Planned Parenthood has included Florida in its list of “states at risk” for the upcoming election. Only four other states (Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Ohio and Texas) are included on the list.

A pro-Planned Parenthood rally in New York City (Pic by WeNews, via Flickr)

The list is part of Planned Parenthood’s new “Women are Watching” campaign, which was created by the political arm of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. As Sofia Resnick of The American Independent has reported, the campaign is “a social-media project intended to educate and engage Planned Parenthood supporters throughout the country.”

The site explains that Florida is particularly risky for women because “the state legislature and Governor Rick Scott have mounted a full-scale, nonstop attack on women’s health in Florida.”

“During the 2011 session,” the site explains, “politicians filed 18 anti-choice bills limiting women’s access to the full range of reproductive health services, spent more than two months of the legislative session debating abortion restrictions, and passed four bills into law.”

The website highlights a couple incidents this past year that were unpopular with women’s health advocates.

Included in Planned Parenthood’s summary is:

• “Lawmakers wasting 59 days debating abortion restrictions” during the legislative session.
• Lawmakers “censoring officials from using the term ‘uterus’ on the legislature floor.” Last session, state Rep. Scott Randolph, D-Orlando, suggested that his wife “incorporate her uterus” in the hopes that it may receive the same kind of privacy and protection as Florida businesses receive. Some of Randolph’s colleagues were upset with Randolph’s use of the word “uterus.” The reaction from GOP memebers of the Legislature prompted an Internet response from women’s health advocates and the ACLU of Florida. Randolph’s incident even caught the eye of The Rachel Maddow Show.
• Gov. Rick Scott hosting “a party at the governor’s mansion when he signed four abortion restrictions, calling it a way for anti-choice activists to ‘celebrate the accomplishments.’” State Sen. Nan Rich, D-Weston, called Scott’s signing ceremony for four bills aimed at curbing abortion rights in the state an effort to “ingratiate himself with zealots.” Scott invited representatives of anti-abortion groups, as well as some of the more socially conservative members of the Legislature, to the event.
• Lawmakers “filing bill after bill in preparation for the session starting in January 2012, including proposed regulations that would make it nearly impossible to open and operate health centers that provide comprehensive reproductive health care such as lifesaving cancer screenings, birth control, STI testing and treatment, and abortion care.” A bill that women’s health advocates are calling an “omnibus anti-choice bill” was recently introduced.

Planned Parenthood also highlights a measure set to appear on the 2012 ballot and another possible ballot initiative. According to the group, the “Florida Legislature bypassed Floridians by voting to put an anti-women’s health bill on the ballot in the 2012 election.”

“Currently,” the group explains, “the Florida Constitution contains stronger privacy rights than the United States Constitution. But Florida’s 2012 ballot initiative would amend the state constitution to deny women fundamental privacy rights, denying them the privacy rights they currently have and should continue to have.” The amendment was introduced by state Sen. Anitere Flores, R-Miami, who also introduced the current “omnibus anti-choice bill.”

“If that weren’t enough,” the group says, “Florida is also likely to face a so-called ‘personhood‘ amendment in 2012.”

The Independent’s Virginia Chamlee has reported that Bryan Longworth, the head of Personhood Florida, said he is undeterred from his goal of placing a “fetal personhood” amendment on Florida ballots, despite the sound rejection of a similar initiative in Mississippi last week. Personhood amendments seek to “elevate the legal status of a fertilized egg to that of a living person, and effectively ban abortion, common birth control methods, and in vitro fertilization,” Planned Parenthood explains. According to Longworth, his group is actually now attempting to place its amendment on Florida’s 2014 ballot.

Planned Parentood says that Florida “got here” because of the 2010 midterm elections, which they claim “worsened the political environment for women by creating a Republican supermajority in the Florida Legislature.”

The page also highlighted that $2 million in state tax money is “directed to crisis pregnancy centers that provide no health services to women.” Crisis pregnancy centers, or CPCs, are mostly religious centers created to dissuade women from having abortions. Some Florida centers were even found to distribute inaccurate information about abortion to women seeking help. The state’s funding of a network of crisis pregnancy centers has remained constant at $2 million since 2005, even as women’s health services suffer budget cuts.

In a blogpost titled “The Great Photo ‘Controversy,’” NOM President Brian Brown addressed the Flickr photo used, but not the photo originally credited to Reuters photographer Jim Young. Brown’s defense for using the public domain photo of a rally for Barack Obama in Ohio in 2008 rather than a photo related to repealing same-sex marriage in New Hampshire in 2012 was that it “symbolizes the tens of thousands of New Hampshire voters who are part of our effort.”

