via Tim Padgett, Time

Drug thugs dumped 49 bloodied and dismembered corpses on a northern Mexican highway on Sunday, May 13. We journalists are finding little new to say, few fresh insights to offer, about these all too frequent narco-massacres in Mexico and the 50,000 people murdered so far in the country’s endless drug war. That’s troubling, because one of the worst things that could happen is that the world becomes inured to the ghastly violence. But at this point, what worries us more is that the leading candidates in Mexico’s July 1 presidential election really don’t seem to have anything new to say about this crisis either.

Critics of Mexican President Felipe Calderón, whose six-year-long military campaign against the drug cartels has in many ways exacerbated the violence, often call the war “Calderón’s Iraq.” But when former U.S. President George W. Bush left office in 2009, the real Iraq War was still his successor’s problem – and the same will be true of whomever follows Calderón. (He is constitutionally limited to one six-year term.) So far, the three top politicos vying to replace Calderón have offered little more than generalities, or remedies Calderón has already put forward, about how to end a conflict that is killing its share of innocents as well as monstrous traffickers. (Officials don’t dismiss the possibility that some if not all of the 49 newest mutilated victims weren’t narcos but civilians like migrant workers who couldn’t pay narco-extortionists.)

The front-runner is Enrique Peña Nieto, former Governor of Mexico state, near Mexico City, the candidate of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). The PRI ruled Mexico as a one-party dictatorship for 71 years until Calderón’s conservative National Action Party (PAN) finally toppled it in the 2000 presidential elections. During its 20th-century reign, the PRI was infamous for drug corruption – but because of its cozy arrangement with the cartels, drug violence in those days was more controlled and less horrific, and many Mexicans hope the party’s return to power will mean some sort of Pax PRI-ista.

The only problem: today that looks all but impossible even for the PRI. Mexico’s proliferating drug cartels, especially the bloodthirsty former military commandos known as the Zetas, who are believed responsible for Sunday’s atrocity 75 miles south of the U.S.-Mexico border, seem well beyond any political control. In fact, some of Mexico’s most violence-plagued states today, like northern Tamaulipas, are run by the PRI – including former Tamaulipas Governor Tomás Yarrington, who left office in 2005 and whom the U.S. accuses of laundering millions of dollars for gangs like the Zetas. (He denies it, and it should be noted the PAN has had its own corruption scandals since 2000.)

Which means that if Peña wins – and he leads his closest competitor by 17 points in voter polls – the PRI will have to do battle with the cartels, not do deals with them. Yet while Peña acknowledged last week that public security is the issue that “anguishes” Mexicans most, he has yet to serve up much in the way of a different tack aside from proposing a “national gendarmerie,” or a force of soldier-police officers. To many that’s simply a fancier name for what Calderón already has on Mexico’s streets: soldiers playing cops because Mexico’s cops are for the most part too corrupt and incompetent to rely on. Peña to his credit also calls for more serious professionalization of judges, prosecutors and police, including more homogeneously trained state forces; but Calderón has pushed similar legislation, only to see it languish inside Mexico’s do-nothing Congress.

That Congress’s lower chamber is controlled by the PRI – which makes Mexican pundits wonder if the party intends to finally pass what is essentially Calderón’s judicial reforms once Peña is President. As cynical as that sounds, it’s better than interminably blocking the reforms Mexico most needs. (Soldiers don’t bring down organized crime; professional cops do.) And that – the prospect of less reform gridlock – may be one big reason Peña holds such a commanding lead over the PAN’s Josefina Vásquez Mota and Andrés Manuel López Obrador of the leftist Democratic Revolution Party (PRD).

Neither of those candidates is electrifying the electorate, either, when it comes to drug war solutions. Vásquez recently told the Wall Street Journal that she favors a “militarized national police” force of 150,000 members; but again, how that differs from what’s out there now isn’t very clear. For his part, López, who narrowly lost the 2006 election to Calderón, has said only that he’ll “stop the war” against the cartels and build a justice system “with humane criteria.”

The bottom line is that police and judicial reform is the only long-term solution to Mexico’s narco-nightmare. (That and reduced drug demand in the U.S., but given how stubbornly Washington clings to its own failed drug war strategies, that’s doubtful.) The short-term solution is improving economic opportunity for lower-income Mexicans (almost half the population still lives in poverty) so they’ll have alternatives to working for the drug cartels that rake in more than $30 billion a year. Calderón came to that realization too late in his presidency, and the trio trying to succeed him have made it a central plank of their platforms. But if they don’t want to see bodies stacked up on Mexican highways when one of them hands off the presidency in 2018, they’ll need to get more serious – and specific – about security.

via Tim Padgett, Time

via Suzanne Goldberg, The Guardian

The ultra-conservative Heartland Institute admitted it was in financial crisis on Wednesday, with the flight of corporate donors making it difficult to pay staff or cover the costs of its annual conference aimed at debunking climate science.

In a speech at the close of this year’s climate conference, Heartland’s president, Joseph Bast, acknowledged that a provocative ad campaign comparing believers in human-made climate change to psychopaths had exacted a heavy cost.

However, Bast also attributed Heartland’s current problems to his weakness in financial management.

“These conferences are expensive, and I’m not a good fundraiser so as a result I don’t raise enough money to cover them. We really scramble to make payroll as a result to cover these expenses,” Bast said.

“If you can afford to make a contribution please do. If you know someone, if you’ve got a rich uncle or somebody in the family or somebody that you work with, please give them a call and ask them if they would consider making a tax-deductible contribution to the Heartland Institute.”

The organisation has lost at least $825,000 in funds from corporate donors although Heartland also claims to have attracted 800 new small donors. Heartland also came in for bruising criticism from its own allies – a number of whom faulted Bast for failing to consult Heartland’s colleagues or board members about the ads in advance.

Among ultra-conservative activists, the billboard controversy has shaken confidence in Heartland’s ability to serve as the hub of the climate contrarian network. It has also raised doubts about Bast’s leadership. Bast is listed on Heartland’s website as its earliest employee. His wife is also employed at Heartland.

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via David Brooks, The New York Times

As a young man, Peter Thiel competed to get into Stanford. Then he competed to get into Stanford Law School. Then he competed to become a clerk for a federal judge. Thiel won all those competitions. But then he competed to get a Supreme Court clerkship.

Thiel lost that one. So instead of being a clerk, he went out and founded PayPal. Then he became an early investor in Facebook and many other celebrated technology firms. Somebody later asked him. “So, aren’t you glad you didn’t get that Supreme Court clerkship?”

The question got Thiel thinking. His thoughts are now incorporated into a course he is teaching in the Stanford Computer Science Department. (A student named Blake Masters posted outstanding notes online, and Thiel has confirmed their accuracy.)

One of his core points is that we tend to confuse capitalism with competition. We tend to think that whoever competes best comes out ahead. In the race to be more competitive, we sometimes confuse what is hard with what is valuable. The intensity of competition becomes a proxy for value.

