Over The Counter, From The Bench, In The Face

A federal judge has scrapped the Obama administration's FDA rules on Plan B contraception being available over the counter, ordering it be made available without age restrictions.

Judge Edward R. Korman, in the case of birth control activist Annie Tummino vs. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Margaret Hamburg, ruled in a highly critical 59-page opinion, “This case has proven to be particularly controversial because it involves access to emergency contraception for adolescents who should not be engaging in conduct that necessitates the use of such drugs and because of the scientifically unsupported speculation that the drug could interfere with implantation of fertilized eggs. Nevertheless, the issue in this case involves the interpretation of a general statutory and regulatory scheme relating to the approval of drugs for over-the-counter sale. The standards are the same for aspirin and for contraceptives. While the FDA properly recognizes that cognitive and behavioral differences undermine ‘the ability of adolescents to make reasoned decisions about engaging in sexual intercourse,’ the standard for determining whether contraceptives or any other drug should be available over-the-counter turns solely on the ability of the consumer to understand how to use the particular drug ‘safely and effectively.’”

Judge Korman's opinion is fairly brutal, basically saying that the ruling was entirely political and "without scientific basis".  Which it was, this was one of the calls President Obama got 100% wrong, and I was far from the only one who called him out on it.

He blasted Sebelius’ decision as blatantly political, saying, “even with eyes shut to the motivation for the Secretary’s decision, the reasons she provided are so unpersuasive as to call into question her good faith” and that “she has failed to offer a coherent justification for denying the over-the-counter sale of levonorgestrel-based emergency contraceptives to the overwhelming majority of women of all ages who may have need for those drugs and who are capable of understanding their correct use.”

The government will mostly likely appeal this ruling, and stupidily, it will go before SCOTUS.  Who knows what they'll do with it, but don't expect Plan B to be available for years, if ever, to those under 18.

President Obama Officially Off The Chain(ed CPI)

The NY Times is reporting that President Obama's budget has a pretty huge concession in it:  recalculating the rate of growth of social safety net benefits through the process of chained CPI.  Jackie Calmes at the Times calls it a "cutback" and she's right.

Besides the tax increases that most Republicans continue to oppose, Mr. Obama’s budget will propose a new inflation formula that would have the effect of reducing cost-of-living payments for Social Security benefits, though with financial protections for low-income and very old beneficiaries, administration officials said. The idea, known as chained C.P.I., has infuriated some Democrats and advocacy groups to Mr. Obama’s left, and they have already mobilized in opposition. 

As Mr. Obama has before, his budget documents will emphasize that he would support the cost-of-living change, as well as other reductions that Republicans have called for in the popular programs for older Americans, only if Republicans agree to additional taxes on the wealthy and infrastructure investments that the president called for in last year’s offer to Mr. Boehner. 

Mr. Obama will propose other spending and tax credit initiatives, including aid for states to make free prekindergarten education available nationwide — a priority outlined in his State of the Union address in February. He will propose to pay for it by raising federal taxes on cigarettes and other tobacco products. 

“The president has made clear that he is willing to compromise and do tough things to reduce the deficits, but only in the context of a package like this one that has balance and includes revenues from the wealthiest Americans and that is designed to promote economic growth,” said a senior administration official, who, like others, declined to be identified confirming details about the coming budget. 

“That means,” the official added, “that the things like C.P.I. that Republican leaders have pushed hard for will only be accepted if Congressional Republicans are willing to do more on revenues.” 

It's a moot point in a sense.  Republicans will declare the entire plan DOA anyway, simply because Obama proposed it.  In another sense, it's a major concession as I said before:  retirees will get less money than they would have, meaning this budget is DOA among Dems as well.

So I'm not sure why President Obama is going this route, considering Republicans will reject the entire offer, and Democrats will not support it because of Chained CPI.  At most he'll get a couple dozen votes for it.

That leaves the budget as a negotiation tactic, but again, Republicans have yet to embrace anything that looks like a Grand Bargain.  They wont to annihilate Barack Obama, not negotiate.  

So at this point, either the President is wasting America's time with a budget that will never pass, or wasting his time with a negotiation tactic that will be ignored (and more likely, Republicans will simply say "Obama is the one cutting Medicare, we're protecting it!") and attack him.  

It's east to blame the President's advisers on this for giving lousy advice, but the reality is at this point even I have to admit that after four years of Republicans treating the President as a illegitimate disease who needs to be expunged from American history, if President Obama actually thinks the GOP gives a good goddamn about negotiation, he's crazy.

StupidiNews!

