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Oklahoma Governor Vetoes "Insane" Abortion Bill

by WoodrowPantano Posted on May 20, 2016

Mother Jones

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On Friday afternoon, Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin vetoed a bill that would have made performing most abortions a felony in the state. On Thursday, the Oklahoma Senate passed the bill 33-12, with no floor debate. During the voting process, Sen. Ervin Yen, the sole state senator who is a physician, called the measure “insane.”

As Mother Jones reported in April, the bill would make performing abortions, except for those intended to save a woman’s life, a felony punishable by a minimum of one year in prison.

If it is discovered that they have provided an abortion, doctors would be stripped of their state medical licenses. The only exception to these rules would be abortions to save the life of the mother, and the bill makes clear that the threat of suicide by a woman seeking an abortion doesn’t fulfill the “life” requirement.

Had the bill been signed into law by Gov. Fallin, it would most certainly have led to a protracted and costly legal battle over the bill’s constitutionality, since its near total ban on abortion goes against Roe v. Wade—the landmark Supreme Court case that legalized abortion. However, the prospect of litigation is not what Fallin took issue with when rejecting the bill. Instead, she said that the “life” exception provided in the bill was “vague.”

“The bill is so ambiguous and so vague that doctors cannot be certain what medical circumstances would be considered ‘necessary to preserve the life of the mother,'” Fallin said. “While I consistently have and continue to support a re-examination of the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade, this legislation cannot accomplish that re-examination. In fact, the most direct path to a re-examination of the United States Supreme Court’s ruling in Roe v. Wade is the appointment of a conservative, pro-life justice to the United States Supreme Court.”

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Oklahoma Governor Vetoes "Insane" Abortion Bill

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George W. Bush Praises Group That Has Pushed for Anti-Gay Crackdowns Abroad

by BlaineHightower Posted on May 20, 2016

Mother Jones

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Earlier this week, former President George W. Bush accepted an award from the World Congress of Families, a social conservative group that has played a leading role in fostering anti-gay movements and legislation abroad, including a widely condemned measure in Russia that criminalized the public expression of same-sex relationships.

The World Congress of Families, which awarded Bush its “Family and Democracy Pro-Life Award” at its conference in Tbilisi, Georgia, is the main project of the Illinois-based Howard Center for Family, Religion and Society. In 2014, Mother Jones reported on the group’s involvement in helping to bolster the nascent anti-gay movement in Russia, where WCF representatives met with legislators and other high-ranking individuals who helped pass the so-called “gay propaganda” law. The law, which inspired anti-gay attacks in Russia, garnered international outrage in advance of the Winter Olympics held in Sochi. The WCF has also supported anti-gay rallies, legislation, and more throughout Eastern Europe, in countries like Serbia, Poland, Romania, Lithuania, Latvia, and the Czech Republic. The organization has been designated an anti-LGBT hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which called it “one of the key driving forces behind the U.S. Religious Right’s global export of homophobia and sexism.”

Bush did not attend the WCF conference this week, but he sent a letter thanking the group for the pro-life award and praising its work: “I commend your efforts to recognize the importance of families in building nations. Your work improves many lives and makes the world better.”

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George W. Bush Praises Group That Has Pushed for Anti-Gay Crackdowns Abroad

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Weekly Flint Water Report: April 30-May 6

by LatashaBuckingh Posted on May 12, 2016

Mother Jones

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Here is this week’s Flint water report. As usual, I’ve eliminated outlier readings above 2,000 parts per billion, since there are very few of them and they can affect the averages in misleading ways. During the week, DEQ took 397 samples. The average for the past week was 10.91.

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Weekly Flint Water Report: April 30-May 6

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Obama’s latest climate move: Cracking down on methane from fracking

by NicoleIrons Posted on May 12, 2016

Obama’s latest climate move: Cracking down on methane from fracking

By on May 12, 2016 12:57 pmShare

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

The Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday released the final version of new federal rules intended to curb emissions of a powerful greenhouse gas. Methane, which is the main component of natural gas, had previously been unregulated. There’s a mounting pile of evidence suggesting that as the United States relies increasingly on gas to produce electricity, methane emissions are much higher than most people expected them to be.

