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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

About 180 jobs are coming to the Fort Dodge area thanks to a $324 million investment from South Korean company CJ Cheiljedang, but a state senator says Gov. Terry Branstad is still way behind on his campaign promise to create 200,000 new jobs over five years. Branstad today announced the facility, which will produce amino acids through fermentation technologies.

Tom Ross, the chairman of the Republican Party of Delaware, told me after the Republican National Committee state chairmen’s meeting that Rep. Mike Castle

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.

I asked Rob Fuller, Lockheed Martin’s chief spokesman for the F-22 jet that it manufactures, what his reaction was to the Senate’s vote to strip funding for the

A committee of the Ingham County Board of Commissioners unanimously approved a plan to fund an attorney that will be dedicated to helping homeowners battle the growing number of foreclosures based on faulty documents. In a meeting Tuesday night, the General Services Committee of the Board approved a contract worth up to $60,000 for Legal Services of South Central Michigan.

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.

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

The anti-abortion movement can claim a small victory in its crusade against Planned Parenthood. A recent Florida statewide survey of 807 likely voters in 2012 found a majority supports cutting federal funding for Planned Parenthood. # The survey conducted by Viewpoint Florida found total support for cutting federal aid to the chain of reproductive health service providers is 54 percent, and opposition was 38 percent.

Republicans in the Iowa House and Senate and the Branstad administration have rolled out a set of nine initiatives related to regulatory reform that they say will expedite business and business expansion in the state, but progressives who attended a series of meetings the GOP lauded as precursors to the proposals are calling foul. According to a GOP press release, “these initial reforms came about as a result of their highly successful and very well attended 11 city tour this spring.” The release notes that more than 1,000 Iowans attended, nearly 175 testified and approximately 300 public comment forms were collected. Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement, a statewide progressive group that calls on government and corporations to put people first, believes that the Republican proposal is ignoring the testimony of more than 175 of the organization’s members who attended public hearings across the state, calling for “stronger and more effective public oversight over factory farm polluters and other big-moneyed corporations.” The nine initiatives, which the GOP has pledged to champion in the 2012 General Assembly, are: All state departments and agencies have a searchable and user-friendly rules database on their websites

The former CEO of the Iowa meatpacking plant that was the scene of the nation’s largest-ever mass arrest of immigrant workers last May has been arrested on

Via The Minnesota Independent, shortly after the Web-tracking site Technorati revamped its algorithm for ranking blogs and other Websites, The Washington

LANSING — The Senate Committee on Reforms, Restructuring and Reinventing approved a resolution Wednesday morning that starts the process to revoke partner benefits for unmarried state workers. The benefit plan was approved by the Michigan Civil Service Commission in January.

Today, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reported that the U.S. economy grew at a 1.6 percent annual pace in the second quarter. The report was a second analysis,