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Idaho Readies For Same-Sex Couples' Marriages To Begin Wednesday

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“We have done all we can through the courts for now to defend traditional marriage in Idaho,” Governor Butch Otter says.

Courtney Yamada-Anderson and Melanie Yamada-Anderson pose for a photo as couples gather at the Ada County Courthouse to apply for same-sex marriage licenses in Boise, Idaho October 8, 2014.

Patrick Sweeney / Reuters

WASHINGTON — Idaho's governor and attorney general acknowledged on Tuesday that marriage equality would be coming to the state on Wednesday morning.

Idaho Gov. Butch Otter, who unsuccessfully fought on Monday to stop same-sex couples from marrying during any further attempts to appeal this past week's appeals court ruling that the state's ban is unconstitutional, acknowledged that marriages will begin on Wednesday in a statement:

"The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has issued its mandate for enforcement of decisions overturning the Idaho Constitution's prohibition on same-sex marriage effective at 10 a.m. MDT, 9 a.m. PDT on Wednesday, October 15. I continue to believe that the federal courts are mistaken in abandoning the sanctity of traditional marriage and in undermining the will of Idaho voters and each state's right to define marriage. But we are civil society that respects the rule of law. We have done all we can through the courts for now to defend traditional marriage in Idaho."

The statement said nothing about whether Otter will seek further review of the ruling from the three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit, something lawyers for Otter have suggested in prior filings that he will do. A spokesman for Otter confirmed that the statement was only regarding the fact that marriages will start on Wednesday, adding, "We are saying nothing more than that."

Idaho Attorney General Lawrence Wasden had acknowledged on Monday in a court filing that the state would not be able to meet the standards for halting the marriages during any appeal. On Tuesday, Wasden's spokesman, Todd Dvorak, told BuzzFeed News, "Attorney General [Wasden] currently has no plans for filing any legal challenge today or tomorrow."


Even Obama's Campaign Wizards Don't Think Democrats Can Keep The Senate

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Robert Gibbs thinks Republicans will win, and David Axelrod won’t say Democrats will.

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WASHINGTON — Two of the most prominent architects of President Obama's underdog primary win in 2008 say Democrats likely won't keep the Senate this fall.

David Axelrod wouldn't say Democrats will win in an appearance on MSNBC Tuesday. On Monday, Robert Gibbs raised his hand to be counted among those predicting a Republican victory at a panel discussion hosted by Axelrod at a University of Chicago's Institute of Politics.

How Obamacare Drives The Sharing Economy

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Health care, but for Uber.

The White House Pete Souza/John Gara for BuzzFeed

President Barack Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law in late March of 2010, about three months before Uber launched, and six months before a best-selling business book popularized the concept of the "sharing economy." Lyft wasn't yet a glint in its founders' eyes. Nobody was talking about disrupting grocery stores and laundromats.

But with no fanfare, and no public debate, two of America's most divisive topics — Obamacare and the sharing economy — have become deeply linked. HealthCare.gov is the de facto HR site for booming app companies like Uber. Some of the legislation's architects told BuzzFeed News they see it as a foundation of the new sharing economy in which decent lives depend on a functioning individual market for health care. And executives at sharing-economy startups see Obamacare as a central plank of their ability to build huge but also sustainable businesses on the labor of people who aren't their employees.

And whether you view the handshake between Obamacare and the sharing economy as a much needed transformation to a modern economy, as a stealth taxpayer subsidy to Silicon Valley, or as a the latest corporate scam, its outlines are emerging more clearly every day.

"Obamacare is really coming at the best time, and is making it a lot better for the workers," said Brooke Moreland, a spokeswoman for the taxi hailing company Gett.

"The growth of the collaborative economy has made Obamacare probably a stronger option," said Aaron Hall, founder of San Francisco-based boat rental company Boatbound. "It's a great add-on to the life they're now empowered to have."

Whether Obamacare's tilt toward the sharing economy is a feature, a bug, or a happy accident, the companies driving this trend have noticed. TaskRabbit, for example, created a portal in partnership with FreelancerHealthcare.com that makes it easy for their contractors to navigate affordable health insurance and even offers special discounts and rates. Lyft, on the other hand, has partnered with Freelancers Union — which now works exclusively with Empire BlueCross BlueShield — to help their drivers either access Empire's health care plans or navigate state health care sites. Indeed, for some other sharing economy firms, HealthCare.gov is standing in as the health care HR site.

"We're legally prevented from providing our contracted cleaning professionals with health care so instead we provide them resources to help them access their own health care," a spokesperson for Homejoy, which connects people to home cleaners, said. "Homejoy supports the Affordable Care Act and, for that matter, any law that helps people have a great quality of life and be able to work on their own terms."

Obamacare, venture capitalist Marc Andreessen — whose firm has invested in Lyft and Homejoy (as well as BuzzFeed) — tweeted Tuesday, is "perhaps the single biggest key enabler for the sharing/gig/1099 economy."

It came at the right time, certainly, for Victor M., who splits his time between driving for UberTaxi in Chicago and tweeting complaints about Uber's treatment of drivers. When Victor (who declined to give his last name) began driving last year, he wasn't making enough to afford private health insurance. This year, Uber's policies pushed his earnings down a bit — to $1,500 a month, he said. But now, for the first time in his 20 years as a cabbie, Victor has health insurance, free Medicaid coverage under the Affordable Care Act, of which is he an enthusiastic fan: "It's provided much needed coverage for the working poor," he told BuzzFeed News.

There aren't reliable public figures on how many Americans have worked as independent contractors through the years, though by some definitions, the figure is extremely high: A recent study commissioned by the Freelancers Union and Elance-oDesk (and which includes both independent contractors and more traditional "freelancers") put the present number at 53 million, or 34% of America's workforce.

Those workers aren't entitled to the health care that most Americans get through their jobs. People trying to buy health care on their own have long faced either bad options — catastrophic coverage that won't pay for a doctor's visit — or unaffordable ones. Both parties have for years proposed an array of solutions — tax-funded single-payer on the left, inexpensive if threadbare private plans on the right. And while Obamacare's 2010 passage was aimed at solving an existing crisis, it arrived just as a new group of workers was entering that pool: workers for companies like Uber, Lyft, Gett, Homejoy, and Etsy, among others, which rely heavily if not entirely on independent contractors and freelancers.