In fact, Thiel argues, we often shouldn’t seek to be really good competitors. We should seek to be really good monopolists. Instead of being slightly better than everybody else in a crowded and established field, it’s often more valuable to create a new market and totally dominate it. The profit margins are much bigger, and the value to society is often bigger, too.

Now to be clear: When Thiel is talking about a “monopoly,” he isn’t talking about the illegal eliminate-your-rivals kind. He’s talking about doing something so creative that you establish a distinct market, niche and identity. You’ve established a creative monopoly and everybody has to come to you if they want that service, at least for a time.

His lecture points to a provocative possibility: that the competitive spirit capitalism engenders can sometimes inhibit the creativity it requires.

Think about the traits that creative people possess. Creative people don’t follow the crowds; they seek out the blank spots on the map. Creative people wander through faraway and forgotten traditions and then integrate marginal perspectives back to the mainstream. Instead of being fastest around the tracks everybody knows, creative people move adaptively through wildernesses nobody knows.

Now think about the competitive environment that confronts the most fortunate people today and how it undermines those mind-sets.

First, students have to jump through ever-more demanding, preassigned academic hoops. Instead of developing a passion for one subject, they’re rewarded for becoming professional students, getting great grades across all subjects, regardless of their intrinsic interests. Instead of wandering across strange domains, they have to prudentially apportion their time, making productive use of each hour.

Then they move into a ranking system in which the most competitive college, program and employment opportunity is deemed to be the best. There is a status funnel pointing to the most competitive colleges and banks and companies, regardless of their appropriateness.

Then they move into businesses in which the main point is to beat the competition, in which the competitive juices take control and gradually obliterate other goals. I see this in politics all the time. Candidates enter politics wanting to be authentic and change things. But once the candidates enter the campaign, they stop focusing on how to be change-agents. They and their staff spend all their time focusing on beating the other guy. They hone the skills of one-upsmanship. They get engulfed in a tit-for-tat competition to win the news cycle. Instead of being new and authentic, they become artificial mirror opposites of their opponents. Instead of providing the value voters want — change — they become canned tacticians, hoping to eke out a slight win over the other side.

Competition has trumped value-creation. In this and other ways, the competitive arena undermines innovation.

You know somebody has been sucked into the competitive myopia when they start using sports or war metaphors. Sports and war are competitive enterprises. If somebody hits three home runs against you in the top of the inning, your job is to go hit four home runs in the bottom of the inning.

But business, politics, intellectual life and most other realms are not like that. In most realms, if somebody hits three home runs against you in one inning, you have the option of picking up your equipment and inventing a different game. You don’t have to compete; you can invent.

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via Paul Blumenthal, The Huffington Post

The push to raise unlimited contributions by a super PAC backing President Barack Obama’s reelection has run into a number of hurdles since Priorities USA Action was set up by former White House aide Bill Burton in 2011. Major Democratic donors have shunned the group, denying it funds to compete equally with the big Republican super PACs and social welfare nonprofits.

The most common complaint from Obama backers who won’t give to the super PAC is one that the president previously voiced: Unlimited money is bad for democracy.

“If we’re going to be the party of the people, where do we draw that line?” asked Don Peebles, a real estate developer worth upwards of $350 million and a bundler for the Obama campaign. “At the end of the day, Grant [and] Hamilton don’t vote.”

Of those who flood super PACs with big donations, Peebles noted, “People aren’t just giving this money because they care. They’re giving money to influence the government.”

Warren Buffett, the third-richest man on Earth, criticized super PACs at a May shareholders meeting: “I don’t want to see democracy go in that direction. … You have to take a stand someplace.”

In February, as it became clear that Republican super PACs and other groups would be able to raise and spend well over $100 million in the 2012 election, the president embraced Priorities USA Action, albeit still with reservation, and had his campaign state that he supported its efforts.

Fundraising for the group had been moribund before that. In January it didn’t even crack $100,000 in contributions. Since then, donations have ticked up, but not to the levels seen by the Republican groups.

Priorities USA Action has raised $8.9 million through the end of March, making it the fourth best-financed super PAC. That’s a fraction of what the big Republican guns — the pro-Mitt Romney Restore Our Future ($51.9 million) and the Karl Rove-linked American Crossroads ($28 million) — have pulled in. Social welfare nonprofits, which can raise and spend unlimited amounts without disclosing their donors, are likely to raise tens of millions for Republicans as well.

Well-known Democratic donors have shied away from Priorities USA Action for reasons that go beyond a distaste for dollar-driven democracy.

Billionaires George Soros and Peter Lewis have both avoided giving money to groups that focus on television advertising. Before this campaign, the two men were the only donors to have given in excess of $20 million to political committees in one election cycle, when they funded efforts to defeat President George W. Bush in 2004.

Lewis’ spokeswoman, Jennifer Frutchy, told Reuters in April, “The super PACs are nearly all about advertising, and he is loath to contribute toward that.”

Soros recently announced that he would begin putting money into super PACs, but only those working to organize on the grassroots level and not focused on ads. “Culturally, the left doesn’t do Swift Boat,” Soros adviser Michael Vachon told HuffPost’s Sam Stein, referring to the ad campaign run by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth to smear the 2004 Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. John Kerry.

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via Guy Adams, The Independent

Declaring that “life must always be protected”, a senior Vatican cleric has defended the Catholic Church’s decision to excommunicate the mother and doctors of a nine-year-old rape victim who had a life-saving abortion in Brazil.

Cardinal Giovanni Batista Re, who heads the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, told reporters that although the girl fell pregnant after apparently being abused by her stepfather, her twins had, “the right to live, and could not be eliminated”.

In an interview with the Italian newspaper, La Stampa, the cardinal added: “It is a sad case but the real problem is that the twins conceived were two innocent persons. Life must always be protected.”

Police believe the girl was sexually assaulted for years by her stepfather, possibly since she was six. That she was four months pregnant with twins emerged only after she was taken to hospital complaining of severe stomach pains.

The controversy represents a PR nightmare for the Vatican. The unnamed girl’s mother and doctors were excommunicated for agreeing to Wednesday’s emergency abortion yet the Church has not taken formal steps against the stepfather, who is in custody. Jose Cardoso Sobrinho, the conservative regional archbishop for Pernambuco where the girl was rushed to hospital, has said that the man would not be thrown out of the Church, because although he had allegedly committed “a heinous crime”, the Church took the view that “the abortion, the elimination of an innocent life, was more serious”.

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via W.J. Hennigan, L.A. Times

In a pivotal moment for private spaceflight, a towering white rocket lifted a cone-shaped capsule into space early Tuesday on a mission to the International Space Station.

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket carried the unmanned Dragon capsule into space after a 3:44 a.m. EDT launch from Cape Canaveral, Fla., marking the first time a private company has sent a spacecraft to the space station.

