Legion of Angels News Archive

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The House of Representatives could vote next week on energy legislation that would open nearly all of the U.S. coastline to offshore drilling while repealing some tax breaks for oil companies, Democratic leaders said on Thursday.

Democrats had said they hoped to hold a vote on the energy package this week, but the House will be closed on Friday so Texas lawmakers can return to their districts to prepare as Hurricane Ike approaches.

The package proposed by Democrats would give states the option to allow drilling between 50 and 100 miles off their shores. Areas further than 100 miles from the coast would be completely open to oil exploration.

Democrats previously had opposed drilling on the outer continental shelf.

The bill also would repeal some tax breaks for oil companies to help fund investments in alternative energy.

“So we’re saying: OK, you want to drill, this is how it will be. No more subsidies,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters Thursday.

Republicans, who have been pushing to lift the moratorium on drilling, criticized the proposal because it does not provide a revenue-sharing plan to coastal states as an incentive to allow drilling.

Separately, Senators Max Baucus and Chuck Grassley on Thursday unveiled energy tax legislation that would extend solar and wind energy tax credits and provide $2.5 billion in credits to clean coal facilities.

Baucus, a Democrat from Montana, and Grassley, a Republican from Iowa, said the bill would provide consumers with a tax credit of up to $7,500 for plug-in electric vehicles and also would extend credits for extend energy efficiency.

The tax bill would be funded partially by reducing tax breaks for the five largest oil and gas companies.

“This bill has the right tax policy to create thousands of jobs, jump-start alternative energy solutions and finally move America away from our dependence on foreign oil,” Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said in a statement.

Source — Yahoo!

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. – Two years after a strict abortion ban here was overturned by voters, backers have brought a similar measure — but one laced with complexities that could bode well for its passage, and ultimately could bring about the challenge to Roe v. Wade desired by abortion foes nationwide.

The referendum has sparked a door-to-door battle to persuade voters that is gaining national attention. Proponents and foes of the ban aim to raise millions of dollars for ads and other campaign expenses.

Groups opposing the ban are planning an event Tuesday in Washington, D.C., that will feature the leaders of the American Civil Liberties Union, Planned Parenthood Federation of America and NARAL Pro-Choice America. Supporters of the ban are gathering endorsements from conservative leaders, such as Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, an influential lobbying group.

“While South Dakota accounts for only 0.1% of all abortions, it has a potentially disproportionate effect on public policy, because people are seeking to create a vehicle to overturn Roe,” says Sarah Stoesz, president and chief executive of Planned Parenthood for Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota.

South Dakota, with a population of less than 800,000, bestows just three electoral votes. But the abortion fight nevertheless has implications for the presidential election, because the new president could change the makeup of a Supreme Court that might reconsider Roe v. Wade. That 1973 ruling, based on a Texas case, held that a woman’s right to have an abortion is covered by privacy rights protected by the Constitution. If it were overturned, regulation of abortion would revert to state governments.

Two years ago, South Dakota voters rejected an abortion ban in a referendum, 56% to 44%. But polls then showed that many who voted against the ban would have switched sides if the proposal had made exceptions for women impregnated through rape or incest.

Those exceptions — as well as one for women in poor health — are included in the new measure. But they are far from simple; the full text of the proposed law is more than 2,400 words. In the voting booth this November, citizens will be presented only a 249-word summary. Abortion-rights advocates say the exceptions are so narrowly drawn as to be meaningless.

“We need to help people understand that the exceptions are very complicated — this is still a total ban,” says Jan Nicolay, co-chairwoman of the South Dakota Campaign for Healthy Families, a group that includes ministers, business organizations, Planned Parenthood and other individuals and organizations who oppose the ban.

On the contrary, say ban supporters, they have to win over abortion foes who feel a new law should contain zero exceptions. Outside a VoteYesForLife.com tent at a Christian music festival last month in Rapid City, Beth Perkins, a 54-year-old nurse, said she will reluctantly vote for the ban despite her discomfort with the exceptions. “I know [of similar] situations with other people where they didn’t get an abortion,” she said.

Patti Giebink, the group’s treasurer and an obstetrician and gynecologist, handed out a written statement from the Roman Catholic bishop of Sioux Falls, which said that Catholics could vote for the ban in good conscience. As she handed the statement to people, she told them, “This lays the foundation for the next step” — a more-stringent ban like the one that failed in 2006.

Dr. Giebink says she worked part time as an abortion doctor in the 1990s, but says she stopped after becoming troubled by the contrast of performing abortions at one job and delivering premature infants at the other. “There’s no way to go back and restore the life I took, but I need to work to change the laws that don’t protect life,” she says.

Several states have added legal barriers to abortion, and advocates are seeking more restrictions. In Colorado, voters in November will consider a “personhood” amendment that would grant state constitutional protections from the time of fertilization. Though the amendment wouldn’t automatically outlaw abortion, it is designed to create the legal foundation for a ban.

