Highlights from the past two weeks include:

• Exclusive reports by our teams in Iowa and Colorado, documenting how extremist talk show hosts have been stoking fears of terrorism and religious intolerance against Muslim Americans. In Iowa, radio host Steve Deace argued that the Fort Hood killings “may have done America a favor” because the shooting rampage shows how the United States has “sold out our religious traditions for a secular enlightenment.”  In Colorado, radio host Peter Boyles told listeners that reports of retaliatory threats around the country against Muslim Americans in the wake of the Fort Hood shootings are a myth, a product of a politically correct culture that aimed to silence hawkish members of the right and that made the U.S. vulnerable to attacks.
• In Michigan, reporter Todd Heywood examined the case of an HIV-positive man from Macomb County who is being charged under Michigan’s 2004 terrorism laws for biting his neighbor during a fight (the neighbor, in turn, had allegedly been “gay bashing” the man for several years). The case, which is being appealed in state courts, is alarming to many in the LGBT community because of the legal precedent it could set for the state’s terrorism laws and its ability to deepen the stigmatization of the virus.
• In Washington D.C., reporter Mike Lillis was the first to notice a major glitch in the unemployment benefits extension passed by Congress. The legislation was intended to extend benefits by 20 weeks in states with high unemployment, but due to an oversight the deadline to apply for the last six weeks of the extension was earlier than participants could legally apply. Lillis’ reporting caught the attention of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) office, which acknowledged the error and promised that Reid would work to extend the program.

More details on our breaking news stories below.

Best,

David

Mike Lillis reported on a major glitch in the unemployment benefits extension passed by Congress. The legislation was intended to extend benefits by 20 weeks in states with high unemployment, but due to an oversight the deadline to apply for the last six weeks of the extension was earlier than participants could legally apply. Lillis’ reporting caught the attention of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) office, which acknowledged the error and promised that Reid would work to extend the program.

National security reporter Spencer Ackerman broke news when he reported that a pair of admirals with a background in special operations and close ties to Gen. Stanley McChrystal has been working quietly behind the scenes as President Obama weighs his options on a new Afghanistan strategy. Ackerman reported that Vice Adm. William H. McRaven and Vice Adm. Robert S. Harward are pushing for a smaller special-ops force to pursue counterterrorism operations throughout the country, in conjunction with the larger infusion of troops to carry out counterinsurgency operations in large population centers. Ackerman’s article was discussed by Time’s Joe Klein, Matthew Yglesias of Think Progress, and Foreign Policy magazine.

While Democratic leaders in Congress and the Obama administration downplayed the significance of controversial new breast cancer screening guidelines for women from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, TWI congressional reporter Mike Lillis reported that the Democrats’ health care reform bills in both houses would require health insurance plans to adopt the guidelines as part of a minimum swath of services. The bills would mandate insurers cover recommendations offered by the preventive services task force that are rated “A” and “B” as part of their minimum coverage. The new mammogram guidelines are rated “B.” Lillis also pointed out another overlooked fact — even if the language were not included in the bills, the task force’s recommendations have influenced government health policy as recently as May of this year. Lillis’ reporting provided much-needed context for the very real consequences the task force’s recommendations can have, as Democrats rushed to squelch the uproar over the new guidelines.

Using new data obtained from the U.S. Army, TWI national security reporter Spencer Ackerman reported that if President Obama deploys an additional 30,000 to 40,000 troops to Afghanistan in the coming weeks, the Army will be left with virtually no available brigades to handle emergencies that may arise. The Army figures, which Ackerman illustrated with detailed brigade-by-brigade data charts, show just over 50,000 active-duty soldiers available for deployment, meaning that a flare-up in Iran or North Korea would be met with dangerously limited military resources. Ackerman discussed this situation with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, who called his discovery “one giant game-changing brand-new fact … that should change the whole way the country talks about and thinks about this war.”

Joseph Boven watched the fallout from statements made by outspoken Republican State Sen. Dave Schultheis, who said stridently via Twitter: “Don’t for a second think Obama wants what is best for U.S. He is flying the U.S. … right into the ground at full speed. Let’s Roll.” The “Let’s Roll” line was a reference to what passengers on United Airlines Flight 93 were thought to have said before overthrowing terrorist hijackers on Sept. 11, 2001. Schultheis, no stranger to controversial statements, said he did not mean any harm with his Tweet. Later, Schultheis told radio talk show host Peter Boyles that the president is surrounding himself with Marxists, communists and fascists.

