StupidiNews, Weekend Edition!

• Mt. Gox CEO Mark Kapales says some 200,000 Bitcoins have been recovered in a digital wallet previously thought to be lost.
• Creationists upset with Fox's "Cosmos" are demanding the network give equal time to present their views.
• A federal judge gave final approval to a $218 million settlement for a class action suit against JPMorgan Chase relating to losses from convicted con man Bernie Madoff.
• President Obama will kick off a week-long trip to Europe in the Netherlands to consult with NATO allies over Russia's aggression towards Ukraine.
• The government of Turkish PM Recp Tayyip Erdogan has declared war on Twitter after users promoted a recorded conversation between him and his son.

Last Call For Another One Falls

Another state constitution banning same-sex marriage, another federal judge strikes it down on Fourteenth Amendment grounds.  This time, the state is Michigan:

Federal Judge Bernard Friedman gave his decision Friday, two weeks after the couple's trial against the ban. Friedman's ruling says the state's ban is "unconstitutional because they violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution."

Doesn't get much more clear cut than that.

In 2004, the state of Michigan enacted the Defense of Marriage Act after it was passed by 59 percent of voters. The act argues that children benefit from living in homes of heterosexual couples.

April DeBoer and Jayne Rowse sued the state of Michigan's federal court in an effort to overturn the state's ban on joint adoptions by same-sex couples. Friedman invited them to challenge the state's ban on same-sex marriage. They refiled the lawsuit and went to trial against the state's ban on gay marriage.

 The ruling is here.  Judge Friedman's conclusion:

In attempting to define this case as a challenge to “the will of the people,” state defendants lost sight of what this case is truly about: people. No court record of this proceeding could ever fully convey the personal sacrifice of these two plaintiffs who seek to ensure that the state may no longer impair the rights of their children and the thousands of others now being raised by same-sex couples. It is the Court’s fervent hope that these children will grow up “to understand the integrity and closeness of their own family and its concord with other families in their community and in their daily lives.” Windsor, 133 S. Ct. at 2694. Today’s decision is a step in that direction, and affirms the enduring principle that regardless of whoever finds favor in the eyes of the most recent majority, the guarantee of equal protection must prevail.

 Boom.  Won't be long now before SCOTUS is forced to act.

There's Christian, And Then There's "Christian"

Chase Martinson was a student at Hannibal-LaGrange University in Missouri, a Christian place of learning.  Emphasis on was, because after being readmitted and asked to join the school's honors program in January after taking a break from school, Chase's admission on Facebook that he is gay just got him kicked out of school.

In the words of Gandhi,  “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”

In the letter, the Admissions’ Committee indicated that “[a]dmittance is open to academically and morally qualified students,” and that “[s]tudents at Hannibal-LaGrange should be in agreement with the student life guidelines set forth by the University.” The letter told him to review page 27 of the Hannibal-LaGrange student handbook, which defines “sexual impropriety” as “participation in, or appearance of, engaging in premarital sex, extramarital sex, homosexual activities, or cohabitations on or off campus.”

These guys know how to party.

Moreover, “[t]he promotion, and advocacy of, or ongoing practice of a homosexual lifestyle is contrary to institution expectations and is therefore prohibited.”

When Martinson spoke to head of admissions, he was again told to review the guidelines “because it was brought to his attention (surprise!) that I was outside of them[.]” He does not indicate who informed the admissions administration about his sexual preference.

In a Facebook update that he encouraged people to share, Martinson wrote that he was told that he didn’t represent “Christian values.”

“Well good thing Jesus Christ was never associated with sinners, thieves, prostitutes, cheats, the lame, etc.” he continued. “Hannibal-LaGrange University should be ashamed of itself, it’s repugnant.”

 I wonder if any students attend the school while receiving any federal student loans or grants. I would very much like to know the answer to that question.

Second of all, I'm betting the same "get government out of my face" people have little problem with this.  It's okay if the government is a Christian theocracy?