Freeing Americans to freelance was an original goal of Obamacare, but one that sounded like hippie self-actualization, and a hard political sell. (Nancy Pelosi's pitch that it would allow Americans to become working artists fell flat.) The technical term for the ill it meant to combat was "job-lock" — the way employer-funded health care could discourage people from starting out on their own, chasing their dreams, or simply doing what they love.

Freeing up workers "is one of the major motivations for health care reform, if not the biggest," Jonathan Gruber, the MIT economist who helped design the Affordable Care Act and its direct predecessor, Romneycare in Massachusetts, told BuzzFeed News. "This may be the biggest effect of the ACA and no one talks about it. We really have a hard time getting a conversation on it."

And though there hasn't been research on the relationship between the Affordable Care Act and the rise of the sharing economy, top economists don't think a link is far-fetched.

"There may be something to the idea that passing the ACA has facilitated an increase in share economy entrepreneurs," he said. "When people start as entrepreneurs, they often begin as a sidelight or doing it part-time (because it's risky and the risk of failure is highest at the beginning). Share-economy services like Uber have made that much easier to do. And one of the biggest impediments to entrepreneurship has been the fear that you couldn't get health insurance if you did. The ACA has, potentially, lessened that a great deal."

This is a difficult proposition for many of the progressives who support the Affordable Care Act, but who view the sharing economy — with its frank anti-unionism and ethos of individual over community — with deep suspicion.

"I have a lot of concerns about whether Uber is creating good jobs. But you don't want access to health insurance to be reason that anybody doesn't start their own business if they have an idea that they want to pursue," said Heather Boushey, chief economist at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, an independent economic think tank supported by the Center for American Progress. "By definition, that's not good for the kind of economy we want."

And indeed, sharing-economy companies have hired a former top Obama campaign official, Natalie Foster, as spokeswoman for the trade association, Peers.org, that makes their case.

The Affordable Care Act begins a new examination of the government's relationship with workers that's key to the growth of the sharing economy, said Natalie Foster, a former top official on the Obama re-election campaign and past executive director of Peers.org, the trade association for the sharing economy.

"The Affordable Care Act is an important first step toward tapping into the flexibility and freedom of new forms of self-employment income, while also accessing important things like health insurance," she said.

There is no comprehensive data on sharing-economy workers who use the Affordable Care Act, though drivers and other workers reached on company message boards and social media said it was common. And in their circles — as in other Americans' — frustrations with the health care system haven't been overcome by its new affordibility.

One Uber driver, a 47-year-old woman based in Los Angeles who makes an average of $1,000 a month driving for Uber and has a part-time job on the side, in fact complained about the difficulty of getting a doctor's appointment under Medi-Cal, California's Medicaid welfare program — and said she thought a flood of sharing-economy workers might be making that worse.

"It's better than having nothing, I guess," she told BuzzFeed News. "I don't know if I'm better off because I'm not able to use it, all these bazillion people are covered under this terrific new act."

"There's a greater flood of workers who are reliant upon this," she said.

(Disclosure: Andreessen Horowitz is an investor in BuzzFeed. Andreessen did not, however, inspire or contribute to this story, whose reporting was largely complete before his tweet kind of scooped us.)

7 Reasons The Vermont Governor's Debate Was One Of The Strangest Debates This Year

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What.

The Vermont gubernatorial debate Monday evening was one of the strangest debate of this election cycle. The debate featured seven candidates and was by no means short of weird topics.

There was independent, hat-wearing candidate, Cris Ericson, questioning Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin about "giving $5 million to a ski resort."

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There was the time Liberty Union candidate Pete Diamondstone quoted Karl Marx to say if taxing the rich doesn't work then Vermont should secede from the Union.

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And independent candidate Emily Peyton using her closing remarks to ask if you'd rather have money or love.

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Juarez's Biggest Booster Is An Irish-American Congressman

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Rep. Beto O’Rourke represents El Paso, Texas — which shares a border with drug-destroyed Juarez. One of the strangest Congressional districts in the United States.

John Stanton

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico — If you ask U.S. Rep. Beto O'Rourke for a bar recommendation in Juarez, he's quick to tick off his favorite spots.

There's Recreo, with its dark wood bar and tuxedo-clad bartenders serving up cold beer and tequila shots to businessmen and leather clad members of the Bandidos. Club Quince, with its '50s pinup paintings, is worth checking out, too, the Democratic congressman says — it's just up the street from the infamous Kentucky Club, purported home of the original margarita.

O'Rourke represents El Paso, the Texas city that shares the U.S.-Mexico border with Juarez. The separation between the two cities is more or less a fiction: tens of thousands of families straddle the border, and each day countless more Mexicans and Americans commute from one city to the other.

The intertwined nature of the cities' fortunes is why O'Rourke has done something highly unusual for a U.S. congressman: he advocates strongly for the economic renewal of a non-American city. In short: He's the unofficial captain of the Juarez tourism board.

When Juarez succeeds, so does El Paso, he says. And the travel warnings against visiting Juarez, he argues, hurt El Paso.

"You had Anthony Wayne, the ambassador to Mexico, who was here in Juarez two weeks ago. And he said, 'This city is wonderful, you guys have really turned around your security problems, Juarez is really coming back to life,'" O'Rourke says over a steak lunch at Tragadero, a local steakhouse where the staff know the American congressman by name.

"And then the following day, you get an advisory, a travel warning from the State Department saying you shouldn't necessarily travel to Ciudad Juarez. It's not necessarily safe for Americans." And that, O'Rourke insists, can hurt El Paso.

The two cities are certainly connected. Mexican students from Juarez attend school at the University of Texas-El Paso — on in-state tuition, O'Rourke says. The blended nature of the region is physical as well: Looking down on the cities from the surrounding mountains, it's nearly impossible to tell where Juarez ends and El Paso begins.

John Stanton

Earlier that day, O'Rourke held a town hall of sorts on a city bus, fielding questions in Spanish and English from morning rush hour riders. It seems kind of gimmicky, and perhaps it is. But it is an undeniably easy, and effective, way to reach poor constituents.

"I was on the bus today with a kid who started his school day in Juarez, comes over to go to school at University of Texas-El Paso. He gets in state tuition, which was a conscious decision by the UTEP system," he says.

The 42-year-old O'Rourke may seem like an unlikely candidate for American champion of Juarez. Tall, lanky, and white, O'Rourke is the son of a local judge and a graduate of Columbia University, with a degree in English.

