Florida company facing furious backlash after posting pro-Kavanaugh sign that taunts sex assault victims

TANA GANEVA Via Raw Story

A Florida roofing company jumped into the national conversation about the confirmation hearings of Brett Kavanaugh and the #MeToo movement with a sign that seemed to make light of sexual assault.

Crowther Roofing & Sheet Metal’s Metro Parkway sign said, “A boy tried to kiss me/I’m going to wait 40 years/To tell on him,” reports Fort Myers News Press.

The owners of the company, who often post controversial signs, apparently didn’t expect such an uproar and defended the decision.

“We in no way advocate or condone sexual assault,” said Lee Crowther Sr., the company’s founder, said. “Anyone who thinks that is goofy.”

Yet it’s hard to deny that the message referenced the accusations of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, who came forward publicly 35 years after her alleged sexual assault.

One woman critical of the sign said that it’s that kind of attitude that might prevent a woman from sharing her story.

“People don’t understand why women don’t come forward,” she said.

According to the News Press, the store’s employees were subjected to death and rape threats.

They’ve previously posted other controversial signs, such as the suggestion that it was un-American to not speak in English. “One Flag. One Language. God Bless America.” The roofer has also weighed in on the debate surrounding confederate statutes.

“So why wasn’t anyone offended over statues when Obama was President?” they asked in 2017.

Fox News guest: Felons should buy guns, but helping people buy Obamacare is too far

By David Edwards/Raw Story

Conservative National Review writer Charles Cooke told Fox News on Thursday that criminals should not be able to assist people using the government’s website to buy health insurance, but they should be allowed to own guns.

During a “breaking news” segment about new dropping public support for President Barack Obama’s health care reform law, Fox News host Gretchen Carlson pointed out that the National Review had a new report that was going to “scare some folks.”

According to the report, “convicted criminals” have been hired as Obamacare navigators in California, “including three individuals with records of significant financial crimes.”

“I should just say at the outset that I think as a rule, I do think sometimes we do over-punish people for crimes they’ve committed in the past,” Cooke opined. “We take away their vote, we take away their guns, and we can sometimes ruin their lives for too long.”

“But this is an issue where privacy is of paramount importance,” he continued. “There’s a lot of personal information and financial information that is being pushed through the system. And some of the people who are working in the system really have some developed skills of fraud and corruption.”

Dana Howard, the spokesperson for Covered California, told National Review that the employees had not been disqualified from the Navigator program because their records had been clean for an extended period of time.

“People make mistakes,” Howard said. “They paid their debt to society. They rehabilitated themselves. And so they apply, and they meet the qualifications. We do not see them as a threat.”

Watch this video from Fox News’ The Real Story, broadcast Jan. 30, 2014.

Brain-Dead Texas Woman’s Family May Have To Pay For The Cost Of Keeping Her On Life Support

BY TARA CULP-RESSLER/Think Progress

On Sunday, Marlise Machado Muñoz — the brain-dead women who was forced to remain on life support against her family’s will because she was pregnant — was disconnected from a respirator after a months-long battle with the hospital that was caring for her. John Peter Smith Hospital finally agreed to relinquish her body to her family after a judge ordered it. Now, her husband Erick is finally beginning the process of saying goodbye to Muñoz and her unborn child, who he named Nicole.

But in the aftermath of the family’s personal tragedy, there are still some unanswered questions. It’s not guaranteed that Texas will actually change the arcane state law that allows hospitals to override women’s end-of-life wishes if they are pregnant. And it’s unclear who exactly will be responsible for paying the medical bills that resulted from Muñoz’s hospital stay, which stretched on for about nine weeks.

In an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, Erick Muñoz acknowledged that he has been receiving medical bills at his home — although he’s not sure exactly what he will be expected to pay.

“They have not come to me and said how that’s going to work,” he told CNN. “But I believe I’ve heard several media outlets…saying that they’ve asked about that. They have asked that question. They said they would continue normal billing.”

After ThinkProgress reached out to the John Peter Smith Hospital, a spokesperson explained that billing is part of Muñoz’s medical records, and is therefore covered under privacy laws. The hospital noted that although Eric Muñoz may say whatever he wants on the matter, its officials are not allowed to disclose details about billing unless he agrees to release his deceased wife’s medical records.

