Wyoming Advances 'Doomsday' Bill Without
'Aircraft Carrier' Provision

post from TPMMuckraker on 28 February 2012 12:01:18 PM. © TPMMuckraker

If the world ends, Wyoming's got you covered.

The Wyoming House of Representatives advanced a bill Monday that would create a task force to study "governmental continuity in case of a disruption in federal government operations," or what the local press has nicknamed a "doomsday" bill.

The task force would consider remedies in the event of national catastrophes, including disruptions in food or energy distribution, a constitutional crisis, or "a situation in which the federal government has no effective power or authority over the people of the United States."

It would also consider what to do in the event that the dollar rapidly declines, and whether Wyoming should establish an "alternative currency."

The bill would have also allowed the task force to consider whether the state should institute its own standing army and military draft, and acquire strike aircraft and an aircraft carrier (in a landlocked state). But the House struck that part of the language from the bill on Monday. It will now move forward to a full House vote.

The task force, which would get $18,000 in funding, would be made up of state lawmakers, the director of the Wyoming Department of Homeland Security, the Wyoming attorney general, and others.

"Things happen quickly sometimes -- look at Libya, look at Egypt, look at those situations," said State Rep. David Miller (R), who introduced the bill. "We wouldn't have time to meet as a Legislature or even in special session to do anything to respond."

"I don't represent people in Illinois or New Jersey," Miller said, the Rapid City Journal reports. I represent people in Wyoming," he said. "And I want them to be protected from any catastrophic events that may beset the rest of the country."

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day_bill_without_aircraft_ca.php

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Report Claims Wikileaks Founder Julian Assange
Secretly Indicted In U.S.

post from TPMMuckraker on 28 February 2012 12:01:18 PM. © TPMMuckraker

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange was secretly indicted by federal prosecutors in the U.S., according to an email from private intelligence company Stratfor obtained by the hacking group Anonymous and published by Wikileaks this week.

"Not for Pub -- We have a sealed indictment on Assange. Pls protect," Stratfor official Fred Burton wrote in a Jan. 26, 2011 email to colleagues at the company. It was one of over 5 million emails obtained from Stratfor's servers. It was sent in reply to an email message from another Stratfor official linking to a CBS article about Assange.

Josh Gerstein reports that the Justice Department and an attorney for Assange did not immediately respond to emails seeking comment and that there are reasons to doubt that a sealed indictment actually exists:

For one thing, military prosecutors suggested in court filings in December that Assange faced no charges in the U.S. at that time. The statements came in response to motions from Assange and WikiLeaks asking that his lawyers be guaranteed access to both open and closed proceedings in the case against Army Pfc. Bradley Manning, who faces a court martial for allegedly providing hundreds of thousands of secret military reports and diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks.
In addition, the grand jury seems to have been most active in the middle of last year, which makes an indictment that would have been returned six months or so earlier unlikely but not impossible.

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s_founder_julian_assange_secretly_indicted_in_us.php

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Will Mitt Go Quietly

post from Talking Points Memo on 28 February 2012 12:00:43 PM. © Talking Points Memo

I've addressed this a few times. But it's probably worth doing again. This morning I got this email from TPM Reader SL ...I don't really hear anyone talking about what Romney would do if (he loses Michigan) and the GOP leaders look for a white horse[...]

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ietly.php

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FDL Membership Drive: The Spirit of Community

post from Firedoglake on 28 February 2012 12:00:23 PM. © Firedoglake

It's Membership Drive time here at FDL. Ryan Cook has all the details. Membership here is about building community, as this is not a one-way megaphone but a two-way channel that fosters greater engagement and activism, as I've learned from my own[...]

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http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/firedoglake/fdl/~3/4RlWrxFsUo4/

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Utah House passes bill to let schools skip sex ed

post from US Politics | AMERICAblog News on 28 February 2012 12:00:12 PM. © US Politics | AMERICAblog News

Then more Utah kids may get sexual transmitted diseases and HIV as a result - oh yeah, they'll also get pregnant at 13 years of age. How that's more Christian, or Mormon, I'll never know. From the Salt Lake Tribune we learn that it's actually even worse than that:

Lawmakers also, however, changed the bill on the House floor to prohibit schools that continue to teach sex education from instructing students in "the use of contraceptive methods or devices."

