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  • Barney Frank Sharply Criticizes Gay Rights Groups’ Flip on ENDA by Amanda Terkel for The Huffington Post A handful of groups said last month that they no longer back the Senate-passed version of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act because of its sweeping religious exemption, which would allow religiously affiliated businesses to fire someone for being lesbian, gay,…

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  •   AIPAC Is the Only Explanation for America’s Morally Bankrupt Israeli Policy As we speak, today, Israel is expanding it ground offensive in Palestine. [US] politicians and policymakers continue to back a brutal military campaign whose primary purpose is not to defend Israel but rather to protect its longstanding effort to colonize the West Bank.…

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  • Yesterday, in Part 1, I told my personal family’s jewish history in an attempt to put the existence of Israel into a broader context. Earlier enough, I had dispensed with the myth of my youth, that Israel was simply the world’s and Palestine’s gift to the jewish culture, a safe harbor for Jews following the…

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  • “Creating land already occupied by Palestinians would ‘imperil not just American but all Western interests in the Middle East.’” —Dean Acheson, 1947, statesman and foreign policy expert for several presidential administrations, including as Harry Truman’s Secretary of State In the early 1900s, both sides of my Jewish family fled the Kiev countryside because of the militant…

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  • On Monday, we wrote our analysis of the disastrous 5-4 Supreme Court decision in Burwell v Hobby Lobby, which gives greater religious freedom rights to closely held for-profit corporations and less religious freedom rights to natural persons (their words). We also urged you to express your dissent by signing on on to support Planned Parenthood in its defends…

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  • It is unbelievable that in 2014 we are still fighting about women’s access to basic health care like birth control. If you agree — say so. Just click here now to add your name to the dissent. — Cecile Richards, Planned Parenthood In a dramatic 5-4 decision along ideological lines, the Supreme Court today chose to…

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  • It was painful last week to hear the unanimous decision of the Supreme Court in McCullen v Coakley, siding with abortion protesters’ free speech right to engage women face-to face in the public square and against those advocating for clinics’ privacy and public safety in consideration of the violence, bombings, and cold-blooded murder that beset…

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  • I just finished reading a June 23 New Yorker magazine article, “Get Out of Jail, Inc.,” exposing on the crushing problems created by the private probation services which are thriving along with the private prison industry. The article references an important but perhaps overlooked February report from Human Rights Watch, cataloguing the lack of transparency…

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  • Last week, we had another wonderful night out in New York City with our friend and current candidate for the Maryland Senate, Dr. Dana Beyer. The Maryland primary election is today and, win or lose, it’s not an exaggeration to say the force is with her. As a trans woman running against an entrenched old…

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  • Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal: People are ready for a hostile takeover of Washington, D.C., warns of a coming rebellion. Yeah, he really said that, hostile takeover, and I think he was speaking not only to those present (1000 evangelical leaders) but to all the trigger-happy militias and tea party folks who would savor the opportunity to do just…

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