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Farewell Hillary For the Moment: Rest, Relax and Keep the Door Open to 2016!

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Hillary Clinton departs her post as Secretary of State today to an unknown future. While millions of supporters wish her well, she no doubt deserves to take a long rest, as many fervently hope for a Clinton presidential run in 2016

 Today marks the end of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s tenure as America’s chief diplomat and she goes out on the top enjoying sky high public approval marks of 69 to 66 percent from the American public.  Having been removed from the rough and tumble of the day-to-day fights of domestic politics during the past four years, her time in the international arena has served her well.  She steps off to a well deserved rest after logging nearly one million air miles (minus the bonus points for a mileage club) to visit 112 countries, as she championed women’s and girl’s human rights, but in the process she also became the idol of the American LGBT community and a heroine to LGBT activists around the world.

As Secretary of State, Hillary routinely ripped off the “L-G-B-T” acronym in human rights speeches like most people can say “A-B-C-D;” all the while most politicians, particularly those faint-hearted ones who usually avoid saying it or using it–including President Obama, who more times than not, uses the generic “gay” reference in his speeches.  As she  steps down, no other politician in America  is as beloved within the LGBT community as Hillary Clinton.  From the Democratic National Committee to Planned Parenthood and the Human Rights Campaign, progressive groups are capitalizing on her popularity, furiously sending out appeals as she leaves public life to rack up names and personal data of her supporters and raise some cash for their causes.

In the earliest days of her tenure, she told State Department bureaucrats to give foreign service officers and their same-sex partners every legal benefit that should be availed to them, not withstanding the Defense of Marriage Act.  And she reformed criteria making it much easier for transgender persons to access passports.  She told the staff, let’s find a way to accommodate our LGBT employees and treat them with dignity and respect.

A workhorse to the end, just yesterday she made one final appearance in the Benjamin Franklin Room at the State Department to deliver one last acknowledgement to a myriad of public-private partnerships launched during her tenure.  And of course she pointedly included a tip of the hat to the Global Equality Fund for LGBT human rights launched in conjunction with the Geneva speech:

 

 

“We’re also expanding on some of our successful partnerships. In 2011, I launched the Global Equality Fund to promote and protect the human rights of LGBT persons around the world. And I want to welcome the Governments of Norway, the Netherlands, and France to this partnership. And I thank the Arcus Foundation and MAC AIDS Fund for their recent contributions. Also with us is Michel Togue, a human rights lawyer from Cameroon who has fought tirelessly to defend LGBT persons with support from this fund, and we greatly applaud his commitment and his courage.”

 

https://youtube.com/watch?v=MudnsExyV78

 

The New Civil Rights Movement leaves our readers with her powerful words delivered in “the speech” in Geneva:

“…Some have suggested that gay rights and human rights are separate and distinct; but, in fact, they are one and the same. Now, of course, 60 years ago, the governments that drafted and passed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights were not thinking about how it applied to the LGBT community. They also weren’t thinking about how it applied to indigenous people or children or people with disabilities or other marginalized groups. Yet in the past 60 years, we have come to recognize that members of these groups are entitled to the full measure of dignity and rights, because, like all people, they share a common humanity.

This recognition did not occur all at once. It evolved over time. And as it did, we understood that we were honoring rights that people always had, rather than creating new or special rights for them. Like being a woman, like being a racial, religious, tribal, or ethnic minority, being LGBT does not make you less human. And that is why gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights.

It is violation of human rights when people are beaten or killed because of their sexual orientation, or because they do not conform to cultural norms about how men and women should look or behave. It is a violation of human rights when governments declare it illegal to be gay, or allow those who harm gay people to go unpunished. It is a violation of human rights when lesbian or transgendered women are subjected to so-called corrective rape, or forcibly subjected to hormone treatments, or when people are murdered after public calls for violence toward gays, or when they are forced to flee their nations and seek asylum in other lands to save their lives. And it is a violation of human rights when life-saving care is withheld from people because they are gay, or equal access to justice is denied to people because they are gay, or public spaces are out of bounds to people because they are gay. No matter what we look like, where we come from, or who we are, we are all equally entitled to our human rights and dignity.

