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Lambda Legal , a New York-based organization committed to winning gay civil rights through the courts, announced in a press release Tuesday that it would challenge New Jersey’s 2006 same sex civil unions law for failing to bring full equality to gay residents of the state. Lambda, which is teaming with New Jersey LGBT group Garden State Equality , will refer to government studies and press investigations that document the way employers have failed to recognize couples entered into a civil union and how civil unions have been ignored or misunderstood by authorities, often in instances involving critical medical decisions. Colorado nearly passed a civil unions bill this spring that its main sponsors, Sen Pat Steadman and Rep Mark Ferrandino, acknowledged fell short of full equality

For the past four years, every time Moqtada Sadr has made this-or-that tactical retrenchment -- standing down from the August 2004 Najaf battle; going to

The Humphrey Institute’s Smart Politics notes that if Rep. Michele Bachmann’s fundraising pace continues — and if she opts not to run for president — she will raise nearly $52 million by November 2012

No shocker here: People are mad at Washington. From The Washington Post: Two-thirds of Americans are dissatisfied or downright angry about the way the

Florida Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz was on Tuesday named chief of the Democratic National Committee . # Wasserman Schultz represents Florida’s 20th congressional district, which covers parts of Broward and Miami-Dade counties and is member of the House Judiciary and Budget committees. # The Miami Herald reports : # An email from Vice President Joe Biden on Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s ascension to DNC chief: # “Debbie has served the people of Florida – first in the Florida State Legislature, and more recently in Congress – for nearly two decades.

In Flint, Mich. and some other troubled communities fighting against an onslaught of abandoned and vacant properties, the latest survival tactic is to shrink

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), considered one of the few Republicans to make concrete budget proposals during the current recession, spoke at the Brookings

Nuclear expert Arnie Gundersen warns that the unfolding nuclear disaster in Japan may result in a catastrophic radiation release that will reach American shores. Gundersen, a nuclear engineer with 39 years of experience and chief engineer with Fairewinds Associates , told the Global Post that he doesn’t have much faith in official pronouncements about the scale of the disaster. Here are some experts: GlobalPost: Officials have said the possibility of a large-scale radiation release is small.

As the Taliban’s fighting and governing prowess improves, Sean Kay puts together a Plan B for Afghanistan over at Foreign Policy’s AfPak Channel. Rather than

Global warming skeptics hope SuperFreakonomics will continue to shift attitudes toward their cause.

TWI visits a Reston, Va. town hall event to talk with protesters.

We’ve added some new information to TWI’s ever-evolving Senate Public Option Scoreboard. In addition to every senator’s stance on the public option, the

For most anti-abortion rights groups, there should only be one legal alternative to an unwanted pregnancy: putting the baby up for adoption. In the latest

The white supremacist Website Stormfront.org has been getting unwanted attention since the Holocaust Museum shooting, and it’s prompted something you don’t

One in five women in the United States has visited a Planned Parenthood clinic to receive health care. And three of seventeen women who are also Colorado state senators showed up to sing karaoke at a bar off the capitol Tuesday night to raise money for the organization’s local political arm, Planned Parenthood Votes Colorado . Denver-area senators Lucia Guzman, Evie Hudak and Linda Newell celebrated accessible women’s reproductive health services from their spots at the bar and from center stage at Hamburger Mary’s, where more than a hundred revelers delivered dramatic renditions of classic hits, tossed back cheap drinks and stuffed pockets with prophylactics.

According to a new report, the reduction to unemployment benefits being negotiated this week in the Florida legislature will have a greater impact on black and Latino workers than on their white counterparts. # A Florida International University Research Institute on Social and Economic Policy report (pdf.) issued Wednesday states: # The disparity in unemployment rates shows that communities of color in Florida have been the hardest hit by the recession in Florida and will therefore likely take much longer to recover. This is an important consideration for state policy makers who are proposing changes to Florida’s unemployment compensation system.

A few months ago I pointed to declassified references in the 2005 Office of Legal Counsel torture opinions to guidelines issued by former CIA Director George

Supplemental Security Income payments go only to the elderly and disabled with less than $2,000 to their name. Now, Congress has let the safety net payments lapse for refugees fleeing persecution in their home countries and seeking refuge in the United States.

Some instances of government secrecy are genuinely malign, but most are frivolous. The cardinal example there is the intelligence budget. For reasons no one has

The full policy paper released on the heels of Rep. Eric Cantor’s (R-Va.) speech today makes it clear: Republicans want a bipartisan commitment to no new taxes

It’s been almost two years since the privately-run prison in Appleton has held prisoners. But in early 2012, the prison’s owner, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), expects to fill Appleton’s Prairie Correctional Facility and another facility in Colorado with 3,256 inmates from California. In the last ten years, the revenue of CCA, the country’s biggest private prison company, has almost doubled, according to their annual reports.

The rapper will.i.am was all over the Democratic National Convention last week. He was headlining a big concert in downtown Denver on the night of Obama’s