control is cost-neutral or even saves money for health insurers because it's cheaper than pregnancy; it spaces out pregnancies, leading to healthier kids, and has other beneficial health effects.
The policy change still won't satisfy the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, which opposed the birth control provision from the start. It's not a cave if your opponents aren't getting what they actually want. What the bishops desire is for the entire birth control rule to be repealed. They believe that no employer—religious affiliation or not—should be required to offer birth control coverage. UPDATE, Friday 3:45 EST: The bishops have released a statement on the policy change that says they're "studying" it and it's a "first step in the right direction." It's unclear whether they'll ultimately retreat from their original position or simply say this attempt is a good step but not sufficient.
The most important reproductive rights groups—Planned Parenthood, NARAL Pro-Choice America, the American Civil Liberties Union, and so on—all support the policy shift. You can bet that these politically savvy groups would be hollering to high heaven if they thought that women had been betrayed.
This whole scuffle was an intriguing policy dilemma, pitting women's health advocates versus faith leaders waving the banner of religious freedom. But with this move, Obama has demonstrated that it's possible to sidestep the red-hot politics of the dispute and work out a reasonable policy outcome that's backed by reproductive rights groups and the Catholic Health Association. It's not likely, though, that the social conservatives who have bashed Obama as an implacable foe of religious freedom will give it a rest.

Details of the White House "Accommodation" on Birth Control Rule

Nick Baumann — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 16:25:51 +0000

The White House will change its policy requiring employers to offer health insurance coverage to their employees that covers birth control at no cost. Previously, religiously affiliated employers other than churches—such as Catholic universities and hospitals—would have been required to offer the insurance to their employees. Now, according to senior White House officials, if a religious employer has a religious objection to providing birth control coverage, insurance companies will be required to offer the insurance featuring free birth control directly to the employees.

Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America, the two most important reproductive rights organizations in the US, both support the White House's compromise, which ensures that women who work for religious organizations other than churches will have access to birth control without a copay. Sister Carol Keehan, the head of the Catholic Health Association, the main Catholic hospitals group, also supports the deal. Keehan and the CHA were key supporters of Obama's health care reform legislation, which the US Conference of Catholic Bishops opposed as written.

Obama's plan is unlikely to win the support of the bishops. In September 2010, when the policy was first being developed, the USCCB wrote a letter opposing requiring any employer—not just religious ones—to offer birth control coverage. Anthony Picarello, the USCCB general counsel who signed the letter, told USA Today on Wednesday that the bishops still oppose the entire policy.

Picarello told USA Today the bishops are worried about the problems the law creates for "good Catholic business people who can't in good conscience cooperate with this," and noted that if he opened a Taco Bell, he'd be forced to offer birth control to his employees. Only something like Sen. Marco Rubio's (R-Fla.) "Religious Freedom Restoration Act"—which would allow any employer, not just religious ones, to cite a religious objection and thereby avoid covering birth control—is likely to satisfy the bishops on this front.

Here's the full text of the White House's fact sheet on its decision:

Continue Reading »

White House Seeking "Compromise" On Birth Control

Adam Serwer — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 14:05:00 +0000

The White House is looking to "compromise" on broadening the religious exemption to its mandate that employers must offer insurance plans that include contraception coverage, following a week of harsh criticism from Republicans and religious organizations.

ABC News' Jake Tapper reports that the White House's compromise could be premised on Hawaii's law, which mandates contraception coverage but contains a mechanism for ensuring that employees are covered while not making religious employers directly pay for that coverage. Here's how it works, according to a report from the Guttmacher Institute:

The Hawaii law specifies that when an employer is exempted from the contraceptive coverage requirement on religious grounds, its employees are entitled to purchase coverage directly from the plan. The cost to the employee must be no more than the price the employee would have paid had the employer not been exempted. The law requires an exempted employer to notify its employees of this option.

Here's the thing: The US Conference of Catholic Bishops has already said that this is unacceptable to them, because according to the National Catholic Register, this would still mean that religious employers "must directly send women to drugs and devices that are morally wrong and can do harm to them." (Millions of women use contraception, including the vast, vast majority of Catholic women, many of them for health reasons rather than preventing pregnancy.) It's also not clear the Hawaii plan is workeable at the federal level, as one administration source told CNN that "the federal government cannot compel insurers to provide a side-contraception plan."

The unacknowledged background to this fight is that, as my colleague Nick Baumann reported earlier this week, federal law has required employers to offer health insurance for more than a decade—which is why DePaul University, the largest Catholic university in America, already offers birth control coverage to its employees. Far from being an unprecedented "assault on religious freedom," the narrow religious exception here has ample legal precedent. As Michelle Goldberg has written, contraception mandates are in effect in 28 states in various forms, and the courts have ruled against challenges brought to those state laws. And in a 1990 opinion, Justice Antonin Scalia found that laws "neutral toward religion and generally applicable" don't hamper inviduals' constitutional rights, so the administration seems to be on firm legal ground.

