News & Politics Blog 750 items | updated May 26 2012

By Jo Piazza / current.com

Despite his off-the-wall rhetoric, the presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney is embracing a recent bromance with real estate tycoon turned reality television star Donald Trump.

Usually content to let the Romney camp shoot itself in the foot, President Barack Obama’s campaign doled out some wise advice to their adversary on Friday:“Ditch the Donald.”

"Donald Trump has become the birther in chief," said the president's campaign spokesman, Ben LaBolt, arguing that Romney should drop Trump from his campaign.

We couldn’t agree more, and not just because we are sick of hearing the word birther. Here are seven reasons Romney needs to muster up the courage to say, “You’re fired,” to Donald Trump:

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.

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 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 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:

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

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 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 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

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

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 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:

By Shannon Brown / current.com

UPDATE: The Super PAC considering a plan to link President Obama to his former pastor Jeremiah Wright now says Joe Ricketts, founder of the Ending Spending Action Fund, has rejected the proposal.

"It reflects an approach to politics that Mr. Ricketts rejects and it was never a plan to be accepted but only a suggestion for a direction to take,” said Brian Baker, president of the fund.

Mitt Romney has also repudiated the plan.

* * *

ORIGINAL POST: Since finally emerging as the uncontested GOP candidate, Mitt Romney and his campaign have reached out to the more-conservative corners of the party, but have kept their attacks on President Barack Obama focused mostly on his policies and the still-fragile U.S. economy.

However, some behind-the-scenes big-money donors are wary of this middle-of-the-road strategy, and are gearing up to hit the president where they think it might hurt the most — his seeming “otherness" from some of the GOP’s most-conservative voters.

Joe Ricketts, founder of TDAmeritrade and patriarch of the family which own the Chicago Cubs baseball team, has put together a strategy that calls Obama “a metrosexual, black Abe Lincoln," among other things, and plans to resurrect the president’s association with controversial preacher Jeremiah Wright as a keystone of its attacks.

By Shannon Brown / current.com

As a new Gallup poll declares acceptance of gays and lesbians as “the new normal,” and as Newsweek announces on its latest cover that Barack Obama is “The First Gay President,” the opposition appears to dig in its heels and prepare to escalate its war against the LGBT community, particularly on the judicial front.

In Virginia, the judicial nomination of Tracy Thorne-Begland was killed in the Assembly because of his sexual orientation, says Rebecca Schoenkopf of Wonkette:

By Stephanie Miller / Host of "Talking Liberally"

I had the strangest dream last night. I was on a school campus. It felt like a middle school or a prep school. I knew it wasn’t the Catholic school I attended when I was growing up because there were no girls anywhere to be seen. It was all boys. Yuck! 

Across the courtyard, I saw a group of these boys talking among themselves and looking at me. Their leader, a stringy bean-pole with a helmet-head of hair that seemed wired into place, started leading his buddies toward me. They were all pointing and laughing as they started running toward me.

With increasing pressure to clarify his position on marriage equality, President Barack Obama formally announced his support for same-sex marriage in an interview with ABC News. Obama became the first sitting president to publicly endorse gay marriage.

If you missed anything, then we've got you covered:

President Obama officially announced his support in an interview with ABC News revealing, "I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married."

Check out the screengrab from today’s Fox Nation home page on President Obama’s support of gay marriage. In addition to deriding the president's new "war," Fox Nation highlighted a bunch of cleavage photos, nudists and "Disney starlets" in bikinis. The website's was later changed to read: “Obama flip flops on gay marriage,” but the T&A remained intact. Fail! 

In addition, the Current community provided some insightful comments following the president's announcement.

By Victor Balta / current.com

President Barack Obama's personal endorsement of same-sex marriage on Wednesday prompted huge support from progressives while conservatives scrambled to figure out exactly how they would frame the conversation.

Fox Nation went with the headline "OBAMA FLIP FLOPS, DECLARES WAR ON MARRIAGE." 

It's a "war on marriage"! Gasp at the thought of the president trampling on the sanctity of marriage. While blaring the "WAR ON MARRIAGE" headline, Fox Nation highlighted four cleavage shots, a profile on the "nudist capitol of the world" and "Disney starlets" in bikinis. 

Because, you know, they're all about values. 

The site has since removed the "WAR ON MARRIAGE" headline, but here is the screenshot of the original version of the page (click on the image to see a bigger version):

By Leslie Hart / current.com

UPDATE, May 15: Ron Paul announced a new chapter of his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination in an email to supporters on Monday, stating that he will no longer invest money in the remaining primary battles but will continue to fight for delegates to represent his platform at the 2012 Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla. On Tuesday, Jesse Benton, Paul’s chief strategist, acknowledged Paul lacks the momentum to wrest the nomination from Mitt Romney but clarified that Dr. Paul is not “dropping out” of the race and reiterated Paul’s intention for his “campaign for Liberty” to maintain a presence at the state convention level.

An adviser to Ron Paul has hinted that the “delegate strategy” could be designed to help pave the way for a potential successor to carry the mantle of Ron Paul’s platform in 2016 — his son, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.).

Regardless of the reasons, the strategy or the plans for the future, what we'll miss most are those ardent and creatively expressive Paul fans. See some of our favorites below.