Creepy 62 y.o. GOPer following opponent's
daughter on Twitter

post from US Politics | AMERICAblog News on 04 April 2012 05:00:55 PM. © US Politics | AMERICAblog News

He got called out for it, and yeah, it is creepy. (Though I suspect he did it hoping the daughter would say something stupid about dad or the opponent.)

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owing-opponents.html

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Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott Predicts
Texas’ Voter ID Law Will Actually Increase Turnout

post from ThinkProgress on 04 April 2012 05:00:32 PM. © ThinkProgress

WASHINGTON, DC — Texas Attorney General Greb Abbott (R) dismissed concerns that his state’s new voter ID law could disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of Texans, predicting instead that it will lead to an increase in voter turnout.

As many as 800,000 Texans currently lack a driver?s license or personal identification card. The likelihood that a Latino voter won’t have the necessary photo ID is as much double that of a non-Latino. Because of this disproportionate effect on Hispanic voters, the Justice Department blocked the Texas’ voter ID law under the Voting RIghts Act.

In an interview with ThinkProgress last week, Abbott dismissed these concerns, arguing instead that no one will be disenfranchised because of voter ID. Abbott went further, insisting that with voter ID in place, turnout will actually increase in Texas.

KEYES: Do you think that goal will be achieved that no one will be disenfranchised with the voter ID law?
ABBOTT: I do believe that both the safeguards and the structure put in place by Texas will ensure that it achieves the same thing that was achieved by Georgia and Indiana, and that is after these laws were implemented, you actually saw an increase in voter participation as opposed to a decrease.

Watch it:

Voter ID doesn’t just discriminate against racial minorities. It also hurts poor people and those who live in rural areas. First, for people who lack an official photo ID, obtaining one in order to vote is an unconstitutional poll tax. One such individual is Jessica Cohen, whose story ThinkProgress documented in November. After she lost her identification during a robbery, the only way to get a voter ID was to pay a fee to Missouri officials in order to obtain her birth certificate.

In addition, rural folks are hit disproportionately hard by a voter ID requirement. For many people living in rural west Texas, for instance, the nearest ID office is as much as 100 miles away. That barrier is all the more difficult because people who lack ID by definition don’t have a driver’s license. Unable to obtain a photo ID, they would be stripped of their voting rights under the state’s voter ID law.

It’s not difficult to see why hundreds of thousands would likely be disenfranchised in Texas if voter ID were reinstated. What is difficult to see is precisely how a major new barrier to voting will result in more Texans being able to vote, as Abbott asserts.

To learn more about voter ID and other suppression efforts, read CAP’s new report on recent attacks on voting rights across the country.

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http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/04/04/456116/greg-abbott-texas-voter-id/

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Mine Union President Compares Fate Of Coal
Industry To Osama Bin Laden’s Death

post from ThinkProgress on 04 April 2012 05:00:32 PM. © ThinkProgress

UMWA President Cecil Roberts

The Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed regulations to limit coal-fired power plants will have the same effect on the coal industry that the American military had on Osama bin Laden, the president of the nation’s largest mining labor union said Tuesday.

The rules seek to limit emissions from new power plants, forcing new plants to install carbon capturing technology to comply. United Mine Workers of America President Cecil Roberts opposes those rules, saying that if enacted, they would kill the coal industry the way Navy SEALs killed bin Laden, The Hill reports:

?The Navy SEALs shot Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan and Lisa Jackson shot us in Washington,? Cecil Roberts, president of the powerful union, said during an interview Tuesday on the West Virginia radio show MetroNews Talkline. [...]
?I noticed this past week the vice president was talking about the campaign and he mentioned that Osama Bin Laden was dead and General Motors was alive,? Roberts said. ?He should have gone on to say that the coal industry is not far behind with respect to what happened with Osama Bin Laden.?

Roberts’ preposterous comparison aside, the new rules wouldn’t affect clean coal, which the industry and its backers — like Roberts — claim exists. Roberts also ignores that despite falling coal production in the nation’s biggest coal producing region — Appalachia is rapidly approaching its peak coal capacity — coal employment rose to a 15-year high in 2011, largely due to EPA regulations.

