Anthony Weiner may be stealing the show, but he’s hardly the only New York politician that’s become engulfed in scandal over the last few months.

The Anthony Weiner spectacle is already etched into the permanent walls of scandal infamy. But the high visibility of his blunders have taken away from other scandals that have plagued the rest of the state.

Source: media1.giphy.com

In April, New York state Sen. Malcolm Smith and New York City Councilman Dan Halloran were indicted for trying to rig the mayoral election.

Smith, a Democrat, allegedly enlisted Halloran to bribe the chairmen of the Bronx and Queens GOP, who were also indicted, to sign a special document to allow him to run for mayor on the Republican ticket. Halloran also allegedly pocketed thousands of dollars from the scheme.

Via: Handout / Reuters

Smith's colleagues, constituents and others called on the oft-embattled senator to resign, but he vowed to keep coming back to work. And in fact, he did.

So the other senators kicked Smith out of his conferences, stripped him of his leadership rolls, and forced him to sit in the back with the freshmen.

Source: media3.giphy.com

We also learned that Halloran follows an intense pre-christian religion and was flogged by church leaders for committing an unknown act against a female "thrall" — or probationary servant.

Above is an actual photo of Halloran at a Theodish ceremony.

Source: nypost.com

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Is J Street back in the fold? Trying to create the “political environment” in Washington for peace in the Middle East.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry (center) watches as Israeli Justice Minister Tzipi Livni and Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat (left) shake hands during a press conference after the start of peace talks in Washington, D.C., Tuesday, July 30, 2013.

Via: Olivier Douliery/Abaca Press/MCT

WASHINGTON — The resumption of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks this week is the latest mark of a reshuffled Washington Israel politics, one that has put the liberal Israel lobby J Street — a group badly marginalized in President Barack Obama's first term — back into the mix.

President Obama's new indifference to criticism from Israel hawks — exemplified by his nomination of Secretary of State Chuck Hagel — and Secretary of State John Kerry's new push come as the five-year-old liberal peace process advocacy group may finally have gotten a foothold on Capitol Hill and in the White House. The group is also taking some credit for the shift — though critics point out that the new peace talks come under a different framework than the one J Street advocated.

"I do think that the political environment in which the talks are conducted is extremely important and I think that the atmosphere around the talks does impact their probability of success," said Jeremy Ben-Ami, the director of J Street. "It is really important that there be a sense of political support for what the president and the secretary of state are doing."

"We have had an impact over the five years of J Street's existence in creating an atmosphere," Ben-Ami said. But "it is being too narrow in one's view on this to put it in a political lens," he stressed.

In an interview with The New Republic earlier this week, Ben-Ami said, "We have the ear of the White House; we have the ear of a very large segment of Congress at this point; we have very good relations with top communal leadership in the Jewish community."

"If you want to have a voice in those corridors of power, then get involved with J Street," Ben-Ami told TNR.

"J Street is having a moment," said one senior Congressional staffer, who is critical of the group, regretfully.

After barely surviving an intense effort by hawkish supports of Israel to render it politically toxic, the liberal group is at least making its way back to respectability — and has some concrete successes to show for it. The Dent-Price letter to the White House calling for a diplomatic solution to Iran's nuclear program last week, signed by 131 members of Congress, was a coup for J Street's worldview, though 104 of the 131 signers voted for tighter Iran sanctions this week. And J Street's PAC aligned itself with California Democrat Sen. Dianne Feinstein, whose reelection bid it raised money for last year along with 60 other Congressional campaigns.

"J Street is one of the groups out there working to open up that political space," said Dylan Williams, J Street's director of government affairs. "Our job is quite an easy one in the sense that very few members still need to be convinced that it's good policy. Part of this is because of the work J Street and others have done to open up the political space so there is no political blowback for members."

The group has also done some tactical repositioning, spending time lining up with more hawkish Israel supporters on issues like opposing boycotts of Israel and backing sanctions on Iran.

Its goal now, Ben-Ami said, is to create political conditions for compromise on Capitol Hill and elsewhere. "There has never been a political basis for demonstrating that support in Congress to back up a presidential effort. That's a really important distinction – the awareness today of a really strong political support effort. I really think that's significant."

This is not to say J Street has made any new friends on the right. While Feinstein is sponsoring a resolution, backed by J Street, to support Kerry's peace efforts, the group has yet to find a House sponsor for the resolution — though conversation are underway. And critics say any progress is in spite, not because, of the liberal group.