• The death toll in Shanghai from the H7N9 strain of avian flu has risen to 6 as Chinese officials close the city's poultry markets in a containment effort.
• Florida Democrat Bill Nelson becomes the latest senator to endorse same-sex marriage, becoming the 51st Senate lawmaker to publicly do so.
• A new Pew Research poll finds that Americans now back the legalization of marijuana for the first time since Pew started asking the question in 1969.
• Denmark's housing bubble continues as the country considers a stimulus plan designed to protect the country's AAA credit rating.
• Electronic Arts' SimCity woes continue with some gamers upset over an in-game charging station (and advertisement) for the Nissan Leaf.

Last Call: At The Movies

Legendary film critic and movie historian Roger Ebert lost his battle with cancer today, passing at the age of 70.

Ebert, 70, who reviewed movies for the Chicago Sun-Times for 46 years and on TV for 31 years, and who was without question the nation’s most prominent and influential film critic, died Thursday in Chicago. He had been in poor health over the past decade, battling cancers of the thyroid and salivary gland.

He lost part of his lower jaw in 2006, and with it the ability to speak or eat, a calamity that would have driven other men from the public eye. But Ebert refused to hide, instead forging what became a new chapter in his career, an extraordinary chronicle of his devastating illness that won him a new generation of admirers. “No point in denying it,” he wrote, analyzing his medical struggles with characteristic courage, candor and wit, a view that was never tinged with bitterness or self-pity. 

On Tuesday, Mr. Ebert blogged that he had suffered a recurrence of cancer following a hip fracture suffered in December, and would be taking “a leave of presence.” In the blog essay, marking his 46th anniversary of becoming the Sun-Times film critic, Ebert wrote “I am not going away. My intent is to continue to write selected reviews but to leave the rest to a talented team of writers hand-picked and greatly admired by me.” 

Always technically savvy — he was an early investor in Google — Ebert let the Internet be his voice. His rogerebert.com had millions of fans, and he received a special achievement award as the 2010 “Person of the Year” from the Webby Awards, which noted that “his online journal has raised the bar for the level of poignancy, thoughtfulness and critique one can achieve on the Web.” His Twitter feeds had 827,000 followers. 

The one word I can use to describe Ebert is this:  honest.  He was honest in his reviews, both scathing and praising, honest with his cancer and his desire to keep going long after other people would have given up, and most of all honest with himself, smoothly passing on his prolific writing duties to a new generation of film historians employed as writers for his website.  He honestly recognized technology as both tool and hindrance for film, and in spreading its virtues across the planet.

Honestly, he will be missed.  More on Ebert from The Grio's Adam Howard, Sci-fi author John Scalzi, and President Obama.

The Nullification Game

Yesterday's story about North Carolina Republicans signing onto a bill that would invoke the Tenth Amendment in order to establish a state religion was never about establishing a state religion, but all about nullification, specifically nullification of the country's first black President, and people concentrating on the theocracy angle are in part missing the bigger threat here.

If the logic that the Tenth Amendment trumps the Supremacy Clause holds true (despite a good 60 years of Supreme Court precedent that the greater good of the nation outweighs a state's right to simply ignore federal laws) then we no longer have a United States of America, but a disunited country.  We've fought wars over this concept, guys.  Some 150 years after states went to war against each other over this, the Republican party is increasingly moving toward this poisonous position once again.

"Washington can't tell us what to do" has become "We won't enforce their laws" in turn becoming "We no longer recognize the laws we don't like" and is going towards "We'll fight like hell to be free of you."  Texas grumbling about secession, North Dakota passing clearly unconstitutional abortion restrictions and daring Washington to do something about it, now we have North Carolina challenging the Bill of Rights and making a huge court fight out of it.

There's no real downside to constantly overloading the courts with these battles, because all it takes is one win to open the door, and then chaos reigns.  There's four votes to have the Tenth Amendment be the predominant tenet of the law, nullifying the federal, on the Supreme Court.  These are the same jokers that came within a whisker of overturning Obamacare completely on these same grounds, and whom believe that corporations are entities with free speech rights that can only be expressed by being able to use unlimited funds to buy our election system.

So no, I don't put nullification past them.  This is all part of the ALEC playbook anyway: relentlessly challenge anything remotely liberal in court until it either becomes unenforceable or is overturned.  So far it's working out rather well for them, only being stopped by a thin margin of occasional capricious wisdom on the part of Justice Kennedy and the ego of Chief Justice Roberts not wanting to go down in legal history as the biggest goat ever.

