Boy Scouts stall decision on gay scouts

After a last-minute, full-court press by right-wing activist groups, including a half-page newspaper ad in USA Today, the Boy Scouts of America now say they need more time to decide whether to follow the Girl Scouts in treating gay scouts and scoutmasters equally.
     (The ad in USA Today probably wasn't very persuasive to editors of the paper, as it recently ran two editorials, here and here advocating a change in the organization's antigay policy.)
     A rally of about 30 antigay demonstrators people outside BSA headquarters in conservative Irving, Texas implored the organization to "save our boys" and accused gay people of trying to "infiltrate" the organization.
     On Monday, over a million petitions from scouting families urging change were delivered to the organization's headquarters.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

After a year of stonewalling, Obama administration will tell some Congressmen its legal 'authority' to kill Americans — but will classify reponse

Only Senators and Representatives on intelligence committees will be allowed to see the administration's justification for Obama's "kill list" targeting US citizens.

NE state senator targets use of cop drones with LB412, the "Freedom from Unwarranted Surveillance Act"

Also: Letter wanting answers from Obama about his authority to put
Americans on drone "kill list" and the 11 senators who sent the letter.

Kevin O'Hanlon of the Lincoln Journal Star reports that Sen. Paul Schumacher of Columbus wants to nip in the bud police use of drones to spy on people in Nebraska.

     "If there's going to be a policy decision from the legislative level on the use of drones for the surveillance of civilian populations, then now's the time to do it -- before communities begin investing in these devices," he said.
     Schumacher has introduced the Freedom from Unwarranted Surveillance Act (LB412) that says "a law enforcement agency shall not use a drone to gather evidence or other information" and that "... evidence obtained or collected in violation of the ... act is not admissible as evidence in a criminal prosecution in any court of law in this state."

These 11 senators want answers from Obama for his 'kill list' authority

UPDATE: Obama administration says it will answer inquiry only
in a classified response to selected senators and representatives.

From Sen. Ron Wyden's website: "U.S. Senators Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Mark Udall (D-Colo.), Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Dick Durbin (Ill.), Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Tom Udall (D-N.M.), Mark Begich (D-Alaska) and Al Franken (D- Minn.) have sent a letter to President Obama seeking the legal opinions outlining the President’s authority to authorize the killing of American citizens during the course of counterterrorism operations." The letter is here.

Sen. Ron Wyden to CIA director nominee Brennan: "I believe every American has the right to know when their government believes it is allowed to kill them."

Letter to Brennan Signed Final 1.14.12 by Spencer Ackerman

Two more of Shirley Phelps-Roper's 11 kids defect from Westboro Baptist Church cult

Towleroad is now reporting the defection of Megan and Grace Phelps-Roper from WBC, following the departure of their brother Nate. Their reasons are stated here. Both are now cut off from the family. Megan did YouTube anti-gay parodies of Lady Gaga's Telephone and Poker Face. YouTube's inscrutable hate speech policies have resulted in the removal of the former but not the latter.

Overwhelming 400-175 vote as UK advances gay marriage bill on second reading, but over half of conservative MPs rebel against PM Cameron

The Manchester Guardian covered the second reading deliberations in Parliament, which were greeted at their conclusion with rare applause in the public gallery over the resounding 225-vote majority.
     This may have been cold comfort to conservative Prime Minister David Cameron as he suffered a humiliating slap in the face when more than half of Tory MPs refused to support his government on an issue in which he has personally invested political capital — about 40 of his conservatives either didn't vote or formally abstained, including attorney general Dominic Grieve.

     The result meant the prime minister, who won the support of an estimated 127 Tory MPs, including one teller, failed to win more than half of his 303 MPs.
     But the bill is likely to reach the statute book, assuming it has a safe passage through the Lords, after support from Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs ensured it got an overwhelming second reading...
     The Roman Catholic church made clear that it would use the strong objections to the bill voiced by MPs across the house to maintain its campaign against same-sex marriage. The Most Reverend Peter Smith, Archbishop of Southwark, said: "Marriage is rooted in the complementarity of man and woman.
     ...A promised statement by the prime minister was hurriedly recorded for television cameras late on Tuesday afternoon four hours after Maria Miller, the equalities minister, had opened the debate.
     One reformer said: "The prime minister couldn't even be bothered to turn up in the chamber. That is so fucking rude. This will have a corrosive effect. The politics around this have been so bad."          ...Tory modernisers were horrified by the speeches by opponents of reform. One minister said: "Yes we can confidently say that the Tory party is divided – and divided right down the middle on this one. And with the help of four or five speeches we have been taken back more than 50 years to the horrors of the 1950s."

