“I will work with our General Assembly to pass legislation that will provide such protections this year,” Biden, the state’s attorney general, says in a new video.

Fresh off the state's passage of marriage equality, Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden is taking a front-row seat in the effort to pass legal protections for transgender people in the state.

"I support providing protections from violence and discrimination based on gender identity and expression under Delaware law," Biden says in a new video. "I will work with our General Assembly to pass legislation that will provide such protections this year."

"[She] has spoken to me about her fear of living without basic legal protections," Biden, the son of the vice president, says of a conversation he had with a young transgender woman.

The video is one of three by Equality Delaware that have been released on the topic of gender identity and expression nondiscrimination legislation.

The legislation to ban such discrimination was introduced this past week and is supported by Gov. Jack Markell.

“If you already have health insurance, the only thing that will change for you under this plan is the amount of money you will spend on premiums. That will be less.” No so much in California…

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Via:

When he was selling his health care overhaul as a presidential candidate and then as commander-in-chief, Barack Obama repeatedly argued that the plan would lower insurance premiums for everyone. But in California, at least, healthy young people — the vast majority of whom voted for Obama in 2012 — are seeing their costs go up.

Conservative author Avik Roy at Forbes reported Thursday that " for the typical 25-year-old male non-smoking Californian, Obamacare will drive premiums up by between 100 and 123 percent." Roy cited data on eHealthInsurance.com showing that the median cost of the five cheapest health care plans in California was only $92 for young people, while under the ObamaCare exchanges the cheapest plan will cost an average of $184 a month.

Obama himself promised that everyone's premiums cost would be lower under his health care plan.

"My plan begins by covering every American. If you already have health insurance, the only thing that will change for you under this plan is the amount of money you will spend on premiums. That will be less," Obama said in his May 2007 speech unveiling his health care plan.

"If you are one of the 45 million Americans who don't have health insurance, you will have it after this plan becomes law. No one will be turned away because of a preexisting condition or illness," Obama continued. "Everyone will be able buy into a new health insurance plan that's similar to the one that every federal employee – from a postal worker in Iowa to a Congressman in Washington – currently has for themselves."

Last January, however, insurers predicted to the conservative American Action Forum that small employers' premiums for healthy people 27 and under are likely to increase an average of 169%, while less-healthy people 55 and older would see their costs decrease less than 25%.

Liberal Washington Post columnist Ezra Klein argued that Roy's argument was unfair, contending that under the old system low cost for young people "was made cheap by turning away sick people" which the new health care plan will make insurers unable to turn away. Klein also adds that many young people will be turned away from low price with minor past conditions like ulcers or headaches.

In a May 2009 interview with C-SPAN President Obama again argued that health care reform would result in lower premiums for all Americans.

"One of the very promising areas that we saw was these insurance companies, drug companies, hospitals, all these stakeholders coming together, committing to me that they would reduce costs by 1.5 percent per year.

If we do that, it seems like small number, we end up saving $2 trillion. $2 trillion, which not only can help deal with our deficit and our long-term debt, but a lot of those savings can go back into the pockets of American consumers in the form of lower premiums. That's what we are driving for."

It isn't the first time Obama has reversed himself on lower premiums. During the 2008 campaign Obama argued at least 15 times premiums would go down, saying for a family the average drop would be $2500.

The independent fact-checking site Politifact rates this a "promise broken" citing an Obama campaign economist who helped come up with the $2,500 figure and who disavows its use relating to premiums alone.

“No one would acknowledge who, if anyone, provided that direction,” Treasury Inspector General J. Russell George said. “We have to get to the bottom of that,” acting IRS head Danny Werfel said.

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Via:

The Treasury Department Inspector General said Monday that no one in Cincinnati would say who gave the order to target conservatives.

"No one would acknowledge who, if anyone, provided that direction," Treasury IG J. Russell George said during a House Appropriations Subcommittee hearing on IRS oversight.

"We have to get to the bottom of that," acting IRS head Danny Werfel said. "We will uncover every fact."

Setting a very high bar for his next peace process mission.

Via: Manuel Balce Ceneta / AP

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State John Kerry continued to escalate his rhetorical push for peace between Israel and the Palestinians during a speech to the American Jewish Committee on Monday, his first in front of a major Jewish group as secretary.

"We are running out of time," Kerry said. "If we do not succeed now, and I know I'm raising those stakes, we may not get another chance."

"What happens in the coming days will dictate what happens in coming decades," Kerry said. Kerry was in Jordan, Oman, and Israel last month and is returning for another Middle East trip next week.

Kerry called for both Israel and the Palestinians to "summon the courage" to restart the moribund peace process, which has not been active for over four years. Kerry has made it his special mission to breathe life into this process and has said recently that there is a one- to two-year window after which further progress won't be possible. Kerry's enthusiasm has been met with some skepticism in Israel, where Haaretz described him as a "naive and ham-handed diplomat who has been acting like a bull in the china shop of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."

On Monday, Kerry warned against one-staters on both sides, saying, "A realistic one-state solution does not exist for either side."

"We all know cynicism has never solved anything," Kerry said. "It has never given birth to a state and it won't."

"What happens if the Palestinian economy implodes? If the Palestinian Authority fails?" he asked. "Are we prepared to live with an nonstop conflict?"

And Kerry reminded the audience of the Palestinians' success at the United Nations last year, when the body voted to upgrade their status to non-member observer state. He warned that the next time the Palestinians go to the UN, they'll probably garner even more support than last time, implying that Israel is isolated on the world stage.

The U.S. has Israel's back, Kerry said, but "wouldn't we be stronger if we had more company?"

In a statement aimed at recognizing “LGBT Pride,” LGBT organization finds cause for criticism of military’s ongoing bar on out transgender service members.

Via: Wong Maye-E / AP

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon will be celebrating LGBT Pride Month again this year, but the memorandum announcing the designation has caused a stir with an organization that supports LGBT service members and veterans and their families.

"We recognize gay, lesbian and bisexual service members and LGBT civilians for their dedicated service to our country," Clarence Johnson, the director of the Pentagon's Office of Diversity Management and Equal Opportunity, wrote in a memorandum announce the designation of June as LGBT Pride Month.

While calling it "appropriate and gratifying" that the Pentagon under Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel continued to designate June as LGBT Pride Month, OutServe-SLDN executive director Allyson Robinson said in a statement, "Transgender people have served this nation with pride, honor, and distinction – and continue to do so in the hundreds, if not thousands. It's past time to honor them for their service and sacrifice, and past time to end the discredited and obsolete practice of forcing them to serve in silence and fear."

Although the repeal of "don't ask, don't tell" ended the ban on out gay, lesbian or bisexual service members, the military continues to consider a service member being transgender grounds for a discharge from the military.

In May, however, BuzzFeed reported that the Pentagon does acknowledge that transgender people have served, allowing military veteran retirees to change the gender marker in the Defense Enrollment Eligibility Reporting System.

A cat, a dog, bipartisanship!

Via: arcweb.archives.gov

Via: arcweb.archives.gov

Via: arcweb.archives.gov

Via: arcweb.archives.gov

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The former congressman, disengaged from the other candidates on stage, was just not into the New York mayoral forum Monday night. “You were bored, too!”

Seated beside canidates Christine Quinn and Bill de Blasio, Anthony Weiner checks his phone during a mayoral debate Monday at the law firm, Kirkland & Ellis.

Via: Ruby Cramer/Buzzfeed

When it wasn't his turn to speak at the New York City mayoral debate Monday night, former congressman Anthony Weiner could be seen glancing around the room, fiddling with his pen, flipping through his notes, checking his BlackBerry under the table, or looking straight ahead — and not at his fellow candidates — as they fielded questions from the moderator on topics ranging from public-private partnerships to City Hall staff diversity.

Weiner, suffice it to say, didn't seem thrilled to be at the forum.

He appeared alongside five other candidates: former Bronx borough president, Adolfo Carrión, Jr; city comptroller, John Liu; former board of education head, Bill Thompson; city council speaker, Christine Quinn; and city public advocate, Bill de Blasio.

"I did not look bored. How do you think you looked? You were really bored," said Weiner afterward, when asked by a group of reporters about his demeanor during the event. "You were bored, too!"

The forum — Weiner's third since announcing his campaign two weeks ago — will be one of dozens he attends this year as he attempts to make an improbable political comeback as the next mayor of New York City, following his resignation from Congress two years ago amidst an illicit Twitter scandal.

If anything, Weiner appeared to be somewhat removed from the other mayoral hopefuls on stage — not once, for example, did he position his own responses in relation to the other candidates' views — instead engaging in the event only when it was his turn to field a question from moderator Sally Kohn, a Fox News pundit.