And what would Utah be without people using government to jam their religion down the throats of others:

King also noted that not everyone in Utah believes premarital sex is harmful, and it may not be right to "force our beliefs down the throats" of those Utahns.

And perhaps my favorite quote from the entire article:

"Maybe you?ve noticed that the world has figured out how to populate itself over thousands of years without sex education," said Rep. LaVar Christensen, R-Draper.

Right, because that's what sex education is about. Making sure that kids know how to get naked.

Also, did you get his reference to the world populating itself "over thousands of years"? Modern humans originated around 200,000 years ago, but people have been having sex and populating the planet a lot longer than that - human-like primates go back millions of years. Thousands of years. These guys, Republicans of course, wear ignorant as a badge of honor.

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to-let-skills.html

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Colorado to vote on legalizing marijuana this
year

post from US Politics | AMERICAblog News on 28 February 2012 12:00:12 PM. © US Politics | AMERICAblog News

Can anyone provide a reason why marijuana shouldn't be legalized? Just because the government has been blowing billions of dollars fighting the so-called war on drugs doesn't mean that the war has been the right thing to do. It's not that hard to admit it was a mistake and move on.

Residents of Colorado will have the opportunity to vote in favor of ending marijuana prohibition this November. Today, the ?Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol Act? was approved for the ballot by Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler. With this confirmation, Colorado now joins Washington as one of two states where measures specific to legalizing cannabis will appear on the electoral ballot.

Backers of the initiative had previously turned in over 160,000 signatures. However, the Secretary of State?s office on February 3 responded that petitioners still needed an additional 2,500 valid signatures from registered voters to place the initiative on the ballot. On February 17th, the Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol submitted an additional 14,000 signatures, well in excess of what was required to meet that threshold. Today?s approval from the state cements their placement on this fall?s ballot.

The Colorado initiative seeks to allow for the limited possession and cultivation of cannabis by adults age 21 and over. The measure would further amend state law to establish regulations governing the commercial production and distribution of marijuana by licensed retailers.

The measure is supported by a broad coalition of reform organizations, including NORML, the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado, SAFER, Sensible Colorado, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP), the Drug Policy Alliance, and the Marijuana Policy Project.

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alizing.html

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Romney Offers False Explanation Of Cross-Party
Primary Vote In 1992

post from ThinkProgress on 28 February 2012 12:00:04 PM. © ThinkProgress

In 1992, Republican Mitt Romney voted in a Democratic primary, backing former Massachusetts Sen. Paul Tsongas for the Democratic presidential nomination. He said he did so because he wanted to “vote for the person who I thought would be the weakest opponent for the Republican.”

Romney is now railing against the Santorum campaign for trying to get traditional Democratic voters to cross-over and vote in the Republican primary. Romney has called this a “terrible dirty trick” and an “attempt to kidnap the primary process.”

In a press conference in Livonia, Michigan, moments ago, Romney was asked how we squared this criticism with his earlier admission that his 1992 primary vote had been a “vote for the person who [he] thought would be the weakest opponent for the Republican.”

Romney responded with a new explanation:

In my case, I was certainly voting against the Democrat who I thought was the person I thought would be the worst leader of our nation. In this case, as I recall, it was Bill Clinton. I wanted someone other than Bill Clinton. I voted against Ted Kennedy, Tip O’Neill, and Bill Clinton. Seemed like a good group to be against.

Watch the video:

While to conservatives, that trio would indeed seem a “good group to be against,” there is no way Romney could have voted against all three that year.

While then-Governor Clinton was indeed on the primary ballot in 1992, Sen. Ted Kennedy was not up for re-election until 1994. Romney should know that, given he ran against Kennedy that year and often brags about the fact that he forced the late Democrat to “take a mortgage out on his house.”