Firm legal ground however, isn't the same as being politically popular, and despite the pre-decision polls showing that mandating contraception coverage would be broadly accepted, there's probably a reason the White House is looking for middle ground now. But that's the same reason that their critics seems unlikely to meet them in the middle on this issue: Republicans think that they have a winning political issue here, too. There's a political angle for the White House here too of course: In offering a compromise, they may not be hoping for reconcilation as much as an opportunity to make their critics look unreasonable.

The Best Swag at CPAC

Tim Murphy — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 11:30:00 +0000

Forget everything you've heard about shrinking government, icing the welfare state, and giving poor children the maintenance tools to pull themselves by their bootstraps—at the Conservative Political Action Conference, everyone's just looking for a handout.

That, at least, was my conclusion after talking to the good folks at Procinctu, a firm that "works to arm you with the knowledge and tools necessary to attain self-sustainment, empowerment, and security." That entails a number of things—warning you against the evils of Monsanto, promoting the purchase of gold and silver, encouraging exercise. And purchasing, for $10, this t-shirt:

If that's tough to read, let me spell it out for you: It's a t-shirt celebrating corpse desecration (a response to this). No one's buying, though; mostly people just come by, snap a photo, and keep on walking when they find out it's not free.

Maybe that's because everything else at CPAC is free. Here's a very incomplete sampling:

The plot of this book—free, if you promise to tell three friends about it—is that Einstein was wrong, time-travel is possible, and our 16th president has done exactly that in an attempt to steer America back on course.

Redecorating your office? Looking for something for that special someone this Valentine's day? Enter to win a free portrait of your favorite GOP presidential candidate:

Of course, if you load up on hand-drawn portraits of GOP presidential candidates, you'll probably need a car to help you bring them home with you. And if you're going to have a car, you'll want a bumper sticker to go with it:

And if you're going to get rear-ended by the driver who took your bumper sticker the wrong way, you'll want same sustenance while you recover. Like a cake replicating the board for the "Tea Party board game." Its creator told me it was like a combination of Trivial Pursuit and Monopoly. They offered me a slice. I told them I always have someone taste my food first. No one laughed.

In addition to handing out Chuck Norris t-shirts, our friends at birther hub WorldNetDaily are shilling for a presidential candidate of their own. But do they know he was born in the Philippines?

This is....interesting:

Pasha Roberts, the creator of the animated film Silver Circle, explained it to me this way: "Basically the plot of the movie is there is a severe economic collapse in 2018. There's a group of rebels who are fighting the Federal Reserve, and the way they fight is by making alternative currency out silver." Think Children of Men meets the Ron Paul Revolution. When I tell him I work for Mother Jones, he adds one more detail: one of the heroines of the flick is a "pot-smoking lesbian":

This isn't free, but I had to share it anyway. It's just a few feet away from a display of Ron Paul books. As I thumbed through this defense of colonialism, a Mitt Romney supporter next to me picked up a copy of End the Fed and held court with his friends: "This is what his freakish followers read. When they protest Romney events, they have a megaphone and they just read the book. It's disgusting!"

Runaway Slave: Run From Tyranny to Liberty, celebrates the exploits of African-Americans who have...embraced the Republican party. As the tag line puts it, the film "lays bare the truth about blacks and the progressive agenda. Get on board the new underground railroad!"

We're Still at War: Photo of the Day for February 10, 2012

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 10:57:00 +0000

Officers with the 82nd Airborne Division's 1st Brigade Combat Team complete a team obstacle course on February 3, 2012, at Fort Bragg, N.C., during a Prop Blast, a traditional rite-of-passage for officers new to the division. During this phase of the event, teams must move the tire and a simulated casualty down a muddy slope, across a muddy slough, and up the other side. (US Army photo by Sgt. Michael J. MacLeod)

The $25 Billion Foreclosure Settlement: Breakthrough or Raw Deal?

Andy Kroll — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 21:06:54 +0000

On Thursday, after months of closed-door negotiations, plenty of hand wringing, and too many leaks to the media to count, 49 state attorneys general, the Justice Department, and five mega-banks announced they'd reached a legal settlement over fraud in the mortgage servicing and foreclosure processes.

The settlement is worth an estimated $25 billion, according to the Justice Department. The banks involved—Ally Financial, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, and JPMorgan Chase—agreed to reduce principal home loan debt for a million homeowners while paying $2,000 to 750,000 more households that had lost their home to foreclosure. Crucially, the settlement doesn't entirely absolve banks of alleged wrongdoing, leaving the door open for AGs like New York's Eric Schneiderman to proceed with foreclosure fraud lawsuits of their own. Depending on whom you ask, the terms of settlement are a key breakthrough, a first step toward righting the foreclosure abuses of the past decade, or a total sham.

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) called the deal "an important victory for homeowners and communities devastated by the housing crisis." Michael Calhoun, president of the Center for Responsible Lending, said in a statement that the deal "will help build a stronger housing market while keeping more people in their homes. But while a significant step toward fixing the foreclosure crisis, this settlement was never intended or able to provide a comprehensive remedy. Much more work is required."