When Kohn asked the candidates to address their views on economic equity in the city, Weiner was the last to speak, and notably directed his response to the audience in the room — a group of professionals on the 50th floor of Manhattan's Citigroup Center, a midtown skyscraper home to top hedge funds, consulting shops, and law firms — rather than his colleagues on stage.

"Can I just pause at the idea that the average New Yorker is poor today," said Weiner. "So why should you care? You're successful people. You're professionals. You're doin' okay. Your firms, your companies, cannot sustain themselves just dealing with other rich people. You're gonna run out of them sooner or later — there's only so many oligarchs who are gonna by our apartments, there are only so many millionaires who are gonna sue each other."

At one point, Kohn told the candidates that Los Angeles beats New York in city hall staff diversity — 48 percent of top Los Angeles mayoral advisors are people of color, and in New York that figure is below 30 percent; she then asked the candidates whether they would "pledge" to top the rival city as mayor.

On down the line — Carrión, Liu, Thompson, Quinn, and de Blasio — every candidate but Weiner raised a hand. The former congressman, seated at the far end of the table, rolled his eyes at the question and waited for the forum to move on.

This week is the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown. Xu Qinxian told his friends, “I’d rather be beheaded than become history’s criminal.”

As Chinese netizens mark the 24th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown, many also celebrate Gen. Xu Qinxian as a voice of conscience in the military.

In 1989, Xu Qinxian refused to lead the 38th Grand Army against protestors in Tiananmen, and was subsequently stripped of party membership and jailed for five years. For two decades, no one knew what happened to him.

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From dishing to the “Latina Oprah,” to nixing a Pawlenty/bin Laden joke on the eve of the terrorist’s assassination, here are some of the juiciest tidbits in my new book, The Center Holds: Obama and His Enemies.

Obama killed a Tim Pawlenty/bin Laden joke in his White House Correspondents Dinner speech.

Speechwriters who knew nothing of the activity in the Situation Room gave the president a draft of his humorous speech at the 2011 White House Correspondents Dinner. It included a joke: “Poor Tim Pawlenty. He had such promise. Except for that unfortunate middle name: bin Laden.” When the president deleted the line, a puzzled David Axelrod — also in the dark — protested that it was funny. Obama said it wasn’t. Axelrod said it was. The president, betraying nothing, insisted that the joke was “so yesterday.” It was dropped.

Absent a major crisis, the killing of bin Laden stripped the Republicans of a weapon, that Democrats are weak on national security, which they had used to win seven presidential elections of the postwar period.

Romney ran a Mad Men campaign.

Stevens assembled a group modeled on Reagan’s famous 1984 “Tuesday Team,” which produced a memorable convention film and legendary spots (“There’s a Bear in the Woods”) that were brilliantly narrated — often while drunk — by the late Hal Riney. Nearly three decades later, Tom Messner, a Tuesday Team member who originated the idea for Reagan’s iconic “Morning in America” ad, was one of Stevens’ Mad Men.

Another was Jim Ferguson. With his long white hair, ever-present Parliaments, and 1970s tattoos, “Fergy” looked like an aging member of Hell’s Angels. When he signed on to Bush’s 2004 reelect campaign he traveled to Kennebunkport, where he told Bush, “Look, if I do this, will I have to worry about pictures of a corkscrew up my ass appearing in some magazine?” Bush laughed and said, “If you got ’em, I’d like to see ’em.” In 2011 Fergy had noticed a news story about an Iowan laid off from his job at a grain elevator who could find only part-time work as a grave digger.

The story made him cry, and Boston thought it would do the same for voters when turned into an ad. It didn’t. The Mad Men weren’t breaking through the clutter with their spots.

Applicants had to go through an insanely rigorous process to get on Obama's big data team.

The selection process for “the Cave,” which housed the analytics team in a secret annex to the Chicago headquarters, was especially rigorous. Finalists had to complete a four-hour online exam consisting of seven or eight fiendishly difficult analytical problems. In the final interview, Dan Wagner, the 28-year-old who ran the Cave, informed applicants that starting in mid-2012 the job would be seven days a week until at least midnight every night. “The presidency is on the line and I don’t care about your personal life,” he told them. “We’re not selling popsicles here.” Analytics ended up with a motley crew of mostly under-thirty data scientists and financial analysts, plus a biophysicist, a former child prodigy, and three professional poker players.

