United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (Photo: Flickr/World Economic Forum)

The tea party has added another item to its list of reasons to fear the United Nations: Some in the movement say the U.N. is planning to intervene in the United States’ upcoming elections.

This week, when Attorney General Eric Holder announced his speech on voting rights, the Texas group True the Vote called for a protest of the event because “Holder is for NAACP Plans to involve the United Nations in US Elections.” [Their emphasis.]

True the Vote, a voter integrity initiative launched by the Houston tea party group King Street Patriots, held a national summit this year featuring some of the right’s most incendiary speakers, such as Andrew Breitbart, The Texas Independent reported. According to the Independent, “representatives from more than 25 states attended the two-day national summit in Houston to receive training and information about the conservative organization’s efforts to combat voter fraud.”

The Independent reported back in March that the group was a 501(c)4 nonprofit and had applied for 501(c)3 nonprofit status.

Catherine Engelbrecht, the president of King Street Patriots, said during the group’s summit that she was hoping to mobilize teams of three people to oversee each voting precinct in the country. That would add up to roughly 1 million right-wing tea party volunteers nationwide by the 2012 general election, the Independent reported.

Tea Party Manatee, based in Southwest Florida, sent out an email newsletter this week, echoing the King Street Patriots’ latest fight and warning that the U.N. is “trying to Intervene in 2012 Elections.”

According to group’s email:

• In November 2012 Foreign bureaucrats will appear at your polling station to ensure you adhere to their vision of a ‘fair’ election.
• Local polling officials who dare to enforce state clean election laws will be subject to lawsuits and arrest.
• Conservative political speech will be deemed hateful and be suppressed.
• Just enough voter fraud will be allowed to ensure a second term for Barack Hussein Obama.

This is not a fantasy – next week it will start to become reality when a delegation of leftist Obama supporters will meet with the United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights in Geneva, Switzerland. And there they will lay the groundwork to ensure the United Nations takes action in time to save Barack Obama.

You see, the Democratic Left is terrified of the new clean election laws being passed across America. These laws have cleared our voter lists of the dead and the ineligible, require voter identification for everyone and insist that our military be allowed to vote.

And clean elections are the single greatest weapon we have to ensure an honest vote in 2012 and a single term for Barack Obama. And the Left can’t allow that to happen.

So they will make their case for action to the UN Human Rights Council – an international government origination so biased that even Hillary Clinton has denounced it.

Council members like Saudi Arabia, Cuba, Mexico and China will review your election laws and judge if you measure up to their idea of democracy. How can we accomplish any of our goals, like repealing health care rationing, securing the borders and balancing our budget if we can’t even control our own elections?

That’s why we need to send a clear message to the UN – stay out of America’s elections and abandon Barack Obama to the judgment of the American people. I need you to tell the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to send that very message to the United Nations – by any means necessary.

It’s difficult to trace the exact origin of this particular hysteria, but one of the earliest mentions of the NAACP’s plan to involve the U.N. came in a report by Fox News.

According to Fox:

The NAACP is calling on the United Nations to intervene as it claims state governments are colluding to “block the vote” for minority communities ahead of the 2012 election — a charge those governments vehemently deny.

The nation’s biggest civil rights organization this week released a report that claimed a raft of new voting laws at the state level would disenfranchise minority voters. The report said 14 states passed 25 measures “designed to restrict or limit the ballot access of voters of color.”

…

Supporters of the laws describe them as common-sense measures meant to ensure the integrity of elections. In Tennessee, which is implementing a new photo ID law, elections coordinator Mark Goins dismissed the criticism and questioned why the NAACP would flag the United Nations over its concerns, calling that effort “a bit extreme.”

“I don’t know what the benefit of going to the U.N. would be,” he said. “I can’t imagine any authority whatsoever that they would have here in Tennessee.”

But the NAACP described the new measures as part of a “concerted” effort to drive down minority turnout and is planning a multi-stage campaign to attract international attention.

To start, the group is planning a “Stand 4 Freedom” rally this Saturday across from the U.N. headquarters. Supporters are being asked to sign an online pledge which, among other demands, calls on the United Nations to “investigate and condemn voter suppression tactics in the United States.”

