Elsewhere in Minnesota news this morning …

STATEWIDE: Ask Al more. Five dollars and cab fare to New York City will get you a lunch audience with Sen. Franken. [Washington Post's In the Loop]

TWIN CITIES: Random acts of criminality on YouTube. Police are on the trail of local thugs who posted a clip showing them attacking people on bikes and on foot. [Fox 9]

PRIOR LAKE: Native Americans get ready for Copenhagen. They want a say in climate-change talks. [Associated Press]

DASSEL: Steve Dille out. The Republican state senator won’t run again; he was one of the eight GOPers who helped override Gov. Pawlenty’s veto of transportation funding in 2008. [Litchfield Independent Review; Polinaut]

PRAIRIE ISLAND: Lege has last say on nuke storage. The people’s reps at the state Capitol could reverse a regulatory OK for Xcel Energy to store more nuclear waste. [Rochester Post-Bulletin]

STATEWIDE: Or possibly universe-wide? Minnesota Public Radio’s designs on dominance in news. [Braublog]

In a Twitter message, Jonah Goldberg wrote:

?? Dems want a health system that says when you can knee surgery, but demand abortion coverage because women should control their bodies.

While its moral logic confounds liberals at Instaputz and Wonkette, Goldberg’s tweet could supply a slogan for former U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman’s political comeback.

Coleman himself underwent knee surgery just last spring — at his own option and, in all likelihood, at government expense.

So the Coleman for Governor in 2010 campaign might be built around the specter of”government knee panels” or the Constitutional protections of “a man’s right to choose.”

Photo: WDCpix

While abortion politics dominated conservative opposition to the health care reform package that barely passed the U.S. House on Saturday evening, 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.

Currently, the government doesn’t track health disparities based on sexual orientation and gender identity like it does for race, economic status, marital status, age and a number of other characteristics. The bill that passed the House would add those categories to the government’s data collection practices and would for the first time be able to determine health disparities. That would enable the government to direct funding for research and public health efforts to address those disparities. A similar bill has been offered in Congress, the Ending Health Disparities for LGBT Americans Act.

The House bill also contains language from the Tax Equity for Health Plan Beneficiaries Act. Employer-paid health benefits for a domestic partner are taxed by the federal government as income but benefits for spouses are not. That means same-sex couples that utilize their employers’ health plan pay income taxes that married couples do not. The bill that passed the House on Saturday would fix that inequity.

An important disparity in the treatment of HIV is remedied in the bill. In order for people living with HIV to qualify for Medicaid programs they must have a diagnosis of AIDS — which often comes after years of living with the disease. The new legislation would enable states to qualify individuals who are newly diagnosed with HIV disease for Medicaid programs. That policy is included in the bill as the Early Treatment for HIV Act.

Strong protections to prevent discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity in health insurance and in the health care system also made it into the House bill.

Finally, the bill provides funding for comprehensive sex education programs that include relevant information for LGBT students.

Many of these policies have drawn fire from the religious right in the past, but recently such groups have been exerting most of their opposition to opposing abortion rights in the health reform bill. And the Stupak Amendment, which aims to ban any federal funding to cover abortion services, dominated the debate over the bill.

For instance, Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth, who railed against the tax equity bill in July, hasn’t mentioned its inclusion in the health bill.

The American Family Association opposed fixing health disparities for LGBT people as early as February, but abandoned that cause to fight against the inclusion of abortion rights in the health reform bill.

And the Family Research Council seems to have completely missed any notice of the LGBT provisions in the bill. The group spent a considerable amount of time and money on opposing abortion in the health reform bill, and FRC president Tony Perkins was even a featured speaker at Rep. Michele Bachmann’s “House Call” event opposing health care reform. He spoke about abortion.

Update: Now Minnesota Family Council is noticing LGBT measures in healthcare bill

Photo: Chris Steller, MnIndy

U.S. Sen. Al Franken introduced legislation Thursday that would encourage states to examine untested rape kits for DNA evidence. The bill would also provide for more health workers trained to administer rape-kit exams, particularly for Native American women.

Another aspect of the bill is that women couldn’t be made to pay for all or part of their rape kit exams — an issue that came up in the 2008 presidential campaign.

“We don’t bill criminals for fingerprint processing,” Franken said in a statement.

The Justice for Survivors of Sexual Assault Act is co-sponsored by Republicans Orrin Hatch of Utah and Chuck Grassley of Iowa, as well as Democrat Dianne Feinstein of California.

The bill follows by only a month Senate passage of Franken’s amendment defunding military contractors that make employees sign away their rights to take sexual assualt allegations to court.

