Transgender woman wins discrimination case after denied employment by US government

Jean Paul Zapata | Gay Star News | July 20, 2013

A transgender woman has won a landmark discrimination case against the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF).

Mia Macy, who claimed to have been rejected from a potential job opportunity with the ATF after she revealed she was transgender, will now be receiving a renewed job offer and additional compensation.

The Department of Justice ruled that ATF broke anti-discrimination laws when it refused to hire the police detective after she told them she was transgender.

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Gay Couple Challenges Ohio’s Gay Marriage Ban

Carlos Santoscoy | On Top Magazine | July 20, 2013

A male gay couple recently married in Maryland is suing the state of Ohio to recognize their marriage.

Jim Obergefell and John Arthur of Cincinnati married last week aboard a medical transport plane parked off a Baltimore airport runway.  Arthur received a diagnosis of amyotropic lateral sclerosis, or ALS (also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease), a neurological disease, 26 months earlier and is now bedridden and receiving hospice care.  Friends and family contributed the $12,700 needed to charter the medically-equipped plane.

(Related: Dying gay man’s final wish: To marry his partner.)

The couple has filed a federal lawsuit to have their marriage recognized in Ohio.

“We do hope to build from here and have this be the first step towards marriage equality in Ohio but for now, we just want to make sure that when John dies, the death record shows him as married,” the couple’s attorney Al Gerhardstein told WKSU.

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Russia arrests Dutch tourists on gay propaganda charges

Cathy Kristofferson | Oblogdeeoblogda | July 21, 2013

So it has begun.  Russia today arrested tourists ‘violating’ their new anti-gay propaganda law.About an hour ago, the LGBT Russian Network posted on their Facebook wall:

“URGENT NEWS! In Murmansk city (North Russia) 3 Dutch citizens detained by the police on charges of gay-propaganda.

At the moment they were released from the police station. Police compiled reports on the violation of rules of stay in the territory of Russia and the violation of the law of the “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations among minors.”

Court hearing will be at 9 a.m. (Moscow time) 22 July 2013.”

The anti-gay propaganda law was recently signed into law by Russian Prime Minister, Valdimir Putin. Its purpose is to ban so-called “propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations”. Propaganda is defined in the the bill as:

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Russia’s Anti-Gay Crackdown

HARVEY FIERSTEIN | New York Times | July 21, 2013

RUSSIA’S president, Vladimir V. Putin, has declared war on homosexuals. So far, the world has mostly been silent.

On July 3, Mr. Putin signed a law banning the adoption of Russian-born children not only to gay couples but also to any couple or single parent living in any country where marriage equality exists in any form.

A few days earlier, just six months before Russia hosts the 2014 Winter Games, Mr. Putin signed a law allowing police officers to arrest tourists and foreign nationals they suspect of being homosexual, lesbian or “pro-gay” and detain them for up to 14 days. Contrary to what the International Olympic Committee says, the law could mean that any Olympic athlete, trainer, reporter, family member or fan who is gay — or suspected of being gay, or just accused of being gay — can go to jail.

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Secret Court Lets NSA Extend Its Trawl of Verizon Customers’ Phone Records

The seal of the U.S. National Security Agency. The first use was in September 1966, replacing an older seal which was used briefly. For more information, see here and here. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Ed Pilkington | Guardian UK | Reader Supported News | July 20, 2013

Latest revelation an indication of how Obama administration has opened up hidden world of mass communications surveillance.

The National Security Agency has been allowed to extend its dragnet of the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon through a court order issued by the secret court that oversees surveillance.

In an unprecedented move prompted by the Guardian’s disclosure in June of the NSA‘s indiscriminate collection of Verizon metadata, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) has publicly revealed that the scheme has been extended yet again.

The statement does not mention Verizon by name, nor make clear how long the extension lasts for, but it is likely to span a further three months in line with previous routine orders from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (Fisa).

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Look Who’s Joining the Sunni War on Syria

English: flag of the Army of Egypt and war flag of Egypt. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Steve Weissman | Reader Supported News | July 20, 2013

Popular uprisings pose tough questions, as in the spat over whether Egypt had a coup or a revolution. The answer requires a close look at the agendas of contending leadership groups and how they differ from the aspirations of the mostly nonviolent participants in the anti-Morsi protests, with whom many on this website tend to identify.

