The strategy of using abortion-related keywords to send a woman searching the web for abortion information to a nearby crisis pregnancy center is already a few years old. But the scheme only received real national attention a couple of months ago, when Siri, Apple’s new voice-activated search assistant, was caught sending women looking for abortion clinics to centers that specialize in talking women out of abortions.

Apple refuted accusations of an anti-abortion agenda, instead blaming the “glitch” on search engines like Google and user-generated guides like Yelp, from which Siri largely extracts its information.

Apple’s explanation matched claims made by anti-abortion rights groups, whose websites describe in detail how they use keywords and Google ads to direct abortion seekers to a central website called Option Line, whose primary function is to route people to one of the thousands of crisis pregnancy centers throughout the country.

The Siri scandal sent The American Independent on a search for evidence that anti-abortion activists are successfully thwarting abortion searches on the Web. We found that CPCs have a minor presence online, but what’s telling is not so much the quantity of CPC ads that appeared on each front-page Google search, but the subtle, universal messaging these sites use.

In many cases, the presence of an anti-abortion agenda is masked.

Searching ‘abortion’

Like most businesses trying to boost their visibility on Google, anti-abortion pregnancy centers buy ads through Google’s AdWords program. But at the heart of the strategy appears to be CPC websites that not only share a universal message, but also a universal Web design.

Using various Google search approaches – “abortion,” “abortion services” “how can I get an abortion,” “I need an abortion” – TAI discovered at least one ad or entry that was linked to Option Line or to Option Line-created software on each primary search page.

These pages often also included two or three entries for individual crisis pregnancy centers or anti-abortion websites. One search result turned up a list of “abortion services” in the D.C. area that included anti-abortion pregnancy centers.

A Google ad that popped up frequently during our searches is “Thinking of Abortion?” whose URL is listed as assistcpc.org. The ad links to the website for Assist Pregnancy Center, a CPC in Annandale, Va. At the very bottom of the website is a note: “Website created by Optionline e-Xtend.” This links to Option Line Extend, a website development program that provides pregnancy centers with “a professional Internet presence.”

Another Google ad titled “Abortion Stories” links to the website standupgirl.com, whose domain is owned by Oregon Right to Life. The site is mainly devoted to promoting pregnancy and hosts an Option Line chat service on its homepage.

Option Line is a 24/7 live-operator contact center headquartered in Columbus, Ohio, which fields inquiries from people seeking information about abortion and pregnancy. It has a Spanish-only version at estasembarazada.com, staffed by bilingual consultants.

Option Line was co-founded in 2003 by Care Net and Heartbeat International, two of the three largest CPC networks in the U.S. About half of the more than 4,000 centers across the country are affiliated with one of these two networks.

In 2007, Option Line created Option Line Extend to sell to centers affiliated with either Care Net or Heartbeat International. CPCs are charged $150 for “basic websites,” $300 for “premium websites” and $500 for “ministry websites.”

Care Net, which made about $7 million in revenue in 2010, reported spending $600,000 on Option Line. Heartbeat International, which reported making about $1.4 million in revenue (PDF) in 2010, reported spending about 46 percent of its budget on its Option Line program between October 2010 and September 2011.

The Option Line Extend model websites are designed with calm colors and messaging, a departure from anti-abortion websites like AbortionNO.org (whose domain is owned by the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform), which links directly to a graphic video of a fetus being aborted.

Aside from live-chats and directions to the closest CPC, Option Line offers answers to questions about abortion, birth control and emergency contraception.

In an answer to the question, “Should I take the morning-after pill?” Option Line replies:

Many times women panic after having unprotected sex and rush to take the morning-after pill (Plan B One Step® or Next Choice®). However, you can only become pregnant on certain days of the month — around the time that you ovulate. Taking the morning-after pill during a time when you cannot become pregnant needlessly exposes you to large doses of hormones.

If you are already pregnant from an earlier sexual encounter, taking the morning-after pill is of no value and may cause harm6^, 7. To find out if you are pregnant, contact us, and we’ll connect you with a caring, qualified pregnancy center near you.

Questions about abortion are answered in similarly sober tones. Potential risks from abortion — often overstated by anti-abortion activists and CPC counselors — are stated here as what they are, potential risks. For example, while activists often argue that abortion is a direct cause of breast cancer, here the link is presented as uncertain. Option Line is also careful about putting disclaimers at the bottom of some of its pages, stating that its centers do not offer certain services, but this message is does not always appear on individual center sites.

Creating diversions on the Internet

According to a recently released updated report (PDF) on crisis pregnancy centers produced by the Family Research Council, Option Line averages about 1 million visitors per year and makes about 20,000 contracts per month, with media partners such as Heroic Media and Online for Life.

Last September, The American Independent reported that Heroic Media, an anti-abortion media group headquartered in Austin, Texas, was employing what’s known in the industry as “landing pages” or “doorway pages,” which Google defines as “poor-quality pages where each page is optimized for a specific keyword or phrase … written to rank a particular phrase and then funnel users to a single destination.”

The single destination where Heroic Media was trying to funnel users was Option Line’s homepage. Heroic Media’s parent company, Majella Cares, registered the Web domain freepreghelpline.com, which, when clicked on, goes to optionline.org/get-help.

Heroic Media discussed this strategy on its website when the Independent first reported the story.

This was an excerpt that we recorded from this page:

Internet keyword advertising is targeted and measureable. We can reach scared, abortion-vulnerable women with life-affirming messages and monitor effectiveness by the number of views, clicks, and visits to our site. We recently launched a new landing page at www.freepreghelpline.com to optimize reporting on just how many women are connected with life-affirming resources.

Keyword advertising on Google is also extremely cost-effective because you only pay for clicks, which cost an average of less than three dollars. That’s three dollars to connect abortion-vulnerable women with life-affirming information and people who can help.

A recent screenshot of the same web page we excerpted back in September shows that Heroic Media deleted the paragraph about freepreghelpline.com (also, the alleged amount of monthly “abortion” searches has jumped from 2 million to 6 million):

Screenshot from HeroicMedia.org, click to enlarge.

When asked if the organization is still using landing pages, Heroic Media spokesperson Marissa Gabrysch said the organization never used them.

“That’s inaccurate, although I understand why it was confusing,” Gabrysch told TAI in an email when asked about the doorway pages. “I have made the clarification on our website. Heroic Media’s keyword ads for Option Line link directly to optionline.org.

“The freepreghelpline.com site has not been advertised through keyword ads,” she continued.

“The county is taking steps that if he gets out, we will file a civil matter to make sure he takes his medications,” Ghosh told The American Independent.

Ghosh was speaking of the Comstock Park man who turned himself in to Grand Rapids police Dec. 22, alleging he attempted to infect hundreds of people with HIV through unprotected sex and sharing needles. He was placed in a psychiatric hold for two days, and on Dec. 24, he was arraigned on the first of two charges of failing to disclose his status to a sex partner. Several days later, prosecutors added a second charge of failing to disclose. He is currently in Ypsilanti undergoing a psychiatric evaluation to determine if he can stand trial. He is being held on a $100,000 bond.

TAI does not identify the names of those charged with HIV disclosure laws unless both the accused and the accuser are named in court documents, or one or both provide TAI permission to publish their names.

The case, media releases and subsequent reporting have resulted in what experts have told TAI were “sensationalist” reports in the wider media.

But this is the first time county officials have indicated plans on how to deal with the man if he is released on bond.

The announcement, however, has HIV advocates worried.

“Forcing anyone to take treatment is a slippery slope,” said Sean Strub, co-chair of the Global Network of People with AIDS, North America (GNP+), in an email. “This person’s most important health issue seems to be his mental health, not his viral status. Forcing anti-retroviral treatment on anyone is a slippery slope. Once the camel’s nose gets inside that tent, even in such a rare and bizarre circumstance as this peculiar case, it is not such a huge step to mandatory testing and treatment for an ever-expanding number of people with HIV.”

While the advent of antiretroviral medications in the mid-1990s resulted in a staggering revival of persons living with AIDS and s sharp decrease in AIDS-related deaths, the drugs themselves are quite toxic and cause a host of side effects. In addition, scientists are not in agreement as to when is the appropriate point in clinical progression to begin treatment, resulting in many mixed messages to patients.