AKSARBENT tweet of the month: Richard III, parking fee scofflaw

     Richard III was slain at the battle of Bosworth Field by the army of Henry Tudor (aka Henry VII) in 1485 during the Wars of the Roses after a two-year reign.
     He was the last of the Plantagenet dynasty and was immortalized by a Shakespeare play.
     Popular legend says he was dumped in the river.
     Not true.
     The Franciscans buried him under their church, which is long gone, replaced by the GreyFriars parking lot in Leicester.
     Richard remained, however, until earlier this year when the University of Leicester dug him up.
     His face has now been modeled from the skull.

Omaha World-Herald worried that Heineman's new tax plan would hurt Medicaid; fails to mention plan would also eliminate huge exemption for newspapers

Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman's plan to shift taxes from
income to sales will benefit the richest 20% of Cornhuskers,
and penalize everyone else. Photo: Lincoln Journal-Star

The Omaha World-Herald has run a story about the Open Sky Foundation's unflattering analysis of Gov. Heineman's GOP-inspired plan to shift taxes from income to sales in Nebraska (LB405 and LB406).
     What the World-Herald did not say was that one of the sales tax exemptions on the chopping block, the one for newspapers sold in Nebraska, is the fourth highest (of 27 sales tax exemptions) in Nebraska, amounting to an estimated $2,536,738 of lost tax revenue in 2014.
     Below is Rachel Maddow's explanation of how regressive this GOP tax strategy, touted by several Republican Governors, really is. The bill to benefit the wealthiest Nebraskans at the expensive of everyone else, was introduced by Elkhorn Senator Beau McCoy.

Tony Perkins, Richard Land play the pedophile card in attacking Boy Scouts policy debate on gay scouts

Tony Perkins, head of the SPLC-designated hate group Family Research Council released another press release the other day. In it, he predictably reduced the Boy Scouts debate excluding gay scouts and scoutmasters to pedophile fear-mongering:

Apparently, children only matter when it's politically convenient, because President Obama told Scott Pelley yesterday that 'gays and lesbians should have access and opportunity the same way everybody else does in every institution and walk of life.' This is a man who said he isn't sure he'd let his sons play football for fear that they'd get hurt--yet he can somehow justify putting boys in physically risky situations like these? No father, including Barack Obama, would want his daughters sharing a tent with grown men in the name of 'access'--but you don't hear anyone calling that politically incorrect! At the end of the day, this debate is about safety and time-honored principles of morality. If that ruffles a few politically correct feathers, so be it.

This is a red herring. Decades ago, in response to the phenomenon of pedophiles organizing scout troups in order to prey on kids, the Boy Scouts changed its policy. Either Perkins knows that and is lying or he didn't bother to research Boy Scout policy before exploiting the issue.

Separate accommodations for adults and Scouts required. When camping, no youth is permitted to sleep in the tent of an adult other than his or her own parent or guardian. Councils are strongly encouraged to have separate shower and latrine facilities for females. When separate facilities are not available, separate times for male and female use should be scheduled and posted for showers. Likewise, youth and adults must shower at different times.

     This kind of cynical demonizing of a minority is exactly why the Family Research Council richly deserves its hate group classification.
     Below, Richard Land, head of the Southern Baptist Convention, takes up the disinformation-at-gays-expense baton:



Some of Land's talking points:

• Claimed gay-inclusive policies would be a "catastrophe" for Boy Scouts without explaining why that policy hasn't been a catastrophe for Girl Scouts
• Redefined the word "appendage." That most people in the US live on either the west or east coasts doesn't seem to bother Richard Land — to him, they are mere outgrowths of the minority who live in the center: “What they’re doing is to appease their left coast and right coast appendages. They’re cutting out the heart and soul of Scouting in the rest of the country.”
• Made the following distinction-without-a-difference: The Southern Baptist Convention's policy of allowing a local option for female pastors is different from a Boy Scouts' local option for gay scouts because: "Our confession of faith is not binding on any particular Southern Baptist" but the Boy Scouts are different because “You can’t have a local option to a core conviction”
• Made distinction-without-a-difference #2: Richard Land: Do parents really want to allow their teenage boys to go on campouts with men who are attracted to the same sex? They wouldn't allow their girls go on campouts with men who are attracted to women... CNN's John Berman: When I was a cub scout, we had Den Mothers. Richard Land: We're not talking about Cub Scouts, we're talking about Boy Scouts.
• Claimed he wasn't accusing gay scoutmasters of being pedophiles, but then said: "It's gonna lead to human tragedy, and the human tragedy's gonna be, sadly, boys and men who are going to end up in relationships that are going to be tragic."

The head of the Southern Baptist Convention takes four of the USA's Supreme Court Justices!
     The Supreme Court's very split decision in Boy Scouts of America vs. Dale was 5-4.
     Land's expansive interpretation of that decision, which hinged on freedom of association: "The Scouts have said for themselves for over 100 years that traditional morality is a core value of scouting — teaching them to be morally straight... Boy Scouts have the right to define character and they define character as being morally straight and that involves being sexually pure and being a heterosexual."
     Here's what the dissenting opinion by Justices Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg and Breyer said regarding Land's definition of "morally straight":

As these terms were defined in the Scout Handbook, Stevens said, "it is plain as the light of day that neither one of these principles—'morally straight' and 'clean'—says the slightest thing about homosexuality. Indeed, neither term in the Boy Scouts' Law and Oath expresses any position whatsoever on sexual matters."

