News & Politics Blog 750 items | updated May 26 2012

By Jo Piazza / current.com

George Clooney and Ricky Martin are among the tinseltown elite who have hosted fundraisers for President Barack Obama. “Glee” star Jane Lynch is narrating a campaign video for the president and reality TV star Donald Trump is strutting his stuff as a surrogate for the presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney. Before he dropped out the presidential race, Rick Santorum owed much of his success in the state of Iowa to another reality television bold-faced named, Jim Bob Duggar of the show “19 Kids and Counting.”

These likely won’t be the last famous faces that we see emerge on the campaign trail before November, but these early adopters of the candidates do beg the question of whether the celebrity endorsement actually matters to voters.

This week, world leaders gathered at the NATO Summit while protesters converged on the Chicago streets, Egyptians voted in the first presidential election of the post-Mubarak era and Israel celebrated Jerusalem Unification Day. Get caught up with The Week in Photos:

LINK: http://current.com/photo-galleries/week-in-photos-may-19-to-25/

By Stephanie Whiteside / current.com

Reality television star Donald Trump has joined the second wave of those questioning the citizenship of President Barack Obama this week.

In what comedian Andy Borowitz suggested on Twitter is a "positive economic sign," conservatives apparently out of legitimate criticisms have gone back to the old trope aggressively in the past week.

In an interview with Lloyd Grove for The Daily Beast, Trump made his birther views known by attacking a literary agency assistant who said that she had made a mistake when writing that Obama was born in Kenya.

By Shannon Brown / current.com

This week's CBO report warns of an impending U.S. economic crisis if Congress can't somehow work together to pass some of the legislation promised in its spending-cap negotiations this past fall. This has prompted some predictable blowback for both the current Congress and for the presidential campaign, with players on both sides of the aisle jockeying to claim ownership over plans to reduce the deficit.

Brian Beutler, at Talking Points Memo, notes that despite the looming threat of renewed recession, both President Obama and Mitt Romney are competing to see who can offer more severe austerity plans to tackle the budget deficit:

By Jo Piazza / current.com

Part of campaigning is making pledges that you will accomplish certain things once you are elected to office. This week Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney made an unemployment pledge, declaring that he would move the rate down to 6 percent from the 8 percent it has hovered above for the past several years.

This makes for a nice sound bite. We want unemployment to go down. America loves pledges. The problem with this pledge is that it is really more of a hedging of bets. See, the unemployment rate is expected to head to about 6 percent in the next four years with or without Romney.

According to a report from the Congressional Budget Office (not the final authority on economic indicators but a pretty good baseline), unemployment will dip below 5.5 percent by the conclusion of 2017.

From the CBO website: 

In CBO’s forecast, the unemployment rate remains above 8 percent both this year and next, a consequence of continued weakness in demand for goods and services. As economic growth picks up after 2013, the unemployment rate will gradually decline to around 7 percent by the end of 2015, before dropping to near 5½ percent by the end of 2017.

So while making an unemployment pledge makes for an exciting stump speech, the Republican candidate isn’t really going out on a limb with this one.

(Photo: Getty Images)

By Jo Piazza / current.com

President Barack Obama says it is bad. Mitt Romney thinks it is very, very good. Newark Mayor Cory Booker thought it was not so bad last week, but then he changed his mind.

We're talking about this week's buzz term of course—private equity.

In an effort to seem less scary (and to make their collective mothers-in-law happy) the Private Equity Growth Capital Council (a trade group representing the interests of the industry) released a video this week explaining why they’re alright citizens.

By Stephanie Whiteside / current.com

American public opinion on key social issues is shifting – and not in the same direction. A Washington Post-ABC poll released Tuesday showed that opposition to gay marriage is at an all-time low, while a Gallup poll released Wednesday found that the number of Americans who identify themselves as pro-choice has plummeted.

Progressive women writers from Jezebel, Feministing and The Frisky tell Current they think the shift is due to the increased attention the media gives the issue of gay rights and the Grand Old Party's continued attacked on the term "pro-choice," that has made the identifier something of a dirty word.

Gallup has polled Americans on the issue of abortion since 1995, when 56 percent of respondents identified themselves as pro-choice. The latest numbers show a mere 41 percent of Americans identifying themselves as pro-choice. The Washington Post-ABC poll asked for views on gay marriage, finding opposition to same-sex unions at a low of 39 percent, down from 43 percent in March.