With Xcel Energy on pace to disconnect power to some 70,000 Coloradans this year for nonpayment, David O. Williams asked some tough questions about why ratepayers should be picking up the tab for lavish executive board dinners, hotel and spa retreats and luxury box tickets to professional sports games, all details that came to light on the last day of rate-hike hearings by the Colorado Public Utilities Commission. Xcel Energy is seeking a $180 million rate hike. A spokesman for the utility said that the board members’ expenses were part of “a reasonable cost of doing business” but said it would consider withdrawing them from the rate hike. Williams’ reporting drove top traffic, with thousands of hits coming from Raw Story and Huffington Post.

Conservative talk-radio host Peter Boyles told listeners recently that reports of retaliatory threats around the country against Muslim Americans in the wake of the Fort Hood shootings are a myth, a product of a politically correct culture that aimed to silence hawkish members of the right and that made the U.S. vulnerable to attacks. The conservative KHOW-AM host was reacting to reporting by The Colorado Independent’s Joseph Boven, who fact checked Boyles’ incendiary comments immediately following the Fort Hood shootings. While Boyles failed to address points Boven brought up in his fact checking, the talk show host continued with his claims, saying that Muslim-Americans have not been in any danger in the U.S.: “Threats? What threats? Name the threat.” Boven outlined a number of cases, including a Greek Orthodox priest who was beaten with a tire iron by a Marine reservist in Florida because he was thought to be a Muslim.

As lawmakers in Washington, D.C., have been waging war over national health care reform legislation, TCI’s Katie Redding has been looking at one specific impact of the realities of gender disparities in the insurance market: women pay more for coverage. As Colorado lawmakers eye legislative solutions to create gender parity by mandating maternity coverage for women, the insurance lobby has been gearing up for a fight. “We’ll always lobby against maternity mandates,” one lobbyist told TCI. “They just drive up the cost.” According to a recent study by the National Women’s Law Center, women in Colorado who purchase insurance on the individual market currently pay up to 59 percent more than men. That’s for coverage that doesn’t include maternity care, since it is virtually impossible to find a plan that includes maternity care on the state’s individual market. Two Democratic state legislators have vowed to bring gender parity to Colorado’s individual insurance market through legislation which the state’s insurance lobby has pledged to fight. By dissecting the issue prior to the start of the session next year, Redding has laid out the issues clearly and shown how determined the insurance industry is to keep the status quo that puts Colorado women at a distinct health care disadvantage.

Lynda Waddington’s traffic-driving interview with Sen. Tom Harkin noted the lawmaker’s views on the Stupak-Pitts amendment’s ban on federal funding for abortion services which he said could lead down a slippery slope that prevents women from accessing services with their own money as well. ”Every health insurance company in America could now lose some of its tax benefits that it gets for providing health insurance if it provides abortion services,” Harkin said. ”You could just say that anybody that got a federal loan for housing could not get an abortion. You can take this and just keep going on and on and on with no end in sight.” Waddington’s interview served to the get the influential HELP chair’s opinions on the record early, driving hundreds of readers to the site.

Jason Hancock carefully monitored the comments of outspoken right-wing radio host Steve Deace of WHO-AM in Des Moines, who said that Army Major Nadil Hasan, the Muslim man accused of shooting 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, “may have done America a favor” because the shooting rampage shows how the United States has “sold out our religious traditions for a secular enlightenment.” That, he said, would serve as a wake-up a call to American Christians to note that “[w]e are at war with an ideology that has an aberrant view of God and what he demands of his people” who can’t expect their “politicians to know the truth if the people in the pews who vote for them aren’t hearing it from the pulpit.”