"J Street has been creating an atmosphere for the peace process like a barnacle creates an atmosphere for a ship to sail," said Noah Pollak, executive director of the Emergency Committee for Israel. "The peace process has been an Obama obsession for years, and now he's added John Kerry's fixation on it to the mix. These men need no encouragement. To the extent J Street has any influence, it's only to discredit Obama's approach by associating such a radical anti-Israel group with the president's agenda."

Josh Block, director of The Israel Project and former AIPAC spokesman, argued that the issues that J Street advocates for have nothing to do with the conditions that have led to the peace process restarting — that they're in fact the opposite.

"It's encouraging that Secretary Kerry has gotten to the point where the Palestinians have finally agreed to talk peace with Israel after five years, and for bit players like that to claim any credit is an insult to the Secretary and like a bird taking credit for the wind or plankton taking credit for a tsunami," Block said. "The very ideas those people advocated — obsession with settlements and public pressure on Israel, not the recalcitrant Palestinians — were the reason for five years of total breakdown, and it's the 180 degree turn away from them by the Secretary and White House that has revived the process, proving their complete irrelevance."

J Street argues that it is at least pulling some support in the American Jewish community away from larger and more hawkish organizations, like AIPAC, the top pro-Israel lobbying group in D.C. which still vastly outstrips J Street in money and influence.

"There are people who have been in more traditional organizations, I don't mean to single out one, but there are more and more people who have come to see that what we're saying is pretty reasonable and rational," Ben-Ami said.

Margaret Miles married Cathy ten Broeke at Minneapolis City Hall at moments past midnight, as the state’s new marriage equality law went into effect.

(Photo courtesy of David Brauer.)

Source: twitter.com

WASHINGTON — The wedding ceremony of Margaret Miles and Cathy ten Broeke began at Minneapolis City Hall at 11:38 p.m. July 31, 22 minutes before the city's mayor, R.T. Rybak, could legally marry the women.

Rybak opened City Hall for midnight weddings to usher in the first day that Minnesota's marriage equality law took effect. He personally married the women moments after midnight.

The moment — an hour after Rhode Island's marriage equality law took effect — made the state the 13th in the country, plus Washington, D.C., to allow same-sex couples to marry. It also marked a changed city in the long fight of gay and lesbian couples for legal recognition of their relationships.

Forty-three years ago, Richard Baker and James Michael McConnell were denied a marriage license in Minneapolis because they were both men. They sued to force the county to allow them to marry, but lost in an unceremonious dismissal of their appeal at the United States Supreme Court.

As the last minutes of Wednesday edged into Thursday, with the choir singing and City Hall filled with joyous onlookers, their cause saw its decades-delayed resolution.

The crowd arrived early.

Via: Renee Jones Schneider/Minneapolis Star Tribune/MCT

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Reporters chase the newly silent candidate in his old congressional district. “Where is Barbara!”

New York mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner attends a campaign event in the Rockaways section in the Queens borough of New York.

Via: Eric Thayer / Reuters

Anthony Weiner hurriedly exited a campaign stop in his home stomping grounds Wednesday, fleeing from reporters during his first appearance since his spokeswoman apologized for an expletive-laced rant against a former intern.

Barbara Morgan, who did not attend the event Wednesday in Weiner's former congressional district, cursed and threatened to sue Olivia Nuzzi, the one-time intern, in an interview with Talking Points Memo. Morgan issued an apology about an hour after the article appeared online.

It's not often that Weiner shies from the press: Since announcing his campaign for mayor of New York City in May, the former congressman has rarely turned away a television camera, or walked past a reporter in silence. But on Wednesday, in the parking lot of the Knights of Columbus Rockaway Council in Queens, where he courted the vote from his old constituents, Weiner fell silent.

After taking three questions from audience members at the Friends of Rockaway Beach meeting, Weiner gave the crowd a "God Bless You!" and beelined for a side door at a brisk pace. A group of about 15 reporters funneled through the exit to chase him, provoking an audible reaction from attendees, who were more focused on the small-scale media frenzy than the next speaker who had by then already taken to the floor.

Once outside, Weiner darted for his tinted SUV without a word.

"Congressman Weiner, can we just ask you a couple quick questions?" one reporter called.

"Where is Barbara!" another shouted as Weiner's car pulled out of the lot.

"Come on!"

"What was that?"

Morgan's comments to TPM, and the uproar that followed the publication of the article, account for the latest upset in the embattled Weiner campaign. Last week, new revelations about Weiner's illicit online behavior — specifically, that he continued to have extramarital relationships with women on the web for more than a year after his resignation from Congress — prompted a sharp drop in polling.

