0018 24

IN THE NEWS WITH ANN AND ANDY (taped 1-6-16)

Happy New Year!

As state legislatures kick off the 2016 term, some are determined to roll back LGBT rights in the face of 2015 gains in the courts.

A lesbian widow in California sues FedEx for her late wife’s pension benefits.

Police in San Diego **shoot and kill a man in a domestic dispute with his boyfriend.

Minneapolis gay activist and publisher Tim Campbell dies at 76.

Atlanta gets set to open a private LGBT school this fall.

Cross-dressing Dame Edna goes off on transgender people.

ISIS executes a 15-year old boy accused of being gay.

A lesbian bar in Moscow is shut down.

Texas slashes HIV prevention to punish Planned Parenthood.

Andy reviews a new movie about a sexy teen Christian birthday pool party. (HENRY GAMBLE’S BIRTHDAY PARTY is at the IFC in NY Jan. 8-14)

And a cast member of WICKED is surprised with a proposal at his curtain call.

LINKS:

“The Saint of Dry Creek” at www.storycorps.org

In cinemas worldwide this month:

THE WINTER'S TALE from the Garrick Theatre in London with Kenneth Branagh and Judi Dench: www.branaghtheatrelive.com

JANE EYRE from the National Theatre in London: www.ntlive.com

On Friday, the Democratic National Committee suspended the Bernie Sanders campaign’s access to a critical database after finding his staffers improperly viewed front-runner Hillary Clinton’s proprietary information when a computer glitch made it briefly available. The DNC backed down after Sanders filed suit, but the Sanders campaign has accused party leadership of trying to thwart the Vermont senator’s bid. The DNC has also been accused of trying to help Clinton by limiting the number of debates and scheduling them on low-viewership periods like Saturday nights. Bill Curry, political columnist at Salon.com and former White House counselor to President Clinton, argues that the DNC is deliberately blocking debate and that chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz should resign as a result.
"This is supposed to be a political party. In a healthy society, there would be a democratic process in the Democratic Party by which elected people would be overseeing these issues by making sure there wasn’t just nepotism and insider dealing," Curry says. "That the political party itself — which is supposed to be the progressive party — has become mortgaged to a small group of Washington insiders who raise money from large corporate PACs, [and] has become just a dead carcass of what it once was, is the most important piece of information that this contretemps over the data files has emphasized. It is time for progressives in this country to stand up and demand a genuinely democratic process."

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Sports reporter from Think Progress, Lindsay Gibbs talks about her about her story about Tyler Sash, a former New York Giants safety who died last September from an accidental overdose. Sash, Gibbs says, had been displaying erratic behavior before he died. Sash's is the latest story to surface about the damaging effects of head injuries from football. It begs the question: where does the NFL and football in general go from here?

Miss an episode of Bill Press? Click the link for our on-demand library of full episodes from The Bill Press Show: https://www.freespeech.org/collection....

The new book "Buyer's Remorse: How Obama Let Progressives Down" by Bill Press has just been released with a blurb by Bernie Sanders. The release comes at an interesting time in the 2016 Democratic race. Hillary Clinton has been campaigning on carrying on President Obama's legacy, while Sanders supporters argue that he is the more progressive choice. Kyle Cheney of Politico joins Bill Press to discuss the book and the article by Cheney about the relevance of the Sanders' blurb in the campaign for the Democratic nomination.

Miss an episode of Bill Press? Click the link for our on-demand library of full episodes from The Bill Press Show: https://www.freespeech.org/collection....

In the news this week:

The action on LGBT rights in the U.S. is in our state legislatures and most of it is not good. To track the bills in your state, go to these websites:
PROTECT THY NEIGHBOR www.protectthyneighbor.org
EQUALITY FEDERATION www.equalityfederation.org/lac

Bitter conflict at the Task Force’s Creating Change conference in Chicago over Israel and Palestine.

An out lesbian high court judge in Minnesota and transgender judge in Canada.

A NYC Council Member comes out and is praised for it by some remaining in the closet.

Rand Paul has an out gay Democratic opponent for US Senate from Kentucky.

Disturbing details in police killing of a gay man in San Diego.

Pope fights civil unions in Italy after supporting them in unsuccessful effort to stop same-sex marriage in Argentina.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) revises guidelines for transgender athletes.

Movies in the works on Alexander McQueen and Robert Mapplethorpe.

Bernie Sanders talks about implementing social safety programs like that of Denmark. Ted Cruz referenced Denmark in an attack against Donald Trump... So how does Denmark feel about its spotlight in the 2016 election in the United States? Chris Moody, Senior Reporter for CNN talks with Bill Press about his recent trip to Denmark to find out just that...

Miss an episode of Bill Press? Click the link for our on-demand library of full episodes from The Bill Press Show: https://www.freespeech.org/collection...

The late folk artist Pete Seeger was a musical and political icon who helped create the modern American folk music movement. Now there’s some new pages to add to his songbook—the government has released nearly 1,800 pages that reveal the FBI spied on him for nearly 30 years. The surveillance began when Seeger protested the targeting of Japanese Americans during World War II. It continued until the early 1970s as he wrote some of the most famous anti-war songs of the 20th century.

Full episodes of Democracy Now! can be viewed at the link: https://www.freespeech.org/collection....

Family members and supporters are demanding justice for Sandra Bland after a grand jury failed to indict anyone for her death. Bland, an African-American woman, was arrested on July 10 in Prairie View, Texas, after she allegedly failed to signal a lane change. She was jailed with bond set at $5,000. Three days later, she was found dead in her jail cell. Authorities say she committed suicide, a claim her family rejects. The family has filed a wrongful death suit and wants charges against the officer who arrested her. Will anyone be held to account for Sandra Bland’s death?

Click the link to continue watching full episodes of Democracy Now! https://www.freespeech.org/collection....