Hospital care is often prohibitively expensive for the average American. A recent report on the issue found that bills at hospitals have been steadily rising for nearly two decades, and some facilities now charge patients up to 10 times more than what the service is actually worth. Pregnancy-related care is a good illustration of this dynamic. The cost of giving birth can vary by tens of thousands dollars at different hospitals, and there’s no good reason for the discrepancy. Often, one catastrophic health event is enough to put a family in serious debt — by some estimates, medical bills are the leading cause of U.S. bankruptcies.

Why Republicans Don’t Believe In Evolution Anymore

BY ZACK BEAUCHAMP/Think Progress

The theory of evolution is right up there with the theory of gravity in terms of its universal acceptance among scientists. But, as we’ve learned from the climate change debate, politics has the power to trump science — and, according to a new Pew poll, it seems like political partisanship may be starting to take its toll on evolution. While a comfortable majority of Republicans accepted human evolution as fact in 2009, Pew finds a plurality now reject it — an astonishing 19 point reversal in four years.

It’s a finding that tells us a lot, both principally about the (ahem) evolution of the Republican Party in the past fours. In short, the kind of person who doesn’t believe in evolution is much more likely be a typical Republican today than four years ago — for reasons that have only a bit to do with the debate over evolution itself.

There are two keys to understanding what the Pew poll teaches us about Republicans. First, the drop in belief in evolution is among Republicans and, more or less, Republicans only. Acceptance of human evolution was basically the same among Democrats and independents in 2013 as it was in 2009. Second, the share of the total population that believes in evolution hasn’t changed at all. The drop in Republican belief doesn’t appear to be people changing their minds about evolution so much as people who already didn’t believe in evolution becoming Republicans.

Why might that be? The obvious explanation is the changing character of the Republican base. When Republicans win in recent years, those victories are won on the backs of old voters, white voters, and religious voters. While race isn’t super-important in predicting views on evolution, age and religion are. Each generation of Americans, Pew found, is increasingly more likely to accept natural human evolution; Americans 18-29 do so by a 68-27 margin, while the number for seniors (65+) is 49-36. Likewise, white evangelical protestants are the group most likely to reject evolution, while the religiously unaffiliated are by far the most likely to accept it.

The winnowing of self-identified Republicans to these demographic groups has been dramatic in recent years. The overall number of Americans who identify as Republicans hovered around 29 percent from from 2008-2012 as American seniors became dramatically more Republican, the pro-GOP margin shifting from 35-34 in 2008 to 39-29 in 2012. White evangelicals have become similarly more Republican at the same time.

So on one look, the decline in Republican belief in evolution is perfectly consistent with one of the most fundamental trends in American politics: a greying, born-again Republican Party increasingly out of step with the rest of America’s political views.

The Republican base’s increasing hostility to evolution could very well explain the rash of recent state-level debates on teaching evolution in schools. In the past four years, we’ve seen a slate of state controversies over school textbooks and curricula that teach creationism alongside evolution. States like Texas, Tennessee, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Kentucky, and New Mexico have all had versions of this fight — all controversies sparked by conservative state leaders that have heated up in the past two or three years. All of this anti-evolution activity makes much more sense if understood as Republican representatives and activists responding to incentives created by their increasingly homogenous base.

If that explanation is right, then we should expect to see similarly base-tailored legislation coming out of Republican state representatives in 2014 and beyond. The demographic trends concentrating the Republican base don’t appear to be slowing, which means that Republicans will have even stronger incentives over time to push legislation that appeals to the older, whiter, more religious demographic. This means that more issues like creationism in schools that don’t play on the national level, but can help local Republicans make a name for themselves inside the party, might make their way into state capitols in the coming year.

But the demographic explanation isn’t everything. Pew cautions that “differences in the racial and ethnic composition of Democrats and Republicans or differences in their levels of religious commitment do not wholly explain partisan differences in beliefs about evolution.” Put more simply, Republicans are more skeptical of evolution than you would expect even when you take into account the demographic character of its base.

This suggests another, more subtle effect at work. A wealth of research into political psychology shows that people’s partisan affiliations affect their beliefs on basic facts. Republicans are overwhelmingly more likely to think the economy is doing well when Republicans hold the Presidency, and ditto with Democrats when their guy holds the White House. A recent experiment found that even basic math is contaminated by politics; people are much more likely to correctly solve basic math problems when, in context, solving them correctly helps rather than hurts their party.