Some experts and observers, however, were plainly dismissive of the deal. Yves Smith, who runs the blog Naked Capitalism, rattled off 12 reasons why "you should hate" the foreclosure settlement, including the deal's overall price tag, the paltry $2,000 payout for homeowners, and her belief that the deal papers over deeper problems with property titles and the foreclosure process itself. "As we've said before," she wrote, "this settlement is yet another raw demonstration of who wields power in America, and it isn't you and me."

Then again, the AGs' foreclosure settlement was never going to fully address the myriad problems with the foreclosure process. Consider MERS, the industry-backed electronic mortgage registry that greased the foreclosure pipeline and enabled many of the dubious practices that led to the housing crisis. MERS has been in use since 1995; it's an entrenched part of the housing market. It will take much more than a nationwide settlement to tackle the many problems MERS has wrought.

There's also the problem of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and their role in the foreclosure crisis. As myself and others have reported, the two government housing giants spawned foreclosure mills, the assembly-line-like law firms that skirted the law as they kicked people out of their homes. They also reportedly squashed a plan to write down the debt of homeowners who owed more than their houses were worth. There's no remedying the foreclosure crisis without reforming Fannie and Freddie.

The settlement, in other words, is far from a cure-all. Best-case scenario, consumer advocates say, the deal is just the beginning of a reckoning for the fraud and abuse that ran rampant. "Today’s announcement of the mortgage foreclosure settlement represents a step toward righting the wrongs committed by the banks," said Phil Angelides, the chair of the now-defunct Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, "but there are still miles to go. "

Marines Sport Nazi SS Flag in Afghanistan

Adam Weinstein — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 20:37:09 +0000

Marine unit's SS flag in Afghanistan: Tayler Jerome

The Marine Corps' scout snipers in Afghanistan could probably use a safety stand-down. Just weeks after news broke that one elite unit of the forward-deployed Marines urinated on the corpses of dead Afghans, a photo has surfaced of another unit posing proudly beside a flag of the Nazi's killer SS troops. The Marine Corps Times reports:

The stylized "SS" logo appeared in a photograph of the platoon taken in September 2010 in Sangin district, Afghanistan, a hotly contested area in Helmand province. The Marines were with 1st Reconnaissance Battalion, out of Camp Pendleton, Calif.

The I Marine Expeditionary Force inspector general based at Pendleton was made aware of the "SS" flag photo in November of last year, said Capt. Gregory Wolf, a spokesman at Marine Corps headquarters. The issue has been addressed with the Marines involved, Wolf said. He did not say what specific action was taken beyond ordering Marines to stop using the logo.

The photo in question is not the only one documenting usage of the logo: A second image (embedded below) shows the SS logo emblazoned on a Marine's rifle. The Marines' story is that the unit used the flag "to identify the Marines as scout snipers, not Nazis." The symbolic appropriation may indeed be unwitting, but witlessness is no more desirable a trait in downrange warriors than malice is.

Why is this making news now? Several Marines who were concerned about the photos contacted Mikey Weinstein (no relation), president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, a nonprofit that watchdogs religious intolerance in the armed services. Their behavior, Weinstein told me, "eviscerates good order, morale, and discipline," in addition to angering non-Americans and alienating survivors of the Nazis' atrocities. He published the photos on the foundation's website and sent a letter to Gen. John Amos, the Marine Corps commandant, demanding punishment for the Marines involved. "That flag symbolizes the vile ideology of Hitlerian fascism and sends a menacing signal to religious minorities within the United States armed forces," Weinstein said.

Walter Plywaski, a survivor of the Lodz ghetto and Auschwitz concentration camp in World War II who later became a US citizen and Air Force veteran, expressed disgust at the Marines' behavior. "The photographs below roil my intestines and break my heart beyond words to express," he wrote in an email to Weinstein. "I wish I could really believe that these sniper teams innocently combined the view of the United States flag with the central symbol of the murderous SS!"

The Corps says the matter has already been handled internally. "Certainly, the use of the 'SS runes' is not acceptable and Scout Snipers have been addressed concerning this issue," Marine Capt. Brian Block told Politico in a statement today.

But that's not good enough for Weinstein. "We're hearing that they may have moved Marines from one unit to another, they may have reprimanded them, they may have given them nonjudicial punishment," he said, referring to the military's most lenient administrative form of punishment. "That's unacceptable. If this is not a court-martial offense, there are no court-martial offenses."

A Marine sniper's rifle-stock sporting the Nazi SS symbol: Military Religious Freedom Foundation

Mind-Blowing Charts From the Senate's Income Inequality Hearing

Josh Harkinson — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 20:35:20 +0000

In another sign that Democrats have embraced income inequality as a cause célèbre, the Senate Budget Committee held a hearing on the subject today. The committee's ranking Republican, Jeff Sessions of Alabama, managed to look concerned during two hours of testimony about the kneecapping of the Middle Class—not that it should have been all that difficult. Here are some of the hearing's most striking charts:

Mother Jones readers have seen this one: The Philippe Dauman chart:

The 1 percent hasn't controlled such a large share of the economy since the eve of the Great Depression:

But as the rich have earned a larger share, they've paid a smaller and smaller share in taxes:

A major source of inequality in the tax code comes from how it treats investment income. Just ask Mitt Romney, who paid 13.9 percent of his income in taxes in 2010. Most of his earnings came from capital gains, which only get taxed at 15 percent. Proponents of the loophole argue that it helps spur investment, but it also disproportionately helps the rich:

Though America's wealthy are supposed to pay a higher tax rate than the poor (what's known as a "progressive tax code"), they now benefit from so many loopholes that the tax code has, in practice, become increasingly regressive (the Gini Index is a common measure of income inequality):

CPAC: Attack of the Anti-Multiculturalists!

Tim Murphy — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 18:33:05 +0000

The hottest piece of swag at the Conservative Political Action Conference in DC is the beer koozie. You can pick up upwards of a dozen varieties wandering through the massive exhibit hall in the basement of the Marriott Wardman Park. You can even get a koozie from the anti-multiculturalist student group, Youth For Western Civilization. But it wasn't the knick-knacks that drew me over to the group's table in the basement exhibit hall, though—it was their logo, a black-and-white image of a flexed arm grasping some medieval piece of weaponry.

It looks like a battle axe, but I'm quickly corrected—it's actually a war hammer. "It's supposed to represent Charles Martel," a volunteer tells me. That's a reference to the eighth-century French leader and father of Charlemagne who turned back the Muslim invaders at the Battle of Tours. Martel is something of a hero to the group because they believe the same thing is happening today—American civilization (Western Civilization) is slowly being watered down into something unrecognizable. We don't just need less illegal immigration; we need a lot less immigration, period.

"Mitt Romney is a soulless automaton with no principles—which is why he's good," says Kevin DeAnna, the American University graduate who founded the organization, suggesting that the GOP front-runner's malleable core values might make him easily persuadable. "He's not a closet leftist like George W. Bush." No group benefits more from immigration than the 1-percent, another volunteer chips in, and Kevin quickly agrees. "When Occupiers come up to us—and I'm sure you can imagine they do—this is what we say to them," he says. The 99-percent should be vehemently opposed to illegal immigration—as proof, he cites the early 20th-century labor organizer Samuel Gompers, who called for limits to immigration out of concern for the domestic workforce. Of course, Youth for Western Civilization's alliance with the Occupy Wall Street crowd is probably short-lived; the same group has also posted articles on its website denouncing Nelson Mandela as a "bloodthirsty terrorist" who should have been hanged in the 1980s. (DeAnna tells me he wishes the Occupiers weren't so caught up in political correctness.)

After wandering through the exhibit hall, I dashed upstairs, where an overflow crowd was gathered for a breakout session called "The Failure of Multi-Culturalism: How the Pursuit of Diversity is Weakening American Diversity." As one speaker put it, "Europeans and their trans-Atlantic cousins are literally an endangered species." Another speaker, Rosalie Porter, chairwoman of the anti-bilingualism group ProEnglish, lamented that the Civil Rights Act had ushered in an era of multiculturalism, in which Americans were distinguished by made-up terms like "Hispanic."

Which isn't to say that the entire conference is dominated by White Nationalists. But in a year in which the CPAC's organizers blocked the LGBT group GOProud from co-sponsoring the event, their inclusion is a jarring reminder of the deep-seated biases preventing the conservative movement from actually becoming the Big Tent Republicans say they want.

House Dems Blast Gitmo "Reengagement" Report

Adam Serwer — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 18:00:56 +0000

House Democrats blasted their Republican colleagues on the armed services committee Wednesday, following the release of a report criticizing the Obama and Bush administrations over their transfer of detainees out of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay.

"Rarely in the history of the House Armed Services Committee has so much time and money been spent with so little result," said Rep. Jim Cooper, a conservative Tennessee Democrat in a statement. Cooper said the quality of the report was a direct result of Republicans on the committee attempting to exploit fears of terrorism for political gain in November. "Reports on terrorism should not further the terrorists’ goal of spreading fear."

None of the Democrats on the committee signed onto the report, which was the result of an 11-month investigation by the House Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee that began last March. Instead, they released an eight page dissent.

The chief point of contention is the report's conclusion that 27 percent of the about 600 former Gitmo detainees who have been transferred "were confirmed or suspected to be presently or previously reengaged in terrorist activities." The report pegs the "reengagement" rate under the Obama administration at 7.5 percent, but like the 27 percent figure, this combines detainees who are "confirmed or suspected" of "reengaging." This is problematic measurement since it not only assumes the detainees were guilty in the first place, but it assumes that those who are merely "suspected" of "reengaging" have actually done so. Of the five detainees released under Obama who are on the "confirmed or suspected list," two were ordered released by the courts. The Democrats argue that the actual "reengagement rate" under Obama is three percent, not 7.5 percent. A Defense Intelligence Agency report published by McClatchy last year identified the rate for detainees transferred or released during the Bush administration at almost 15 percent. The report asks the administration to produce its own report on "rengagement" and calls for restrictions on transfers of detainees out of Gitmo to remain in place.

While the administration took on a comprehensive evaluation of all the remaining detainees at Gitmo when Obama took office, the Republican majority is critical of the task force that reviewed their cases on the basis that they were predisposed towards the president's goal of closing the facility. Despite the lesser "reengagement rate" under Obama, however, the report concludes that "the threat of reengagement may not be lessened in the long term" by more robust review procedures adopted during the Obama administration.

Human rights and civil liberties groups are also critical of the report, which ACLU Senior Staff Attorney Zachary Katznelson called a "rehash of old allegations, long on accusations, short on facts."

The number of former detainees who have committed terrorist acts post-release or transfer has been a point of controversy since Obama took office, having promised to close the Gitmo detention facility within a year. But Congress balked, and beginning in Decemeber 2010, Congress has maintained restrictions on transferring detainees out of Gitmo that, according to the Pentagon, are nearly impossible to satisfy. Public opinion has shifted markedly, with seventy percent of Americans in favor of keeping Gitmo open, according to a recent Washington Post/ABC News poll. In 2009, a majority of Americans wanted Gitmo closed. So the report is unlikely to make the effort to close Gitmo any deader than it already is, or lessen the already abysmal chances that the dozens of detainees who have been cleared for transfer or release will taste freedom anytime soon.

Pentagon to Let Women in Combat, Kinda Sorta

Adam Weinstein — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 17:30:27 +0000

Female Marines on foot patrol in Marjah, Afghanistan: Marine Corps PhotoThe Department of Defense is expected to release a report on Thursday urging Congress to let women serve in more frontline combat-related jobs, signaling a possible death knell for male-only military units.

The recommendations are part of a department-wide "Women in Service" review that was scheduled to be released last April but has been held up for nearly a year by DOD officials. Military representatives will hold a Pentagon press conference Thursday afternoon to announce the changes.

Although the new rules aren't expected to allow women into all combat roles currently held by men, such as infantry, artillery, and special operations, they will certainly boost the case for full equality in the ranks. According to DOD officials who have briefed journalists on the report, it will recommend that women be allowed to fill essential non-combat roles—medics, cops, intelligence and communications specialists—in small, frontline combat units where they were previously forbidden.

Continue Reading »

Second White Nationalist Appearing At CPAC

Adam Serwer — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 16:25:54 +0000

Though gay conservatives aren't welcome at the Conservative Political Action Confrence this year, at least two white nationalists are appearing at the yearly conservative confab.

One is Peter Brimelow *, founder of the nativist site VDARE which publishes the works of white nationalists like Jared Taylor, and the other is Robert Vandervoort, who runs a group called ProEnglish and according to the Institute for Research on Education and Human Rights, "was also the organizer of the white nationalist group, Chicagoland Friends of American Renaissance," which is affiliated with Taylor.

They'll be appearing on a panel titled "The Failure of Multiculturalism: How the pursuit of diversity is weakening the American Identity" alongside National Review's John Derbyshire, who believes "that racial disparities in education and employment have their origin in biological differences between the human races," differences that are "facts in the natural world, like the orbits of the planets." I'm not sure whether there's really any daylight between Derbyshire, who is a long-time writer at American conservatism's flagship magazine, and the two other men he's appearing with.

*An earlier version of this post wrongly identified "Peter Brimelow" as "Jay Brimelow."

Catholic Bishops Want Entire Birth Control Rule Repealed, Not Just the Religious Exemption

Nick Baumann and Kate Sheppard — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 16:11:00 +0000

The US Conference of Catholic Bishops, the national political lobby for the Catholic Church in America, has been waging war on President Barack Obama's new rule requiring health insurers to cover birth control at no cost to women. The religious exemption in the Obama rule allows churches an exemption to birth control coverage, but still requires religiously affiliated schools and hospitals to provide insurance to their employees that includes contraception without a co-payment.

The bishops claim that exemption is too narrow. But they don't just want the religious exemption widened. They want the whole policy repealed. (Never mind that most employers have been required to cover birth control for years.) This USA Today story sort of buries this fact, but at least it acknowledges it:

The White House is "all talk, no action" on moving toward compromise, said Anthony Picarello, general counsel for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. "There has been a lot of talk in the last couple days about compromise, but it sounds to us like a way to turn down the heat, to placate people without doing anything in particular," Picarello said. "We're not going to do anything until this is fixed."

That means removing the provision from the health care law altogether, he said, not simply changing it for Catholic employers and their insurers. He cited the problem that would create for "good Catholic business people who can't in good conscience cooperate with this."

"If I quit this job and opened a Taco Bell, I'd be covered by the mandate," Picarello said.

So in short, the bishops want your Catholic boss to be able to decide whether or not you have to pay full freight for your birth control. Not coincidentally, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) has a bill that would do just that.

The problem with this argument is that if taken to its logical extreme, your boss could claim religious exemptions for all sorts of health care issues, whether you worked at Catholic Charities, Taco Bell, or anywhere else. Christian Scientists generally don't believe that people need pharmaceutical medicine at all. Scientologists don't believe in psychiatry. If individual employers are allowed exemptions to the birth control coverage mandate, the law could quickly be rendered meaningless.