Analytics data-mined certain consumer preferences, but this was a small part of the model. The most critical data, obtained from the DNC, were door-to-door voter contact information going back to 1992, much of it from long-forgotten local elections. The voter file assembled over the years was the best resource available, especially when constantly updated with information from the field. It was much more useful for the Cave to learn that a thirty-five-year-old persuadable voter in Zanesville, Ohio, had volunteered in 2000 for the Democratic candidate for state senate than if she drove a Volvo, ate Brie, and listened to NPR.

Michelle Obama dished to the "Latina Oprah" — telling her in an unaired segment that she was through having kids.

For the Latino market, the messenger is often more important than the message. The surrogate Chicago chose was Cristina Saralegui, known as “the Latina Oprah.” By coincidence, her signature sign-off line on her Univision show, “Pa’lante!,” translates roughly as “Forward!” Saralegui conducted an “interview” with Michelle Obama in which she pointed to the first lady’s midsection and asked, “Is the factory closed?” Michelle said she and the president were done having kids. That exchange didn’t air, but Saralegui’s ads on Univision and Telemundo were known by almost all Latino voters, and by almost no one in the separate universe of white America.

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Between 2010 and 2012, the agency spent $50 million on such conferences.

The IRS spent $135,350 on 15 guest speakers at a single conference in Anaheim, according to a report by the Treasury Inspector General's report, released by the House Government Oversight Committee Tuesday. The report states that the IRS spent $50 million on such conferences between 2010 and 2012.

The average speaker at the Anaheim conference made $9,000, according to a list of the 15 speakers. The IRS paid for the $4 million conference with unused funds originally intended to hire more enforcement personnel.

A breakdown of spending from the report:

• The IRS reported that it expended $50,187 on videos for the conference, but was unable to provide any details supporting this cost.

• IRS management contracted with 15 outside speakers for presentations at a total cost of $135,350. Costs for outside speakers included a $17,000 fee for a keynote speaker whose presentation included creating six paintings of famous people to reinforce his message of finding creative solutions to challenges. Two of the paintings were given away at the conference, three were donated to charity, and one was lost, according to IRS management. Another keynote speaker was paid $27,500 which included a $2,500 fee authorized for first class airfare.

• IRS employees made three planning trips at a cost of approximately $35,800 prior to the conference.

• The IRS also paid over $30,000 for 45 IRS employees who reside in the local area to stay at the hotels and incur per diem expenses while at the conference.

• Numerous gifts/promotional items were provided to attendees at an estimated cost of more than $64,000.

The TIGTA Report:

Video from the conference:

Source: youtube.com

Frederica Wilson, hat genius.

Meet Congresswoman Frederica Wilson, (D-Fla.)

Source: facebook.com

She wears a big, colorful, glorious hat to every congressional thing she does.

Source: fbcdn-sphotos-e-a.akamaihd.net

Like a blue bedazzled one with a STAR!

Source: fbcdn-sphotos-b-a.akamaihd.net

Or this brilliant yellow one for a speech!

Source: fbcdn-sphotos-a-a.akamaihd.net

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No actual victims testified on the day’s first panel.

Via: @HowardMortman

The Senate Armed Services hearing on sexual assault in the military had witnesses opposed to reform outnumbering supporters 18-2 according to National Journal, and declined to have a single sexual assault victim testify on the first panel of the day. The photo shows eleven men and one woman at the witness table. The Senate Armed Services Committee has twenty male and six female members.

A primary in August, and a general just three weeks before Christie’s own reelection. “For all of you who are bored of the governor’s race, I have solved your problem.”

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Via:

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie called for a special election to replace Sen. Frank Lautenberg, who passed away Monday, to take place just three weeks before the general election this fall.

At a press conference Tuesday afternoon, Christie announced that a primary would take place on Tuesday, Aug. 13, leaving candidates like Newark Mayor Cory Booker and Rep. Frank Pallone just 70 days to prepare. The general election will take place on Wednesday, Oct. 16, Christie said.

Although there was speculation Christie would try to delay the election until November 2014 — allowing an interim Republican appointee to fill Lautenberg's seat for a full 18 months — the governor pursued an entirely different path, scheduling a special election this October.

"I want to have an elected senator as soon as possible," said Christie, adding that he was willingly forgoing the "political advantage that would come to me" from a long-term appointee in Washington.

