News Weekly

The New Hampshire House has approved a bill to strengthen legal protections for religious organizations related to same-sex marriage, and the governor says he will sign same-sex marriage into law.

The House approved the measure on a vote of 198-176. Supporters of same-sex marriage erupted in cheers and applause as the total was announced.

Gov. John Lynch announced that he would sign the same-sex marriage bill into law on Wednesday evening.

The House vote followed the Senate approving the bill on a 14-10 party-line vote.

Tomorrow, Tuesday, June 2, leading pollsters and political experts have scheduled a teleconference to discuss the findings and implications of a series of recent polls and focus groups on immigration reform. Pollsters Pete Brodnitz of Benenson Strategy Group and Celinda Lake of Lake Research Partners will join immigration and political experts Simon Rosenberg, President, NDN, and Frank Sharry, Executive Director, America's Voice, on a teleconference call to analyze American voters' attitudes toward tackling comprehesive immigration reform this year.

Tomorrow's teleconference call comes in advance of President Barack Obama's June 8 meeting with congresional leaders to discuss immigration reform. Meanwhile, as the research from Benenson Strategy Group and Lake Research Partners shows, the American people want a solution to the nation's broken immigration system, even during a down economy, and are frustrated with Washington's inaction and want policymakers to tackle this critical issue.

The conference call is scheduled for 11 a.m. ET tomorrow. The dial-in number is 800-862-9098. The passcode is 7REFORM.

How Canadian can you get?

The Finance Minister understates the deficit by $16 billion. Do we get mad?

Nah. The guy's doing his best. Let's give him another chance.

Canadian Press:

OTTAWA - Canadians appear to be willing to cut Finance Minister Jim Flaherty a little slack over his deficit shocker.

A Canadian Press Harris-Decima poll shows few Canadians think the
finance minister should resign just because he made a $16-billion
mistake on his deficit projection.

The survey of 1,000 people finds only 28 per cent who want Flaherty to
step down, while 59 per cent think he should stay on the job.

Even among Liberal supporters, 54 per cent don't think he should lose
his position because the budget deficit has ballooned to more than $50
billion - not the $34 billion predicted in the budget four months ago.

by Amanda Marcotte

Because fuckheads who don’t know what they’re talking about are beginning to blather about how they think they know better than actual doctors about the realities of late term abortion, I thought I’d put up a video that we made explaining the facts.

RH Reality Check: Late Term Abortions from RH Reality Check on Vimeo.

It’s interesting that Republicans have used the occasion of a new Supreme Court nomination to denounce the quality of empathy.  You know, the quality that genuinely decent and brave people like Dr. George Tiller had in spades, while moral cowards like Megan McArdle suffer a massive deficit.

Rewatching that, I feel particularly weird about the line I wrote about how using late term abortion as a political football is dangerous.  In my head, I was thinking about the women who need to have safe abortion available for dangerous pregnancies.  Now I realize that it’s also dangerous in terms of riling people up so they commit hate crimes.