Topic - ThinkProgress

Republican Party of Virginia Treasurer Bob FitzSimmonds, a former aide to and “very close friend” of gubernatorial nominee Ken Cuccinelli II (R), told Virginia blogger Ben Tribbett that he is “not a big fan of contraception, frankly.” FitzSimmonds — who was Cuccinelli’s legislative director during his time in the Virginia Senate, as well as a [...]

Black passengers trying to hail a cab in the District of Columbia are 25 percent less likely to get picked up, according to a hidden camera investigation by local DC news program WUSA 9. Over the course of three weeks, WUSA 9 anchors examined almost 100 taxis on Saturday night between 6:00 pm and 2:00 [...]

At a congressional committee hearing to discuss a proposed measure to criminalize abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, a Texas lawmaker told a woman who made the difficult choice to terminate a non-viable pregnancy that she should have carried the fetus to term anyway — even though an MRI had already revealed that he was [...]

In a floor speech Wednesday, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) falsely claimed that the debt ceiling is critical to saving future generations from inheriting a crippling national debt. Rubio, who is widely expected to seek his party’s presidential nomination in 2016, insisted that the Senate forbid its budget conferees from including an increase to the debt [...]

The trailer for the upcoming Civil War drama Copperhead conveniently doesn’t mention that the movement its titular characters were affiliated with wanted the Union to make a peace with the Confederacy that would allow for the preservation of slavery, and that it was naive enough to believe the Confederacy would come back to the Union [...]

The bridge is yours. I’ll be out of the office tomorrow, but posts should go up in my absence. Have a great long weekend! -Well, this is an unhappy format for a reality show. -Honey Boo Boo as American cultural ambassador. -Indie games won’t be able to self-publish on XBox One. -Blake Shelton is doing [...]

At a May 16 televised forum on the recovery from Superstorm Sandy, a former top military infrastructure official called on Americans to “stop ignoring” climate change and “realize it’s the new reality.” At the Sandy town hall organized by public television stations NJTV and WNET, John Boulé, the former commander of the New York District, [...]

I’m glad we’ve got the first trailer for Don Jon, the directorial debut of Joseph Gordon-Levitt, because it gives me an opportunity to talk about something I’ve been thinking about since I saw it at SXSW this year. As romantic comedies have hit a financial and creative rough spot, one of the best responses to [...]

Rep. Jim Bridenstine (R-OK) is not happy about the pressure on the Boy Scouts of America to allow gay Scouts, a decision being weighed today by Scout leaders from across the country. Earlier this week, he spent some time on the House floor decrying the “intolerant Left” because of how it “bullies and browbeats” the [...]

On MSNBC’s Morning Joe Thursday morning, panelist John Heilemann got into a heated argument with GOP Chairman Reince Priebus over President Obama’s role in the targeting of conservative groups applying for 501(c)4 status. Priebus offered a series of comments trying to tie Obama to the scandal — which Republicans have attempted to frame the IRS [...]

Welcome to The Morning Pride, ThinkProgress LGBT’s daily round-up of the latest in LGBT policy, politics, and some culture too! Here’s what we’re reading this morning, but please let us know what stories you’re following as well. Follow us all day on Twitter at @TPEquality. - Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval (R) has signed into law [...]

McMinnville, Oregon Police brutally assaulted a man who was neither being arrested nor accused of any crime, according to dashboard camera footage and an internal police review recently acquired by Portland’s Newschannel 8. Hipolito Aranda was watching the police conduct a DUI investigation on February 13th, 2010, when he was approached and frisked by Sgt. [...]

Bishop E.W. Jackson, the Republican nominee to be the next Lieutenant Governor of Virginia, does not believe that victims of the Oklahoma tornado should receive any federal aid to help them rebuild their lives. In video from a previous campaign first posted by Right Wing Watch, Jackson claims that federal relief to disaster victims is [...]

As Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld supported the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” recognizing that the time for open service in the military “had arrived.” In an interview with Larry King, however, Rumsfeld explained that he doesn’t support marriage equality, because he’s concerned it will lead to polygamy. He also doesn’t believe marriage is [...]

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett (R-PA) brushed away a question about Latinos working in his administration during a roundtable discussion at The Union League in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on Friday, telling the moderator, “If you can find us one let me know”: MODERATOR: Do you have staff members that are Latino? CORBETT: No, we do not have [...]

The bridge is yours. -Nashville undergoes changes as it prepares for season two. -Jennifer Westfeldt joins season three of Girls. -I’ll believe this when I see it, but Steven Spielberg is producing a Halo series for X-Box. -General Zod has some thoughts for us:

Birtherism is passe these days, save for a few Onoda-esque holdouts. The new conspiracy, if E.W. Jackson gets his way: Harry Reid is faking his faith. Jackson, a highly-controversial figure thrown into the limelight after Virginia Republicans nominated him to be their Lieutenant Governor nominee this past weekend, argued that Reid was just pretending to [...]

The biggest banks were already huge before the financial crisis, and concentration in the banking industry was in fact one of the causes of the crash. Yet they have gotten even bigger since then. Just 12 banks, 0.2 percent, control nearly 70 percent of total bank assets, and the 20 biggest hold assets equal to [...]

Welcome to The Morning Pride, ThinkProgress LGBT’s daily round-up of the latest in LGBT policy, politics, and some culture too! Here’s what we’re reading this morning, but please let us know what stories you’re following as well. Follow us all day on Twitter at @TPEquality. - The Peace Corps will now accept applications from same-sex [...]

The most expensive prison in the world recently became even more costly. The Guantanamo Bay prison is badly in need of renovation and it’s going to cost the American taxpayer nearly $200 million to do it. “The mess hall, the barracks for my military personnel down there are just ramshackle,” Southern Command commander Gen. John [...]

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) vociferously defended Apple during a Senate hearing on Tuesday, as the tech giant fought against accusations that it used foreign subsidiares to dodge billions of dollars in taxes. The Tea Party favorite, who is openly considering a 2016 presidential bid, accused the government of “bullying” Apple and issued a personal apology [...]

Abercrombie and Fitch’s policy of not stocking women’s pants larger than a size ten, or women’s sizes XL and XXL—though it stocks those sizes for men, because while men can be big because they’re muscular and athletic, there’s no way women could possibly be larger than a size ten without being hideously heavy or freakishly [...]

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II (R), the Republican nominee for governor, endorsed his newly-nominated running mate, Bishop E.W. Jackson Sr., but refused to say whether he agreed with Jackson’s myriad controversial comments. Cuccinelli told a crowd in Abingdon, VA on Monday that he wants Jackson, as Lt. Governor, breaking ties in the currently split [...]

The big tornado outbreak, including a monster Oklahoma twister, have people asking again about a possible link to climate change. I’ll review the science in this post. “The news helicopter from kfor.com caught this image of the shocking near-total destruction of a huge area of Moore, Oklahoma, on May 20, 2013.” Via Masters. Tom Karl, the [...]

The bridge is yours. -NBC has closed the inevitable loop and ordered a scripted show about a reality series. -I’d be curious to see what folks think of James Fallows’ take on Kevin Spacey. -Crime spree in Cannes. -Tim Goodman, preaching on the practice of burning of unaired TV shows. -I am terrified by the [...]

Unionization levels have been falling for decades and last year hit a low not seen in a century, with just 11.3 percent of workers represented. That’s the lowest level since 1916. Strikes, one of the greatest sources of power for labor unions, have also become increasingly rare. That’s bad news for the middle class. In [...]

Thousands marched Monday night in New York City to denounce the recent rash of anti-gay violence, including the murder of Mark Carson this weekend. The march to the spot where Carson was shot was led by City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, and Edie Windsor, the plaintiff in the Supreme Court challenge of the Defense of [...]

Kanye West’s debuted a new song, “New Slaves,” for a mass audience on Saturday Night Live this weekend, and as an art project last Friday, projecting a video for the song on buildings in London, Chicago, New York, and Sydney. Among those locations was the Prada store Fifth Avenue: It’s a fitting choice of venue, [...]

by Brad Johnson, campaign manager of Forecast the Facts In the wake of Superstorm Sandy, New York City’s flagship public television station, WNET, has dropped the richest man in New York, carbon pollution billionaire David Koch, from its board of trustees. Days before the monthly board meeting on May 16, Koch’s name was removed from [...]

President Obama delivered the commencement speech this weekend at Morehouse College, an historically black all-male liberal arts school in Georgia. His remarks were remarkably gay-inclusive, challenging the graduates to be the best husband they can be even if their partner isn’t female, and to recognize the kind of oppression other groups experience, including gays and [...]

At its nominating convention Saturday, the Republican Party of Virginia selected three candidates for the November 2013 statewide elections. Their selections — Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II for governor, Bishop E.W. Jackson for lieutenant governor, and State Senator Mark Obenshain for attorney general — represent three of the most vocally anti-LGBT figures in the history [...]

