LGBTQ news and entertainment
The DNC has released a new video addressing what looks like Mitt Romney’s frustrations when asked questions he doesn’t like.
This comes after he apparently was not happy with the degree of questions he was asked earlier this week in a FOX News interview with Bret Baier.
Republican presidential candidates are joining New Hampshire’s intensifying same-sex marriage debate — whether they like it or not.
State lawmakers plan to take up a measure to repeal the law allowing same-sex couples to wed and a vote is expected at some point in January — the same month New Hampshire holds the nation’s first Republican presidential primary contest.
The impending focus on marriage equality carries risk for several of White House contenders — including former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Texas Gov. Rick Perry and former businessman Herman Cain — whose inconsistencies on the topic are well documented.
The Republican candidates’ increasingly vocal support for “traditional marriage” also threatens to alienate a growing number of younger Republicans and independents here who support legal recognition of same-sex couples. That note of divisiveness could bode poorly for the eventual Republican challenger to Obama in the general election.
Romney was the Massachusetts governor when his state legalized same-sex marriage. The Romney administration, as directed by the courts, granted nearly 200 same-sex marriage requests for gay and lesbian couples in 2005.
This past June, he said during a debate that he favors a federal constitutional amendment banning the practice. That’s been his position at least since the beginning of his 2008 presidential bid, when he was the only major Republican candidate to support such an amendment.
But as a Massachusetts Senate candidate back in 1994, Romney told a Boston-area newspaper that same-sex marriage is “a state issue as you know — the authorization of marriage on a same-sex basis falls under state jurisdiction.”
Herman Cain told the Christian Broadcasting Network that federal legislation is necessary to protect traditional marriage. That seemed to be a direct contradiction from his statement of just six days earlier, when he told “Meet the Press” host David Gregory that states should be allowed to make up their own minds.
“I wouldn’t seek a constitutional ban for same sex marriage, but I am pro traditional marriage,” Cain told Gregory.
In Rick Perry’s case, the Texas governor says he supports the New Hampshire repeal. But in July he said that New York’s move to legalize same-sex marriage was “fine by me.” A week later, facing social conservative criticism, he walked back the comments.
“It’s fine with me that the state is using their sovereign right to decide an issue. Obviously gay marriage is not fine with me,” he said then.
While I think most conservatives won’t worry over the flip flops, come the general election these positions could come back to haunt the eventual GOP nominee in terms of some all important independent voters.
Time will tell.
This man needs a serious 7th grade civics class.
The President of the United States CANNOT overturn the Supreme Court of the United States. He embarrasses himself with his answer.
Also, I would like to know how he would feel if the Civil Rights Act of 1964 were overturned.
The phrase “not ready for prime-time” have never been more appropriate.
Lord…
The race for the Republican presidential nomination took an unexpected turn today as a new poll showed that a startled deer was the new GOP frontrunner.
Bucky, the red deer who is the first choice of likely Republican voters is believed to be the first woodland creature ever to lead a major party’s presidential field.
“Voters like what they see in Bucky,” said veteran political strategist Ed Rollins, who has signed on to helm the red deer’s primary campaign. “The fact that he is unable to speak is a major asset.”
In his first appearance in Concord, New Hampshire, however, the antlered candidate garnered mixed reviews for what some observers said was an unsteady performance.
Appearing frightened by the TV lights, Bucky kicked over the podium and then pranced down the hall before being subdued by a tranquilizer dart.
“Clearly he’s a little rough around the edges,” said Mr. Rollins. “But he still did better than Herman Cain.”
It was another rough day for Mr. Cain, who offered this response to a reporter’s question: “For the last time, I did not touch her down there. Oh wait, did you say ‘Libya?’”
Gov. Rick Perry also stumbled badly in a campaign appearance in Iowa, telling supporters, “If I am elected, I will find out where Iran’s nuclear weapons are. Also, where Iran is.”
Meanwhile, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich predicted that his recent rise in the polls is not a fluke: “The American people want an adult, and no one has a stronger record of adultery than I do.”
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Read the Borowitz Report. Funny, funny stuff…
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| Capt. Stephen Hill and husband Joshua Snyder |
Army Capt. Stephen Hill says he wasn’t trying to score political points when he asked the Republican presidential candidates if they would reinstate the ban on gays serving openly in the U.S. military.
Now that “don’t ask, don’t tell” has been lifted, he needed to know if the military would take the next step and recognize his marriage, or if a new president would try to force soldiers like him back into the closet.
“I was looking forward to the future and hoping everybody would realize we are soldiers first, always,” said Hill, 41, an Army reservist who returned last week from his yearlong deployment. “I was hoping ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ would be a distant memory for everybody.”
