August 28, 2014

Daily Caller Op-Ed Links Military Rape To Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal

By CAITLIN MACNEAL Published AUGUST 28, 2014, 12:34 PM EDT

The Daily Caller on Wednesday published an op-ed in which the author blamed gay men in the military for the uptick in reported sexual assaults.

"Military Sexual Trauma (MST) is on the rise for both men and women, according to a Pentagon report earlier this year that was widely covered in news outlets such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Associated Press, Reuters, and CNN," David Benkof wrote. "But virtually none of that coverage addressed an obvious aspect of the problem: the 2011 introduction of open service by gays and bisexuals undoubtedly has increased the incidence of sexual assault against men in uniform."

Benkof argues that sexual assaults on men in the military started to rise after the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell in 2011, even though he notes that many experts don't attribute the rise to gay service members. "Astonishingly, many experts interviewed in articles on this topic, as well as gay community leaders, argue that the rapists involved are usually heterosexual," he wrote.

As Media Matters noted, researchers have not found evidence that allowing openly gay individuals to serve in the military has led to an increase in sexual assaults. And some argue that the DADT policy discouraged people from reporting incidents of male-on-male rape for fear of being discharged.

more
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/daily-caller-military-sexual-assault-gays

August 28, 2014

Texas Monthly Profiles a Woman Who Has Witnessed 278 Executions

The Witness

FOR MORE THAN A DECADE, IT WAS MICHELLE LYONS’S JOB TO OBSERVE THE FINAL MOMENTS OF DEATH ROW INMATES—BUT WATCHING 278 EXECUTIONS DID NOT COME WITHOUT A COST.

by PAMELA COLLOFF

I.
Ms. Lyons,
Hi, if you are reading this then they killed me. I wanted to tell you that I enjoyed talking to you, you seem like a really great lady. I’m sorry we didn’t meet under different circumstances. . . . Thank you for your kindness. Have a wonderful day.

—Letter from death row inmate Robert Coulson, June 25, 2002

Early one morning in April, Michelle Lyons pulled up outside her daughter’s elementary school in Huntsville, seventy miles north of Houston. Set deep in the Piney Woods, Huntsville—which is home to no fewer than five prisons—is a company town whose primary industry is confinement. Many parents who were dropping their children off at school that day worked for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Huntsville’s largest employer. Michelle, who sat behind the wheel of her blue Chevy sedan nursing a travel mug of coffee, had worked for TDCJ herself for more than a decade. She had been the public face of the agency, a disarmingly friendly, upbeat spokesperson for the biggest prison system in the nation. Though she had left the position two years earlier, she was still well-known around town, and several mothers waved as her car idled in the drop-off line. “Have a beautiful day,” she murmured when her nine-year-old leaned in to kiss her goodbye.

When Michelle first went to work for TDCJ, in 2001, she had begun each weekday morning by driving into town, past the picturesque courthouse square and toward the Walls Unit, the 165-year-old penitentiary that is Huntsville’s most iconic landmark. The prison, whose ramparts measure more than thirty feet high, is a colossal, foreboding structure crowned by razor wire—a two-block-long, red-brick fortress that houses the most active death chamber in the country. Michelle’s office occupied a corner of an administrative building directly across the street from the Walls, and one of the requirements of her job as a public information officer had been to attend every execution the state carried out. She had also attended executions for her previous job, as a reporter covering prisons for the hometown newspaper, the Huntsville Item. Michelle spent many evenings—hundreds, in fact—standing shoulder-to-shoulder with witnesses in a cramped room that afforded a view of the death chamber, where she watched as men, and two women, were injected with a three-drug cocktail that stopped their hearts. All told, she had seen 278 inmates put to death.

As Michelle pulled away from the school, she headed out of Huntsville, toward Interstate 45 and her new job more than an hour’s drive away, in downtown Houston. She cracked her window, grateful for the cool air on her face. Mornings, when her commute offered time to think back on everything she had seen at the Walls, were the hardest. She was flooded with memories from her time inside the Death House: of the conversations she had shared with particular inmates in the hours before they were strapped to the gurney; of the mothers, dressed in their Sunday best, who had turned out to attend their sons’ executions; of the victims’ families, their faces hardened with grief; of the sudden stillness that came over the prisoners soon after the lethal drugs entered their bloodstreams. She could still see some of these men—their chests expanding, their chins stiffening as they took their last breaths.