Chase meanwhile is going to attend University of Missouri - St. Louis this fall.  Good for him.

More Food Stamps For Thought

House Republicans were confident that cuts in food stamps this year (specifically punishing Democrats in northern blue states that took advantage of heating assistance to access additional SNAP money) would help turn voters against Obama in the midterms.  Only one problem:  Democrats in New England and the Mid-Atlantic states aren't playing along.

At issue is a provision in the farm bill, known as “heat and eat,” that allows people who receive benefits through the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) to also receive more nutrition assistance.

The idea behind the link was that low-income families should not have to choose between buying food and heating their home. But Congress has chafed at states that have sought to obtain more food stamp money by sending $1 LIHEAP checks to households that would not otherwise receive help.

To close what some lawmakers called a loophole, Congress increased the LIHEAP subsidy threshold to $20. The Congressional Budget Office estimated the change would save $8.6 billion over a decade, representing a majority of the spending cuts in the nearly $1 trillion farm bill.

Yet in the weeks since President Obama signed the law in February, seven of the 17 states that currently send nominal LIHEAP checks have announced plans to increase that aid to $20, so they can continue to access additional funding from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Those states include Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Oregon, Montana, Massachusetts and New York. All of them, with the exception of Pennsylvania, have Democratic governors.

Orange Julius and the House GOP are furious and are promising yet more food stamp cuts to crack down on "cheating states", but the harder the House Republicans push on this, the meaner they look to voters.

And they know it.

StupidiNews!

Sorry about the last couple of days, StupidiNews is back and ready...

• The IRS is warning that a fake phone scam where crooks pretending to be IRS agents have stolen at least $1 million from thousands with demands for fake tax payments.
• Fred Phelps, the founder of the controversial and often reviled Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas has died at age 84 according to family members.
• The Treasury Department reports 29 of 30 major US banks have passed this year's capital stress tests, with the only exception being Zions Bancorp.
• Sanctions both against and by Russia continue to fly back and forth across the Atlantic, with Russian oil billionaire Gennady Timchenko the latest target.
• Bitcoin's software has gotten an upgrade to help plug the security flaw that brought down the Mt. Gox exchange.

Last Call For Too Much Advice

It seems like everyone wants to tell President Obama how he can really hurt Vlad Putin this week, from Sen. Marco Rubio to Slate's Fred Kaplan to Russian dissident Alexey Navalny to Sen. John McCain to Rush Limbaugh.

Guys, I'm pretty sure President Obama can handle this, thanks.

Besides, would you take "objective" advice from any of these folks on pretty much anything, considering all five think we should be sending troops to Eastern European NATO countries like Poland to ratchet up the tension?

Rand Paul Lectures Us Again

Because Rand Paul really, really can't help himself with this "If you people were only smart enough to listen to me" garbage, this time as he goes to UC Berkeley to tell black folks that Democrats are the real racists, again.

Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, says President Obama should be particularly wary of domestic spying, given the government’s history of eavesdropping on civil rights leaders such as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“The first African-American president ought to be a little more conscious of the fact of what has happened with the abuses of domestic spying,” Mr. Paul said, previewing remarks he planned to deliver to a group of students and faculty members Wednesday afternoon at the University of California, Berkeley.

“Martin Luther King was spied upon, civil rights leaders were spied upon, Muhammad Ali was spied upon, antiwar protesters were spied upon,” he said. “The possibility for abuse in this is incredible. So I don’t care if there’s never been any evidence of abuse with the N.S.A., they should not be collecting the data.”

To recap, it takes a lot of balls to be a white guy who would have voted against the 1964 Civil Rights Act and believes business owners have the right to discriminate against customers based solely on race, creed, religion and/or sexual orientation to be speaking to the first black POTUS this way.  And now he is suddenly worried about black people and doesn't understand why we haven't turned against Obama over the NSA?  No.