That ain't much to rest a country on.

[UPDATE]  Looks like the national public outcry was so massive that North Carolina's state House Speaker, Republican Thom Tillis is promising that he will not bring the bill up for a vote:

A House resolution supporting the creation of an official religion in North Carolina will never come to a vote, officials said Thursday.

House Speaker Thom Tillis' office said House Joint Resolution 494 was dead.

So, looks like we won this round.  The next, well...

The Merchant Of Menace

Adidas, you're horrible, horrible people.

Kevin Ware broke his leg during an Elite Eight game on Sunday. Louisville handled it in classic, major college athletic fashion, by exploiting sentiment for profit. “Rise Up # 5″ Final Four t-shirts are already for sale on the team website. Proceeds benefit…the Louisville Athletic Dept and Adidas. Just shameless.

Damn right there is.

StupidiNews!

• Connecticut's state legislature has passed and Gov. Dan Malloy is expected to sign into law today strict new gun safety measures in the wake of the Newtown mass shooting.
• Students at a rural Georgia high school are organizing the school's first racially integrated prom this year after decades of "traditionally" segregated separate proms.
• South Korean automakers Hyundai and Kia are recalling nearly 2 million late model vehicles due to safety concerns with brake lights.
• The notion of Ohio Dem Sen. Sherrod Brown as chair of the Senate Banking Committee has the banking industry up in arms as NY Sen. Chuck Schumer remains silent about his plans for the seat.
• Disney has opted to shutter game developer LucasArts and license out the Star Wars franchise to other game developers.

Last Call

Josh Kraushaar makes the case as to why Mark "Appalachian Trail" Sanford is in real trouble in this special election against Elizabeth Colbert Busch.

Sanford’s personal problems are the biggest reason the seat will be in play. There’s a long list of House seats flipping in the wake of scandal: Anthony Weiner saw his Queens district flip to Republicans in the wake of his sex scandal. One month after winning a Republican primary in March 2006, an indicted Tom DeLay opted not to run for reelection, recognizing there was a good chance he’d lose despite representing one of the most Republican seats in the country. That same year, Rep. Don Sherwood couldn’t overcome the blowback from news that he choked his mistress, coughing up his ruby-red district in northeast Pennsylvania. All those seats were considered safely in one party’s corner, until scandal struck.

Second, special elections are notoriously unpredictable.  Democrats won several seats in the heart of the Deep South in 2008 off-year elections, and Republicans picked up a seat in Hawaii just before the 2010 midterms. Like all special elections, the race will turn on which side can generate more enthusiasm from the base.  Given Sanford’s high unfavorable ratings, it’s very possible a lot of Republicans will choose to stay home, giving Democrats an opportunity to win the turnout battle.

Third, even though the race is taking place in South Carolina, the Charleston-based district favors country-club Republicans over social conservatives. That could play to Sanford’s advantage -- these voters may be more forgiving of his sins -- but it also suggests they’d be more receptive to voting for a moderate Democrat than their more evangelical counterparts in the western part of the state. The district nearly elected an openly gay businesswoman, Linda Ketner, who took 48 percent of the vote in 2008 against then-Republican Rep. Henry Brown.

I honestly think a lot of Country Club Repubs are going to be horrified to be represented by Sanford.  The guy's damaged goods, and if you're playing the influence game, honestly, how much clout is Sanford going to have on the Hill if he wins?  Meanwhile, Colbert Busch is a business-friendly Democrat, and frankly as Kraushaar says, a lot of them will be okay with that on the social stuff anyway.

We'll see, but I stand by my theory that for this race to be a tossup in a blood red district shows just how awful of a candidate Sanford is.

North Carolina's Turn On The Rack, Again

Boy, North Carolina Republicans are really going straight for the insaneotrons, aren’t they.

A bill filed by Republican lawmakers would allow North Carolina to declare an official religion, in violation of the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Bill of Rights, and seeks to nullify any federal ruling against Christian prayer by public bodies statewide.

The bill grew out of a federal lawsuit filed last month by the American Civil Liberties Union against the Rowan County Board of Commissioners. In the lawsuit, the ACLU says the board has opened 97 percent of its meetings since 2007 with explicitly Christian prayers.