By Shannon Brown / current.com

With Democrats and Republicans on both sides of the aisle gearing up for the November elections, the increasingly torturous business of Congress has already slowed to a maddening crawl. The deadlock has been welcomed by some But now a Congressional Budget Office report is suggesting that, if the Congress takes no action before the end of the year, Bush-era tax cuts will expire, along with the temporary payroll-tax cut, and if no debt-reduction plan is reached, deep cuts in federal spending could hurl the U.S. economy back into recession.

By Stephanie Whiteside / current.com

Tuesday morning marked a step forward for the private space industry as SpaceX successfully launched the first commercial cargo capsule to attempt to deliver goods to the International Space Station. The Dragon capsule has successfully detached from Falcon 9 rocket that powered its launch and entered orbit, where it is on track to test systems and attempt to dock with the ISS.

The mission is a new step in partnership between NASA and the private space industry, but is private industry the right solution for space exploration?

SpaceX is part of a program to advance the private space industry by having NASA work with private companies to deliver cargo to the ISS. The Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program that is helping fund the mission is designed to help NASA move away from the shuttle era and free the agency to focus on broader goals. It's also designed to help advance the private space industry.

By Carrie Mihalcik / current.com

North Carolina Pastor Charles Worley has a plan to get rid of all the "queers and the homosexuals": Corral them with an electric fence, air drop food and wait for them to die off. Worley says, unfortunately, he couldn't get his plan through Congress.

President Barack Obama may have endorsed same-sex marriage, but that doesn't mean anti-gay religious leaders are going to be any quieter about the evils of homosexuality. Worley's plan to rid the world of gay people is just the latest homophobic rant to come out of a religious leader's mouth. And if you think what Worley said is outrageous, just wait.

Here are seven of the worst homophobic rants from religious leaders. Warning, there's enough hate unleashed here to power a mid-sized town:

By Shannon Brown / current.com

The Catholic Church responded to the Obama administration’s so-called "birth control mandate" by filing lawsuits in 12 federal courts on Monday, seeking to invalidate the rule that employers who provide health insurance coverage must provide coverage for birth control in their policies.

When the rule was introduced last year by the Department of Health and Human Services, the Catholic Church was one of the loudest voices in the uproar that claimed the mandate violated the First Amendment and religious liberty. A compromise proposed in February of this year allows religious institutions and other employers with objections to sidestep the issue by placing the burden on insurance companies, rather than employers, but the Catholic Church was not satisfied.

Among the plaintiffs in the suits — which include dioceses, schools, and other social service agencies — is the University of Notre Dame, which, the Huffington Post’s Rachel Zoll notes, in February praised the administration’s attempt at compromise but has since changed its tune as the Catholic Church has intensified its campaign against the Obama administration:

By Carrie Mihalcik / current.com

How much does a ton of coal cost? Go ahead take a guess.

If you said this is a trick question then you're right. The price of coal is different all over the world. In China, the world's largest coal consumer, the cost of a ton of coal averaged to $97.28 in 2011. Over the past few months in the U.S., the price of coal has ranged from $8.15 to $60.90.

The reason for the low cost of coal in the U.S. is low demand. The U.S. Energy Information Administration expects electricity produced by coal power plants to drop by 14 percent in 2012. Utilities are switching to cheaper natural gas and the Environmental Protection Agency has started to crack down on old, polluting coal plants.

Here's the second question: How much did Peabody Energy, the world's largest coal company, pay the Bureau of Land Management to mine 5-square-miles of public land in Wyoming's Powder River Basin?

Just $1.11 per mineable ton. And that's after its first offer of just $0.90 was rejected.

Greenpeace's Joe Smyth reports that this isn't the first low bid the BLM has accepted:

The BLM's role is critical because unlike other regions such as Appalachia, Powder River Basin coal is mostly owned by the federal government, and BLM is supposed to ensure that coal development there “is in the best interests of the Nation.” But without proper oversight, the BLM has been offering this federal coal to companies like Peabody, Arch Coal, and Cloud Peak Energy for bargain rates. Over the last 30 years, this has amounted to a $28.9 billion subsidy to the coal mining industry.

Including a southern portion of the Powder River Basin that Peabody leased in 2006, the company now controls 3.3 billion tons of coal on U.S. taxpayer property. Peabody has already said they plan to supply Asia's rising demand for coal. So once the land has been mined, the coal will be exported, resulting in huge profits for Peabody and a staggering amount of CO2 emissions for the climate.

For the third and final question, I turn once again to Smyth: "How exactly is it in the 'best interests of the nation' to sell coal that belongs to U.S. taxpayers at a discount so Peabody can strip mine and ship it to Asia?"

By Victor Balta / current.com

You know why this post exists. If you Google "Obama teleprompter," you'll get 2.5 million results as it's been a running joke among conservatives for nearly six years. Why this became such a touchstone for conservative attacks on President Obama is completely mystifying, but with this year's general election taking shape it's a good time for progressives to arm themselves with one quick and easy way to respond to any use of the words "Obama" and "teleprompter" in the same sentence. 

Despite the fact that having blatant hypocrisy pointed out rarely appeases conservatives, here are 15 pictures of Republicans using teleprompters:

Mitt Romney

By Shannon Brown / current.com

Cory Booker, the mayor of Newark who is seen as a rising star in the Democratic party, is usually in the news for his outspoken views and, occasionally, his heroic rescues of neighbors from burning buildings, but after an appearance on NBC's Meet the Press yesterday where he criticized the Obama campaign’s focus on Mitt Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital, Booker finds himself in the unfamiliar hot seat.

In fact, as is being discussed in the Current community, Booker and his camp are already walking back some of his comments, but the furor rages on.

The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein sees the unexpected controversy as part of a larger, context-free political campaign, saying that nothing about Booker’s original remarks struck him as controversial while watching the show live:

This week, Facebook debuted on NASDAQ, activists gathered in Chicago to protest as the city prepares to host the NATO Summit and Queen Elizabeth II continued her Diamond Jubilee tour. Check out The Week in Photos:

LINK: http://current.com/photo-galleries/the-week-in-photos-may-12---18/

By Stephanie Whiteside / current.com

When it comes to the debate over same-sex marriage, conservatives have framed the issue as one of religious freedom and the sanctity of heterosexual marriage. Marriage, the argument goes, is a sacred sacrament to celebrate the union between a man and a woman for the purposes of procreation. Nevermind the fact that it shuttles gay families into second-class citizenship, it's not about civil rights.

The argument falls apart pretty quickly when faced with actual facts: Marriage confers benefits and protections to families that same-sex couples, even those in civil unions or domestic partnerships, don't have.

But recent events make it even more clear that the battle over gay marriage is deeply rooted in an ideology of discrimination and hate.

By Carrie Mihalcik / current.com

Rep. Ron Paul may have given up campaigning, but that doesn't mean his ardent supporters are any less convinced he'll be the eventual Republican nominee for president — or at least force a brokered convention.

"Our campaign will continue to work in the state convention process," Paul said in a statement released by his campaign on Monday. "We will continue to take leadership positions, win delegates, and carry a strong message to the Republican National Convention that Liberty is the way of the future."

But the delegate math isn't in Paul's favor. Mitt Romney has almost 1,000 delegates already and it seems unlikely with nine primaries left that Paul will be able to prevent Romney from getting the 1,144 delegates need to win the nomination.

By Shannon Brown / current.com

While the Obama administration waits for a Supreme Court ruling on its signature health care plan, the Republican opposition in the House and Senate is readying a “replacement" act if the court strikes down all or part of the so-called “Obamacare" reforms.

Even if the Supreme Court allows the health care laws to stand as they are, GOP House Speaker John Boehner is committed to repealing all provisions of the bill, even some of the options most popular with the public, says The Hill’s Sam Baker:

By Carrie Mihalcik / current.com

Doing a history report on former President Herbert Hoover? Well, if you head to Whitehouse.gov to get his biography you might also learn a nugget of information about President Barack Obama.

The Web site's biographies of the past 14 presidents -- except former President Gerald Ford -- were updated on Monday with information about Obama and his accomplishments, or ways the administration believes it is moving past presidents' actions forward. The information, bulleted under a "Did you know?" header, now appears at the bottom of the biographies.

White House sources told ABC News that "the additions of items with hyperlinks are a commonly used Internet best practice to encourage people to browse more pages on a site." But that hasn't convinced conservatives who are crying foul and saying the new information amounts to "complete megalomania, childlike insecurity" and a possible "attempt to propagandize children."

Take a look at the updates and let us know what you think: