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By Jorge Barake, on August 28th, 2010
 Source: Lancaster Unity
More than 1,600 officers on horseback and in riot gear pen in 700 activists, including BNP members and soccer thugs
Far-right activists threw smoke bombs and missiles and fought with the police as trouble flared in a protest organised by the English Defence League.
Bricks and bottles and smoke bombs were thrown at anti-racist supporters and police as around 700 EDL activists – including known football hooligans and BNP members – held a “static protest” in Bradford city centre. Mounted officers and others in riot gear were attacked as they pushed the EDL into a penned area. Skirmishes continued as EDL speakers addressed the crowd and there was more violence as its supporters were put back on coaches.
More than 1,600 officers from 13 forces were involved in the police operation amid fears the demonstration would descend into violence. Police said there had been five arrests.
The EDL, which has held demonstrations in towns and cities across the country over the past 12 months, had predicted that thousands of its supporters would turn out in Bradford for what was dubbed “the big one”, but police said there were around 700 people.
Earlier in the afternoon coachloads of EDL activists had chanted “Allah, Allah who the fuck is Allah?” and “Muslim bombers off our streets”. One of the coach drivers said: “I didn’t expect a job like this when I came to work this morning. We’re a five-star firm. We don’t usually take scumbags like these.”
Thousands of anti-racists and local residents joined counter-protests and events organised around the city. Mohammed Khan, 29, said: “We want to show the people of the UK that Bradford is a united and peaceful place, where Asians, white people – everyone – gets along. Nobody here wants these people. They are just trying to divide this city and provoke trouble.”
Several hundred people gathered at a community celebration at Infirmary Fields near Manningham, where running battles between youths and police took place in 2001. “Everyone wanted to join in to tell people how good this city is,” said Surhra Bibi from Bradford’s Fairbank Road. Hundreds of other demonstrators joined an event organised by Unite Against Fascism in the city centre.
Earlier this month Theresa May, the home secretary, authorised a ban on the march but police and politicians claimed that they were powerless to prevent the far-right group holding a “static protest”.
Yesterday, as the demonstration came to an end, fights broke out among rival gangs within the EDL and local teenagers and anti racist campaigners were kept back by mounted police. A West Yorkshire police spokesman said: “Missiles have been thrown in the area around the Bradford Urban Gardens; however, this has been contained and the police are utilising their resources to manage the current situation.”
The decision by Bradford council to seek a marching ban followed a formal request by West Yorkshire chief constable Sir Norman Bettison, made after his force carried out a risk assessment of the proposed event. Bettison said he was taking the action after considering the “understandable concerns of the community”.
David Ward the local Liberal Democrat MP, who attended the event in Infirmary Fields, said the city had moved on in the past nine years.
“This is a celebration of all that is good about Bradford. We’re not so much a big city as a collection of villages – communities which get along and today have got along. I want no part of the hatred some people are showing in our city centre. We have moved on from 2001. I hope today is the day that is made clear.”
The EDL, formed last year, has become the most significant far-right street movement in the UK since the National Front in the 1970s. It claims to be a peaceful, non-racist organisation opposed only to “militant Islam“. But many of its demonstrations have ended in confrontations with the police after supporters became involved in violence and racist and Islamophobic chanting.
In May, the Guardian revealed that the EDL was planning to step up its Islamophobic street campaign, targeting Bradford and Tower Hamlets in London.
By Jorge Barake, on August 27th, 2010
 Source: ACLU
Forty-seven years ago tomorrow, 200,000-plus people marched on Washington to demand full access to the benefits of citizenship for black Americans and an end to segregation. On the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his iconic “I Have a Dream” speech.
The poster that advertised the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom read: “Millions of citizens, black and white, are unemployed…As long as black workers are disenfranchised, ill-housed, denied education and economically depressed, the fight of white workers for a decent life will fail.” March organizers understood that the floor had to be raised for all Americans. They also understood that people of color bore the brunt of economic hardship.
They still do, and the current economic crisis has had a particularly brutal impact on communities of color. Black and Latino workers are unemployed at significantly higher rates than white workers. Black and Latino homeowners, who received almost half of all subprime loans, are projected to lose a quarter trillion dollars in home equity as a result of the foreclosure crisis. Experts believe that half of all African-American children will live in poverty before employment rates improve.
