Category Archives: Landmark

The Americans With Disabilities Act Is Turning 25. Watch the Dramatic Protest That Made It Happen.

by DanaOFerrall Posted on July 25, 2015

Mother Jones

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Twenty-five years ago this weekend, the Americans With Disabilities Act was signed into law, officially outlawing discrimination against disabled people in employment, transportation, public accommodation, communications, and government services. The law was a long time coming: Activists had fought for decades against unequal access to jobs and exclusion from public schools. But the ADA might never have gotten to President George H.W. Bush’s desk were it not for a group of activists in wheelchairs who took matters into their own hands earlier that year.

On March 12, 1990, hundreds of people with disabilities gathered at the foot of the Capitol building in Washington to protest the bill’s slow movement through Congress. Dozens left behind their wheelchairs, got down on their hands and knees, and began pulling themselves slowly up the 83 steps toward the building’s west entrance, as if daring the politicians inside to continue ignoring all the barriers they faced. Among the climbers was Jennifer Keelan, an eight-year-old from Denver with cerebral palsy. “I’ll take all night if I have to!” she yelled while dragging herself higher and higher.

Here’s some footage of the protest, via PBS’s Independent Lens:

The Capitol Crawl, as it became known, made national headlines and pushed lawmakers to pass the ADA into law. When Bush finally signed the landmark bill, it was seen as one of the country’s most comprehensive pieces of civil rights legislation to date. But it was not a total cure-all, according to Susan Parish, a professor of disability policy at Brandeis University. The Supreme Court later watered it down, she says, in a series of decisions that created a narrow definition of disability.

In 2008, lawmakers passed amendments to strengthen the ADA, but Parish says people with disabilities have still struggled to gain equal access to employment, in part because employers are expected to comply with the law but do not have to follow reporting requirements. “I feel that the country needs a full-scale affirmative action program for people with disabilities,” she said in a recent interview.

President Obama issued an executive order in 2010 requiring the federal government to hire more people with disabilities. In a speech earlier this week, he said the West Wing receptionist, Leah Katz-Hernandez, is the first deaf American to hold her position. But despite some progress since 1990, he acknowledged, “We’ve still got to do more to make sure that people with disabilities are paid fairly for their labor, to make sure they are safe in their homes and their communities…I don’t have to tell you this fight is not over.”

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The Americans With Disabilities Act Is Turning 25. Watch the Dramatic Protest That Made It Happen.

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No, the Earth Is Not Heading for a “Mini Ice Age”

by EdithHXAZzf Posted on July 14, 2015

Mother Jones

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This story was originally published by Slate and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

A new study and related press release from the Royal Astronomical Society is making the rounds in recent days, claiming that a new statistical analysis of sunspot cycles shows “solar activity will fall by 60 per cent during the 2030s” to a level that last occurred during the so-called Little Ice Age, which ended 300 years ago.

Since climate change deniers have a particular fascination with sunspot cycles, this story has predictably been picked up by all manner of conservative news media, with a post in the Telegraph quickly gathering up tens of thousands of shares. The only problem is, it’s a wildly inaccurate reading of the research.

Sunspots have been observed on a regular basis for at least 400 years, and over that period, there’s a weak correlation between the number of sunspots and global temperature—most notably during a drastic downturn in the number of sunspots from about 1645 to 1715. Known as the Maunder minimum, this phenomenon happened about the same time as a decades-long European cold snap known as the Little Ice Age. That connection led to theory that this variability remains the dominant factor in Earth’s climate. Though that idea is still widely circulated, it’s been disproved. In reality, sunspots fluctuate in an 11-year cycle, and the current cycle is the weakest in 100 years—yet 2014 was the planet’s hottest year in recorded history.

If you look closely at the original press release, the study’s author, Valentina Zharkova, never implied a new ice age is imminent—only that we may see a sharp downturn in the number of sunspots. Yes, the sun is a variable star, but its output is remarkably stable. The amount of energy we receive from the sun just doesn’t change fast enough to cause a rapid-onset ice age in just a few decades.