But O'Rourke is also a fourth-generation El Pasoan who's fluent in Spanish and like most residents his age spent time in high school and college in Juarez, before the cartels turned the city into a warzone.

Even the decidedly Irish-American O'Rourke's name is an example of the interconnectedness: Born Robert O'Rourke, he has, like many Anglos in El Paso, adopted the Latino nickname for Roberto, Beto.

For his part, O'Rourke seems just as at home in the cluttered steakhouse, where the walls are covered in paintings and magazine clippings of bullfighters, as he is in the halls of Congress.

He can — and does — rattle off the economic reasons for looking out for the interests of the 1.5 million Mexicans living a stone's throw across the border.

Last year the series of bridges that connect the two cities into the largest bi-national community in the world recorded over 23 million crossings — the vast majority of which were people from Juarez and the state of Chihuahua visiting El Paso.

"A lot of them [are] shoppers. It's a huge driver for the El Paso economy," O'Rourke says, adding that combined with international trade done across the border, economic activity with Mexico accounts for nearly one quarter of the jobs in El Paso.

"That's a real basic reason for me in my job to be interested in this," he says.

The neighborhood where Tragadero, the steakhouse in Juarez where O'Rourke is eating carne asada, was once a destination for American tourists looking for cheap steaks, burritos, and other Mexican fare. After a decade of violence it has been abandoned to the locals — even as it has become as safe as many American neighborhoods.


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Keg Stand Senator Against Medical Marijuana

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Soft on keg stands, hard on medical marijuana.

At the Louisiana Senate debate Tuesday evening, Democrat Sen. Mary Landrieu said she was against medical marijuana. Her opponent, Republican Rep. Bill Cassidy said he supports it. Cassidy is a doctor.

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According to Public Policy Polling, opinion of the keg stand was also hilariously divided among party lines.

According to Public Policy Polling, opinion of the keg stand was also hilariously divided among party lines.

Via publicpolicypolling.com

Mary Burke Says Of Plagiarism Response: "I Wish It Was Better Handled"

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“Yeah, probably, sure, it had an impact.”

Democratic Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Mary Burke said she wishes her campaign's response to BuzzFeed News reporting that she plagiarized several large sections of her jobs, rural communities, and veterans plans "was handled better," given how it consumed her campaign for two weeks.

"I was on it from day one," Burke said in an interview with the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel editorial board. "That's politics, this was no doubt politically motivated to take the attention of some really bad jobs numbers that were released at the exact same time. So of course, with what the results were and how it impacted things of course I wish it was better handled. I can't come up with any specific ways, I think we handled it really well."

Burke blamed the copied text on a political consultant Eric Schnurer, who the campaign cut ties with following the revelations.

"Yeah, probably, sure, it had an impact," Burke said when asked by Journal-Sentinel if she thought it slowed her campaign's momentum.

Here's the video:

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Beheaded American Journalist Featured Heavily In Series Of Political Ads Targeting Democrats

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The group running the ads, Secure America Now, is a conservative national security nonprofit.

James Foley, the American journalist murdered by ISIS militants, makes a cameo in a series of web ads from the Secure America Now, a right-wing nonprofit national security organization that lists on its advisory board people like former Gov. Mike Huckabee and Ambassador John Bolton.

The advertisements target Democrats running in competitive midterm elections.

Secure America Now bills themselves as a "nonpartisan voice and platform to those who share our national security concerns."

The new advertisements are part of "the launch of a new advocacy campaign in Arkansas, Colorado, Louisiana, Michigan, and New Hampshire."

It is clear if the advertisement are running on TV or are Internet-only.

Foley was beheaded in the video, "A Message to America," posted by ISIS militants in August.

Mary Landrieu

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Mark Udall

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Gary Peters


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National Democrats Haven't Spent Anything On Maine's Senate Race

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“I don’t understand it … [Money would have] a much bigger impact than it would have in say Kentucky or Georgia right now.”

U.S. Sen. Susan Collins

Getty Images Alex Wong

WASHINGTON — One of the most untouchable senators this year is a Republican from a blue state.

National Democrats have not spent any money against Sen. Susan Collins. Even in a year where Democrats are spending millions on seats in red and purple states — including dropping $1 million in South Dakota as late as last week — the Democrats' Senate campaign arm never really even tried to attack Collins. Despite representing a state that voted twice for President Obama, in a year with a competitive governor's race, Collins will likely cruise into another term.

The DSCC has endorsed the Democratic candidate, Shenna Bellows — but they haven't given her any financial support. And little national attention has come Bellows' way; when Michelle Obama campaigned last month for the Democratic candidate for governor, Bellows was nowhere to be seen (a scheduling conflict interceded, according to her campaign).

The utter lack of national support has progressive groups, who've strongly supported Bellows, confused and angry. The Bellows campaign has tried to chip away at Collins' well-established image as a moderate, independent representative and said that reinforcements from Washington could go a long way in helping their campaign.

"Susan Collins is out of step with Maine voters on everything from paycheck fairness to shutting down the government to her endorsement for unpopular Gov. Paul LePage," said Bellows campaign manager Katie Mae Simpson.

"We're glad to have been endorsed by the DSCC, and because Maine is a cheap media market, we continue to believe that added resources here could make a decisive impact on Election Day," she added.

But, of course, there is a good reason for this reluctance: Collins remains very popular in the state. And, outside of a handful of progressive groups, she commands the support of seemingly everyone in Maine. Planned Parenthood is staying neutral and a prominent LGBT rights groups has supported Collins: These are groups that typically throw their weight behind Democratic candidates.

In May, Angus King, Maine's independent senator, endorsed Collins. From there, a slew of Democratic outside groups elected to sit this one out. Earlier this month, Planned Parenthood actually asked Bellows to stop saying Collins had voted to defund the group.

"We have not endorsed in the Maine Senate race, which is not unusual when both candidates have good positions on women's health," said Eric Ferrero, the vice president of communications for Planned Parenthood's political arm. "As senator, Susan Collins has a strong record when it comes to protecting women's access to health care."

In June, Bellows wrote in the Huffington Post that she was running in part on a pro-LGBT platform, arguing she would work to pass a strong version of the Employee Non-Discrimination Act if she won the seat. Bellows worked on marriage equality issues in Maine as the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union. A week later, the Human Rights Campaign endorsed Collins. EqualityMaine, a pro-LGBT rights group in the state, did not endorse either candidate.

"We have two candidates who are supportive of equality issues and we see that as a thing to celebrate," said EqualityMaine spokesperson Ian Grady.