Against this backdrop, it is hard to believe that, as James Webb (the Democratic Senator from Virginia) recently opined in the Wall Street Journal, “a plethora of government-enforced diversity policies have marginalized many white workers” and “damaged racial harmony.”
Webb is not the first to take aim at affirmative action by accessing civil rights-style language to raise the specter of reverse discrimination. California lobbyist Ward Connerly called his 2008 anti-affirmative action crusade “Super Tuesday for Civil Rights,” and consistently uses misleading faux-equality rhetoric to conceal the true intent of his initiatives.
So when Webb writes that “Nondiscrimination laws should be applied equally among all citizens, including those who happen to be white,” he, like Connerly invokes American values of fairness and equality not to support equal opportunity policies that break down the present-day inequities faced by people of color, but to justify their elimination.
As you’ve probably heard by now, Fox News commentator Glenn Beck — who famously called Barack Obama a racist — is organizing a rally at the Lincoln Memorial this Saturday, the anniversary of the March on Washington.
Beck claims he didn’t realize the coincidence, but he did say that “Blacks don’t own Martin Luther King…Too many have…purposely distorted Martin Luther King’s ideas of judge a man by the content of his character.” He also said, on a separate occasion, that “We will reclaim the civil rights moment. We will take that movement because we were the people who did it in the first place.”
What better mark of privilege than the ability to effortlessly co-opt the posture of the oppressed?
By Jorge Barake, on August 26th, 2010
Source: Committee to Protect Journalists
With another journalist murdered in Honduras on Tuesday, bringing the total killed since March to eight, the country’s press is understandably jittery. In a new documentary jointly produced by the Inter-American Press Association and the Video Journalism Movement, Carlos Mauricio Flores, the executive director of Tegucigalpa-based El Heraldo newspaper says, “We journalists are living in uncertainty and fear.”
The video explores a frightening possibility. Since the ouster of President Manuel Zelaya in June 2009, a breakdown in society has led to ongoing violent attacks. And no one can agree on who is targeting journalists. The government, for the most part, attributes the deaths to generalized crime. Many human rights activists and journalists, however, are asking an extraordinarily pointed question: Is the state actually targeting journalists in order to silence its critics? Watch below.
By Jorge Barake, on August 26th, 2010
Source: Daily Kos
Incumbent Representative John Fleming (R-LA) frames the November election in terms that only a proud member of the American Taliban could support:
LA GOPer: November A Choice Between An Atheist Society And A Christian Nation
Appearing before the Republican Women of Bossier with Sen. David Vitter (R-LA), Rep. John Fleming (R-LA) cast the November elections as a choice between godlessness and Christianity. He also called bipartisanship impossible.
“We have two competing world views here and there is no way that we can reach across the aisle — one is going to have to win,” Fleming said.
We are either going to go down the socialist road and become like western Europe and create, I guess really a godless society, an atheist society. Or we’re going to continue down the other pathway where we believe in freedom of speech, individual liberties and that we remain a Christian nation. So we’re going to have to win that battle, we’re going to have to solve that argument before we can once again reach across and work together on things.
It is precisely this sort of freakshow that Markos is talking about in his new book, American Taliban: How War, Sex, Sin, and Power Bind Jihadists and the Radical Right. The big difference — as he argues — is that the American Taliban do not have the same sort of control over this country as their radical brethren do in fundamentalist nations. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t pursuing it, and John Fleming is a perfect example of just how serious they are about their goals.
By Jorge Barake, on August 26th, 2010
Source: Los Angeles Times
Click here to view medical marijuana dispensaries in a map
Los Angeles city officials announced Wednesday that only 41 medical marijuana dispensaries are eligible to stay in business under the city’s restrictive ordinance, a number so low that the city will suspend the winnowing process and ask a judge to rule that it is legal.
“It was a surprise,” said Jane Usher, a special assistant city attorney who worked closely with the City Council to draft the complex law and is defending it in court.
Rather than move ahead with a selection process that would clearly trigger a spate of lawsuits by disqualified dispensaries, the city attorney’s office decided to sue them first and ask a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge to determine that the city’s process was appropriate.
“We’re trying to be proactive,” Usher said.
Yamileth Bolanos, who runs PureLife Alternative Wellness Center, found out that the city had determined her dispensary was not eligible to continue to operate. “I’m not going to take this lying down,” she said. “This is ridiculous. They have screwed up one thing after another. Not once have they thought about the patients of Los Angeles.”