The mission is considered the first test of NASA’s plan to outsource space missions to privately funded companies now that its fleet of space shuttles is retired. SpaceX aims to prove to NASA that its Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule are ready to take on the task of hauling cargo — and eventually astronauts — for the space agency.

“Today marks the beginning of a new era in exploration; a private company has launched a spacecraft to the International Space Station that will attempt to dock there for the first time,” said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden in a speech at the cape. “And while there is a lot of work ahead to successfully complete this mission, we are certainly off to good start.”

In a separate news conference, Elon Musk, SpaceX’s 40-year-old billionaire founder and chief executive, spoke at company headquarters in Hawthorne. It was there that SpaceX employees had gathered, watched and cheered as the Falcon 9 climbed toward the heavens.

“There’s so much hope riding on that rocket,” he said. “When it worked … and they saw their handiwork in space and operating as it should, there was tremendous elation. For us, it’s like winning the Super Bowl.”

But the launch is just the beginning, and the toughest tasks in the mission lie ahead.

The Dragon capsule will rendezvous with the space station as it circles the Earth at about 1,700 mph. Once the Dragon catches up to the station, it must complete a series of complicated tests to determine if it is ready to dock.

If all goes well, the crew aboard the station will snag the spacecraft with a robotic arm and lead it in. SpaceX hopes to dock the Dragon, which is designed to carry up to seven astronauts, as early as Friday.

After years of testing, NASA is hoping to turn the job of carrying cargo and crews over to private industry at a lower cost. Meanwhile, the agency will focus on deep-space missions to land probes on asteroids and Mars.

The agency has poured nearly $400 million in seed money into SpaceX in hopes that the company can one day complete routine missions to the space station. NASA is doling out $63 million to the Russians each time it wants to send an astronaut to the station.

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via Mark Hachman, PC Mag

Facebook’s strength—that it has evolved beyond a social network, into a platform—appears to be its greatest weakness, at least in the mobile market.

Much has been made in the last week about Facebook’s inability to derive revenue from or otherwise monetize its mobile business. That may be one of the factors driving the company’s stock price down; since the opening moments of its IPO, Facebook’s share price has steadily declined.

Here’s the key quote, taken from the portion of its S-1 document dealing with its risk factors: “… mobile products, where we do not currently directly generate meaningful revenue, particularly to the extent that mobile engagement is substituted for engagement with Facebook on personal computers where we monetize usage by displaying ads and other commercial content.”

In other words, Facebook is worried about users posting status updates, check-ins, and posting pictures from smartphones instead of from their laptops and desktop PCs—exactly the mobile usage what rivals like Path, Color, and even startups like Instagram have sought to achieve. Of course, Facebook bought Instagram for $1 billion, a deal most now assume recognized the significance of the mobile market.

Basically, Facebook Mobile is getting killed by Facebook Desktop.

Yes, other risks include the so-called law of large numbers, which says Facebook’s growth will inevitably taper off as it attracts a larger proportion of the world’s users. And there’s always the risk that users will migrate to the next big thing. But monetizing mobile is the short-term problem that overrides all else.

Monetizing mobile means one thing: ads. And it seems impossible to believe that Facebook can’t figure out a strategy for embedding ads into its mobile Timelines—in fact, a few months ago, Facebook said it would be doing exactly that. The company said it would begin displaying premium ads and Sponsored Stories, or posts that have been paid for by advertisers, on mobile news feeds, and on the desktop log-out page. Previously, ads were only shown on the sidebar and desktop news feed. A new type of ad, called “Offers,” will also provide a “a free and easy way” for businesses to share discounts and promotions directly through their Facebook pages, Angela Moscaritolo reported from New York.

According to Noah Elkin, principal analyst for eMarketer, the two largest mobile ad networks are owned by Google and Apple —the developers of the two mobile operating systems Facebook’s HTML5-based mobile app runs on top of. That gives both Apple and Google at least some measure of control in this game that Facebook, which has yet to develop a specific version of its app for either OS, so far lacks.

Here’s the thing: merely displaying simple text-based ads on a Timeline or news feed shouldn’t be difficult; Google has made billions doing just that (the back-end sales and algorithms necessary to do so effectively are another story). But the rich relationships an advertiser can strike with a user via Timeline apps and other brand relationships simply aren’t there in the mobile space.

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via Laura Bassett, The Huffington Post

Franciscan University of Steubenville, a Catholic institution in Ohio, has decided to drop its entire student health insurance plan as of the fall semester 2012 because of the new federal rule requiring contraception coverage under most employee and student health policies. While a number of religious colleges have filed lawsuits over the birth control requirement, Franciscan is the first to get rid of its student health plan.

“The Obama Administration has mandated that all health insurance plans must cover ‘women’s health services’ including contraception, sterilization, and abortion-causing medications as part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA),” the school announced on its website. “Up to this time, Franciscan University has specifically excluded these services and products from its student health insurance policy, and we will not participate in a plan that requires us to violate the consistent teachings of the Catholic Church on the sacredness of human life.”

Therefore, the statement continued, the university will no longer offer student health insurance, require that all full-time undergrads have health insurance, or bill those students not covered under another plan for health insurance. The current plan expires on Aug. 15, 2012.

The announcement is somewhat misleading. Under the new rule, Franciscan University would not have to pay for any student’s contraception. The administration carved out an exemption for religious organizations, including Catholic schools, that would require the insurance company itself to pay for the insured’s birth control coverage “directly and separately.” Nonprofit schools that don’t currently cover birth control can also qualify for a one-year transition period to comply with the new requirement.

Further, the birth control mandate does not include any “abortion-causing medications.” Rather, it includes emergency contraception, which prevents pregnancy. But the U.S. Catholic bishops have frequently and publicly objected to the contraception coverage requirement based on the claim that it includes “abortifacients.”

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via Ruth Marcus, The Washington Post

President Obama is walking a tightrope on same-sex marriage, teetering between his stated view that marriage is the province of the states and his legal position that refusal to recognize same-sex marriage can violate the Constitution.

In his interview with ABC’s Robin Roberts, the president emphasized the traditional state role in defining marriage. “I continue to believe that this is an issue that is going to be worked at the local level because, historically, this has not been a federal issue,” he said.

Referring to Mitt Romney’s support for a constitutional amendment to bar same-sex marriage, the president warned it would be “a mistake to try to make what has traditionally been a state issue into a national issue.”

But in Loving v. Virginia, the Supreme Court’s 1967 ruling that anti-miscegenation laws violate the equal protection and due process clauses of the Constitution, the justices did exactly what Obama counsels against. The decision transformed a state issue into a national one, because of the odiousness of discriminating on the basis of race and the fundamental importance of the right to marry.

“The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men,” Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote in Loving.

Federal courts are now grappling with the ruling’s modern-day equivalent: whether those constitutional protections extend to same-sex couples. Under Obama’s direction, the Justice Department took the extraordinary step of declining to defend the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), the 1996 law that prohibits the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages from states that perform them.

“We consider that a violation of [the] equal protection clause,” Obama told Roberts. “I helped to prompt that move on the part of the Justice Department.”

The stance of the Obama Justice Department in the DOMA cases can, for now, be squared with the president’s states’-rights position. After all, in the pending litigation the department is arguing in favor of the ability of states to define marriage on their own terms, rather than being dictated to by the federal government.

But the implications of the Justice Department’s legal arguments point to an eventual clash with the president’s leave-it-to-the-states approach. In its brief arguing that DOMA is unconstitutional, the department said that laws discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation should be subject to “heightened scrutiny” by courts. That would mean such laws could pass constitutional muster only if they are “substantially related to an important governmental objective.”

DOMA, it contended, failed to meet that test. Citing earlier Supreme Court rulings, the Justice Department argued that the interests Congress asserted in passing DOMA, such as “defending traditional notions of morality” or “promoting heterosexuality,” are not acceptable justifications.

“Discouraging homosexuality, in other words, is not a governmental interest that justifies sexual orientation discrimination,” the brief stated.

Neither, it continued, is the notion of defending traditional heterosexual marriage. “As an initial matter, reference to tradition, no matter how long established, cannot by itself justify a discriminatory law under equal protection principles,” the brief said.

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Emanuel hails weekend as a ‘milestone’ for city

via Kristen Mack, Rick Pearson, and Bob Secter

Once again, the whole world was watching. But Chicago didn’t devolve into 1968 redux. It wasn’t the combustible World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle, either.

By that barometer, Chicago’s turn as host of the NATO summit could be declared a success.

Protests got rowdy but not wildly out of hand. Security was tight but the city wasn’t on lockdown, allowing the business of the summit to proceed. Commuters were inconvenienced but by and large could get where they needed to go — and many decided where they needed to go was nowhere near downtown.

In the end, the summit proved a one-weekend blip on the radar of a major urban metropolis used to crowds, conventions, dignitaries and hoopla.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel hailed it as a “milestone” for the city on par with other history-making events.

“By hosting NATO and the NATO summit, we have reinforced, reaffirmed and revitalized Chicago’s role on the world stage,” Emanuel declared Monday, his first public comments in four days. “While Chicago has the title of second city, because of the NATO summit, we’ve shown the world that we are a world-class, first-class city.”

It will be weeks or even months before anyone can hit a total button on the economic costs or benefits of the gathering to the city.

David Vite, president and CEO of the Illinois Retail Merchants Association, said all the face time Chicago was getting on TV around the world could lead to a payoff in the long term. But Vite also noted that retail activity appeared to slow to a crawl in the central city.

“While we don’t have any numbers … for 72 hours it was not a great business weekend,” Vite said.

The business slump during the NATO summit weekend came as no surprise to downtown restaurant owners, but things weren’t much better in outlying neighborhoods well removed from the action. “Brutal, that would be my word,” said Drew Goss, co-owner of West Town Tavern on Chicago Avenue in Logan Square.

For nearly a year leading up to the summit, Emanuel promised it would raise the city’s global profile in an era of international trade and tourism.

Chicago’s existing global profile was underscored by two of the targets that anti-NATO protesters chose to focus their ire on Monday: The international headquarters of aerospace giant Boeing and the re-election headquarters of the leader of the free world, President Barack Obama.

“The image of Chicago was good already before we arrived,” observed NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen on Monday.

Chicago’s residents didn’t get a chance to weigh in on whether they wanted to host the world — Emanuel simply announced the event was coming after lobbying the White House to let him hold the summit in Obama’s hometown.

With no formal role during the summit, Emanuel played good-will ambassador. After a year in office where he has commanded the media spotlight, the mayor largely stepped aside and watched the party he organized from the corner of the room.

Not so his police superintendent, Garry McCarthy, who was a constant presence alongside his officers at the scene of demonstrations looking every bit the part of a take-charge law enforcement official.

During a Sunday protest near McCormick Place that turned into a tense standoff between protesters and police, McCarthy was captured on television cameras helping an officer who had fallen get back on his feet, patting him on the back and encouraging him to rejoin the scrum. For McCarthy, being out front was probably a job requirement, but one that carried risk if the protests went south.

The mayor on Monday issued a special thank you to police for doing a “tremendous job under very stressful situations” over the course of the weekend. He said he went to thank many of them personally on the street, shaking 400 to 500 hands.

The weekend served as the official capstone to Emanuel’s first year in office, an anniversary party of sorts thrown by the federal government and private donors that between them picked up the $55 million tab. It’ll be some time before it’s clear whether that amount is sufficient to cover the city’s costs, though the mayor has long promised it would be.

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via Zachary Bernstein, ThinkProgress

The Missouri House passed a “conscience bill” yesterday to allow health care workers to deny health care to women. Under the law, medical professionals cannot be fired or discriminated against for refusing to provide contraception or perform abortions if it conflicted with their personal views, while employers do not have to cover contraception.

But as opponents of the measure point out, there is more at stake than religious convictions for doctors or pharmacists:

Most of the opposition in the House came from Democratic lawmakers representing districts near St. Louis and Kansas City who argued the legislation would inhibit access to health care for some Missourians. Several opponents said it seemed the measure was aimed particularly at birth control.

Rep. Stacey Newman, D-St. Louis, said the medical procedures at issue in the legislation would affect women most directly. Speaking with a male opponent of the measure, Newman said, “You will be putting your stamp on what you think I should be doing and also deciding if your religious beliefs will supersede my religious beliefs and my moral convictions.”

This bill now goes to the state Senate for consideration before the Missouri legislative session ends on Friday.

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via Marcus Wohlsen, The Huffington Post

A watchful eye has arrived on San Francisco’s bar scene, but not to keep you in check. It just wants to check you out.

A new app launched this weekend that will scan the faces of patrons in 25 bars across the city to determine their ages and genders. Would-be customers can then check their smartphones for real-time updates on the crowd size, average age and men-to-women mix to decide whether the scene is to their liking.

The Austin, Texas-based makers of SceneTap say the app doesn’t identify specific individuals or save personal information. But in a city known for its love of both libations and civil liberties, a backlash erupted even before the first cameras were switched on from bar-goers who said they would boycott any venue with SceneTap installed.

SceneTap’s ability to guess how old people are and whether they’re men or women relies on advances in a field known as biometrics. A camera at the door snaps your picture, and software maps your features to a grid. By measuring distances such as the length between the nose and the eyes and the eyes and the ears, an algorithm matches your dimensions to a database of averages for age and gender.

SceneTap CEO Cole Harper says the app doesn’t invade patrons’ privacy because the only data it stores is their estimated ages and genders and the time they arrived – not their images or measurements.

“Nothing that we do is collecting personal information. It’s not recorded, it’s not streamed, it’s not individualized,” Harper said.