Michigan does have a part of the state health code that allows health officials to declare a person a health threat to others (HTTO). HTTOs are a civil action and can amount to anything from counseling to forced civil confinement for as long as six months. TAI reported in December that many people thought the law was being abused when it was revealed that any HIV-positive person who was diagnosed with a sexually transmitted infection was immediately issued an HTTO. In other instances, women who became pregnant were issued HTTO orders and HIV-positive people who were named in partner services programs were also targeted for HTTO orders. The state, which oversees the HTTO list, denies pregnant women were targeted but said the STI and partner services programs were appropriate uses of the state’s name-based HIV list.

“[The suspect] does not have an airborne disease spread through casual contact; he has a disease that, regardless of treatment, is not easily transmitted. Even without treatment, the primary routes of infection — unprotected anal or vaginal sex — result in HIV transmission roughly one percent or less of the time,” said Catherine Hanssens, executive director of the Center for HIV Law and Policy. “So the threat of mandatory treatment is not a reflection of any danger [the suspect] poses, but of Ms.Ghosh’s dangerous misapprehension of both HIV transmission and the law governing the very limited circumstances under which treatment of an individual can be mandated.”

Photo: Kent County, Mich. logo (www.accesskent.com)

Hoogendyk unsuccessfully challenged Upton for the seat two years ago, when he was able to garner only 43 percent of the vote, in spite of significant support from the tea party movement. Upton out-raised and outspent Hoogendyk — with Upton reporting $2 million in fundraising and spending to Hoogendyk’s $62,000.

The über-conservative former lawmaker is expected to announce his decision Jan. 17 at a noon press event in Kalamazoo, according to an email sent by Steven Mobley, Calhoun County Republican Party chair.

If Hoogendyk tosses his hat in the ring again, he is likely to come to the fight with a much larger war chest. He has been openly courted by the conservative political action committee Club for Growth, which has recently launched a two-week television commercial campaign accusing Upton of being “liberal.” The group met with Hoogendyk in November, reports MLive.com, and while it did not issue an endorsement, the PAC did say that it was “impressed” with him.

While he has been out of the state legislature for four years, Hoogendyk has been anything but invisible. He spoke at a tea party rally protesting Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm’s final state of the state speech; has been actively engaged in pushing right-to-work legislation; and in November took heat for funding robocalls, which were said to have killed a local school millage election, reported Joyce Pines of the Kalamazoo Gazette. Those same robocalls may also have violated federal regulations.

Hoogendyk is anti-gay, anti-union, and anti-abortion-rights. He staunchly supports limited government and home schooling. His wife, Erin, home-schooled all of their children — in the Mattawan school district, where he reportedly helped kill the millage election.

Mobley’s email follows:

Two years ago, after much urging by friends and a lot of time in contemplation, Jack Hoogendyk made the decision to run for the 6th District Congressional seat. He did so because he felt that it was time for someone to stand on the principles of Freedom and Liberty that are a part of the foundation of our country. He also believed that it was vital to return the government “To the People” and that our nation was in need of strong leadership that would fight for those principles.

Now, two years later, we find ourselves facing much of the same. Leadership that is backing down and giving in to policies that will drive us further away from our independence. Leadership that is accepting status quo as good enough. Leadership that is not willing to fight with every fiber of their being to turn this nation around and Jack is once again listening to the urging of those asking him if he will fight for us.

Jack and Erin have spent countless hours in thought, evaluation, and prayer, as well as, seeking the advice of trusted friends. And now it is decision time. I would like to invite you to come out and join us as Jack makes an important announcement regarding the 6th Congressional seat.

Progressive groups were quick to condemn a possible Hoogendyk candidacy.

“A primary between Upton and Hoogendyk would be a rerun financed by Washington, DC corporate power brokers,” David Holtz, executive director of Progress Michigan, told The American Independent by email. “Upton’s Wall Street and Big Oil backers versus an extremist anti-government group that, more than any other, is responsible for driving this Republican Congress off the cliff into historic depths of low public opinion. Expect low ratings from middle class Michigan voters who may just decide to tune both of them out.”

Amy Hunter, president of the Equality Michigan Pride PAC, was also scathing in her assessment of a Hoogendyk candidacy.

“Given Rep. Upton’s extraordinary shift to the far-right, it seems unlikely that the GOP could hope for someone less interested in equality for women, families and gay and transgender Michiganders,” she said in an email to TAI. “Jack Hoogenbyk [sic] unfortunately, fits that description. The people of the Michigan 6th Congressional District deserve a representative who cares about all of his or her constituents. Someone who cares about fundemental [sic] fairness and equality for all Michiganders, not someone whose far-right agenda harms or excludes thousands of Michigan families and children – gay or straight.”

Photo: Former Michigan state Rep. Jack Hoogendyk appears at a tea party event at the state Capitol (AMERICAN INDEPENDENT/Todd Heywood).

The Foundation for Government Accountability logo (Photo: Facebook)

The Foundation for Government Accountability debuted a new website Monday — an online database of the salaries of Florida’s public employees: FloridaOpenGov.org.

The website is almost a replica of a project by Foundation President Tarren Bragdon at his last place of employment, the Maine Heritage Policy Center.

According to a press release from the organization, the website is a compilation of “about 35 million public records detailing nearly $1.4 trillion in spending and payroll by state, county, municipality and school.”

Here is some of the data included in the database, according to the release:

• County government payroll (FY 1997-2011)
• Local K-12 public education payroll (FY 1997-2011)
• State government payroll (1995-2010)
• Local government spending (FY 1993-2010)
• State vendor payments (FY 2005-2011)

Steve Mistler of the Sun-Journal wrote in September 2010 that Bragdon’s group in Maine “fed the public’s oft-held suspicion that government is too wasteful [when it] published the names and salaries of every state employee on maineopengov.org, and linked it to the center’s homepage.” Critics called the website a “cynical hijacking of transparency to foster public mistrust in government,” Mistler reported.

The Foundation’s new website is very similar to the Maine project in that it details almost every state salary.

According to the press release release, the group’s webpage is also picking up some endorsements from state legislators:

FGA unveiled FloridaOpenGov.org on Monday at a Statehouse press conference, with a bipartisan group of state and local elected officials. These officials helped raise awareness about FloridaOpenGov.org and the opportunities it creates for taxpayers to learn more about politicians’ spending decisions.

…

State Representatives Matt Hudson (R-Naples), Rachel Burgin (R-Tampa Bay) and Joseph Abruzzo (D-Wellington) and City of Longwood Mayor Joe Durso also endorsed FloridaOpenGov.org as an important addition to Florida’s government transparency movement. Other leaders noted the site’s value as well.

At the Capitol, Bragdon highlighted key findings from FloridaOpenGov.org, including the top ten highest paid state government workers (Department of Education employee Frank Brogan is number one), government workers who are members of the $100k salary club, state vendors with the most in government contract and payments, and local spending data.

The Foundation has so far declined to disclose the source of its own funding. Bragdon has previously said that ”initial donors who were interested in having [him] here” in Florida were responsible for his move to the state. In the few months that the Foundation has been in Naples, one of the group’s pamphlets was included in the state’s defense of a controversial law requiring temporary cash assistance applicants to undergo a drug test before receiving benefits. The law was recently stopped from being implemented; the Foundation’s pamphlet was deemed “not competent expert opinion” by Judge Mary Scriven.

The Foundation has also set its sights on influencing Florida’s 2012 legislative session and has been touting the state’s controversial Medicaid reform with right-wing “free market” groups like the American Legislative Exchange Council.

“Frankly, litigation may be the best way forward on this issue,” Ed Ryerson wrote in a letter last week to Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.), defending his ex-employer’s ability to regulate water on forest lands.

In his letter, Ryerson, who coordinated the Forest Service’s ski area program from 1992 until his retirement in 2005, excoriated “the ‘bad actors’ in the ski industry who welshed on their agreements with the United States, and obtained water rights, justly belonging to the American people, through fraud and deception. These are the ski areas on who’s behalf NSAA has been lobbying.”

Udall, along with Sens. Michael Bennet (D-Colo), John Barrasso, (R-Wyo.), James Risch, (R-Idaho), and Rep. Scott Tipton, (R-Colo.), recently asked the Forest Service to suspend a new clause in its permitting process that ski resorts contend is an illegal taking of valuable water rights.

The Forest Service did not act on the advice of the politicians. Federal officials say the National Forest Ski Area Permit Act of 1986 concedes water rights on federal forest lands to the U.S. government. They also cite statutory authority based on the Organic Administrative Act of 1897, and other laws.

But in 2004, high-level meetings between ski industry executives and Bush administration officials resulted in a new policy that awarded permit owners joint ownership of water rights on federal lands.

“The 2004 water rights clause was implemented during my tenure and accordingly, I experienced how the ski industry exploited the lax regulatory environment that characterized the Bush Administration to attempt to effectuate the transfer of valuable water rights, that justly belong to the American people, to private ski areas,” Ryerson wrote in his letter to Udall. “The 2004 water rights clause is the legacy of this effort and should be seen in the context of that administration’s regulatory failures that allowed greed to jeopardize our economy and environment.”

Before the 2004 clause, there was a particularly cantankerous meeting between Ryerson, accompanied by a Department of Agriculture’s Office of General Council (OGC) lawyer, and NSAA.

“They reacted to every concern we voiced with hostility and let us know that they had the support of the Under Secretary’s Office to make the  changes they wanted,” Ryerson wrote of the NSAA officials. “Following this unproductive meeting, all discussions on modifying the clause were conducted between NSAA representatives, the Director of Recreation in the Chief’s office, and the Under Secretary’s staff. Agency permit specialist and water rights experts with OGC were excluded from the meetings that resulted in the development of the 2004 water rights clause.”

When the Forest Service tried to convey water rights under the 2004 joint-ownership policy, officials say agency lawyers learned Colorado’s laws wouldn’t allow it. That led to the 2011 interim directive, which authorizes the Forest Service to begin to wholly reclaim water rights at ski areas through permit actions. The new directive is limited to new permit requests and it is only valid for 18 months.

Ryerson’s letter questions whether any ski areas have intentionally deceived the Forest Service.

“If, in fact, some ski area operators signed their permits under the pretense of agreeing to transfer these water rights to the Government, when their intent was not to do so, they knowingly and willfully deceived the Forest Service and defrauded the United States,” he wrote. “Accordingly, these ski area operators risked criminal penalties under 18 USC 1001, as well as termination of their permits. That they would resort to such reckless behavior clearly illustrates the power of greed.”

Asked for a response, Geraldine Link, the policy director for NSAA, emailed the Colorado Independent to say “the 2011 clause – is retroactive in nature. It resurrects old, invalid and replaced clauses that are no longer in effect. It resurrects them from the past even though at this time the ski area and the water rights could very well be owned by a different entity who was not a party to the permit from 3 decades ago. The 2011 clause also applies to water that originates on private land and other non-USFS lands. Talk about shifting political winds. The ski industry is frustrated with the pendulum swinging back and forth between administrations. It is not good for business.”

Ryerson has a much different perspective but he agrees with NSAA officials on at least one point when they say they are going to sue the Forest Service: Let the dispute play out in court.

“It will be advantageous to the public’s interest to get the Justice Department involved in this matter,” Ryerson wrote in his letter to Udall, on which Bennet was copied. “It will provide them an opportunity to become familiar with the facts of the matter to help them determine if criminal prosecutions should be pursued, and to expedite acquiring title to water rights that justly belong to the American people.”

Photo: Flickr/Nashoba Valley Ski Area

Photo: Personhood USA co-founder Keith Mason (Photo: personhoodusa.com)

Via OneNewsNow:

The group submitted language for the proposal to Attorney General Dustin McDaniel, who rejected it on the basis of it being too vague. Personhood spokesman Keith Riley says that was no shock.

“They discussed several pro-life bills in the Arkansas legislature last year and he [McDaniel] sent somebody from his office to testify in opposition to every single one of them,” says Riley. “So, he’s been described in media circles as blatantly pro-abortion.”

Personhood Arkansas remains undeterred by the decision, and plans to submit a rewritten measure. Should the rewritten version be rejected, the group says it intends to file a lawsuit challenging the decision.

“Well, the next step is, we’re going to go ahead and re-file,” Riley told OneNewsNow. “The Personhood Arkansas group is trying to adopt as many of his recommendations as possible, and basically at this point we’re anticipating a second rejection of the language and what we’ll do then is file a lawsuit to challenge that second rejection.”

In October, Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine rejected his state’s personhood initiative, after determining that a summary of the initiative was not “fair and truthful.” Supporters of the amendment addressed those concerns by adding language to clarify that the proposal would neither restrict the use of contraception nor affect in-vitro fertilization and, on Dec. 30, DeWine certified the rewritten ballot language.

With the beginning of session only days away, Florida legislators have been busy filing a slew of anti-abortion bills. Add yet another to the list: a measure outlawing race- and gender-based abortions. The bill was filed by state Rep. Scott Plakon, R-Longwood.

