Dana Liebelson

Reporter

Dana Liebelson is a reporter in Mother Jones' Washington bureau. She contributes regularly to The Week. Previously, she worked for the Project On Government Oversight (POGO), covering defense and open government issues. Her work has also appeared on TIME's Battleland, Truthout, OtherWords and Yahoo! News. In her free time, she plays electric violin in an Indie rock band.

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VIDEO: Bradley Manning's Lawyer Makes First Public Appearance

—By Dana Liebelson

| Tue Dec. 4, 2012 10:10 AM PST

David Coombs, the lawyer representing Bradley Manning, the jailed soldier accused of leaking sensitive national security documents to WikiLeaks, spoke publicly about the case for the first time last night.

The event was held in Washington by Manning-supporters to raise money for the defendant. Other speakers included Jesselyn Radack of the Government Accountability Project, Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights, and Marsha Coleman-Adebayo of the National Whistleblower Center.

Coombs spoke about how he doesn't want his client to be tried in the press, Manning's treatment in prison, and why he thinks the court martial system is "by far the fairest." You can see the whole event streamed by C-Span here, or a few excerpts from Coombs in the video below.

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7 Ways Women and Girls Are Stereotyped, Sexualized, and Underrepresented on Screen

New report highlights staggering gender disparities in film and TV—even children's shows.

—By Dana Liebelson and Asawin Suebsaeng

| Fri Nov. 30, 2012 3:24 PM PST

It's no big revelation that women and minority actors have long struggled to land prominent roles in big-budget Hollywood fare. And entertainment and media's oversexualization of women (even in Olympics coverage) has always been pretty damn bald-faced.

But how about kids' TV shows, or family movies?

The Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media (founded in 2004 by the Oscar-winning actress and United Nations special envoy) has published a new report (PDF) detailing the stereotypes, barriers, and straight-up exploitation that still define how badly women and girls are treated on screen. The study takes a deep dive into prime-time television, as well as children's programming and family-friendly films. Women are scarcer in prime-time shows and family films, and those films depict "fewer women in prestigious occupational positions," the study notes. "Females are not only missing from popular media, [but] when they are on screen, they seem to be there merely for decoration."

Check out some of the stunning stats below:

Image credits: Walt Disney Pictures ; CBS ; HBO ; NBC ; Group W Productions ; 20th Century Fox ; TBS

The Supreme Court's Big Gay-Marriage Week, Explained

The Supreme Court is taking up Proposition 8 and the Defense of Marriage Act this week.

—By Dana Liebelson

| Thu Nov. 29, 2012 1:55 PM PST

This week, the Supreme Court will hear a challenge to Proposition 8, which bars same-sex couples from marrying in California, and a case challenging the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which denies federal benefits to same-sex couples married under state law. Proposition 8 is the big one: Overturning it would establish a broad, constitutional right to gay marriage that could be applied nationwide. However, DOMA shouldn't be discounted: If this law, signed by former president Bill Clinton, is found to unconstitutional, federal law will not longer discriminate against legally married gay couples. My colleague Adam Serwer argues that the risk to gay marriage is in fact, "very great" in the Supreme Court, because the court could "side with marriage equality" in DOMA, but "render discrimination constitutional," by not overturning Prop 8. Read on for essential background on the Supreme Court's decision to take up gay marriage:

More Mother Jones coverage of gay rights and marriage equality

Big Government or Marriage Equality? DOMA Puts Conservative Justices in a Bind

Here Are the 7 Worst Things Antonin Scalia Has Said or Written About Homosexuality

At Supreme Court, Marriage Equality Foes' Best Argument Is That They're Losing

Which Politicians Supported Gay Marriage and When?

The Anti-Marriage Equality Movement Meets on the Mall—and Tries to Think Happy Thoughts

The Supreme Court's Big Gay-Marriage Week, Explained

VIDEO: The 5 Most Comically Bad Anti-Gay Ads, Ever

Mac McClelland on Gay Rights in Uganda

Gay by Choice? The Science of Sexual Identity

Gay by Choice? Yeah, What If?

Which cases were originally before the Supreme Court?

The Supreme Court had the opportunity to pick up five cases that challenged the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), a law signed by President Bill Clinton in 1996 that prevents same-sex couples married under state law from receiving the same federal recognition as heterosexual married couples. The Supreme Court decided to hear the Proposition 8 case and Windsor v. United States, which Serwer calls, "the kind of same-sex marriage case even a conservative justice could love."

Photographer: © Nick Adams, ZumaPress

What would have happened if the Supreme Court didn't accept any of the cases?

Many gay-marriage advocates didn't want the Supreme Court to take up the Proposition 8 case. If the court had let the lower-court decision stand, same-sex couples could again get married in California after a four-year delay. The same holds true for the Diaz case, which if left alone, would allow state employees to continue to receive domestic-partner health insurance coverage for the time being.