As the debate over housing terrorism detainees from Guantanamo Bay on U.S. soil was reignited, Jason Hancock and Lynda Waddington carefully documented how Iowa politicians used the contentious issue to weaken each other. The issue hit close to home because of a new proposal to house detainees in a prison across the Mississippi River in Illinois. Iowa Republican Party Chairman Matt Strawn said the detainee proposal constitutes “a clear and present danger” and called on Democratic U.S. Rep. Bruce Braley, whose eastern Iowa district sits across the river from the prison, to denounce the plan. Braley, meanwhile, said he was “not going to engage in political fear mongering about something that is very serious to the safety and security to the people I represent.” U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, a Republican, weighed in as well, saying that he is opposed to not only housing the detainees in Illinois but to bringing them to U.S. soil to begin with. The senator was also critical of having accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed tried in federal court in New York City, saying it would turn the trial into a courtroom spectacle not seen since the O.J. Simpson trial. Iowa Democratic Party Chairman Michael Kiernan in turn, accused Grassley of using “Karl Rove-style fear-mongering tactics” on using the terrorism issue as a tool of division.

Jason Hancock took note of how the Iowa Democratic Party is taking advantage of fractures within the state Republican Party in advance of next year’s gubernatorial race. Democrats pounced on a tax policy schism between State Rep. Chris Rants and former Gov. Terry Branstad, two Republicans vying for their party’s gubernatorial nomination, that began when Rants claimed that Branstad will raise the state’s gas tax. Democratic Party Chairman Michael Kiernan, in a Web video, said it was “deeply troubling, in that it would seem Terry Branstad has not learned his lessons about tax increases on Iowans and intends to be a repeat offender.” Democrats have focused on GOP intra-party divisions before, trying to weaken the Republican Party field as Democratic Gov. Chet Culver looks to strengthen his position.

Todd A. Heywood examined the case of an HIV-positive man from Macomb County who is being charged under Michigan’s 2004 terrorism laws for biting his neighbor during a fight. The case, which is being appealed in state courts, is alarming to many HIV/AIDS activists because of the legal precedent it could set for the state’s terrorism laws and its ability to deepen the stigmatization of the virus. Heywood fact-checked the medical science in the case, noting that it’s essentially impossible to infect a person with HIV through a bite, something Detroit media failed to mention. A number of state lawmakers, including the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, have called the prosecution overzealous, saying it may be time to revisit the state’s HIV transmission laws as well. HIV activists, acting on Heywood’s reporting on the case, are now targeting the county prosecutor’s use of the 2004 terrorism laws. In an act of symbolic protest, they have asked anyone with HIV to “voluntarily turn themselves in” to be charged as terrorists.

If the city of Detroit didn’t have enough problems to tackle, it is also in an AIDS “crisis.” That’s how Charles Pugh, the incoming Detroit City Council president, describes the situation. Statistics from the state of Michigan show many ZIP codes in Detroit have HIV prevalence rates between 3 and 5 percent, Todd A. Heywood reports. One ZIP code has a prevalence rate of 6 percent for HIV, on par with high-rate African counties and U.S. urban areas, like the District of Columbia and New York City’s Bronx borough. Both D.C. and the Bronx have been elevated to targeted sites for new intervention plans by the Obama administration, including a new, aggressive testing program to identify and treat early HIV infection in those areas. Pugh said Detroit needs to be a “squeaky wheel” to marshal forces and keep the HIV/AIDS emergency in check, including the church community. Pugh, who is openly gay, said he will be able to get Mayor Dave Bing to pay attention to the problem that is eating away at Detroit.

Although some state lawmakers say that a proposed ballot initiative to create standards for uranium mining in the Upper Peninsula in unnecessary because they claim none of the radioactive material has been found there, Eartha Jane Melzer noted how one Canadian company has already pinpointed future mining development in the state. A coalition of Upper Peninsula lawmakers have come out in opposition to the uranium mining ballot proposal that would set mining standards where none currently exist. Environmental groups have decried the opposition as the acceptance of pro-mining propaganda. But the risk is very real: Several residential drinking wells have recorded uranium levels, prompting health advisories in parts of the western Upper Peninsula.

Minehaha Forman noted an important speech by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder where the nation’s top law enforcement official sounded the alarm about Michigan’s woefully underfunded and under-resourced public defender system. As Michigan Messenger has previously reported, recent studies of public defense have said Michigan is in a “constitutional crisis.” Holder, during a speech to the Brennan Center for Justice in Washington, D.C., stressed how bad things are for those accused of crimes in the Great Lakes State where there are counties “where defendants are charged and plead guilty to crimes that carry jail time without ever speaking to a lawyer.”

Andy Birkey attended and covered a fundraiser held in Bloomington for You Can Run But You Cannot Hide, a controversial ministry that says it preaches in public schools. Rep. Michele Bachmann headlined the event with a four-minute videotaped introductory address. “We can’t overlook the outright rejection of God in the public school classroom, and the outright scorn of Christianity in our public square,” she said.

Birkey also secured some of the top traffic with his reporting on the U.S. House version of the health care reform bill. While abortion politics dominated conservative opposition to the package that passed, several measures in the bill that are beneficial to LGBT Americans largely went unnoticed — especially by conservatives. The Human Rights Campaign reports it successfully lobbied to get five provisions important to the LGBT community included in the final bill, including provisions to track health disparities based on sexual orientation and gender identity, and tax equity for same-sex health plan beneficiaries. The Minnesota Family Council was among those who drove traffic to the stories, its blog crediting Birkey for “correctly concluding” that conservatives had focused their obstructionist efforts on abortion.

Chris Steller noted that U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann may have violated House rules by using her taxpayer-funded congressional website to urge people to attend her Nov. 5 “Super Bowl of Freedom” rally at the U.S. Capitol. In an official complaint filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, Bachmann and other House members are said to have violated rules by failing to get a permit for the demonstration, which they described as a “press conference.” CREW officials told Steller that House members aren’t supposed to use their congressional websites to urge public action on behlaf or against pending legislation.

With the winter holidays fast approaching, Andy Birkey has been keeping an eye on conservative groups who say there is an active “War on Christmas” by retailers and other groups, claiming that using the term “holiday” in marketing efforts demeans the sanctity of the birth of Jesus. The American Family Association has named Eden Prairie-based SUPERVALU as a “retailer against Christmas” because the company “refers to Christmas decorations as ‘holiday’ on website and weekly ads.” Bloomington-based Best Buy, which capitulated to AFA pressure on the subject in 2006, only makes out slightly better making the list under “Companies marginalizing ‘Christmas.’”

Dozens of state decision-makers logged on for NMI’s liveblog of a legislative hearing on the relatively obscure issue of combined reporting, which pertains to large, multi-state companies that don’t pay taxes on income they make in the state. According to NMI polls of participants taken during the event, the vast majority of decision-makers said they supported “combined reporting” reform, but in a separate poll only about a fifth said that they understood what that meant. Matt Reichbach also liveblogged and webcast Gov. Bill Richardson’s press conference in which he ordered nearly 20,000 state workers to take five furlough days and further pledged to cut 1,000 vacant state jobs and make cuts at the agencies under his control.

Trip Jennings plumbed public records to reveal which specific political appointees of Gov. Richardson are double-dippers: state workers who retire and then return to work, collecting both a salary and a pension. Although Richardson has vowed to stop the practice, he has not taken any action that would affect his own appointees, such as Deputy Secretary of General Services Marilyn Hill, who earns $99,424 in her current role while also drawing a $68,000 pension from the Public Employees Retirement Association (PERA); or Jeffrey Riggs, who takes in $96,928 as Deputy Director of the state Educational Retirement Board along with a $61,656 yearly PERA pension.

The State Investment Council decided to release four documents, including two federal grand jury subpoenas tied to a criminal investigation of an investment scandal. The public disclosure of the documents is being hailed as a victory for government transparency after the SIC refused to honor requests by The New Mexico Independent and groups like the Foundation for Open Government, which had insisted for months that the documents were public and should be released under New Mexico’s open records laws, Trip Jennings reported. In a separate investigation, Gov. Bill Richardson may be asked to testify under oath about anything he may know regarding a scandal in the state’s housing authority system, which culminated in 2006 with the default of $5 million in bonds owed to the SIC.

GOOD NEWS

N.M. approves four new medical marijuana producers

After months during which New Mexico’s single non-profit producer of medical marijuana was unable to keep a consistent supply of medical cannabis, Department of Health Secretary Alfredo Vigil announced Monday that the state is licensing an additional four producers, enough, the department hopes, to supply the state’s nearly 800 active medical cannabis patients.