Copies of the latest report are being sent to the United Nations, as well as attorneys general across the country and the Department of Justice. According to one newspaper report, the NAACP will follow up in March when it sends a delegation to Geneva, Switzerland, to present its case before the U.N. Human Rights Council — a group known more for its sustained criticism of Israel than its attention to voting rights.

An NAACP spokesman says the organization is just doing its duty as one of the 3,500 groups that “has consulting status” with the U.N. The group simply works with the international organization to make sure the United States is “living up to its commitment” to an initiative to eliminate discrimination, the spokesperson says.

He also says that the U.N. does not have the power to actually intervene in state matters, and can only interview people and create reports through the Human Rights Council.

“We are just working to make sure the U.S. remains a beacon of democracy,” the NAACP spokesperson says.

The NAACP will be giving a presentation in Geneva to the Human Rights Council in March 2012 as part of its consulting status.

A spokesperson for the Florida Department of Health tells The Florida Independent that budget authority was denied for a competitive grant “awarded to Florida beginning October 2010 for $175,000 yearly.”

The DP10-1017 “Demonstrating the Capacity of Comprehensive Cancer Control Programs to Implement Policy and Environmental Cancer Control Interventions” grant was a “five-year grant built on strengths of existing statewide Cancer Control and Research Advisory Council (C-CRAB) working with four regional cancer collaboratives to reduce the burden of cancer,” according to the Department of Health. The grant did not require any contributions from the state.

The grant was just one of many that has been rejected by the state. This week, health advocates in Broward County expressed their frustration with the millions of dollars Florida has turned away since the passage of the federal health care reform law.

According to a recent report by the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, Florida is among many states that have “missed opportunities to enact laws and policies that could not only save money and generate revenue, but also save lives.” In the report, Florida was listed as one of the seven states that fell short in all “five priority areas.” Alabama, Idaho, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Tennessee are the other states that are also falling short in every category.

Two of the priority areas the report focused on had to do with the funding of prevention and detection programs in the state.

According to a Department of Health spokesperson, the state’s joint advisory councils had recently “completed the revised 2010 Florida Cancer Plan and developed an accompanying Implementation Guide.” The plans would have built “on the cancer councils’ combined agenda of identified priorities” and the rejected grant would have “accelerated prevention and risk reduction policies and efforts.”

The department says the plans for the grant included:

• Assisting Moffitt Cancer Center to convene the four goal committees to implement strategies for cancer control.
• Assessing and implement initiatives to reduce tobacco use statewide.
• Promoting national food guidelines and other measures to reduce obesity in school aged populations.
• Developing and support community health workers to improve access to care for underserved populations.
• Creating a forum to enhance the continuum of care for cancer patients through improved medical record keeping including electronic medical systems.

The Department of Health spokesperson tells the Independent that “the work of these initiatives is being continued by other programs in the Bureau of Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, but in a smaller scope.”

The report, titled How Do You Measure Up?: A Progress Report on State Legislative Activity to Reduce Cancer Incidence and Mortality, “ranks state policies in five priority areas.” #

The five “priority areas,” according to a press release announcing the report, are: #

• breast and cervical cancer early detection program funding
• colorectal screening coverage laws
• smoke-free laws
• tobacco prevention program funding
• tobacco taxes.

The study analyzes whether states have either “well-balanced policies and good practices,” or whether they are falling short, in these health policy areas. #

Florida is one of seven states that is falling short in every single one of these areas. Alabama, Idaho, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Tennessee are the other states that are also falling short in every category. #

According to a press release from the Cancer Action Network: #

“State legislators should support laws and policies that help people fight cancer by emphasizing disease prevention, making health care affordable and accessible and focusing on quality of life,” said John R. Seffrin, PhD, chief executive officer of ACS CAN. “Missed opportunities to pass laws that fight and prevent cancer not only leave new state revenue and health savings on the table, but deny the potential for saving countless lives from a disease that still kills 1,500 people every day.” #

One area where the Cancer Society scores Florida particularly low is in state appropriations for breast and cervical cancer screening programs. #

According to a state-by-state analysis, Florida “allocates no money for the program.” #

The group’s press release says that “many states are slashing funding to the National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program, which provides low-income and uninsured women with access to life-saving mammograms and Pap tests.” The group also warns that “decreased funding means that fewer eligible women across the United States have access to lifesaving screenings.” #

Public funding for women’s health in Florida has taken a hit this past year. The state’s budget (with added line-item vetoes from Gov. Rick Scott) cut millions in funding for women’s health. #

One policy research group recently stated that the severity of the cuts to the state’s public health funding was “unnecessarily harmful.” #

But this week, a Knox County commissioner in Knoxville, Tenn., did.