The root of the problem here may be a poorly worded quote in the press release implying an imminent 60 percent decline in solar activity. Yes, numbers of sunspots can vary by that much or even more on an 11-year cycle, but the sun’s output—the total amount of energy we get—is extremely stable and only changes by about 0.1 percent, even in extreme sunspot cycles like the one Zharkova is predicting.

But let’s play devil’s advocate: What if Zharkova is right about the decline in solar activity? There’s still no need to worry (or to become complacent about global warming). Even assuming sunspots are in the process of shutting down, as happened during the Maunder minimum and Little Ice Age, it wouldn’t matter much.

An interesting new study published in June showed that a sharp decline in solar activity to record lows could have a relatively large impact on regional climate over a period of decades. But even the return of a Maunder minimum type slowdown in solar activity—an extreme scenario, by any measure—would slow global warming by only about a half-degree in northern Europe. That’s essentially negligible, on a global scale. A half-degree is within the margin of error of predictions for the continued decline in frost-free days in the United Kingdom, for example. Winter will still be a month shorter, on average, by the end of the century. Past research suggests that an extreme decline in solar activity would lead to a shift of just 0.16 degrees Celsius globally—and even that is erased once a more typical solar cycle resumes in a few decades.

For reference, we’ve already warmed the planet by about 0.8 degrees Celsius since 1880 thanks to fossil fuels, and, despite all our decades of discussion about the problem, we’re still on pace for a worst-case scenario of between 3 and 4 degrees of warming by century end.

If anything, changes in the oceans—especially the Pacific, our largest ocean—over the last couple of years point to an imminent increase in the rate of global warming. El Niño has already grown to record levels in the Pacific for this time of year, and ocean temperatures in the vast patch of sea from Hawaii to California to Alaska are also without precedent. Similar events have coincided with a 10- to 20-year surge in global temperatures.

No matter what the sun does over the next century, we are not heading in to a new ice age. Why am I so sure about that? It may have something to do with the 110 million tons of carbon dioxide humanity is pumping into the atmosphere every single day. The resulting change to our global climate system is so huge, it overwhelms all natural atmospheric forces, including the sun. There is no other plausible explanation for global warming except us.

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No, the Earth Is Not Heading for a “Mini Ice Age”

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Here’s How GOP Presidential Hopefuls Are Reacting to the Iran Nuclear Deal

by TyroneStClair07 Posted on July 14, 2015

Mother Jones

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Early Tuesday morning, Iran and six world powers announced a landmark agreement aimed at halting Iran’s nuclear capabilities in exchange for lifting international sanctions that have long crippled the country’s economy. The accord, which concluded a tense 18-day summit in Vienna, was met with praise by both U.S. officials and Iranian leaders as ushering in a new era of cooperation between the two historically at-odds nations.

Unsurprisingly, the accord was also met with a barrage of criticism from conservatives who had long opposed negotiating with Iran in the first place. They were specifically outraged by President Obama’s vow to veto any congressional legislation attempting to block the deal from being implemented. Upon learning that the negotiations had successfully concluded, GOP presidential hopeful and foreign policy hawk Sen. Lindsey Graham told Bloomberg‘s Josh Rogin the deal was “akin to declaring war” on Israel.

It didn’t take long for others to weigh in. Here is a sampling of the reactions from Republican presidential candidates below:

Conservative pundits also weighed in:

Congress now has 60 days to review the details of the agreement, and the intense rhetoric is likely to escalate.

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Here’s How GOP Presidential Hopefuls Are Reacting to the Iran Nuclear Deal

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Iran Nuclear Deal Reached Betweeen World Powers

by Kyung Wilhoite Posted on July 14, 2015

Mother Jones

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Following years of negotiations, Iran and six other world powers have finally reached a historic agreement set to curb Iran’s nuclear capabilities. In return, longstanding international sanctions will be lifted.