These memories intruded with such frequency that Michelle no longer tried to push them out of her mind. Instead, she had started recording voice memos, letting her thoughts unspool as she drove alone in the car. She kept one eye on the road that morning as she rummaged through her purse for her iPhone, finally fishing it out and holding the microphone up to her mouth. “I support the death penalty,” she began. “I believe that there are some crimes that are so heinous that the only way you can truly pay your debt to society is with your life.” She spoke with the same deliberation she had used when addressing reporters outside the Walls after high-profile executions. “But in other cases, I feel very conflicted,” she added. “There are men I watched die that I don’t think should have.” A piece of folk art she had picked up on a trip to Austin—an evil-eye charm to ward off bad spirits—bobbed from her rearview mirror. “I thought being away from the prison system would make me think about it less, but it’s been quite the opposite,” she continued. “I think about it all the time.”

more
http://www.texasmonthly.com/story/michelle-lyons-witness-to-278-executions-in-texas?fullpage=1&wpsrc=slatest_newsletter

August 28, 2014

Minnesota Father of Nine Killed Fighting for ISIS in Syria

By Ben Mathis-Lilley

Another American, Abdirahmaan Muhumed, has been killed fighting on behalf of ISIS in Syria. Muhumed was from Minnesota; Douglas McAuthur McCain, whose death in Syria was reported Tuesday, attended high school in Minnesota, though it's not clear whether the two men knew each other.

Minnesota Public Radio reported earlier in the summer that Muhumed was among the group of "as many as 15" Americans of Somali ancestry who had left the Twin Cities to fight in Syria:

"A Muslim has to stand up for [what's] right," Muhumed, 29, wrote in a Jan. 2 [Facebook] post. "I give up this worldly life for Allah."

Muhumed, who claims he wants to save the global Muslim community, said if that causes others to consider him a terrorist, he is "happy with it." He asked Allah to forgive him and to "make my mom strong for the decision that I made."

more
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2014/08/28/minnesota_isis_abdirahmaan_muhumed_killed_in_syria.html?wpsrc=slatest_newsletter

August 28, 2014

McDonnell's 'Crazy Wife' Defense Is Totally Unprecedented

By CATHERINE THOMPSON Published AUGUST 28, 2014, 6:00 AM EDT

Jurors could begin deliberating as early as Friday in the federal corruption case against Virginia ex-Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) and his wife Maureen. Over five weeks of testimony, jurors have heard a barrage of details about the McDonnells’ finances and about their interactions with a wealthy Virginia businessman, Jonnie Williams, from whom the couple is accused of taking $177,000 worth of gifts and loans in exchange for lending the credibility of the governor’s office to Williams’ dietary supplements company.

But without a doubt, the most engrossing aspect of the trial has been the revelations about the McDonnells’ marriage. In testimony, the governor painted a picture of his marriage veering so far into soap opera territory that pundits began referring to it as the “crazy wife” defense. Legal experts told TPM that was an unprecedented strategy to deploy in such a high-profile criminal case.

When the former governor the took the stand, he cast his wife as a mercurial thorn in his side — not to mention that of the entire Executive Mansion staff. Under questioning by the defense, various other witnesses described Maureen McDonnell as a hoarder, "diva-ish" and "pathologically incapable of taking any kind of responsibility." One former aide testified that the governor was "in denial about Mrs. McDonnell’s mental capacity."

For his part, McDonnell testified that he considered his marriage “on hold” while in the governor’s mansion and further revealed that he moved out of his home just before the trial began, opting to live with his parish priest in order to prepare for court each day away from Maureen McDonnell. Defense attorneys are hoping that all this testimony proves to jurors that communication between the McDonnells was too strained for them to have been able to conspire together to promote Williams’ company.

more
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/bob-mcdonnells-crazy-wife-defense-is-unprecedented

--------------------

"The devil...errr, I mean my wife, made me do it"

August 28, 2014

The GOP's All-Out War On Obamacare Is In A Death Spiral

By DYLAN SCOTT Published AUGUST 28, 2014, 6:00 AM EDT

The implosion of the GOP's all-or-nothing assault on Obamacare might have started on Election Night 2010. Republicans thought they had been validated in their relentless attacks on the law, swept to huge victories in the House. Four years ago, it seemed unthinkable that they would ever waver.