Media Matters notes that in the past, Land has claimed that gay people are working to usher in the "full-blown paganization" of America and are "recruiting" children, saying this is "really child abuse."

Who's dumber? Fake Mean Jean dodges bullet in NE Lt. Gov. sex scandal; real Stothert tries to tap opponent for contribution; Wheatfields turns patrons into antigay candidate boosters whether they like it or not

Fake Jean Stothert was clever enough not to arrange trysts with Lt. Gov. Rick Sheehy on his state-issued cell phone and to let Gov. Heineman watch, so as to destroy the plausible deniability he thinks people are now buying in respect of his supposed lack of knowledge of Sheehy's multiple affairs and misuse of state property even though Nebraska Democrats were buzzing about all this last summer and KETV has been investigating this for months, sending the state a request for phone records in November.

     Real Jean Stothert just sent GOP mayoral candidate Dan Welch (that would be her opponent) a fund raising appeal. Oh hell, let's be nice. Maybe the administration of her campaign to run Omaha isn't really that stupid. Maybe she's just trying to help out the US Postal Service with its deficit.

     Leavenworth St. noticed this latest example of Stothert's ineptitude and we have to credit them for that, as well as for the most shameless GOP spin we saw this week — a dismissal of Sheehy's jaw-dropping behavior so cavalier than even the Gov. and Lt. Gov. didn't go there:

Lt. Governor Rick Sheehy has resigned — reportedly because of, basically, an affair. (Used a state phone, but so what.)

     Umm... four affairs... Umm... misused state phone 2,300+ times for more than 28,000 minutes.

     Meanwhile one of our spies, who is an impeccable source and actually owns a journalism degree that has her name on it, informed AKSARBENT of this:

Speaking of Mean Jean — one of her supporters is Ron Popp, formerly of the Garden Cafe, now of Wheatfields. Not that big a shock, as I suspect most of the restaurant owners who tried to get rid of the restaurant tax are supporting anyone who is not Suttle. How big a supporter, you ask? Well... one Sunday morning ***** and I went to breakfast at the Wheatfields in the Old Market. Probably just after the new year. Hot tea and coffee came in brand new glass Wheatfields mugs. One side was emblazoned with the Wheatfields logo, while the other side had a big old Jean Strothert for Mayor logo. So everyone with a hot drink was advertising Mean Jean for mayor. I only regret not taking a picture to send you.

We end our coverage of Councilwoman and mayoral aspirant Jean Stothert, as always, with her tough love lecture of gay constituents just before she voted to ensure that gay Omahans would have no legal recourse here when jerked around because of their sexual orientation by local 'phobes.

Time chart: Hegal hearing senators more concerned about Israel than US troops in Afghanistan; who do these senators really represent?

One senator, Mike Lee of Utah, mentioned Israel 16 times and Afghanistan not once. Overall, GOP senators mentioned Israel 64 times, Afghanistan four times. Time Magazine graphed this in three different charts.

Super Bowl: NFL experiments with seventh-inning stretch; Beyonce, PBS conspire to sabotage game; Joe Flacco drops F-Bomb live on CBS; Niners lose, Downton Abbey wins

Why keep this conspiracy theory to yourself? Tell your friends via the Facebook, Google+, Reddit, Twitter, or email buttons at the bottom of this post.

San Francisco was down as much as 22 points and never led the Ravens, though it battled back to threaten not only Baltimore's lead but its victory at about the 2-minute warning. Final score: 34-31.

Lady Grantham, Team PBS: "I couldn't have electricity in the house,
I wouldn't sleep a wink. All those vapors floating about."

Suspicious plot to sabotage the Super Bowl: 12 minutes after Beyonce drained most of the electricity in Louisiana and just minutes before the beginning of Downton Abbey (the second-most-watched program on Super Sunday, last year) HALF THE LIGHTS FAILED AT THE LOUISIANA SUPERDOME!
     It took 35 minutes to turn them all back on, by which time millions of bored sportsball fans were probably watching Evil Gay Footman Thomas put the moves on the new blond in Lord Grantham's crib. Coincidental technical malfunction? Oh sure it was, Perry Mason.
     Did AKSARBENT hear what it thought it heard? After Downton Abbey ended and someone made us go back to his game, we thought we heard Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco drop the F-Bomb on CBS, live. Closed Captioning was still on from DA (we're talkin' bout YOU, Dame Maggie) but curiously, there was no four-letter word transcript. Were we to believe our lying ears? Apparently yes. Jim Buzinski of Outsports heard it too. Fucking awesome.

Like Nixon, the NRA has an enemies list (with over 200 celebrities!)

A litany of entertainment stars is nice, and you can see it here, but it was the organizations that the insanely pugnacious NRA now has decided to take on that made us sit up and take notice.
     Perusing the "A" segment alone makes you realize how deviant and out of step gun nuts and their #1 organizational poison are.
     The idiot leadership of the NRA will probably be blind-sided from the blowback from this latest, very public exhibition of them shooting themselves in the foot by nothing less than their own mad delusions.

"National Organizations With Anti-Gun Policies"
AARP
AFL-CIO
Ambulatory Pediatric Association
American Academy of Pediatrics
American Civil Liberties Union
American Academy of Ambulatory Care Nursing
American Medical Women`s Association
American Medical Student Association
American Medical Association
American Association for the Surgery of Trauma
American Trauma Society
American Federation of Teachers
American Association of School Administrators
American Alliance for Rights and Responsibilities
American Medical Association
American Bar Association
American Counseling Association
American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
American Academy of Pediatrics
American Association for World Health
American Ethical Union
American Nurses Association
American Association of Neurological Surgeons
American Association of Family and Consumer Sciences
American Firearms Association
American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
American Jewish Committee
American Trauma Society
American Psychological Association
American Jewish Congress
American Public Health Association
Americans for Democratic Action
Anti-Defamation League
(Via Buzzfeed Politics)

Fake Alan Dershovitz weighs in on Super Bowl 47

Outsports' Jim Buzinski, gay sherpa to Super Bowl 47

Both hilarious and insightful (although AKSARBENT would be easily fooled) the complete version is here at the Huffington Post.

Kickoff/TV: The kickoff is set for 6:30 p.m. EST, shortly after Alicia Keys sings the national anthem. You can bet in Vegas on whether Keys' version will last longer than 2 minutes and 15 seconds...  You can also get 5-to-1 odds on whether Keys will get booed.
      The game will be broadcast on CBS, with Jim Nantz doing the play-by-play and Phil Simms doing the analysis. Simms was a cute blond in his days as the New York Giants' quarterback, and he has two sons, Chris and Matt, who have carried on that legacy. Neither is as good a quarterback as their dad, but they certainly are hot...
Quarterback pet angle: Kaepernick has a pet turtle, Sammy, who weighs 115 pounds.
The fans: ...Swimmer Michael Phelps, a Baltimore native, is the best-known Ravens fan, and he showed up at the AFC championship game sporting a new grungy look. Two of my brothers and a nephew are huge Steelers fans, so they hate the Ravens as a matter of course (the two teams are bitter division rivals), but I have not found the Baltimore fan base to be that obnoxious.
     The 49ers used to have annoying, entitled fans (that's what winning five Super Bowls in 13 years will do), but this is their first trip to the Super Bowl since the 1994 season, so their fans there are a little more humble. A new gay sports bar, Hi Tops, opened in the city last year, and it made the pages of Sports Illustrated when the magazine ran a photo of two gay male patrons making out after the 49ers won the NFC championship.
The game: The pointspread is small for a reason: These teams are evenly matched, and any outcome would not be a surprise. That's been the trend of the past nine Super Bowls, all of which were within a touchdown or less in the fourth quarter...
The pick: I see a back-and-forth affair as the Harbaugh brothers try to outguess each other... History repeats itself: 49ers 24, Ravens 20.

Best Superbowl car ads, and the best noncar ad

Also: Gov. Heineman's GOP-hatched scheme to cut taxes for upper 20% by shifting taxes from income to sales, costing 80% of Cornhuskers more.
     TMZ interviews Tennessee's answer to Jesse Helms: Knoxville Knuckledragger Stacey Campfield

AKSARBENT never watches the Superbowl, and tonight will be no exception. We'll be tuning in to the second most-watched telecast this evening, Downton Abbey, as usual. (Tip: Superbowl Sunday is a great time to shop for anything. The stores are empty! No checkout lines!)
     As for ads, we just picked the best three car ads observing in passing how amazingly more-Honda-than-Honda, Hyundai's image is becoming.)
     But first our favorite ad of all, the Budweiser commercial featuring an adorable foal and his (her?) even more adorable trainer. Enjoy the well-edited and well-staged animal fantasy for what it us and try not to think about the Budweiser sales-bot in a companion "making of" video encouraging "consumers" to give Budweiser their personal information name the horse in the ad by visiting a web site and then she drones on and on in corporate speak about about the connection "consumers" have to her employer's mega-breweries via the cute pony, etc., etc.
     By "Consumers" understand that she means the millions of thirsty gullets that Budweiser, now a foreign corporation, hopes to add to its database as targets for the marketing of millions more cans of product.