The accord, perhaps the most significant diplomatic victory of Obama’s presidency, was struck between Iran, the U.S., Britain, China, France, Germany, and Russia, after a grueling 18-day negotiation in Vienna, Austria. It includes an agreement to allow Iran to continue its nuclear program, but reduce its current stockpile of low enriched uranium by 98 percent and its centrifuges at its main enrichment facility by two-thirds, for at least a ten-year period.

Under the agreement, United Nations inspectors will also be allowed into the country, but their entry is not guaranteed. If denied, the world powers would convene to assess the situation.

Hours after the announcement early Tuesday morning, President Obama praised the landmark agreement and indicated he would veto any legislation attempting to halt it, in a televised address from the White House.

“Today, because America negotiated from a position of strength and principle, we have stopped the spread of nuclear weapons in this region.”

“I will veto any legislation that prevents the successful implementation of this deal,” Obama said.

Congress now has 60 days to review the deal.

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Iran Nuclear Deal Reached Betweeen World Powers

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Fossil fuel companies have been lying about climate change for more than 30 years

by QuinnHilderbran Posted on July 9, 2015

Fossil fuel companies have been lying about climate change for more than 30 years

By on 9 Jul 2015commentsShare

For nearly three and a half decades — longer than many of you dear Grist readers have even been alive — the fossil fuel industry has waged a campaign to obfuscate and mislead the public on the science surrounding climate change. It’s all laid out in a new report by the Union of Concerned Scientists.

The report pulls together a number of industry documents, some disclosed only this year, that show that even though the industry knew that burning fossil fuels put the planet’s climate and residents in danger — one 1995 industry report noted that “the science of the Greenhouse Effect is well established and can be demonstrated in the laboratory” — the companies campaigned to keep policymakers and the general public from arriving at the same conclusion

As early as 1977, the report’s authors note, “representatives of fossil fuel companies including BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, Peabody Energy, and Shell attended dozens of congressional hearings in which the contribution of carbon emissions to the greenhouse effect and other aspects of climate science were discussed.”

An email written last year by a former Exxon employee recounts that by 1981, the company was very concerned about the prospect of carbon dioxide emissions triggering climate change and bringing on regulation — so much so that it decided to forego the substantial profits that could have been earned by tapping the Natuna gas field, a huge natural gas reservoir off Indonesia, using procedures that would release a huge amount of CO2 into the atmosphere.

“In the 1980s, Exxon needed to understand the potential for concerns about climate change to lead to regulation that would affect Natuna and other potential projects. They were well ahead of the rest of industry in this awareness,” wrote the employee, Lenny Bernstein, who was once Exxon’s in-house climate expert as well as a lead author on two IPCC reports, in an email to his son, a professor at Ohio University. The email was later shared with other professors at Ohio University as part of a discussion on ethics. “Other companies, such as Mobil, only became aware of the issue in 1988, when it first became a political issue,” Bernstein continued.

But Exxon and other companies, while clear on the science, of course did continue to extract fossil fuels in locations other than the Natuna gas field. When, in 1988, James Hansen’s landmark testimony before Congress raised the alarm on climate change, the companies participated in a coordinated effort to discredit the science. Taking a page from the tobacco companies, fossil fuel industry groups chose to argue that the conclusions of climate scientists still left significant room for doubt instead of emphasizing points favored by other IPCC detractors (like that solar activity was to blame for climate change).

So, because of these companies’ political efforts — which have, at times, sunk to the level of having lobbyists forge letters from nonprofits like the NAACP claiming that minority voters opposed cap-and-trade on the grounds that it would raise electric bills — our energy economy continued to rely on fossil fuels. We know that story. The result? Humanity has generated more than half of industrial fossil fuel pollution between 1988 — when Hansen testified to Congress — and today.

UCS

Today, ExxonMobil and other companies acknowledge climate science. Many internally use a carbon-pricing scheme, and some have publicly called on governments to set a predictable carbon tax.