As recently as last fall, conservatives felt as confident as they'd ever been when the federal health insurance exchange HealthCare.gov failed miserably in its first days. It reinvigorated their faith in fighting the law after the U.S. Supreme Court and 2012 presidential election dealt that thinking a serious blow.

But since the heady days of cancelled policies and a balky website, the political viability of absolutist repeal has been on a downward spiral. It was probably a decline made inevitable when President Barack Obama beat Mitt Romney in 2012, which ensured that repeal would at least be vetoed for another four years. But that decline has been slow enough that it can be difficult to detect.

Even though Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who fancies himself to be a thought leader in the party, still tweets #FullRepeal with regularity, he's become an increasingly lonely voice. The use of Obamacare as an effective Republican attack looks almost at its end. It's been a long time coming.

more
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/gop-obamacare-2014-elections-no-mas

August 28, 2014

American Jihadis Douglas McCain and Troy Kastigar: From Losers to Martyrs

Michael Daly

If you can’t make it anywhere, you can make it there—that, at least, seems to have been the theory of Douglas McCain and Troy Kastigar, friends who ended up with ISIS and al-Shabab.

Why be a loser when you can be a martyr? That was the sad and screwy logic that propelled Douglas McAuthur McCain and his pal Troy Kastigar.

The same dynamic has driven other disappointed souls and threatens to drive many more, as ISIS and al-Shabab and their murderous ilk offer an exciting travel destination to those who are going nowhere.

A plane ticket can take you from jerk to jihadi. And if you can’t make it anywhere, you can make it there.

But while it seems an odd coincidence that McCain and Kastigar both managed to lose a front tooth in the course of their journeys, it is no surprise that they both ultimately reached the deadest of dead ends.

more
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/08/28/american-jihadis-douglas-mccain-and-troy-kastigar-from-loser-to-martyr.html

August 28, 2014

Russian Moms Denounce Putin’s Not-So-Secret Ukraine Invasion

Anna Nemtsova

As Russia troops and tanks make an apparent bid to open the land route to annexed Crimea, discontent is growing in the motherland about the obvious but oft-denied war in Ukraine.

MOSCOW, Russia – Where U.S. President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel have failed to make Russian President Vladimir Putin acknowledge his ever-more-overt invasion of Ukraine and think about pulling back, Valentina Melnikova, the head of Russia’s famous Soldiers’ Mothers Committee, might just have a chance.

Early Thursday morning, Melnikova started getting phone calls from Russian army bosses. All of them, from the deputy defense minister to the paratrooper division commanders, wanted to meet with the great matriarch of the Russian military. She had accused the entire high command, along with Commander-in-Chief Vladimir Putin of invading Ukraine and of committing a crime against Russian citizens by sending Russian soldiers to "the bloody battlefields" without declaring the war, without signing legal papers with the servicemen, without letting Russian mothers know where exactly their drafted sons ended up dying.

The day before, Russian servicemen were fighting shoulder to shoulder with pro-Russian separatists in Novoazovsk, a strategic port city on the Russian border. By taking over Novoazovsk, the separatists cleared the way for more servicemen to pour into Ukraine. “According to our expert analyses,” said Melnikova – and few organizations have better information than hers – “ there are over 10,000 Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine today."

It’s important to understand just how important Melnikova and her organization are in the minds of the Russian people and, often grudgingly, to the Russian military. She is an active member of defense ministry's public council, and commanders knew perfectly well that no secrets can be hidden from Soldiers Mothers, since the organization has first-hand information about the army’s affairs. Melnikova's opinion has been respected by the Russian people since the days when the first zinc coffins flowed back to the Soviet Union along what came to be called “the river of the dead” from Afghanistan in the 1980s.

more
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/08/28/russian-moms-denounce-putin-s-not-so-secret-ukraine-invasion.html

August 28, 2014

“Would you criminalize fornication?” Desperate new argument against same-sex marriage laughed out of

“Would you criminalize fornication?” Desperate new argument against same-sex marriage laughed out of court

Straight people get drunk and pregnant! Gay people don't, so they don't need marriage! That was the real argument

GABRIEL ARANA

One of the most fascinating things about the same-sex marriage battle has been the evolution of the arguments against gay unions. Not long ago, gays and lesbians were not only considered unsuitable parents; they were an active danger to children, child molesters and abusers. Kids raised by same-sex couples were said to fare worse than those raised by heterosexual couples.