The bridge is yours. -Anything that means more America Ferrera on television is good news to me. -Apple hits 50 billion app downloads. -Get ready for a content boom in Hollywood. -Pairing up the Game of Thrones characters with OK Cupid. -It cannot be Anchorman 2-o’clock soon enough:

One congressman is so vehemently opposed to Obamacare that he’s willing to sacrifice his own health insurance in order to make a point. Rep. Mark Amodei (R-NV), who entered Congress in 2011, was asked last week prior to the House’s vote to repeal Obamacare whether he would be giving up his own government-sponsored health insurance. [...]

Late Friday night, a gunman claiming to be the Newtown shooter chased after 32-year-old Mark Carson through the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City shouting homophobic slurs at him, and ultimately shot him in the face. Carson was pronounced dead upon arrival at Beth Israel Medical Center. After an ensuing policing chase, the suspect [...]

On Sunday, during an appearance on Meet The Press, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) — the GOP leader in the senate — distanced himself from Republican efforts to portray the Obama administration’s response to the attacks on a U.S. diplomatic issue in Benghazi, Libya as a Watergate-level scandal that should result in impeachment. McConnell’s comments come [...]

Matt Kasper is the Special Assistant for Energy Policy at the Center for American Progress. On Wednesday night, Minnesota State Representative Glenn Gruenhagen (R-Glencoe) took to the House floor to talk about climate change and renewable energy. Using sources such as the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), Gruenhagen told his colleagues that climate change is [...]

Gabriel Gomez, the Republican nominee to fill John Kerry’s open Senate seat in Massachusetts, Tweeted a stunning attack against his opponent Friday, claiming, without any apparent justification, that a campaign ad by Rep. Ed Markey (D) blamed him personally for the Newtown shooting. Markey’s ad correctly notes that Gomez opposes a federal assault weapons ban [...]

Gina McCarthy finally got a vote. The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee held a hearing yesterday to vote on McCarthy’s nomination to be the next EPA Administrator. This came after a week of obstruction from the Republican members of the committee, who boycotted the scheduled vote last week. As one of the most highly-qualified [...]

Welcome to The Morning Pride, ThinkProgress LGBT’s daily round-up of the latest in LGBT policy, politics, and some culture too! Here’s what we’re reading this morning, but please let us know what stories you’re following as well. Follow us all day on Twitter at @TPEquality. - Today is the International Day Against Homophobia (IDAHO). The [...]

For nearly two decades U.S. law enforcement agencies have used counter-terrorism devices known as “stingrays” after the brand name of one variant or ISMI (international mobile subscriber identity)-catchers to track locations in domestic investigations, but information about the devices has been kept carefully under wraps from the public and sometimes even from judges authorizing its [...]

The House Agriculture Committee approved a farm bill late Wednesday night that would cut federal food stamps more steeply than any legislation since the welfare reforms of the 1990s. A Democratic amendment to strip $20.5 billion in Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) cuts was defeated by a 27-17 vote, after more than an hour of [...]

During a Wednesday House oversight hearing with Attorney General Eric Holder that overwhelmingly focused on the invasive government search of Associated Press phone logs and the IRS, one House member took the opportunity to grill Holder on another Department of Justice issue that has provoked criticism from the left. Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) tore into [...]

On Wednesday, a group of immigrant activists jointly organized by the Center for Community Change and Fair Immigration Reform Movement demanded former Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) to resign as president of the Heritage Foundation. DeMint was an enthusiastic leader at the forefront of a flawed immigration study co-authored by Jason Richwine who argued that Hispanics [...]

Though Karl Rove receives a salary from Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp for his work as a Fox News Channel “political contributor,” his compensation doesn’t end there. The network frequently airs ads by his American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS political committees, as “news,” free of charge. A ThinkProgress review of Fox News Channel broadcasts over the [...]

An Indiana congressman suggested cutting the United States’ foreign aid budget — choking off supplies to refugees around the world — to keep a Navy stunt pilot group in the air. Earlier this month, Rep. Larry Bucshon (R-IN) gave a sit-down interview with local television station WJTS, and when sequestration came up, Buchson was saddened [...]

The bridge is yours. -Read these science fiction novels if you want to understand the economy. -David Edelstein on “spoiler” creep. -We are getting more Peanuts comics, and they will be on Vine. -So on board with the revival of butterscotch. -Have an actual, full-length

In an interview with Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren last night, Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) threw cold water on hopes that the Justice Department’s surveillance of Associated Press reporters’ phone records could lead to legislation preventing similar incidents in the future. Gowdy noted that the surveillance occurred in no small part because Republicans demanded such [...]