Whether the company’s promises are comforting or SceneTap still seems creepy, it portends a near future when any camera-equipped smartphone will have the ability to recognize faces with a click of the virtual shutter.

Already the iPhone’s camera app will highlight a person’s face on the screen with a green box before the picture is even snapped. And Apple’s iPhoto software will try to recognize the faces of the people in users’ pictures to categorize photos automatically by who’s in the shot.

Facebook also uses facial recognition software that tries to identify any friends in a photo a user uploads.

SceneTap’s San Francisco debut came the same day Facebook went public. Privacy experts say social media has played a major role in making it easier to attach a face to a name.

“Ten years ago if I walked down the street and took a picture of someone I didn’t know, there was little I could do to find out who that person was. Today it’s a very different story,” said Lee Tien, a staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who focuses on surveillance technology and privacy.

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via Ed Pilkington, The Guardian

Democratic politicians in Virginia are weighing up their options in the wake of the general assembly’s vote to block the appointment of the state’s first openly gay judge.

Senior Democrats expressed their dismay and outrage at the vote in the House of Delegates to reject a prominent local prosecutor, Tracy Thorne-Begland, for a vacancy on the Richmond circuit court. The decision instantly engulfed Virginia in the toxic fumes of the gay marriage debate sweeping America.

The vote followed a heated debate in which Republican delegates accused Thorne-Begland of having violated military rules by coming out as gay while serving in the navy 20 years ago.

Delegates voted 33 to 31 in favour of his appointment to the bench, but that fell short of the majority of 51 votes needed for ratification. Ten delegates abstained, and 26 stayed at home.

Jennifer McClellan, the Democratic delegate for the area of Richmond in which Thorne-Begland lives, said that his rejection was not the end of the struggle. “One day the LBGT community will be represented on the bench in Virginia, and that’s a fight worth having,” she said.

There is no immediate way that Tuesday’s vote can be reconsidered by the House of Delegates, which has now adjourned for the rest of the year. It would be possible to renominate Thorne-Begland for the judgeship next January, when the assembly reconvenes, but that would be dependent on his own wishes, which he has not yet articulated. His only statement on the matter is that he is “looking forward to continuing to serve the citizens of the city of Richmond and the great commonwealth of Virginia”.

The block on the appointment of Thorne-Begland, 45, has thrown Virginia into the centre of the debate about the legal status of gay and lesbian Americans. Last week Barack Obama said that he supported same-sex marriage, making his unexpected intervention a day after North Carolina became the 31st state to place a constitutional ban on gay marriage.

McClellan said that Thorne-Begland had been the best candidate for the judgeship, a fact that was lost amid the House of Delegates debate which she said had been marred by misinformation. Robert Marshall, who led the Republican opposition to the appointment, accused Thorne-Begland of having broken military rules when he appeared as a serving naval officer on the ABC TV show Nightline and came out as gay.

McClellan said that to portray him as having broken naval rules was unfair. “He never violated military rules. He was honourably discharged from the military twice.”

Should Thorne-Begland agree to put himself forward for renomination in January, his supporters hope that there is potential to shift the assembly to avoid another humiliating rejection. Among the 36 delegates who abstained or stayed away, there is thought to be several members who could be brought on board should a successful “yes” vote be deemed attainable.

There was an outpouring of criticism of Virginia’s assembly following the vote. Thorne-Begland’s boss, Michael Herring, the attorney of Richmond commonwealth, made an impassioned speech in which he denounced the rejection as an embarrassment. “I’ve known Tracy for years, he’s a good man, a good father, a good lawyer and he was a good navy pilot. He would have been an outstanding judge and for the life of me I can’t understand why folks voted against his nomination.”

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via Matt Krantz, USA TODAY

Facebook shares jumped 13% to $43 as the stock opened in the frenzied first minutes of trading Friday, but just as quckly the price slid, tas investors stormed Wall Street to trade shares of the world’s leading social networking company.

The stock rose $5 from its initial price of $38 a share, indicating just how strong demand is for the company, especially from individual investors who largely couldn’t buy shares at the initial public offering price. There were so many last minute orders that trading, initially set for 11 a.m. ET., was delayed by nearly 30 minutes. The early gains were trimmed to about 5% in mid-day trading.

At its current stock price, Facebook is being valued at $121 billion, which makes it worth more than Amazon.com, McDonald’s, Cisco Systems and Visa. The company raised $16 billion in the IPO. It could raise more, up to a total of $18.4 billion, if the company’s investment bankers utilize an overallotment option reserved to satisfy additional demand.

The stock trades by the symbol FB on the Nasdaq exchange. Trading was expected to begin trading at 11 ET Friday. But trading was delayed as market makers attempted to match buying and selling interest to arrive at a valid opening price.

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via Erika Niedowski, The Huffington Post

Rhode Island’s governor on Monday declared that the state will recognize same-sex marriages performed elsewhere, giving gay couples the same rights as heterosexual ones when it comes to health insurance and a slew of other benefits.

The order signed by Gov. Lincoln Chafee in a Statehouse ceremony directs state agencies to recognize marriages performed out of state as legal and treat same-sex married couples the same as heterosexual ones.

Some gay couples married outside Rhode Island – where civil unions are allowed, but gay marriage is illegal – have not been afforded certain rights because state law is not clear on the subject.

In 2007, then-Attorney General Patrick Lynch issued an opinion in favor of recognizing out-of-state same-sex marriages, but it was nonbinding. Chafee said his signing of the executive order is “following through” on that opinion.

The executive order is expected to have many real-world implications. Same-sex spouses of state employees and anyone covered by an insurance company regulated in Rhode Island will be entitled to health and life insurance benefits, gay rights advocates say.

Both partners in a same-sex couple will be able to list their names as parents on a child’s birth certificate, and same-sex couples will be entitled to sales tax exemptions on the transfer of property including vehicles.

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via Fran Spielman, Chicago Sun-Times

Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Wednesday offered Chicago area residents a new and compelling reason to welcome a NATO summit many are dreading as a giant inconvenience: a place in world history.

No matter what happens with the thousands of demonstrators on the streets of Chicago outside McCormick Place, serious foreign policy business will be conducted inside the convention center, he said.

“NATO will be now deciding how to de-emphasize its involvement, its footprint in Afghanistan and how to wind down its presence. It will be known as the ‘Chicago Accords,’ basically,” the mayor said.

“That’s significant. Something that started post-9/11 will now become de-emphasized and the NATO kind of presence as it dealt with Afghanistan will now be on the downward slop — not an upward slope. And that is going to be agreed to here.”

Emanuel noted that sixty world leaders and foreign ministers are coming to Chicago, many of them for the first time. Roughly 2,500 members of the international press, who are coming to cover the summit, may never have been here, either.

“They get to New York or [Washington] D.C. and that’s their experience of America. They’re [now] gonna see the most American of American cities,” the mayor said.

