by KenFrom Demand Progress ("Demand Progress mobilizes the public to challenge entrenched power and promote freedom") comes book-publication news that includes a "pay what you wish" option for the e-book edition. OR Books has published Demand Progress's Hacking Poliltics, its book "about the SOPA [the Stop Online Piracy Act, the Hollywood heavy hitters' wish-list bill] fight and other recent internet freedom organizing" -- documenting how an improbable coalition of activists spanning the political spectrum from left to right "teamed up [as the publisher's blurb puts it] to defeat SOPA and save the Internet." From the OR Books catalog: Hacking Politics How geeks, progressives, the Tea Party, gamers, anarchists and suits teamed up to defeat SOPA and save the InternetEdited by DAVID MOON, PA...

John Barrow (GA), one of the shadiest and most cowardly fake-Dems in the House, is a co-chair of the reactionary Blue Dogs and a member of the corrupt, corportaely-owned New Dems. In 2012 the top 38 recipients of legalistic bribes from Big Oil & Gas were all Republicans. The 39th biggest bribe taker was John Barrow, who got $106,900. The lobbyists who are in charge of bribing Members of Congress got more than just the tweet above from Barrow. Tomorrow, when the House Republicans, vote to take approval for the Keystone XL pipeline out of President Obama's hands-- in the bill co-sponsored by Barrow and fellow Blue Dog Jim Matheson of Utah-- Barrow will have lined up several of the most corrupt Democrats in the House, mostly Blue Dogs and New Dems, to cross the aisle and vote for big pr...

Election Day In L.A.: Eric Garcetti Is The Better Candidate... By A Mile > I don't recall any L.A. Mayor going on to be President of the United States. Eric Garcetti could be the first. Today's the day that will be decided. His opponent, "former" (technically-speaking) Republican Wendy Greuel, a shill for the DWP (Department of Water and Power), is a dead end hack with a lot of endorsements from a lot of people who instinctively pick a corrupt conservative Democrat over a progressive reformer. Bill Clinton is backing Greuel of course. He never backs progressives over ConservaDems and EMILY's List... well, they can always be counted on to play the filthy politics they play against progressive men on behalf of conservatives. Eric started out with...

Sunday, Bill Jarman at Daily Kos created two charts of the most vulnerable Members of the House, a chart of Democrats (above) and a chart of Republicans (below). He combined data on the nature of their districts with data on how close their last race was to come up with his conclusions. I cut each chart off at the #25 most vulnerable. He explained his methodology by way of example: Here's an example of how it works: Take, for instance, the Democratic House member that the Index deems most vulnerable, Jim Matheson of Utah's 4th congressional district. If you refer back to the earlier diaries, you'll see that he had the second-closest race of any House Democrat in 2012, winning against Mia Love by only 0.3 percent. And he has the reddest district of any House Democrat in 2012, as measured b...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is telegraphing his intention to use the nuclear option to reduce or eliminate the filibuster for nominations this summer if Republicans follow through with their threats to block President Obama's upcoming nominees. "If he were allowed to make the decision himself, he would definitely do it," a Senate Democratic aide familiar with Reid's thinking told TPM. "He more than anybody has experienced the Republican obstruction first hand." Reid -- and other Democratic senators -- will face tremendous pressure to change the rules of the Senate if Republicans filibuster Obama's picks to run the Labor Department (Tom Perez), the Environmental Protection Agency (Gina McCarthy) and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (Richard Cordray). Reid said he inte...

After the December killings in Newtown, Conn., the National Rifle Association's chief lambasted the the evils of violent movies and video games, saying they, rather than guns, were a source of the nation's woes. Now, less than six months later, the NRA's "flagship publication," American Rifleman, is celebrating cinematic savagery with a list of the top 10 "coolest gun movies" that unabashedly praises Hollywood depictions of death and crime. "Who has not dreamed of having the power and respect of Michael Corleone? That he built his empire through violence is only that much more alluring," the magazine's Associate Online Shooting Editor Paul Rackley wrote in his summary of "The Godfather." The list includes action movies like "The Matrix," "Red Dawn," and "Zombieland." It notes the ...

Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), who opposed emergency disaster relief for victims of Hurricane Sandy and called the bill a "slush fund," suggested he'll support legislation to provide similar assistance to victims of the tornado in Moore, Okla., provided it's tailored narrowly enough to prevent federal dollars from being appropriated to other states. "[Sandy aid] was totally different," Inhofe said on MSNBC Tuesday morning. "They were getting things, for instance, that was supposed to be in New Jersey. They had things in the Virgin Islands. They were fixing roads there, they were putting roofs on houses in Washington, D.C. Everybody was getting in and exploiting the tragedy that took place. That won't happen in Oklahoma." Inhofe's remarks are telling not just because they hint at a doubl...

By Agence France-PresseTuesday, May 21, 2013 12:30 EDT   Like Raw Story on FacebookTweetPinning the deadly tornado in the US state of Oklahoma on climate change is wrongheaded, even though the world is set to see a rise in high-profile weather disasters due to global warming, the leader of a UN body said Tuesday. Rajendra Pachauri, head of the UN-backed Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said data was still coming in about Monday’s massive tornado which tore through a suburb of Oklahoma City, killing at...

By Agence France-PresseTuesday, May 21, 2013 12:59 EDT   Like Raw Story on FacebookTweetA US appeals court ruled Tuesday that the federal government is not required to release photos that were taken of Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden after he was killed by special forces. The Al-Qaeda leader was slain at his Pakistani compound in May 2011 by US Navy SEAL commandos, who took pictures of their target’s corpse in order to confirm the success of their mission. In a 14 page opinion, the judges wrote that The Central...

By Arturo GarciaTuesday, May 21, 2013 13:05 EDT   Like Raw Story on FacebookTweet Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) seemed to contradict his colleague Sen. Tom Coburn’s (R-OK) stance on Tuesday on federal assistance for victims of the Moore, Oklahoma tornado, suggesting that there will be help coming. But he also differentiated that need from his opposition to aid for victims of Hurricane Sandy. “That was totally different,” he told MSNBC host Kris Jansing, saying that requests for help after the hurricane went instead...

By David EdwardsTuesday, May 21, 2013 13:13 EDT   Like Raw Story on FacebookTweet Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) is telling her constituents that God will “answer our prayers” and create a “miracle before our eyes” to repeal President Barack Obama’s health care reform law. In a Tuesday interview with evangelical radio host James Dobson, Bachmann noted that the House of Representatives had recently voted for the 37th time to repeal the Affordable Care Act and that she was hopeful that the Democratically-controll...

By Agence France-PresseTuesday, May 21, 2013 13:47 EDT   Like Raw Story on FacebookTweetThe political appointee who headed the IRS during the US tax agency’s abusive treatment of conservative groups insisted on Tuesday that he was not involved in the scandal. US senators grilled retired IRS boss Douglas Shulman about what he readily acknowledged was “inexcusable” behavior by agents who, from 2011, singled out right-leaning groups for excessive scrutiny. The IRS actions have become one of a series of alleged abu...

By Agence France-PresseTuesday, May 21, 2013 13:49 EDT   Like Raw Story on FacebookTweetEarly humans living in South Africa made cultural and industrial leaps in periods of wetter weather, said a study Tuesday that compared the archaeological record of Man’s evolution with that of climate change. Anatomically modern humans, Homo sapiens, first made their appearance in Africa during the Middle Stone Age which lasted from about 280,000 to 30,000 years ago. Some of the earliest examples of human culture and techno...

By Stephen C. WebsterTuesday, May 21, 2013 14:00 EDT   Like Raw Story on FacebookTweet U.S. space agency NASA has tapped 3-D printer firm Systems & Materials Research Corporation (SMRC) to create the first-ever “Star Trek”-style food replicator using 3-D printing technology. According to Quartz, NASA gave the company a six month, $125,000 grant contract to focus on developing 3-D printers that use cartridges full of carbohydrates, protein powders and oils that can be combined in layers to produce food. Th...

By Arturo GarciaTuesday, May 21, 2013 14:12 EDT   Like Raw Story on FacebookTweet An Arizona Republican congressman is using the case of convicted abortion provider Kermit Gosnell as justification for a bill he plans to introduce which would ban all abortions after the 20-week pregnancy mark. Think Progress reported on Tuesday that Rep. Trent Franks’ (R-AZ) proposal is an expanded version of a bill he proposed to cover the District of Columbia. “Had Kermit Gosnell dismembered these babies before they had trav...

By David EdwardsTuesday, May 21, 2013 14:35 EDT   Like Raw Story on FacebookTweet Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) on Tuesday lashed out at fellow members of Congress for looking into how technology giant Apple is able to avoid paying billions of dollars in taxes. The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations released a report on Monday detailing how Apple had used a network of offshore shell companies in recent year to avoid paying taxes. At a committee hearing on Tuesday, Paul was livid that Apple CEO Tim Cook w...

By Stephen C. WebsterTuesday, May 21, 2013 14:43 EDT   Like Raw Story on FacebookTweet The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday that Arizona’s ban on all abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy is flatly unconstitutional, striking it down without additional comment. The state’s Republican majority passed the law last April, making Arizona one of the most restrictive states in the union for reproductive rights. Experts said that the law was so broadly written and carried with it so little medical expertis...

The big tornado outbreak, including a monster Oklahoma twister, have people asking again about a possible link to climate change. I’ll review the science in this post. “The news helicopter from kfor.com caught this image of the shocking near-total destruction of a huge area of Moore, Oklahoma, on May 20, 2013.” Via Masters. Tom Karl, the director of the National Climatic Data Center, explained in a 2011 email: What we can say with confidence is that heavy and extreme precipitation events often associated with thunderstorms and convection are increasing and have been linked to human-induced changes in atmospheric composition. Insured losses due to thunderstorms and tornadoes in the U.S. in 2012 dollars. Data and image from Property Claims Service, Munich Re. Tornadoes “come from cer...

As multiple polls released in the past few days indicate, President Obama’s public standing remains strong despite the GOP’s relentless effort to exploit the “trifecta” of real and imagined government errors in the Benghazi, AP, and IRS auditing events.  This is not surprising given that the conservative spin on the facts has gone well beyond what’s legitimately at issue, pushing an self-serving, manipulative narrative of Obama’s intentions and actions in each case. What’s more interesting is how the President and his team have decided to fight the scandal accusations: rallying his base. Rather than merely rebutting each and every claim that conservatives throw at him in a defensive posture, Obama is calling on core supporters to reorient the conversation towards more friendly, and substa...

I didn’t write about the dumbest, most exist thing about Star Trek Into Darkness, because there were a lot of discussions of drones and extrajudicial killing to write about, and because sometimes a lady gets exhausted of pointing out, yet again, that you know that thing you did you think is clever? Actually, it’s pervy. But Star Trek Into Darkness does indeed have one of those moments, when scientist Carol Marcus (Alice Eve), in the course of explaining her father’s secret photon torpedo program to Jim Kirk (Chris Pine), inexplicably starts changing into a jumpsuit she needs to wear down to a planetoid to open up one of said torpedoes. Why she needs to do this right now rather than in three minutes, when the U.S.S. Enterprise has apparently decided to hang around Klingon space for a while ...

Washington is descending into another silly season. Let’s end this diversion of dust and smoke as partisans hype mock “scandals” for political profit. The real scandals — like that of children in poverty — are simply being ignored. In this rich nation, nearly 8 million children under the age of 18 are being raised in what are called “areas of concentrated poverty.” These are the ghettos, barrios and impoverished rural areas where more than 30 percent of families live below the poverty line (a little over $22,000 for a family of four in 2010, when these figures date from). The number of children living in these communities is rising: It’s up 25 percent since 2000, according to the Data Snapshot of Kids Count, the nonpartisan organization whose report is the source of this data.  Not ...

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A new study finds that 97 percent of peer-reviewed papers on climate science agreed that human activity is driving climate change. Fox News has yet to report on these findings, after repeatedly insisting that there is no scientific consensus on the issue. The survey, published last week in the journal Environmental Research Letters, analyzed nearly 12,000 peer-reviewed papers published between 1991 and 2011. Of the 4,000 that took a position on the causes of climate change, 97 percent agreed that it is anthropogenic, and less than one percent disputed the scientific consensus. This survey is the most comprehensive of its kind, building on a 2004 review which found that not a single peer-reviewed paper rejected manmade climate change over the previous decade. Polls have consistently shown t...

As the Boy Scouts prepare to vote on whether to change the organization's ban on openly gay members, news outlets should resist the urge to let anti-gay activists frame the debate around concerns about pedophilia and sexual abuse. On May 23, the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) will vote on a proposal that would rescind the organization's ban on openly gay scouts but maintain a ban on gay adults serving in leadership positions. The "compromise" proposal is clearly meant to assuage right-wing fears that openly gay scout leaders might engage in pedophilia - a fear that was given plenty of airtime in February when the BSA first considered changing its policy: But the compromise proposal hasn't silenced anti-gay groups like the American Family Association (AFA) and Family Research Council (FRC), w...

WND columnist Les Kinsolving equated homosexuality to bestiality, suggesting that people who engage in bestiality should receive the same legal protections afforded to gay people in same-sex relationships. In a May 20 column titled "Why Not An Additional 'B' To LGBT?," Kinsolving suggested that people engaged in bestiality should be allowed to legally marry animals, equating homosexuality with bestiality and suggesting that animals are capable of consenting to sex with humans: If lesbians, male homosexuals, bisexuals and transsexuals should have the right to marriage licenses - as a few states, including Maryland, now provide - why should the real animal lovers (whose orientation is bestiality) not be allowed to marry? The argument that animals are incapable of making a choice is surely i...

Poor residents in cities and suburbs, 1970 - 2010 (millions) Brookings Institution analysis and ACS data Suburbs such as Highland Park (Detroit), Carol Stream (Chicago), and Forest Park (Atlanta) once stood for escape from the hard times of the inner city. Now their deceptively bucolic names conceal a national epidemic of suburban poverty. According to a report released today by the Brookings Institution, the suburban poor now far outnumber the rural and urban poor: Their ranks grew by 64 percent during the aughts to 16.4 million—a rate of increase more than twice that seen in America's cities. What's going on here? Well, for one, Ward and June Cleaver's house wasn't exactly built to last. And as retiring baby boomers downsize and young millennials flock to hip inner cities, not that m...

Kaitlyn Hunt Steven Hunt/XOJaneWhen Florida high school student Kaitlyn Hunt was 17, she began dating a 15-year-old teammate on her school's girls' basketball team. Kaitlyn's parents say the parents of the 15-year-old never complained to them about the (consensual) relationship. But a few months after Kaitlyn turned 18, the younger girl's parents had her arrested. She was charged with a felony—"lewd and lascivious battery of a child 12-16 years old." The girl's parents also succeeded in getting her expelled from school by appealing to the school board after the school and a judge refused to grant their request, according to Kaitlyn's mother, Kelly Hunt Smith. "That is absolutely ludicrous," Smith wrote on Facebook last Friday in a widely shared plea for help. "We need justice in this situ...

Katherine Welles/ShutterstockOn Saturday, Virginia state Sen. Mark Obenshain clinched his party's nomination for attorney general in the November election. And much like the rest of the GOP ticket, he's got some baggage. Think Progress swiftly unearthed a bill he authored in 2009 that would subject women to legal penalties if they fail to report a miscarriage to the police. Here's the relevant portion of his bill: When a fetal death occurs without medical attendance upon the mother at or after the delivery or abortion, the mother or someone acting on her behalf shall, within 24 hours, report the fetal death, location of the remains, and identity of the mother to the local or state police or sheriff's department of the city or county where the fetal death occurred. No one shall remove, de...

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The site where Mark Carson was shot on West 8th Street, New York. Police say the killing was a hate crime. James West Blinding afternoon sun lit the biggest gay rights demonstration in years in New York's West Village Monday. The LGBT community and its supporters, including a couple of mayoral candidates, marched in the wake of a murder that has capped a month-long spate of homophobic violence. Demonstrators—police say 1,500, organizers say many hundreds more—marched through the leafy streets that gave birth to the gay rights movement to the  corner where Mark Carson, 32, was shot in the face and killed Friday night as he walked with a friend. Police have charged Elliot Morales, 33, with second-degree murder and a hate crime, accusing him of hurling homophobic slurs at Carson. Flourine...