Los Angeles is already tangling with about 85 dispensaries that have filed almost 30 lawsuits challenging the procedure the City Council adopted Jan. 26 to limit the number of dispensaries. Most of the dispensaries that have sued are among more than 400 ordered to shut down.
The city experienced a dizzying increase in the number of dispensaries when it failed to enforce a pot-shop moratorium put in place in 2007. Under that ban, only 186 dispensaries were approved to operate, but hundreds opened, a trend that accelerated after the Obama administration indicated last spring that it would not raid dispensaries complying with state law.
Los Angeles city officials announced Wednesday that only 41 medical marijuana dispensaries are eligible to stay in business under the city’s restrictive ordinance, a number so low that the city will suspend the winnowing process and ask a judge to rule that it is legal.
“It was a surprise,” said Jane Usher, a special assistant city attorney who worked closely with the City Council to draft the complex law and is defending it in court.
Rather than move ahead with a selection process that would clearly trigger a spate of lawsuits by disqualified dispensaries, the city attorney’s office decided to sue them first and ask a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge to determine that the city’s process was appropriate.
“We’re trying to be proactive,” Usher said.
Yamileth Bolanos, who runs PureLife Alternative Wellness Center, found out that the city had determined her dispensary was not eligible to continue to operate. “I’m not going to take this lying down,” she said. “This is ridiculous. They have screwed up one thing after another. Not once have they thought about the patients of Los Angeles.”
Los Angeles is already tangling with about 85 dispensaries that have filed almost 30 lawsuits challenging the procedure the City Council adopted Jan. 26 to limit the number of dispensaries. Most of the dispensaries that have sued are among more than 400 ordered to shut down.
The city experienced a dizzying increase in the number of dispensaries when it failed to enforce a pot-shop moratorium put in place in 2007. Under that ban, only 186 dispensaries were approved to operate, but hundreds opened, a trend that accelerated after the Obama administration indicated last spring that it would not raid dispensaries complying with state law.
By Jorge Barake, on August 26th, 2010
Source: Common Dreams
On the heels of a horrific anti-Muslim attack in New York City on Tuesday night, there’s new disturbing evidence that hate crimes are on the rise across the country for Latinos.
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is reporting an upward tick in anti-Latino hate crimes, and apparently it’s a general trend that’s been in the works for years. Hate crimes against Latinos had already increased in each of the four years between 2003 to 2007, according toFBI statistics. After taking a slight dip last year, the trend seems to be picking up just as the national debate over immigration reform rages on.
SPLC cited some pretty startling examples. There’s the case in Maricopa County, Ariz., (home to Sheriff Joe Arpaio) where Juan Varela was killed and his brother was shot in the neck by Gary Thomas Kelley. According to the U.S. attorney’s office in Phoenix, Kelley pointed a gun at Valera and said, “Hurry up and go back to Mexico or you’re gonna die.” The dead man was a third-generation, native-born American, reports SPLC.
There’s also news that since April, there have been 11 assaults on Mexicans in the Staten Island City of Port Richmond. The Los Angeles Times recently reported that there have been 26 suspected hate crimes in the city this year, and of the 11 proven assaults, all but one is considered a bias-related crime carried out by the city’s black residents against Mexicans.
The report also takes great aims to place blame for the uptick squarely on the shoulders of politicians’ whose hefty anti-immigrant talk has severely driven anti-Latino sentiment. In one notorious, Texas Republican Reps. Louie Gohmert and Debbie Riddle warned the world of “terrorist babies.” Both men claimed pregnant terrorists were hatching a plan to sneak across the border and give birth to future terrorists who’d finish off a plan to “destroy our way of life.” FBI Director Tom Fuentes eventually took to CNN to debunk the rumor.
“There was never a credible report—or any report, for that matter … to indicate that there was such a plan for these ‘terror babies’ to be born,” Fuentes said.
It’s clear that when it comes to the “Ground Zero mosque” debate and the furor over immigration reform, hot-headed political rhetoric has very real life and death consequences.
By Jorge Barake, on August 26th, 2010
Source: Religion Dispatches
Last night on his Fox television program, Glenn Beck (now fashioning himself a religion expert) tried to launch a theological attack on President Barack Obama‘s Christianity, opportunistically pasting together a predictable string of Jeremiah-Wright-Michael-Pfleger-Jim-Wallis clips to suggest that the President’s espoused a rogue brand of Christianity that was not Christianity at all.
Surely Glenn Beck is just trying to whip up the faithful in time for his “Restoring Honor” rally in Washington, D.C. this weekend.
But he’s also going to inflame evangelical Christians who have long accused Mormons of practicing a rogue brand of Christianity that is not Christian at all.
“You’re not a Christian.” Growing up in the 1980s as a young Mormon in Southern California, that’s what I (and my brother and sisters) heard time and time again from evangelical Christians drawn into an anti-cult movement that set its sights on Mormonism. It baffled us. Especially since we learned in church every Sunday that Jesus was the son of God, who suffered and died for our sins.
“You don’t believe in the right Jesus,” they told us at Friday night pizza parties designed for local youth, in letters taped to our school lockers, in messages scrawled in our yearbooks, and when they picketed our church meetings.
Perhaps Beck, a convert, has never experienced how it feels when someone challenges the legitimacy of your religion.
Or if he has, perhaps he doesn’t care. He’s willing to do whatever it takes to generate turnout for his media events and build his media empire.
“The president apparently has a deeply held belief that his salvation cannot come without a collective salvation,” Beck said Tuesday night. “I don’t know what that is,” he continued, “other than it’s not Muslim, it’s not Christian. It’s a perversion of the gospel of Jesus Christ as most Christians know it.”
Not so fast.
You could convene a room of theologians and have a robust debate on the nature of salvation across traditions, over time, and find lots of evidence of people of faith (including Christians) believing that the concept of salvation is more expansive than Beck’s theological demagoguery makes it out to be. Even Mormons don’t actually believe that we enter heaven alone. In Mormon theology, eternal marriage is crucial to eternal salvation. And many orthodox Mormons I know speak of Christ’s atonement as an infinite event not contracted to the individual but covering collective suffering and loss, including the suffering humans intentionally and unintentionally cause one another.
But you’ll never find such a robust, thoughtful discussion in the world of Glenn Beck.
It’s Beck who is perverting Christianity by opportunistically casting doubt on the sincerity, honesty, and legitimacy of Barack Obama, a man who has as good as grounds as he does (if not better, in the eyes of America) to call himself a Christian.
By Jorge Barake, on August 26th, 2010
Source: The Huffington Post
In an interview with the Huffington Post on Wednesday night, former Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman — whoannounced earlier Wednesday that he is gay and intends to join the fight for marriage equality in California — said he wishes he had come out while he was the face of a historically anti-gay Republican Party platform.
Mehlman acknowledged regret that he remained closeted when he led the RNC between 2005 and 2007 — a time when, as The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder noted, it was “stepping up its anti-gay activities.”
“The reason I wish that I had been in a different place then, as I am now, is I know the personal benefit of being comfortable with, and at peace with, an important part of your life,” Mehlman said. “Until you get there, it’s much harder. I’m very glad to be there.”
The former chairman argued that he tried hard to “expand the party and build the party,” but said he wished he had done more for gay rights. Still, he said, “[You] can’t look back, you’ve got to look forward.”
In the interview, Mehlman was reluctant to address current political subjects, declining to comment on President Obama’s progress on LGBT issues and the conservative movement’s often-offensive rhetoric toward gay men and women. He did, however, say that there is “absolutely” a place for LGBT individuals in the GOP.
“I think the Republican Party is a diverse party with lots of different views, and I think it’s a mistake to presume that people who disagree with what I think is the right answer — which is freedom to marry — are inherently motivated by divisive instincts,” Mehlman said, adding that he thinks conservatives are focusing less on social issues like opposition to LGBT equality and “much more about the size and scope of the government — spending, deficits, and taxes.”
Many high-profile LGBT activists have already embraced Mehlman since his announcement earlier Wednesday. “We hope the fact that Ken Mehlman has reached this level of honesty will now encourage other political leaders to reject divisive anti-gay campaign tactics which, as Mr. Mehlman now admits, are purely cynical attempts to manipulate the American public,” Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund President and CEO Chuck Wolfe said in a public statement. Openly gay Democratic strategist Steve Elmendorf told the Huffington Post that it was “great for the community to get new converts” because “until we get 51 percent of the American public supporting us on these issues, it’s really important that we welcome people who want to come help us.”
Center for American Progress Senior Vice President Winnie Stachelberg, who is a former Human Rights Campaign executive and longtime friend of Mehlman’s, said, “I’m sure there will be plenty of people who will be angry that he came out when he did and after the things that he did, and he probably regrets that more than most people, but I think that having him as part of the team moving forward will only help all of us in this fight.”
The impetus for Mehlman’s coming-out was a Sept. 22 fundraiser for the American Foundation for Equal Rights, which is fighting for marriage equality in California. Mehlman will co-chair the event with Elmendorf and high-profile Republicans including Steve Schmidt, who managed John McCain‘s 2008 presidential campaign, and Nicolle Wallace, who advised both McCain and President George W. Bush.
By Jorge Barake, on August 25th, 2010
 Source: TheAtlantic
Ken Mehlman, President Bush‘s campaign manager in 2004 and a former chairman of the Republican National Committee, has told family and associates that he is gay.
Mehlman arrived at this conclusion about his identity fairly recently, he said in an interview. He agreed to answer a reporter’s questions, he said, because, now in private life, he wants to become an advocate for gay marriage and anticipated that questions would be asked about his participation in a late-September fundraiser for the American Foundation for Equal Rights (AFER), the group that supported the legal challenge to California’s ballot initiative against gay marriage, Proposition 8.
“It’s taken me 43 years to get comfortable with this part of my life,” Mehlman said. “Everybody has their own path to travel, their own journey, and for me, over the past few months, I’ve told my family, friends, former colleagues, and current colleagues, and they’ve been wonderful and supportive. The process has been something that’s made me a happier and better person. It’s something I wish I had done years ago.”
Privately, in off-the-record conversations with this reporter over the years, Mehlman voiced support for civil unions and told of how, in private discussions with senior Republican officials, he beat back efforts to attack same-sex marriage. He insisted, too, that President Bush “was no homophobe.” He often wondered why gay voters never formed common cause with Republican opponents of Islamic jihad, which he called “the greatest anti-gay force in the world right now.”
Mehlman’s leadership positions in the GOP came at a time when the party was stepping up its anti-gay activities — such as the distribution in West Virginia in 2006 of literature linking homosexuality to atheism, or the less-than-subtle, coded language in the party’s platform (“Attempts to redefine marriage in a single state or city could have serious consequences throughout the country…”). Mehlman said at the time that he could not, as an individual Republican, go against the party consensus. He was aware that Karl Rove, President Bush’s chief strategic adviser, had been working with Republicans to make sure that anti-gay initiatives and referenda would appear on November ballots in 2004 and 2006 to help Republicans.
Mehlman acknowledges that if he had publicly declared his sexuality sooner, he might have played a role in keeping the party from pushing an anti-gay agenda.
“It’s a legitimate question and one I understand,” Mehlman said. “I can’t change the fact that I wasn’t in this place personally when I was in politics, and I genuinely regret that. It was very hard, personally.” He asks of those who doubt his sincerity: “If they can’t offer support, at least offer understanding.”
“What I do regret, and think a lot about, is that one of the things I talked a lot about in politics was how I tried to expand the party into neighborhoods where the message wasn’t always heard. I didn’t do this in the gay community at all.”
He said that he “really wished” he had come to terms with his sexual orientation earlier, “so I could have worked against [the Federal Marriage Amendment]” and “reached out to the gay community in the way I reached out to African Americans.”
Mehlman is aware that his attempts to justify his past silence will not be adequate for many people. He and his friends say that he is aware that he will no longer control the story about his identity — which will simultaneously expose old wounds, invite Schadenfruede, and bring out anger among gay rights activists in both parties who did not hide their sexual orientation.
Mehlman, who has never married, long found his sexuality subject to rumor and innuendo. He was the subject of an outing campaign by gay rights activist Mike Rogers, starting when Mehlman was Bush’s campaign manager. Rogers’s crusades against closeted gay Republicans split the organized gay lobby in Washington but were undoubtedly effective: he drove several elected officials, including Virginia Rep. Ed Shrock, from office, pushed out a would-be presidential campaign manager for George Allen well before Allen was set to run, slung rumors about Sen. Larry Craig’s sexual orientation well before Craig’s incident in a Minneapolis airport bathroom, and even managed to make homosexuality a wedge issue within the party’s activist circles.
In 2006, Rogers caught up to Mehlman and asked him why he gave “so many confusing answers to social conservatives about your homosexuality,” and followed up by asking whether Mehlman knew of a man who Rogers had claimed was Mehlman’s secret partner. Mehlman denied to Rogers that he had given conflicting answers and said that the man in question was a law school classmate.
In several discussions I’ve had with Mehlman since he stepped down from the Republican National Committee in 2007, he never volunteered information about his sexual orientation, although charges that he presided over a resurgence in anti-gay sentiment were clearly an ongoing burden to him.
The disclosure at this stage of Mehlman’s life strikes one close friend as being like a decision to jump off of a high diving board: Mehlman knows that there is plenty of water below, but it is still very scary to look down and make the leap. Mehlman likes order and certainty, and he knows that the reaction to his public confirmation cannot be predicted or contained.
Mehlman is the most powerful Republican in history to identify as gay.
Because his tenure as RNC chairman and his time at the center of the Bush political machine coincided with the Republican Party‘s attempts to exploit anti-gay prejudices and cement the allegiance of social conservatives, his declaration to the world is at once a personal act and an act of political speech.
“I wish I was where I am today 20 years ago. The process of not being able to say who I am in public life was very difficult. No one else knew this except me. My family didn’t know. My friends didn’t know. Anyone who watched me knew I was a guy who was clearly uncomfortable with the topic,” he said.
During the Rogers crusades, many news organizations made attempts to confirm rumors and stories about Mehlman’s sexuality. Republicans close to Mehlman either said they did not know, or that it did not matter, or that the question was offensive.
Mehlman once joked in public that although he was not gay, the rumors put a crimp on his social life. He admits to having mislead several people who asked him directly.
He said that he plans to be an advocate for gay rights within the GOP, that he remains proud to be a Republican, and that his political identity is not defined by any one issue.
“What I will try to do is to persuade people, when I have conversations with them, that it is consistent with our party’s philosophy, whether it’s the principle of individual freedom, or limited government, or encouraging adults who love each other and who want to make a lifelong committment to each other to get married.”
“I hope that we, as a party, would welcome gay and lesbian supporters. I also think there needs to be, in the gay community, robust and bipartisan support [for] marriage rights.”
Ed Gillespie, a former RNC chairman and long-time friend of Mehlman, said that “it is significant that a former chairman of the Republiucan National Committe is openly gay and that he is supportive of gay marriage.” Although Gillespie himself opposes gay marriage, he pointed to party stalwarts like former Vice President Dick Cheney and strategist Mary Matalin as open advocates for gay rights who had not been drummed out of the party. He acknowledged “big generational differences in perception when it comes to gay marriage and gay rights as an agenda, and I think that is true on the Republican side.”
But, Gillespie said, he does not envision the party platform changing anytime soon.
“There are a lot of Republicans who are gay, there are a lot of Republicans who support government sanction of gay marriage, a lot of Republicans who support abortion on demand, a lot of Republicans who support cap-and-trade provisions. They’re not single-issue voters.” Gillespie acknowledged that the party had been inhospitable to gays in the past, and said that he hopes Mehlman’s decision to come out leads the party to be “more respectful and civil in our discourse” when it comes to gays.
Mehlman said that his formal coming-out process began earlier this year. Over the past several weeks, he has notified former colleagues, including former President Bush. Once he realized that the news would probably leak, he assembled a team of former advisers to help him figure out the best way to harness the publicity generated by the disclosure for the cause of marriage rights. He is worried that some will see his decision to go public as opportunistic. Mehlman recently moved to Chelsea, a gay mecca in New York City. He refused to discuss his personal life with me, and he plans to give only a few print interviews on the subject.
Chad Griffin, the California-based political strategist who organized opposition to Proposition 8, said that Mehlman’s quiet contributions to the American Foundation for Equal Rights are “tremendous,” adding that “when we achieve equal equality, he will be one of the people to thank for it.” Mehlman has become a de facto strategist for the group, and he has opened up his rolodex — recruiting, as co-hosts for the AFER fundraiser: Paul Singer, a major Republican donor, hedge fund executive, and the president of the Manhattan Institute; Benjamin Ginsberg, one of the GOP’s top lawyers; Michael Toner, a former chairman of the Federal Election Commission; and two former GOP governors, William Weld of Massachusetts and Christie Todd Whitman of New Jersey.
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