But despite the new scandal, Weiner was well received by voters at the event. The beach community of Rockaway, which was hit badly by Hurricane Sandy last year, was one Weiner "never walked away from," Patrick Clark, a resident and community leader, told him during the meeting. "We're going to see all the different candidates out here, but once one of them is elected, I don't think we're going to see them out here at all — unless it's you."

"I'd like to have a mayor with a controversy rather than having a mayor who we're never gonna see again," said Clark, who has lived in Rockaway for 28 years.

But other attendees felt Weiner, and the bevy of reporters following his campaign, distracted too much from the problems of Rockaway.

After Weiner's SUV pulled out onto Beach 90th Street, reporters stood in the parking lot — some still flummoxed, others already heading home. Inside, three other mayoral candidates — Joe Lhota, John Catsimatidis, and Sal Albanese — were still waiting their turn to speak.

"Can I ask you a question?" said Charlie Ciliberti, a voter who had also come outside to see Weiner's exit. "I want to ask the media a question. This means a lot to us in this neighborhood. We've been through a lot of shit, and everyone runs out like it's over. Everyone wants to see the big show with Anthony Weiner. It's pretty messed up."

"They're all getting in their cars and leaving," he said. "Just watch them all go to their cars."

“I’ve read the whole transcript,” says the former presidential candidate. He says the church won’t be changing its stance on homosexuality anytime soon.

Via: Eric Gay / AP

Pope Francis made headlines this week when he told reporters in a press conference aboard the papal airplane, "If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?" Some hoped the comment was a sign that the Roman Catholic Church was softening its opposition to homosexuality, if ever so slightly.

But former presidential candidate Rick Santorum, a staunch social conservative and devout Catholic, told BuzzFeed Wednesday night that the pontiff's remarks have been taken out of context by the press, and that gay rights advocates shouldn't hold their breath for the church to change its doctrine with regard to homosexuality.

"I've read the whole transcript, and what he said early on was that 'I don't know anybody who puts gay on their identification card.' He said it in that context," Santorum said. "I think all believers need to understand that we need to respect and love everybody and treat everybody with dignity and respect. There's no room for harshness in respect to this issue — but that doesn't mean the church doesn't have the right to believe what is right and wrong."

Santorum was referring to how Francis answered a question about the so-called "gay lobby" within the Vatican, a rumored coalition of gay priests that uses blackmail and internal politics to advance their agenda.

"So much is written about the gay lobby. I have yet to find on a Vatican identity card the word 'gay,'" Francis said. "They say there are some gay people here. I think that when we encounter a gay person, we must make the distinction between the fact of a person being gay and the fact of a lobby, because lobbies are not good."

Santorum said he was confident the pope had no intention of signaling a shift in the church's stance on homosexuality. But he praised Francis, who he called "the people's pope," for the way he's represented the church to the world.

"If you look at Jesus, he hung out with the poor and the sinners," Santorum said. "He didn't hang out with the elites. He had a concern with those who were hurt and suffering from the ravages of sin and physical ravages. [Francis] comes from what was at one time a third world country. He comes from an area that still has very rampant poverty, so I think he's just very sensitive to that. And that's a good thing. That's why it's a good thing to have someone who's not from Europe."

Best job in the world.

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Running for City Council on New York City’s Upper West Side, Wymore would be the first out transgender person on the council. “You can do almost anything if you feel comfortable in your own skin,” he tells BuzzFeed in an extensive interview.

Via: Macey Foronda/Buzzfeed

On September 10, New Yorkers will be casting their primary ballots for city offices — and potentially making history if they elect the first out transgender council member.

Though attention has been focused on the mayoral and comptroller campaigns, the race for the City Council seat on the Upper West Side, District 6, could end with the election of the first out transgender person on council, or in elected office in the state.

Wymore said he sees this race as part of his responsibility to address the issues about gender identity that took him decades to figure out and led to his eventual decision to transition from a woman, while serving as the head of the local community board.

"For people like me who have been very lucky to live in one of the most progressive communities on the planet, where I could be the chair of the community board and announce, 'Hey, I'm transitioning. I'll keep you posted,' ... I realized it's really my responsibility to bring that to other people — to bring that conversation out," he said.

"I have to do that because I don't want to have more people who take 35 years to figure out who they are. I certainly don't want it for my kids."

Out trans public officials are still very rare across the country, with only a handful of known out trans elected officials currently in office — none of whom are in a state legislature or Congress.

"Mel has literally spent decades serving his community and his neighborhood, so he's got the resume you want to see in a city council candidate," Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund vice president of communications Denis Dison said of the group's endorsement of Wymore.

