"Nones" a New Voting Bloc?

The Center for Humanist Activism Fund has started the Freethought Equality Fund PAC, creating the country's first ever political action committee dedicated to promoting the rights and concerns of non-believers.  According to The Huffington Post:

The PAC will back humanist, atheist and agnostic candidates at all levels of government. Freethought's coordinator, Bishop McNeill, told The Huffington Post that it would also be open to supporting candidates who identify with a religion if they are committed to protecting the separation of church and state and defending the civil liberties of secular Americans. 

Nonbelievers have expressed concerns about religious lawmakers who are hostile to legislation based on scientific research because it conflicts with their faith.

According to the latest findings from the Pew Forum, about one-in-five adults affiliate themselves as atheist, agnostic, or non-believers ("nones" for short).  That number rises to one-in-three for those of us under the age of 30.

Comparatively, a recent Gallup poll that indicated Americans who identified themselves as Republicans dropped to 25%.  With a five percent difference between Republicans and nones, it would seem that the demographic field between religious conservatives and nones is beginning to even out.  Unfortunately, an earlier Gallup study demonstrated only 54% of voters would be willing vote for an atheist for President.

What can we draw from these numbers?  If the polls are correct, it shows that despite a continuing growth in the non-religious population of this country since the 1980s, nones are still distrusted by a large segment of the American public.  Large enough that the ambition of fielding a candidate for a national office like the presidency is still a premature dream.

However, PACs representing nones like the Freethought Equality Fund could still prove to be useful in other electoral venues.  Many of the issues that concern nones, like science education, government sponsored prayer, and equal access to public forums stem from local elections.  If the FEF and other nones-aligned PACs helped to promote candidates - who were either non-religious or religious but respected a strong separation of church and state - in strategic local races where religious encroachment into politics was a problem, then these PACs could be a start of a larger effort for better political representation for atheists, agnostics, and other non-believers.  

(Hat Tip Roy Speckhardt)

CIA and Hollywood's Propagandic Collusion

Glenn Greenwald writes about the disturbing relationship between a CIA spokesperson Marie Harf and New York Times intelligence reporter Mark Mazetti.  Fellow NYT columnist Maureen Dowd wrote a piece that mentioned the collusion between the CIA and filmmakers working on a film that details the killing of Osama Bin Laden, and Harf was worried that the information implicating the CIA's relationship with the film would look poorly on the agency.  She contacted Mazetti, who then forwarded her the as-of-then unpublished column without consent or knowledge from the paper or Dowd, for her to review, but asked her to delete the email, since it seems he does have some sense of shame.  

While the media and the government often have a relationship that is too friendly to allow the media to properly act as a adversarial fourth estate, the new levels of collusion between filmmakers Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal (the director and screenwriter for "The Hurt Locker," respectively) and the CIA are disturbing, especially since the film was originally scheduled to be released in October, just before the presidential election.  As Judicial Watch has reported:

According to a June 15, 2011, email from Benjamin Rhodes, Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications, to then Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs Doug Wilson, then-CIA Director of Public Affairs George Little, and Deputy White House Press Secretary Jaime Smith, the Obama White House was intent on “trying to have visibility into the UBL (Usama bin Laden) projects.”

Compare the treatment of Laura Poitras, a documentarian whose last two films, "My Country, My Country" and "The Oath," have been critical of the United States foreign policy.  She is routinely harassed at airports when she enters the country, questioned by the TSA and FBI agents, and has her electronic equipment seized without a warrant.

This is all par for the course.  Instead of making Washington more transparent, and therefore more accountable as he promised, Obama and his administration have rewarded people who give favorable treatment to the administration with access, sometimes to classified information, while punishing whistle- blowers with harassment and sometimes even prosecution.

Now imagine if this would have happened sometime in 2006, when Bush was still in the White House.  I can almost guarantee that Democrats and liberals would be up in arms about this sort of corruption.  But now that it is their man as the commander-in-chief, most could not care at all.

Some Justice (Good News from the Federal Courts)

After an appalling week of Supreme Court decisions (see here and here), a US District Court decided to allow David House, a friend of Bradley Manning and a co-founder of The Bradley Manning Support Network, to continue with his lawsuit against the government and rebuked the government's request to have the lawsuit thrown out of court for national security reasons.

The background of the case is as follows; David House, a US Citizen, has been stopped by the Department of Homeland Security several times when he has returned this country.  During one of these stops, DHS agents repeatedly asked him about his political beliefs, specifically relating to his work with the The Bradley Manning Support Network, and confiscated his laptop, zip-drive, and cellphone, all without a warrant.  After seven weeks, he finally had his property returned to him, with the government saying that it took much longer than it had anticipated because their agents were unfamiliar with the computer's operating system.

At no time during this ordeal has the government accused David House of any criminal activity.  Even during Houses questioning by DHS agents, the government was only concerned about his involvement in a group whose aim was to raise money for Bradley Manning's defense and speak out against Manning's detainment.  Both of those aims fall well under the protection of the First Amendment.  Any person with a basic understanding of constitutional law and relevant Supreme Court precedent knows that the government is not allowed to punish people for political speech.  Unfortunately, Obama's Department of Justice, much like his predecessor's, just clearly does not give a shit about constitutional rights.  Especially when the can easily scream "Terrorism" and hope that federal judges decide to throw the case out of the courts.

Torture Does Not Work

Jennifer S. Bryson, a former US interpreter and interrogator, wrote an article in Public Discourse that attacks the US Government's use of torture during the interrogations of terrorism suspects.  She joins the ranks of other experienced interrogators, such as Glenn Carle and Ali Soufan, who argue that the torture of detainees not only violates the law, but gathers inaccurate information that actually hurts the intelligence community.  Bryson's article, which I highly recommend every one reads, goes further to explain why torture during interrogations dehumanizes both the interrogator and the detainee, and why that dehumanization hurts the process of gathering useful intelligence:

Wisconsin Recall Elections are Today

The recall elections for the Wisconsin legislature are in full swing today, which place six Republicans at risk to lose their seats.  Two more Democrats will face recall next week.  As the article notes, the out-of-state, third-party money fund the recall efforts at an unprecedented rate from both conservative and liberal groups:

Cash flowing into the recall elections from third-party interest groups already has approached $30 million, election watchdogs say, and total spending by third-party groups and candidates could top $40 million.

That total would double spending on all 116 of last fall's state legislative races combined. About $19.25 million was spent in those races for 17 Senate seats and 99 Assembly seats, which included 312 candidates on the primary ballot and 225 candidates in the November 2010 general election, said Mike McCabe, Wisconsin Democracy Campaign executive director. 

The money spent so far in this summer's nine recalls — one already has been decided — is believed to have already broken Wisconsin's record for state Senate and Assembly races set in 2008, when candidates and groups spent about $20 million on 115 elections.

Wisconsin State Website Leads You to Jesus

The Isthmus broke the story of how the Wisconsin state website contains a link to a page for Care Net.   

A new link to a crisis pregnancy center on Wisconsin.gov, Wisconsin's state website, has led several area advocates to accuse Gov. Scott Walker's administration of blurring the lines between church and state.

The link, found under the "Family Services" subsection of "Health and Safety," leads to Care Net, an evangelical anti-abortion group that runs some 1,100 crisis pregnancy centers throughout the nation, including the Elizabeth House on Madison's east side. According to Care Net's website, its ultimate aim "is to share the love and truth of Jesus Christ."

It also claims to be a place where "those struggling with past abortions are finding God's healing and forgiveness."

Now, imagine if the same website, with the same exact services offered, instead claimed its aim was to share the true word of God as told by the last prophet, Muhammad.

Victory Against the Obama DOJ in Two Espionage Cases

The invaluable Glenn Greenwald writes that the Obama DOJ suffered serious blows to two of their espionage prosecutions; one against former NSA executive Thomas Drake (see details about his prosecution) and the other a subpoena  to compel New York Times reporter James Risen to reveal his confidential source for his book State of War. 

Most of the charges against Drake, who originally faced up to 35 years in prison for leaking classified information, were dropped on June 9th, which left Drake to plead guilty to one misdemeanor of exceeding his authorized use of a government computer.  As Greenwald writes, the U.S. District Judge, Richard Bennett, blasted the DOJ for their sloppy and drawn-out prosecution and refused to acquiesce to the DOJ's demand that the court fine Drake for $50,000.  Judge Bennett acknowledged that the DOJ already destroyed Drake's life through their prosecution, writing: