Monday, June 14, 2010

Today on the Signorile Show

As we approach Senate hearings on her nomination, things have been pretty quiet on the Elena Kagan front. But Duncan Osborne of Gay City News writes on his blog about Kagan's defense of religious freedom in 1996,How does her view of this case, which deals with anti-discrimination laws vs. religious rights, fair for the the LGBT community? We'll speak with Duncan Osborne at 4:30 ET and lay out the details of the case.

Is the White House finally getting a handle on the response to the BP oil leak? This morning, President Obama's headed to the Gulf states to assess more of the damage. He will spend today and tomorrow traveling to the different beaches and talking to the people whose lives have been affected. This weekend, the administration announced that the president would be meeting with the heads of BP to discuss fixing this leak and putting money aside for those whose lives have been destroyed by BP's failure to contain this leak. The White House also announced the president would give an update to the American people tomorrow night in a televised address from the Oval Office to summarize his visit and to use this time to promote tougher energy laws.

Guest
/ 3:30pm EST - Jonathan Alter, Newsweek columnist and guest correspondent on MSNBC, joins us to talk about his latest book, The Promise: President Obama, Year One, which chronicles the president with an inside look at his transition to the White House through the passage of historic health care reform.

Guest / 4:30pm EST - Duncan Osborne joins us to clarify what Elena Kagan wrote in the memo to President Clinton in which she argued , "that the Clinton administration... join religious conservatives in asking the US Supreme Court to review and reverse a California Supreme Court ruling that found that a landlord's religious objections to renting to an unmarried couple were trumped by that states anti-discrimination law."

While "don't ask, don't tell" waits to be repealed, gay and lesbian soldiers are living in limbo.

In perhaps in an example of the work battling homophobia that military officials must do, two Marines have been charged with brutally assaulting a gay man.

Just when calls for pulling out of Afghanistan were reaching a crescendo amid reports of further deterioration, comes a report in The New York Times: "The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan... enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the war itself." The deposits, which include copper, iron and lithium, "are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world." But in fact all this has been known for years and this seems to be the latest in Pentagon propaganda.

These stories and so much more, today on The Michelangelo Signorile Show!

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