“[T]he United States Office of Personnel Management (OPM) will now be able to extend benefits to Federal employees and annuitants who have legally married a spouse of the same sex,” OPM acting director Elaine Kaplan writes to the heads of executive departments and agencies today.

WASHINGTON — The Office of Personnel Management on Friday announced that it is implementing the Supreme Court's marriage-recognition decision quickly, with federal employees' same-sex spouses being made eligible for the federal employee health insurance program and other key programs.

OPM acting director Elaine Kaplan alerted executive department and agency heads to the changes, most of which noted to have been effective as of June 26, 2013 — the day of the Supreme Court's decision in United States v. Windsor striking down section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act.

In addition to the Federal Employees Health Benefits (FEHB) Program, Kaplan details new eligibility under life insurance, dental and vision insurance, long-term care insurance, retirement programs and flexible spending accounts resulting from the DOMA ruling.

Additionally, the memorandum states at several points that the changes apply to "all legally married same-sex spouses," which would appear to include couples who are legally married in one state but live in a state that does not recognize the marriage.

Al Jazeera reports that the U.S. State Department has been channeling money to anti-Islamist and anti-Morsi groups.

Via: Official White House Photo / Pete Souza

An incendiary report by Al Jazeera indicates that the United States government has been secretly funding Egyptian opposition figures for the past two years through a State Department program to promote democracy in the Middle East.

"The State Department's program, dubbed by US officials as a 'democracy assistance' initiative, is part of a wider Obama administration effort to try to stop the retreat of pro-Washington secularists, and to win back influence in Arab Spring countries that saw the rise of Islamists, who largely oppose US interests in the Middle East," Al Jazeera reports. Funding is dispersed through a variety of official agencies, specifically the Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (DRL), The Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI), and USAID, who then pass the money along to pro-democracy endowments and nongovernmental organizations. According to federal records, MEPI spends $70 million each year promoting democracy in the Middle East, and USAID earmarks $390 million of its $1.4 billion budget for democracy promotion.

The network obtained documents through the Freedom of Information Act that they say show activists funded by the Obama administration's "democracy assistance initiative" include "An exiled Egyptian police officer who plotted the violent overthrow of the Morsi government, an anti-Islamist politician who advocated closing mosques and dragging preachers out by force, as well as a coterie of opposition politicians who pushed for the ouster of the country's first democratically elected leader."

If true, the State Department may have broken Egyptian laws prohibiting foreign political funding and certain U.S. regulations that ban the use of taxpayer money to support foreign politicans or groups that target democratically elected governments.

Via: cipe.advomation.com

Via: Mohamed Abd El Ghany / Reuters

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A brave new world.

This is Senator Chris Murphy from Connecticut.

Via: T.J. Kirkpatrick / Getty Images

As a young, up and coming Senator he naturally uses Vine. Typically for adorable purposes.

But today Murphy posted this, the first ever butt vine in the Senate:

Or was it performance art?

Based on the haunting sound we can assume he was riding on the notoriously noisy Senate subway.

Via: washingtonpost.com

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“I remember when I first saw Star Wars … It used to be you’d see, like, the string on the little model spaceship.”

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WASHINGTON — President Obama awarded Star Wars creator George Lucas the National Medal of Arts Wednesday, praising the filmmaker for the revolutionary special effects he used in the films.

"I remember when I first saw Star Wars," Obama said. "There's a whole generation that thinks special effects always looked like they do today. But it used to be you'd see, like, the string on the little model spaceship."

Obama referred to the ships in the Star Wars films as "planes in space," an awkward turn of phrase that could once again lead him to be criticized by science fiction aficionados. Obama was chastised by nerds in March when he combined the Star Trek and Star Wars realms and said, "I can't do a Jedi mind-meld to make the Republicans do the right thing."

Fixed.

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For reference.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and actress best known for her role on The West Wing was presented with the 2012 National Humanities Medal by President Obama on Wednesday. They shared a moment, too.

The approach.

The embrace.

The banter.

The lean-in.

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With a whimper. An unexpected moment as a committee sends a bill to ban anti-LGBT job discrimination to the Senate floor.

WASHINGTON — On Wednesday morning, a small crowd of people got a glimpse into how the longtime opposition to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights will meet its end.

It didn't happen at a grand rally or pride parade or even in the Oval Office or on the steps of the Supreme Court. Instead, it happened in a nondescript Senate hearing room on the fourth floor of the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

The opposition to LGBT rights, a regular part of politics in the not-so-distant past, was given no voice as a Senate committee voted 15-7 in favor of legislation that would ban anti-LGBT job discrimination by most employers across the country.

