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TNCRM’s Scott Rose Asks California Commission To Prosecute NOM

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The National Organization for Marriage‘s “Yes on 8” — the group responsible for getting Prop 8 on the ballot and getting it passed — has admitted guilt in 18 counts of violating California state election finance laws.

NOM now is hoping that the California Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC) will accept NOM’s offer to settle on NOM’s rampant law breaking for only $49,000.

This reporter sent the FPPC the message below, explaining why strict deterrent penalties must be imposed on the malevolently anti-gay NOM bigots who have admitted to breaking laws.

FPPC officials to whom this e-mail (below) was sent include Commission Chair Ann Ravel, Executive Director John Wallace, Chief of the Administration Division Tina Z. Bass, General Counsel Zackery P. Morazzini, Chief of the Technical Assistance Division Lynda Cassady, and Chief of the Enforcement Division Gary Winuk.

From:

Scott Rose
Minorities Anti-Defamation Professional

To the Entire California Fair Political Practices Commission:

This regards your case against the anti-gay-rights group “Yes on 8,” which is part of The National Organization for Marriage.

NOM is to American LGBTers what the KKK is to blacks and Jews.

NOM wants to settle your case against it, in order to evade full criminal justice accountability for its law-breaking ways.

Meanwhile, the organization is spending umpteen millions upon tens of millions around the country and the world, demonizing sexual minorities on the basis of known falsehoods (i.e. demonizing lies), hate-mongering and inspiring to violence against us.

In state after state, NOM has apparently violated election finance laws, and then tied up the courts bringing apparently frivolous challenges to the laws, not caring about the waste of tax payers’ resources in pursuing those apparently frivolous cases through appeals. If all of these NOM election law violations-related cases had been brought in a single court system, instead of the court systems of many different states, a court almost surely would already have barred NOM from filing any such cases in the future.

NOM must now be given an effective deterrent penalty for having broken at least 18 of California’s state campaign finance laws.

As stated above, NOM hate-mongers and incites to violence against sexual minorities.

NOM sponsors anti-gay hate rallies where its hand-selected speakers yell through megaphones that homosexuals are “worthy to death.”

To see a video of one such NOM anti-gay hate rally, go here.

NOM also incites people to believe that gays are not human. For example, NOM’s Wiliam Duncan led a symposium in an all-day anti-gay hate fest titled “Homosexuals or Homo Sapiens; Who Deserves Protected Class Status?” You can see documentation for NOM’s William Duncan having done that, here.

To spell this out for you: NOM says that homosexuals are not human and deserve to die.

We are sick and tired of these arrogant, tyrannical, hateful heterosupremacists believing that they are above the law.

Many top NOM officials also are top officials with other anti-gay hate groups. NOM founder Robert George, for example, is a board member of the Family Research Council, a Southern Poverty Law Center-certified anti-gay hate group. The SPLC classifies groups as hate groups when they continually promulgate demonizing lies against a minority. The SPCL 2012 Intelligence Report on NOM is titled “National Organization for Marriage Continues to Spread Lies Against Gays.” You can view that SLPC report here.

NOM founder Robert George also is senior fellow of The Witherspoon Institute, whose president Luis Tellez is a NOM board member.

The Witherspoon Institute funded a sociological “study” from the University of Texas at Austin’s Mark Regnerus, booby-trapped with malice aforethought to make gay parents look bad. First, Witherspoon/NOM gave Regnerus a $55,000 “planning grant” for a study on gay parents’ child outcomes. After seeing Regnerus’s “plan,” booby trapped to make gay parents look bad, Witherspoon/NOM arranged for Regnerus to have a known minimum total of $785,000 in study funding; a jaw-dropping amount for a sociological study that only surveyed 2,988 total people, only 250 of which were labelled, inappropriately and unscientifically, as having been raised by “same sex parents.”

Witherspoon/NOM have now fully weaponized that scientifically invalid study, and are deploying it pitilessly against gay people and their rights. You can read a letter signed by over 200 Ph.D.s and M.D.s, complaining about the study’s lack of intellectual integrity as well as about the suspicious circumstances under which it got published, here.

To read about the circumstances of the corrupt peer review through which the Witherspoon/NOM commissioned anti-gay hate speech got published in a scientific journal, go here.

Whereas Witherspoon and NOM share top officials in common, NOM is a 501(c)4 while Witherspoon is a tax exempt 501(c)3. There is a strong appearance that in its funding of the Regnerus “study,” Witherspoon and NOM were playing a tax laws shell game, paying for the Regnerus study through the 501(c)3 Witherspoon Institute, even though the study was conceived primarily for use as a NOM weapon to defeat President Obama. To read details about Witherspoon/NOM’s possible violations of IRS tax laws, go here.

As you see, NOM knows no boundaries for its violations of human decency in attacking its LGBT victims.

NOM now wants to settle with the Fair Political Practices Commission on its 18 counts of campaign finance law violations — for only $49,000 —  so it can move ahead as though nothing had happened, continuing to violate laws in its hateful and unwarranted attacks against gay human beings. As mentioned above, in state after state, NOM has apparently violated election finance laws, and then tied up the courts bringing apparently frivolous challenges to the laws, not caring about the waste of tax payers’ resources in pursuing those apparently frivolous cases through appeals. If all of these NOM election law violations-related cases had been brought in a single court system, instead of the court systems of many different states, a court almost surely would already have barred NOM from filing any such cases in the future.

NOM must now be given an effective deterrent penalty for having broken at least 18 of California’s state campaign finance laws.

A wrist-slap, easy-does-it settlement of $49,000 does not faze the malicious anti-gay bigots of NOM one iota. The “planning grant” they gave for a weaponized, fraudulent study booby trapped against gay parents was $55,000, leading to a full study grant of $785,000. And as mentioned above, NOM meanwhile is spending umpteen millions upon tens of millions around the country and the world, demonizing sexual minorities on the basis of known falsehoods (i.e. demonizing lies), hate-mongering and inspiring to violence against us.

NOM is laughing in advance at the California Fair Political Practices Commission, believing that the Commission will settle with NOM instead of referring NOM to appropriate authorities for criminal prosecution.

The California Fair Political Practices Commission absolutely must not allow NOM to have the last laugh in their 18 violations of state campaign finance laws.

Sincerely,

Scott Rose

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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OPINION

‘We Are Not Going to Stand for It’: McCarthy Defends Trump – Vows to Use Jim Jordan’s Committee to Target Attorney General

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The Republican Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, barely hours after the U.S. Dept. of Justice unsealed a 49-page, 37-felony count criminal indictment charging Donald Trump with violations of seven federal laws, decided to double-down on his defense of the ex-president by threatening to target the Attorney General of the United States and declaring House Republicans “are not going to stand for” the criminal prosecution of the ex-president.

McCarthy went on Fox News Friday afternoon, saying “this judgment is wrong by this DOJ. That they treated President Trump differently than they treat others. And it didn’t have to be this way. This is going to disrupt this nation because it goes to the core of equal justice for all – which is not being seen today and we are not going to stand for it.”

McCarthy, a California Republican who cobbled together a tenuous pact with far-right extremists to win his speakership on the 15th try, is incorrect on the facts.

RELATED: DOJ Unseals 37-Count Trump Criminal Indictment – Legal Expert Calls It ‘Egregious’ and ‘Devastating’ (Full Text)

The Dept. of Justice does not pass judgment, the courts – in this case a jury, does. The Dept. of Justice did not treat Trump “differently,” except to give him multiple opportunities over an approximately two-year period to return national secrets he allegedly unlawfully removed, retained, and refused to return, even after being served with a subpoena and a search warrant.

What McCarthy does not do is claim Trump’s actions were legal or reasonable, because the damning indictment makes clear they are not.

Later, McCarthy took to Twitter to effectively declare he would target the Attorney General of the United States, Merrick Garland, who – for nearly a quarter century – served as a federal appeals court judge and chief judge before being nominated to serve at Main Justice.

(Garland was nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court in 2016 but then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to allow the confirmation to move process forward.)

“Many officials, from Secretary Hillary Clinton to then-Senator Joe Biden, handled classified info after their time in office & were never charged,” tweeted the Speaker, not just wrongly, but grossly and dishonestly characterizing the allegations against Trump.

“Now Biden’s leading political opponent is indicted—a double standard that must be investigated,” he again dishonestly declared.

READ MORE: ‘Fail’: Critics Blast Youngkin for Claim Trump Is a Victim of ‘Politically Motivated Actions’ Just Like ‘Parents in Virginia’

President Joe Biden had nothing to do with the decision of the Special Counsel to ask a Florida grand jury for an indictment. Nor was the President even told before Trump was indicted – like every American, President Biden learned of the Trump indictment through news reports. Attorney General Garland did not sign off on the decision to ask a grand jury for an indictment.