At a commission meeting held Monday, Commissioner Amy Broyles questioned an $8,000 contract between the county and the East Tennessee pregnancy counseling center Hope Resource Center, reported the local NBC affiliate WBIR.

During the meeting, it came out that the CPC had originally requested the money to be used only for hepatitis-screening services not offered by the county health department. However, according to WBIR, Hope Resource Center’s contract revealed that the services listed consist of pregnancy testing, testing for sexually-transmitted diseases and ultrasound screenings, which are provided by the Knox County Health Department.

From WBIR:

Broyles says redundancy was a red flag that has her fighting against approval of the contract, although she did point out young women she has met allege the center bullied them into pro-life decisions — allegations the center denies.

[...]

“Regardless of where we all fall on this, anti-choice, anti-abortion. The bottom line is we’re already paying for these services,” Broyles said. ”This contract that is before us today is not the same thing that was before us as part of the budget when we approved it two months ago.”

Broyles’ problems with the contract — which reportedly includes a stipulation that county money will not go toward “counseling” — sparked a debate among commissioners, who argued over whether funding the CPC was political and a bad way for the county to do business. In the end, the commission voted 8 to 3 to fund the CPC.

Watch the report and response from the Hope Resource Center:

On its website, the SBA List is keeping a “State by State Scoreboard” showing that to date, approximately $60,399,000 in federal and state funding has been stripped from Planned Parenthood affiliates in eight states. SBA breaks down that total amount by how much Planned Parenthood has been “defunded” in each state:

• Indiana: $2 million
• Kansas: $330,000
• New Hampshire: $1.8 million
• New Jersey: $7.5 million
• North Carolina: $434,000
• Tennessee: $335,000
• Texas: $47 million
• Wisconsin: $1 million

The SBA List has essentially declared war on the “abortion giant.” On its website, SBA notes that: “Our efforts during the federal budget fight gave Planned Parenthood a black eye.” The group recently garnered much attention surrounding a presidential pledge to support only judicial nominees and cabinet members opposed to abortion rights in most cases, to defund Planned Parenthood and to support a national “fetal pain” bill that would ban abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy.

Americans United for Life (AUL) has similarly taken credit for the state-by-state defunding trend. Last week, the group released a report accusing Planned Parenthood of financial and criminal wrongdoing and distributed copies of this report on Capitol Hill. As The Florida Independent reported, Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.), who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, has suggested he might look at the report and launch an investigation of Planned Parenthood, telling POLITICO PULSE:

“I believe my Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee should review the findings of this report and possibly hold a hearing on why taxpayers are funding Planned Parenthood with its record of abuse and violations of state laws. The American people deserve a concrete reason for funding Planned Parenthood; a reason I do not believe exists.”

In the past, Stearns has identified himself as a friend to the anti-abortion rights movement and several times has introduced legislation to give federal funding to so-called “crisis pregnancy centers,” but his proposed legislation has never moved. Back in February, Stearns promised anti-abortion rights groups that he would call a hearing to investigate Planned Parenthood, but it hasn’t happened yet.

Since Planned Parenthood released a rebuttal, fact-checking AUL’s report, the anti-abortion rights groups has renewed its call for a congressional investigation and has released its own rebuttal (PDF) to Planned Parenthood’s rebuttal. On Tuesday, Kellie Fiedorek, staff counsel for AUL, is scheduled to discuss her organization’s allegations against Planned Parenthood at a Bloggers Briefing sponsored by the Heritage Foundation.

“Grassroots uprising” is how Americans United for Life (AUL) has described recentstate efforts to defund Planned Parenthood affiliates. In one of two emails sent to supporters Thursday, Charmaine Yoest, president and CEO of the anti-abortion rights policy group based in Washington, D.C., praised individual state efforts to reject “Planned Parenthood’s culture of deception and death.”

Indiana has led in the effort, after Gov. Mitch Daniels signed a bill that eliminates all Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood of Indiana is currently entangled in a lawsuit to defeat the measure, and though it has the support of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the affiliate is already seeing effects of the new legislation: PPIN was recently denied a fundraising tax credit through the state’s Neighborhood Assistance Grant program, according to the Evansville Courier & Press.

Recently in Tennessee, Davidson County revoked a $335,000 family planning grant from Planned Parenthood and redirected it to the Metro Public Health Department. Now no county’s budget in Tennessee, except for in Shelby County (where teen pregnancy and infant mortality rates are the highest in the state), will designate any federal funding to Planned Parenthood; though it is anticipated that Shelby County will join in this move. This month, the Kansas Legislature passed a budget with a Planned Parenthood-defunding amendment. And on Wednesday, the North Carolina legislature overrode Gov. Bev Perdue’s veto of next year’s budget, which includes a provision defunding Planned Parenthood. (However, as The Florida Independent notes, unlike in Indiana, North Carolina’s defunding measure did not strip Planned Parenthood clinics of Medicaid funding.)

But it’s not likely to stop there.

“Make no mistake about it: this issue is much larger than one or two states – it’s about a pro-life grassroots uprising to de-fund Planned Parenthood, one state at a time,” Yoest writes in an email titled “The Revolution Has Begun — Take Action.” “States across America are refusing to accept Planned Parenthood’s lies and Congressional negligence in getting to the bottom of taxpayer subsidization of abortions.”

Earlier this year, AUL released a legislative and policy guide complete with models of proposed legislation for state lawmakers to introduce. One of the models is for a joint resolution to investigate and defund Planned Parenthood (PDF) and to freeze any state funding allocated for abortion providers. Another model (PDF) helps states draft policies to opt out of health insurance plans that cover abortion through insurance exchanges, which have so far been enacted by 13 states, as The Florida Independent recently reported.

On June 9, Yoest emailed supporters asking for “an urgently needed contribution,” adding that the organization must raise $106,000 to meet its June budget. Since then AUL has sent out four emails to supporters, and on Thursday, Yoest said it now needs to raise $81,000 by June 30.

“On our 40th Anniversary this month, we are facing a real challenge in meeting our year-end fiscal target,” Yoest writes. “Just imagine how many more states we could help rise up against Planned Parenthood if we can reach our year-end goal”

AUL spokesperson Kristi Hamrick recently told The American Independent summer is the normal fundraising season for the organization, just like other groups, and the money raised is not going toward any activity in particular but for all their “life-saving activities.” She did not indicate that the organization was in trouble financially.

There does, however, appear to be an emphasis on focusing efforts toward encouraging states to withhold federal and state family-planning dollars from Planned Parenthood. Last week, AUL released a video denoting its strategy to, “once and for all,” defund “the nation’s abortion super-provider.” The revealed strategy was little more than asking for donations to its lobbying arm Americans United for Life Action.

In the Thursday email, Yoest specifically said donations will go to support “the brave citizens of Indiana and Tennessee who are fighting back against Planned Parenthood’s highly paid army of Washington lawyers and lobbyists,” and to sustain AUL’s “life-saving activities.”

In its appeal for donations, AUL refers to Planned Parenthood’s “well-disguised ruse–funding its abortion clinics by funneling your tax dollars through its jumbled bank accounts.”