House Bill 1327, or the “Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass Prenatal Nondiscrimination and Equal Opportunity for Life Act,” would make it a crime to have an abortion “that it is sought based on sex or race of child or race of parent of that child.” A similar bill was filed in the U.S. House by Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., last month and became law in Arizona last year.

According to a summary of the bill, it:

• Requires person performing termination to first sign affidavit stating that he or she is not performing termination because of child’s sex or race and has no knowledge that pregnancy being terminated is because of child’s sex or race;
• Prohibits performing or inducing termination knowing that it is sought based on sex or race of child or race of parent of that child, using force or threat of force to intentionally injure or intimidate any person for purpose of coercing sex-selection or race-selection termination, and soliciting or accepting moneys to finance sex-selection or race-selection termination;
• Provides for injunctions;
• Provides for civil actions by certain persons; authorizes civil fines against physicians & other health professionals who knowingly fail to report known violations; provides that woman on whom sex-selection or race-selection termination is performed is not subject to criminal prosecution or civil liability.

Plakon says he did not file the bill to address any “Florida-specific” problem, but rather to address a “creeping problem” with gender- and race-based abortions worldwide. He says “we shouldn’t wait” until there is a rampant problem in order to address this.

“This is wrong,” he says. “We need to make sure this doesn’t creep into Florida from other countries.”

Plakon does, however, concede that it is hard to prove that gender- or race-based abortions are happening “on a micro-level,” which would make this law somewhat hard to enforce unless a woman were to mention the reasoning behind her abortion.

“If she volunteers that information,” Plakon says, “it would put the burden on the abortionist to not provide the abortion.”

There is no denying this is happening worldwide, Plakon says. “And you could argue that this country is a safe haven for this sort of thing.”

“At least we are doing something,” he says.

Reproductive rights and justice activists have long condemned bills like Plakon’s since Frank first introduced his measure the same week President Obama was elected.

Loretta Ross, the president of SisterSong — a reproductive justice collective for women of color — says there is no evidence that supports the need for such a bill. She believes these bills are a “blatant attempt for southern Republicans to look like they are champions of racial justice,” while they actually attacking women’s rights.

“The question to ask would be: Do you champion [racial minorities and women] once they are here?” Loretta says.

This sort of legislation has been the result of a concerted effort among anti-abortion activists to link abortion to racist aims. Groups have been touting the “black genocide” conspiracy in an effort to convince African-American communities to oppose abortion. In some cases, these arguments have taken root in the African-American community.

Ross says that painting women as propagators of genocide in this way is an “attack on women’s dignity.”

“Ultimately,” Ross says, “this shows contempt for women.”

As of now, the Legislature has filed eight anti-abortion/reproductive rights bill for the session starting next week — nine if/when this bill picks up a Senate sponsor.

“The Minnesota Marriage Minute videos are an exciting opportunity to promote a respectful dialogue about the future of marriage in Minnesota,” said John Helmberger, chairman of Minnesota for Marriage, in a recent statement announcing the videos.

“We especially want to thank Kalley Yanta, a veteran former news anchor and devoted mother for volunteering her time to make these important videos,” said Helmberger. “We are grateful for Kalley’s faithful commitment to preserving marriage in Minnesota and for her experience and poise in presenting the various topics. We are confident that she will be well received by Minnesotans across the State.”

The first video in the series is an introduction:

Yanta launched her new project with Minnesota for Marriage on Pastor Brad Brandon’s “Word of Truth” radio show on Wednesday.

“This is a big deal,” she said of the anti-gay marriage amendment. “People need to really pay attention to this.”

Yanta said they’ve taped 30 of the “marriage minutes” and are considering also creating radio and television spots. The Minnesota for Marriage group asked her to be the “face” of the effort, she told Brandon.

She also said she signed up for the project because of her own marriage and that fact that same-sex parents are harmful to children.

“I feel very, very grateful to have a good marriage,” Yanta told Brandon. “I want to be a part of … preserving that as our definition of marriage in Minnesota. … There are many efforts under way to tear apart the foundation of our society, which is the family.

“Thirty-one states across the nation have taken up this amendment and all have passed it, so if Minnesota doesn’t, we’d be the first not to, and that sets a precedent for the rest of the nation, and we don’t want to do that” she continued.