And here are the car ads:

VW


Audi


Sonata Turbo


Finally AKSARBENT's bonus, Coke's vaguely Priscilla, Queen of the Desert ripoff: a desert race with hot showgirls vs. hot Mad Max gang clones (plus ethnic cowboys or maybe straight-up gauchos plus camel jockeys on their home turf) race each other to Coca Cola nirvana — or is it a mirage? And YOU GET TO DECIDE WHO WINS ON GAME DAY by giving Coca Cola your personal information voting at a web site!

TMZ interviews the new Jesse Helms — Tennessee state-senator-on-the-make Stacey Campfield

This Knoxville Knuckle-dragger is even worse than Elkhorn's own Beau McCoy, although we imagine their constituencies are about the same.


(Via Towleroad; see our blog list)

The political viability of Stacey Canfield's bare-knuckled bigotry is provided by fine Tennesseans in these parts of Knoxville and Farragut who would love you to vacation in their area and give them your money. Firms headquartered in Knoxville include Gov. Haslam's company — Pilot Petroleum, Magnavox, the Cooking Channel, Sea Ray pleasure boats and Regal Entertainment, which operates movie theaters.

Click to enlarge.

These individual contributors, trade groups and businesses also help Stacey Campfield do what he does best.

Click to enlarge.

Time Warner's Kansas City customers getting a way better deal than Lincolnites; reason: company so terrified by spread of Google's ultra-fast Internet service that it desperately lowered prices

A Google Fiber crew gets ready to hang fiber cables
from a Kansas City utility pole.

Google's 1,000-Mbps service (no, that wasn't a typo) isn't even that cheap — $70 per month. But upload speeds are just as fast as download speeds and there are no caps on bandwidth — something America's most-hated cable/Internet Service Provider, Comcast, would surely choke on.
     One more thing: Google offers a free (for at least seven years, after a $300 "construction" fee) service that is 5 Mbps download and 1 Mbps upload. And that includes a box with Wi-Fi and 4 gigabit ethernet ports that you don't have to rent. (Century Link's worst nightmare, we're sure.)
     Too bad Omaha missed out on becoming a Google City.
     Anyway, here's what happened when Time Warner (and Sprint) were driven to the depths of pricing despair by real ISP competition, as opposed to whatever you might call what exists in Lincoln (or Omaha.)

     Tangentially related: the Everything's Up To Date In Kansas City number from the 1955 film version of Oklahoma. The superlatively cerebral choreography of Agnes de Mille starts at about the 2:24 mark. Yes, Agnes was related to famed director Cecil B. de Mille — she was his niece.

Rachel Maddow explains how Dave Heineman's regressive GOP tax plan will increase taxes for 80% of Cornhuskers by shifting taxes from income to sales

The Nebraska-specific bar chart showing how taxes will go down for the richest Nebraskans and go up for everybody else is here, but it looks just like the ones from other states in the video.

Local reactionary blog, Objective Conservative, suddenly very concernstipated about Chuck Hagel's rumoured firing of lesbian staffer

In a weird post entitled, "Just How Pro-Gay Has Hagel Become?" [AKSARBENT left off three of the four question marks.] Objective Conservative has become so worried that Chuck Hagel may have evolved beyond his heterosexual supremacist mindset, (making him INCONSISTENT!) or may not have (making him a PANDERING LIAR!) that it seems to have retired to its Log Cabin Republicans Memorial Fainting Couch over Hagel's rumored firing of a lesbian staffer.

Yes, like his former stance on abortion and just about everything else, Hagel seems to be willing to say anything and change anything he ever supposedly believed in to be relevant---to become Secretary of Defense.
     So now that Hagel has recanted all his former anti-gay attitudes we think maybe it is time for him to fess up. Did he really fire a well-regarded young lady employee in his U.S. Senate office and send her packing back to Omaha because he found out that she was gay?
     We have every reason to believe he did. But, sadly, that lady now works for a firm that happens to be just a little enamored by Chuck Hagel and a potential position as Secretary of Defense.
     ...maybe it's just time he apologized to that young lady whose life was forever changed by his bigotry? [AKSARBENT left off five of the six question marks.]

     An observance: US Senators and Representatives have exempted themselves from virtually all antidiscrimination employment laws that the rest of us must follow. They can basically do what they like.
     Another observance: While AKSARBENT is not a fan of Objective Conserative, we know someone who is!
     A final observance: We at AKSARBENT were really quite touched by Objective Conservative's heartfelt empathy with the young lesbian whose life was "forever changed by his [Hagel's alleged homophobic] bigotry."
     Therefore you can imagine our confusion when we spied OC's "Upcoming Events" sidebar promoting a $50-per-person fundraiser for Jean Stothert, the same Mean Jean who attempted to play Omaha's gay community for fools in the Omaha City Council Chamber, just before before voting against Omaha's LGBT antibias ordinance.
     Gosh, Objective Conservative, doesn't charitable concern about antigay bias begin at home?

Nebraska Lt. Gov. Sheehy scandal: Journal Star outs two of his paramours

Also: Gov. Heineman's scheme to raise taxes on 80% of Nebraskans.
     Rick Sheehy, handpicked succes­sor to NE GOP GOV. Heineman, resigns after 2,000 late night calls to four women found on state-issued cell phone

One is Dr. Theresa Hatcher of Bellevue, who has repeatedly served as the Unicameral's "Doctor of the Day." She began a relationship with Rick Sheehy in 2008 and told the Journal Star:

"After meeting the lieutenant governor at political events, I eventually grew to have a personal relationship with him. I regret now that many of my understandings and impressions of his marital status were later found to be inaccurate."

     Another woman was Michele Ehresman, a former director of the Holdrege Area Chamber of Commerce.
     The Omaha World-Herald filed a request for email correspondence between Sheehy and Ehresman. Phone records show Sheehy made or received 73 calls to and from a Holdrege area cell phone, some late in the evening, on 10 days in January 2012.
     The Journal Star said its attempts to reach Ehresman on Saturday were unsuccessful.

NE GOP Lieutenant Gov. Rick Sheehy, handpicked succes­sor to Heineman, resigns after 2,000 late night calls to four women found on state-issued cell phone

Heineman, left, with disgraced Lt. Gov. Sheehy,
whom he had groomed to succeed him.

Also: Gov. Heineman's scheme to raise taxes on 80% of Nebraskans.
     Lincoln Journal Star outs two of Sheehy's paramours

Antigay Governor Dave Heineman called a press conference this morning to deliver the bad news about his dauphin, who really, really likes the ladies.
     Heineman's hand was forced by a public records request by both the Omaha World-Herald. and Omaha's ABC affiliate, KETV, which first requested records last November.
      Technically, Rick Sheehy is married, but his wife of 28 years, Colleen, filed for divorce last July.
     AKSARBENT has knowledge of at least one Democratic Party operative who said rumors of Sheehy's misuse of state property in connection with his extracurricular activities, including not just his state-issued cell phone, but a vehicle, were rife as far back as last summer, which begs the question: What did Sheehy's taciturn boss, Gov. Heineman, know and when did he know it?
     The World-Herald, which has been looking at Sheehy's phone records for about a month, published in Norfolk, via its news service, a story headlined Secret cellphone life of Rick Sheehy, in which he is said to have made 2,302 calls to four women, lasting a total of more than 28,000 minutes, in the last four years (About 1/2 an hour per day). Sheehy drove 60,000 miles throughout the state yearly during his tenure as Lt. Governor.
     On its 6 pm newscast, Nebraska's most influential newscaster, Omaha's KETV, floated the names of two GOP politicians the party might pick to replace the already-announced but certain-to-be-aborted candidacy of Sheehy: state senators Charlie Jansen, reportedly a stooge of the Koch Bros., especially Koch-funded ALEC and Beau McCoy, the legislature's most dangerous homophobe.
     KETV may have had as much or more credit in breaking this story as the World-Herald; it too filed to get phone records and threatened court action, according to the verbiage of documents shown on its newscast, if it didn't get them.

     KETV NewsWatch 7 I-Team found that Sheehy was improperly using his state-issued cell phone to make late-night phone calls -- some calls lasting for more than an hour.
     Acting on a public records request made by the I-Team, Heineman's spokesperson turned over a history of calls made to and from Sheehy's cell phone dating back to January 2009.  
     The World-Herald reported that it raised questions about the calls in recent days, which prompted Sheehy's resignation.  The paper reports that Sheehy made those calls to four women, other than his wife, during that time.

     Below: The Nebraska Lieutenant Governor's resignation letter, a one-paragraph missive of Nixonian terseness, and Heineman's press conference, earlier today.

GOP Gov. Heineman's scheme to shift Nebraska taxes from income to sales will see 80% pay more to subsidize tax breaks for the richest 20%

Photo: Lincoln Journal-Star

Update: Rachel Maddow exposes this ruse in a video! (Other GOP governors are trying it too.)

Here, via a tweet from Ken at Progressive Oasis is a stark graph showing how GOP Gov. Dave Heineman's tax giveaway to Nebraska's wealthiest citizens will affect the 80% of us who will have to make up the taxes they will no longer pay.
     There are two versions of Heineman's plan; the chart below is for LB406.
     It was produced by the Open Sky Institute, a non-partisan Nebraska think tank dedicated to fiscal research and analysis. The organization has produced four charts, two each for LB405 and LB406, broken down into 5 and 7 segments, respectively. Click here to see all the graphs and the methodology.

New Normal takes expected ratings hit without The Voice lead-in; here's last week's new episode, Dairy Queen

Ratings may be off but the brilliant comedy's quality isn't.