The Victory Fund takes candidates' viability into account, and Dison said the group views Wymore as both viable and the best candidate in a crowded field to take the seat currently held by Gail Brewer.

But, the Victory Fund's primary aim is to increase the prevalence of out LGBT candidates and elected and appointed officials, and Wymore would be a notable change in the elective landscape.

"The fact that he'd also become a high-profile transgender leader is incredibly important," Dison said. "It would give him a level of prominence that probably no trans official has had in the U.S."

Part of the change the Victory Fund hopes to see from out elected officials is an increase in education and awareness about LGBT issues. Talking with BuzzFeed, Wymore made clear he's eager to take on that mantle for out trans officials as he talked about his aims in the race and the long and winding path that led him here and headed — he hopes — to join New York City Council in January 2014.

Via: Macey Foronda/Buzzfeed

BuzzFeed: So, why are you running for City Council?

Mel Wymore: Running for City Council is a very natural progression of the work I've been doing in the community for more than 20 years. I started off very local, organizing my own block to start a food program for tenants of a building across the street who were missing out on services, particularly food and health care. Through that work, I got to know a lot of people in the community. I was asked to sit on Community Board 7, which is our, kind of a mini-City Council about 17 years ago, and I served on many committees after that. Eventually, I chaired the board itself.

Now I have an opportunity to take that knowledge and that experience, and also some of the skills that I have as an engineer, and perhaps bring some new conversations to policymaking [and] the way in which you bring people together to actually design the future as opposed to just advocate for policy on one side or another.

BuzzFeed: There are out gay and lesbian members of City Council, but you would be the first out trans member.

Wymore: I'd be the first out trans member of anything in New York state, in terms of elected office. There are some real role models in the trans world that have been active as district leaders in the Democratic Party or even in local community works in various boroughs, but, for the most part, no one has yet run for elective office in New York state, to our knowledge. You don't always know, because not everyone is out, but no one has run as an openly transgender person.

I'm excited about that, for a couple of reasons. I think that there's an opportunity to really give voice to a community that's really invisible in our society and is just starting to become a known community. And, secondly, because I feel that my perspective actually informs the way we can bring policy to a different level. I'm someone who really has seen many sides of life, and I think I can take on a lot of different perspectives and not just only representing a trans community, but really the whole continuum of what it means to be a human being, from a gender perspective certainly, but also from a perspective of what it means to be mainstream versus what it means to feel marginalized, what it means to feel that you are an activist versus someone who is in the privileged roles. It's probably good to have someone like that on the City Council.

BuzzFeed: We're at a point where there is a growing awareness of trans issues and lives.

Wymore: I started transitioning six years ago, and it's been a tsunami of awareness and change, in terms of the cultural understanding of gender. We have a long way to go because there's still a deep sense of otherness, I think, in people when they respond to meeting someone who is transgender. You actually have to meet [someone who is transgender] personally before that sense of otherness starts to fade.

Then, also, there's the issue of what it means to be transgender, because we live in a very binary society, meaning there's — we really breathe the air of 'there's two sides of the coin, there's the male side and there's the female side,' and so, the notion of a gender continuum is just beginning to become more commonplace in people's understanding and the cultural understanding of gender.

I think it's very exciting how quickly this is changing. It used to be when you saw a child who was "nonconforming," in terms of gender, and there was a path they were going to take. We all have this expectation: "There's a feminine, male-born child. That's gonna be a gay kid," and we have all these expectations of where they're gonna go. And, then there's the tomboy: "The tomboy is going to go through this butterfly transformation and turn into Mulan, who gets married to the prince." Those are the stories that we had, the expectation. And it was still always set in this very binary kind of world. [Now,] we see more and more parents … trying to create safe environments for their children to try and develop however they develop and not try to channel them in a particular path.

At the same time, there are people out there in tremendous pain because they live in a context or a world where it's not so easy to explain who they are, it's not so accepted.

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GET DOWN!

President Obama rarely goes to the Capitol. So when he does, everyone pays attention!

Source: theguardian.com

So here is a first-person perspective of what it takes to MAKE THIS VISIT HAPPEN:

When the motorcade is en route, traffic around the Capitol is heavily diverted.

Via: Benny Johnson/Buzzfeed

"Hey, Mt. Sinai Baptist Church, go away."

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Glenn Beck whipped out his chalk board to connect Reza Aslan, the author who achieved internet fame this week for keeping his cool during a hostile and uninformed interview on Fox News that focused on his Muslim faith, to billionaire and Beck-villain George Soros. Beck added “forget about this guy being a phony Muslim, or a phony scholar, he’s a radical progressive.”

