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John Boehner Signals Intent To Destroy Gay Rights Around The World

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John Boehner‘s March 23 appointment of National Organization For Marriage (NOM) founder and Chairman Emeritus Robert George to the United States Commission for International Religious Freedom is a Republican signal of intent to roll back civil and human rights for gay people in the U.S. and around the world.

None of the major gay rights groups appear to grasp the full seriousness of what Speaker Boehner has signaled. Here is HRC’s wan statement on George’s appointment.

So let me now repeat this truth: Boehner’s appointment of the professional political gay-basher Robert George to the U.S. Commission for International Religious Freedom is a Republican signal of intent to roll back civil and human rights for gay people in the U.S. and around the world. Imagine for a moment that Romney wins the presidency, that Republicans have control of at least the Congress, and that an anti-gay Republican is named Secretary of State. The scenario at this date appears within a range of possibility.  Should it in reality occur, Hillary Clinton’s gay rights address in Geneva will be put into the wood chipper, and replaced with an aggressive U.S. strategy of rolling back gay rights advances at home and abroad.

As NOM’s quiet-behind-the-scenes mastermind, George of course at least helped to write and promote the maliciously anti-gay NOM pledge signed by the presumed Republican nominee Mitt Romney.

If you do not understand Robert George’s wholesale antipathy and contempt for gay human beings, read this. George in sum believes that all gay people inherently have no dignity, are dirty, inferior and not worthy of rights, and should be fined and imprisoned for being intimate with each other.

Already, it was the case that George had communications access to all leading Republicans; Boehner now has positioned him to help to carry out anti-gay measures worldwide, including in the U.S., and particularly should Republicans gain political ground in the 2012 elections.

Any decent human being should consider that George’s mentality is antithetical to the mission of the U.S. Commission for International Religious Freedom. Ideally, the Commission, which makes policy recommendations to the U.S. President, Department of State and Congress, should aim to promote harmony between and for minority populations overseas. George’s group NOM has developed and implemented race-baiting strategies to pit American minorities against each other; how can the monster who approves of that possibly make sane recommendations to the U.S. government for promoting harmony for and among minorities overseas?

The very thought that George is genuinely interested in “religious freedom” is preposterous. He certainly does not give a hang about the religious freedoms of clergy who wish to be able to marry gay and/or lesbian couples.

We must, with a sense of urgency, raise an alarm and send a message that we can not accept as a U.S. government figure a monster whose organization sponsors anti-gay hate rallies where attendees are told that homosexuals are “worthy to death.”

At this link is a petition to the White House, asking it to condemn Boehner’s appointment of the gay-bashing Robert George to the Commission. The petition needs 25,000 signatures by April 27, 2012 in order to get a response from the White House.  Now, are you going to settle for HRC’s quiet little nothing of a press release about this matter, or are you going to sign and re-distribute the petition, as part of taking a stand against Republicans’ ambition of throwing Hillary Clinton’s gay rights speech into the wood chipper, and gay rights here and abroad into the trash?

 

Image: John Boeher, left; Robert P. George, top right; NOM, the National Organization For Marriage logo, bottom right.
 

New York City– based novelist and freelance writer Scott Rose’s LGBT– interest by– line has appeared on Advocate .com, PoliticusUSA .com, The New York Blade, Queerty .com, Girlfriends and in numerous additional venues. Among his other interests are the arts, boating and yachting, wine and food, travel, poker and dogs. His “Mr. David Cooper’s Happy Suicide” is about a New York City advertising executive assigned to a condom account.

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‘We’d Bomb Mexico’: Republican Breaks Ranks and Blasts Trump Over ‘WMDs’

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U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) delivered sharp criticism of President Donald Trump’s policy of using military force to destroy vessels the U.S. Department of Defense believes are smuggling illicit drugs, including fentanyl, to the United States.

Critics have called the strikes illegal, murder, and war crimes. Earlier this week, President Trump signed an executive order designating illicit fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction.

“The framers understood a simple truth,” Congressman Massie said on the House floor on Wednesday. “To the extent that war-making power devolves to one person, liberty dissolves. If the president believes military action against Venezuela is justified and needed, he should make the case, and Congress should vote — before American lives and treasure are spent on regime change in South America.”

The U.S. Constitution vests the power to declare war in Congress.

READ MORE: ‘Negative, Negative, Negative’: Trump Faces Bleak Midterm Prospects Says Analyst

“Let’s be honest about likely outcomes,” Massie continued, “Do we truly believe that Nicolás Maduro will be replaced by a modern-day George Washington? How did that work out? In Cuba, Libya, Iraq, or Syria?”

“Previous presidents told us to go to war over WMDs,” he said, referring to weapons of mass destruction, the alleged reason President George W. Bush took America to war against Iraq. “Weapons of mass destruction that did not exist.”

“Now, it’s the same playbook, except we’re told that drugs are the WMDs,” Massie explained.

“If it were about drugs, we’d bomb Mexico, or China, or Colombia. And the president would not have pardoned Juan Orlando Hernández,” he said, the former president of Honduras serving time in a U.S. prison after having been convicted of drug trafficking.