His trip to the university here is the latest piece of a carefully constructed plan by Mr. Paul and his political operation to try to broaden his appeal beyond the Republican Party. Mr. Paul has had tough words for his party and its leaders lately, saying they risk shutting themselves out of power for years to come if they do not start convincing young people, blacks, Hispanics and others who have abandoned Republicans that the party can and will change.

He picked Berkeley as an ideal place to test out his message on a group of new potential supporters, he said, because the issue of domestic spying has deeply upset many liberals and turned many of the president’s loyal constituents on the left against him.

His message of course being "You people are stupid to not vote for me even though I'm clearly trying to manipulate you and split the left, leaving Republicans in charge of everything so we can abolish nearly all of the social and civil rights advances made in the last 80 years."

And we're not buying it, especially whenever President Obama does acknowledge race in America, he's immediately portrayed by Republicans as divisive.  Race doesn't matter unless it's a situation where Rand Paul thinks it should matter? 

Take your privilege and shove it, man.

And The Crap Came Back

Ohio Republicans aren't giving up on effectively criminalizing abortions, as this marks the third year out of four they've introduced their ridiculous "heartbeat" bill.

Ohio state Sen. Kris Jordan (R-Ostrander) introduced a bill Thursday that would ban abortions after the detection of a fetal heartbeat, which can be as early as six weeks into a pregnancy, before many women know they are pregnant.

SB 297 allows abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected only to preserve the life or health of the pregnant woman. It contains no exceptions for rape or incest, and would make performing an abortion after a fetal heartbeat is detected a fifth-degree felony. The bill also would create a joint legislative committee to promote adoption, and allow a woman who has had an abortion to file a civil suit against the physician for the “wrongful death of her unborn child.”

So not only would it become a felony to perform a medical abortion after just the first six weeks (before many women know they are even pregnant) but women could then apparently retroactively sue abortion providers right out of business, so it's not like any providers would be left anyway.

Another heartbeat ban passed the state house in 2011 but failed to pass the senate, and it has not received hearings or a vote since being reintroduced in the house in 2013. The recent senate reintroduction came the day before a federal court permanently struck down another extreme abortion ban in Arkansas, which would have banned the procedure after 12 weeks and defined viability as beginning with a fetal heartbeat. Attorneys who sued to block that law successfully argued that it unconstitutionally restricted abortion before a fetus is viable.

Which is great, but Ohio's existing abortion laws are very close to turning Cincinnati into the largest metro area in the US without any abortion providers whatsoever.

As more abortion clinics close in Ohio, few hospitals are willing to perform the procedure under any circumstance.

In 2012, fewer than 1 percent of the 25,000 abortions performed in Ohio occurred at a hospital.

State law prohibits public hospitals from performing abortions or entering into transfer agreements for care after one is performed. Even most private hospitals have bans on elective abortions or strict guidelines for when the procedure can be performed.

Some hospitals allow for abortions deemed to be medically necessary. Increasingly, though, that means only in the most dire circumstances, as when the life of an expectant mother is threatened.

Few hospitals in Southwest Ohio will perform an abortion due to a genetic anomaly of a fetus, said Dr. Roslyn Kade, medical director at Planned Parenthood of Southwest Ohio.

“The hospitals used to induce all of those patients. That is something that has changed very recently,” she said. “Even if the pregnancy is not viable, these women have to go to (full) term or get referred, because they likely won’t terminate the pregnancy in the hospital now.”

Cincinnati could be without any abortion providers by the end of this year.  That's shocking.  The GOP only wants to speed that up.

Last Call For Lost Wages

Over at Nate's House O' Numbers, econ writer Ben Casselman crunches the data on who exactly earns minimum wage.  Republicans contend that it's mostly teenagers and college kids living at home earning under $10.10 an hour (the level Democrats in Congress want to raise the minimum wage to), Democrats argue the majority of these low-wage workers are single-income people supporting a household.

Not surprisingly, it turns out the Democrats are right.

According to the survey, in 2013 more than 25 million people earned less than $10.10 an hour, which amounts to an annual salary of roughly $21,000. That’s nearly eight times the number of Americans who work for the current minimum wage of $7.25 an hour or less. Low-wage workers tend to be older than their minimum-wage counterparts: Nearly 60 percent, or 15 million Americans, of this group is 25 years old or older compared to about half of minimum-wage workers.

So these aren't teenagers, and Republicans are ignorant.  Shocking, I know.

What we really want to know, however, isn’t how old these workers are — it’s how many of them are trying to support themselves and their families on these wages. To estimate that number, we first need to define what we mean by “supporting themselves.” We’ll start by eliminating both teenagers and retirees from our count, limiting ourselves to people between the ages of 20 and 64. A substantial — and increasing — number of young adults are living with their parents, so we’ll also exclude anyone under 30 whose parent is in the same household. A trickier question is how to handle multiple-earner households; we’ll include anyone who is unmarried, whose spouse is absent or doesn’t work, or whose spouse is also a low-wage worker.

Which all seems like a pretty good set of criteria.

Based on that definition, there were 13 million Americans, out of the 25 million low-wage earners, who were trying to support themselves on less than $10.10 per hour in 2013. Some 4.5 million of them were also raising children.

More than half of people earning under $10.10 an hour are trying to live on that wage.




In other words, when Bush became President and took a giant crap on the economy, the percentage of people trying to live on the equivalent of $10.10 an hour or less in 2013 dollars went from 37% in 2001 to 51% in 2009.  It's still about 52% today.

That's what his "compassionate conservatism" and wasting trillions in Iraq and Afghanistan did.

The Real Assault On Press Freedoms

Reminder from the Courier-Journal editorial board: this is how Mitch McConnell and Republicans deal with journalists.

It must be terrifying to be a public official and be confronted by reporters who want to ask tough questions that you would rather avoid.

But Kentucky's senior Sen. Mitch McConnell, who as Senate minority leader is one of the most powerful Republicans in Washington, has found a novel solution.

Police protection.

Staff for Mr. McConnell — who is seeking a sixth U.S. Senate term — had a Louisville Metro Police officer bar a reporter with LEO Weekly, an alternative magazine in Louisville, from a campaign press conference Monday.

When Joe Sonka, LEO news editor, attempted to enter the room at Louisville's Hilton Garden Inn with other reporters gathered for a news conference, an LMPD officer blocked his access, according to Courier-Journal political writer Joseph Gerth.

No one with the campaign offered any plausible answers why.

You can complain about the Obama administration avoiding questions all you want to.  But remember, it's Republicans who are using the power of their office to detain the press and even threatening them with physical harm.  This is how Republicans deal with those who oppose them in the end, fascist police tactics and violence. 

The GOP is the real threat to free press in this country.

Meanwhile, In New Jersey...

So with Bridgegate still simmering as the scandal expands to more of New Jersey GOP Gov. Chris Christie's staff...

Gov. Chris Christie’s chief political strategist was included in discussions about the George Washington Bridge lane closure controversy, according to newly released emails.

Mike DuHaime, who has previously escaped scrutiny as members of Christie’s administration have been hit with subpoenas, was forwarded on a December email from a campaign worker asking how to respond to a media inquiry.

...and the investigations continuing while the calls for real reform mount...

The better answer is to appoint a top prosecutor with sufficient independence and integrity. Much like the state’s top judges, the attorney general serves a fixed term and can’t be fired by the governor for political purposes. He or she is expected to operate without fear of reprisals, and the Legislature has the power to block any questionable nominee.

Christie’s current pick, Kevin O’Dowd, is his former chief of staff, and can’t serve until his role in Bridgegate is definitively answered. It was his deputy who sent the note, “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee.” And does his role as a Christie confidante make him less likely to be an independent officer of the law? That should also be on the agenda for his confirmation hearing.

In the meantime, Christie’s acting attorney general should assign a few staffers to the Bridgegate investigation, to focus on violations of state law. We need to rebuild the capacity of this office. Christie should have chosen a truly independent prosecutor for the job, instead of hiring Hoffman, a political ally. We saw the same problem on the state ethics commission, where he installed a loyalist as director.