But the companies are, at the same time, pushing to drill in the Arctic, making it extremely unlikely, according to recent studies, that humanity will be able to stay within its remaining carbon budget before disastrous climate effects set in. The companies have also rejected shareholder resolutions aimed at getting them to change their business practices. Some are lobbying to prevent the U.S. from reducing its emissions.

The report’s authors argue that this has to change — and that, if fossil fuel companies were actually to take responsibility for the years of misinformation, they would have to pay up.

“Communities around the world are already facing and paying for damages from rising seas, extreme heat, more frequent droughts, and other climate-related impacts. Additional investments must be made to protect and prepare communities for these risks today and in the future, and fossil fuel companies should pay a fair share of the costs,” the report reads. In a blog post, UCS’s president, Ken Kimmell, suggests that some form of compensation could be part of the U.N. process to hammer out a climate deal. “The world is increasingly focused on climate change, and the international climate conference in Paris at the end of the year offers a last, best chance to make a meaningful down payment on our obligation to future generations.”

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Fossil fuel companies have been lying about climate change for more than 30 years

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The Rise of Violent Right-Wing Extremism, Explained

by JestineChristia Posted on June 30, 2015

Mother Jones

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The US law enforcement community regards homegrown violent extremists, not radicalized Islamists, as the most severe threat from political violence in the country, according to a new study from the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security. Released late last week, the report comes amid renewed focus on the problem ever since a 21-year-old avowed white supremacist carried out a mass shooting at a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina. There is a growing body of research highlighting the threat from right-wing extremists, but who or what exactly does that term encompass, and how big really is the problem? Mother Jones examined various reports and contacted experts to find out more.

What are “far-right” or “right-wing” extremists?
While there is no uniform definition, these terms loosely encompass individuals or groups associated with white supremacist, antigovernment, sovereign citizen, patriot, militia, or other ideologies that target specific religious, ethnic or other minority groups. (Meanwhile, how to determine which violent attacks constitute an act of terrorism has been a subject of renewed debate.)

The available data on violent attacks perpetrated by right-wing extremists ranges widely, explains Michael German, a former FBI agent who is now a national security expert at the Brennan Center for Justice. Researchers at the US Department of Homeland Security, New America Foundation, Southern Poverty Law Center, University of Maryland, and the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point have all compiled data on right-wing extremist violence using varying criteria over different periods of time, most of them going back to the mid 1990s, when the Oklahoma City bombing riveted attention on the problem. (The exception is the University of Maryland’s data, which dates to 1970, during a surge in violent far-left extremism.)

The various studies have all led to the same general conclusion: The threat from homegrown right-wing extremists has grown in recent years. “Since 2007, there has been a dramatic rise in the number of attacks and violent plots originating in the far-right of American politics,” Arie Perliger, the director of terrorism studies at the Combating Terrorism Center, wrote in a 2012 report.

How often do right wing violent extremists attack?
The University of Maryland’s Global Terrorism Database registered 65 attacks on American soil associated with right-wing ideologies since 9/11, versus 24 attacks by jihadist extremists. The New America Foundation, meanwhile, tallied 48 deaths from attacks by non-jihadist extremists over the same time period—including the Charleston shooting—compared with 26 deaths from attacks by jihadist extremists, including the one at Fort Hood in 2009, in which 13 were killed.

Courtesy of the New York Times

The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, which compiles data on “all violent attacks that were perpetrated by groups or individuals affiliated with far-right associations,” counted an average of 337 annual attacks by right-wing extremists in the decade after 9/11, including a total of 254 fatalities, or an annual average of about 18 deaths.

Arie Perliger, Combating Terrorism Center at West Point

Daryl Johnson, a former DHS domestic terrorism intelligence analyst who now heads the consulting firm DT Analytics, says that attacks from far-right extremists “increased dramatically” after 2008. Johnson, who began tracking domestic terrorism while at DHS, estimates that there is currently an average of one plot or attack every 40 to 45 days. “We are in a heightened period right now,” he says.