In the evolution context, this suggests a feedback effect at work among Republicans. As the GOP becomes more associated with the creationist cause as a consequence of demographic shifts, Republicans start to feel more like being skeptical of evolution is their “team” position. So even Republicans who are demographically more likely to accept the basic science of evolution start to reject it, because that belief best harmonizes their beliefs with the perceived interest of their political party.

Eric Cantor won’t bring Immigration Reform to the floor for a vote because Healthcare.gov has technical issues

By Anomaly/Freak Out Nation

On Friday afternoon, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) gave one of the most mind boggling reasons for the House not voting on the bipartisan Senate immigration reform bill that was passed in June because — wait for it — he didn’t want to “repeat the mistakes” of Obamacare. Whatever that means.

House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD) argued that a vote on immigration reform should occur by the end of the year, because it can garner 218 votes.

Think Progress reports, “Cantor responded that Senate Democrats and White House officials have been unwilling to talk and instead insist on a “my way or the highway kind of mode of operation.”

That sounds so familiar. In fact, in August, Rep. Steve King (R-IA) — one of the most hardline immigration opponents — called reform “a waste of time,” and said that the House should focus its attention on Benghazi instead.

Transcript via Think Progress:

HOYER: Bring it to the floor and see if the House thinks it’s a bad bill. See if the House believes that it’s a bill that is not worthy to be considered and passed as a fixing of a broken immigration system … He has the power to bring that bill to the floor.
CANTOR: We don’t want a repeat of what’s going on now with Obamacare. That bill, constructed as it is by the Senate, last-minute-ditch effort to get it across the finish line … let’s be mindful, Madam Speaker, of what happens when you put together a bill like Obamacare and the real consequences to millions of Americans right now, scared that they’re not going to even have health care insurance that they have today come January 1.
[...] I’d say to the gentleman again. The track record of this administration and the majority in the Senate has indicated an unwillingness to sit down and talk. They’ve not done so, certainly the White House has not done so on the immigration issue, did not do so on the health care issue, and again it doesn’t help the American people for their insistence on a “my way or the highway” kind of mode of operation.

After an insane amount of attempts to repeal Obamacare, what Cantor is saying is that he will block any measure Obama supports because he lost the fight to destroy Affordable Health Care.

And also because today ends in a Y.

Cantor refuses to do more than one thing at a time, and the only thing he has tried to accomplish has taken years, and he’s failed over and over again. It also cost this economy a lot of money. A lot.

At Stand Your Ground Hearing, Ted Cruz Argues Florida Law Helps African-Americans

BY REBECCA LEBER/Think Progress

With Trayvon Martin’s mother sitting just across from him, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) claimed that Stand Your Ground is beneficial for African-Americans. At the Tuesday Senate Judiciary Subcommittee hearing, Cruz claimed, “In Florida, the data show that African-American defendants have availed themselves of the Stand Your Ground law more frequently than Anglo defendants.” Indirectly citing a Daily Caller story that said black defendants were successful in 55 percent of fatal cases compared to 53 percent of whites, Cruz said this “isn’t about inflaming racial tensions though some might try to use it to do that.”

Shortly after Cruz described Stand Your Ground as protecting innocent victims from violent aggressors, Sybrina Fulton and Lucia McBath, the mothers of Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis, delivered emotional testimony about their murdered children.

GOP witness John Lott, president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, also argued Cruz’s point at length. “Poor blacks who live in high-crime urban areas are not only the most likely victims of crime, they are also the ones who benefit the most from Stand Your Ground laws,” he said according to prepared testimony. Later, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said he found Lott’s argument “compelling,” and that he did not see how the law “has a racial injustice about it.”

This is an oversimplified, if not misleading, portrayal of the racial disparity in Stand Your Ground. It looks only at the rate of successful Florida claims based on the shooter’s race, which indeed is slightly higher for black shooters than white shooters.

By no means does this mean blacks “benefit” under the law.

A report from the Congressional Research Service on inter-racial shootings nationwide shows disparity at work. Without looking specifically at Stand Your Ground, CRS found a clear racial disparity in shootings that were ruled to be justified, as well as an increase in cases of justifiable white-on-black homicides after states began enacting the ALEC model legislation in 2005. According tothe report, white-on-black shootings were considered justified far more often than black-on-white shootings.

The same data that Florida Cruz cited also shows that killers are far more likely to go free when their victims are black. In those cases with black or Hispanic victims, the killings were found justified by the Stand Your Ground law 78 percent of the time, compared to 56 percent in cases with white victims. The racial disparity among victims has also been confirmed by other studies, like the Urban Institute’s finding that in Stand Your Ground states, white-on-black homicides are 354 percent more likely to be ruled justified than white-on-white homicides.

Conservative editor: Republicans are losing because of Family Guy

By Eric W. Dolan/Raw Story

Republicans are losing to Democrats because pop culture in the United States is dominated by liberal thought, according to conservative writer and TV editor Bill Whittle.

At the RightOnline Conference in Orlando on Saturday, Whittle singled out the TV show Family Guy with particular disdain.

“Any audience of people that grew up with classical Superman automatically love this country because Superman is about the best America we can be, and when Superman was all over the pop culture we were a nation that loved this country,” he remarked. “Now, 20 years after the peak ofSuperman‘s popularity along comes Gilligan’s Island. That’s pretty neutral in terms of politics. Really about the only message you can get from Gilligan’s Island is if you want to get off the island all you have to do is kill Gilligan.”

“But if you’re a young person out there today and you can finish the theme song from Family Guy, then all the anti-American, anti-capitalist, anti-Christian, anti-morality messages of Family Guy are in your head as completely and thoroughly as that theme song is.”

The example of Superman and Family Guyillustrated how conservatives needed to construct narratives that exemplified their belief system.

“You’re programmed by the pop culture. You’re programed by story,” Whittle said. “It’s all about stories, and if we’re the villain in all of the stories that are told we’re never going to win another election again.”

Watch video, uploaded to YouTube, below:

The full speech can be viewed here.

Gun Advocacy Group Sends Zimmerman $12,000 To Buy Guns

By Igor Volsky/Think Progress

On Tuesday, an Ohio-based gun advocacy group sent George Zimmerman, who fatally shot and killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, a $12,150.37 check with which to purchase more guns.

Buckeye Firearms Foundation said that it came under cyber attack since raising money for Zimmerman and has had its website hacked. The page was not accessible at the time of publication.

The group, however is no stranger to controversy; it has actively trained teachers and administrators to carry arms in the classroom since the school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. The so-called Faculty/Administrator Safety Training and Emergency Response (FASTER) program is designed to “help deal with mass murders at schools” by ensuring that schools “are no longer ‘victim zones,’” the group claims. Participants will be able to carry weapons inside the classroom after completing “an intensive 3-day class where you will learn many of the same skills and tactics used by law enforcement.”

Ohio law allows teachers and staff to carry firearms if approved by the school board and the FASTER program hopes to attract teachers from the kindergarten through collegial levels.

The U.S. Department of Justice is still holding the gun that killed Martin, as part of a civil rights investigation into the killing, though an attorney for Zimmerman claims that since the verdict, there is “even more reason” for Zimmerman to always be armed. Attorney Mark O’Mara “said his client is getting threats since the verdict earlier this month and has been carrying a weapon.”

Tea Party Congressman Compares African American Civil Rights To Snail Darters

By Igor Volsky/Think Progress

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) compared the civil rights of African Americans and other minorities to the rights of animals during a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday, sparking outrage from lawmakers.

Gohmert made the remarks as the panel considered a bill that could “prevent federal regulatory actions from being implemented.” Currently, the federal government relies on consent decrees to settle lawsuits from advocacy organizations challenging agencies for failing to take regulatory action or missing statutory deadlines. The GOP-backed bill would allow anyone whose rights are affected by the decree to intervene in the settlement, significantly delaying the action.

Democrats offered an amendment, sponsored by Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN), that would have prohibited third parties from intervening in any regulatory action that prevents or is intended to prevent discrimination on the basis of race, sex, national origin, or other protected characteristic. Consent decrees had been pivotal to enforcing civil rights laws, Cohen and Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) argued, and noted that advocates used the consent decree process to protect minority communities from police misconduct and brutality.

But Gohmert objected to the amendment and insisted that the bill had nothing to do with the civil rights and would primary impact rules and regulations that pertain to fish, wildlife, and the environment. He then proceeded to mock Democrats’ concerns about minorities by joking that they were interested in protecting the liberties of snails and other animals:

GOHMERT: There is nobody in this chamber who is more appreciative than I am for the gentleman from Tennessee and my friend from Michigan standing up for the rights of race, religion, national religion of the Delta Smelt, the snail darter, various lizards, the lesser prairie chicken, the greater sage grouts and so many other insects who would want someone standing for their religion, their race, their national origin and I think that’s wonderful.

Watch it:

The bill, however, is actually written in general terms and would therefore impact the consent decrees adopted by the Department of Justice and other offices responsible for civil rights, committee staff confirmed to ThinkProgress. Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) blasted Gohmert’s comments, noting that “this is not a snail darter’s amendment, it is not an environmental amendment, it is a civil rights amendment, and we’re talking about the civil rights of people — the civil rights of people that have been violated egregiously for generations in this country.”

The amendment failed in a vote of 13 to 16, with Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL) joining Democrats in voting for it. The underlining bill passed the Judiciary Committee along party lines. A similar measure passed the House last year and is not expected to advance in the Senate.

North Carolina Gun Owners Will Soon Be Able To Carry Firearms At Bars And Playgrounds

By Aviva Shen/Think Progress

On Tuesday, North Carolina lawmakersapproved a bill allowing gun owners with concealed-carry permits to bring their weapons to playgrounds, bars, and public recreation areas, although bar owners will still be permitted to deny entry to armed patrons. Gov. Pat McCrory (R) is expected to sign the expansive bill into law soon. The measure will also allow concealed-carry permit holders to keep their guns in cars parked on school campuses. The bill was stripped of an especially extreme provision that would have eliminated the requirement for background checks or handgun permits.

Since the Newtown elementary school shooting, legislation to put guns in more places is gaining traction among Republican lawmakers, who argue that gun-free zones leave people unarmed and vulnerable to attack. But North Carolina’s plan to put guns in bars poses a far greater danger. Shootings involving alcohol are all too common. Nearly half of all homicides are preceded by some sort of argument, frequently a drunken fight over a perceived insult. Moreover, an estimated 40 percent of men and 30 percent of women who killed someone were drinking alcohol at the time.

Gun owners also tend to abuse alcohol at far higher rates than people who do not own guns, engaging in risky behaviors like binge drinking and drunk driving.

Undeterred by this data, North Carolina Republicans embraced the bill along with an onslaught of radical legislation targeting poor people, women, and minorities. Residents are fighting back with widespread “Moral Monday” protests. As of this week, 900 North Carolinians have been arrested in these demonstrations.

Other Republican legislatures have recently pushed similar bills to put guns in bars in Georgia,South Carolina, and Louisiana.

Texas Senate confiscates tampons while debating anti-abortion bill

By Arturo Garcia/Raw Story

As the Texas Senate begins debating the anti-abortion bill that sparked a series of protests that garnered national attention, Republicans backing the measure drew more criticism for confiscating women’s hygiene products from attendees at the gallery in the state capitol on Friday.

According to Burnt Orange Report, state Sen. Kirk Watson (D) convinced authorities to halt the seizures, but not before GOP lawmakers were mocked online as security guards went through women’s bags pulling out what one opponent of the bill, local activist Jessica Luther,said on Twitter was described to her as anything “that can be thrown at senators.”

The legislation, House Bill 2, is expected to be passed after debate either late Friday or early Saturday, and would ensure the closure of all but five abortion providers in the state based on revised guidelines for reproductive health facilities. The Associated Press reported that spectators would also be handed printed rules threatening those found to be “disrupting the chamber’s work” with being jailed for 48 hours.

“We’re going to have strict enforcement,” Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst (R) told the AP. “If there are any demonstrations, we are going to clear the gallery.”

As Think Progress reported, however, attendees with concealed-carry licenses were still being allowed to bring firearms into the gallery. State Rep. Jonathan Strickland (R), who said at one point he was concerned about protesters becoming violent, did not respond when asked if he was bringing his own gun to the building but told the National Review, “I very, very often do concealed-carry, I can say that.”

State Republicans’ last attempt to pass HB2 on June 25 failed after being stalled by a 13-hour filibuster by state Sen. Wendy Davis (D) and other Democrats, culminating in a 15-minute vocal protest by attendees in the gallery.

Billionaire Koch Brother Says Eliminating The Minimum Wage Will Help The Poor

By Rebecca Leber/Think Progress

A conservative mogul worth $43 billion says he knows the secret to helping poor people. According to Charles Koch, the U.S. needs to get rid of the minimum wage, which he counts as a major obstacle to economic growth.

On Wednesday, the Charles Koch Foundation launched a $200,000 media campaign in Wichita, Kansas, with a hint of expanding it elsewhere. It is the Kochs’ biggest media buy since they promised to do more to “persuade politicians” after suffering losses in the 2012 election.

In an interview with the Wichita Eagle published Tuesday, Koch said that the minimum wage is one policy he is working against:

We want to do a better job of raising up the disadvantaged and the poorest in this country, rather than saying ‘Oh, we’re just fine now.’ We’re not saying that at all. What we’re saying is, we need to analyze all these additional policies, these subsidies, this cronyism, this avalanche of regulations, all these things that are creating a culture of dependency. And like permitting, to start a business, in many cities, to drive a taxicab, to become a hairdresser. Anything that people with limited capital can do to raise themselves up, they keep throwing obstacles in their way. And so we’ve got to clear those out. Or the minimum wage. Or anything that reduces the mobility of labor.

The Kansas ad does not specifically mention the minimum wage, but it does claim that Americans earning $34,000 a year should count themselves as lucky, because that puts them in the top 1 percent of the world. “That is the power of economic freedom,” the ad concluded. Meanwhile, Charles and David Koch are the ones comfortably in the 1 percent, with a net worth of about 1 million times that figure. Watch the ad:

The ad cites a report from the Koch-funded Fraser Institute showing that “The United States used to be a world leader in economic freedom but our ranking fell. And it’s projected to decline even further.” (That same Fraser report interestingly ranks Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand, Switzerland, and Chile ahead of the U.S. Those places all have government-run health care, which the Kochs adamantly oppose.)

In the U.S., economic inequality has grown rapidly, and the lagging minimum wage is in large part to blame. Some states have moved to address the growing gap between what people earn and the rising cost of living, but nationally the minimum wage has barely moved in decades. Little to no evidence exists to support Koch’s claim that the minimum wage impedes companies or causes them to fire employees. In fact, raising the minimum wage to $9 would pump up to $48 billion into the economy by the next year and ease the income gap for 15 million low-wage workers.

Koch maintained his and his brother’s political efforts are not for their own benefit, but for the country’s greater good. “All the other large companies, or the great majority of them, are promoting some kind of special cronyism where they’re undermining economic freedom.” Although he deems low-wage workers part of a “culture of dependency” on the government, Koch Industries is on the receiving end of oil subsidies, government contracts, and bailouts.

McCain Slams Efforts To Curb Rampant Campus Sexual Harassment As Violating Free Speech

By Kumar Ramanathan/Think Progress

Over the past month, conservatives and libertarians have criticized efforts to curb sexual harassment on college campuses as “de-eroticizing universities” and claimed they violate free speech. Now, Sen. John McCain has jumped on the bandwagon in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder.

McCain’s letter, sent to Holder last Wednesday, accuses Assistant Attorney General Tom Perez and Department of Justice (DOJ) lawyers of having “single-handedly redefined the meaning of sexual harassment at all universities and colleges across the country.” Endorsing claims made by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), which has led the attack on the DOJ and OCR, McCain suggests that guidelines set out by the DOJ and the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) with one university in the wake of increasing student protest and complaint over the epidemic of rape culture across college campuseswould somehow restrict free speech.

As ThinkProgress reported in June, the agreement in question was reached by the DOJ and OCR with the University of Montana in May in an effort to prevent sexual harassment and assault following a string of high-profile cases and subsequent mishandling by campus authorities. Inone particularly notable case, a woman who reported her attempted rape was told “not to expect much” and told that half of all rape allegations were false. The final agreement is so measured that it has been met only with hopeful skepticism from campus activists.

Over the past two months, conservative and libertarian critics of the agreement have seized on one section of the lengthy agreement, which is intended to encourage students to feel more comfortable reporting conduct they feel harassed by, rather than be burdened with interpreting Title IX regulations themselves. In that vein, the section defines sexual harassment for the purpose of student reporting as “any unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature.” Government officials have repeatedly reiterated that only conduct that meets the legal standard of being “severe or pervasive” and creating “a hostile environment” will be subject to enforcement, and that the guidelines merely try to “ensure students are not discouraged from reporting harassment.” But that has not stopped McCain and other conservatives from insisting that this section creates a new and expanded definition of sexual harassment, alleging that it could even encompass a student asking another on a date.

McCain’s letter includes several questions asking for clarification on the DOJ’s definition of sexual harassment and the implications of its agreement with the University of Montana, and requests a response by July 17. A DOJ representative said in a statement to the Huffington Post said that the Department was reviewing McCain’s letter.