In a recent interview, Hill reflected publicly for the first time on his reasons for submitting the pre-recorded question for the Sept. 22 debate, as well as his reaction to the heckles heard around the world; the answer that former Sen. Rick Santorum gave to thunderous applause; and the outrage expressed on his behalf by, among others, his commander in chief.
This is what he asked: “In 2010, when I was deployed to Iraq, I had to lie about who I was because I’m a gay soldier and I didn’t want to lose my job. My question is, under one of your presidencies, do you intend to circumvent the progress that’s been made for gay and lesbian soldiers in the military?”
Santorum replied that he would reinstitute the ban on open service by gay troops because “any type of sexual activity has absolutely no place in the military.”
“What we are doing is playing social experimentation with our military right now. That’s tragic,” he continued. “Leave it alone. Keep it to yourself whether you are heterosexual or homosexual.”
“When the actual booing occurred, my gut dropped out, because my first inclination was, did I just do something wrong?” Hill said.
President Barack Obama, about a week later, chided the Republican contenders for staying silent when several people booed an American soldier.
What Hill remembers most was that a presidential candidate defined his marriage and military service in terms of sex.
“This is not about sex,” Hill said. “A special privilege is not hiding pictures in my house or God forbid, taking mortar fire again and not knowing if Josh will be recognized. I’m fighting every day to protect everyone’s rights as human beings, and it seems counterintuitive for me to be fighting for those rights and not have them.”
In a week, the GOP will again vote on a Balanced Budget Amendment. The vote is part of the final compromise to raise the debt limit, in which President Obama and Senate Democrats promised to hold a vote on such an amendment, despite the fact that such votes have failed numerous times in the past.
Republicans have taken to ignoring the obvious perilous consequences of the amendment even as voices on both sides of the aisle denounce it as the “worst idea in Washington.” The current amendment, former Reagan adviser Bruce Bartlett said, “looks like it was drafted by a couple of interns on the back of a napkin.”
Today, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) added to that criticism, releasing a study highlighting a piece from Macroeconomic Advisers that notes that such an amendment would make future recessions “deeper and longer.”
And according to CBPP, passing a Balanced Budget Amendment now, with the country trying to climb out of the hole of joblessness caused by the recession, would have the exact opposite affect one would expect policy makers to try and achieve. In fact, the budget cuts required by such an amendment now would double the unemployment rate and slide the country back into the throes of recession:
If the 2012 budget were balanced through spending cuts, those cuts would total about $1.5 trillion in 2012 alone, the analysis estimates. Those cuts would throw about 15 million more people out of work, double the unemployment rate from 9 percent to approximately 18 percent, and cause the economy to shrink by about 17 percent instead of growing by an expected 2 percent.
Yet, despite evidence that the amendment would have disastrous consequences for our economy, Republicans — even those who pitch themselves as credible on the economy, like former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney — continue to support it.
More at ThinkProgress.com
UPDATE: The House fell short of the votes necessary to approve a Balanced Budget Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in a largely sybolic exercise on Friday afternoon.
The House voted, 261 to 165, in favor of the amendment, which would prohibit federal spending in any fiscal year from exceeding tax receipts for that year. While a majority of the chamber favored the measure, two-thirds of the House — 290 members — is needed to approve an amendment to the Constitution.
Waterboarding, an interrogation technique that simulates drowning, was endorsed by Republican presidential candidates Herman Cain and Michele Bachmann in the latest GOP presidential debate.
‘They’re wrong,’ said Obama in a press conference. ‘Waterboarding is torture.’
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And Gingrich gets his turn near the top of the heap jumping 14 points as Cain drops back 11 points.
I should point out that NONE continues to get more votes than Rick Santorum.
CBS News’ 60 Minutes aired a report last night alleging that several members of Congress have traded stock using information they received during private briefings or meetings, enabling them to profit from inside information.
By far the most damning story was about House Financial Services Chairman Spencer Bachus (R-AL), who in 2008, the day after receiving a private briefing from the nation’s chief economic officials on the extent of the financial crisis, proceeded to bet that the stock market would tank:
In mid September 2008 with the Dow Jones Industrial average still above ten thousand, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke were holding closed door briefings with congressional leaders, and privately warning them that a global financial meltdown could occur within a few days. One of those attending was Alabama Representative Spencer Bachus, then the ranking Republican member on the House Financial Services Committee and now its chairman.
While Congressman Bachus was publicly trying to keep the economy from cratering, he was privately betting that it would, buying option funds that would go up in value if the market went down. He would make a variety of trades and profited at a time when most Americans were losing their shirts.
CBS also criticized House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) for trading health stocks right before the public option was officially killed and noted that former Rep. Dennis Hastert (R) and former Sen. Judd Gregg (R) profited from steering federal earmarks towards projects in which they had a financial stake.
Read more at ThinkProgress