Christie said he was still considering who he would appoint to that role to serve until October, but did say he would choose a member of his own party.

Having the special election in October — as opposed to this November, when Christie will be on the ballot for his own reelection — will cost the state up to $12 million, according to early estimates.

The decision will likely draw fire from members of both parties inside the state: Democratic critics say Christie didn't want the special election held on the same date as the general New Jersey election so that his name could stay at the top of the ballot; while Republicans may take issue with the spending the additional election will cost the state.

In a statement released shortly after the press conference, New Jersey Democratic Party Chairman John Wisniewski cast the October election as a "blatantly political move."

"Democrats believe an election should be held in a timely manner, however in what appears to be a blatantly political move, the governor would rather spend $12 million in taxpayer funds on a special election when a general election is scheduled for less than three weeks later," said Wisniewski. "Chris Christie's decision speaks more to his national political ambitions than his responsibility to the residents of New Jersey as governor."

But Christie said that it would have been impossible to hold the senate election this November, "unless I delayed my decision for another 10 days," he said. "That's just irresponsible, and I wouldn't think it's right for the people of New Jersey."

"The option to have it on the general is not an option," he said.

As for the cost associated with the senate election, said Christie, "the state will be responsible for all the costs associated."

"I dont know what the cost is, and I quite frankly don't care," Christie added.

The announcement sets the New Jersey senate race rolling more than a year in advance, and forces Booker, Pallone, and other interested candidates like Rep. Rush Holt, to put their campaigns into high-gear.

Booker, the most high-profile candidate vying to replace Lautenberg, had previously said he wouldn't announce his senate campaign formally until after this year's governor's race.

Before leaving the room, Christie added to the reporters attending, "For all of you who are bored of the governor's race, I have solved your problem."

The Student Non-Discrimination Act, included in education bill introduced Tuesday, would ban anti-LGBT discrimination in schools. The LGBT provision had been left out in 2011.

Via: Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images

WASHINGTON — In the 1,150-page education bill introduced by Senate Democrats Tuesday, Sen. Tom Harkin has included a measure to ban anti-LGBT discrimination in schools — a measure that he sought to keep out of the bill in his committee just two years ago.

The Student Non-Discrimination Act appeared as part of the Democrats' "Strengthening America's Schools Act of 2013." The measure is modeled after Title IX, which bans sex discrimination in schools that receive any federal funding.

The bill would ban discrimination, which includes harassment, based on sexual orientation and gender identity, in any covered educational program that receives federal funding. It also would provide federal agencies and departments with the right to enforce the bill's provisions and would allow for private individuals to file lawsuits alleging violations of the law.

Back in 2011, Sen. Al Franken, the lead sponsor of the measure in the Senate, had offered the bill as an amendment to the education bill, but he later withdrew the amendment before seeking a vote on the measure because Harkin sought to pass the bill out of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee with bipartisan support. Although Franken had said he would seek a floor amendment to get the measure included, he never had a chance because the bill was brought to the floor.

This year, however, the bill was introduced Tuesday with support from every Democrat on the HELP Committee and no Republicans. Among the Democrats on the committee are Franken and Sen. Tammy Baldwin, the first out LGBT member of the Senate.

Rep. Jared Polis, the lead sponsor of the Student Non-Discrimination Act in the House, praised the Senate move.

"I'm excited that the Student Non-Discrimination Act as introduced by Senator Franken today is also included in the Senate's Early Childhood Education Act (ESEA) for the first time, which would ensure that LGBT students are protected against bullying and harassment in schools," Polis said in a statement. "SNDA's inclusion in this important bill is reflective of how important protecting all students is and I look forward to working with my colleagues on the Education & Workforce Committee to move forward on our bipartisan bill in the House."

The move comes just a couple weeks after several Democrats faced criticism in the Senate Judiciary Committee for their move against inclusion of protections for same-sex couples in the immigration reform bill making its way through the Senate.

Neither Harkin nor Franken's offices responded to a request for comment about the inclusion of the measure or whether such inclusion would make it more difficult to get Republican votes for the bill. There also is no mention of the measure's inclusion in the bill in the news release about the introduction on the HELP Committee web site.

Notably, however, one of the Republicans on the committee is Sen. Mark Kirk, who has been supportive of several LGBT rights measures.

LGBT advocates, who were disappointed with the 2011 decision in the committee, expressed satisfaction with Tuesday's news.

"This is a significant moment for our nation's education system and one that addresses the vital needs of all students in K-12 schools. We are thrilled that the Senate is moving to address the long overdue issue of school bullying and harassment," said Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network executive director Eliza Byard.

Update at 3:30 p.m.: Frank press secretary Alexandra Fetissoff tells BuzzFeed, "Sen. Franken is very pleased that the Student Non-Discrimination Act has been included in the 'No Child Left Behind' reform bill and he looks forward to working with all of his colleagues to get the legislation out of committee."

In a statement, Franken said:

"No child should dread going to school because they don't feel safe. Our nation's civil rights laws protect our children from bullying due to race, sex, religion, disability, and national origin. My proposal extends these protections to our gay and lesbian students who shouldn't ever feel afraid of going to school. I'm also pleased my provision is now a part of the education bill that will soon be debated in the Senate Education Committee."

Update at 5:05 p.m.: Harkin says, in a statement provided to BuzzFeed:

"Because every child deserves a safe and healthy place to learn, we have included the Student Non-Discrimination Act and the Safe Schools Improvement Act in this year's reauthorization of ESEA. These provisions will help to ensure that all students, regardless of gender identity or sexual orientation, are treated fairly and afforded equal opportunities to succeed in the classroom. I applaud Senators Al Franken and Bob Casey for their leadership on these issues, and am pleased that these protections have a place in our legislation."

The markup of the legislation is slated to begin in Harkin's committee on June 11.

A 1,150-Page Bill:

But See Sec. 4106:

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“For several months now, Mayor Booker has been taking the steps necessary to run,” the mayor’s office says.

Via: Julio Cortez / AP

A special election to replace Sen. Frank Lautenberg, who passed away Monday, will take place this October — more than a year ahead of schedule — and Newark Mayor Cory Booker is ready, his office says.

"For several months now, Mayor Booker has been taking the steps necessary to run, but he will make an official announcement at the appropriate time," said Booker's office in a statement.

In a press conference Tuesday afternoon, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie called for a special election to fill the senate seat on Wednesday, Oct. 16, with a primary taking place on Tuesday, Aug. 13.

The special election, which could have taken place this year or next year, according to New Jersey statute, leaves candidates just 70 days to prepare for a race that was scheduled to take place in November 2014, at the end of Lautenberg's fifth and last term in office.

Booker announced his intention to run for Lautenberg's seat late last year, two months before the senior senator had announced his plans to retire. The popular Newark mayor immediately started raising money after filing paperwork with the Federal Election Committee in January.

The mayor had previously said he wouldn't formally announce his senate campaign until after this year's governor's race, so as not to distract from the Democratic gubernatorial candidate, state Sen. Barbara Buono, for whom Booker is a major surrogate.

But now Booker will have to accelerate his fundraising and hiring, and make an official announcement to launch his campaign.

His likely challenger, Democratic Rep. Frank Pallone, has long been interested in running for Lautenberg's seat. In a special election, Pallone would not be at risk of losing his seat in Congress. Rep. Rush Holt is also thought to be interested in running for the seat.

According to FEC filings, Booker has $1.6 million cash on hand, as of March 31. Pallone has $3.7 million, and Holt has $790,000.

You Only Legislate Once.

Meet Congressman Mike Quigley (D-IL).

Source: sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net

He is clearly the most YOLO congressman on Facebook. Look at him headbutt this beluga whale.

Source: sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net

He cooks in a restaurant.

Source: sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net

And makes this derp face while doing it.

Source: fbcdn-sphotos-c-a.akamaihd.net

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“This conference is an unfortunate vestige from a prior era.”

Via: Charles Dharapak / AP

The Internal Revenue Service responded Tuesday to the Treasury Inspector General's report, released by the House Government Oversight Committee Tuesday, showing the IRS spent $50 million on conferences between 2010 and 2012.

"This conference is an unfortunate vestige from a prior era," acting IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel said in a statement. "While there were legitimate reasons for holding the meeting, many of the expenses associated with it were inappropriate and should not have occurred."

"Taxpayers should take comfort that a conference like this would not take place today," he continued. "Sweeping new spending restrictions have been put in place at the IRS, and travel and training expenses have dropped more than 80 percent since 2010 and similar large-scale meetings did not take place in 2011, 2012 or 2013."

The Treasury Department reiterated the point in a statement saying that, "Under Treasury leadership, the IRS has dramatically reduced its conference spending."