While the UMWA will most likely avoid challenging President Obama on the issue during the 2012 presidential election, the new EPA rules could cost the president an endorsement. Still, Roberts thinks Obama has “done a lot of great things for the country,” though it isn’t clear whether Roberts considers bringing about the death of the world’s most notorious terrorist to be one of them.

Read The Full Article:
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/04/04/458367/coal-industry-bin-laden-death/

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Women and the National Magazine Awards: How the
Judging and Categories Work

post from ThinkProgress on 04 April 2012 05:00:31 PM. © ThinkProgress

When the nominations for the National Magazine Awards were announced yesterday, they sparked a spirited debate about gender and representation among the nominees. Liliana Segura found that the finalists included no women in the Reporting, Features, Profiles, Essays or Columns categories, though as I noted, they netted four out of the five nominations for Public Interest reporting. Mother Jones’ Adam Weinstein spoke with Erin Belieu, the co-founder of VIDA, which monitors women’s bylines in magazine journalism, about the breakdown. And Sid Holt, the chief executive of the American Society of Magazine Editors, which administers the National Magazine Awards, mounted a spirited defense of the nominations, and of the existence of a Women’s Magazine category in the competition, though there is no Men’s Magazine category.

It’s easy to feel frustrated with the results, which have roots further back in the pieces editors choose to commission in the first place and the categories in which editors choose to submit entries. But in an extended conversation with ThinkProgress, Holt laid out the process by which ASME assembles its judging pools, and described the organization’s debates about issues ranging from attaching bylines to pieces in the judging process to the existence of the Women’s Magazines category.

243 judges participated in the selection process for this year’s print National Magazine Awards, of whom 118, or 48.5 percent, were women. 40 percent of the judges are editors in chief of magazines, 20 percent come from places other than New York, and 25 percent were first-time judges. Of the 20 judging groups, 8 were lead by women?the original plan would have had 9 women group leaders, but one dropped out and was replaced by a man. Holt said his goal is to put together judging pools that won’t produce easily predictable results. “There?s no specific guideline, there?s x number of women or x number of men,” he explained, “but there have to be more than a couple of women or men” in any given pool.

Each initial submission is evaluated by two readers, usually a man and a woman, though Holt said the process emphasizes diversity of background so “It?s not two women service editors. If it?s a man and a woman, it?s not a man from a sports magazine and a woman from a sports magazine.” Those readers initially evaluate the pieces by reading them as PDFs that are uploaded to a website. When submissions move to the judging pool, judges read the stories again in the physical magazines which they appeared, so everything from the paper to the byline is the same. Holt said there have been debates about stripping bylines from pieces, but that certain magazines?like the New Yorker?and certain pieces that are so widely circulated that it wouldn’t make sense to attempt to disguise who their authors are.

Holt acknowledged that the Women’s Magazines category remained the subject of debate, but said it grew out of larger changes when ASME decided to abandon categories in the General Excellence awards that sorted magazines by circulation, which prevented magazines with similar content and ambitions from being judged against each other. “There clearly are men?s magazines, but the number of men?s magazine doesn?t justify having a separate category for men?s magazines,” he said. “We did the general excellence categories for years based on circulation…There was a perception, and it was a reality, that women?s magazines weren?t recognized. So we specifically created a category for women?s magazines to recognize women?s magazines…It was a specific problem, and there are women editors who liked it the other way. We were trying to address an issue in which magazines that competed for readers and for advertisers were competing against one another. It was a system that made sense from a magazine perspective and wasn?t entirely arbitrary.”

And Holt said he recognized the difficulties of a system and a market where magazines with service sections aimed only at men?but with feature wells that aim to compete with publications like the New Yorker?ended up in the General Interest category while Women’s Magazines are separated out. “Putting GQ and Esquire in a category called General Interest, I realize that is problematic,” he said. “That’s a practical solution to sort of an organizational problem.”

Read The Full Article:
http://thinkprogress.org/alyssa/2012/04/04/458385/women-and-the-national-magazine
-awards-how-the-judging-and-categories-work/

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Today on The Stars Hollow Gazette

post from Docudharma - Front Page on 04 April 2012 04:55:56 PM. © Docudharma - Front Page

Our regular featured content-On This Day In History April 4 by TheMomCatPunting the Pundits by TheMomCatThese featured articles-Who decides who's "viable"? by Archangel M'Are there no Workhouses?' by ek hornbeckDemocracy Under Water by ek hornbeckThis[...]

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http://www.docudharma.com/diary/29529/today-by-TheMomCat

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Today

post from Docudharma - Front Page on 04 April 2012 04:55:56 PM. © Docudharma - Front Page

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Why Do Reporters Think Mitt Romney Is a Moderate

post from The American Prospect on 04 April 2012 04:54:54 PM. © The American Prospect

I'm sorry, but I refuse to let this one go, even if I have to repeat myself. Time's Alex Altman writes, "A very conservative party is on the verge of nominating a relative moderate whom nobody is very excited about, largely because none of his rivals managed to cobble together a professional operation." I beg you, Alex, and every other reporter covering the campaign: If you're going to assert that Mitt Romney is a "relative moderate," you have to give us some evidence for that assertion. Because without mind-reading, we have to way to know whether it's true.

What we do know is that when he ran in two races in the extremely liberal state of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney was a moderate. Then when he ran in two races to be the Republican nominee for president, Mitt Romney was and is extremely conservative. There is simply no reason?none?to believe, let alone to assert as though it were an undisputed fact, that the first incarnation of Romney was the "real" one and the current incarnation of Romney is the fake one.

Every single issue position that might mark Mitt Romney as a "relative moderate" is something he has cast off, whether it's being pro-choice, or pro-gay rights, or not hating on immigrants. If you're going to say he's a relative moderate, you have to explain how the Massachusetts Romney was an expression of his true beliefs, and the national Romney is the product of cynical calculation, and how you know this to be the case.

It might be the case. But it is just as likely that the Massachusetts Romney was the fake one, and the current Romney is the sincere one. Or that neither one is real, because Romney simply has no actual beliefs about these issues. (I leave aside the possibility that they're both real, and he underwent some genuine change of heart on most every issue after deciding to run for president. Because no one's crazy enough to believe that.) So please, reporters: if you suspect that Mitt Romney is really a moderate, then say it's a suspicion. But don't treat it like a fact.

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http://prospect.org/article/why-do-reporters-think-mitt-romney-moderate

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Religious University Abruptly Drops Birth Control
Coverage

For years, Xavier University, a Jesuit school in the Cincinnati area, had a health care plan that included birth control coverage. Faculty and other employees at the college, including non-Catholics, could get birth control under their health plans. When[...]

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The War on Women continues in Republican budget

The Center for American Progress details how the House Republicans' vision for America, that Paul Ryan budget adopted by them and embraced by Mitt Romney, is just the latest volley in their War on Women.

This attack on women is an attack on their economic security throughout their lifetimes, CAP argues. They have a tremendous table showing just how women would be hurt at every stage of life, in contrast to the Republicans' priorities.

For childhood:

During adulthood:
CAP chart

While raising families:
CAP chart

In old age:
CAP chart

Notice the blank column in all of those categories for what is protected by the House budget? Well, here's that:
CAP chart

This is your budget, GOP. Gosh, it's really hard to imagine why Mitt Romney is having such a hard time with women.

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http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/-8xe7lankDQ/-The-War-on-Women-cont
inues-in-Republican-budget-

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NC Businessman Bob Page to Major Donors: Time to
Give Until it Hurts to Defeat Amendment One

NC businessman Bob Page knows the impact on business that Amendment One could have on growth and ability to attract and retain the best and brightest employees. Bob took time out of his busy schedule to speak with the Blend because the fight to beat back[...]

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