Mike Lux, a progressive strategist in Washington, said that Collins has been hugely successful in keeping up her moderate image among voters in Maine, even though he doesn't believe her voting record reflects that.

"Conservatives feel like she's one of them and whenever they've needed her vote she's been there," Lux said. "People in Maine, at least this is the conventional wisdom, people in Maine just don't view her that way. She's obviously cultivated that image and it does make it tough."

And as Bellows' campaign tries to paint Collins as anything but moderate, that message hasn't broken through even with the core Democratic base: The poll released Tuesday from the Bangor Daily News showed Collins' enjoying support from 34% of Democrats.

The DSCC wouldn't respond to multiple requests for comment but a source working for outside groups involved in senate races said that polling showed, even after messaging attacks on Collins, no clear path to victory. The source called Collins' popularity partially due to the "Snowe effect" — a reference to former moderate Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe who was a hugely popular figure in the state.

"Maine loved having the two of them. Collins is still insanely popular," the source said. "We'd love to play… but there's just no point."

A second Democratic strategist said the hesitancy to go after Collins can be traced back to 2008, the last time she was up for reelection.

"If we couldn't win that seat with Obama on the top of the ticket in 2008, it'd be insane to think we would be able to do it in 2014," the strategist said.

Some progressives disagree and are starting to openly question the decision-making of the DSCC.

Democracy for America, a progressive group that has spent $300,000 in support of Bellows, said that their own polling showed Democrats liking Collins until they described her positions on things like the Keystone Pipeline and her votes against minimum wage and paycheck fairness.

"This is someone who has reliably voted with Republicans every single time they've needed her vote," said DFA's Executive Director Charles Chamberlain.

"I don't understand it. The DSCC has outraised the NRSC quarter after quarter," Chamberlain said of the decision to stay out of Maine. "They have the resources to spend in Maine and it would have a monstrous impact, a much bigger impact than it would have in say Kentucky or Georgia right now."

Chamberlain said that Democrats were making a mistake by not stepping up for Bellows, but the late investment in South Dakota has given the group some hope they will come around.

"We knew it was a race we needed to get in," he said, "And our hope, much like in South Dakota, is that by getting in and getting in big we were hoping we could wake up national Democrats and national establishment and get them to invest in this race."

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee is another group that's been somewhat active in supporting Bellows both on the campaign and fundraising side, raising around $93,000 for her.

"There's a tendency in D.C. to stick with the conventional wisdom in an off-year election to support Republican-light candidates instead of progressive populists and we believe that is a mistake," Chamberlain said.

GOP Rep: Obama Talking About "Opening Up The Borders More To Either Ebola Patients Or Illegal Immigrants"

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“He’s out fundraising, he’s out golfing, and he’s talking about shutting down Guantanamo Bay.”

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A Republican congressman says President Obama is talking about "opening up the borders more to either Ebola patients or illegal immigrants."

Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania's 4th Congressional district was appearing on the Gary Sutton radio program Tuesday when he made the comments.

"I see a very stark difference, and I hate to use this analogy," Perry said of Obama. "The president has awfully tough job and I'm not not really sure why anyone would want it. He needs to take time away and get his head around, ya know, the situations around the world and so on and so forth."

"But the difference is that George Bush was engaged in these fights every single day because it required his involvement. Seeing foreign leaders and getting agreements, and getting their buy in, and getting their boots on the ground and, ya know, their blood and treasure."

Perry went on to say that President Obama is disengaged and is fundraising and talking about issues not related to the problems America is facing.

"And this president is disengaged from this," he said. "He's out fundraising, he's out golfing, and he's talking about shutting down Guantanamo Bay and opening up the borders more to either Ebola patients or illegal immigrants. You gotta know where someone's core is and it's evidenced in what they do everyday not necessarily what they say in my opinion."

Appeals Court Puts Alaska Marriages On Hold, Sends State Officials To Supreme Court

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Unless the Supreme Court grants a stay, the stay issued tonight by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals will end on Friday and same-sex couples’ marriages would then be allowed to proceed.

Ann Marie Garber, left, and Koy Field speak to reporters after filling out a marriage license application Monday, at the Department of Vital Statistics in Anchorage.

AP / Mark Thiessen

WASHINGTON — The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals put same-sex couples' marriages in Alaska on hold for a couple days, giving Alaska officials until noon PT Friday to seek a more permanent stay from the Supreme Court.

The decision puts a temporary stay on the Sunday trial court decision striking down Alaska's ban on same-sex couples' marriages.

The move followed denials of similar requests with regards to last week's decision from the 9th Circuit upholding a lower court's ruling that Idaho's ban is unconstitutional. Same-sex couples began marrying in Idaho on Wednesday.

Tonight's decision, by a different panel of judges than the three judges who heard the appeal over Idaho and Nevada's bans, sends the issue of state's marriage bans back to the Supreme Court — and Justice Anthony Kennedy — for a second week in a row. On Oct. 6, the justices declined to hear several cases challenging states' bans, and on Oct. 10, the court denied Idaho's request for a stay pending its further appeals of the case challenging its ban.

Notably, Judge Diarmuid O'Scannlain, one of the most conservative judges on the 9th Circuit bench, stated that he would have granted the full stay requested by the state — which would have lasted throughout any appeal. However, Judge Jay Bybee — another conservative judge — joined his more liberal colleague, Judge Marsha Berzon, in granting only the temporary stay.


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The Dumbest, Most Florida Thing Happened In The Florida Governor's Debate

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Republican Gov. Rick Scott delayed his debate against former Gov. Charlie Crist on Wednesday night because Crist put a fan under his podium, against the debate rules. A fan — like the kind that blow air. By seven minutes ! This really happened.

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Republicans: Immigration's More Likely To Happen If We Take The Senate

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Two key House Republicans tell BuzzFeed News it could happen. Democrats and activists say they’ve heard this all before.

Jonathan Ernst / Reuters

Key House Republicans say congressional action on immigration is much more likely if Republicans take control of the Senate.

The effort, two Republicans say, would likely involved individual measures rather than a broad, comprehensive bill favored by Democrats.

"I actually think it's more likely, if we take the Senate, that we will have immigration reform," said Rep. Raul Labrador. "We will be able to do it on a step-by-step approach like most Republicans have been asking to do and I think the American people want."

Labrador, who was a member of the bipartisan House group working on the issue before exiting, foresees a Republican-controlled Congress passing a series of bills that deal with the border and focus on interior security and guest-worker programs.

