Join us on Thursday, March 24th at 4 p.m. PST for our first hour long #VLCHAT conversation on Twitter!

We’ll be tweeting with AZ State Senator Kyrsten Sinema regarding the growing number of SB1070 copy-cat legislation around the country and the rise of hate-speech against Latinos.

Senator Sinema is one of the most active Twitter users and her live tweets from the Arizona State Senate have kept us all informed with up to the minute updates on legislation that would give SB1070 more power. Legislation like SB1308, SB1309, SB1405, SB1407, and SB1611.

Here’s what you need to know:

Hashtag: #VLChat <– use this so that we can track your contributions, ask questions!
Where: Online, on your phone, on your iPad, world wide! 4 – 5 p.m. PST
Topic: #Immigration, #SB1070, #HateSpeech against #Latinos, where is the country headed?
With: @VotoLatino & @KyrstenSinema

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Arizona HB2443, passed out of the State Senate yesterday, makes it illegal to perform an abortion on the basis of the sex and/or race of the fetus. This legislation is designed to erode a woman’s right to choose by using a foot-in-the-door strategy. Here is how it works:

• Arizona Republicans propose legislation restricting abortion rights in a way that makes opposition politically difficult. A no vote will be spun as “Democratic legislator X voted to allow doctors to kill unborn babies because of their race or gender.” Not that they need the Democratic votes anyway with their majority.
• With passage, a woman now can be forced to state a reason for having an abortion. Anti-abortion activists can now continuously file criminal charges against abortion providers, with the female patients potentially forced to give a statement to a police officer or attorney regarding the reason for her abortion. If at the time of the abortion the patient was aware of the sex of the fetus, the doctor/patient are even more at risk. If the father of the fetus is of a different race than the mother, the abortion is immediately called into question.

Republicans are claiming that the legislation is to prevent “gendercide,” which they apparently believe is an epidemic in the state: (emphasis mine)

But backers said the practice is occurring in America.

There is evidence to prove it, said Sen. Nancy Barto, R-Phoenix.

She pointed to a 2008 study in the “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America,” in which the authors concluded that, among families from Asia, some sex selection is going on in the United States.

The authors, however, had no proof, only statistics that suggest such abortions have taken place.

The authors had examined 2000 Census data about families that identified themselves as Chinese, Korean or Asian-Indian. While the ratio of boys to girls among first-born children was in line with the average, the study found that when the first child was a girl, the likelihood of the second child’s being a boy increased, and the likelihood increased even more sharply among third children when both the first- and second-born children were girls.

Among second children, it was 17 percent more likely that the parents would have a boy if the first had been a girl, and among third children, 50 percent more likely if the parents had not yet had a boy.

“We interpret the found deviation in favor of sons to be evidence of sex selection, most likely at the prenatal stage,” the study reads.

In other words, if I flipped a coin, and the first result was heads, the second result was more likely to be tails. If I flipped heads twice in a row, it was even more likely to be tails the next toss.

In countries with quotas on children, gendercide and sex selection certainly exist. In the United States we have no such quotas, and the idea that women keep aborting their female fetuses until they get a male one is ridiculous. Almost as ridiculous as the other huge non-problem the state faced: animal-human hybrids.

This legislation gives anti-abortion activists legal avenues to harass women and abortion providers and creates a framework for taking away a woman’s right to choose. I can’t come up with any other situation where a legal action becomes illegal solely because of what the person might have been thinking.

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Today, Hollywood celebrities, Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, NFL stars, business, clergy and civil rights leaders launched Freedom to Marry’s “Say I Do” campaign urging President Obama to support the freedom to marry for gay and lesbian couples.

“My wife and I were married in May of 2010, and I can say without a doubt that marriage matters,” said Emmy Award winning actor Jane Lynch. “As President Obama continues his journey toward recognizing our right to equal taxation, protection and dignity under the law, I encourage him to listen to gay and lesbian couples and families so he can better understand how marriage equality affects us all.”

Freedom to Marry’s “Say I Do” campaign kicks off with a letter to the president signed by a diverse set of VIPs and open to Americans from every walk of life to sign. The letter calls for “clarity from the President” and urges him to “join us and the majority of Americans who support the freedom to marry.”

To read the full text of the letter, please click here. The letter will be delivered to the White House by same-sex couples and families later this spring.

“Freedom to Marry is proud that such a diverse and talented group of people is joining us to ask the President to ‘Say I Do’ to loving, committed gay and lesbian couples who want to marry,” said Marc Solomon, National Campaign Director for Freedom to Marry. “We appreciate the President’s journey towards supporting the freedom to marry and the concrete steps he’s taken along the way. Now we call on him to complete that journey on the side of fairness for gay and lesbian Americans and their families.”