Yanta refuted the idea that same-sex parents can raise healthy, well-adjusted children, referring to a conversation she had with a “very prominent CEO of a major metropolitan hospital here in town,” who defended gay parenting.

“I have beg to differ with that opinion,” she said. “There are studies that are being conducted right now about how children are being raised and how that affects somebody in their psyche and in their self-esteem and in the various ways that that can affect a person being raised by either a man and a man or a woman and a woman. It’s not natural.”

Yanta also said that if the amendment doesn’t pass, Christian parents could be arrested.

“If marriage between homosexuals is legalized, what would some of the consequences be?” she asked rhetorically. “Parents who want to opt their kids out of the public school on the day that they’re teaching about homosexual relationships how it should be okay and accepted, and the parents are charged with discrimination and are hauled away sometimes in handcuffs. … We just can’t allow this to happen.

“We all need to have courage when it comes to speaking the truth,” she continued, noting that, so far, she hasn’t received any backlash from the videos.

But while Yanta may not have received backlash, the videos have.

Minnesotans United for All Families, a coalition of more than 100 groups, analyzed the images in the first video released and determined that not a single person in the video was actually from Minnesota.

“While this video is full of stock images, it is strangely lacking in real Minnesotans,” the group said on its Facebook page. “Perhaps they couldn’t find any real Minnesotans willing to support their divisive agenda?”

One image appears to have been taken by a French photographer of a French family, and another is being used on the website of an India-based health-care center.

Most of the images were purchased through low-budget stock-photo websites.

And it’s not the first time a group affiliated with the National Organization for Marriage (NOM is one of three groups that make up Minnesota for Marriage) used stock photos to misrepresent support for their cause. In 2011, the group’s New Hampshire affiliate used images from a rally featuring Barack Obama and passed them off as their own rallies.

The Minnesota for Marriage videos are not Kalley’s first foray into conservative Christian issue-oriented video production.

She has recently produced documentaries that express aimed her anti-abortion beliefs. In a November video, Yanta accuses Planned Parenthood of building “clandestine” and secretive headquarters in St. Paul, Minnesota’s Midway neighborhood. The video compares the Planned Parenthood construction to the Nazis’ Auschwitz concentration camp complex.

Yanta’s video also discusses “post abortion syndrome,” a controversial notion that women experience higher rates of mental illness following an abortion. The video portrays it as a real illness, despite recent scientific research to the contrary. A study in January 2011, for instance, showed that women do not have a higher risk of mental illness after having an abortion. In fact, studies that have shown a link often have neglected to assess the mental health of the women prior to them becoming pregnant.

Yanta courted controversy in the late 1990s, when as the anchor of KSTP-TV, a Minneapolis ABC affiliate, she had to cancel a speaking engagement with a group called Concerned Citizens for Action, an anti-abortion group that would later become Pro-Life Action Ministries, an entity that Yanta has worked with for several years. The station did not say why the news anchor had to cancel the appearance, but Yanta later told the St. Paul Pioneer Press that the event created the appearance of bias for the anchor.

She’s also been involved in Total Life Care Centers, a network of crisis pregnancy centers in Minnesota, many of which are state-funded despite providing information that medical experts and reproductive rights advocates have called false and misleading.

Photo: Screen shot of Kalley Yanta anchoring “Minnesota Marriage Minute: Episode 1″ (Source: minnesotaformarriage.org)

“Is the president going to have the authority to decide if the Supreme Court has deliberated too little on a case?” CitizenLink quotes Yoo writing on the matter. “Does Congress have the right to decide whether the president has really thought hard enough about granting a pardon? Under Obama’s approach, he could make a recess appointment anytime he is watching C-SPAN and feels that the senators are not working as hard as he did in the Senate (a fairly low bar).”

CitizenLink identifies Yoo only as “a law professor at the University of California at Berkley, who is well known in legal circles for advocating executive power.”

Yoo is perhaps one of the most controversial figures in U.S. legal history. His torture memos were eventually disavowed by the Bush justice department. The Office of Legal Counsel where Yoo worked repudiated them as unsound and dangerous. After a five year inquiry, the department’s Office of Professional Responsibility reported that Yoo had “committed intentional professional misconduct when he advised the CIA it could proceed with waterboarding and other aggressive interrogation techniques…” During the inquiry, Yoo told investigators the “president… had the constitutional power to order a village to be ‘massacred.’” Three years ago, Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzón Real launched an investigation of Yoo for war crimes.

By contrast, the Obama appointments this week can be seen in context less as any kind of historic overstep and more as just another strategic move in a Capitol Hill chess game.

The appointments come after three years of deep congressional dysfunction and after the president in recent months vowed to act where he can to use executive orders to bypass congressional obstructionism.

“We’re not going to wait for Congress… Where they won’t act, I will, through a series of executive orders… We’re going to look every day to see what we can do without Congress,” he told a crowd in October gathered on the downtown Denver Auraria Campus.

The argument against the appointments is that the Senate was not in fact in recess when Obama made them. The White House says the Senate was “in session” in name only, opening up for do-nothing 30 second meetings in order mainly to keep the president from appointing Cordray to head the two-year-old leaderless Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CPFB), which was created by Congress over the objection of bank lobbyists to protect credit card holders, for example, from gouging interest rates and fees.

Republican senators have for months blocked confirmation of Cordray, who is a Republican and a former attorney general of Ohio. The senators say they do not object to Cordray but only to how the CPFB is organized. Its financing, for example, comes from the Federal Reserve, which means Congress can’t influence the agency by controlling its budget. Yet, in two years, none of the senators have introduced legislation to rework the CPFB, leading most observers to conclude that, on one hand, the Republicans, acting on behalf of the banks, don’t want the bureau to ever functionally exert its regulatory mission and, on the other, don’t want to go on record with that stand in an election year where the commitment of lawmakers to represent the interests of their constituents instead of the interests of corporations is being seriously called into question.

Jon Stewart on Thursday laid out the controversy in typical succinct and damning fashion:

Dr. Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute, announced the second annual Climate B.S. of the Year Awards on Huffington Post and Forbes blogs Thursday to make examples of bad climate science that was produced, cited, or used in 2011 to try to influence or confuse the public.

Scores of conservative lawmakers and Fox News personalities amplified their pro-greenhouse-gas mantra last year, even as extreme weather, record-breaking temperatures and billion-dollar catastrophesdominated the planet.

First place went to all of the Republican candidates running for president, none of whom sided with the science accepted by 97-98 percent of all climate scientists and every national academy of sciences in the world. Second place went to Fox News and Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation “because of its regular misrepresentation of climate science and anti-climate science reporting among the different Murdoch outlets in the UK, the U.S., and Australia,” the Pacific Institute announced.

Third place went to Roy Spencer and William Braswell “for a debunked research paper on climate sensitivity, and John Christy, for an astounding piece of misleading testimony at a Congressional climate change hearing,” Gleick wrote.

Billionaire badboy brothers Charles and David Koch, who own Colorado property and bankroll lawmakers like Cory Gardner and Scott Tipton, slide into the fourth spot of the bad-science list. The Pacific Institute makes note of the Koch brothers’ well-funded network of anti-climate science groups and highlights a quote from the president of Americans for Prosperity, a Koch-supported super-PAC.

“If you look at where the situation was three years ago and where it is today, there’s been a dramatic turnaround. Most of these candidates have figured out that the science has become political. We’ve made great headway,” Americans for Prosperity’s Tim Phillips “brags outright,” Pacific Institute reports.

For a detailed report on how the Koch brothers influence environmental politics, click here.

Colorado’s conservative congressional delegation has helped the cause. Gardner, Tipton, Doug Lamborn and Mike Coffman have all taken the No Climate Tax Pledge and repeatedly voted to weaken protections for land, air and water. Calling out Gardner specifically, one report found Congress averaged more than one anti-environmental vote for every day it was in session.

Fifth place went to anti-climate-science blogger Anthony Watts, “who said he would accept the results of the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature … even if it proved him wrong.” The Koch brothers actually funded the study but it backfired and, like many studies before it, confirmed the Earth’s surface is warming and doing so at an accelerating rate. In the end, Watts attacked the study.

The Pacific Institute’s runners-up for its 2011 Climate B.S. of the Year Awards were Harrison Schmitt and the Heartland Institute for ‘Arcticgate’ (documented errors in denying disappearance of Arctic sea ice); Rush Limbaugh for his consistent falsehoods about climate science; and Steve McIntyre for his smear of climate scientist Dr. Michael Mann of Penn State University.”