South Dakota has become a focal point of the debate largely because of Leslee Unruh, an activist who pushed the 2006 ban and helped get this year’s measure on the ballot.

After having an abortion she says she now regrets, Ms. Unruh, 53, founded the Alpha Center, which counsels women on alternatives to abortion, and the National Abstinence Clearinghouse in Sioux Falls, which promotes abstinence-only sex education. She says her goal is to see Roe v. Wade overturned. “We believe this is historical,” she says.

Abortion already is limited in South Dakota. Women who want an elective abortion usually must go to the Planned Parenthood clinic in Sioux Falls, which performed 701 abortions last year. Doctors travel there from Minnesota because few local physicians will perform abortions. A recent federal court ruling on a 2005 state law requires doctors to tell patients an abortion will “terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being.”

Ban proponents hope it would be challenged in court and eventually entice the Supreme Court to revisit Roe. That is where the presidential race comes in. Democratic Sen. Barack Obama has said abortion should remain legal and wants to preserve Roe, while Republican Sen. John McCain wants Roe to be overturned.

The exceptions in the new South Dakota proposal create some knotty questions for voters. For instance, should a woman be forced to continue a pregnancy if the fetus isn’t going to survive? How ill must a woman be to qualify for an abortion under an exception for a woman in poor health?

The health exception permits an abortion if there is a “serious risk” of a “substantial and irreversible impairment” of a major organ or system. But doctors could be prosecuted if they are found to have disregarded “accepted standards of medical practice.”

Marvin Buehner, a Rapid City obstetrician and gynecologist who is campaigning against the ban, says he has performed abortions for seriously ill patients, including a woman with rectal cancer who needed chemotherapy and radiation. But he says he wouldn’t perform that abortion if the ban passed, at the risk of spending 10 years in prison. The phrase “accepted standards of medical practice,” he adds, “is so vague and nebulous that no physicians I know, myself included, would take the chance.”

One Saturday last month, the South Dakota Campaign for Healthy Families, which opposes the ban, dispatched volunteers to a Sioux Falls neighborhood to explain the nuances of the ban’s exceptions.

The canvassing wasn’t easy. Most people appeared to be uncomfortable discussing the topic. Many barely opened their doors. A middle-aged man peeking around his screen door asked 29-year-old volunteer Jonathan Drew: “You’re for abortion? You’re for choice?” Mr. Drew responded, “We’re saying the ban is too restrictive.” The man accepted a flier and shut the door.

Ms. Nicolay, the group’s co-chairwoman, says the group plans to raise money statewide and nationally, through house parties and online solicitations. Canvassers aim to visit or call thousands of homes. She says she remains optimistic that voters will defeat the ban. “I still believe people do not want the government telling them what to do,” she says.

Source — The Wall Street Journal

WASHINGTON - The last House vote before a vacation usually sparks a stampede toward the doors and waiting planes. Not so on Friday, when Republicans occupied the House floor for a rare, and at times bizarre, protest against Democratic energy policies.

The microphones were off, the House had stopped TV feeds to C-Span and the lights dimmed after the pre-noon vote to adjourn for the August recess. That didn’t deter Republicans, who one after another rose to demand that Congress stay in session until it does something about high gas prices.

Unlike a normal session where the rules of decorum are strictly enforced, GOP lawmakers and their aides who filled the chamber clapped, chanted, gave standing ovations and booed the Democrats.

“Madame Speaker, where art thou?” shouted out Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, in a glancing rhetorical shot at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. “Where oh where has Congress gone?”

It was a rare treat for tourists. Republicans invited many, in their shorts and sandals, into the chamber, usually strictly off-limits, to better hear the revivalist-like speeches.

The talkathon finally ended around 5:00 p.m. EDT, more than five hours after it began and 30 minutes after police escorted tourists out of the chamber. The Capitol closes to tourists at 4:30 p.m. In a grand finale, lawmakers led a roomful of aides in a rendition of “God Bless America” and walked off to chants of “USA, USA.”

The event, said Rep. John Shadegg of Arizona, one of the organizers with Reps. Mike Pence of Indiana and Tom Price of Georgia, was “the equivalent of the Boston Tea Party over the energy issue.”

Republicans are angry that Democrats blocked them from a vote on allowing more offshore oil drilling and increasing domestic oil supplies.

Democrats have faulted Republicans for obstructing their efforts to stop market speculation, press oil companies to develop the leases they have and force the president to release oil from the strategic petroleum reserve. The result is that Congress is leaving town without a comprehensive energy bill.

Source — MSNBC

SAN FRANCISCO, California (CNN) – The California Supreme Court has cleared the way for Californians to vote in November on whether to ban same-sex marriages in the state.

The court on Wednesday denied a petition to remove the initiative from the state’s general election ballots. The unanimous decision was handed down without elaboration.

Hundreds of marriage licenses have been issued to same-sex couples since mid-June, a month after the court overturned the state’s laws against such unions.

However, on June 2, opponents of same-sex marriage filed for a ballot initiative that would ban such marriages in the state’s constitution. Such a ban would overturn the court’s May ruling.

Equality California, a Sacramento-based activist group, filed a petition against the initiative — Proposition 8 — arguing that it involves a constitutional revision that can’t be adopted through a ballot vote.

The group also contended that petitions circulated to qualify the proposition for the ballot contained material that misled readers about the measure’s effects.

Jennifer Kerns, a spokeswoman for the proposition, called Wednesday’s decision “a huge victory.”

“We believe it deals a strong blow to our opponents and sends a strong message that they won’t be able to keep the ballot initiative away from the people of California,” she said.

Calls Wednesday to Equality California were not immediately returned.

If the proposition is approved, it would be the second time same-sex marriages have been voided in California.

In February 2004, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom — who is considering a run for governor — challenged the state’s laws against same-sex marriage, ordering city officials to issue marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples.

Those unions were voided by the California Supreme Court, though the justices sidestepped the issue of whether banning same-sex marriage was unconstitutional, allowing legal cases to work their way through the lower courts.

Several gay and lesbian couples — along with the city of San Francisco and gay-rights groups — sued, saying they were victims of unlawful discrimination.

A lower court ruled San Francisco had acted unlawfully in issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. However, the state Supreme Court’s ruling in May struck down the state’s ban on same-sex marriage as unconstitutional.

That decision made California the nation’s second state, after Massachusetts, to legalize same-sex marriage. Four other states allow civil unions.

Source — CNN

WASHINGTON (CNN) – Sen. Barack Obama’s vote for a federal surveillance law that he had previously opposed has sparked a backlash from his online advocates, who had energized his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.

In October, Obama had vowed to help filibuster an update of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that gave telecommunication companies that had cooperated with President Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program immunity from lawsuits.

After 9/11, Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop, without the mandated warrant from a federal court, on electronic communication involving terrorist suspects.

Critics said Bush’s Terrorist Surveillance Program was a violation of civil liberties.

The Senate voted Wednesday on the bill updating FISA — which had a provision to shield telecommunications companies that had cooperated in the surveillance. Obama joined the 68 other senators who voted to send the bill to the president’s desk.

Obama did vote for an amendment offered before the final vote by Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Connecticut, that would have stripped the immunity provisions from the bill, but the amendment failed.

Bush signed the bill into law on Thursday, saying the bill “will help us meet our most solemn responsibility: to stop another attack.”

The bill does not grant the telecommunication companies direct immunity, but it does contain a provision that allows a federal judge to dismiss the suits if the companies can present a letter from the government stating that the program was legal.

Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, testified before Congress that all the companies received such letters.

The bill also allows any warrantless wiretapping program to be reviewed by a secret federal intelligence court; requires a spy agency to purge any intelligence involving an American unless it gets a court warrant; and, for the first time, requires intelligence officials to get a court warrant if they wish to target an American living abroad. Read what’s in the FISA bill

When pressed to explain his change in position by an angry questioner Thursday, Obama defended his vote, saying he opposed the immunity for the companies but ultimately voted for the bill because he felt that the revisions to the intelligence law were necessary to protect the nation’s security.

“The surveillance program is actually one that I believe is necessary for our national security,” Obama told the questioner. “So I had to balance or weigh voting against a program that I think that we need — and that had been created so that your privacies were protected — or create a situation in which we didn’t have the program in place.”

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a former Democratic presidential candidate and an Obama supporter, said Friday that the improvements to the bill allowed Obama to change his position.

“What changed is that the bill got better and more acceptable to Sen. Obama — the judicial oversight, the fact that the president can’t unilaterally say he’s going to eavesdrop on citizens,” Richardson said. “There are a lot of safeguards in the bill that weren’t there before.

“Now, again, the telecoms — I personally think they shouldn’t have immunity. But, you know, Sen. Obama had to make that decision,” Richardson said. “We do have to protect ourselves against terrorists, but I understand there’s some in the base that are concerned.”

Many of the liberal blogs who touted the Illinois Democrat early on have blasted Obama for changing his position.

One post on the blog DailyKos.com called Obama’s decision to vote for the bill a “sellout” and a “tactical blunder.” iReport.com: Was Obama’s vote a “sellout”?

And on “getfisaright.com,” a self-described group of 23,000 Obama supporters has posted an open letter to the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, saying,”It is disheartening that you decided to support this bill, which does immense damage to the rule of law and our most fundamental democratic institutions.

“Even though we are disappointed, most of us continue to support you as a candidate,” the group wrote. “But as a candidate you have work to do repairing our trust in you and in government.”

But Richardson said the choice Obama made is just one of difficult decisions a senator — and a president — must make.

“There are enough safeguards in the bill and Sen. Obama said he’ll review the bill again, see how it’s working when he’s president,” Richardson said.

“So these are some of the political realities you face when you’re running for president, when you’re also in the Senate and you have to make a judgment on a bill.”

Source — CNN