Johnson’s view is supported by a 2012 report from Perliger at the Combating Terrorism Center: “Since 2007, there has been a dramatic rise in the number of attacks and violent plots originating in the far-right of American politics,” it notes.

How organized are these extremists?
As former Mother Jones staffer Adam Serwer reported in August 2012 when a neo-Nazi carried out a massacre at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, the number of American extremist groups has also risen overall in recent years:

How is law enforcement responding?
About three quarters of the 382 state and local law enforcement agencies surveyed by the Triangle Center listed anti-government extremism as a top threat in their jurisdiction, compared with 39 percent that listed violence connected with Al Qaeda or related groups.

In 2014, the Anti-Defamation League documented an upswing in far-right attacks against law enforcement:

Anti-Defamation League

But those numbers should be put into perspective, the report’s authors Charles Kurzman and David Schanzer note, since terrorism of all kinds represents a small fraction of total violent crime in the United States. The number of homicides in the US since 9/11 totaled more than 215,000.

And because the data on right-wing violence varies so much, “it’s hard to get a true understanding of the threat,” German says, adding that the FBI—whose number one priority is to protect the United States from a terrorist attack—does not publish data on domestic terrorism. “Instead, we rely on these private groups that are doing a public service by compiling and publishing information,” he says. The FBI does collect and publish limited data on hate crimes, which it defines as criminal offenses “against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, ethnic origin or sexual orientation.” But German as well as researchers at the Southern Poverty Law Center point out that data relies on voluntary reporting and thus undercounts those numbers.

So what is the government doing about it?
The federal and local governments had ramped up efforts to combat domestic terrorism of all kinds in the wake of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people. A few months following the 9/11 attacks, FBI official Dale Watson testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee that “Right-wing groups continue to represent a serious terrorist threat.” But Johnson, German, and others assert that federal counterterrorism programs since 9/11 have focused overwhelmingly on the perceived threat from Islamic extremism. That includes the Obama administration’s “countering violent extremism” strategy, which “revolves around impeding the radicalization of violent jihadists,” according to a 2014 Congressional Research Service report.

The attack in Charleston underscored “the failure of the federal government to keep closer tabs” on right-wing extremists, argues Gerald Horne, a historian and civil rights activist at the University of Houston.

But the focus may soon increase. In February, CNN reported that US Homeland Security circulated an intelligence assessment that focused on the domestic terror threat posed by right-wing extremists. Kurzman and Schanzer also point to a handout from a training program sponsored by the US Department of Justice, cautioning that the threat from antigovernment extremism “is real.”

Who and where are the perpetrators of far-right extremist attacks?
According to Perliger’s research at West Point, 54 percent of such attacks since 1990—in which the perpetrators were caught or identified—were carried out by a single individual. About 75 percent of all perpetrators identified were 29 years old or younger.

Perliger also notes that attacks have moved beyond states in the South—the birthplace of groups such as the KKK and the site of major attacks during the 1960s—to places including California, New York, Illinois, and Pennsylvania. “The existence of significant minority groups in the different states appears linked with the level of far-right violence they experience,” Perliger says. In a recent editorial, the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Morris Dees and J. Richard Cohen argued that far-right extremism is gaining ground beyond state boundaries: “Unlike those of the civil rights era, whose main goal was to maintain Jim Crow in the American South, today’s white supremacists don’t see borders; they see a white tribe under attack by people of color across the globe…The days of thinking of domestic terrorism as the work of a few Klansmen or belligerent skinheads are over.”

What factors might explain the latest rise in this kind of extremism?
Experts suggest that several factors may have played into it. Researchers commonly attribute the spike in right-wing attacks, around 2008, to the election of an African-American president. Around the time of Obama’s election, Johnson notes how the white supremacist web forum Stormfront had less than 100,000 registered users. “Today, it is over 300,000,” he says. Scholars have also debated the role that the 2008 financial crisis, a heightening debate over immigration, and other socioeconomic changes may have had. The Combating Terrorism Center’s Perliger points out that past spikes in far-right attacks also corresponded with the passing of landmark legislation such as the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and firearm restrictions during the 1990s.