McCarthy, meanwhile, vowed House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan and the House Republicans “will get answers.”

“Merrick Garland: the American people elected us to conduct oversight of you. We will fulfill that obligation,” he declared.

McCarthy made those remarks atop a Friday letter from Jordan to Garland that begins: “The Biden Department of Justice is reportedly about to indict a former president and President Biden’s chief rival in the upcoming presidential election.”

“According to reports, the Department will indict President Donald Trump, despite declining to indict former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for her mishandling of classified information and failing to indict President Biden for his mishandling of classified information.” (The letter does not mention former Vice President Mike Pence, who is not being charged for his mishandling of classified information.”

On Thursday a defiant and angry McCarthy, after Trump was indicted, wrote: “Today is indeed a dark day for the United States of America.”

“It is unconscionable for a President to indict the leading candidate opposing him,” he said, which is egregiously false – Biden did not indict Trump, nor did his Attorney General or even Special Counsel; a grand jury of Florida citizens did.

“Joe Biden kept classified documents for decades,” McCarthy charged, which is a legitimate claim and there is a current federal investigation underway. The difference is Biden did not take the documents, did not know they were among his papers, and immediately upon learning they were, contacted the National Archives to arrange their return.

Donald Trump, we now know, according to the indictment, packed some of the boxes himself, not only refused to return the documents but hid them from the Dept. of Justice and National Archives, lied about them, and kept them at times in public areas of his Florida resort and residence.

“I, and every American who believes in the rule of law,” McCarthy wrong declared, “stand with President Trump against this grave injustice. House Republicans will hold this brazen weaponization of power accountable.”

READ MORE: SCOTUS ‘Surprise’ Voting Rights Decision Could – and Did – Have Big Implications for Democrats, Legal Experts Say

In response to McCarthy’s remarks, U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) posted a photo from the DOJ’s indictment of Trump.

“These are the secrets that protect our troops. And Kevin McCarthy thinks it’s perfectly OK that Donald Trump stole and stored them like this,” he charged.

Watch the video and see Rep. Swalwell’s tweet above or at this link.

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RIGHT WING EXTREMISM

‘Fail’: Critics Blast Youngkin for Claim Trump Is a Victim of ‘Politically Motivated Actions’ Just Like ‘Parents in Virginia’

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Virginia Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin, a possible 2024 presidential candidate, is under fire after remarks he made Friday morning defending Donald Trump after the ex-president was indicted on what has now been revealed to be 37 federal felony counts related to the Dept. of Justice’s criminal probe into his handling of hundreds of classified and top secret documents.

Youngkin Friday suggested that the prosecution of Donald Trump, which includes Espionage Act charges, conspiracy charges, and obstruction of justice charges among others, was just like the alleged prosecution of parents.

Gov. Youngkin, often wrongly portrayed in the media as a moderate Republican, may have been attempting to invoke the false yet viral far-right claim that Attorney General Merrick Garland was investigating and prosecuting parents for merely speaking at school board meetings. That claim came about after Garland issued a letter asking the Bureau to come up with strategies to address violence and violent threats directed at school board members. Some who have promoted that erroneous claim, including Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, have falsely claimed Garland called ordinary parents “terrorists.”

On Friday, Youngkin tweeted about the Trump indictment, saying, “These charges are unprecedented and it’s a sad day for our country, especially in light of what clearly appears to be a two-tiered justice system where some are selectively prosecuted, and others are not.”

“Parents in Virginia know firsthand what it’s like to be targeted by politically motivated actions,” he added.

“Regardless of your party, this undermines faith in our judicial system at exactly the time when we should be working to restore that trust,” Youngkin concluded, remarks that themselves could undermine faith in our judicial system.

Days before his election, Youngkin also promoted the false Garland claim, even after the Attorney General that same day explained to the Senate Judiciary Committee his letter directed the FBI to investigate not ordinary parents, but people who were organizing attacks on school board members.

Candidate Youngkin appeared on Fox News in October 0f 2021 (video below) and falsely told Tucker Carlson, “What happened today was, of course, Merrick Garland doubled down. He said, ‘No, I’m absolutely maintaining my position that the DOJ and the FBI should be investigating parents.’ Parents who are trying to stand up for their children when there’s been a sexual assault in a school bathroom. We have a board of education and in Loudoun County that tried to hide it from parents, hide it from hiding from the public, and they move this child into another school and then that child again committed another sexual assault.”