Despite the controversy, University of Montana officials have said that they will go ahead with implementing the agreement and do not see it as unconstitutional. “I don’t believe we’ve been instructed to [create a new category for sexual harassment],” Lucy France, legal counsel for the University, told the Moussilian. “We’re working on a draft policy that’s consistent with the law, and not inconsistent with First Amendment rights and academic freedom. That’s what we agreed to do with the DOJ.”

Tea Party Labels John McCain An ‘Illegal Immigrant’

By Esther Yu-Hsi Lee/Think Progress

On Tuesday, the Tea Party website ‘Tea Party Nation’ put out an article that labeled Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) an “illegal immigrant” because he had sneaked into Syria to visit rebels fighting against the Bashar al-Assad regime. Although the White House was aware of McCain’s Syrian visit, the article indicated that his visit was virtually the same as undocumented immigration. It also noted that McCain’s humanitarian support for rebels could be attributed to his lack of intelligence, and Democratic turnout for his unsurprising win in the Arizona Senate race.

The characterization of McCain is just one incident in a long series of efforts by the group to unjustifiably incite hatred against undocumented immigrants. While the Tea Party is ostensibly meant to represent true American virtues, it’s better known for its outlandish values that border on racism, particularly when it comes to immigration. Tea Partiers have deemed pejorative phrase “illegal immigrant” and “illegal alien” a “fair” phrase, even when it is not applicable in many instances. For example, in the latest gubernatorial race in Virginia, Terry McAuliffe was portrayed as an “undocumented Virginian” even though he had lived twenty years in the state.

Some major newspapers like the New York Times, the LA Times, and the AP have dropped the use of “illegal immigrant” from its coverage of undocumented migration. Immigration advocates view the phrase as offensive, citing that “no human being is ‘illegal,’ drop the I-word.” Yet Tea Party organizations have hardly budged.

The definition that Tea Partiers give for an illegal immigrants is “someone who sneaks into another country… even if they do not stay long.” Although the Tea Party has had a long history of describing undocumented immigrants as “illegal” and “invasive,” it sometimes does so in particularly inaccurate ways, such as last Thursday’s article headine, “Obama Meets In Oval Office With Illegal Aliens.” In actuality, Obama was meeting with Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients, who, through executive action, are actually lawfully present in the U.S. In the past, Tea Partiers have asked the public to detail their encounters with illegal aliens, like if they are “showing racist posters” — something which the Tea Party is itself not immune from doing.

In pandering to Tea Party advocates, some politicians are in fact hurting progress more than anything. Across many issues, Republican senators have quietly shifted their concerns to appease Tea Party supporters. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), for example, has shifted towards a Tea Party-style concern for states’ rights, when it comes to the ability of American children of undocumented immigrants to recieve federal benefits.

3D Gun Blueprints Removed From Defense Distributed, After 100,000+ Downloads

By Alexis Kleinman/Huffington Post

Controversial wiki-weapon venture Defense Distributed removed the blueprints for a 3D printable gun from its website on Thursday on the State Department's order.

"#DEFCAD is going dark at the request of the SOD Department of Defense Trade Controls," Defense Distributed's founder Cody Wilson Tweeted Thursday morning. "Some shapes are more dangerous than others."

The link to download the blueprint has been replaced with the following: "This file has been removed from public access at the request of the US Department of Defense Trade Controls. Until further notice, the United States government claims control of the information." The state department said that the blueprints may violate U.S. export controls.

The government's move came just days after the "Liberator," as the gun is known, was first successfully fired on Sunday, and the video of someone shooting the gun quickly went viral.

And the order may have come too late. The blueprints for the gun were downloaded about 100,000 times, according to Forbes. And there's nothing to stop those files from being shared again and again.

Defcad had a little help from Kim Dotcom. All the downloads from defense distributed were hosted on a Kim Dot Com's new file-sharing web site Mega.

The government "controls exports of sensitive equipment, software and technology as a means to promote our national security interests and foreign policy objectives," the State Department's website explains. Since these guns could be downloaded and printed abroad, the government views them as a potential risk.

It's worth noting that most people who downloaded the blueprint probably don't have the capability of manufacturing the gun at home. As Forbes notes, Defense Distributed used an $8,000 printer to make their gun. That device is not widely available.