The second issue is a question of whether homosexuality arises from a particular part of the world. Some seem to believe it is a Western phenomenon, and therefore people outside the West have grounds to reject it. Well, in reality, gay people are born into and belong to every society in the world. They are all ages, all races, all faiths; they are doctors and teachers, farmers and bankers, soldiers and athletes; and whether we know it, or whether we acknowledge it, they are our family, our friends, and our neighbors.

Being gay is not a Western invention; it is a human reality. And protecting the human rights of all people, gay or straight, is not something that only Western governments do. South Africa’s constitution, written in the aftermath of Apartheid, protects the equality of all citizens, including gay people. In Colombia and Argentina, the rights of gays are also legally protected. In Nepal, the supreme court has ruled that equal rights apply to LGBT citizens. The Government of Mongolia has committed to pursue new legislation that will tackle anti-gay discrimination…”

Get some rest Secretary Clinton.  Put your feet up.  Get regular massages.  See your doctor. Take your vitamins.  Write a book.  And then, you know…run, run one more time in 2016.  We will be waiting for you.   
Tanya domi 1.2010Tanya L. Domi is the Deputy Editor of the New Civil Rights Movement blog.  She is also an Adjunct Assistant Professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University and teaches human rights in East Central Europe and former Yugoslavia.  Prior to teaching at Columbia, Domi was a nationally recognized LGBT civil rights activist who worked for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force during the campaign to lift the military ban in the early 1990s. Domi has also worked internationally in a dozen countries on issues related to democratic transitional development, including political and media development, human rights and gender issues.  She is chair of the board of directors for GetEQUAL.  Domi is currently writing a book about the emerging LGBT human rights movement in the Western Balkans.

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‘Fool or a Liar’: GOP Knives Out for ‘A–hole’ Matt Gaetz as Vote to Oust McCarthy Appears Likely to Succeed

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House Republicans are expressing outrage at one of their own, U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), who by day’s end may succeed or come close to ousting Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy for relying on Democrats’ votes to keep the federal government from shutting down Saturday night.

“I prefer, you know, common sense over chaos,” Republican Congressman Anthony D’Esposito, who referred to Congressman Gaetz as an “a–hole,” told Fox News on Tuesday.

“I think that we should be focused on governance rather than grandstanding, and the fact that we have one a–hole that is holding us up and holding America up is a real problem,” D’Esposito added.

Far-right Republican Derrick Van Orden told CNN’s Manu Raju that Gaetz is “either a fool or a liar.”

“I’m telling you,” warned Republican Andy Barr of Kentucky, “it definitely puts the majority in jeopardy when you see disunity.”

READ MORE: Trump Has Now ‘Crossed the Line Into Criminal Threats’: Top Legal Scholar

GOP Rep. Steve Womack of Arkansas said, “I think it’s sending a terrible message to the electorate in advance of the 2024 election that this Republican majority could not govern itself.”

On camera, another Republican called Gaetz “a chaos agent,” and another said: “I don’t have tolerance for some pseudo psycho political fetish.”

Still another warned, “I think it’s sending a terrible signal to the electorate in advance of the ’24 election, that this Republican majority cannot govern itself.”

Watch below or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Sodom and Gomorrah’: ND Republican Unleashes Anti-LGBTQ Christian Nationalist Rant Calling for ‘Christ Is King’ Laws

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‘Probably So’: McCarthy Says His Speakership Likely Will End After Vote

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The Republican Speaker, Kevin McCarthy, is acknowledging his leadership of the U.S. House of Representatives “probably” is about to end.

“If five Republicans go with Democrats, then I’m out,” McCarthy, sounding resigned to his possible future, told reporters late Tuesday morning. The Speaker acknowledged that if all Democrats vote against him in a vote schedule for Tuesday afternoon, and just five Republicans join them, he will lose his job.

“That looks likely,” ABC’s Rachel Scott told McCarthy.

“Probably so,” he responded.