READ MORE: DOJ Unseals 37-Count Trump Criminal Indictment – Legal Expert Calls It ‘Egregious’ and ‘Devastating’ (Full Text)

Youngkin made education and “parents’ rights” a campaign issue when he ran in 2021. His opponent, Democrat Terry McAuliffe, during a debate said, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” While experts claim it didn’t swing the election for Youngkin, it at least established him nationally as focused on education and “parental rights,” a mantle Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis quickly co-opted.

The Washington Post, alternatively, on Friday focused on Youngkin’s “two-tiered justice” remarks, reporting: “Youngkin’s suggestion that a rich White man — he didn’t actually name Trump — had been victimized by a ‘two-tiered justice system’ drew fierce pushback, with many critics noting the governor’s opposition to the notion that racial and ethnic minorities face systemic racism. The Republican won the governorship on a promise to purge ‘critical race theory’ from K-12 classrooms, though it was not part of any curriculum. Once in office, Youngkin launched a tip line for parents to report on teachers discussing ‘inherently divisive’ concepts in schools.”

Youngkin, who technically is a “populist conservative” but swings far-right on social issues, was quickly chastised for his tweet.

“You know what you are staying is wrong and incendiary. Shame on you,” declared former CIA officer John Sipher. “These charges stemmed from a grand [jury] of Florida citizens. Trump will have access to a Fair process. But instead you spread information to anger and confuse people. You are stoking misinformation and violence.”

READ MORE: SCOTUS ‘Surprise’ Voting Rights Decision Could – and Did – Have Big Implications for Democrats, Legal Experts Say

MSNBC’s Chris Hayes took a different approach, mocking the Virginia Republican.

“It’s the pivot to ‘Parents in Virginia…’ in the third sentence that elevates this to art,” he wrote.

“The moderate, genial suburban dad in a fleece vest suggests that the only way to restore confidence in the justice system is to place Trump above the law,” wrote The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent, also mocking Youngkin.

“Youngkin is pro-Trump, as usual–even though Virginia voted heavily AGAINST Trump in both 2016 and 2020. When it comes to Donald Trump, Liz Cheney has more courage in her pinky than Youngkin does in his whole body,” observed Larry Sabato, the well-known professor of politics, political analyst, and founder and director of University of Virginia’s Center for Politics.

The vice president of research for the liberal super PAC American Bridge 21st Century, Liz Charboneau, called Youngkin’s tweet an “especially stupid statement when a large portion of your state has a security clearance, handles classified documents, and has never been charged under the espionage act.”

Conservative Mona Charen, a syndicated columnist and Policy Editor at The Bulwark: “So here’s our answer as to whether Youngkin is a man of character. Fail.”

The Lincoln Project’s Michelle Kinney tweeted, “Youngkin twisting himself into pretzel to weave a vaguebook repudiation of Trump indictment and his weirdo anti vaxx anti trans ‘parents rights’ obsession into one tweet. It reads like Veep dialogue.”

Historian, professor, Holocaust expert Dr. Waitman Wade Beorn tweeted, “Hey dude, the Pentagon is literally in your state. Maybe stop in and have a chat…”

Watch the video above or at this link.

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BREAKING NEWS

Watch Live: Special Counsel Jack Smith Holds News Conference After Trump Criminal Indictment Unsealed

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Special Counsel Jack Smith will hold a news conference Friday at 3:00 PM ET, after the U.S. Dept. of Justice unsealed its 49-page 37-criminal count indictment against Donald Trump. The indictment also names a Trump aide.

Legal experts reviewing the indictment were stunned at not only the level of detail but the manner in which Trump treated classified documents, including allegedly storing them in boxes on the stage at Mar-a-Lago, in a bathroom, a shower, and a bedroom.

Former Dept. of Defense special Counsel Ryan Goodman, now an NYU professor of law, calls the indictment “devastating,” and concludes: “Extraordinary risks to U.S. national security. Foreign adversaries would pay tens of millions for that info.”

READ MORE: ‘Disgraced’ Trump-Appointed Florida Judge Initially Assigned to Oversee Ex-President’s Criminal Case: Report

Smith, who was appointed by Donald Trump as an acting U.S. Attorney, also prosecuted war crimes cases at The Hague. he also was the head of the DOJ’s Public Integrity Section.

Watch video of his full news conference below or at this link.

This article has been updated to include full video of the completed news conference.

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