Was the Charleston shooting a hate crime or an act of terrorism?
It had the marks of both, according to Horne, German, and others. FBI Director James Comey came under fire for saying the Charleston shooting did not appear to be an act of terrorism based on the available evidence. German adds that Roof’s racist comments about black people, his photos with flags invoking racist ideologies, and the fact that he killed a state senator, make clear that his attack on the church was both targeted and political.

Could the Charleston shooting have been prevented?
Violent attacks by extremists are difficult to predict, but both the government and researchers could be doing a better job of working to understand them, German says. “You have to understand both how the movement works and what parts are dangerous and what parts aren’t, as well as understanding how the particular terrorist activity starts,” he explains, adding that most research on terrorist attacks has fixated on their ideological roots, rather than on their methodologies. “That’s where you’ll see terrorism studies completely lacking, despite the hundreds of millions of dollars that have been thrown into terrorism research. They’re not studying the right things.”

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The Rise of Violent Right-Wing Extremism, Explained

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Watch President Obama Break Into "Amazing Grace" During His Extraordinary Charleston Eulogy

by RoxannaZiq Posted on June 26, 2015

Mother Jones

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President Obama came before a grief-stricken but ebullient crowd in Charleston, South Carolina, on Friday afternoon to eulogize the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, who was among the nine people gunned down on June 18 in the massacre at the historic Mother Emanuel church. Obama delivered more than a presidential speech—he gave a sermon, a powerful and lively invocation of Pinckney’s life, punctuated by applause, cheers, and notes from the church organ. He drew on the history of pain and survival of the church community that Pinckney led, and situated Pinckney’s life within the broader historical struggle for civil rights for black Americans.

But it was Obama’s rendition of “Amazing Grace”—begun a cappella by the president in a moment of quiet pause near the end, and soon joined by the church band and the entire audience—that will surely be the most remembered part of this extraordinary presidential address. (The song starts around the 35:20 mark.)

Taking the stage after a series of passionate eulogies and moving gospel numbers at a packed arena at the College of Charleston, Obama called Pinckney “a man who believed in things not seen, a man who believed there were better days ahead, off in the distance. A man of service who persevered” and was “wise beyond his years.”

“Rev. Pinckney embodied a politics that was never mean, nor small,” Obama said, to regular vocal agreement from the crowd. “He encouraged progress not by pushing his ideas along, but by seeking out your ideas.” Pinckney, Obama said, “embodied that our Christian faith demands deeds, not just prayer.”

“Our pain cuts that much deeper because it happened in a church,” the president continued, going on to detail the history of the struggles faced by black churches—what he called “hush harbors,” “rest stops,” and “bunkers” along the turbulent path to freedom, desegregation, and beyond. “A foundation stone for liberty and justice for all,” he said. “That’s what the church meant.” He was met with more than one standing ovation.

In the aftermath of the Charleston massacre, Obama has spoken forcefully both about race and gun violence. As the eulogy crescendoed, he all but merged the two subjects. First, he said, “None of us can or should expect a transformation of race relations overnight. Every time something like this happens, somebody says, ‘We have to have a conversation about race.'” He then said emphatically, “We talk a lot about race. There’s no shortcut. We don’t need more talk.”

After the applause subsided, he turned to guns. “None of us should believe that a handful of gun safety measures will prevent every tragedy—it will not,” he said, acknowledging that worthwhile policy arguments will go on. “There are good people on both sides of these debates.” Obama continued:

But it would be a betrayal of everything Rev. Pinckney stood for, I believe, if we allowed ourselves to slip into a comfortable silence again. Once the eulogies have been delivered, once the TV cameras move on—to go back to business as usual. That’s what we so often do, to avoid the uncomfortable truths about the prejudice that still infects our society. To settle for symbolic gestures without following up with the hard work of more lasting change. That’s how we lose our way again.