Rape came up during Franken’s campaign for Senate when opponents publicized instances in his comedic past that touched on the topic.

In a special edition of their newsletter (DOC), the group goes after President Obama, saying his facts are incorrect.

“Despite public statements by Pres. Barack Obama that ‘no federal dollars will be used to fund abortion,’ all of the major bills under consideration would put the federal government into the business of subsidizing elective abortion on a massive scale,” wrote MCCL, then going on to quote Factcheck.org. “‘Despite what Obama said, the House bill would allow abortions to be covered by a federal plan and by federally subsidized private plans,’ reported the independent FactCheck.org.”

But what FactCheck.org actually said was that it’s a grey area in between. “The truth is that bills now before Congress don’t require federal money to be used for supporting abortion coverage. So the president is right to that limited extent. But it’s equally true that House and Senate legislation would allow a new ‘public’ insurance plan to cover abortions, despite language added to the House bill that technically forbids using public funds to pay for them.”

The rest of the groups claims have also been debunked by Factcheck.org.

Health Rationing

MCCL says that all of the health reform proposals would dole out care based on age and disability. “In addition to the expansion of abortion, all major bills under consideration — as currently written — would likely lead to the rationing of care,” the group writes. “The bills addressing health care ‘reform’ all require the rationing of health care.”

Paul Stark, Student Outreach Coordinator, wrote, “The health care legislation pending in Congress would likely lead to the rationing of care for elderly, disabled and other vulnerable persons.”

When RNC chair Michael Steele used a similar line in an ad attacking health care reform, Factcheck.org corrected him. “It’s … false for Steele to imply that Democratic health care legislation proposes to ‘ration health care based on age.’”

While none of the bills specifically spells out a rationing of health care, Politifact took time to explore the issue. “Everyone hates the word rationing,” Katherine Baicker, a health economics professor at Harvard University, told the Pulitzer Prize-winning fact-checking site. “From an economics perspective, there’s no way around rationing. Some care is being rationed now. Everyone isn’t getting everything.”

But MCCL does not acknowledge — let alone condemn — the fact that health care is currently rationed.

Medicare cuts

Stark wrote, “[A] substantial part of the cost under the proposals would be paid for by ‘robbing Peter to pay Paul’ − reducing Medicare funding for older people in order to cover the uninsured.”

MCCL president Leo Lalonde wrote about seniors’ reactions when MCCL told them at a fall meeting that Medicare would be deeply cut. “This information and much more was shared with Fall Tour attendees, who reacted with anger, fear and disbelief. Some people already understood this threat. But many more did not, and were deeply disturbed to learn that Medicare — the only source of medical care for many senior citizens— could be severely restricted under Obama’s plan.”

Factcheck.org found that claim to be false:

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the House bill would result in “savings” [to Medicare] of $219 billion after all increases and decreases are netted out. The House bill would trim projected increases in payments for hospitals, insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies and others, including home health care providers and suppliers of motor-driven wheelchairs. But it also proposes what CBO estimates is a $245 billion increase in spending for doctors, by canceling a scheduled 21 percent cut in physician payments. None of the “savings” or “cuts” (whichever you prefer) come from reducing current or future benefit levels for seniors.

Klobuchar recounted her own experiences with the health care industry on the Senate floor last week.

Let me tell my colleagues how I got interested in this issue. When my daughter was born, she was very sick. She couldn’t swallow. She was in intensive care. They thought she had a tumor. It was a horrendous moment for our family. I was up all night in labor, up all day trying to figure out what was wrong with her, and they literally kicked me out of the hospital — my husband wheeled me out in a wheelchair after 24 hours — because at that point in our country’s history, they had a rule; it was called driveby births. When a mom gave birth, she had to get kicked out of the hospital in 24 hours.

In a press conference, Klobuchar talked about how that experience drove her to get the law changed.

Klobuchar also said she was pleased that domestic abuse was being addressed by Congress.

“In nine states and the District of Columbia, women who are victims of domestic abuse, who have been victims of domestic abuse can be denied health care coverage because domestic abuse can be considered a preexisting condition,” she said. “That’s why I’m so glad one of the major, major proposals in this reform is to do something about pre-existing conditions.”

Seven other female senators are working to make the health reform package inclusive of women: Sens. Patty Murray, D-Wash; Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y.; Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H.; Barbara Boxer D-Calif.; Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich.; Mary Landrieu, D-La.; and Senator Kay Hagan, D-N.C.

The senators say one of the most important issues facing women’s access to health care is that women pay more in premiums but get less health care for the added cost. Things like pregnancy and domestic abuse are sometimes excluded as preexisting conditions.