But FREEDOM and DON’T TREAD ON ME so we’ll ignore the First Amendment part that says “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion” and all that.  But it gets even more awesome, now with LIBERTY:

House Bill 494, filed by Republican Rowan County Reps. Harry Warren and Carl Ford, would refuse to acknowledge the force of any judicial ruling on prayer in North Carolina – or indeed on any Constitutional topic:

“The Constitution of the United States does not grant the federal government and does not grant the federal courts the power to determine what is or is not constitutional; therefore, by virtue of the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, the power to determine constitutionality and the proper interpretation and proper application of the Constitution is reserved to the states and to the people,” the bill states. “Each state in the union is sovereign and may independently determine how that state may make laws respecting an establishment of religion.”

The Tenth Amendment argument, also known as “nullification,” has been tried unsuccessfully by states for more than a century to defy everything from the Emancipation Proclamation of the Civil War to President Obama’s health care reforms to gun control.

So yeah, Tenth Amendment nullification, the South’s favorite “I can’t hear you Washington lalalalala” argument since 1828.  At this point we’ve got people actively saying that the Union doesn’t matter, that 150 years of precedent and a war fought over the issue doesn’t matter, and that states can do what they want so screw you.

It doesn’t actually work this way.  Or at least it didn’t before President Thugheart X Reparations came to power in his illegal Kung-Fu and waffles junta.  Now all of a sudden we’re dusting off the Fort Sumter gameplan again.  Sure, let’s keep up that outreach, GOP.

And lest we think this is a nowhere bill written by a couple of dinks from Salisbury who will get politically disappeared, it seems the GOP here is quite serious about passing this, as we see at the end of the article:

Eleven House Republicans have signed on to sponsor the resolution, including Majority Leader Edgar Starnes, R-Caldwell, and Budget Chairman Justin Burr, R-Stanly.

This one could get ugly.

Time To Police Yourselves, Folks

The GOP assault on government services continues, as a Georgia town compels residents to own a gun to protect themselves.  We can't afford cops while we're cutting taxes for the rich and destroying government services, we'll just make you defend your own homes from criminals.

The town of Nelson, Georgia, followed through on its proposal to require residents to own a gun Monday night following a unanimous vote by the city council.

WGCL-TV reported that the law will apply to heads of household, with exceptions built in for the disabled, mentally ill and those objecting to gun ownership for religious reasons. Convicted felons will not be allowed to own a firearm.

“If anything should happen that they would need to use a firearm, [now] they are backed up by their government, their city government,” council member Edith Portillo told the station.

Now, the city council says the ordinance is symbolic and won't be enforced, mainly because Nelson, Georgia has about 1,500 people and city council members outnumber the number of cops.  Or in this case, cop.  Singular.  (He's overworked.)

But the whole point is now, if there's any issues with crime, Nelson City Council can say "Well, did you have a gun in the home?  You didn't?  Guess that's too bad."  How long before this law becomes not "symbolic" but actual law, and in a place much larger than Nelson?

Won't be long in red state America, folks.

StupidiNews!

• Former disgraced SC Republican Governor Mark Sanford has won the GOP runoff ahead of next month's special election for SC-1's congressional seat.
• After losing tens of billions during the housing depression, mortgage giant Fannie Mae recorded a $17.2 billion profit in 2012 on the road to paying back taxpayers.
• The NRA's "School Shield Task Force" is recommending armed law enforcement officers in every US public school.
• British bankers are trying to get around EU banker bonus caps by redefining who qualifies as a "risk-taker".
• California state Democrats are introducing legislation to force companies to disclose what personal information they've collected on state residents.

Last Call

The GOP minority outreach plan continues, and the Republicans' "secret weapon" this time around is Raffi Williams, son of FOX pundit Juan Williams.  Evan McMorris-Santoro:

A significant part of the Republican Party's future rests on the shoulders of Raffi Williams, the 24 year-old son of Fox News' Juan Williams.

Not long after RNC chair Reince Priebus admitted his party has been unable to appeal to the youth and minorities, Raffi Williams got the job of selling the GOP to youth outlets and the African American press as a Deputy Press Secretary.

He admits making young and black voters consider voting Republican is a tall order. But Williams told BuzzFeed a visible African American media outreach program can reap political rewards for the GOP beyond the black vote.

"I think it's a slow process. If you expect us to get a ridiculous amount of African Americans in the next election, that's not going to happen probably," he said. "But we can start to make inroads, and the more inclusive we are as a party the better optics we get to other demographics as well — not just African Americans — and that helps us in the long run." 

What Raffi Williams and the rest of these go-getters haven't figured out yet is that the problem isn't reaching African-Americans, Latinos, LGBT Americans, and other minority groups, it's the people in the GOP currently reaching us with messages that we're distinctly second-class and not worth the GOP's time, or worse, that we're enemies of America.