Florida joined Arizona, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah and Virginia this year in enacting such legislation. The report shows that many of the bills have “narrow exceptions for women’s health” and have, in effect, taken health benefits away from women. #

These laws were the result of a provision in last year’s health care reform law that allows states to ban the coverage of abortion in the exchanges the law creates. This provision was the result of Bart Stupak’s failed attempt to stall the legislation in an effort to include an all-out ban on abortion coverage in any of the exchanges the law creates. #

However, some states have enacted laws that are significantly more austere than Stupak’s amendment, which provides exceptions for the ban. #

According to the Women’s Law Center report, Oklahoma, for example, “clarified that its insurance ban applies to exchanges and narrowed it so that women who become pregnant as a result of rape or incest will no longer be able to obtain insurance coverage of abortion.” #

While most states contain exceptions for extreme situations, such as rape or incest or when a woman’s life is in danger, Louisiana and Tennessee do not. #

Florida’s law (which was recently signed into law by Gov. Rick Scott) does provide exceptions for cases of rape, incest and when the women’s life is in danger. However, efforts to also include an exception for a woman who faces a “serious risk to her health”failed right before the bill received its final vote. The provision received bipartisan support. #

According to the report, the absence of these exceptions are dangerous to women’s health: #

Only five bills have limited, narrow exceptions for women’s health. This means that almost all of the bans prohibit insurance coverage for abortions that would protect women from serious, permanent, and even life-shortening health conditions. For example, a woman for whom continuing the pregnancy will result in permanent damage to her health, such as damage to her heart, lungs, or kidneys or a pregnant woman who is diagnosed with cancer and must undergo chemotherapy will not have insurance coverage for these medically necessary abortions. In addition, some women without insurance coverage of abortion will be forced to postpone abortion care while attempting to find the necessary funds. Although abortion is an extremely safe procedure, delays in obtaining care increase the health risks of the procedure. #

The report also explains that these laws impose “high out-of-pocket costs for these services” for a lot of women and that these laws only worsen barriers to proper health care. #

Tennessee law precludes executing people who are intellectually disabled, and, thanks to Monday’s ruling, an IQ a score of 70 or below is no longer a stand-alone indicator. Now mental health expert testimony will be considered in the ruling.

According to the Memphis Daily News, the decision is based on the appeal of death row inmate Michael Angelo Coleman (PDF), who was convicted for robbing and murdering Leon Watson in Memphis in 1979. Coleman was convicted of six prior violent felonies, and though he met the IQ standard for imposing the death penalty, two experts testified he was intellectually disabled, according to the appeal.

“While a person’s I.Q. is customarily obtained using standardized intelligence tests … the statute does not provide clear direction regarding how a person’s I.Q. should be determined and does not specify any particular test or testing method that should be used,” Justice William C. Koch, Jr. wrote for the Supreme Court. “Ascertaining a person’s IQ is not a matter within the common knowledge of laypersons. Expert testimony in some form will generally be required to assist the trial court in determining whether a criminal defendant is a person with intellectual disability.”

The court found that in Coleman’s case, the lower courts incorrectly treated his intellectual disability and mental illness as two separate causes of his adaptive limitations.

“The threat from terrorism continues to plague the United States generally and Tennessee in particular.”

The bill would make contributing to any group or institution designated a Sharia organization a felony and would give the Tennessee attorney general the power to designate as a Sharia organization any group that he or she believes adheres to Sharia law and has the capability and intent to engage in acts of terrorism. Of course, while the bill ultimately claims to merely be aimed at terrorists, many Muslims and civil rights groups have objected to the fact that the bill associates Sharia law with jihad and acts of terrorism and that it would give to an individual the right to declare a given group to be a terrorist organization.

Rep. Judd Matheny (R-Tullahoma), who introduced the bill in the House of Representatives, admitted in an interview with the Nashville Tennesseean that he has not actually reviewed the bill extensively and merely introduced it as it was given to him by Tennessee Eagle Forum, a conservative advocacy group with ties to ACT! for America, a national group that calls itself “a collective voice for the democratic values of Western Civilization, and against the threat of radical Islam.”

ACT! for America also had connections to the Texas and Oklahoma bills. The group made 250,000 automated phone calls to Oklahoma voters to try and spread the word about that state’s bill, and it was one of the principal advocates of Rep. Leo Berman’s bill in Texas. Both bills were meant to amend the state constitutions; the Texas bill remains in committee, and the Oklahoma bill was actually passed as a ballot measure, but its implementation was put on hold by a federal judge.

Missoula’s government operates under a charter, essentially a municipal constitution. Last year, Missoula amended its charter to include the ordinance because state law addresses only discrimination based on “sex, marital status, race, creed, religion, age, familial status, physical or mental disability, color, or national origin.” Missoula added to that “sexual orientation, gender identity or expression.” A similar statute is also on the books in Bozeman.