No such arguments were made in Chicago on Tuesday, where lawyers for Wisconsin and Indiana did their best to defend their states’ bans on same-sex marriage before a three-judge panel of the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals. Their line of attack against gay marriage was quite the opposite: Gay parents are too responsible to need marriage.

That’s right — lawyers for Indiana and Wisconsin claimed that because a “fleeting moment of passion” can produce offspring, straight people need marriage as an incentive to stay together and raise their “unintended children.” Gay people, on the other hand, have to think and plan a lot harder if they want to be parents, so marriage doesn’t concern them. In other words, because an ill-considered, alcohol-fueled romp between two straight people can lead to a baby, gays shouldn’t be able to marry.

Judge Richard Posner, a Reagan appointee, could only respond with sarcasm. “Would you criminalize fornication?” he said. “It sounds like a way of dealing with this unintended child problem.”

The absurdity of Indiana and Wisconsin’s justifications for banning gay unions — which are really something if you listen to the audio — highlights the central problem for opponents of same-sex marriage: As traditional justifications for anti-gay discrimination have lost legal ground, defending gay-marriage bans increasingly requires logical acrobatics.

more
http://www.salon.com/2014/08/28/would_you_criminalize_fornication_desperate_new_argument_against_same_sex_marriage_laughed_out_of_court/

August 28, 2014

Romney for US president in 2016? Iowa poll puts him on top

Source: Agence France-Presse

Americans may not be through with Mitt Romney after all. The two-time Republican presidential candidate has repeatedly stressed over the past year that he is not interested in a third shot at the White House.

But an Iowa poll released Wednesday suggests that Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who lost to President Barack Obama in 2012, would be the party’s odds-on favorite if he threw his hat in the ring for 2016.


The survey of Iowa Republican voters conducted by Suffolk University and USA Today showed that if Romney was added to the pool of potential 2016 Republican contenders, 35 percent of respondents would place him first in the Iowa caucuses, the political contest that kicks off the primary calendar.

Arkansas ex-governor Mike Huckabee came in a distant second, at just nine percent, with New Jersey Governor Chris Christie trailing at 6.5 percent and former senator Rick Santorum at six percent. Senators Ted Cruz and Rand Paul each earned five percent, while the remaining field was in the low single digits.

-snip-

Read more: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/08/28/romney-for-us-president-in-2016-iowa-poll-puts-him-on-top/

August 28, 2014

Bill Kristol outdumbs Laura Ingraham: Bomb them, bomb them now! Don’t think!

War-loving chicken hawk Bill Kristol, who is always wrong, reaches impressive new personal high in self-parody

JIM NEWELL

Bill Kristol, the neoconservative editor of the Weekly Standard and all-around person who is wrong about everything, is frustrated at the pace of overseas bombing thus far.

He complained last week about how Obama was being too slow to bomb, even though Obama had already started bombing ISIS targets in Iraq. The bombing continues and has now surpassed 100 bombings since early this month. It is not only not clear when this bombing in Iraq will stop, but the administration is taking surveillance flights over Syria to eye out potential targets for strikes there, too — a direction in which the Obama administration appears to be leaning.

In other words, once the seal was broken and, for however noble the purpose, the Obama administration decided to start bombing to help those trapped on Mount Sinjar, escalation began. It’s unclear what the administration’s broader goal is in Iraq — stop a massacre here or there? Kill off ISIS? — and, if and when it goes into Syria, what the goals will be there. All of these things should be major causes of consideration for the administration, Congress and the rest of the country before the United States military ends up entrenched in a war covering two nations that suck.

That’s one opinion, at least. And then there’s Bill Kristol’s opinion, which is only a few synonyms away from “bomb first, ask questions later”:

more
http://www.salon.com/2014/08/28/bill_kristol_outdumbs_laura_ingraham_bomb_them_bomb_them_now_dont_think/