Signers to the letter include actors Anne Hathaway, Jane Lynch, Eric McCormack, Martin Sheen, and Lily Tomlin; television host Ellen DeGeneres and actor Portia DeGeneres; musicians Melissa Etheridge, Mya, and Rufus Wainwright; high-tech entrepreneurs Jack Dorsey (creator of Twitter), Chris Hughes (co-founder of Facebook), Sean Parker (co-founder of Napster), and Mark Pincus (co-founder of Zynga); media/entertainment execs David Geffen (co-founder of Dreamworks SKG) and Bob Wright (former chairman and CEO of NBC Universal); NFL players Brendon Ayanbadejo and Scott Fujita; playwright Tony Kushner; civil rights icons Julian Bond, Chairman Emeritus, NAACP, and Helen Fabela Chavez (widow of Cesar Chavez and founder of Cesar E. Chavez Foundation); and Rev. Peter Morales (president, Unitarian Universalist Association). For a full list of original signers, click here.

In addition to the letter, the Say I Do campaign will focus on sharing poignant stories of same-sex couples and their family members with the President.

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Yesterday I wrote about the history of conservative efforts to divide and conquer the people by manufacturing conflict. Today, the AP has a story about the GOP trying to turn African-Americans against immigrants:

Black lawmakers accused Republicans on Tuesday of trying to “manufacture tension” between African-Americans and immigrants as Republican members of the House of Representatives argued in a hearing that more minorities would be working were it not for illegal immigration.

Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, criticized the hearing’s premise in a statement.

Several other Democratic lawmakers echoed that argument, saying Republicans were ignoring their lack of support for job training, affirmative action, college financial aid and other programs more critical to employment of minorities.

“I am concerned by the majority’s attempt to manufacture tension between African-Americans and immigrant communities. It seems as though they would like for our communities to think about immigration in terms of ‘us versus them,’ and I reject that notion,” Cleaver said in his statement.

Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, issued a warning at the start of the hearing against any attempts to pit blacks against Latino immigrants, a notion that he said he found “so abhorrent and repulsive.”

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PBS Kids Creative Director Chris Bishop created this great infographic illustrating the importance of PBS.

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Below are the nine Democrats who voted for the Pence Amendment to defund Planned Parenthood on Friday with their 2010 election results and Planned Parenthood Action Fund choice rating.

Dan Boren (OK-2): 108,203 (56.52%) def. Charles Thompson 83,266 (43.48%)
[PPAF Rating 0%]

Jerry Costello (IL-12): 119,878 (60%) def. Teri Newman 73,226 (37%)
[PPAF Rating 14%]

Joe Donnelly (IN-2): 91,341 (48.2%) def. Jackie Walorski 88,803 (46.8%)
[PPAF Rating 20%]

Dan Lipinski (IL-3): 113,756 (70%) def. Michael Bendas 39,828 (24%)
[PPAF Rating 14%]

Mike McIntyre (NC-7): 112,397 (54%) def. Ilario Pantano 96,582 (46%)
[PPAF Rating 0%]

Collin Peterson (MN-7): 133,086 (55.2%) def. Lee Byberg 90,682 (37.6%)
[PPAF Rating 0%]

Nick Rahall (WV-3): 79,422 (55%) def. Elliott Maynard 64,669 (45%)
[PPAF Rating 14%]

Silvestre Reyes (TX-16): 49,242 (58%) def. Tim Besco 30,983 (37%)
[PPAF Rating 78%]

Mike Ross (AR-4): 102,222 (58%) def. Beth Anne Rankin 71,385 (40%)
[PPAF Rating 43%]

Heath Shuler (NC-11): 129,677 (54%) def. Jeff Miller 109,029 (46%)
[PPAF Rating 0%]

The biggest surprise is Reyes from El Paso. PPFA gives him a high-mixed rating on choice issues and he represents a safe Dem district.

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Today, Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA) spoke out against one of the Affordable Care Act’s most popular provisions, which allows young adults to stay on their parent’s plan up to age 26. Speaking from the House floor he said “I have four kids under the age of 26. I have raised them to be responsible. The average age of soldiers in Vietnam was 19. World War II probably the same. I have raised my kids to be responsible, to get health care at 21. Kids don’t need to be running home to mommy and daddy until they’re 26 for healthcare.” The dependent coverage provision is one of the most popular in the health care law, with polls showing as much as 70% of Americans support the provision.

“Jack Kingston and his family have every right to not extend coverage to their children. That’s their choice. But apparently Rep. Kingston thinks his ideas on how to raise children should dictate the health care choices of millions of families and their children. Rep. Kingston should tell the families in Georgia already benefiting from this provision that he knows best when he tries to take coverage away from their kids,” says Aaron Smith, Co-founder and Executive Director of Young Invincibles.

Rep. Kingston may not know that Georgia already had a law extending dependent coverage before the new health care law. The old Georgia state law extended coverage to young adults up to the age of 25, although it was full of restrictions. The law only required a family plan to offer coverage to young adults that were financially dependent and enrolled as full-time students for at least 5 months of the year, or who were eligible to be a full-time student but prevented due to illness or injury. The state law also did not apply to many large employers that were self-insured. The federal law raised the age to 26, removed almost all of these restrictions, and applies to all employers, including self-insurers.

In 2010, 343,000 19-25 year olds were uninsured in Georgia, while the unemployment rate among the same age group in Georgia is a staggering 20%. An estimated 43,500 young Georgians are predicted to benefit from this new federal provision in 2011, at no cost to the federal or state budget, while thousands more will benefit when the exchanges are fully implemented in 2014.

Rep. Kingston’s position is at odds with many other Republicans who have supported dependent coverage. For example, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina recently said “[t]here’s some things in there like parents being able to keep their kids on insurance while they’re going to school — that’s good stuff.”

Young Invincibles has a fact sheet on the impact of the dependent coverage provision in Georgia, among other states. Find it here.

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The DREAM Act failed in the Senate after Republicans and five Democrats, Pryor (Ark) Tester (Mont.), Nelson (Neb.), Hagan (NC), and Baucus (Mont.), voted no.

Campus Progress issued the following statement:

Statement of Angela Peoples, Policy and Advocacy Manager at Campus Progress (the youth division of the Center for American Progress), on the Senate’s failure to pass the DREAM Act today:

“Campus Progress is extremely disappointed in the Senate’s failure to pass the DREAM Act today. The fact that common sense, fiscally responsible legislation like the DREAM Act cannot pass in the Senate says a great deal about how deeply cynical our political process has become. It is a travesty that the futures of thousands of talented young people have become casualties of political posturing and misleading, xenophobic rhetoric.

We are grateful to Senators Reid, Durbin, Levin, Leahy and others who have consistently and courageously stood with us to fight for the DREAM Act. We want them to know that we will continue to fight until the thousands of young people who want nothing more than to give back to the only country they call home have the opportunity to do so.

We watched the vote carefully today, and rest assured, we will remember who chose to stand up in support of fairness and expanding opportunity, and those who stood in the way.”

USSA issued the following statement:

Today, the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act failed in a Senate procedural vote. This legislation would have created a pathway to citizenship for undocumented students who go to college or enter the military. The United States Student Association (USSA), the country’s oldest and largest student association, has supported the DREAM Act since it was first introduced in 2001.

“Students nationwide, both with and without proper documentation, were extremely disappointed in yet another failure of Congress to summon the political courage to pass the DREAM Act,” said USSA President Lindsay McCluskey. “This bill would strengthen the moral, educational, economic, and military foundation of the U.S., yet too many members of the Senate chose to put politics over country today.”

Recently, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) announced the DREAM Act would have raised over $2 billion in revenue for the U.S. and cut the deficit by over $1 billion over the next ten years. Additionally, several members of President Obama’s cabinet, including Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, had come out very supportive of the DREAM Act because of its benefits to national security.

Undeterred by the vote, young people will continue fighting for immigrant youth justice by gearing up for what will most likely be a difficult 112th Congress.

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On the eve of an historic vote on the fate of the DREAM Act, the National Immigration Law Center and a coalition of civil rights, education, child advocacy, and labor organizations have released the “DREAM Act 2010 Yearbook,” featuring the personal stories of undocumented young men and women who would benefit from this legislation. If passed tomorrow, the DREAM Act will provide undocumented young people who were brought to this country as children with a pathway to legal status if they attend college or enlist in the military.

“Discussions about the DREAM Act are too often devoid of the faces behind the legislation. With so many barrels of ink spilled over the relative merits and costs of the DREAM Act, it’s little wonder that we forget about the people who would be most impacted by this legislation,” said Tyler Moran, federal policy director for the National Immigration Law Center. “We hope that the young men and women in this yearbook remind all those engaged in this debate that this legislation should not be about politics, but about sound policy for the children who have grown up here.”

The children and young adults profiled in this yearbook are from small towns and big cities, and have diverse professional and personal aspirations. Many have already obtained degrees in desperately-needed medical and technological professions.

First introduced in 2001, the DREAM Act has long enjoyed bipartisan support. Last week, it was passed by the House of Representatives with a vote of 216 to 198. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has indicated that the DREAM Act will come to a vote in the Senate tomorrow.

For more information about the DREAM Act, visit http://nilc.org/immlawpolicy/DREAM/index.htm.

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From the release for Gallup’s new poll about public opinion of the health care law (emphasis mine):

Americans are most likely to say the healthcare law passed earlier this year goes too far (42%), while 29% say it does not go far enough and 20% say it is about right. Those who believe the law goes too far tend to favor repealing it and passing a new bill as opposed to scaling back the existing bill or repealing the law and not passing new legislation in its place.

The summaries of these polls have been continually framed in a way that gives the impression that the American people are against health care reform. Since the question splits the supporters of health care reform into two responses, while all detractors fall into one, the summary presents the detractor response as “most likely.” What the poll is really saying is that most Americans either support the new law or want a stronger one 49-42%. The presentation of the results in these summaries is helping fuel the negative narrative surrounding health care reform.

On another note, health care is two words. Go back to school, Gallup.

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