The new bill, HB 516, has now been approved by the House and was sent over to the Senate immediately thereafter. The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Kris Hansen (R-Havre), has claimed that the inconsistency between the city ordinances and state discrimination regulations could be problematic if a city business or individual found in violation by Missoula or Bozeman were to take the case to the state level in appellate court.

And yet instances abound of less controversial issues addressed in Missoula’s city charter that have no equivalent in Montana State Code and would presumably face the same problems in a state appeals court. To provide one very mundane example, Missoula residents are prohibited from putting up barbed wire fences on their property except under certain conditions; there is no such prohibition in the Montana Code, and yet no one on the state level has objected to this regulation or any of the dozens of other Missoula-specific regulations on the books.

Now that the bill has made it through the House, it stands a very good chance of getting through the state Senate, in which Republicans outnumber Democrats 28 to 22. If that happens, all eyes will be on Montana’s Democratic Gov. Brian Schweitzer. Schweitzer has been somewhat quiet on gay rights in the past, preferring to defer to the will of the people in interviews, although he did call opponents to gay marriage “homophobic” in a 2009 interview. It seems Schweitzer’s decision to pass or veto the bill will come down to whether he wants to alienate conservative voters by going to bat for gay rights when he could just as easily skirt around the issue by way of a veto in order to prevent a later mess in state courts.

Montana is not alone among states where Republican legislators are working to push against such anti-discrimination laws. In Tennessee, a bill explicitly nullifying any local anti-discrimination charters and limiting discrimination laws to “race, creed, color, religion, sex, age or national origin” failed in committee earlier this month. State Representative Glen Casada (R-Franklin) introduced the bill in response to a recent Nashville Metro Development and Housing Agency decision to expand anti-discrimination statutes to include gender and sexuality-based discrimination.

In Kansas, a bill currently in the House Judiciary Committee is meant to achieve the same goal using far less transparent language. HB 2260 (PDF) is framed as a religious freedom bill, but buried within is language that would give employers and landlords carte blanche to discriminate against anyone, as long as they do so for religious reasons.

The bill first limits its definition of the term “compelling government interest,” saying that it “shall not include prohibition of a practice or policy of discrimination against individuals in employment relations, in access to free and public accommodations or in housing” unless it’s of a type already prohibited by Kansas law, which does not address gender identification or sexuality. The bill later goes on to say that no government decision can “substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion” unless it’s of compelling government interest.

Lost yet? Opponents of the bill say that’s the point — to slip gender and sexuality-based discrimination into the protection of the law by using language so confusing that no one would notice. In plain language, the bill says that discriminating against LGBT employees and tenants is an act of religious freedom protected under the law.

All three bills have something in common beyond the discrimination they seek to protect. They all have ties to Focus on the Family, a Colorado-based evangelical Christian organization that advocates prayer in schools and is outspokenly opposed to abortion rights and same-sex marriage. In an interview with the Billings Gazette, Rep. Hansen, the sponsor of the Montana bill, said that the Montana Family Foundation brought an already-drafted version of the bill to her so that she could introduce it to the Montana House. As it proclaims on its website, the Montana Family Foundation is affiliated with Focus on the Family.

Meanwhile, Citizen Link issued a press release about Rep. Casada’s Tennessee bill nearly a month before he introduced it to the House. Citizen Link is a subsidiary of Focus on the Family and publishes the latter organization’s in-house magazine, Citizen.

And in Kansas, one of the principal advocates of the House’s convoluted discrimination bill has been the Alliance Defense Fund. The Alliance Defense Fund was co-founded by Focus on the Family founder James Dobson. Focus on the Family was also responsible for a series of Colorado ads in 2008 which claimed that an anti-discrimination bill then being debated would allow sexual predators to cross-dress and enter restrooms meant for the opposite sex in order to sexually assault children. The bill became law despite the ad campaign.

Focus on the Family underwent an IRS investigation between 2005 and 2007, during which it was investigated for inappropriately endorsing and funding campaigns for public office. The organization stood to lose its non-profit status as a result of the investigation, though it was eventually cleared of the charges.