The IRS also released a chart showing that spending on conferences has dropped by more than $30 million dollars since 2010.

The Chart Released By The IRS:

“Listen to me or you can take the mic, but I’m leaving,” the first lady told the heckler. A woman who identified herself as a “lesbian looking for federal equality before I die” interrupted the event, shouting for the president to sign an executive order banning federal contractors from LGBT discrimination.

Via: Win McNamee / Getty Images

WASHINGTON — First Lady Michelle Obama was heckled at a private fundraiser Tuesday night, pressed for action her husband has not taken to issue an executive order banning federal contractors from discriminating against LGBT employees and job applicants.

Michelle Obama responded telling the woman, "[L]isten to me or you can take the mic, but I'm leaving." The woman was escorted out, according to the White House pool report, continuing to shout that she was a "lesbian looking for federal equality before I die."

The heckling happened a bit after 6 p.m. under a white tent in the backyard of the residence of Karen Dixon and Nan Schaffer in Northwest DC. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the chair of the Democratic National Committee, also was in attendance at the event, which benefits the DNC.

The incident came hours after White House press secretary Jay Carney reiterated the president's focus being on legislation, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, that would ban most private employers from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity, and not the proposed executive order.

Obama himself had, however, committed in 2008 to supporting a federal nondiscrimination policy based on sexual orientation or gender identity for federal contractors as president, a commitment this reporter published at Metro Weekly last year.

According to the pool report:

Most notable part of the event was an interruption from a protester about 12 minutes into the 20-minute speech. A pro-LGBT rights individual standing at the front began shouting for an executive order on gay rights. (Pool did not hear exactly what.)
"One of the things I don't do well is this," replied FLOTUS to loud applause. She left the lectern and moved over to the protester, saying they could "listen to me or you can take the mic, but I'm leaving. You all decide. You have one choice."
Crowd started shouting that they wanted FLOTUS to stay.
"You need to go!" said one woman near the protester.
The protester was then escorted out, shouting "...lesbian looking for federal equality before I die." (First part of the quote was inaudible.) Pool could not get their name before they were taken out.
"So let me make the point that I was making before," continued FLOTUS. "We are here for our kids. So we must recapture that passion. That same urgency and energy that we felt back in 2008, 2012. Understand this -- this is what I want you all to understand. This is not about us. No one back here. It's not about you or you or your issue or your thing. This is about our children."
Loud applause in response to this comment.

Update at 8:50 p.m.: Get Equal's Heather Cronk confirmed to BuzzFeed that the activist organization planned the heckling. The activist was identified to the pool reporter by Cronk as Ellen Sturtz.

First Lady-Heckler Sturtz:

Via: facebook.com

Via: @eos16

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“A lot of what we do is wholly irrelevant to our major military threat right now,” Frank says.

Via: Jay Mallin / Getty Images

Recently retired Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank may be out of government, but he's not out of the public eye. Before a speech at The New School Tuesday he told reporters the U.S. needs to continue to cut military spending, beyond what's already being cut from sequestration, and further tax the richest Americans.

"I think America is ready for an immense reduction to military spending commensurate with what we now have to deal with," he said.

Sequestration is a one time cut that hits the budget equally across the board, but Frank said it can be cut billions below sequestration levels while still maintaining the world's strongest military, if done with discretion.

For example, Frank, a co-author of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, pushed for the military to adjust to the foes it currently faces, contrasting the modern threat of terrorism to the country's former enemies, specfically Nazis and Communists.

"You can't defeat terrorism with nuclear submarines," he said. "I wish you could because we have them, they don't. It would be over."

"A lot of what we do is wholly irrelevant to our major military threat right now," he added.

Generally supportive of Obama's military policies, Frank wants to bring even more troops home, in addition to getting them all out of Afghanistan. "I generally don't understand why we should be stationing troops in Western Europe," he said. He also suggested that other countries can be trusted, in some instances, to fend for themselves.

"If the Japanese feel threatened, they should rearm some," Frank said. "I don't think there is something in the genetics of the Japanese that says they should never be allowed to have guns."

He shot down a November 2012 op-ed in the Wall Street Journal written by a former George W. Bush Air Force official and a former CEO of the Air Force Association that called on a just re-elected Obama administration to reconsider the amount of airplanes it proposed to buy. One of the staunch foreign policy differences between Obama and Mitt Romney was Romney's desire to commit much more of the GDP to the military.

The WSJ article cites the reason so few planes were being purchased as, in part, a result of the historic success of the Air Force -- not a single U.S. soldier has been killed by enemy air forces since 1953, according to the article.

"This is not The Onion," Frank joked.

Doubling down on his idea that the military is spending money where it doesn't need to, Frank recalled a conversation with an unnamed House Republican who argued that cutting the budget will lead to "hangar queens," aircrafts that never get used and just sit at a base somewhere. "That's because nobody needed them to fly," Barney said. "They had no mission, they had no enemy. And the F-35 is a wonderful weapon, and there's no one for it to shoot."

But cutting military spending wasn't the only part of his deficit-reduction plan. Frank challenged Obama to meet his campaign promise to tax those making more than $250,000 rather than settling for raising taxes on those who make more than $400,000. He also recommends reimposing the social security tax on those who make between $250,000 and $400,000.

The savings, he said, would not only be beneficial to those at home by shrinking the deficit, but could be used to help those abroad as well.

"If you took 5% of the money we're saving and put it into AIDS and malaria and good hunger programs, and other things that help people overseas, it would be great," he said. "I think it's the opposite of isolation."

Samantha Power accused Susan Rice of letting the Rwandan genocide happen. Now Syria is the “problem from hell.”

Via: Lucas Jackson / Reuters

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama's elevation of Samantha Power and Susan Rice to two top foreign policy posts brings two participants of the intense debates over human rights and intervention of the 1990s to today's debate over broadening atrocities in Syria.

Power, a former journalist and academic whose views were formed in the Balkan wars, cast Rice as an icon of the Clinton administration's Clintonian — as she saw it then — decision to allow mass slaughter to proceed in Rwanda in 1994.

Her book, A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, and a 2001 Atlantic article that has much of the same material, includes a passage in which Power criticizes Rice for the way she avoided the word "genocide":

At an interagency teleconference in late April, Susan Rice, a rising star on the NSC who worked under Richard Clarke, stunned a few of the officials present when she asked, "If we use the word 'genocide' and are seen as doing nothing, what will be the effect on the November [congressional] election?" Lieutenant Colonel Tony Marley remembers the incredulity of his colleagues at the State Department. "We could believe that people would wonder that," he says, "but not that they would actually voice it." Rice does not recall the incident but concedes, "If I said it, it was completely inappropriate, as well as irrelevant."

Later in the piece, Power quotes Rice expressing regret over Rwanda, which Rice portrays as an experience that made her more interventionist.

Susan Rice, Clarke's co-worker on peacekeeping at the NSC, also feels that she has a debt to repay. "There was such a huge disconnect between the logic of each of the decisions we took along the way during the genocide and the moral consequences of the decisions taken collectively," Rice says. "I swore to myself that if I ever faced such a crisis again, I would come down on the side of dramatic action, going down in flames if that was required." Rice was subsequently appointed NSC Africa director and, later, assistant secretary of state for African affairs; she visited Rwanda several times and helped to launch a small program geared to train selected African armies so that they might be available to respond to the continent's next genocide. The American appetite for troop deployments in Africa had not improved.

Both women ended up strongly advocating for intervention in Libya, a move that was seen as a success (and that has some observers predicting a similar push now for Syria). They were also both early members of team Obama whose efforts seemed, at times, stymied by more forceful bureaucratic players. Power was largely ineffectual in getting the White House to pay attention to human rights, while Rice became embroiled in the Benghazi controversy after a series of Sunday show appearances in which she gave misleading information about the attack.

In December, a New Republic piece on Rice stated that the two women have since "become close," and that "Power says she sees a gulf between what her sources told her and the colleague she has come to know."

Power didn't respond to a request for comment. Rice's spokesperson Erin Pelton said, "Susan and Samantha have an excellent personal and professional relationship, having worked closely together on a daily basis for the first four years of the Obama administration to promote and defend U.S. interests at the U.N. As has been documented extensively, they also have deep respect for each other."

Though the move has been in the works for some time, Rice downplayed the rumors of her imminent replacement of Tom Donilon at an appearance in New York in March.

"I am the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations," Rice said at a panel with New Yorker writers. "I'm going to continue happily serving in that role as long as the president wants me to."

The president will announce Rice's appointment Wednesday afternoon, the White House has announced.