DeMint at CPAC: Compromise Is the Enemy

David Corn — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 15:18:27 +0000

The first major speaker at this year's Conservative Political Action Conference, an annual gathering of right-wing advocates, grassroots activists, and politicians (including 2012 contenders), was Republican Sen. Jim DeMint, who had a fundamental message for the base: compromise sucks.

GOPers on Capitol Hill should not be looking to work with Democrats to develop common solutions to the nation's woes, he proclaimed. Not at all. Not ever. And DeMint, with an I'm-so-clever smile, offered what he obviously thought was a killer analogy: the Super Bowl.

Referring to last Sunday's game, he said, "I can guarantee you that coach Tom Coughlin did not tell his Giants to go out on the field and work with those other guys....They weren't cooperating with Tom Brady."

DeMint explained that the New York Giants and the New England Patriots had "different goals." Consequently, compromise would not work. Continuing with this trenchant observation, DeMint noted that "compromise works well in this world when you have shared goals." You can compromise with a wife or with a business colleague. But not with Democrats: "We don't have shared goals with the Democrats."

DeMint, of course, is ignoring the efforts of other conservative Republicans to forge agreements with the other side, most notably the Gang of Six in the Senate. This band of Republican and Democratic senators put together a deficit-reduction framework that drew signs of support from about 40 Democratic and Republican members of the upper chamber last summer. But this compromise failed. Why? Not because Democrats were unwilling to work toward a shared goal with the GOPers. It collapsed because Tea Party-whipped Republicans (such as House Speaker John Boehner) could not accept any increase in tax revenues—and this package included about $1.5 trillion in boosted revenues over ten years.

The problem was not that the shared goal of deficit reduction could not yield a bipartisan compromise. The Gang of Six showed that it could. The issue was that Republican extremists would not accept even an agreement devised by fellow Republicans. They just wouldn't play ball—and that's hardly a course of action that Tom Coughlin would advise his players.

We're Still at War: Photo of the Day for February 9, 2012

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 10:57:00 +0000

US Army Sgt. Aaron Sweeny and Staff Sgt. Robert Novak, both with 3rd Platoon, Battery A, 2nd Battalion, 377th Parachute Field Artillery Regiment, Task Force Spartan, watch explosions from a mountain top near Forward Operating Base Salerno during a call for fire exercise on February 3, 2012. US Army photo by Spc. Ken Scar, 7th MPAD.

Your Daily Newt: Gingrich Shoots a Pig. Sort of.

Tim Murphy — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 22:50:39 +0000

As a service to our readers, every day we are delivering a classic moment from the political life of Newt Gingrich—until he either clinches the nomination or bows out.

In early February, Newt Gingrich launched a new website attacking GOP front-runner Mitt Romney for his less-than-distinguished record as a hunter. The site, romneyguns.com, mocks the former Massachusetts governor for once claiming to have hunted "small varmints," and depicts Romney in an Elmer Fudd-style cap holding a rifle, standing inside a silver cup. It's funny because Romney has been hilariously uncomfortable when he's asked about hunting. It's also funny because the man attacking him is Newt Gingrich.

Gingrich, as my colleague Andy Kroll reported in January, has never owned a gun in his life. His comment that "males are biologically driven to go out and hunt giraffes" notwithstanding, he does not hunt. Instead, Gingrich's passion for wildlife is on the complete other side of the spectrum—he once told a reporter that he'd like to spend 6 to 12 months in the Amazon staring at tree sloths. When it comes to big-game-hunting bona fides, the former speaker gives Romney a run for his money. Newt's affinity for firing a gun in anger at an animal was captured in this scene from a 1995 Vanity Fair profile:

Carter tells a down-home kind of story from the 1970s. Newt and Carter, who was then his campaign treasurer, used to barbecue hogs in the Gingriches' driveway in Carrollton, Georgia. They would go to a friend's farm and pick out a hog --and shoot it.

"One day, Newt says to me, 'I need to be the one to kill the hog. It's only right, just morally.'"

Carter showed Newt how to use a Walther P-38, a W.W. II German pistol. "I said, 'Put some corn in your left hand. When the pig comes over to get it, put the pistol against his head and shoot him between his eyes.'"

"So the pig comes over and he starts eating," says Carter. "Newt flinches as the round hits the pig on the side of the head and ricochets down." But the shot only stunned the hog and sent it fleeing back into the pen. "Newt keeps trying to get this pig to come back to him. Newt's getting madder and madder. I said to him, 'You just shot the son of a bitch in the head, Newt, why do you think he's gonna come to you?'"

Carter recalls urging his comrade-in-arms, "'You gotta get in there, in the hogpen, and go get him.' But Newt wouldn't do it. So I ended up going in the pen and killing the hog."

Boehner Pledges to Reverse Free Birth Control Decision

Kate Sheppard — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 20:44:05 +0000

House Speaker John Boehner joined the battle on contraception coverage on Wednesday, vowing to overturn the new regulation that requires health insurers to provide birth control at no cost. The Obama administration's decision has roiled some anti-contraception religious groups and conservative members of Congress.