“That exposure highlights this great metropolitan international city and the investments and economic opportunity and job growth that comes with it….A lot of our economy depends on that type of investment and they see a city that they otherwise had only read about or had one image on.”

As the NATO summit draws near, Emanuel has become increasingly defensive about an event that many Chicagoans view as a giant headache.

For months, he described the summit as a “minor inconvenience” that’s worth the pain to showcase Chicago on the world stage. He called it the Olympics without the athletes.

But after the U.S. Secret Service disclosed plans to close three major expressways, lakefront museums and countless roads to protect President Barack Obama and other world leaders, the mayor acknowledged that it was a whole lot more than a “minor inconvenience.”

Instead, he urged Chicagoans to view the summit in the context of other, longer inconveniences.

“The Green Line was shut down for two years. How long has Congress [Parkway] been under work? How long has Wacker [Drive] been under construction?…This is two days vs. five years. Can you spell the word perspective?” he told the Chicago Sun-Times during an interview on his first year in office.

“I’m sensitive to this. I want to be sensitive to this…For businesses and residents in certain parts, it will have its challenges. But, I want people to remember, it’s two days.”

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via Nicole Brodeur, The Seattle Times

The Little Rascals had the “He-Man Woman Haters Club.” We’ve got The Catholic Church.

Just a few weeks after the Vatican started looking into the activities of the umbrella group representing some 57,000 American nuns, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) showed it had smaller fish to fry: The Girl Scouts of America (GSA).

The nation’s cutest cookie pushers are the subject of an “official inquiry” by the bishops’ Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life and Youth, according to National Public Radio.

The bishops are suspicious of some of the scouts’ program materials, and relationships with groups that conflict with church teaching. (The Girl Scouts are a secular group, but many troops are church-based.)

The USCCB doesn’t like that the Girl Scouts have connected with groups like Doctors Without Borders, the Sierra Club and Oxfam International, because they support family planning and emergency contraception, the report said.

It doesn’t like that the Girl Scouts belong to the 145-nation World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts, which supports girls and women having “an environment where they can freely and openly discuss issues of sex and sexuality.”

It doesn’t like that one troop in Colorado welcomed a transgender Scout.

Nor does it like that when Girl Scouts CEO Anna Marie Chavez was featured in Marie Claire magazine, Scouts were directed to the magazine’s home page, which includes the promotion of a sex-advice column.

That’s rich: U.S. bishops getting so uptight about sex, when in 2004, a survey by the John Jay School of Criminal Justice found that 4,392 American priests were alleged to have sexually abused young people in their pastoral care.

Where was the outrage and inquiry then? Why weren’t they as suspicious then as they are now?

If the bishops order Catholic girls to leave the Scouts, it could fold the organization’s tent for good. Membership already has been dropping off, and the Girl Scouts estimate that one-fourth of their 2.3 million members are Catholic.

What a nice way to mark the Girl Scouts’ 100th anniversary: Make them part of the continuing War on Women.

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via Dan Froomkin and Paul Blumenthal, The Huffington Post

One of the most consequential campaign finance loopholes affecting the 2012 race — the one allowing big-money donors to secretly funnel millions into campaign ads — is now closed, after an appellate court ruling on Monday.

In April, a district court judge struck down a Federal Election Commission regulation that allowed donors to certain nonprofit groups — including those created by Karl Rove and the Koch brothers — to evade normal disclosure requirements.

And on Monday, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit turned down a request to stay that ruling on a 2 to 1 vote.

“This case represents the first major breakthrough in the effort to restore for the public the disclosure of contributors who are secretly providing massive amounts to influence federal elections,” said Democracy 21 President Fred Wertheimer, one of the lawyers who filed the original lawsuit that led to the April decision, in a statement.

The office of House Administration Committee ranking Democrat Robert A. Brady issued a statement Tuesday saying, “As of today, any entity creating electioneering communications will have to disclose the identity of their top donors.”

“As far as we see, the groups now have an obligation, pursuant to the district court ruling, to disclose all their donors of over $1,000,” said Tara Malloy, a lawyer with the Campaign Legal Center, a group that aims to reduce the influence of money in politics.

But whether the non-disclosing groups will suddenly change their behavior — or gamble that they can continue to skirt disclosure requirements — remains unclear. “That is the million-dollar question,” Malloy said. “Or more like the $100 million question.”

Campaign law expert Rick Hasen blogged that he expects the “stay request to now end up before the Supreme Court, where the outcome may be different.”

The FEC’s commissioners, who in normal circumstances would issue new regulations that enforce the law as interpreted by the court, are deadlocked 3-3 on virtually every important matter that comes before them.

The April ruling already prompted one group, the conservative American Future Fund, to ask for an advisory opinion on whether they could continue to keep their donors secret as long as they used “White House” or “administration” in their ads rather than “Obama.”

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via William Pesek, Bloomberg

The iPhone has become a symbol of something Steve Jobs never envisioned: Chinese sweatshops.

Were the late Apple Inc. co-founder still with us, he would surely dispute that. But facts are facts, and any of us (full disclosure: this includes me) who use one of Apple’s smartphones, iPads or iPods is, at least indirectly, supporting the exploitation of electronics factory workers in China.

Yet what if the iPhone is a key to ending the poverty that forces so many Asians to toil in such abhorrent conditions?

The buzz phrase “financial inclusion” is getting increasing attention these days. It refers to the world’s unbanked masses, what bankers like to call “the other 3 billion.” That’s the estimated number of people who lack access to the most basic of financial services. And in nations such as India and the Philippines, a key answer may be mobile phones. Poor Asians who lack bank accounts often have one.

That has banks turning to experts on mobile-device networking systems, such as Jay Collins. Working for Citigroup Inc. (C) in New York, Collins is one of modern finance’s true alchemists, endeavoring to find ways for the poor to move, pay, collect and store money on mobile devices.

No more wasting an entire day at the bank or paying various bills in person. No more being scammed when remitting cash to families overseas. No more getting robbed while carrying your weekly wages. No more public officials skimming money off the top. No more black-market money changers. No more turning to loan sharks.

Cutting Out Middlemen

That also goes for small and midsize enterprises, which account for almost half of all employment in developing Asia. Owners and managers could make payments to suppliers and employees directly into accounts connected to mobile-phone SIM cards, eliminating any number of middlemen all looking for their cut. The more cash and credit these businesses get their hands on, the more Asians (MXAP) they can hire.

“We view this as our killer app that could transform banking and reduce poverty and corruption at the same time,” Collins says.

Citigroup isn’t an altruistic venture. It’s championing this revolution because of the potential profits: loads of new customers, deposits and, of course, fee income. Just as George Soros’s Quantum (M) Ltd., Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Nomura Holdings Inc. invested in microfinance, Citigroup realizes there’s money to be made even from those with little of it.

The potential of mobile banking deserves far more attention than it’s getting from governments. It could enable billions to leapfrog from no connection to the global financial system to becoming productive participants. Asia’s poor would suddenly have a way to manage income, build assets, invest in the future and buy insurance to prepare for risks like health crises or natural disasters.

Political leaders should facilitate the technology’s growth with regulations and oversight to ensure security against hacking and scams. They should commit to distribute certain salaries, benefits and subsidies on mobile systems. They should step up efforts to raise financial literacy in the region.

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via Paige Lavender, The Huffington Post

Mitt Romney said the protesters rallying against Bank of America in Charlotte this week are too young “to really understand how the economy works.”

“Unfortunately, a lot of young folks haven’t had the opportunity to really understand how the economy works, and what it takes to put people to work in real jobs, and why we have banks, and what banks do,” Romney told WBTV in Charlotte, according to National Journal. “It’s a very understandable sentiment if you don’t find a job, and you can’t see rising incomes. You’re going to be angry and looking at someone to blame.”

Romney said the protesters’ blame should be targeted at “the president and the old school liberals that have not gotten this economy turned around.” He made a not-so-subtle 2012 push, insisting he’s the one who “understands how to get the economy going again.”

The protesters — which included Occupy Wall Street activists, environmentalists, pro-union advocates and victims of home foreclosures — held massive demonstrations outside of Bank of America’s shareholder meeting in Charlotte on Wednesday. Occupiers saw the event as a trial run ahead of September’s Democratic National Convention, which will have an increased police presence thanks to a City Council ordinance from earlier this year.

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via Yahoo! News

President Barack Obama has signed a waiver to remove curbs on funding to the Palestinian Authority, declaring the aid to be “important to the security interests of the United States.”

A $192 million aid package was frozen by the US Congress after the Palestinians moved to gain statehood at the United Nations last September.

But in a memo sent to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, published by the White House, the president said it was appropriate to release funds to the authority, which administers the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

In signing the waiver, Obama instructed Clinton to inform Congress of the move, on the grounds that “waiving such prohibition is important to the national security interests of the United States.”

The Department of State, Foreign Operations and Related Programs Appropriations Act of 2012 contained a provision that said none of the funds “may be obligated or expended with respect to providing funds to the Palestinian Authority.”

In November, the US Congress released $40 million but the State Department had expressed concern about being able to provide the necessary funding to address the dire economic and humanitarian hardship facing Palestinians.

White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said the funds were aimed at “ensuring the continued viability of the moderate PA government under the leadership of president Mahmoud Abbas and prime minister Salam Fayyad.”

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via Steve Olenski, Social Media Today

Facebook is currently testing the idea to charge users to highlight a given post or picture on their Facebook wall.

Let’s say you’re out one night at a club and you take a picture of your buddies making complete idiots out of themsleves and you want to post that picture to Facebook.

Happens all the time, right?

Or if you come across this incredible article you just read and you want to make sure all your friends see it when you post it.

Or you’re a business owner who wants to highlight a post about your latest product.

Well you may be able to take that same post, picture or article and post it to Facebook with a bright, yellow background with it so it really stands out.

Wouldn’t that be great?!?!

Well before you get too excited there may be a fee associated with this new feature, which is currently being tested in New Zealand.

Why New Zealand?

Who knows.

What I do know is I first heard about this on BusinessInsider.com which led me to the full story on stuff.co.nz, where I read… “Facebook is considering charging its members US$2 to “highlight” important posts so they are more visible on the social networking site.”

Two bucks in exchange for some yellow background.

Here’s a screenshot of what is being called the “Highlight” feature:

The user who received the offer to try this new feature was at first thinking it was a scam, but according to stuff.co.nz a spokeswoman from Facebook by the name of Mia Garlick confirmed it was a real feature they were testing.

“We’re constantly testing new features across the site. This particular test is simply to gauge people’s interest in this method of sharing with their friends,” said Garlick.

Ms. Garlick also told stuff.co.nz that Facebook is testing different price points including the aforementioned $2 as well as offering it for free or some other amount.

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via Will Doig, Salon

Cities as technologically precise as a Formula One race car are being built now. Do we really want to live in them?

Formula One car racing is the most viewed sport in the world. On any given race day, half a billion people — one-fourteenth of the globe — are watching it on TV. But it’s what they’re not seeing that wins races today: More than 300 sensors are implanted throughout each vehicle to monitor everything from air displacement to tire temperature to the driver’s heart rate. These data are continuously transmitted back to a control room, where engineers run millions of calculations in real time and tweak their driver’s strategy accordingly.

Through this process, every last ounce of efficiency and performance is wrung out of each car. And so it will be with cities like PlanIT Valley, currently being built from scratch in northern Portugal. Slated for completion in 2015, PlanIT Valley won’t be a mere “smart city” — it will be a sentient city, with 100 million sensors embedded throughout, running on the same technology that’s in the Formula One cars, each sensor sending a stream of data through the city’s trademarked Urban Operating System (UOS), which will run the city with minimal human intervention.

“We saw an opportunity … to go create something that was starting with a blank sheet,” said PlanIT Valley creator Steve Lewis, “thinking from a systems-wide process in the same way we would think about computing technologies.”

Built-from-scratch cities have been popping up for years, but fully sentient ones are only in the prototype stage (PlanIT Valley will have just 150,000 residents). And their goal, as with all sentient beings, is to replicate. The percentage of global city dwellers will surge to 70 percent by 2050, and many of the fastest-growing cities are sprawling eco-disasters in the making. PlanIT Valley’s hyper-efficient model promises to be bright green. A white paper created by Living PlanIT, the company designing PlanIT Valley, details an techno-paradise of energy conservation. (Living PlanIT did not respond to requests for comment.) Cars are guided toward empty parking spaces, personal computers are engaged to run the UOS when they’re sitting idle, and rooms not only lower the air conditioning when you’ve left them (yes, the system will know when you’ve left them), but can even decide whether it’s worth it to do so based on how long you typically leave that room vacant.

But wait, there’s more! Leaky faucet? The UOS can detect it, and if it can’t do the repair remotely, will dispatch a plumber. Lose your child? Surveillance cameras might be swiveled to ascertain “the child’s current location and activity.” Apartment on fire? The UOS will alert the fire department, direct each resident to the safest exit, adjust the neighborhood’s traffic lights to clear a path for the incoming trucks, tell the firefighters which parts of the building are affected and the locations of anyone inside, automatically unlock doors and windows, increase pressure in that neighborhood’s water mains, and allocate patients in priority order when they arrive at the nearest hospital.

In many ways, this type of city epitomizes our attitudes toward modern technology, says Mark Shepard, an architect and the author of “Sentient City: Ubiquitous Computing, Architecture, and the Future of Urban Space.” “From a tech perspective, we’re not really selling products and services anymore. We’re selling lifestyles,” he says. And the sentient-city lifestyle is sure to appeal to a certain brand of technophile. “Why not?” says Carlo Ratti, director of MIT’s SENSEable City Lab, when asked if he’d live in a city like PlanIT Valley. “Provided I have control of my own information, which is a very basic principle we should ask for.”

