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Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly battled fellow Fox News host Bill O’Reilly last night, and reiterated her support of Chaz Bono and the transgender community in an on-air segment. Kelly earlier had interviewed fellow Fox associate Dr. Keith Ablow and excoriated him for his online Fox column and later comments that children could become transgender just by … Continue reading
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg warned today that public frustration over joblessness in the U.S. is in danger of boiling over and could lead to riots in the streets if the government fails to create more jobs. “You have a lot of kids graduating college who can’t find jobs. That’s what happened in Cairo. … Continue reading
Two top Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee have asked Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to delay the new policy allowing gays to serve openly in the military. In a letter to the Pentagon chief this week, California Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon, the committee chairman, and South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson – two opponents of … Continue reading
A town clerk in Ledyard, N.Y., is standing in the way of letting a same-sex couple tie the knot, even though the state legalized marriage equality in June. Rose Marie Belforti, the town clerk for the small town of Ledyard, has publicly stated that she will not sign marriage licenses for same-sex couples and refused … Continue reading
The U.S. Postal Service appears to be the latest casualty in digital technology’s slow but steady replacement of working humans. Unless an external source of funding comes in, the post office will have to scale back its operations drastically, or simply shut down altogether. That’s 600,000 people who would be out of work, and another … Continue reading
Rep. Brad Miller (D-N.C.) said a push in the North Carolina state legislature to add an anti-gay-marriage amendment to the state constitution has prompted him to co-sponsor federal legislation to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). “For a couple who [have] been married legally, every state should be required to give full faith and … Continue reading
MIAMI — A federal judge on Wednesday blocked enforcement of a first-in-the-nation law that restricted what Florida physicians can say about guns to their patients, ruling the law violates the U.S. Constitution’s free speech guarantees and does not trample gun rights. U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke said it was important to emphasize “the free flow … Continue reading
A package of disaster relief funding worth $7 billion was blocked from coming up for a vote by Senate Republicans on Monday, drawing sharp condemnation from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) who lambasted the conservative party for abandoning Americans in need. “Last night, Democrats tried to move forward on a measure that would have … Continue reading
The Census Bureau reports the number of Americans in poverty jumped to 15.1 percent in 2010, a 27-year high. About 46.2 million people, or nearly 1 in 6, were in poverty. That’s up from 43.6 million, or 14.3 percent, in 2009. It was the highest level since 1983. The number of people lacking health insurance … Continue reading
Republicans who are mainly interested in making sure their party wins the 2012 presidential election would seem to face a catch-22. The man who currently leads the GOP race in national polls, Rick Perry, has a history of making reckless and inflammatory statements about Social Security — enough to raise serious questions about whether nominating … Continue reading
A House bill to repeal the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act has now attracted 122 cosponsors—two more than the total number of sponsors from the previous congressional term, when the legislation was first introduced. A spokesman for Rep. Jerrold Nadler of New York, lead House sponsor of the Respect for Marriage Act, told The Advocate … Continue reading
Gay Iranians are sending a message via a new Facebook group — “We are everywhere.” London’s Guardian first noted that a string of anonymous Iranians were proclaiming their homosexuality in videos posted on the “We are everywhere” Facebook group as a protest. They live in a country that not only recently executed three men for … Continue reading
Texas Gov. Rick Perry bristled at accusations during Monday’s GOP debate that he had done the bidding of a corporate donor by ordering schoolgirls to use a new vaccine. “The company was Merck, and it was a $5,000 contribution that I had received from them,” Perry said. “I raised about $30 million. And if you’re … Continue reading
The participant’s in last night’s GOP presidential debate once again took the opportunity to pretend that the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) put a massive dent in Medicare by cutting $500 billion from the program. Michele Bachmann told us that “We know that President Obama stole over $500 billion out of Medicare to switch it over to Obamacare.” … Continue reading
With her standing in the polls slipping, Michele Bachmann needed to find a way to capture the spotlight she held earlier this summer. She just may have done that tonight at the Tea Party Express/CNN debate in Tampa, Florida. Bachmann, the founder of the Tea Party Caucus in the House, knew her audience well and … Continue reading
Texas Gov. Rick Perry toned down his language on Social Security today, deviating from the harsh rhetoric that has fueled criticism from his Republican opponents as they gear up for the second presidential debate in less than a week. In an op-ed for USA Today, Perry replaced the term “Ponzi scheme” with descriptions of the entitlement program’s “financial … Continue reading
The military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy will become history on Sept. 20, but for active-duty gays and lesbians planning to celebrate its demise, there are still plenty of do’s and don’ts to keep in mind. In a blog post Monday, the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN) released guidelines on the types of parties gays … Continue reading
President Barack Obama will take to the Rose Garden on Monday to make a pitch for his jobs creation plan and announce he is sending it to Congress later that evening, the White House said. Obama will be joined by teachers, veterans, small-business owners and others who would benefit from the American Jobs Act’s passage, … Continue reading
A battle over Social Security launched last week between the top two GOP presidential contenders doesn’t show any signs of quieting down as candidates prepare for round two at the first-ever CNN/Tea Party Republican Debate on Monday night. The debate, being held at the Florida State Fairgrounds in Tampa, will also give the six other … Continue reading
Armed with worrisome poll data and seeking to maintain the legislative upper hand, Congressional Republicans who have spent the balance of the year pouring buckets of criticism on the Obama administration are shifting to a more restrained approach as they ponder how to respond to the president’s jobs plan. Back from a summer break in … Continue reading
U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said Friday that teachers have been “beaten down for too long” and endorsed “doubling’’ their salaries. “We need to elevate teachers,’’ Duncan told a gathering of officials and educators in the fresco-ceiling library of Carl Schurz High School. “I think we need to double salaries for teachers. We need to … Continue reading
President Barack Obama’s promise Thursday that everything in his jobs plan will be paid for rests on highly iffy propositions. It will only be paid for if a committee he can’t control does his bidding, if Congress puts that into law and if leaders in the future — the ones who will feel the fiscal … Continue reading
The Obama administration is seeking to broaden access to a two-year-old refinancing program that has helped far fewer homeowners take advantage of low interest rates than initially expected. President Obama announced the effort Thursday night as part of his package of measures to spur job creation, saying it would help “responsible homeowners” by reducing their … Continue reading
While men lost more jobs in the recession than women, women have been slower to recover, losing nearly 300,000 jobs since the economic “recovery” began in 2009. Some women’s organizations were concerned that President Obama’s jobs plan was going to focus on boosting male-dominated industries, such as construction and manufacturing, to the exclusion of the … Continue reading
South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) wants the jobless to pass a drug test before they can receive benefits, but she seems to have an exaggerated sense of drug use among the unemployed. “I so want drug testing. I so want it,” Haley said during a Thursday question-and-answer session at the Lexington Rotary Club. She … Continue reading
The Brandt Standard 