In Egypt, millions of protestors expressed a wide range of very real grievances. They want jobs and good economic management of their country, with the promise of a decent life for the poor. They want “dignity.” They want security in the streets and justice for anti-government activists killed during and after the January 2011 uprising. They want competent government, preferably democratic. And most, whether secular or Muslim, want freedom from the dictates of Mohamed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood.  They want what many would call a much-needed revolution.

Tamarod, the group that organized the petition and protests against Morsi, was fighting for all that as well. But Tamarod leaders were also building popular support for the Egyptian military to take renewed power, which the generals have now done. This is why most commentators without a dog in the fight speak of a military coup. As further proof, Egypt’s new “civilian government” has just named the leader of the coup – General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi – as its deputy prime minister and defense minister.

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Manning ‘Aiding the Enemy’ Charge Is a Threat to Journalism

Bradley Manning – Caricature (Photo credit: DonkeyHotey)

Yochai Benkler | Guardian UK | Reader Supported News | July 20, 2013

Without an informed and free press, there cannot be an enlightened people. That’s what this trial is really about.

Thursday, Colonel Denise Lind, the judge in the Bradley Manning court martial, refused to dismiss the “aiding the enemy” charge. The decision is preliminary, and the judge could still moderate its effect if she finds Manning not guilty. But even if she ultimately acquits Manning, the decision will cast a long shadow on national security journalists and their sources.

First, this case is about national security journalism, not WikiLeaks. At Monday’s argument in preparation for Thursday’s ruling, the judge asked the prosecution to confirm: does it make any difference if it’s WikiLeaks or any other news organization: New York Times, Washington Post, or Wall Street Journal? The prosecution answered: “No, it would not. It would not potentially make a difference.”

Second, the decision establishes a chilling precedent: leaking classified documents to the these newspapers can by itself be legally sufficient to constitute the offense of “aiding the enemy”, if the leaker was sophisticated enough about intelligence and how the enemy uses the internet.

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Helen Thomas, White House Reporter, Dies

Patrick Gavin | Politico | Reader Supported News | July 21, 2013

Helen Thomas, a longtime White House journalist whose career covering ten presidents once earned the nickname the “Dean of the White House Press Corps,” died Saturday at 92, the Associated Press confirmed.

She died after a long illness, the Gridiron Club’s Carl P. Leubsdorf wrote in an email to members.

The bulk of Thomas’ career was marked by both her trailblazing role as a female White House reporter and her aggressive and argumentative questioning style. From her perch in the front row of the White House briefing room, Thomas prodded each president with pointed questions and a low tolerance for talking points.

In a statement, President Barack Obama called Thomas a “true pioneer,” adding, “She covered every White House since President Kennedy’s, and during that time she never failed to keep presidents – myself included – on their toes.”

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This Week in Press Freedoms and Privacy Rights

Glenn Greenwald | Guardian UK | Reader Supported News | July 21, 2013

The travesty calling itself “the Bradley Manning court-martial”, the kangaroo tribunal calling itself “the FISA court”, and the emptiness of what the Obama DOJ calls “your constitutional rights.”

I’m on a (much-needed) quick vacation until Sunday, so I’ll just post a few brief items from what has been a busy and important week of events, particularly when it comes to press freedom and privacy:

(1) In the utter travesty known as “the Bradley Manning court-martial proceeding”, the military judge presiding over the proceeding yet again showed her virtually unbreakable loyalty to the US government’s case by refusing to dismiss the most serious charge against the 25-year-old Army Private, one that carries a term of life in prison: “aiding and abetting the enemy”. The government’s theory is that because the documents Manning leaked were interesting to Osama bin Laden, he aided the enemy by disclosing them. Harvard Law Professor Yochai Benkler explained in the New Republic in March why this theory poses such a profound threat to basic press freedoms as it essentially converts all leaks, no matter the intent, into a form of treason.

At this point, that seems to be the feature, not a bug. Anyone looking for much more serious leaks than the one that Manning produced which ended up attracting the interest of bin Laden should be looking here. The Obama White House yesterday told Russia that it must not persecute “individuals and groups seeking to expose corruption” – as Bradley Manning faces life in prison for alerting the world to the war abuses and other profound acts of wrongdoing he discovered and as the unprecedented Obama war on whistleblowers rolls on. That lecture to Russia came in the context of White House threats to cancel a long-planned meeting over the Russian government’s refusal to hand over NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden to the US to face espionage charges.

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