That’s a problem for the fight against climate change. Methane emissions are far lower than carbon dioxide emissions, and methane survives in the atmosphere for a relatively short period of time. But methane is far more effective at trapping heat than CO2 is, which makes it a significant near-term warming threat. As I reported in a deep dive on methane yesterday:

When unburned methane leaks into the atmosphere, it can help cause dramatic warming in a relatively short period of time. Methane emissions have long been a missing piece in the country’s patchwork climate policy …

The natural gas system produces methane emissions at nearly every step of the process, from the well itself to the pipe that carries gas into your home. Around two-thirds of those emissions are “intentional,” meaning they occur during normal use of equipment. For example, some pneumatic gauges use the pressure of natural gas to flip on or off and emit tiny puffs of methane when they do so. The other one-third comes from so-called “fugitive” emissions, aka leaks, that happen when a piece of equipment cracks or otherwise fails.

The lack of regulations on methane was one reason why President Barack Obama’s climate strategy, which hinges on swapping the country’s coal consumption for natural gas, has been frowned upon by some environmentalists. Even today’s regulations are just partial solution, since they only apply to new and modified natural gas infrastructure, not systems that already exist. And by some analysts’ reckoning, more than 70 percent of gas-sector methane emissions from now until 2025 will come from sources that already exist.

Still, the regulation announced today achieves one of the final remaining big items on Obama’s climate checklist. It aims to reduce gas-sector methane emissions 40-45 percent below 2012 levels by 2025 by tightening the allowed emissions from pumps, compressors, wells, and other infrastructure; requiring more frequent surveys for leaks; and implementing a data-gathering survey that will give officials and companies a better understanding of just how much methane leakage there really is. The EPA expects the regulations to cost $530 million by 2025, but produce $690 million in environmental benefits.

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Obama’s latest climate move: Cracking down on methane from fracking

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BinC Watch: Trump Knows All the Best People

by RonnySchubert Posted on May 12, 2016

Mother Jones

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Donald Trump has based his entire campaign on the idea that the government is managed by idiots and will run better once he appoints smart people to head things up. The smartest, in fact! So who has he appointed so far? Let’s take a look:

VP search: Ben Carson, then Corey Lewandowski. Carson is the guy whose ignorance during the debates was so stupefying that even the Republican base rejected him. Lewandowski’s job is to follow Trump around wherever he goes.

Foreign policy: Keith Kellogg, Joseph Schmitz, George Papadopoulos, Walid Phares, and Carter Page. Huh? “I don’t know any of them,” said a former official in the George W. Bush State Department. “National security is hard to do well even with first-rate people. It’s almost impossible to do well with third-rate people.”

Muslim ban commission: Rudy Giuliani. Nuff said.

Tax plan: Larry Kudlow and Steve Moore. Kudlow is a CNBC talking head. Moore is the Heritage Foundation hack who wrote a column so riddled with errors that the Kansas City Star announced, “There will be no future Heritage pieces published that don’t get thorough factchecking.”

The best and the brightest! I can’t wait until the federal government is fully staffed with people of this caliber.

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BinC Watch: Trump Knows All the Best People

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Corrupt IRS Spells Doom For Donald Trump Later This Year

by JulietaBeardsle Posted on May 12, 2016

Mother Jones

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Should Donald Trump release his tax returns? Sure. So why won’t he? There are probably a few embarrassing things tucked away in there, but I doubt this is the real reason. The real reason is that they’d show Trump isn’t worth $10 billion. Or $5 billion. Or, who knows, maybe not even $1 billion. His ego just couldn’t stand having that made public.

Still, he did promise to release them. And Quin Hillyer has an…exotic reason why he should keep that promise:

Republicans, especially delegates, have every right not just to ask for, but to demand, the release of the returns before the convention. With a crew of Lois Lerners running the IRS, those returns surely will leak right after the nomination is made formal.

That’s right. The IRS is such a beehive of Democratic Party corruption that Hillary Clinton will have no trouble getting one of her moles to hand over the entire Trump record. Hell, she’s probably done it already and is just waiting for the right time to start dribbling out explosive revelations. It’s just the kind of things she’d do. Amirite or amirite?

Between left and right, I feel like I’m almost entirely enveloped by bizarre paranoia these days. Can we all just settle down and return to planet Earth for a while?