Massie also issued a warning: “This is about oil and regime change.”

READ MORE: FCC Scrubs Website After Chair’s ‘Independent Agency’ Assertion Ignites Heated Clash

 

Image via Reuters

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‘Negative, Negative, Negative’: Trump Faces Bleak Midterm Prospects Says Analyst

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Can President Donald Trump break a pattern held by several of his predecessors — rebounding into a positive net approval rating by next year’s midterm elections?

It will be challenging but not impossible, says CNN forecaster Harry Enten, who noted that if he doesn’t, it could spell trouble for congressional Republicans on the November ballot.

“I would say the report card is negative,” Enten said on Wednesday. “It’s minus. It’s no good.”

READ MORE: FCC Scrubs Website After Chair’s ‘Independent Agency’ Assertion Ignites Heated Clash

Enten then shared a critical statistic.

“Every single day since March 12th, Trump has been in the red. Negative. That is days in row, 281. He has spent more time underwater than Jacques Cousteau, for goodness’ sake.”

“The bottom line is this, the American people don’t like what Trump’s doing, and they haven’t liked what Trump’s doing for a long period of time: 281 days,” he explained, noting that his net negatives are on “all the key issues.”

“He’s underwater across the board.”

“Immigration, a key issue for him: underwater by six points. Foreign policy, which has been one of his better issues, underwater by 14 points. Trade and tariffs, of course, this has been a key component of Trump’s presidency: underwater by 15 points.”

READ MORE: Trump Bets ‘Dangling’ Cash Will Shift Voters’ Views: Report

“The economy, the reason Trump got elected to a second term, underwater by 16 points, and the Epstein case — which I think will be talking a lot about going into the latter part of this week — underwater by 29 points. Negative, negative, negative, negative, negative,” he exclaimed.

Enten noted that there are still ten and a half months until the midterms.

“But if history is any guide, it’s not a good one for you, because take a look at your term two, negative net approval ratings at this point, when positive by the midterm, well, we have three examples: Richard Nixon, he was forced out of office, of course. He never went positive. George W. Bush, he never saw positive territory again. Barack Obama earlier this century, he did not go positive by the midterm.”

And now, “It’s just negative across the board for the president of the United States. He is, again, gonna have to break history. He has done it before, but he’s really gonna have to do it if he really wants to give his Republican Party much of a chance come the 2026 midterms, because if the numbers look like this and look like this, well, this will become another X.”

READ MORE: GOP Crack-Up Continues as Another House Republican Calls It Quits

 

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FCC Scrubs Website After Chair’s ‘Independent Agency’ Assertion Ignites Heated Clash

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The Federal Communications Commission (FCC), established by Congress in 1934 as an independent agency to regulate a wide swath of communications, is not an independent agency, according to its Trump-appointed chairman, during a raucous debate on Capitol Hill.

The FCC has jurisdiction over radio, broadcast television, satellite, and cable communications, and oversees licensing of broadcasters, with some authority to revoke licenses for regulatory or technical violations.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly called for the licenses of outlets he has criticized to be revoked.

In a heated debate, U.S. Senator Ben Ray Luján (D-NM) challenged FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, a Project 2025 author, over the agency’s independence.

“Yes or no, please, yes or no?” Senator Luján asked Carr during a Commerce Committee oversight hearing on Wednesday. “Is the FCC an independent agency?”

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When Carr immediately declared, “I think that…” Luján pulled him back.

“Yes or no, is all we need, sir. Yes or no, is it independent?” the New Mexico Democrat asked again.

“Well, there’s a test for this in the law, in the key portion of that test,” Carr replied.

“Yes or no, Brendan,” Luján again asked.

“So just so you know, Brendan,” the senator continued, “on your website, it just simply says, man, the FCC’s independent. This isn’t a trick question.”

“Okay, the FCC is not…” Carr began.

“Yes or no?”

After more back and forth, Carr ultimately declared, “the FCC is not an independent agency.”

The Bulwark reported that in 2021 Carr declared that the FCC is an independent agency.

The Bulwark’s Sam Stein reported early Wednesday afternoon, “FCC folks have been frantically scrubbing their website to remove reference to it being an ‘independent’ agency now that Carr this morning said it’s not.”

An archived version of the FCC’s website reads: “An independent U.S. government agency overseen by Congress, the Commission is the federal agency responsible for implementing and enforcing America’s communications law and regulations.”

READ MORE: GOP Crack-Up Continues as Another House Republican Calls It Quits

That page now calls it a “U.S. government agency overseen by Congress.”

Axios’ media correspondent Sara Fischer on social media declared, “This is INSANE. I took this screenshot of the @FCC website at 11:52 a.m. ET where it explicitly states the FCC is an independent agency. 25 minutes later, it has been removed following Carr’s comments during this hearing!”

“This, combined with SCOTUS appearing poised to uphold POTUS firing of FTC commissioners,” Fischer added, “shows how effective Trump has been in diminishing the independence of federal agencies that are supposed to regulate the media/ad/tech industries.”

READ MORE: White House Teases Out What Trump Will Say in Rare Oval Office Address

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