There are currently at least five Republicans who say they will vote to oust McCarthy, according to CNN’s Haley Talbot, as of last Monday night.

Democrats on Tuesday have said they will not support McCarthy.

U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) has been on a campaign to oust McCarthy, who was elected Speaker in January but only after the House voted 15 times before granting him the gavel. That gavel came with public and private concessions, among them, that any one member of the House could initiate a “motion to vacate,” which Gaetz did Monday night.

Gaetz claims he is working to strip McCarthy of the Speakership because he reached across the aisle and accepted votes from Democrats very late on Saturday to avoid what had been an almost-certain shutdown of the federal government. But McCarthy has long contended for Gaetz it’s “personal,” because the Speaker would not intervene to save Gaetz from a re-opened House Ethics Committee investigation into possible violations including sexual misconduct, unlawful drug use, and public corruption.

if Republicans do succeed on the motion to vacate, there currently is no one named to replace McCarthy. That would leave the position that is second in line to the presidency vacant.

Watch today’s House session live below, starting at 11:45 AM, see his remarks to reporters above, or watch both at this link.

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Trump Has Now ‘Crossed the Line Into Criminal Threats’: Top Legal Scholar

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As Donald Trump’s rhetoric grows increasingly menacing and threatening, experts are again sounding the alarm.

It’s been weeks since Special Counsel Jack Smith asked U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan to impose a narrow limitation on the ex-president in the case charging him with attempting to overturn the 2020 election. It likely will be weeks until that Judge Chutkan announces a decision.

In the mean time, Trump continues to make disparaging remarks and what some have suggested are thinly-veiled threats or calls to action to his supporters against those he perceives as his enemies.

Trump recently suggested that his former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, “in times gone by” would have been executed for treason.

READ MORE: Gaetz Needs Just Five Republicans to Oust McCarthy – He Already Has Three

Milley’s perceived “treasonous” crime, according to Trump? Making a White House approved call to China to let them know Trump wasn’t planning to attack China, as the AP reported.

Last month, Trump wrote on Truth Social that General Milley “was actually dealing with China to give them a heads up on the thinking of the President of the United States. This is an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH! A war between China and the United States could have been the result of this treasonous act.”

Special Counsel Jack Smith included that post in his communication with Judge Chutkan on Friday.

Monday morning, inside a Manhattan courthouse before the start of New York Attorney General Letitia James’ $250 million civil fraud case, Trump unleashed an angry rant in front of news cameras, saying, “You ought to go after this attorney general.” He also called New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron a “rogue judge.”

He added, “now I have to go before a rogue judge, as a continuation of Russia, Russia, Russia, as a continuation of the greatest witch hunt of all time. And I don’t think the people of this country are going to stand for it.”

These were just Trump’s remarks at the start of the day. He faced the cameras two other times, during the lunch break and after the day’s proceedings had ended.

READ MORE: ‘Sodom and Gomorrah’: ND Republican Unleashes Anti-LGBTQ Christian Nationalist Rant Calling for ‘Christ Is King’ Laws

Describing Trump’s remarks, Vanity Fair’s Bess Levin wrote: “Speaking to reporters outside the courtroom, Trump called the case a ‘witch hunt’ and ‘a disgrace,’ saying, ‘You ought to go after this attorney general,’ because if there’s one thing the man loves, it’s a not-so-veiled threat against his enemies.”

Harvard University Professor Emeritus Laurence Tribe, a legal scholar and expert on the U.S. Constitution, on Monday warned Trump’s remarks “crossed the line into criminal threats.”

“Trump’s 1st Amendment freedom of speech includes the right to express his racist views about anyone, including Attorney General Letitia James,” Tribe wrote. “But he has no right to foment violence against her. He crossed the line into criminal threats when he said ‘you ought to go after this attorney general.'”

Former Chicago Tribune editor Mark Jacob, responding to the video, writes: “When Trump says “you ought to go after this attorney general,” we know what he means. Some call it stochastic terrorism, but I call it puppetmaster terrorism. He’s telling his crazed followers who the targets are.”

See the post and video above or at this link.

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