"I don't want to mislead; it's a difficult lift as we all know," Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart told BuzzFeed News. "But we would have a better shot at getting it done if Republicans take control of the Senate for the simple reason that it could be initiated in the House with close coordination with the Senate."

Actual Republican-passed immigration legislation could put President Obama in a very difficult political position: Sign bills that don't accomplish all of what Democrats want, or accept smaller, incremental changes to U.S. immigration policy. Labrador pointed to "high-tech immigration" — where the House passed a bill and he says the Senate didn't take it up because it wasn't a comprehensive fix — as an area that shows the quandary Obama would find himself in.

"He's going to get a lot of pressure from his left-wing base to veto anything that's not a full comprehensive approach," he said. "I think that's what you're going to see: bills like that passing the House and passing the Senate if you have a Republican majority and then it's going to be up to the president if he wants to veto that kind of legislation just because it's not 100% of what he wants."

Diaz-Balart noted that with 2016 politics looming, immigration would have to move quickly and early in 2015.

Given the reality that, should Republicans win control of the Senate (which looks increasingly likely), their majority will be slim — and Democratic votes would still play a very significant role in any legislation's success.

Democratic Rep. Luis Gutierrez has said on the House floor that he believes this is all a predictable ploy by Republicans to stop Obama from enacting long-awaited administrative actions that would slow deportations of undocumented immigrants.

"If Republicans are serious about immigration legislation in the next Congress, I will work with them," he told BuzzFeed News. "But I find it hard to believe the GOP-ruled House will be able to take up reform given how much control they have given to opponents of legal immigration and immigration reform."

Activists who have railed against the White House for delaying executive actions, don't put much more stock in Republicans being able to pass an immigration overhaul.

"I don't buy it for a minute, I really don't," said Frank Sharry, a veteran of immigration battles for over a decade. "They've not only said no to immigration reform in the House, they've said yes to lurching to the right. They have demagogued the kids who came across the border and have invoked ISIS and Ebola coming, too."

Sharry said he has a lot of respect for Diaz-Balart and added that the theory behind Republican action on immigration is that they need to change policy to reflect the changing electorate, but now he believes the party as a whole is too far gone.

"The party is so fundamentally bigoted and anti-immigrant they can not overcome the majority so that the few reformers can make it right," he said.

"For far too long the GOP has waived this pamphlet saying, 'We want to do it, we want to solve this problem,'" said Lorella Praeli, of immigrant rights organization United We Dream. "I don't believe they are sincere. It's hard to see a scenario where the GOP proposes legislation that addresses the issue and treats people with dignity and respect."

Praeli argued a Republican-controlled Senate will only lead the GOP to try to stop Obama from enacting executive actions or use the spending bill process as a way to block or threaten the president from taking action.

The Republican focus would likely fall short of what Democrats are under constant pressure from activists to do, as well.

"We'll work with whoever leads the effort to ameliorate the president's harsh deportation record," Cesar Vargas, who heads Dream Action Coalition, said. "The question for us is, if the Senate bill was already draconian, what is this package going to lack?"

Clarissa Martinez, a deputy vice president at National Council of La Raza, said her organization believes the president should have acted and should act as soon as possible but notes that the GOP could have gotten an immigration overhaul done whenever they wanted.

"Doing something is now predicated on Republicans taking the Senate?" she said. "As if our inability to get immigration reform done was in the Senate. It's about how do you get this done in the House, because the Senate passed it."

Diaz-Balart argued the reverse is true — it's Obama, he says, who only thinks about immigration around election-time.

"You've seen it with the [deferred action] kids and now with the red line he drew on acting unilaterally," he said. "The nightmare for Obama is not Republicans passing immigration, it's it actually getting done. All he cares about is using it as a political issue."

Still, activists and Democrats were unified in insisting the executive actions need to happen.

"The distant hope for legislative reform cannot delay actual implementation of executive action the nation so desperately needs," Gutierrez said. "In fact, President Obama's actions could be the push the pro-reform Republicans need."

Kate Nocera contributed reporting. This story has been updated.

Boehner Won't Say If Texas Should Have An Ebola Travel Ban, Too

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The nation’s top elected Republican said Wednesday that travel should be halted from West African nations suffering from the Ebola outbreak.

Jonathan Ernst / Reuters

WASHINGTON — House Speaker John Boehner Wednesday called for a "temporary" ban on flights from countries with Ebola outbreaks, but stopped short of calling for a travel ban for Texas, despite the fact that an Ebola-infected nurse flew to his home state of Ohio from Dallas earlier this month.

In a statement released by his office Wednesday evening, Boehner joined a growing chorus of Republicans insisting the Obama administration impose a travel ban on West African countries suffering from the Ebola conference.

Boehner invoked the Texas Ebola patient in calling for a ban on other parts of the world, saying, "Today we learned that one individual who has contracted the virus flew to Ohio through the Cleveland airport in the last few days. A temporary ban on travel to the United States from countries afflicted with the virus is something that the president should absolutely consider."

Asked if Boehner also believes flights from Texas to other parts of the country should be halted, Boehner spokesman Kevin Smith said by email Boehner "said [Obama] should consider a temporary ban on travel to the United States from countries afflicted with the virus along with any other appropriate actions. That's where we are right now. Don't have anything more."

The concept of banning travel from West African countries at the epicenter of the Ebola pandemic has gained traction since Dallas resident Thomas Eric Duncan contracted the virus during a trip to Liberia. Duncan subsequently died from virus.

On Wednesday, health officials acknowledged that a second nurse in Dallas who treated Duncan, Amber Vinson, had also tested positive for Ebola. On Wednesday morning, officials said Vinson had traveled to Ohio on a commercial airplane while she was potentially symptomatic.

U.S. and international officials heading up the response to the Ebola pandemic have long argued against a travel ban to affected areas, warning a ban would limit their ability to effectively combat the outbreak.

Iowa Senate candidate Joni Ernst Wednesday called for a limited travel ban to West Africa. Also on Wednesday, Senate Republican Conference Chairman John Thune became the first member of the Senate leadership to call for a temporary travel ban.

Obama Picks A True Blue, Real Deal, Long-Time Police Critic To Head Up Civil Rights Division

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Obama’s new pick to run the civil rights division is as passionate an advocate for racial justice as you could find. But will that help or hurt her nomination?

Vanita Gupta appearing on Comedy Central's The Daily Show.