You have Raffi Williams out here wanting to make the case that Republicans are good for minorities, and yet we can't hear your message over the volume of hate coming from the people up top making the decisions.  All we think Republicans want to do is attack the nation's first minority President as lazy, stupid, and evil.  Republicans want to undo everything he's done, even when they agreed with it up until the point he said "this idea from Republicans is a good one and I want to incorporate it into this legislation."

In other words, until Republicans show me they have a goal other than being assholes who only care about the one percent, who want to make it more difficult to vote, more difficult to get and keep a job that pays enough to keep you out of poverty, and who assume all black people are lazy, shiftless bastards who need to be uplifted by your morally and intellectually superiority, I really don't give a damn who delivers your message.

Have a seat, Raffi.  You need to be working on your own broken party before you even think about outreach to anyone else.  Your messenger is meaningless until you change the message.

The GOP Voter Suppression Plan Continues

Add Arkansas to the list of red states taking the right to vote away from people for the crime of being Democrats, to battle "voter fraud" that doesn't exist.

Arkansas legislators passed a law Monday requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls, overriding Democratic Gov. Mike Beebe's veto of the bill, which he called an expensive solution to a non-existent problem.

The Republican-led state House voted 52-45, largely along party lines, to complete an override that started in the GOP-controlled Senate on a 21-12 vote last week. Only a simple majority was needed in each chamber.

"We are trying to protect the integrity of one of the most fundamental rights we have here in America," said state Rep. Stephen Meeks, a Republican from Greenbrier and the bill's House sponsor. House Speaker Davy Carter, a Cabot Republican who did not vote for the bill when it passed the House last month, supported the override.

Sure they are.  The fact that it will "stop in-person voter fraud" which never happens, but it will also prevent thousands of mostly minority, poor, elderly, and college-age students from actually voting, all groups that vote Democratic, is just an unintended consequence that just happens to be enacted every single time by Republican legislatures across the country.  It's just a staggering coincidence, I'm sure.

Republicans insist on spending millions to "protect the integrity of the vote" and to spare no taxpayer expense to stop a non-existent "epidemic" of in-person voting fraud, but then argue that early voting, expanded in-person absentee ballot voting, and weekend voting especially the Sunday before the election is an expense that no state can afford because it's wasteful government spending.  

Creating additional hoops to jump through to vote, vital government function.  People actually voting, wasteful government spending.  There's your modern GOP at the state level, folks.

Study For Your Supper

Tennessee Republicans move forward with legislation to strip welfare money from kids who don't get good enough grades:

Two Tennessee lawmakers introduced legislation that would tie welfare assistance under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program to the educational performance of students who benefit from it, and the legislation was approved by committees in both the state House and Senate last week.

Under the legislation brought by two Republicans, a student who doesn’t not make “satisfactory progress” in school would cost his or her family up to 30 percent of its welfare assistance, the Knoxville News and Sentinel reported.

Now, it seems amending the bill to allow exceptions for kids with disabilities is enough of a sop in order to allow the state to punish the rest of the poor kids, who must be poor because their parents are lazy.  Here's the fun part:

House Democratic Caucus Chairman Mike Turner of Nashville said parents of children with “undiagnosed learning disabilities” could suffer because of the bill and, even if a child is performing poorly in school, “the kid still has to eat.”

Turner also said the bill apparently does not apply to home-schooled children and, “I guess a person who wants to get around this just can say ‘I’m home schooling my children’.”

Surprise!   Of course the bill doesn't apply to home-schooled kids.  We know they have involved non-lazy parents because they're home-schooled!  The fact that the overwhelming majority of home-schooled families vote GOP has nothing to do with it.

Oopsie.  Still, the point of the bill is to punish "those people" for being poor, so they stop being lazy working at their $8 an hour job 40 hours a week and get a second job like a real American, so they'll have even less time at home to become involved with their kid's schoolwork.  That'll teach em to be poor people!

StupidiNews!

• North Korea's latest provocative move is to restart its nuclear reactor program, mothballed since October 2007.
• Texas GOP Sen. Ted Cruz is claiming that expanding Medicaid for states through Obamacare will result in states having to close schools and release criminals early.
• A federal judge has rejected a bid by Wall Street banks to halt Stockton, California's bankruptcy proceedings, meaning they will continue.
• Average unemployment in the 17-country Eurozone reached a record high 12% in the first quarter of 2013, signaling additional problems ahead.
• Roadrunner, the first supercomputer to break the one trillion operations per second scale and the world's fastest in 2009, will be taken offline and destroyed by the Department of Energy.