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Via:

The Senate Majority Leader was not pleased with his colleagues’ lack of decorum during debate on a transportation spending bill. And he let them know it.

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Via:

“The opinion of the Russian government is now perfectly clear: if you’re gay and you come to Russia for the Olympics, you will be in harm’s way,” an advocate says. The sports minister’s comments contradict a statement last week from International Olympic Committee.

Russian Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko

Via: YURI KADOBNOV / Getty Images

WASHINGTON — Contradicting a statement put out last week by the International Olympic Committee, Russian Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko told R-Sport Thursday that Russia's anti-LGBT propaganda law would remain in effect during the Sochi Olympics in February 2014.

"No one is forbidding an athlete with non-traditional sexual orientation from coming to Sochi, but if he goes onto the street and starts propagandizing it, then of course he will be held accountable," Mutko told R-Sport.

The comments come a week after the IOC announced that it had received assurances "from the highest level of government in Russia that the legislation will not affect those attending or taking part in the Games." The sports minister's comments also came two days after a Russian lawmaker made similar comments regarding his view that the law could not be suspended during the Olympics.

The legislation, signed into law by Russian President Vladimir Putin this June, authorizes the 15-day jailing of foreigners and fines for both foreigners and Russians who are convicted of "promotion of non-traditional sexual relations among minors." The breadth of the law, as judged by public comments of officials and early attempts at prosecution, could criminalize any public discussion or dissemination of information about homosexuality. If committed "with the use of the media," the penalty could include "administrative suspension of activity for up to ninety days."

Asked about the development, a U.S. Olympic Committee spokesman — referencing a letter sent to sport organizing bodies around the country that BuzzFeed published on Tuesday — said that "our letter says all we're currently prepared to say." In the letter, sent from USOC head Scott Blackmun, he stated that the USOC was "engaged in active discussions with the International Olympic Committee and the U.S. State Department" regarding Americans' safety at the Olympics.

IOC officials did not immediately respond to a request seeking comment.

The Human Rights Campaign, which had questioned the IOC's announcement at the time, responded to Thursday's statement saying that officials have made clear that gay people "will be in harm's way" if they go to Sochi for the Olympics.

"One wonders which Russian authorities the IOC is speaking to," HRC's vice president for communications, Fred Sainz, told BuzzFeed regarding the IOC's prior statement. "Within the past twenty-four hours, two high level officials have gone out of their way to contradict the IOC in no uncertain terms. The opinion of the Russian government is now perfectly clear: if you're gay and you come to Russia for the Olympics, you will be in harm's way."

All Out, an organization aimed at mobilizing people and their social networks across the globe on equality issues, has been working with Russian activists on LGBT issues for the past two years and likewise criticized Thursday's statement.

"The founding principles of the Olympics must be upheld within Russia: respect, excellence and friendship. Staging the Games in Russia with these laws in place is like holding the Olympics in Johannesburg at the height of apartheid," All Out's executive director, Andre Banks, said. "President Putin will risk his country's international reputation if these Games go ahead with laws in place that are in fundamental opposition to Olympic values."

Sainz added, "What this makes all the more clear is that LGBT Russians and expats alike are also in peril. The law is so obtuse that circumstances can be contrived to prosecute LGBT individuals who are simply living their lives. These laws are an abomination and pose a human rights imperative for all to speak out."

Update at 8 p.m.: USA Today reported a response from the IOC Thursday evening:

"We rest with comments made directly to us by deputy PM Kozak," IOC spokesman Mark Adams wrote in an email Thursday, referring to Russian deputy prime minster Dmitry Kozak.

[This article has been updated to include comment from the U.S. Olympic Committee.]

Fox Business Network host Don Imus praised Aslan’s book Zealot on Thursday morning. This was an unusual break from the criticism Aslan’s book has received from other parts of the Fox News world.

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Via:

“Russia has stabbed us in the back,” Schumer says.

Edward Snowden talks with Russian lawyer Anatoly Kucherena (2nd R) in front of a car at Moscow's Sheremetyevo on Thursday.

Via: Handout / Reuters

WASHINGTON — Pressure is building in Congress for President Obama to move the G-20 summit in September away from St. Petersburg in light of Russia's granting Edward Snowden asylum on Thursday.

"Russia has stabbed us in the back, and each day that Mr. Snowden is allowed to roam free is another twist of the knife," said Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) in a statement. "Others who have practiced civil disobedience in the past have stood up and faced the charges because they strongly believed in what they were doing. Mr. Snowden is a coward who has chosen to run. Given Russia's decision today, the President should recommend moving the G-20 summit."