A spokesperson from Reuters told The American Independent that Reuters is currently looking into the matter and investigating whether NOM actually purchased the photo or was otherwise given permission to use it. NOM has not responded to TAI’s .requests for comment.

Not only did Brown not address the Reuters photo, but he did not identify the source of the news story, which was Good As You. Instead, he credited the discovery of the altered photos to “Rachel Maddow and her friends on the left.” (Good As You’s Jeremy Hooper said NOM has been instructed never to respond to him or Good As You).

An excerpt from Brown’s blogpost:

Neither Maddow nor her friends at the Human Rights Campaign can defend imposing same-sex marriage on New Hampshire with no vote of the people. So they issue “reports” and press releases criticizing NOM over a photo collage! They object to us using a photo of a crowd scene, which symbolizes the tens of thousands of New Hampshire voters who are part of our effort. They’re upset that the photo was not taken at a NOM rally. Seriously?! NOM using a common use photo in the public domain is considered a great scandal, yet they can redefine marriage—the most important social institution of society against the wishes of New Hampshire voters—and nobody is supposed to object? It’s as if the institution of marriage gets mugged, and they complain about speeding in the neighborhood when someone rushes it to the hospital!

“We’re batting around a lot of different ideas,” state Representative Crisanta Duran, D-Denver, told the Colorado Independent. “We’ll be looking at where there’s common ground. We’ll be talking with county clerks to find the best way to reach out to voters and to establish a system where all Coloradans have equal access to the political process.”

Duran was speaking generally about conversations taking place among members of the Democratic caucus in the state House, but she added that she’s confident there would be bipartisan support for any well-crafted bill that fairly addresses the question raised by Secretary of State Scott Gessler when he sued Denver County last month to prevent Clerk Debra Johnson from mailing ballots to legally registered but “inactive” voters.

“The overall goal has to be to facilitate the right to vote. Voting is an American value that people cherish. Expanding the franchise is the goal,” said Duran. “I mean, we have GOP county clerks like Sheila Reiner in Mesa County who agree that Gessler’s action was an overstep.”

Gessler, a Republican who made a career as a private attorney championing partisan interpretations of election and campaign finance law, argued that state law requires clerks mail ballots to only active registered voters. Gessler said he was seeking to prevent fraud but he supplied no evidence that any fraud had occurred in Colorado in recent elections, much less fraud that suggested mailing ballots to inactive voters in any way increased the likelihood of fraud.

Inactive voters in Colorado are those who have registered but who have failed to cast a ballot in the previous even-year election.

Roughly 2.4 million Coloradans voted in the presidential election of 2008. The 2010 midterm election, however, drew only 1.8 million voters. There are now roughly 1.2 million voters categorized as inactive in Colorado. A disproportionate share of those inactive voters live in Democratic Party dominated Denver County.

Mailing ballots to inactive voters has been demonstrated to increase participation. Voters are much more likely to cast ballots they receive in the mail than they are to track down a ballot or request one to complete and return.

In Denver last year, Clerk Johnson estimated that mailing to inactive voters translated to 10,000 votes. That same year, Democratic US Senator Michael Bennet defeated Republican Ken Buck by only roughly 15,000 votes statewide.

On October 7, Judge Brian Whitney threw out Gessler’s lawsuit, ruling that the Secretary of State’s interpretation of election law in the case was insupportable. Gessler has not said whether or not he plans to appeal the decision.

That Gessler’s actions seemed rushed and even slapdash bolstered the impression among legal analysts and members of the press that Gessler was acting baldly to suppress votes in the state, joining Republicans in states coast to coast who this year have spearheaded an historic raft of similar efforts.

Maps of inactive voters in Denver broadcast by MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow highlighted the fact that Gessler’s injunction against mailing inactive voters ballots, had it been upheld, would have overwhelmingly affected minority voters in the city, voters with less access to the internet, for example, who move often and who are clustered partly in Representative Duran’s House District 5.

“I’m watching this very closely,” Duran said. “This is just incredibly important. There’s no reason why legally registered voters should have to jump through additional hoops.”