Planned Parenthood of Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, praised Klobuchar’s efforts.

“The health care debate continues to rage in Washington, and amendments limiting women’s access to reproductive health care are expected,” the group said on Friday. “Senator Klobuchar made it clear last week that women cannot be worse off after health care reform than they are today. Health care reform must improve our lives, not take away the rights we have fought so hard to win.”

The U.S. Marshals Service is charged with protecting the 94 United States District Courts. Lubinski will be in charge of the United States District Court for the District of Minnesota if approved by the U.S. Senate later this year.

Lubinski is openly lesbian and has served in law enforcement for more than 30 years and is one of the highest ranking LGBT members of law enforcement in the country.

If confirmed, Lubinski would also be the second female U.S. Marshal currently serving in that capacity and would be the 13th female Marshal in U.S. history.

President Obama praised Lubinski in a press release Tuesday afternoon. “Assistant Chief Lubinski has dedicated her career to the noble cause of protecting her fellow Americans. She has displayed exceptional courage in the pursuit of justice, and I am honored to nominate her today to continue her selfless work as a U.S. Marshal for the District of Minnesota.”

Sen. Amy Klobuchar recommended Lubinksi earlier this summer. She wrote:

Sharon Lubinski’s mix of experience managing a large, urban police department and working in a more rural sheriff’s office sets her apart and makes her uniquely qualified to serve in this new role. During my eight years as Hennepin County Attorney, I had the opportunity to work with Sharon on an almost daily basis. I observed firsthand the strength of her leadership abilities and the respect she commands from people at every level of law enforcement and in the larger community.

According to her bio, Lubinski has served in the Minneapolis Police Department for 20 years and has held a command post for 10 years. She started her law enforcement career as a member of the force at the Dane County Sheriff’s Department in Madison, Wis., and she is a member of the faculty at Metropolitan State University School of Criminal Justice.

MnIndy file photo

An amendment that would ban federal funds going to companies that require arbitration in the case of sexual assault passed the Senate on Tuesday. The amendment was offered by Sen. Al Franken and was added to the defense appropriations bill by a vote of 68 to 30.

The amendment was offered after Jamie Leigh Jones, an employee of Kellogg, Brown & Root (formerly a subsidiary of Halliburton) was sexually assaulted by her co-workers in Iraq and then locked in a shipping crate when she tried to report the rape. Her return to the United States was facilitated by U.S. Rep. Ted Poe, R-Tex., but upon her return, she learned that the fine print of her employment contract banned her from taking the case to court.

On the Senate floor, Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., called it “a political attack directed at Halliburton.”

Franken rebutted, “This amendment does not single out a single contractor. This amendment would defund any contractor that refuses to give a victim of rape their day in court.”

The amendment was supported by a number of Minnesota organizations including Advocates for Human Rights, Breaking Free, Casa de Esperanza, Mid Minnesota Legal Assistance, the Minnesota Coalition against Sexual Assault, the Minnesota Indian Women’s Resource Center, the Minnesota Indian Women’s Sexual Assault Coalition, the Minnesota National Organization for Women, Minnesota Women Lawyers and the Sexual Violence Center.

“I’m proud of what we accomplished today. Victims of sexual assault deserve their day in court and no corporation should be able to deny them that right,” Franken said. “Jamie’s courage in telling her story will help women all over this country and I’m honored to have been a part of that.”

Jones also praised passage of the amendment. “This amendment makes all the hard times that I have gone through, when going public with such a personal tragedy, worth every tear shed from telling and retelling my horrific experience,” she said. “I am highly honored that Senator Franken and his wife have created this amendment to ensure that others do not have to endure the suffering that I have.”

Lila Rose tells the Values Voter Summit she wishes abortions would be performed in the public square. Via YouTube.

The grainy video, filmed in Bloomington, Ind., last year, features a young woman with bleach-blonde hair fidgeting in her chair. As haunting music loops over her small voice, she tells a Planned Parenthood worker that she’s 13 years old, almost 14. She mentions an older boyfriend. The worker says Indiana law dictates that people 13 years old or under who have had intercourse must be reported to Child Protective Services. The timestamp in the corner of the screen skips back and forth. The video lingers accusingly on a clip, edited to repeat multiple times, of the worker saying she didn’t hear the boyfriend’s age. It fades into black.

Lila Rose, the 21-year-old woman behind an undercover video campaign against Planned Parenthood, as well as the actress in most of her recordings, is scheduled to travel to Minnesota to speak at a benefit dinner for Pro-Life Action Ministries in Brooklyn Center on Monday.

Following the successful bipartisan push to defund ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) after a similar undercover video campaign, abortion opponents are refocusing their energy on Planned Parenthood. Only last weekend, following a speech in which she said she wished abortions in the United States would be conducted literally in “public squares,” Rose hosted a breakout session at the 2009 Value Voters Summit entitled “Defunding Planned Parenthood.” Participants were urged to “learn from people, like you, who have successfully stopped Planned Parenthood funding in their communities.”

Rose is a superstar in the anti-abortion movement, backing a California ballot measure to constitutionally expand the legal definition of a human to include fetuses and rubbing shoulders with Republican luminaries like Gov. Tim Pawlenty.

The videos she produces are designed to fuel allegations that Planned Parenthood staff neglect to report statutory rape, as many state laws require. With only nine videos in her holster, her organization, Live Action, has managed to threaten some government funding for Planned Parenthood in Indiana, California and Tennessee — despite the fact that none of those organizations has ever used such funds for abortions.

Rose’s work faces criticism from reproductive-rights advocates who allege the videos are edited manipulatively and feature non-medical staff. It also raises ethical questions about secretly videotaping workers and the mainstream media’s careless treatment of the videos.

“Defunding Planned Parenthood”

Kathi Di Nicola, spokesman for Planned Parenthood of Minnesota, South Dakota and North Dakota (PPMNS) said her organization wasn’t threatened by Rose’s impending visit.

“Serving the reproductive needs of our patients is our number-one priority, day in and day out,” Di Nicola said. “We’ve done that for 81 years in Minnesota and we’re not intimidated by those who attempt to undermine our work.”

Representatives from both PPMNS and Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) declined to comment about security measures prompted by Rose’s undercover videos or her presence in the state this week.

There’s been little direct public response to Rose’s operation from Planned Parenthood, which is, after all, no stranger to criticism. Their rejoinders have been limited to some general statements and a pair of now-withdrawn lawsuits in California.

“Ultimately, their modus operandi has been to try to minimize the scandal because clearly they want to keep operating as they are,” Rose said in an interview with the Minnesota Independent.

Planned Parenthood is accustomed to taking heat from anti-abortion activists, despite the fact that only a small proportion of the services the organization provides involve abortion, said Linnea House, executive director for NARAL Pro-Choice Minnesota.

The tactic’s goal “is to get [a worker] to say something that the general public would disagree with,” House said. “It seems like what they’re trying to do is get Planned Parenthood defunded.”

Rose claims to have cost Planned Parenthood $1.1 million nationwide because of her videos. In June 2009, the Tennessee state legislature worked to revoke Planned Parenthood’s preferential status for federal Title X Family Planning funds because of outrage fueled by one of Rose’s videos that purported to show a Planned Parenthood worker telling an underage girl how to avoid statutory rape charges for her older boyfriend.

Representatives of Planned Parenthood in the greater Memphis area say the final legislation won’t really affect their funding, but that it’s more of a symbolic vote.

Rose also said her videos have led to the firing or other reprimanding of Planned Parenthood workers. The Planned Parenthood Federation of America declined to comment on specific staffing issues related to the videos, but in an e-mailed statement PPFA spokesman Diane Quest said, “Planned Parenthood affiliate health centers take all claims [of employee misconduct], regardless of their source, seriously.”

Quest said the organization is dedicated to protecting teens, and making sure they receive the medical care they need.

“Millions of parents trust that their teens will get accurate information and quality care at Planned Parenthood health centers, and affiliate staff work exceptionally hard to maintain that trust,” Quest said. “In the rare cases when an affiliate health center determines that a staff person hasn’t met Planned Parenthood’s high standards of employment, swift action is taken — action that can include retraining and other steps.”

But a leaked e-mail from Planned Parenthood Greater Memphis Region CEO Barry Chase to state legislators in April pointed out that the worker featured in Rose’s Memphis video was a translator, not a nurse or caregiver. That’s another common criticism of Rose’s videos; it’s often unclear who she is filming and in what context. In the e-mail, Chase refers to the Memphis video as “highly edited.”

It’s also not clear that she’s ever sat down with Planned Parenthood’s trained nurses, instead focusing on clerical or other workers. According to the PPFA, Rose never had official patient appointments or filled out any paper work.

Biased media or media bias?

Since the ACORN videos broke, the tactic of secretly videotaping the political opponents of right-wing activists has quickly gained mainstream conservative approval.

“It’s definitely a trend or even beyond a trend, it’s a growing number of people that are not just listening to the mainstream media anymore, or what used to be the mainstream media, and instead are determined to really find the facts for themselves,” Rose told the Minnesota Independent.

Such undisclosed investigations can be ethically troubling, said Jane Kirtley, professor of Media Ethics and Law at the University of Minnesota and member of the Society of Professional Journalists’ Ethics Committee.

“Just because you’re doing something that involves hidden camera surveillance doesn’t mean you’re doing it for journalistic purposes,” Kirtley said.

In traditional journalism circles, she said, the use of undercover cameras is regarded as a last resort, and in many states it can be illegal.

“There is this aspect of it which troubles people, the old question: Do the ends justify the means?” Kirtley said. “If you’re going to be uncovering misconduct on the part of somebody else, does that justify your engaging in something that some people think is inappropriate, like using deception?”

Kirtley said Rose’s videos, depending on how they are done, could potentially fit into the media’s watchdog role, which has often been fulfilled or supplemented by advocacy groups.

Rose, who wavers between referring to herself as a “journalist” and “activist,” readily admits that her aim is dramatic effect, shrugging off criticism that undercover videos can land her in ethically murky water. (Aside from a stint publishing a campus magazine at UCLA, Rose has no formal journalistic experience.)

“Those are diversions from the real subject at hand, which is that young girls are being abused sexually and taken in for secret abortions,” Rose said. “A lot of times, [these criticisms] are shameful diversions because what those people are saying basically is any undercover journalism and any work like this is just not OK.”

Rose points out that mainstream media shows like NBC Dateline’s “To Catch a Predator” use her form of undercover journalism.  In fact, Rose turns the tables on mainstream media outlets, accusing them of political bias for not following up on her investigations.

“People get uncomfortable with certain organizations being exposed and the embarrassment it causes them because of the true horrific things that are happening behind the closed doors of those organizations,” Rose said. “They’re willing to sacrifice the public being truly informed as they should be for their own political agenda. As a journalist I find that sickening and I think that’s not right; I think the public deserves to know.”

But Kirtley said the mainstream media’s big problem resides in its rush to air videos like Rose’s without providing appropriate disclaimers or context.

“I’m not suggesting that news organizations of any stripe shouldn’t use user-generated content. There are many times where that’s absolutely appropriate and enriches the whole news-gathering and reporting experience,” Kirtley said. “If you’re taking material from a group that has an agenda, you have an obligation to be absolutely clear in rebroadcasting the material that it comes from them and you’re reporting it because of the fact that they did it and not because the content is necessarily accurate.”

Rose said her organization has prepared other videos for 2009. Although Rose won’t disclose how many undercover videos her organization has shot or where they were filmed, she said that a 2009 video based in Minnesota is a possibility.

Despite her intense involvement in anti-abortion events and activism, Rose said her mission to “defund Planned Parenthood” isn’t about abortion.

“Many [young women] are manipulated by partners or by older men [...] into getting these abortions, so definitely we’re staunchly against [abortion],” Rose said. “But even on a purely organizational level, the way that Planned Parenthood operates in accepting tax money and in manipulating women and assessing the sexual abuse cover-up is reason enough to stop taxpayer funds going to the organization.”

Linnea House of NARAL Pro-Choice Minnesota said the loss of any funding for the organization would hurt Planned Parenthood’s mission as the largest provider of family planning and reproductive health care in the country.

“This is basically another tool for [anti-abortion activists] to be doing some fear-mongering,” House said. “Doing these undercover exposés on an organization that is internationally and nationally known as a provider is a tactic to be used by those who don’t have a whole lot of options.”

Bachmann has been talking up how tough her re-election bid will be in November 2010, and that’s the month she is pictured in the 2010 Great American Conservative Women Calendar from the Claire Booth Luce Institute.

You’ll be rewarded with a complete slideshow of all 11 women featured in the calendar if you visit FoxNews.com — or if you prefer, the Huffington Post, where they’re soliciting photos for a Great American Liberal Women calendar.

(Not sure why the Luce calendar has only 11 great conservative women — either they couldn’t come up with a full dozen or they are in solidarity with Nepali calendar-makers.)

Bachmann’s photo is decorated with a vintage 1958 stamp from Minnesota’s centennial and her own quote, which harkens back to an even earlier time:

Since the fall of Adam, freedom has not been the natural condition of man. However, America has chosen to light a candle, rather than curse the darkness, with the bright promise of life, liberty and freedom.

One of Bachmann’s press aides had a quote almost as long if less profound (it involved “getting soaking wet”) when she was featured last July in The Hill’s list of the 50 most beautiful people in Washington, D.C.