There remain wide swaths of the country where virulent anti-LGBT attitudes control the dialogue, but the Senate's Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee provided an unexpected view Wednesday into what the next phase of LGBT rights battle could look like.

No one spoke in opposition to the bill, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, as Chairman Tom Harkin's committee took up a vote of the legislation for the first time in more than a decade.

ENDA, in some ways, is past its time. If judging by public opinion, it should have been passed years ago — and many people tell pollsters that they already think it is law. But, the opposition to LGBT rights has thus far kept a foothold in Congress, with members regularly and consistently providing a voice to those views.

Wednesday was different. The only senator present who voted against sending the bill to the floor Wednesday was the ranking Republican on the committee, Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander. The other six "no" votes were cast by proxy. Even Alexander, though, said nothing against the bill. To the contrary, he praised changes and compromises made to the bill already, suggested more that he would like to see, and praised the bill's sole Republican sponsor on the committee.

"I want to commend Sen. [Mark] Kirk for his leadership on this issue over the years, and thank him for his hard work on this bill, and give him now the opportunity to make the opening statement," Alexander said, giving Kirk the floor to push for the bill's passage.

Kirk then used his opening statement to tie ENDA's passage to historic efforts to advance civil rights in America.

"In Illinois, we all measure ourselves against the career of Abraham Lincoln and think about the legacy that that means. I would say that I measure myself against Everett Dirksen and his support for the 1964 Civil Rights Act as Republican leadership as the best moment in his career," Kirk said. "[With] this legislation, I'm very proud to do it in the tradition of Illinois' Dirksen and Lincoln."

In addition to Alexander and Kirk, Sen. Lisa Murkowski was the only other Republican senator in attendance — and she joined Kirk in voting yes. Sen. Orrin Hatch, a longtime vote target on ENDA for LGBT advocates, finally gave them the yes vote they wanted.

"I voted for it because it prohibits discrimination that should not occur in the workplace, it protects the rights of religious entities, and minimizes legal burdens on employers," Hatch said in a statement provided to The Washington Blade following his "yes" vote, which was cast by proxy.

"Sen. Hatch is a leader and today he stepped up," Human Rights Campaign President Chad Griffin told BuzzFeed after the vote. "What is clear today is that this bill is advancing with bipartisan support. ... You never know exactly what motivates every single one of these folks up here, but this issue, of all issues, should be nonpartisan."

In the wake of the Supreme Court's ruling striking down the federal definition of marriage in the Defense of Marriage Act, Griffin's statement, in some ways a posturing soundbite, had the added power of several votes and statements to back it up. The Senate committee, in fact, looked like one would expect a place to look anti-LGBT sentiment has lost its political savor.

As the bill moves on — to the floor of the Senate this fall most likely, and then over to the House if the Senate, as Harkin expects, passes the bill — someone will give those views opposed to LGBT rights voice yet again.

There were, though, no such voices on Wednesday.

The movement for LGBT rights takes a heavier lift, of course, than just the opposition's silence. It takes yes votes, it takes action, it takes genuinely changed minds, and it takes time.

But, for the movement against LGBT rights, it will have reached its end when there's no one left who is willing to voice those views.

In that Senate committee Wednesday — for the first time on the national legislative stage — people saw what that will look like.

“There’s not a clear consensus,” said Wisconsin Rep. James Sensenbrenner. “But there will be. I don’t think we’ve gotten there yet on our approach.”

House Speaker John Boehner

Via: Susan Walsh / AP

WASHINGTON — At Wednesday's closed-door meeting for House Republicans on immigration — billed as a part educational, part venting session — Congressional GOPers emerged feeling much the same way about immigration reform as they went in: all over the place.

It's not that anyone was expecting Republicans to come out of the meeting with a solid plan on how to move forward with comprehensive immigration reform. The ball is in the House's court after the Senate passed their own bill with bipartisan support last month. There are those in the conference pushing for a way forward for a comprehensive bill, those who think the approach should come in steps, and those that think any legislation they might pass will become a vehicle for "amnesty" for the nation's 11 million undocumented immigrants and that's just a nonstarter for them.

"It's hard to see a common theme evolving in there right now, besides everyone being unified around border security first," Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie said. "None of the Republicans trust the president, nor should they, and not enough of them trust the leadership."

Others left feeling more confident leadership would find a way forward.

"There's not a clear consensus," Wisconsin Rep. James Sensenbrenner said. "But there will be. I don't think we've gotten there yet on our approach."

The message from Republican leadership was twofold: The House won't touch the Senate bill but more importantly, Majority Leader Eric Cantor told members, Republicans needed to present their own ideas for how to move forward.

"Today House Republicans affirmed that rather than take up the flawed legislation rushed through the Senate, House committees will continue their work on a step-by-step, commonsense approach to fixing what has long been a broken system. The American people want our border secured, our laws enforced, and the problems in our immigration system fixed to strengthen our economy. But they don't trust a Democratic-controlled Washington, and they're alarmed by the president's ongoing insistence on enacting a single, massive, Obamacare-like bill rather than pursuing a step-by-step, common-sense approach to actually fix the problem," Republican leadership said in a statement following the meeting.

The House Judiciary committee has moved several border security bills, but many in the conference believe that that those could be used as a way to go to conference with the Senate, and a bill would then pass with the majority of Democratic support.

Over the course of the more than two-hour meeting, House Speaker John Boehner came to the microphone several times to reiterate that was not going to be the case. He tried to relieve member concerns by assuring them conferees would not agree to a deal unacceptable to the majority of House Republicans.

Some stalwarts weren't convinced.

Alabama Rep. Mo Brooks, who is deeply opposed to a pathway to citizenship for the country's undocumented immigrants, stood at the microphone to read a line from "America the Beautiful." The line? "Confirm thy soul in self-control, thy liberty in law."

"We should never support a policy that undermines the rule of law," he said after the meeting. "Anyone whose first act on American soil was to break the law should not be rewarded with the highest honor of citizenship."

Republicans were united around the idea though that President Obama can't be trusted. Many of them pointed to the recent announcement that the administration would delay the health care law's employer mandate as their prime example of how he would not enforce laws passed by Congress.

"It's a game changer as far as our members are concerned," Ohio Rep. Pat Tiberi said. "Already you'd get six or seven different answers from members as to how to approach immigration but there's so much less trust after that announcement it hurts our effort to do big things."

Even if they cannot immediately agree on a way forward, many members said they felt completely ignoring immigration all together would be worse than doing nothing at all.

"The politics of doing nothing are on [President Obama's] side," Rep. Richard Hudson said. "The politics of doing an amnesty are worse for us. So we need to do something—we just have to be very careful about how it's done."

Shamefully, Congress failed to act before the July 1st deadline to prevent your student loan interest rates from doubling. This is an issue on which we should all agree. I call on Congress to pass legislation that will retroactively prevent this de facto tax increase on young people already struggling under mountains of debt. At a time when Americans owe more than $1.2 trillion in student loans debt, the last thing we should do is make college more expensive for students and their families. Here are 11 reasons why Congress needs to act on student loan interest rates.

Because on July 1st, your student loan rates doubled from 3.4% to 6.8%.

10 million students nationwide will lose $1,000 per year from the higher rates, and even more under the House GOP plan.

If you had that money, you could buy...

Student loan debt in America has reached $1 Trillion…

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Let’s hope Elisabeth Hasselbeck can keep her co-hosts under control when she takes over the middle spot on the Fox & Friends couch.

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Here's the viral video that made little Titus famous.

The members of congress who are most outspoken against immigration reform all have something in common: They have overwhelmingly white congressional districts. [Note: Stats are from the 2010 Census and include people who identify with multiple races so numbers may not add up to 100%.]

Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa)

Via: Pete Marovich / Getty Images

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.)

Via: Mary F. Calvert / Reuters

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“I cannot ethically defend the constitutionality of Pennsylvania’s version of DOMA. I believe it to be wholly unconstitutional,” Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane says.

Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane will not defend the state's ban on same-sex couples marrying, challenged in a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on Tuesday.

Following the Supreme Court's decision on June 26 striking down the definition of marriage in the Defense of Marriage Act that excluded gay couples from federal recognition, Kane Thursday said, "I cannot ethically defend the constitutionality of Pennsylvania's version of DOMA. I believe it to be wholly unconstitutional."

When a reporter asked whether the process of changing the ability of same-sex couples to marry was better handled through the legislature, Kane, a Democrat, said, "I believe that any method that breaks down discrimination and inequality is the method that we should all take, whether it's ... through the courts or the legislature."

At the news conference, held in Philadelphia at the National Constitution Center, Kane noted that she was both a defendant named in the lawsuit herself and the lawyer for other officials named, including Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett.

As to his defense, she said, "Our process is to send over a letter, as we do on many occasions, delegating authority back to the Office of General Counsel." Asked what Corbett, a Republican, will do, Kane said, "I don't speak for the governor. I don't know. I do what I believe is right, and ... the governor does what he does as well."

Corbett's office had no immediate comment, but a spokesman directed BuzzFeed to seek comment from the Office of General Counsel. A message seeking comment there was not immediately returned.

[Update at 3 p.m.: The following statement was issued from Pennsylvania General Counsel James D. Schultz:

We are surprised that the Attorney General, contrary to her constitutional duty under the Commonwealth Attorneys Act, has decided not to defend a Pennsylvania statute lawfully enacted by the General Assembly, merely because of her personal beliefs.

We have not received any formal notification of Attorney General Kane's decision. While we await that notification and accompanying legal justification, we will continue to review the lawsuit filed by the ACLU.

Corbett's office has not issued any statement directly about the news.]

In 2009, then-California Attorney General Jerry Brown, a Democrat, reached a similar decision to Kane as to California's Proposition 8, saying that he would not defend it because he believed it to be unconstitutional. Then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, also said he would not defend the law, although he took no position on its constitutionality. Brown is now governor and the current attorney general, Kamala Harris, continued Brown's position against the amendment.

In concluding Thursday's news conference, Kane returned to the chosen setting of the event.

"Now that we're here in the Constitution Center, I know that we talk a lot about the Constitution. As I said to my nieces who are here in the audience, I don't just want to teach them to talk about the Constitution, I want to teach them to act toward it."

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Via:

Oh, Behave.

Edward Snowden was an "infrastructure analyst" for the National Security Administration, working as a contractor in Hawaii.

He became increasingly disturbed by the fact that the federal government has a gigantic, secret spying apparatus to monitor people around the globe.

Snowden decided to leak proof of previously unknown clandestine spying programs to Glenn Greenwald of The Guardian.

The Guardian in turn published a series of exposés in June and July about the program.

The government was not really sure how to respond to the leaks at first.

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California freshman Mark Takano whips out the correction pen to give GOP immigration hardliners “an F.”

Via: Rep. Mark Takano

WASHINGTON — When Democratic Rep. Mark Takano got his hands on a draft letter to Speaker John Boehner from conservatives on immigration, he did what any pro-reform member of Congress who was a high school literature teacher for two decades would: took out his red pen and marked up the draft.

Unsurprisingly, he gave the Republican letter an "F."

"If you don't understand the bill come by my office and I'll explain it," he wrote at the bottom in his best teacherese.

The letter, which is being circulated by Louisiana Republican Rep. Bill Cassidy and is addressed to Boehner, is a rebuke of the Senate's comprehensive immigration reform bill. It includes complaints that the Senate bill is "over 1,000 pages long" and was created in a "secret and underhanded way." Cassidy's letter calls on the House to reject a comprehensive bill in favor of several smaller bills targeted at specific immigration arguments, like border security.

The signatories of the letter are a Who's Who of Republican comprehensive reform opponents in the House, including Reps. Tim Huelskamp of Kansas, John Culberson and Mike Conaway of Texas, Charles Boustany and Rodney Alexander of Louisana, Steve Palazzo and Alan Nunnelee of Mississippi, Joe Pitts of Pennsylvania, Tom Price, Paul Broun and Austin Scott of Georgia, Paul Gosar and Trent Franks of Arizona, Andy Harris of Maryland, Doug Lamborn of Colorado, Jeff Duncan of South Carolina, Bob Latta of Ohio, Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, Blaine Luetkemeyer of Missouri and Richard Hudson of North Carolina.

Outside the White House Thursday, leaders of the Senate Gang Of Eight, which authored the immigration bill, rejected similar complaints made by conservative Republicans in the past.

"Those extreme opponents, they keep coming up with new reasons to oppose the bill. One of their latest is, 'oh, our bill is a thousand pages and complicated,'" said Sen. Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York. "Well, from what I understand, the bills they are putting together -- and they only have half of them done -- are already 500 pages."

"It's what in those pages that's important, and what's in those pages is supported by the American people overwhelmingly -- Democrats, Republicans, business, labor, the whole religious community," Schumer added.

Takano's office says the marked-up version of the letter, which staff posted to both Takano's Facebook and Tumblr pages, has been a hit. After about two hours on Facebook, the letter had already been shared more than 1,000 times.

“As Dr. Phil would say…”

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Via:

Ken Cuccinelli channeled TV host Dr. Phil while making comments critiquing Medicare and Medicaid at a 2012 tea party rally on Capitol Hill. Cuccinelli used the programs as part of a larger attack on Obamacare.

"We have had one answer in federal government to every challenge in health care for 47 years, and that's more government," Cuccinelli said. "It goes back to beginning of Medicaid, Medicare, and as Dr. Phil would say, 'How's that working out for 'ya?'"

"We need to go the other way," Cuccinelli continued. "We need to move back toward a free market. We don't have a free market in health care. We need to connect customers up with the cost of care. And to drive innovation that way. And we're moving the other way with the federal health care bill. In Virginia we want to have our own opportunity to control our own destiny, control our own market. And this bill gets in the way of all of that."

The Virginia attorney general previously argued in his bookThe Last Line of Defense: The New Fight for American Liberty that programs like Medicaid and Medicare were used as "one of politicians' favorite ways to increase their power," saying the programs "make people dependent on government. And once people are dependent, they feel they can't afford to have the programs taken away, no matter how inefficient, poorly run, or costly to the rest of society."

The full video of Cuccinelli's 2012 interview has been embedded below:

Source: youtube.com

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney responds: “We understand that.”

Via: Jonathan Ernst / Reuters

WASHINGTON — Confronted with claims that members of the LGBT community are being discriminated against while President Obama continues to oppose signing a proposed executive order to ban some of that discrimination, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney responded bluntly Wednesday: "We understand that."

Since April 2011, Obama administration officials have said that Obama will not be signing an executive order to ban anti-LGBT discrimination against employees of and jobs applicants to federal contractors. Those employers represent about 20 percent of all private-employer jobs in the country.

Administration officials have said instead that their focus is on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, legislation that would ban sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination or most private employers in the country. Carney noted a Senate committee's passage of the bill on Wednesday as evidence of progress on the legislation.

The administration has held this position even as it enforces President Clinton's executive order that bans anti-gay discrimination in the federal workforce and President Lyndon Johnson's executive order that bans discrimination on the basis of race, color, sex, religion or national origin among federal contractors.

On Wednesday, however, NBC News' Kristen Welker questioned Carney about the impact of the administration's inaction, prompting a rather blunt response.

Welker: "People who support the executive order and this legislation would say that in the meantime, while this is going through Congress —

Carney: "I understand and I, Kristen —"

Welker: "— members of the LGBT community are being discriminated against."

Carney: "I know you've been here when I've answered this question a half-dozen or a dozen times. We understand that, and we've had the position we've had."

Watch The Exchange:

Source: youtube.com

The Florida Senator used to talk entirely about border security, attacked Ronald Reagan for supporting amnesty in 1986, criticized McCain’s past reform attempts, and said granting amnesty would only encourage more illegal immigration. He’s now singing a different tune with a bill that has fines, background checks and other requirements allowing illegal immigrants to access the legal immigration system.

"I am for securing our borders, and I am not in favor of amnesty."

Via: hotair.com

"In 1986 Ronald Reagan granted amnesty to 3 million people. You know what happened, in addition to becoming 11 million a decade later? There were people trying to enter the country legally, who had done the paperwork, who were here legally, who were going through the process, who claimed, all of a sudden, 'No, no no no , I'm illegal.' Because it was easier to do the amnesty program than it was to do the legal process."

"If you grant amnesty, the message that you're sending is that if you come in this country and stay here long enough, we will let you stay. And no one will ever come through the legal process if you do that."

Via: postonpolitics.com

"I believe we need to secure our borders and fix our VISA program. Only after we do that can we move on to fixing legal immigration and other issues like guest worker programs. We need to secure our borders before we even talk about something like a guest worker program — but, I am not in favor of amnesty. I think it would be demoralizing and destructive."

Via: rightwingnews.com

"As far as amnesty, that's where the governor and I disagree. He would have voted for the McCain plan. I think that plan is wrong, and the reason why I think it's wrong is that if you grant amnesty, as the governor proposes that we do, in any form, whether it's back of the line or so forth, you will destroy any chance we will ever have of having a legal immigration system that works here in America."

Via: politicsdaily.com

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Thank goodness Sen Pat Roberts (R-KS) is running for reelection.

Watch Senator Pat Roberts serenade Senate Leader Harry Reid with some Johnny Cash.

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And here's Roberts showing his aide how to turn off his "damn phone."

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Flashback to Roberts fantasy about playing B-ball with Obama.

A new video from the American Foundation for Equal Rights highlights the last week of June, from the Supreme Court to San Francisco and Los Angeles city halls.

The American Foundation for Equal Rights released a special video today.

It's filled with touching moments from the end of Prop 8.

From outside the Supreme Court:

Source: youtube.com

To when Obama called from Air Force One:

Source: youtube.com

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Are YOU ready?

She would have the first full blown hipster glasses in the Senate.

Via: Andy Lyons / Getty Images

Her finger wag.

Via: Carolyn Kaster / AP

"PERFECTED."

Via: Jonathan Ernst / Reuters

Imagine floor speeches like THIS!?

Via: Pete Marovich / Getty Images

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