"This attack by the federal government on religious freedom in our country cannot stand, and will not stand," said Boehner on the House floor. He said that if the Obama administration doesn't reverse the decision—which would exempt churches but not universities or hospitals affiliated with religious organizations—then Congress will. The Obama administration's decision was made as part of the reform measures put in place under the new health care law. The Institute of Medicine recommended that birth control be provided without a co-payment as one of a number of preventative care measures.

Boehner's promise drew a quick response from pro-choice Democrats in the House and reproductive rights groups, who held a conference call with reporters on Wednesday afternoon. "Some have decided to again use women's health as a political football," said Rep. Lois Capps (D-Calif.). "Most Americans believe that women, not their bosses, should decide what health care services they have access to."

"The opponents of birth control in Congress are trying to take health benefits away from working women," said Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.). She predicted, however, that the move would cause "a backlash from the women of America." "I think it would be at great peril if they were going to do this."

Poll: Americans Approve Of Targeted Killing Of American Terror Suspects

Adam Serwer — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 14:59:32 +0000

Buried in the recently released Washington Post/ABC poll noting improving numbers for President Barack Obama are numbers showing that Americans are favorably disposed towards the use of targeted killing in counterterrorism operations, even if the targets are Americans.

Here are the poll results: Overall 83 percent of Americans approve of the use of "unmanned, 'drone' aircraft against terrorist suspects overseas," 59 percent strongly and 26 percent "somewhat." Of those who approve, 79 percent think the use of targeted killing against American citizens abroad who are suspected of terrorism is justified. The Washington Post's Greg Sargent, who takes a closer look at the internal numbers, finds that "Democrats approve of the drone strikes on American citizens by 58-33, and even liberals approve of them, 55-35." Whether as a result of partisan identification with the president or an artifact of the United States shifting to the right on counterterrorism policy in general, it doesn't seem likely that Obama will pay a high political price with his base for either the escalation of drone strikes since taking office or the use of drones to kill Americans abroad suspected of terrorism.

The administration has faced increasing criticism from civil liberties and human rights groups over the nature and secrecy of its targeted killing program, including its efforts to block attempts to force disclosure of the legal rationale for targeting Americans without charge or trial, even as administration officials comment publicly on the program's success. Recently, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta revealed that, when it comes to the targeted killing of Americans suspected of terrorism, the final decision is made by the president himself. In an online forum, President Obama insisted that drones were being used with restraint, saying it was on a "very tight leash," with extreme care being taken to minimize civilian casualties. Not everyone agrees with that assessment: The Bureau of Investigative Journalism says that since Obama took office close to 400 of the casualties from drone strikes in Pakistan have been civilians, with close to 200 of them children.

Republicans have criticized Obama for his use of targeted killing and special operations forces—mostly on the grounds that more dead terror suspects means fewer of them to interrogate. But the poll numbers suggest widespread approval of Obama's approach to counterterrorism: Limited, covert, and with the collateral damage borne by individuals who remain far beyond the thoughts of most Americans.

We're Still at War: Photo of the Day for February 8, 2012

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 10:57:00 +0000

A soldier secures an area during a dismounted patrol in Muqer district, Ghazni province, Afghanistan, on January 29, 2012. Soldiers from Civil Affairs and Provincial Reconstruction Team conducted the dismounted patrol to engage elders and key leaders in the area. Photo by the US Army.

State Department Preparing To Cut Iraq Embassy Staff By Half

Asawin Suebsaeng — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 22:10:49 +0000

When the Iraq War officially ended late last year, many were quick to point out it was hardly a wholesale withdrawal. There are still 5,500 armed contractors stationed in Iraq to protect US government personnel (a figure nearly three times the number of hired guns the State Department uses to protect all its other diplomatic missions combined). A small (and controversial) fleet of surveillance drones are patrolling Iraqi skies. Oh, there's also that huge embassy complex in Baghdad that was recently on track to balloon to an even greater size.

But as Tim Arango of the New York Times reported on Tuesday, the State Department might end up nixing as much as half of the 16,000-strong embassy staff:

The expansive diplomatic operation and the $750 million embassy building, the largest of its kind in the world, were billed as necessary to nurture a postwar Iraq on its shaky path to democracy and establish normal relations between two countries linked by blood and mutual suspicion. But the Americans have been frustrated by Iraqi obstructionism and are now largely confined to the embassy because of security concerns, unable to interact enough with ordinary Iraqis to justify the $6 billion annual price tag. ...

Michael W. McClellan, the spokesman for the embassy...said in a statement, "over the last year and continuing this year the Department of State and the Embassy in Baghdad have been considering ways to appropriately reduce the size of the U.S. mission in Iraq, primarily by decreasing the number of contractors needed to support the embassy's operations."...McClellan said the number of diplomats—currently about 2,000—is also, "subject to adjustment as appropriate." To make the cuts, he said the embassy, "is hiring Iraqi staff and sourcing more goods and services to the local economy."

For years, State Department officials have been pushing for substantial cuts in diplomatic operations to accomodate the reduced American role in Iraq. Budgetary realities, the scrapped plans for a residual force of American troops, and animosity between Iraqis and the security contractors have also contributed to the growing downsize-fever.

Also buried in the Times story is this glorious nugget about a major "difficulty" facing the thousands of contractors and diplomats who remained in Iraq after the December drawdown:

Convoys of food that were previously escorted by the United States military from Kuwait were delayed at border crossings as Iraqis demanded documentation that the Americans were unaccustomed to providing. Within days, the salad bar at the embassy dining hall ran low. Sometimes there was no sugar or Splenda for coffee. On chicken wing night, wings were rationed at six per person. Over the holidays, housing units were stocked with Meals Ready to Eat, the prepared food for soldiers in the field.

Uh.... I'll just let Andrew Exum bring this one home:

Sometimes, when I was stuck on some godforsaken mountain in eastern Afghanistan, there was no sugar or Splenda for coffee. Or coffee.
— Andrew Exum (@abumuqawama) February 7, 2012

Rep. Sue Myrick Retires, Opening Door for Islamist Intern Cabal To Take Power

Tim Murphy — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 21:46:44 +0000

North Carolina GOP Rep. Sue Myrick told supporters on Tuesday that she will not be seeking re-election next November, making her the third elected representative from the state to announce her retirement in just the last few weeks. On the surface, it's not an especially big deal, largely because Myrick is hardly a power-broker in Congress and her district is solidly conservative.

But Myrick's departure will deprive Congress of one of its loudest voices in the fight against the largely nonexistent threat of "stealth jihad"—a congresswoman who once held a press conference to declare that the Capitol had been infiltrated by a secret cabal of radical Islamist interns bent on destroying America from within. (As anyone who's spent much time in this city knows, the real power in Washington is held by Hill interns; the lobbyists are just there to make sure we don't run out of cigars.)

Such behavior would become a pattern. When Myrick sat down with Muslim constituents in Charlotte in 2010 to explain herself, the Associated Press noted that Myrick had "proposed fighting Islamic radicalization by cutting off exchange programs and weapons sales with Saudi Arabia, passing legislation that would make it a treasonous offense to call for the death of American citizens and investigating the selection of Arabic translators." Admittedly, it was an incomplete list. Last August, she held hearings on the Muslim Brotherhood's supposed attempt to take over America through self-jihad (it didn't go so well). Myrick has also addressed—and been honored by—the anti-Islam activist group ACT! for America. ACT!'s founder, Brigitte Gabriel, believes Muslims should be prohibited from serving in the military and blocked from holding public office.

Last fall, Myrick canceled her planned appearance at a September 11th memorial out of concerns that she had become a target for terrorists, citing an article published by Iranian state media that mentioned her name. Myrick declined to elaborate on the specifics of the threat, except to say that "I live with threats every day; that's my life." The Iranian report was actually just a translation of a report on Islamophobia published by the liberal Center for American Progress. And although Myrick alleged that she had been told be intelligence sources that the article put her life at risk, Salon's Justin Elliott noted that none of the other Republican members of Congress implicated in the report canceled their public events on 9/11.

Court: Prop 8 Is Unconstitutional

Adam Serwer — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 19:42:49 +0000

renedrivers/Flickr

On Tuesday morning, a three-judge panel from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals found California's ban on same-sex marriage unconstitutional.

"Proposition 8 serves no purpose, and has no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California," wrote Judge Steven Roy Reinhardt in an opinion that quotes William Shakespeare, Frank Sinatra, and Groucho Marx. "Although the Constitution permits communities to enact most laws they believe to be desirable, it requires that there be at least a legitimate reason for the passage of a law that treats different classes of people differently."

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What Do the Coen Brothers, Jan Brewer, and Huggies Have in Common?

Andy Kroll — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 17:47:44 +0000

Forget The French Connection, Bullitt, or The Italian Job. The best chase scene in modern cinema—bring it on, boo boys—appears in Joel and Ethan Coen's bizarre, pitch-perfect 1987 classic, "Raising Arizona." (It also features the best chase scene one-liner. Mustachioed truck driver to Nicholas Cage with the cops hot on his trail: "Son, you got a pantie on yer head.") Behold:

Why the clip? One of the nation's largest labor unions has drawn on the Coen brothers oeuvre as it wages the latest battle over workers' rights in America.

In Arizona, Republican Gov. Jan Brewer and state GOP lawmakers have taken a cue from Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker by taking aim at the collective bargaining rights of public sector unions. Except Arizona's assault on workers' rights is more extreme than Wisconsin's. The bills introduced in the state senate there would eliminate all collective bargaining for public employees at the state, city, and county levels.

To fight back, the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees launched "Razing Arizona." The new campaign rips Brewer and calls Arizona's anti-union legislation "the latest orchestrated attack from extreme right-wing lawmakers, think tanks, and their corporate cronies who are hell-bent on wiping out what’s left of the middle class." AFSCME also released an ad bashing Brewer in the style of VH1's Pop-Up Video:

The Brewer video has been viewed 2,100 times on YouTube. The Razing Arizona campaign has a thousand "likes" and counting on Facebook. And with the Arizona anti-union legislation still wending its way through the legislature, you can plenty more union counterattacks, film-inspired or no, are on their way.