The president appeared with first lady Michelle Obama, alongside Vice President Joe Biden and his wife, Jill Biden. House Speaker John Boehner was also in attendance (the White House confirmed to CBS News reporter Mark Knoller that it had been Boehner’s first time aboard Air Force One with Obama).

The eulogy in Charleston capped an extraordinary two days for Obama in which he hailed two landmark Supreme Court decisions. The first, handed down Thursday, saved a key part of his signature health care law. The second, on Friday morning, cleared the path for marriage equality across America. Then the president strode onto a stage to inspire a grieving community, and nation, using words and song like no president had before.

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Watch President Obama Break Into "Amazing Grace" During His Extraordinary Charleston Eulogy

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Texas County Clerk Refuses to Issue Marriage Licenses to Gay Couples

by TristanDanforth Posted on June 26, 2015

Mother Jones

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Despite this morning’s landmark Supreme Court decision to legalize gay marriage across the country, at least one county clerk in Texas has refused to issue marriage licenses to two same-sex couples.

The Denton Record-Chronicle reports:

Denton County Clerk Juli Luke issued a statement that she would defer to guidance from Denton District Attorney Paul Johnson before issuing any marriage licenses in Denton County today to same sex couples.

“It appears this decision now places our great state in a position where state law contradicts federal law,” Luke wrote.

A sign posted at the clerk’s office stated that it would not issue licenses until it addressed “a vendor issue.” But county officials may also be waiting for guidance from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who criticized the high court’s ruling in a statement on Friday, calling it “a dilution of marriage as a societal institution.” The Austin American-Statesman reported that at least two other counties are holding off issuing licenses, but that three—Travis, Bexar, and Dallas—had already done so following the ruling.

Tod King and Casey Cavelier, who visited the Denton County clerk’s office on Friday morning to obtain a license after being together for 19 years, told the college newspaper North Texas Daily: “We were really excited this morning…We took a rainbow flag and hung it on the house. Then we came down here and got a little disappointed that they weren’t prepared for this.”

Other couples were disappointed as well:

Obstacles to same-sex marriage weren’t just remaining in Texas. Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood said in a statement on Friday that clerks would have to wait until the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals lifts a stay on a federal judge’s order to overturn the state’s ban on gay marriage.

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Texas County Clerk Refuses to Issue Marriage Licenses to Gay Couples

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Here Are the Instant Reactions From Every Diva Every Gay Has Ever Loved

by AbrahamHartz Posted on June 26, 2015

Mother Jones

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Gay icons—those public figures embraced by the LGBT community for their ridiculousness, heroism, mastery of transformation, advocacy, or pop genius—have been posting their reactions to the Supreme Court’s landmark decision to clear the way for marriage equality across the country. Here are some of our favorites. We’ll add more as our divas share their thoughts. (No word yet from Cher, Madonna, Elton… Martha Stewart… Anna Wintour…)

Retweeted by RuPaul:

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Here Are the Instant Reactions From Every Diva Every Gay Has Ever Loved

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Climate Activists Sued Their Country to Force It to Pollute Less. They Just Won.

by Antonio50E Posted on June 24, 2015

Mother Jones

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This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

A court in The Hague has ordered the Dutch government to cut its emissions by at least 25 percent within five years, in a landmark ruling expected to cause ripples around the world.

To cheers and hoots from climate campaigners in court, three judges ruled that government plans to cut emissions by just 14 to 17 percent compared to 1990 levels by 2020 were unlawful, given the scale of the threat posed by climate change.

Jubilant campaigners said that governments preparing for the Paris climate summit later this year would now need to look over their shoulders for civil rights era-style legal challenges where emissions-cutting pledges are inadequate.

“Before this judgment, the only legal obligations on states were those they agreed among themselves in international treaties,” said Dennis van Berkel, legal counsel for Urgenda, the group that brought the suit.

“This is the first time a court has determined that states have an independent legal obligation towards their citizens. That must inform the reduction commitments in Paris because if it doesn’t, they can expect pressure from courts in their own jurisdictions.”

In what was the first climate liability suit brought under human rights and tort law, Judge Hans Hofhuis told the court that the threat posed by global warming was severe and acknowledged by the Dutch government in international pacts.

“The state should not hide behind the argument that the solution to the global climate problem does not depend solely on Dutch efforts,” the judges’ ruling said. “Any reduction of emissions contributes to the prevention of dangerous climate change and as a developed country the Netherlands should take the lead in this.”

After a legal campaign that took two and a half years to get to its first hearing in April, normally dispassionate lawyers were visibly moved by the judge’s words. “As the verdict was being read out, I actually had tears in my eyes,” Roger Cox, Urgenda’s lead advocate, told the Guardian. “It was an emotional moment.”

Young activists in court said that the ruling had gone some way to restoring Dutch national pride, which has been dented as Denmark, Germany and even the UK overtook the Netherlands, once seen as a European climate leader, in the green economy race.

The Dutch Labor MP Eric Smaling cautioned though that “some people will feel proud but others are more unhappy about the influx of refugees. So far climate action has too much been the last baby of a relatively leftist elite.” He called for a wide coalition to spread the climate action message before elections in early 2017.

The Dutch government has not decided whether to appeal the court’s decision yet, but opposition politicians are steeling themselves for the prospect.

Stientje Van Veldhoven, an MP and spokesperson for the D66 Liberal opposition in parliament noted that the government had yielded to a comparable, if more limited, ruling ending gas extraction in part of the giant Groningen gas fields earlier this year.

“The government has never ignored a court ruling like this one before, but there has never been a ruling like this before either,” she said. “Everybody has a right to appeal.” Veldhoven has requested a parliamentary debate on Wednesday’s court ruling.

In a statement on behalf of prime minister Mark Rutte’s cabinet, the Dutch environment minister Wilma Mansfeld said that the government’s strategy was to implement EU-wide and international agreements.

“We and Urgenda share the same goal,” Mansfeld said. “We just hold different opinions regarding the manner in which to attain this goal. We will now examine what this ruling means for the Dutch state.”

Some 886 plaintiffs organized by Urgenda had accused the Dutch government of negligence for “knowingly contributing” to a breach of the 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) maximum target for global warming.

Their legal arguments rested on axioms forbidding states from polluting to the extent that they damage other states, and the EU’s “precautionary principle” which prohibits actions that carry unknown but potentially severe risks.

An article by the UN climate secretariat obliging states to do whatever is necessary to prevent dangerous climate change was also cited. So was the UN climate science panel’s 2007 assessment of the reductions in carbon dioxide needed to have a 50 percent chance of containing global warming to 2 degrees Celsius.

Several legal sources said that ideas outlined in the Oslo Principles for climate change obligations, launched in the Guardian in March, appeared to have been influential in the judge’s reasoning.

James Thornton, the CEO of the environmental law group ClientEarth, hailed what he said had been a “courageous and visionary” ruling, that would shape the playing field for future suits.

“There are moments in history when only courts can address overwhelming problems. In the past it has been issues like discrimination. Climate change is our overwhelming problem and this court has addressed it. The Dutch court’s ruling should encourage courts around the world to tackle climate change now.”

Serge de Gheldere, the president of Klimaat Zaak, which is pursuing an almost identical case to Urgenda’s in Belgium, said: “This gives us a lot of hope as it sets an incredible precedent. The government in Belgium will take a lot of notice of whats happened here today. This could be the first stone that sets an avalanche in motion.”

Professor Pier Vellinga, Urgenda’s chairman and the originator of the 2-degree target in 1989, said that the breakthrough judgment would have a massive impact. “The ruling is of enormous significance, and beyond our expectations,” he said.

The court also ordered the government to pay all of Urgenda’s costs.

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Climate Activists Sued Their Country to Force It to Pollute Less. They Just Won.

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