"Yes. Yes I do," Republican Senator Kelly Ayotte, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told Buzzfeed when asked if she thought Obama should consider not attending the G-20 meeting.

"I think this is a troubling pattern," Ayotte said, pointing to Putin's support for Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, his crackdown on adoptions and a string of other decisions in which he's "basically just trampling on what we've expressed to him that we want to see happen … we're not just talking about Snowden here."

Other senators didn't explicitly call for Obama's plans to change, but strongly condemned Putin for allowing Snowden into Russia instead of returning him to the U.S.

"I think Snowden is a traitor, and Putin did a wrong thing. But I'm not going to be a Secretary of State. I'm going to leave that to the President and John Kerry," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told BuzzFeed.

Sen. John Cornyn said that while he doesn't have an opinion on whether Obama should not attend the meeting, he placed a substantial part of the blame for Putin's decision on Obama's shoulders.

"I think it's a real thumb in the eye by Putin," the Texas Republican said. "A thumb in the eye to the United States and a thumb in the eye to the President personally. Part of that is because people don't see any consequences that follow cross red lines or defying the United States. That's as much a credibility issue as anything else."

Senator John McCain called for "serious repercussions" for Russia's actions.

"Russia's action today is a disgrace and a deliberate effort to embarrass the United States," McCain said in a statement. "It is a slap in the face of all Americans. Now is the time to fundamentally rethink our relationship with Putin's Russia. We need to deal with the Russia that is, not the Russia we might wish for. We cannot allow today's action by Putin to stand without serious repercussions."

McCain called for an expansion of the Magnitsky act and for completion of the U.S.'s missile defense programs in Europe. "

Meanwhile, the White House and State Department have been suggesting that the President's participation in a planned meeting with Putin around the time of the summit is in question.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters in the daily press briefing on Thursday that "we're evaluating the utility of a summit."

State Department deputy press secretary Marie Harf told reporters that "we are also re-evaluating the utility" of a planned 2+2 meeting between U.S. and Russian representatives scheduled to take place in Washington later this month.

Given the news about Snowden, Harf said, "It behooves us to reevaluate where the relationship is, whether the summit makes sense."

Sen. Jeff Merkley will introduce the resolution. The measure will call on the International Olympic Committee to oppose Russia’s anti-LGBT propaganda law and protect athletes and spectators from discrimination at the Winter Olympics.

Via: Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images

WASHINGTON — Sen. Jeff Merkley plans to introduce a Senate resolution calling on the International Olympic Committee to oppose Russia's anti-LGBT propaganda law and receive guarantees about the law's enforcement during the Sochi Winter Olympics, BuzzFeed has learned.

A spokesman for the Oregon Democrat told BuzzFeed of the plans Thursday afternoon, hours after a Russian news source reported that the country's sports minister said the law would be enforced during the games, slated to take place in February 2014.

The statement from Russian Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko contradicted a prior statement of the IOC that the international body had received assurances the new law would not be applied to "those attending or taking part in the Games."

Following BuzzFeed's report on the developments Thursday, Merkley tweeted:

The resolution will ask the IOC both to oppose the law itself and to receive a guarantee that athletes and spectators will not be discriminated against on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity at the Sochi Winter Olympics, Merkley spokesman Jamal Raad said. The language is still being finalized, however, and he said the resolution will not be introduced formally until the Senate returns from its August recess.

The resolution would be the Senate's first formal statement regarding the Russian law, which was signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin in June.

The Human Rights Campaign praised Merkley — also the lead sponsor of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which would ban anti-LGBT discrimination in employment in the U.S. — for the move.

"With increasing attention being paid to Russia's deplorable treatment of LGBT people, we applaud Senator Merkley and efforts in Congress to shine a spotlight on this issue and the cloud that hangs over the Sochi Olympic Games," Human Rights Campaign spokesman Michael Cole-Schwartz told BuzzFeed.

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Enjoy the borscht! A spokesman for the committee wasn’t immediately available to comment on the tweet .

“His proposal would allow federal employees and congressional staff to keep their coverage but would not allow members to exempt themselves.”

Via: Susan Walsh / AP

One of Obamacare's biggest opponents in the Senate is considering legislation to exempt House and Senate staff from being automatically enrolled in the healthcare exchanges during the rollout this January.

Sen. Tom Coburn, who recently called the move to defund Obamacare a "failed strategy for conservatives" will soon propose his own adjustments for the law, including letting Hill staffers off the hook on signing up for the Obamacare exchanges.