From the Hollywood Reporter:

NBC had two new episodes of Betty White's Off Their Rockers (1.5 and 1.8 adults). While both episodes were down double digits from last winter's premieres, those did not air in the first hour of primetime. Go On (1.5 adults) and The New Normal (1.3 adults) both took expected spills without a lead from The Voice. The comedies were down 38 and 24 percent, respectively.

From Deadline.com

Also coming off a series low from its January 22 show, The New Normal (1.1/3) was also down 8% from last week. That’s also a new series low for the Ryan Murphy produced comedy. NBC wrapped up the night with a special Dateline (1.3/4).

Effort to block Omaha's LGBT antibias law by Omaha Liberty Project, Heritage Coalition and Catholic Church fails to gather enough signatures

The Omaha World-Herald reports that The Omaha Liberty Project, sponsor of the petition effort which needed to submit roughly 11,400 valid resident signatures to the city today to potentially force a vote in May's general election, wasn't able to do so, despite considerable support by conservative North Omaha black churches, evangelical West Omaha megachurches and the Omaha Catholic Archdiocese, which allowed petition solicitations in its churches and violated Nebraska's electioneering law at polls in its buildings in last fall's general election. (See example below filmed at St. Francis of Assisi.)
     A similar petition effort to reverse Lincoln's short-lived LGBT protections was successful. Although the state's statutory window for compulsory retention by the Lancaster County Election Commission of voters who signed the petition to kill Lincoln's law has passed, AKSARBENT has confirmed that at least one copy of the list of 10,000+ was purchased and may yet be published online in order that Lincolnites will be able to find out which of their acquaintances and neighbors took action to make sure antigay discrimination would remain legal in Nebraska's capitol.



     “We've got to be pretty darn close to the number we need,” said Patrick Bonnett, the group's executive director and a member of the Papio-Missouri River Natural Resources District board.
“Darn close, but we just didn't get it.”
     UNO political science professor, Gregory Petrow, said petition drives like this don't often fall short because of a lack of people willing to sign, but because of less-organized grassroots campaigns. He told the Herald: “You wouldn't want to conclude anything about what this says on the state of public opinion on the issue,”

     Bonnett said the Liberty Project's campaign got a late start and had to spend much of the holidays bringing voters up to speed on the ordinance.
     “We were very, very shocked at how few people were in tune with the issue,” he said.

     That's nonsense, unless by "in tune" Bonnett means "as homophobic as we are." Hearings on the issue were standing room only and received wide local coverage.
     The World-Herald quotes organizers as saying they will keep trying to ensure that gay Omahans arbitrarily jerked around by homophobes never have legal recourse look forward to "continuing the whole conversation."

If organizers gather enough names, they could turn in ballots at a later date. But they'd likely have to wait until the next election: the 2014 primary.
The number of signatures required to get the issue on the ballot then would depend on voter turnout for this year's general city election — the requirement is 15 percent of the turnout in the most recent election.
“We're proud of our petition drive,” Bonnett said.

     Bonnett's allies include William Femi Awodele — a North Omaha "community leader," from Nigeria, a board member of the Nebraska Family Council and an executive director of his apparent business, Christian Couples Fellowship International, which has a website on which not a single page has functioned properly for months, except the one in which marriage-improvement DVDs for troubled heterosexuals (which cost up to $70) may be ordered.
     The Nebraska Heritage Coalition was also behind the effort. That organization of dozens of reactionary churches falsely claimed that its members condemn violence but its list of online signatories included Omaha's notorious death-to-gays preacher, Phillip Kayser, of MSNBC fame, whose venue at the University of Nebraska at Omaha Alumni Center was the subject of repeated protests.

 

TalkingPointsMemo graphic of quote from
page 24 of Kayser's paper Is the death penalty just?

Screen capture of Heritage Coalition's online list of signatories
to its Proclamation on Sexual Preference, made 3/3/12

     Omaha's municipal code, revised last March, gives gay and transgender residents the right to file complaints with the city's Human Rights and Relations Department if they believe they were fired due to their sexual orientation, suffered other workplace discrimination or were refused a public accommodation, but it doesn't cover housing!  Employers found guilty are subject to civil penalties. Religious organizations are exempted.

     Six complaints have been submitted to date, said City Human Resources Director Richard O'Gara. One complaint has been investigated and dismissed, O'Gara said, while the rest are being scrutinized under a lengthy investigative process.
     “It just takes time,” O'Gara said.

Virginia House passes Campus KKK Protection Act

C. Todd Gilbert

It's not called that, of course; the bill's name is HB1617, sponsored by Del. C. Todd Gilbert (R-Page, Rockingham, Shenandoah and Warren counties).

     But what it does is exactly what you read in the headline. From John Riley in Poliglot:

...it prohibits public institutions of higher education from "discriminating against a student organization or group on the basis of the religious, political, philosophical or other content of the organization or group’s speech."
     It also allows religious or political student organizations to determine whom they may admit as members "in furtherance of the organization’s religious or political mission."