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The lawsuit describes Andy as taking “a ‘special interest’ in Plaintiffs Dean and YCR because he is a secularist and/or atheist and gay activist with a politically left ideology who despises people of faith.” However, Andy’s award-winning coverage of YCR has received wide praise, including the Society of Professional Journalist’s (SPJ) first prize for Best Continuing Coverage. SPJ stated that Andy took “an even-handed approach into a weighty subject sure to provoke controversy from various standpoints.” We read your comments, tweets, Facebook messages, and emails and know you agree that Andy’s coverage, along with the rest of the reporting by The American Independent News Network, is excellent. You can help ensure that our work continues by making a donation today to support The American Independent News Network and our Legal Defense Fund.

Make no mistake: This suit is a direct attack not only on us but on the very idea of a free and independent press, as well as an attempt to silence journalists like Andy who expose the views of people like Bradlee Dean.  In short, this is a frivolous and blatant attempt to chill free speech. They think that because we are a small, non-profit organization we will be forced to back down; they think by threatening us with a lawsuit, we will stop. They are wrong. We stand behind Andy and our coverage completely, and know you do too.

The American Independent News Network fully intends to fight this suit and to continue our reporting.  You can help us do both by making a donation to our Legal Defense Fund today.

By making a donation you are helping to provide us with the resources to withstand such challenges and to continue our work of advancing and protecting the common good.  Your donation can help take a stand for freedom of the press and against the suppression of dissent through dubious legal means.

Hanaa Rifaey is the publisher of The American Independent News Network.

Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler

This week’s report consisted primarily of an interview with Pueblo County Clerk and Recorder Gilbert Ortiz.

Maddow introduces the segment by saying that Gessler’s efforts to reduce voter turnout in Colorado is part of a concerted, sustained national attack on voting.

“Sometimes it comes down to one person, one official, doing what he or she thinks is the right thing, and doing it right now,” she said about Ortiz’s decision to mail ballots to American soldiers serving overseas.

She said Ortiz was in the courtroom Friday when a judge ruled that county clerks in Colorado could mail ballots to inactive voters, and that he immediately got on the phone to his office and ordered that the ballots be sent.

Ortiz did not return a call seeking further comment.

Gessler’s rise to national prominence began when he sued Denver’s clerk and recorder in order to force her not to mail ballots to inactive voters. Gessler said he was trying to ensure fair elections, which he said would not happen if some counties mailed to inactive voters and others didn’t.

Critics of the move, though, saw it as an effort to reduce voting by Democrats and minorities and as such saw it as part of a national effort to reduce the number of such voters prior to the 2012 election.

Pueblo Clerk Ortiz joined the lawsuit as a defendant, and held off on mailing ballots to soldiers and other inactive voters until Friday when a judge ruled the ballots could go out.

She showed a map comparing areas of Denver with the most inactive voters to a map showing areas of heavy Hispanic concentration, and guess what? They match.

Gessler last week ordered Colorado’s county clerks not to mail ballots to inactive voters, actually filing suit against Denver County. Pueblo County Clerk Gilbert Oritz wrestled publicly with the question of whether to follow Gessler’s order or not, saying it seemed wrong–and possibly illegal–not to mail ballots to active duties soldiers who had been deemed inactive. Ortiz finally said he would comply with the order, but today joined Denver as a defendant in the lawsuit.

MSNBC host Rachel Maddow dedicated a segment of her show Friday to the potential awkwardness that might occur when Fischer follows Romney on Saturday, given the former is outspoken in his views against the LGBT community, Muslims and Mormons, and Romney is a Mormon.

“That is particularly awkward this year,” Maddow said, “because not only has Bryan Fischer managed to be outlandishly all-caps bigoted against every other group in America that you can think of, but … Bryan Fischer is really specifically bigoted against the Mormon church and against Mormons.”

More awkward than being Mormon, Romney is a mainstream Republican presidential candidate trying to court both the Republican Party and conservative establishments, Maddow said.

People for the American Way’s (PFAW) Right Wing Watch reported last week on Fischer’s radio show, where he said that the First Amendment does not apply to Mormons and that polygamy likely “will come back” to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS).

Right before last year’s Values Voter Summit, PFAW sent letters to Romney and six other conservative leaders speaking at the event, asking them to denounce publicly Fischer’s statements against Muslims and the gay community.

In last week’s post, Right Wing Watch’s Kyle Mantyla writes:

[W]e are once again asking Republican leaders who will be attending the upcoming Values Voter Summit to denounce Bryan Fischer’s long history of unmitigated bigotry. This time we are focusing on Mitt Romney because, according to the conference schedule, he will be speaking immediately before Fischer on Saturday morning.

Our efforts in the past to get someone, anyone within the GOP or Religious Right to condemn Fischer’s relentless bigotry have not amounted to much, mainly because nobody within the movement seems to be particularly bothered by it, which is why GOP leaders continue to appear on his radio program and on stage with him at Religious Right events.

This year — as in years past — political leaders and presidential hopefuls have not responded to criticisms of AFA, which the Southern Poverty Law Center designates a hate group, attending the Values Voter Summit.

Mother Jones recently put it this way:

Republican candidates have consistently played political footsie with Fischer, despite his extremism. Tim Pawlenty, Newt Gingrich, and Herman Cain have all appeared on Fischer’s radio program, and Texas Gov. Rick Perry co-hosted a prayer rally in Houston in August with Fischer’s organization, the American Family Association. Romney’s appearance at the Values Voters Summit might help him court social conservative voters who play an outsized role in Republican primaries. But the appearance is a reminder that even a prominent Republican who has tried to stay clear of fringe right-wing conspiracy theories like those peddled by Fischer cannot succeed within the GOP without hobnobbing with extremists.

Fischer has not had many nice things to say about Romney publicly.

In a recent tweet, Fischer called Romney a “phony” and “not a true conservative.”

And in Saturday’s RenewAmerica column, Fischer criticized presidential contender Texas Gov. Rick Perry for his policy allowing undocumented immigrants to apply for in-state tuition. Fischer said Perry “needs to restore the confidence of grassroots Americans the he is the best alternative,” noting that “there is a deep and well-justified resistance among conservatives to Mitt Romney.”

Watch a clip from the Rachel Maddow show:

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The release added: #

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow chopped up Marco’s words and distorted them, even weaving in mentions of Marco’s parents to attack him. #

Ed Schultz attacked Marco’s speech as “psycho talk” and called Marco a “political hack”. #

In the speech at the Reagan Library Rubio said conservatism is about “compassion and prosperity,” and that while he believes in programs like Social Security and Medicare, they have “have weakened us as a people” and ”we must embrace public policy changes to these programs.” #

Rubio launched Reclaim America, saying he started the PAC “in the hopes of supporting candidates all across this country that will come to Washington and join us and standing up to these policies that have failed us and in its place offering clear alternatives.” #

In his message, Rubio blamed Senate Democrats “who don’t fully believe in the American free enterprise system” and the White House, which is “occupied by someone whose policies have failed the American people.” #

Rubio echos another freshman GOP Sen. Mike Lee, from Utah, who launched the Constitutional Conservatives Fund to “find, fund, and support the kind of statesmen we so desperately need in Washington—those who are ready and willing to stand as champions of constitutionally limited government.” #

“I believe the root of many of these problems has been the erosion of constitutional limitations on the power of the federal government. It has become too big, too expensive and too intrusive, all at the expense of American ingenuity, economic prosperity, and individual liberty,” Lee wrote in announcing the PAC. #

In his speech at the Reagan Library Rubio said, “We built government and its programs without any account on how we would pay for it,” adding that Americans in the 20th century built the most prosperous nation in the world, but also a government “we cannot afford to pay for.” #

Dean, of the ministry You Can Run But You Cannot Hide International (YCR), claims that reporting on his May 15, 2010, radio show “maliciously set out to and did harm not only the Plaintiffs but by extension also the presidential campaign of Congresswoman Michele Bachmann.”

In the article, Minnesota Independent ran a video with the audio of Dean’s statements, as well as a transcription.

“Muslims are calling for the executions of homosexuals in America,” Dean said on YCR’s May 15 radio show on AM 1280 The Patriot. “This just shows you they themselves are upholding the laws that are even in the Bible of the Judeo-Christian God, but they seem to be more moral than even the American Christians do, because these people are livid about enforcing their laws. They know homosexuality is an abomination.”

“If America won’t enforce the laws, God will raise up a foreign enemy to do just that,” Dean continued. “That is what you are seeing in America.

“The bottom line is this … they [homosexuals] play the victim when they are, in fact, the predator,” Dean said, before going on to make a claim that has no basis in fact: “On average, they molest 117 people before they’re found out. How many kids have been destroyed, how many adults have been destroyed because of crimes against nature?”

On June 4, 2010, the Minnesota Independent published a follow-up article to the one referenced above, in which Dean said he does not support executing homosexuals. Dean specified that he may not have been clear, then continued:

For example, we have specifically rejected, as all Christians do, the Islamic doctrine, and actual practice, of executing homosexuals. But some have claimed, in effect, that by merely mentioning the execution of homosexuals (as a criminal practice of Islam), on our radio broadcast, we have suggested it for consideration. Obviously this is absurd. The whole point was to contrast the Islamic position with the Christian position. This may not have been as clear as we would have otherwise planned it to be. Live radio is not scripted. But everyone who knows us knows that this is our position because we have stated it consistently for years – long before we ever discussed the topic on the radio. There are board members, and other supporters who can vouch for this. We have never and will never call for the execution of homosexuals. This is a complete misinterpretation by design.

The lawsuit further contends that Rachel Maddow, MSNBC and NBC “disparaged” Dean in Maddow’s segment on the reporting from the Minnesota Independent, alleging that Maddow, too, had an agenda in covering Dean.

The American Independent News Network released the following statement in regards to the Dean press conference in New York City Wednesday morning:

The allegations by Bradlee Dean and You Can Run But You Cannot Hide International (YCR) are completely without merit. The American Independent News Network stands firmly behind our news site, The Minnesota Independent; our reporter, Andy Birkey; as well as their reporting on Dean and his ministry. The complaint describes Birkey as taking “a ‘special interest’ in Plaintiffs Dean and YCR because he is a secularist and/or atheist and gay activist with a politically left ideology who despises people of faith.” However, in giving Birkey and The Minnesota Independent first prize for Best Continuing Coverage of their reporting on YCR, the 2010 judges for the Minnesota Professional Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalist’s Page One Awards stated, “the reporter [Birkey] takes a deep-dive with an even-handed approach into a weighty subject sure to provoke controversy from various standpoints. Leads readers to think about serious public policy and constitutional issues.”

We are confident that the courts will agree that this lawsuit is completely frivolous and is a blatant attempt to chill freedom of the press.

MSNBC’s statement regarding the lawsuit:

This suit is baseless and we stand by our reporting.

Tuesday night, the MSNBC anchor spotlighted video of Mike Bickle, founder of the International House of Prayer. Bickle — who calls Oprah the “harbinger of the Antichrist” — and the all-day prayer center were subject of a recent New York Times feature:

Mr. Bickle has won praise from many evangelicals, but he has also been criticized by some pastors for what they describe as unorthodox theology and a cultish atmosphere, charges that Mr. Bickle rejects. Some former students said they had been expelled for questioning the fascination with mystical healings, prophesies, angels and demons.

The show also featured, in rapid-fire succession:

John Hagee, a San Antonio pastor whose endorsement for former Republican presidential candidate John McCain was retroactively declined in reaction to Hagee’s sermons preaching Hitler was a hunter sent by God to kill Jewish people, and calling the Catholic church “the great whore.”

AFA’s director of policy analysis Bryan Fischer, who has argued homosexuality caused the Holocaust, all non-Christians should not be allowed religious freedom, Muslims should not have First Amendment rights, permits should not be granted to build any mosques in the U.S., that Pres. Obama nurtures a “hatred” for the U.S. and the white man and that Herman Cain is the only “authentically” black/ “the real black man” in the presidential race.

Cindy Jacobs, who claims birds are dying because of the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell; John Benefiel, a self-proclaimed “apostle” who asserts the Statue of Liberty is a “demonic idol” and homosexuality is a strategy designed by the Illuminati to control global population; and C. Peter Wagner, who likens himself to a prophet equal to Christ and has promoted the destruction of Catholic, Mormon and non-Christian religious objects. Wagner contends Japan’s economic and environmental woes were caused by paganism brought on by Sun Goddess that had sexual intercourse with Japan’s Emperor.

Maddow referenced comprehensive research from Right Wing Watch. The site maintains an updated list of Perry’s prayer event endorsers and their backgrounds.

Later, Dallas Morning News political reporter Wayne Slater joins Maddow to discuss how Perry’s alignment with these figures may help him secure the Republican nomination. Perry is gaining the support of “Teavangalelists,” Slater said — tea partiers and evangelists — who are increasingly eyeing the Texas governor as their preferred candidate. Slater said associations with contentious figures such as Hagee will only serve to strengthen Perry’s appeal to that group.

The two also discussed how the connections between religion and policy, given some event endorsers’ remarks that violations of religious laws have real-world policy implications. Perry has billed the event as a time for prayer over national crises like “financial debt, terrorism, and a multitude of natural disasters.”

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