And House Speaker Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill Jr.? His final campaign for the U.S. House had been eight years earlier, in 1984.

It’s odd that Romney claims to remember events that happened nine months before his birth, but cannot seem remember the 1990s.

Read The Full Article:
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2012/02/28/433689/romney-false-explanation-of-1
992-primary-vote/

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Hollywood and Washington, Beware: Study Links
Diet Coke and Health Risks

It’s a long-standing joke that Diet Coke is the rocket fuel that powers Hollywood, from an entry in Stuff Hollywood Assistants Like to this weekend’s Oscars Diet Coke ad. But Tinseltown?not to mention Washington, Hollywood for Ugly People, which is also notoriously Diet Coke-dependent?may have to find a new pick-me up. A long-term study’s just linked diet soda and cardiovascular disease.

Read The Full Article:
http://thinkprogress.org/alyssa/2012/02/28/433797/hollywood-and-washington-beware
-study-links-diet-coke-and-health-risks/

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Brownback: 'Go Work Somewhere Else' If You Want
Contraception

Brownback: 'Go Work Somewhere Else' If You Want Contraception

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Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback (R) has a simple solution for women who work for religious institutions that refuse to cover birth control: Find a new job.

During a call-in show on C-SPAN Monday morning, a woman named Doris from Osawatomie, Kansas told Brownback that she was worried that he wanted to turn back the clock on women's rights.

"No, goodness," Brownback replied. "That's not true."

"I am concerned that -- along with lots of other red states -- Gov. Brownback feels that we should be the reddest state in the country," Doris explained. "Women's rights are being trampled. He was talking about what President Obama is requiring insurance companies to do, to cover birth control. You know you are taking away the individual woman's right to decide if they need birth control."

"Ninety-eight percent of women have used birth control in their lives," she added. "Now, we can pay for vasectomies, we can pay for Viagra, but we cannot pay for birth control for women? I think it's a shame."

Brownback immediately disagreed.

"What the president basically said is if you are church that does not believe in this -- and the Catholic Church has problems with, the official Catholic Church, amongst other institutions, have problems with paying for contraceptives," the Kansas governor explained. "You have a number of religious groups who saying, 'We don't want to pay for so-called abortifacients, these have morning after pill-type effects. And this is against our religious beliefs.' And the president was saying, 'You got to pay for it.' And they were saying, 'This is against our view life is sacred.'"

"That's not denying women's rights," he insisted. "If a woman then wants birth control, go work somewhere else."

A coalition of rights groups including Planned Parenthood, MainStream Coalition and the American Civil Liberties Union recently criticized Brownback for an "assault on women's health."

"In 2011, 5 bills limiting access to abortion services and affordable contraception were passed by the Kansas Legislature and signed by Governor Brownback and the legislature spent over 25 public hours on these bills," MainStream Coalition board member Gail James said in a media advisory. "This divisive social agenda does not reflect the values or priorities of the majority of Kansans."

For his part, Brownback on Monday denied wanting to limit the rights of women.

"Having three very good, strong daughters that are doing quite well, I -- and I want them to have every opportunity and every possibility in this country and they're going to have it," he said.

(H/T: Don't Cut Me Off)

Read The Full Article:
http://crooksandliars.com/david/brownback-go-work-somewhere-else-if-you-want

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Two-Thirds Of Illinois Voters Oppose Proposed
Ultrasound Bill

Lawmakers in Illinois are considering a bill similar to one in Virginia that would require women to undergo an invasive ultrasound before receiving an abortion, but a new poll shows that two-thirds of the state’s voters disagree with this legislation. According to the ACLU’s poll, only 33 percent of voters support the bill, which would require women to either view an ultrasound or decline to do so in writing. A majority of both men (57 percent) and women (53 percent) oppose the proposal. An Illinois House committee passed the bill last week.

Read The Full Article:
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012/02/28/433865/illinois-voters-oppose-ultrasou
nd-bill/

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