According to a Coburn aide, the senator's proposal "would allow federal employees and Hill staff to keep their coverage but would not allow members to exempt themselves from Obamacare."

Hill staff are currently covered through the Federal Employee Health Benefit Plan, the nation's largest employer-sponsored health insurance program.

Lawmakers had included a provision in the original law forcing most members and staff into healthcare exchanges. Only leadership and committee staff would be exempted from the provision.

It is estimated the law will cost Hill staffers $5,000 a year for individual and $11,000 for families under some of the most popular exchange plans.

Coburn's move to do away with this provision is interesting given the relative popularity of the provision in conservative circles. His proposal is also precisely the opposite of what some Republicans in the house are calling for. House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp is proposing moving all federal employees, including the president and his executive staff, from their current plan and into an Obamacare exchange.

A recent article in the New York Times notes that Hill staffers are "freaked out" by the confusion and rocketing costs but that the Office of Personnel Management, who would oversee the Hill rollout, was working on a fix to be proposed at the end of October.

The exchanges are set to open on Oct. 1.

Four ambassadors and a senior Justice Department official were among several nominations approved by the Senate on a voice vote Thursday night.

United States Ambassador to Australia John Berry

WASHINGTON — Being an out gay nominee for appointed office isn't the controversy it used to be.

The Senate confirmed John Berry to serve as the ambassador to Australia — the first out gay ambassador to a G-20 country — on a voice vote Thursday, along with three other out gay ambassadorial nominees: Rufus Gifford as ambassador to Denmark, James Costos as ambassador to Spain and Daniel Baer to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe.

Also confirmed on a voice vote was Stuart Delery, a senior Justice Department official who is gay and argued for the Obama administration in court that the Defense of Marriage Act should be struck down as unconstitutional, to serve as assistant attorney general for the Civil Division.

In contrast, the first out gay ambassadorial nominee, James Hormel, faced a far different task. Nominated by President Clinton to serve as ambassador to Luxembourg, several senators refused to let the nomination go forward and Clinton eventually named Hormel to the post as a recess appointment.

Earlier, Clinton also nominated the first Senate-approved out LGBT nominee for any position. Clinton's nomination of Roberta Achtenberg to serve as assistant secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, however, famously led Sen. Jesse Helms to announce on the floor of the Senate his refusal to vote for that "damn lesbian."

Thursday was far less acrimonious, with the five out LGBT nominees coming as part of a package of dozens of nominees approved by the Senate on a voice vote.

"Today the U.S. Senate confirmed five highly qualified nominees to important posts who happen to be gay," Human Rights Campaign president Chad Griffin said in a statement to BuzzFeed.

"It is a testament to President Obama and the U.S. Senate that the sexual orientation of these nominees was irrelevant to their qualifications for their posts, as it should be. All Americans should be proud to have these fine public servants representing the interests of the United States," Griffin added.

One out nominee for an ambassadorship whose nomination has sparked some controversy in the country where he is to serve — James "Wally" Brewster's nomination to serve as ambassador the the Dominican Republic — was not among the several ambassadorial nominations approved Thursday night.

A shift from offense to defense in the culture war. “We’re not some sort of moral majority in American culture,” says Moore.

Via: John Gara

When Texas Sen. Ted Cruz sat down for an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network last month, he didn't spend much time bemoaning the moral rot embodied by the "homosexual agenda." He didn't call for boycotts of explicit rap albums, or express outrage at the availability of condoms in high schools, or champion some new law designed to combat the corrosive effects of pornography.

Instead, he made headlines with a dire warning for Christians everywhere: Your pastors could soon be prosecuted for hate speech.

"If you look at other nations that have gone down the road towards gay marriage, that's the next step where it gets enforced," he soberly intoned. "It gets enforced against Christian pastors who decline to perform gay marriages, who speak out and preach biblical truths on marriage."

Cruz is one of several prominent Republicans who have spent the past year actively reframing the conservative social agenda in terms of protecting religious freedom instead of enforcing "family values — a subtle but profound shift in the culture war that deliberately moves the religious right from offense to defense for the first time in decades.

In speeches, interviews, and op-eds, savvy culture warriors have abandoned the fervent rhetoric of the 80's and 90's that used to cast conservatives as champions of virtue, enemies of vice, and saviors of American society: That battle, many conservatives conceded to BuzzFeed, is lost. Instead, their new message centers on ensuring that the rights of religious institutions and believers aren't trampled under a stampede of secularism.

According to a range of interviews with Republican politicians and activists, the rationale driving this strategic shift is defined by a mix of genuine anxiety over big government encroaching on religion and recognition that moral policing has lost its political savor.