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Corrupt IRS Spells Doom For Donald Trump Later This Year

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Whenever Trump Gets Cozy With Bigots, His Campaign Cites Technical “Errors"

by JacquesF98 Posted on May 11, 2016

Mother Jones

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Every political campaign has its share of computer glitches and technical malfunctions, but for the Trump campaign, these sorts of bugs have a strange tendency to happen whenever white supremacists come up for discussion. Just how often has this been the case? More than you might think.

The “database error”
After Mother Jones reported on Tuesday that the Trump campaign had selected white nationalist leader William Johnson for its slate of California delegates, the Trump campaign at first claimed that the story was “totally false.” But soon, Trump spokesperson Hope Hicks gave a different explanation: “A database error led to the inclusion of a potential delegate that had been rejected and removed from the candidate’s list in February 2016,” she said in a statement emailed to Mother Jones and other news organizations. Johnson then told Mother Jones that he would resign as a delegate.

The “bad ear piece”
In a Sunday morning interview in late February, Trump declined to disavow an endorsement for former Klu Klux Klan leader David Duke after being asked about it repeatedly by CNN’s Jake Tapper. He later claimed that he couldn’t hear what Tapper was asking. “I was sitting in a house in Florida, with a bad ear piece,” Trump told NBC’s Today show. “I could hardly hear what he was saying. I hear various groups. I don’t mind disavowing anyone. I disavowed Duke the day before at a major conference.”

A source familiar with Trump’s three television interviews that Sunday morning told Mother Jones that NBC and Fox were in charge of the camera and satellite truck—a common pool sharing arrangement—and that the same equipment was used for all three interviews. “So the notion that some particular earpiece was to blame is not accurate,” the source said.

The Photoshop glitch
Last July, Trump tweeted a photo of himself looking stoic against a backdrop of an American flag and marching soldiers.

The tweet seemed unremarkable, until close observers noted that the soldiers used in the image were in fact dressed as WWII-era Waffen-SS infantry. The Trump campaign deleted the tweet and told The Hill that an intern was at fault.

Various other social media glitches apparently have involved the processor between Trump’s ears: He has retweeted white supremacist Twitter accounts such as @WhiteGenocideTM and @EustaceFash, which campaign spokesperson Hicks has explained by noting that Trump pays no attention to who’s doing the tweeting, but only to the content.

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Whenever Trump Gets Cozy With Bigots, His Campaign Cites Technical “Errors"

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There’s More to "Improper Payments" Than Meets the Eye

by TristaBancks59 Posted on May 11, 2016

Mother Jones

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Here’s an interesting thing. I was browsing over at The Corner and came across a post from Veronique de Rugy, who was unhappy about the federal government’s rate of improper payments, which totaled $137 billion last year. That’s fair enough. Here are the six worst programs:

This is the kind of thing that liberals should care about too—in fact, we should care about it more than conservatives if we want people to trust government to handle their tax dollars competently. Still, it got me curious. What exactly does this mean? $137 billion in waste and fraud last year? As it turns out, no. Here’s one interesting methodological tidbit:

Another prevalent misunderstanding is that all improper payments are a loss to the government, but that is not always the case. For example, although most of the $137 billion in improper payments was caused by overpayments (payments that are higher than they should have been), a significant chunk of that total amount was caused by underpayments (payments that are lower than they should have been). The difference between these two amounts (that is, overpayments minus underpayments) equals the net amount of payments that improperly went out the door.

Huh. So if the feds overpay Joe $10 and underpay Jane $10, that counts as $20 in improper payments. This is a reasonable thing to track, since we’d like all the payments to be correct, but it doesn’t give us much insight into how much money we’re losing to improper payments. My guess based on a bit of googling is that underpayments are a smallish part of the whole number, but for some reason there’s no official tally of this. Roughly speaking, though, you can probably shave 10-20 percent off the top and get pretty close.

What else? There’s this:

Also, many of the overpayments are payments that may have been proper, but were labeled improper due to a lack of documentation confirming payment accuracy. We believe that if agencies had this documentation, it would show that many of these overpayments were actually proper and the amount of improper payments actually lost by the government would be even lower than the estimated net loss discussed above.

An entire payment is labeled improper if complete documentation is not available. This appears to account for somewhere in the neighborhood of 50-60 percent of all improper payments. Most likely, though, once the documentation is in place, the vast majority of these payments turn out to be correct.

Put this all together, and the net value of genuinely improper payments is probably about $50 billion or so. Still high, but not quite as outrageous as it seems at first glance.

Something about this whole exercise seems kind of weird to me, though. We’re only a few months into 2016 and we already have numbers for FY2015. That’s fast work—too fast to be anything but a preliminary cut at flagging payments that might be incorrect. But how many of them really are incorrect? Nobody knows. For that, you’d have to wait a year or two and then re-analyze all the payments in the sample.

I’d be a whole lot more interested in that. $137 billion makes for a fine, scary headline—especially when the headline leaves the vague impression that this is all due to fraud and waste—but why don’t we ever get a follow-up number that tells us how much the feds ended up paying improperly once all the documentation is rounded up and the final audits are done? Wouldn’t that be a better number to care about?

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There’s More to "Improper Payments" Than Meets the Eye

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Donald Trump Selected a White Nationalist as a Delegate in California. Here’s His Campaign’s Reponse.

by AthenaRucker Posted on May 10, 2016

Mother Jones

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Mother Jones‘ Josh Harkinson reported earlier today that the Trump campaign selected white nationalist leader William Johnson as a delegate in California.

Trump campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks just issued this statement about it to the Washington Post:

Yesterday the Trump campaign submitted its list of California delegates to be certified by the Secretary of State of California. A database error led to the inclusion of a potential delegate that had been rejected and removed from the campaign’s list in February 2016.

Read Harkinson’s full story.

UPDATE, 5:48 p.m. ET: “Database error” was apparently the Trump campaign’s second attempt at an explanation.

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Donald Trump Selected a White Nationalist as a Delegate in California. Here’s His Campaign’s Reponse.

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Donald Trump’s Newest Delegate Is a Kinder, Gentler White Nationalist

by CecilaMcKenzie Posted on May 10, 2016

Mother Jones

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Meet the chairman of the American Freedom Party:

William D. Johnson, J.D., is an international corporate lawyer practicing in Los Angeles….As Chairman of the American Third Position, he serves the purpose of speaking on behalf of the party, and championing its sensible and just policies before the American people. He is also, more than any other, responsible for safeguarding the course, values, and program of the party.

And now, meet the American Freedom Party:

White Americans should push back! Change your party allegiance to the American Freedom Party. A Nationalist party that shares the customs and heritage of the European American people….Return to Americans their traditional right of freedom of association, including freedom in racial matters, along with the abolishment of all forms of government- and corporate-mandated racial discrimination and racial preferences, such as affirmative action, quotas, and all forms of “sensitivity training.”

Finally, courtesy of MoJo‘s own Josh Harkinson, meet Donald Trump’s newest delegate from the great state of California:

Trump’s slate includes William Johnson, one of the country’s most prominent white nationalists….”I just hope to show how I can be mainstream and have these views,” Johnson tells Mother Jones. “I can be a white nationalist and be a strong supporter of Donald Trump and be a good example to everybody.”

….Armed with cash from affluent donors and staffed by what the movement considers to be its top thinkers, AFP now dedicates most of its resources to supporting Trump. Johnson claims that AFP’s pro-Trump robocalls, which have delivered Johnson’s personal cellphone number to voters in seven states, have helped the party find hundreds of new members. “Trump is allowing us to talk about things we’ve not been able to talk about,” Johnson says. “So even if he is not elected, he has achieved great things.”

….Johnson also now finds it easier to be himself: “For many, many years, when I would say these things, other white people would call me names: ‘Oh, you’re a hatemonger, you’re a Nazi, you’re like Hitler,'” he confessed. “Now they come in and say, ‘Oh, you’re like Donald Trump.'”

See? Donald Trump is already making America great again.

UPDATE: No worries, folks. This was all just a big misunderstanding: “A database error led to the inclusion of a potential delegate that had been rejected and removed from the campaign’s list in February 2016.” OK then.

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Donald Trump’s Newest Delegate Is a Kinder, Gentler White Nationalist

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