Until the governor does that, the state’s top law enforcement office will also be discredited as just another puppet of this administration.

 ...Christie needs another scandal right now like he needs another hole in his head.

Meet his new friend Hole In The Head, who has just moved in, crashed on the couch, and is eating all the leftover Chinese food in the fridge.

But once he was elected, Governor Christie moved to award big pension management contracts to the Wall Street donors who have helped boost his political fortunes. In his second year in office, Christie’s administration proposed giving Singer’s hedge fund, Elliott Associates, a contract to manage $200 million in state public pension funds. Elliott Associates won the contract in 2012. Singer again demonstrated his political loyalty to Christie in December 2013, shortly after Christie became chair of the RGA, a coveted post for GOP presidential aspirants. This time, Singer gave the group $1.25 million, making him the largest contributor that year and significantly enlarging the RGA’s war chest under Christie.

Another hedge fund manager with close political ties to Christie, Daniel Loeb, has also won big contracts to manage state retiree money under the governor, The Nation has found.

More payola nonsense.  Christie awarded huge NJ state pension fund contracts to his biggest Wall Street donors?  Isn't that the reason Gov. Jon Corzine lost to Christie in a landslide?

Of course I've been saying Christie is a corrupt Republican (but I repeat myself) for years now.

Funny how I was right all along.

Last Call For Lost Plans

If you're wondering what the Republican plan for fixing America's health care system is after they magically repeal Obamacare, don't worry!  They still don't have one, but that's not actually stopping them.

Senior House Republicans — struggling to find consensus for health care legislation to replace the Affordable Care Act — are planning to test ideas in April at town-hall-style meetings that could provide a path toward a long-promised alternative to President Obama’s signature legislative achievement.

The “House ObamaCare Accountability Project” is still months away from producing actual legislation. With Democrats opposed, Republican leaders will have a hard time finding enough votes for any plan, and Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio remains cool to guaranteeing a vote.

But a road map is developing.

“It’s important to show the American people that there is a better approach to improving health care for Americans than Obamacare,” said Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the majority whip. “Unlike the president and congressional Democrats, we have been listening to the American people, and what Americans want is affordability, greater flexibility and access to care, which we are focused on achieving.”

"We just have no idea how to actually achieve that,"  McCarthy forgot to add.  And let's note that an accountability project doesn't seem to involve repealing Obamacare at all...

With every passing week, the Affordable Care Act is changing the political terrain, Republican leadership aides concede. The Department of Health and Human Services announced on Monday that enrollment in private health plans through the health care exchanges had passed the five million mark, with two weeks to go before the first sign-up period ends.

That may be below the goal of seven million set initially by the administration in internal documents, but the final number will not be far below that, and it does not count millions more enrolled through an expansion of Medicaid.

The reality is that Republicans lost this battle in 2010, plain and simple.  They will make gains in 2014 because of it, but those gains will be tempered by the fact they don't have anyone in 2016.  They know they've lost.  They're trying to figure out how to take 100% of the credit for "fixing" Obamacare problems that have largely been created by Republicans themselves in red states refusing to participate.  Once that all gets ironed out and states like Texas and Florida buy in out of necessity, the game ends.  The fact that Republicans are still trying to come up with a "road map" four years after Democrats passed legislation tells you exactly how dedicated Republicans are to do anything about health care.  That would require actual governance, which is something they are intellectually incapable of.

They're desperately trying to figure out a way to prevent Obamacare from becoming the law of the land, but they have no real plans for fixing anything, and they know it.

They're far too late.

Sanction You Very Much, Comrade

The US and EU slapped sanctions on Russian officials and Putin aides on Monday, and Russia's response is to ban US senators and members of Congress.  Josh Rogin:

U.S. senators, congressmen and top Obama administration officials are sure to be on Vladimir Putin’s sanctions list; a response to the Obama Administration’s announcement on Monday that 7 Russian officials and 4 Ukrainian officials would be barred from holding assets or traveling to the United States.