According to Jon Davidson, the legal director for Lambda Legal, if the Supreme Court had decided not to hear any of the DOMA cases, rulings from the First and Second Circuits saying that a section of DOMA is unconstitutional would have stood. Same-sex couples married in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont would be recognized as married when it comes to federal benefits and rights. (This won't change the fact that same-sex couples in Rhode Island can't marry, and couples in Maine can't marry until January.)

- Hollingsworth v. Perry, a challenge to Califorinia's Proposition 8, is the only case facing the high court that deals specifically with the right of same-sex couples to marry. After the anti-gay-marriage activists passed an amendment to the California constitution defining marriage as between a man and a woman. A federal appeals court then under the 14th Amendment. (This case was picked up by the Supreme Court.)
- Diaz v. Brewer deals specifically with health insurance benefits for gay couples in Arizona who are state employees. Same-sex marriage is not legal in Arizona. Right now, there is a preliminary injunction that allows same-sex couples to receive domestic-partner health insurance coverage.
- Gill v. Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group of the US House of Representatives and Massachusetts v. United States Department of Health and Human Services involve challenges to DOMA in Massachusetts. The complaints deal with federal benefits denied to gay married couples, like the right to file joint income taxes.
- Windsor v. United States concerns a challenge to DOMA in New York. In this case, that the plaintiff was not able to claim an estate tax marital deduction after her spouse's death. (This case was picked up by the Supreme Court.)
- Golinski v. Office of Personnel Management is a California case involving a married federal court employee who was unable to extend health benefits to her same-sex spouse.
- Pedersen v. Office of Personnel Management is a case with a plaintiff challenging DOMA in Connecticut, as a purported violation of the 5th Amendment.

[Read the full article]

Canceled Nukes Meeting: A Setback for Obama?

The president took office with nuclear non-proliferation as a priority, but has little to show for it thus far.

—By Dana Liebelson

| Wed Nov. 28, 2012 3:09 PM PST

The day after Thanksgiving, when Americans were still digesting on La-Z-Boys and watching football, the State Department quietly announced that the 2012 conference for a Middle East zone free of nuclear weapons had been canceled by the United States. It doesn't quite qualify as inconvenient news deliberately dropped over a holiday weekend (Israelis and Palestinians were probably watching the news, not sleeping off turkey), but it comes close.

The cancelation, apparently due to circumstances in the region, doesn't reflect particularly well on President Obama, who had made nuclear non-proliferation a priority in his administration. In 2009, shortly after his inauguration, he appeared in Prague and presented an ambitious vision to achieve a world without weapons of mass destruction. Since then, he has worked toward that goal—holding nuclear summits in Washington and South Korea—but with mixed results. The summit in Seoul for example, dissolved into squabbles between the US and Russia, and did little to advance a nuclear weapons-free agenda. (The New York Times called it "a most undiplomatic pileup.") Reports early this year indicated that Obama was considering reducing the US nuclear arsenal, but likely not until further talks with the Russians some time in 2013.

[Read the full article]

Obama: Whistleblowers' New BFF

—By Dana Liebelson

| Wed Nov. 28, 2012 5:56 AM PST

When it comes to protecting whistleblowers, President Obama's track record has been fairly bleak. In his first term, he trampled over them on his quest to aggressively prosecute government leakers. But Obama's legacy on the issue may have changed on Tuesday when he signed a law called the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act, a far-reaching bill that affords federal whistleblowers a host of new safeguards.

This hard-fought law (activists have been working to get it passed for more than a decade) upgrades the existing protections for federal employees who witness waste, fraud, or abuse within the federal government.

Specifically, the law lowers the standard of proof whistleblowers must provide in order to receive protection and closes judicially-created loopholes that were added to the original 1989 Whistleblower Protection Act. It also makes it easier for the Office of Special Counsel, the federal government's whistleblower protection agency, to discipline employers or agencies who retaliate, and it provides compensatory damages to certain whistleblowers who have successful cases. (This compensation is different than the monetary awards available to certain whistleblowers in the private sector. The Securities and Exchange Commission, which received 3,000 tips last year, rewards private sector whistleblowers who expose financial corruption, and whistleblowers who bring Qui Tam cases are also eligible for compensation under the False Claims Act.)

The Obama administration has angered whistleblower advocates in the past for being particularly tough on whistleblowers and prosecuting them under the Espionage Act. But, with the passage of the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act, whistleblower advocates seems to think the administration has turned over a new leaf. According to the Government Accountability Project (GAP), Obama restored a large portion of the bill that protects national security whistleblowers after the House gutted it via a presidential directive.

"Most Presidents have offered lip service for whistleblower rights, but President Obama fought to give them more teeth," Tom Devine, legal director of GAP said in a statement.