Comedy Central / Via thedailyshow.cc.com

The Obama administration has chosen a harsh critic of the criminal justice system to run the civil rights division of the Justice Department, even as his party appears on the verge of losing the Senate.

The ACLU announced Wednesday that Vanita Gupta, their deputy legal director and head of their Justice Center, was being nominated for the job.

"I think it shows some real commitment to civil rights on the part of the administration that they're putting forth another serious civil rights lawyer after Debo [Adegbile's] nomination," said Sam Bagenstos, a law professor at the University of Michigan and a former top lawyer in the division.

Gupta is as passionate an advocate for racial justice as you could find. At a time when the Obama administration faces a potential Republican majority in the Senate — and having lost a tough nomination battle over the nominee's connection to a racially charged murder case involving a police officer — they chose a nominee who has spent the last decade attacking racism in the American criminal justice system. Gupta has called for the decriminalization of marijuana, criticized the militarization of local police, and gone after cops engaging in "highway robbery" through civil asset forfeiture laws.

Given Gupta's skill set, it's hard not to imagine that the scenes coming out of Ferguson, Missouri, where tensions between the black community and a mostly white police force erupted into ongoing protests, influenced the administration's decision. In many ways, Gupta's job at the ACLU was policing the police. As head of the civil rights division, she'll do that with the power of the federal government at her back.

As an attorney with the NAACP LDF, Gupta helped overturn the drug convictions of dozens of black and Hispanic residents of Tulia, Texas, in a sting orchestrated by a local sheriff who was later convicted of perjury. In her work for the ACLU, Gupta has focused on ending the War on Drugs and curtailing mass incarceration, policies she sees as having devastated communities of color.

"Our country, at the state and federal level, has used the criminal justice system to wage a merciless drug war selectively in poor communities, especially in black and brown ones," Gupta wrote in January.

That's significant, because the Obama administration's enforcement of civil rights laws — particularly when it comes to voting rights and housing — has often proved controversial on the right. When Attorney General Eric Holder announced he was resigning last month, Ilya Shapiro, a legal analyst at the Cato Institute, compared Holder to segregationist politician George Wallace.

Obama's first choice for the job was Debo Adegbile, a celebrated Supreme Court litigator and attorney with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. Democratic control of the Senate couldn't save Adegbile's nomination from being shot down over his representation of a man convicted of the murder of a police officer.

While at the NAACP LDF, Adegbile helped reverse the decision to sentence Mumia Abu-Jamal to death for the 1981 killing of Officer Daniel Faulkner. The courts found that the judge's instructions to the jury during his sentencing had been improper, and Abu-Jamal is now serving life in prison. Republicans pilloried Adegbile over his role in the case, and his nomination became so toxic that a handful of Democrats crossed the aisle to vote down his nomination in March.

Though the catalyst for Republican opposition to Adegbile was the Abu-Jamal case, the larger backdrop was an ongoing ideological dispute between right and left over the continuing impact of racial discrimination and the federal government's role in fighting it.

There's no question about where Gupta comes down in that argument.

Nevertheless, Gupta's work on criminal justice reform has drawn allies from across the political spectrum. Many Republicans and conservative elites have come to believe mass incarceration and the War on Drugs are costly and counterproductive. In announcing her nomination, the ACLU sent out a statement with praise from conservative luminaries Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform and David Keene, the former chair of the American Conservative Union.

A nominee with a background in voting rights or housing discrimination would have had a very difficult time being confirmed. By picking Gupta, Obama has chosen a nominee who has spent her career fighting for racial justice and against the abuses of big government at the same time.

It's an open question whether that will translate to any Republican support in the Senate, where the partisan divide over the role of the federal government in enforcing civil rights laws is no closer to being resolved than it was months ago.

"I think the administration is hoping they will get some Republican support because of Gupta's work with conservatives on criminal justice issues," said Bagenstos. "It's a really polarized environment."

Vanita Gupta appeared on the Daily Show to discuss civil asset forfeiture in July 2014.

Via thedailyshow.cc.com


How Our Shopping Harms The Lungs Of California Children

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MORENO VALLEY — The largest bribe the FBI has ever paid to a public official in a sting operation wasn’t to a United States senator or even a state lawmaker. It was to a lowly city councilman in this gritty, unglamorous Los Angeles exurb, where a fifth of the population lives below the poverty line, and local headlines play a steady drumbeat of grim news such as the daytime murder of a grandmother at a gas station.

Former Moreno Valley City Councilman Marcelo Co.

AP Photo

Councilman Marcelo Co didn’t seem particularly interested in improving the town. Even as he ran for office in 2010, he faced criminal charges for renting out apartments that were slummy and unsafe. Midway through his first term, he was caught on tape taking $2.36 million in cash from an undercover agent he thought was a land developer. Co told the agent that for enough money he would vote “yes” on any land-use plans. “I don’t care if it’s the shittiest can of worms,” Co said.

Despite Moreno Valley’s depressed property values, control over its land is actually worth a fortune. Indeed, nearly every major retailer in the world covets the kind of real estate the city offers: empty acres near freeways and train tracks at the epicenter of one of the largest but least noticed land rushes in America.

This arid flatland, shimmering and indistinct in the heat and smog, is just perfect for warehouses. These are not, however, warehouses as most people think of them. These are massive, futuristic behemoths that have proliferated on a scale seen nowhere else on the continent to usher in goods from Asia to consumers across a vast swath of the United States.

Americans have grown to expect the goods they want delivered to their homes or nearby store shelves within days or hours. But all this two-day shipping, click-to-ship, and get-it-on-your-doorstep-by-noon-tomorrow has come at a price, paid by the people who live in the shadows of the mega-warehouses: lung-stunting, cancer-causing pollution and, in some cases, political corruption.

The underside of our consumer economy can be seen in a tale of two cities, just 20 miles apart. There is Moreno Valley, where developers have shoveled in money to win the political approvals to build new warehouses. And there is Mira Loma, a tiny community already awash in warehouses and suffering some of the worst pollution in America.

“Everyone wants a new flat-screen TV,” said Ed Avol, a professor at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine who has spent the last two decades studying the effects of air pollution on children. “Everyone wants new clothing. But nobody thinks about how it got [to them.]”

Warehouses line both sides of Etiwanda Avenue as it stretches out into the Inland Empire.

Photograph by Jesse Kaplan for BuzzFeed News / Via jessekaplanphoto.com

Moreno Valley and Mira Loma lie in the vast sprawl east of Los Angeles known as the Inland Empire. Three decades ago, the area was a bastion of orange groves, military bases, and light manufacturing. But in recent years, a number of Inland Empire cities, which even many Southern California residents couldn’t locate on a map, have quietly become pivotal to a transformation in the global economy.

Shipping containers at the port of Los Angeles.

Courtesy of the port of Los Angeles

More than 40% of all shipping containers imported to the United States enter through the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. Most of that cargo then moves through the Inland Empire. It either passes through or stops off at distribution centers serving Amazon, Wal-Mart Stores, Target, Costco, Home Depot, Restoration Hardware, Baskin-Robbins, Nike, Nordstrom, Kraft Foods, Toys ‘R’ Us, Ford, BMW... the list goes on and on.

If you live anywhere in the United States west of about Chicago, and you eat, wear, watch, play, sit on, or drive a product bought retail in recent years, chances are good that it came through this area.

And if you live in the Inland Empire, you’ve watched giant flat-roofed buildings that resemble alien spaceships march across the landscape with a speed some compare to a raging forest fire.

There is now enough industrial space in Riverside and San Bernardino counties — the two counties that make up the Inland Empire — to enclose almost half of Manhattan. Industry experts estimate that the area needs at least 15 million additional square feet every year just to keep pace with demand.

That, in and of itself, might not be so bad for the air. But getting the goods in and out of these warehouses requires trucks and trains. Thousands upon thousands of them, passing through in a ceaseless tide, creating a dull background roar, and contributing to some of the worst pollution in America.

Although air quality overall in Southern California has improved in the last two decades, according to the South Coast Air Quality Management District, the area has had among the nation’s worst ozone pollution almost every single year since 1988 and the worst fine-particulate-matter pollution in Southern California since the agency began measurements in 1999.

The well-defined line between the residential neighborhood of Mira Loma (right) and the massive warehouse structures in the area (left).

Photograph by Emily Berl for BuzzFeed News

The community that epitomizes the pollution warehouses can bring is Mira Loma.

“Our quality of life is in the tubes,” said Gene Proctor, 73, who has lived in Mira Loma Village for 43 years. “I wish people shopping in Tucson, Arizona, in other places, I wish they could see the little kids around here, their respiratory problems.” His great-granddaughter has asthma, and his 3-year-old great-grandson, he said, “coughs like a smoker.”

Mira Loma Village, shown in green, is almost completely surrounded by warehouses.

Population 21,000, Mira Loma is so small and poor it doesn’t have a movie theater, a community center, or even a moderately upscale restaurant. What it does have are 90 warehouses and a whole lot of big rigs: Trucks rumble through 15,000 times every day. In just half an hour on a recent afternoon, 269 trucks passed by the big plate glass window in the front of the Farmer Boys truck stop on Etiwanda Avenue.

That is more than one every seven seconds.

Avol, the professor at the USC Keck School of Medicine, began visiting the town in the early 1990s as part of a study of air pollution and children’s health across Southern California. Back then, he said, researchers chose Mira Loma because it sits at the “end of the tailpipe” of the Los Angeles basin, meaning the prevailing winds off the Pacific Ocean blow L.A.’s infamous smog east until much of it arrives in Mira Loma. So it was rural yet had a lot of ozone and smog. Other places in the study, such as Santa Barbara and Long Beach, were picked because they were thought to boast clean air or because they were in industrial areas.

When the study began, Mira Loma residents complained to researchers about the smell of dairy cows, herds of which clustered on vast pastures and cow yards. But in 1987, Riverside county supervisors revamped the general plan for Mira Loma, clearing the way for massive warehouse development.

“In the course of a few years, the dairies disappeared,” and what had been “open pasture became streets and warehouses, lined with trucks,” Avol said. “Mira Loma turned out to be a very interesting place to study.”

The trucks made the already bad air worse, bringing in diesel particulates, very small particles that can enter the lungs and travel to tissues throughout the body. They are associated with asthma, heart disease, neurological problems, and cancer.

In Mira Loma, children were found to be growing up with stunted lungs compared with children living in places with better air. Their lungs were growing at a rate that was 1 to 1.5% slower, Avol said, so that “after their teen years, they were about 10 to 12% lower in lung function than children who had grown up in cleaner places.”

He added: “We have no information at this point that supports the idea that they ever catch up.”

Studies from other Inland Empire communities are also dire. In a neighborhood near the BNSF rail yard in the city of San Bernardino, Loma Linda University researchers found that adults have more respiratory problems, and children alarmingly high rates of asthma, even when compared with other polluted communities.

Warehouse industry officials, along with Barry Wallerstein, the head of the South Coast Air Quality Management District, insist that it is possible to build jumbo warehouses that do not pose a threat to public health. The key, Wallerstein said, is taking steps such as requiring that “clean” trucks service them and ensuring that traffic going in and out does not abut residential areas.

And yet, time and again, records and interviews show, officials failed to consider health impacts when approving warehouses.

A 2002 investigation by the Riverside Press Enterprise, the local paper, examined the dozens of warehouses approved to be built in Mira Loma between 1987 and 2000. County planners couldn’t point to a single one in which they had required a detailed environmental study.

A spokesman for the county said it has “improved environmental protection,” and indeed as lawsuits from environmentalists and disconcerting health studies have piled up, officials across the Inland Empire have been ordering environmental reviews. But that doesn’t mean they turn down developers’ requests for more warehouses.

In 2011, Riverside County officials voted to allow a 1-million-plus-square-foot complex on one of the last pieces of vacant land near Mira Loma Village despite a study that found it would pose health risks to the people living there.

A local environmental group, the Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice, sued. California Attorney General Kamala Harris joined the suit on the side of environmentalists.

The two sides reached a settlement last year that allowed development to proceed but required local officials and the developer to make the project "greener," with electric vehicle charging stations and even a potential prohibition on trucks on the road closest to the village.

The settlement also contained a provision that feels ripped from the pages of dystopian fiction: Every home in the village would be offered high-tech air filters so residents could avoid breathing the polluted air right outside their windows.

Lillyana Carrasco is pictured here with her father, Daniel Carrasco, as she leans on a new air filter at their family's home in Mira Loma, California, on July 12. She was not part of the study that found stunted lungs.

Photograph by Emily Berl for BuzzFeed News

The warehouse boom has been propelled by two stark factors: poverty and money.

Many of the cities in the Inland Empire, battered particularly badly by the foreclosure crisis, face bleak economic prospects. Just one-fifth of adults over age 25 have a bachelor’s degree. When people are desperate for jobs, thousands of trucks driving through their community every day seems more tolerable.

Then there is the money: Warehouse developers and the retailers that buy or lease from them have it. When they come in, they bring tax revenues to cash-starved local governments.

And developers donate to the political campaigns of politicians who control land-use approvals. Unlike the bribe Councilman Co took, much if not most of the money surely flows through legal channels in the form of campaign contributions. But it’s hard to find an elected official in the Inland Empire who hasn’t benefited significantly, and in some cases overwhelmingly, from development interests.

That was certainly the case in Moreno Valley. Population 200,000, the exurb sits 65 miles from Los Angeles. At the eastern edge of town, houses peter out into a dusty brown expanse, stretching to the horizon.

The flat land, right by a freeway, is the site of developer Iddo Beneevi’s audacious plan to build what may well be the nation’s largest warehouse complex, a 41-million-square-foot colossus equivalent to 700 football fields called The World Logistics Center.

Long before the undercover FBI operative bribed Councilman Co (and then arrested him), Benzeevi methodically bought land — the city estimates he owns or controls about half the developable land in town — and helped build a political machine in this city.

Benzeevi, as he will tell just about anyone who asks and even some who don’t, believes that “the logistics industry” is the inevitable next step in the evolution of human economic development, the end of a line of progress that leads from agrarian society to the great colonial empires to Apple, which, he claimed, can be seen as just a really cool logistics company.

So far, he acknowledged, Moreno Valley has not been a hotbed of economic innovation. But with his help, he insisted, the city can put itself at the center of world commerce.

Benzeevi has an exquisitely courteous manner, even with those who disagree with him, and a fancier style of dress — suits or pressed shirts — than that favored by most who frequent Moreno Valley City Hall. His long-winded fervor on the benefits of the logistics economy is so well known it is something of a joke in town.

But until fairly recently his focus, like that of so many other developers, was on high-end homes that would rise up from the dry scrub as they had in so many other Inland Empire communities before the housing crash.

In 2005, Benzeevi, reportedly working with Florida-based developer Jules Trump (no relation to the Donald), won approvals for “Aquabella,” an upscale community that would feature estates built around artificial lakes — “real resort living, without the hotel,” Benzeevi told one publication.

He even helped convince the Moreno Valley City Council to rename the part of the city that would include the Aquabella community to “Rancho Belago” — the fact that “Belago” is not a word in English, Spanish, Italian, or any other common language didn’t deter anyone, nor did one resident’s complaint that it sounded “goofy” and “like a casino from Las Vegas.”

Rancho Belago signs were eventually put up all over the eastern end of town — although they were modified slightly from the original design after the city of Beverly Hills complained that they looked an awful lot like their iconic town signs. They still look very similar.

Macey Foronda/BuzzFeed (Rancho Belago), Flickr: Thom Watson/Creative Commons / Via Flickr: thomwatson

GOP Congressman: CDC Director "Is The New Commander Of The Democrats' War On Woman Nurses"

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If you’re confused here it’s because we are, too.

A Republican Texas congressman says the Center for Disease Control is part of the "Democrats' war on woman nurses."

"Ya know it's a shame that the CDC head, Frieden, and apparently is the new commander of the Democrats' war on woman nurses," Rep. Louie Gohmert said on Glenn Beck's radio program. "Because they set up them up and then they throw them under the bus."

Here's the video:

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Rick Scott Bizarre Debate Fan Moment Is Front Page News In Florida

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They’re fans.

At the Florida gubernatorial debate last night, Republican Governor Rick Scott refused to go stage for seven minutes because his opponent, former Governor Charlie Crist had an electronic fan under his podium to keep him cool. This is a real thing that happened.

Crist, who sweats a lot, has taken a fan with him for years to keep him cool.

If you thought the issue makes Scott look bad, even petty, then it gets worse. The fan stumble was front page news on some of the biggest newspapers across Florida.

Here the video of the debate moment and this morning's front pages:

Newseum / Via www1.newseum.org

Newseum / Via www1.newseum.org


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Here Are The Most Conservative And Liberal Names In America

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There’s… a pattern.

Chris Ritter / BuzzFeed

The most conservative and liberal names in America are Doyle and Natasha.

Crowdpac, a nonpartisan group, focuses on how money and policy work in politics. The group scores all donors who have made two or more campaign contributions since 1980. Using that algorithm — and a cut-off of names with at least 1,000 donations made to avoid unusual names and outliers — Crowdpac built a tool to show how conservative or liberal first names are.

You can enter your name in this tool here.

(For example, "Katherine" is moderately liberal and people with this name are "less likely to contribute to a campaign than the average citizen.")

Crowdpac also put together the top 20 conservative and liberal names in the country.

You'll notice there is a very stark gender divide! The liberal names generally sound like a group of women in their late 20s; the conservative names sound like the members of a large bluegrass band from the 1930s. This makes sense: Women are more likely to be Democrats, for one thing, and the liberal names also generally represent younger Americans, while the conservative names generally skew older.

GOP Senator: ISIS Using Ebola Is A "Real And Present Danger"

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Asked whether the U.S. should be concerned about ISIS militants bringing Ebola into the country, Sen. Ron Johnson said we should do everything possible to prevent such a thing.

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A Republican senator says he sees the threat of ISIS militants intentionally infecting themselves with the Ebola virus and then traveling to America as a "real and present danger."

"Well, it's certainly something I've been thinking about ever since this Ebola outbreak started," Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin said Wednesday of ISIS using Ebola on America's Forum on NewsmaxTV.

NewsMaxTV cited Al Shimkus, a professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College, who said last week that that ISIS fighters could infect themselves with the Ebola virus and then travel to U.S. as a form of biological warfare.

Johnson said America should be preparing to defend ourselves against such a scenario, calling it "a real and present danger."

"You really don't even want to think about," he said. "You really don't even want to talk about, but we should do everything possible to defend ourselves against that possibility because I think that is a real and present danger."

The director of the FBI said Thursday there were no concerns about ISIS militants using Ebola.

The Department of Homeland Security has likewise dismissed such claims.

"We've seen no specific credible intelligence that ISIS is attempting to use any sort of disease or virus to attack our homeland," DHS chief Jeh Johnson said in remarks to the Association of the United States Army Monday.

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