Putin is expected to release his retaliation list as early as Tuesday and while the final list is still being crafted, it will include top Obama administration officials and high profile U.S. senators, in an effort to roughly mirror the U.S. sanctions against Russian officials and lawmakers, according to diplomatic sources. At the top of the list in Congress is Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, who recentlyco-authored a resolution criticizing Russia’s invasion of Crimea.

Durbin’s inclusion on Putin’s list would mirror Obama’s naming of Valentina Matvienko, the head of the upper chamber of the Russian Duma. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell are not expected to be on the Russian sanctions list.

The response from US senators from both parties is exactly what you would expect.

Durbin told The Daily Beast in a statement Monday: "My Lithuanian-born mother would be proud her son made Vladimir Putin’s American enemies list."

Sen. John McCain, who traveled to Kiev last weekend to meet with Ukrainian leaders, told The Daily Beast that he expects to be on the list and is happy about it.

“You think I’m not going to be on it?” McCain said. “I would be honored to be on that list.”

With so many gigantic egos involved, of course this is going to degenerate into comedy.  Too bad it's deadly serious for the Crimea region, Ukraine, and Europe.

As things stand today, Putin has announced that Russia will now formally annex the Crimea.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, defying Ukrainian protests and Western sanctions, told parliament on Tuesday that Russia will move forward with procedures to annex Ukraine's Crimean region.

Putin signed an order "to approve the draft treaty between the Russian Federation and the Republic of Crimea on adopting the Republic of Crimea into the Russian Federation". The order indicated the president would sign the treaty with Crimea's Russian-installed leader, who is in Moscow to request incorporation into Russia, but it gave no date.

Possession is still nine-tenths of international law, apparently.

Welcome Back, Mr. Silver

The new FiveThirtyEight has launched this week, now with ESPN (let's remember they started out modeling baseball stats), and Prognosticator Supreme Nate Silver explains his site's take on what he calls "data journalism" and what it means for the media landscape.  He starts out confessing that his modeling for the 2012 elections was in fact overrated because other folks came to very similar conclusions about Obama vs Romney, and for one other reason:

The other reason I say our election forecasts were overrated is because they didn’t represent the totality, or even the most important part, of our journalism at FiveThirtyEight. We also covered topics ranging from the increasing acceptance of gay marriage to the election of the new pope, along with subjects in sports, science, lifestyle and economics. Relatively little of this coverage entailed making predictions. Instead, it usually involved more preliminary steps in the data journalism process: collecting data, organizing data, exploring data for meaningful relationships, and so forth. Data journalists have the potential to add value in each of these ways, just as other types of journalists can add value by gathering evidence and writing stories.

The breadth of our coverage will be much clearer at this new version of FiveThirtyEight, which is launching Monday under the auspices of ESPN. We’ve expanded our staff from two full-time journalists to 20 and counting. Few of them will focus on politics exclusively; instead, our coverage will span five major subject areas — politics, economics, science, life and sports.

So here's where we are in 2014:  fact-driven journalism is shiny and new, as opposed to endless punditry, opining, spin, and agenda-driven lying.  I can't think of a better person to fill this "niche" than Nate Silver.  Here's wishing him luck.

It's a pretty high bar, and judgement is so far reserved.

StupidiNews!

• A California man was arrested near the Canadian border on terrorism-related charges as the DOJ accused him of planning to travel to Syria to join Al Qaeda.
• The largest private collection of Beatle John Lennon's poetry and prose will be auctioned off by Sotheby's in June.
• As part of $100 million in cost savings, Sony Pictures will be laying off employees globally in its digital marketing division.
• Harvard scientists have discovered gravitational ripples that serve as direct evidence to support the Big Bang theory.
• For a brief period on Saturday, Google DNS server requests were routed to networks in Venezuela, although hacking attempts are not suspected at this point.