"I think it's the next phase of the debate," Florida Sen. Marco Rubio said. "From a political perspective, people now have the freedom to live with and love anyone they want, but I don't think that saying churches are preaching bigotry because they don't agree is the right thing to do... You have instances around the world where it's against the law to preach against homosexuality even if that's what your faith teaches. I do think it's an issue we need to start talking about," he added.

Citing disparate cases in courts throughout the country, religious conservatives say they are facing an broad-based assault on their rights — and that their platform is built simply to counter these liberal aggressors. The Heritage Foundation has been documenting their grievances in this area and one of the think tank's scholars recently displayed a small sample platter of injustices in the National Review:

The New Mexico Human Rights Commission prosecuted a photographer for declining to photograph a same-sex "commitment ceremony." Doctors in California were successfully sued for declining to perform an artificial insemination on a woman in a same-sex relationship. Owners of a bed-and-breakfast in Illinois who declined to rent their facility for a same-sex civil-union ceremony and reception were sued for violating the state nondiscrimination law. A Georgia wellness counselor was fired after she referred someone in a same-sex relationship to another counselor.

Victimization isn't a new theme in conservative mythology. For a long time, the political right positioned itself as an oppressed majority at war with the liberal, secular elites who were out of step with mainstream America. But increasingly, religious Republicans are acknowledging that, on social issues at least, they are now simply in the minority.

Former presidential candidate Rick Santorum, a conservative Catholic who has built his career on culture war, pointed to the Mormon Church's shrinking role in the gay rights fight as an example of how secular society is trying to scare religious institutions out of the public square.

"They stood up courageously for [same-sex marriage ban] Proposition 8 in California, and the retribution they faced was, I think, unexpected for the church," Santorum said, citing a website that took the names and zip codes of donors to the Prop. 8 effort and overlaid them on a Google map, allowing people to easily locate those who financially supported the ban. Businesses were boycotted, death threats were reported, and envelopes with white powder were sent to some of the donors. "For a minority religion, that's a big deal. So you saw that when the Boy Scouts issue came up, [Mormon leaders] said, 'You know what, this is not our fight. We're taking a step back.' They were bullied."

(A statement by Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in May explained its decision to stick with the Boy Scouts of America after the organization started allowing out gay youth among its ranks as an attempt to "address the diverse needs of young people in the United States and throughout the world.")

Santorum blames President Obama for this perceived assault on religious people's rights. "I think the administration is very good at letting people go to church, but they're not so good at letting people leave church and apply their faith principles in daily life," he said. "The American public is going to wake up and say, 'Hey wait a minute, we're for everyone being treated right and fair but that doesn't mean you can turn around and tell people what they can believe.'"

Meanwhile, the GOP's savvy set views the religious-freedom argument as a necessary political calculation after largely losing the culture war battles of the past 30 years. Gay rights are spreading rapidly across the country; pot is no longer taboo in many places; arguments over sex and violence in the media seem like a quaint pastime; and sodomy laws, once championed by mainstream Republicans, have been ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. (When Ken Cuccinelli, Virginia's attorney general and Republican gubernatorial candidate, began trying to enforce such laws earlier this year, it was a source of embarrassment for many in the GOP establishment. As one prominent Republican put it, "If it looks like you're picking on the gays, you lose.")

Establishment Republicans see religious liberty as a way to speak to the issues that are important to their traditional grassroots base without coming off as prudish and Puritanical to the rest of the country. It's also a message that aligns with the ascendant libertarian wing of the party — a sort of anti-regulatory Christian conservatism that Rand Paul and his acolytes can get behind.

Conservative activist Grover Norquist said the decision to start focusing on religious liberty represents "an incredible return to the successful 1980 model that was lost."

"How did the religious right first get organized in the 1970s? They felt like Jimmy Carter was going after their Christian schools and the FCC was going after Christian radio stations with the fairness doctrine. They went into self-defense mode," Norquist said. "None of them started up to go tell people how to run their lives.

But as their political influence grew, Norquist said, conservative Christians got greedy with their agenda — moving well beyond the protection of their own rights and earning a reputation among wide swaths of the electorate as bullies.

With those triumphant, Falwellian days firmly behind them, many social conservative leaders now seem ready to give up the movement's role as an electoral Goliath, and once again inhabit the character of the humble underdog, David.

"Clearly, those of us who are socially conservative recognize that we're not some sort of moral majority in American culture," said Russell Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. "We're speaking a word of prophetic witness to a culture that very often doesn't hear us."

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