But for the rest of us, this radical re-imagining of city life is a classic example of top-down urbanism, treating the residents as a problem to be solved rather than as part of the solution. Certainly, city governments need to provide for their people and run a tight ship, but a city that operates like a valet service works against urban life’s primary strength. There’s a great little poem by D.H. Lawrence called “The Third Thing”:

Water is H20, hydrogen two parts, oxygen one,
But there is also a third thing, that makes it water
And nobody knows what that is.

Cities are more than the sum of their parts because it’s not their parts that make them great. It’s the thing in between those parts — if you live in a city, you know what I’m talking about. “Cities built from scratch have generally failed because they don’t become cities that people evolve through,” says Shepard. “Quite often, it’s the productive friction these places produce that make them dynamic.” Not that life in PlanIT Valley couldn’t end up being dynamic despite itself. “The funny thing about these cities programmed for efficiency, you find a lot of conversations about how to design serendipity back into them to make them more interesting,” says Usman Haque, founder of Pachube, an open Web service that manages real-time data.

Haque foresees that vital urban friction coming to PlanIT Valley, but not in preprogrammed form — rather, in the form of residents figuring out how to beat the system. “When you have more rigid structures, people get very creative in finding ways to get around it,” he says. You can picture PlanIT Valley following in the huge three-toed footsteps of Jurassic Park as “nature finds a way.” “The inhabitants will eventually want to reconfigure it and have an effect on it,” says Haque. “You either plan for that, or be surprised by the push-back.”

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via Carrie Budoff Brown and Seung Min Kim, Politico

President Barack Obama’s embrace of same-sex marriage was viewed for so long as such a risky move that operatives in both parties expected it to drop like a bomb, handing Republicans a powerful wedge issue in an election year.

Instead, it’s landed like a feather.

Top Republican officeholders went out of their way Thursday to try to shift the conversation back to the economy. The GOP’s House and Senate campaign committees practically ignored it. And prominent Republican strategists are warning the party to steer clear of it.

One notable exception is Ed Gillespie, a top adviser to the presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney. Gillespie predicted on MSNBC that Obama’s support of same-sex marriage would become a significant campaign issue. And, signaling divisions within the party, cultural conservatives said Romney would be foolish not to capitalize on Obama’s announcement. But Romney himself made no mention of it Thursday during a fundraiser and public event.

The muted Republican response calls into question long-standing assumptions that the president’s endorsement would prove perilous, used by the GOP as a turnout and organizing tool in the same way that former President George W. Bush’s campaign relied on anti-gay marriage initiatives in swing states in 2004 to motivate his supporters.

There’s still plenty of time for the GOP to modify its strategy, but the relative silence from national Republicans so far suggests 2012 may look nothing like 2004.

The early calculation by Republicans is that it’s not worth diverting attention from the economy, which remains Obama’s biggest weakness, and that an intense focus on gay marriage may actually further alienate women and younger voters who were turned off by the GOP’s focus earlier this year on limiting access to birth control.

“This election is all about jobs, the economy, spending and the debt,” said Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster who advised former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman’s presidential campaign. “The president’s decision is not going to change that fundamental foundation. It might make a difference at the margins, especially in culturally conservative states and among cultural conservatives. But it just is not where voters are.”

“I recommend that Republicans focus like a laser on the economy,” Ayres added.

Democrats were the ones playing offense. The Obama campaign and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee used the issue to appeal for donations. The White House highlighted the president’s ABC News interview in an email to supporters. And gay-rights advocates in Massachusetts went on the attack against Republican Sen. Scott Brown, who is locked in a tight race with Elizabeth Warren.

But White House press secretary Jay Carney made clear Thursday that, like Republicans, Obama doesn’t intend to keep talking about gay marriage.

“The president’s focus, as I think he also said yesterday in his interview, has been and will continue to be on jobs and the economy,” Carney said. “Creating greater security for a middle class in this country that has been under stress for a long time, even predating the Great Recession, has been [the] No. 1 priority. It was his No. 1 priority when he ran for office, for this office, and it has been his priority since he took the oath of office. And I think you will hear him focus on those issues just as he has — going forward, just as he has in the past.”

The Republicans caution was apparent on multiple fronts Thursday.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) refused to get drawn into the debate, telling reporters that he believes marriage should be between “one man and one woman” and then quickly returned to the economy.

“The president can talk about it all he wants. I’m going to stay focused on what the American people want us to stay focused on, and that’s jobs,” he said.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), often at the leading edge of the party’s messaging strategy, made no mention of the issue during his floor remarks Thursday, choosing instead to talk about the economy.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee are usually both quick to blast out press releases demanding that vulnerable Democrats state whether they agree with the president on hot-button issues. On Thursday, they kept an unusually low profile.

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Think the DNC should be moved out of North Carolina?
Sign the petition here.

via George E. Condon Jr., National Journal

Democrats who already were queasy about the site of their national convention could be excused after Tuesday’s election in North Carolina if they asked, “Tell me again just why we’re going to Charlotte this year?” In fact, many Democrats privately are asking exactly that after the state’s voters overwhelmingly approved a measure outlawing not just same-sex marriage — which already was illegal in North Carolina — but also any form of civil unions. Almost immediately after the vote, more than 20,000 people signed a “move the convention” petition being pushed by a New York group called Gay Marriage USA. And Twitter accounts lit up with hundreds of angry tweets demanding the party pull out of Charlotte.

And it’s not as if things were going swimmingly for convention organizers before Tuesday’s vote. Fundraising was lagging with the Democrats’ decision not to accept money from corporations, making it much more difficult to reach the needed $36.6 million. That led to more pressure on labor unions to pony up. But they would rather spend their money on grassroots efforts and are still miffed that the party decided to go to a “right to work” state and a city with few unionized hotels.

You can add to the mix an unpopular Democratic governor who has decided not to run for another term, likely handing the statehouse to the Republicans. And don’t forget a messy sexual harassment scandal that has forced the state Democratic Party’s executive director to resign and left the party chairman with no choice but to step down with a new chairman slated to be elected on Saturday.

And, oh yes, there is the fact that President Obama will be accepting his nomination with a speech at the unfortunately named Bank of America Stadium, an occasion that will lead to a run of stories about the $45 billion that the banking powerhouse received in the unpopular TARP bailout. And there will be mentions of the bank’s inclusion on the list of mortgage companies where staffers signed foreclosure documents without verifying the information on them.

What’s not to love about a Charlotte convention? When the city beat out the other finalists — Cleveland, Minneapolis and St. Louis — it used the slogan “Charlotte in 2012: Reaching for Tomorrow.” The challenge for Democrats now is to try to forget a pretty messy Today.

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Think the DNC should be moved out of North Carolina?
Sign the petition here.