Here are the 80 Virginia lawmakers who voted for it:

Albo, Anderson, BaCote, Bell, Richard P., Bell, Robert B., Bulova, Byron, Cline, Cole, Comstock, Cosgrove, Cox, J.A., Cox, M.K., Crockett-Stark, Dance, Edmunds, Fariss, Farrell, Filler-Corn, Garrett, Gilbert, Greason, Habeeb, Head, Helsel, Herring, Hodges, Hugo, Iaquinto, Ingram, Joannou, Johnson, Jones, Keam, Kilgore, Knight, Landes, LeMunyon, Lewis, Lingamfelter, Loupassi, Marshall, D.W., Marshall, R.G., Massie, May, Merricks, Miller, Minchew, Morefield, Morris, O'Bannon, O'Quinn, Orrock, Peace, Pogge, Poindexter, Purkey, Putney, Ramadan, Ransone, Robinson, Rush, Rust, Scott, E.T., Sherwood, Spruill, Stolle, Tata, Tyler, Villanueva, Ware, O., Ware, R.L., Watson, Watts, Webert, Wilt, Wright, Yancey, Yost, Mr. Speaker--80

     Kevin Clay, a spokesman for Equality Virginia, the commonwealth's major LGBT-rights organization, said Equality Virginia opposes the bill, which he says could potentially allow student groups at publicly funded universities to discriminate against LGBT individuals if they cite religious beliefs or political philosophies.
     "Our concern with the bill is it allows discrimination with publicly accessible funds," Clay said.
     He further noted that universities, even if they have a nondiscrimination policy, are unable to deny funding or resources to groups that openly discriminate, because under current Virginia law, campus nondiscrimination policies are not legally binding. 

Zack Ford of ThinkProgress explains the significance of the Virginia House of Delegates' assault on diversity and fairness:

On most college campuses, student organizations must maintain a constitution that conforms to the university’s procedures, including its nondiscrimination policies...
     Nondiscrimination policies have become a source of contention for conservative Christian student groups, like at Tennessee’s Vanderbilt University and New York’s University of Buffalo, who wish to exclude gay students from membership.
     In the 2010 case Christian Legal Society v. Martinez, the U.S. Supreme Court narrowly answered this question in favor of nondiscrimination policies, ruling that “all-comers” policies are viewpoint neutral, and thus are no more unfair to Christian groups than any other student groups.
     Conservatives have argued, however that nondiscrimination policies allow for “hostile takeovers“ — in which students with opposing views infiltrate and assume power in the organization — but there’s no evidence to suggest that this is plausible, let alone that it... (read more.)

Ed Koch, closeted, colorful ex-mayor of New York City, dies at 88

Antigay Florida Senator Marco Rubio, who lied about his parents fleeing Fidel Castro, says Chuck Hagel has 'big, big problems'

When Mike Allen of Politico asked Mark Rubio if homosexuality was a sin, Rubio said yeah, but he wasn't passing judgement — specifically saying, "Well, I can tell you what faith teaches and faith teaches that it is. And that’s what the Bible teaches and that’s what faith teaches."
     The Ten Commandments, which, like Jesus himself, did not mention homosexuality, do teach that you shouldn't lie, but that didn't stop Rubio from repeating ad nauseum the familial fable about his parents' daringly brave flight from Cuba as the jackboots of Castro's thugs shook the island — until an examination of naturalization papers and other records revealed that Rubio’s parents came to the United States and were admitted for permanent residence while Castro was still in Mexico, more than two and a half years before his forces overthrew the Batista government and took power on January 1, 1959.
     Obviously, where opportunism is at play, the Rubio family is way ahead of the curve.

Dan Savage removes 49ers It Gets Better video after Ahmad Brooks and Isaac Sopoaga backpedal and issue preposterous denials; '#NFL #homophobia #horseshit'

After the 49ers insisted that cornerback Chris Culliver didn't represent their organization when he made condescending, antigay remarks in a radio interview days before the NFL championship game, two players who were in the 49ers It Gets Better video have disassociated themselves from their participation.

     The 49ers' linebacker Ahmad Brooks and nose tackle Isaac Sopoaga, both of whom participated in the team's widely-praised "It Gets Better" video last summer, have denied ever producing the clip.
     The players told USA Today Sports that they didn't realize the video's aim was to specifically combat bullying experienced by lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) teens.
     "This is America and if someone wants to be gay, they can be gay," Brooks told the publication. "But I didn't make any video." Later, after he was reportedly shown the video on an iPhone, the player clarified, "Oh, that. It was an anti-bullying video, not a gay [rights] video."
     Even more curiously, Sopoaga also denied taking part in the clip, even as a teammate reportedly tried to jog his memory. "I never went," he declared. "And now someone is using my name."

One thing is certain: some 49ers players are pretty bad liars. Here's the evidence: