Stephanie Mencimer

Reporter

Stephanie works in Mother Jones' Washington bureau. A Utah native and graduate of a crappy public university not worth mentioning, she has spent the last year hanging out with angry white people who occasionally don tricorne hats and come to lunch meetings heavily armed.

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Stephanie covers legal affairs and domestic policy in Mother Jones' Washington bureau. She is the author of Blocking the Courthouse Door: How the Republican Party and Its Corporate Allies Are Taking Away Your Right to Sue. A contributing editor of the Washington Monthly, a former investigative reporter at the Washington Post, and a senior writer at the Washington City Paper, she was nominated for a National Magazine Award in 2004 for a Washington Monthly article about myths surrounding the medical malpractice system. In 2000, she won the Harry Chapin Media award for reporting on poverty and hunger, and her 2010 story in Mother Jones of the collapse of the welfare system in Georgia and elsewhere won a Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism.

Gay Activists to Mehlman: Not So Fast

—By Stephanie Mencimer

| Thu Aug. 26, 2010 9:13 AM PDT

Well, big surprise. Ken Mehlman is gay. And now the former Republican Party chairman says he yearns to be a gay-marriage advocate. But Mehlman, who headed George Bush's 2004 re-election campaign, is a little late to the wedding party, and he's getting a frosty reception in some quarters of the gay rights world--for good reason.

Mehlman was outed years ago not just by gay activists appalled by his party's electoral strategy, which included vicious attacks on gays and lesbians, but by other gay Republicans. During the 2004 presidential campaign, the Bush reelection effort and the GOP used anti-gay marriage initiatives in key states, such as Ohio, to enhance their electoral prospects. The party continued to whip up anti-gay sentiment after Melhman assumed the helm of the Republican National Committee. Meanwhile, rumors about his sexuality persisted. (After a 2005 Republican Party dinner in Ohio attended by Mehlman, one local gay Republican attendee told the Gay People's Chronicle that while Mehlman didn't quite admit publicly that he was gay in response to questions about his sexual orientation, "as long as he’s sleeping with men behind the scenes, that’s all I care about.”) Mehlman's hypocrisy is legendary on this front.

Mehlman is hardly the first big-league Republican to come out of the closet. Last year, longtime GOP political consultant Arthur Finkelstein, a highly secretive down-and-dirty political operative who helped orchestrate the rise of notorious gay basher, North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms, shocked the politerati by marrying his partner of 40 years in a civil ceremony in Massachusetts. (Prior to that, there had been merely unconfirmed rumors about Finkelstein's orientation.) Fred Karger, a long-closeted California political consultant who helped devise the Willie Horton campaign against Michael Dukakis during the 1988 presidential campaign, came out a few years ago, and he has become a prominent gay rights advocate, as we explained in this article earlier this year. But unlike Mehlman, Karger never worked for the extreme social conservatives of his party or promoted gay-bashing electoral strategies.

Given Mehlman's particular record, many gay activists believe he has lots of apologizing to do, and not all of them are ready to link arms with the guy. In a post headlined, "Repulsive Anti-Gay Quisling Homophobic Scumbag Asshat Closeted Former RNC Chair Ken Mehlman Has Come Out," gay blogger Joe.My.God writes, "Mehlman's crimes against his own people are motherfucking LEGION....We can be sure that GOProud and the Log Cabin Republicans [organizations of Republicans who support gay rights] are positively drooling over the prospect of welcoming Mehlman onto their boards of directors. VOMIT."

Michael Rogers, who outed Mehlman six years ago, writes a blistering post suggesting that gay rights activists should wait before embracing Mehlman as one of their own:

I want to hear from Ken that he is sorry for being the architect of the 2004 Bush reelection campaign. I want to hear from Ken that he is sorry for his role in developing strategy that resulted in George W. Bush threatening to veto ENDA or any bill containing hate crimes laws. I want to hear from Ken that he is sorry for the pressing of two Federal Marriage Amendments as political tools. I want to hear from Ken that he is sorry for developing the 72-hour strategy, using homophobic churches to become political arms of the GOP before Election Day. And those state marriage amendments. I want to hear him apologize for every one of those, too.

And then there is one other little thing. You see, while you and I had the horrible feelings of being treated so poorly by our President, while teens were receiving the messaging 'gay is bad' giving them 'permission' to gay bash, while our rights were being stripped away state by state, Ken was out there laughing all the way to the bank. So, if Ken is really sorry, and he very well may be, then all he needs to do is sell his condo and donate the funds to the causes he worked against so hard for all those years. He's done a lot of damage to a lot of organizations, while making a lot of money. A LOT of money. It's time to put his money where his mouth is. Ken Mehlman is sitting in a $3,770,000.00 (that's $3.77 million) condo in Chelsea while we have lost our right to marry in almost 40 states.

THEN, and only then, should Mehlman be welcomed into our community.

Perhaps Mehlman should go one more in his quest for atonement (should he decide to atone, that is). Karger, the gay former GOP consultant, is running for president as a Republican. Needless to say, the party hasn't rallied around his historic, if exceedingly long-shot, campaign. Mehlman could join Karger's campaign staff, or at least raise money for him. Karger, who is vacationing in Martha's Vineyard and schmoozing with the White House press corps to advance his campaign, emails that he'd already been planning to ask Mehlman for assistance before the news broke. After all, he notes, there aren't that many gay, Jewish Republicans. Now that Mehlman has come out, Karger is more than happy to welcome him to the fold--and to his campaign, saying, "Ken, I need your help!"

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If at First You Don't Secede

Meet the legalization-loving, Iraq-War-hating Californian who's become a guru to the state sovereignty movement.

—By Stephanie Mencimer

| July/August 2010 Issue

This February, around 300 conservative activists and candidates gathered at the Atlanta airport Hilton to celebrate the Tenth Amendment, the oft-overlooked constitutional provision that's become the philosophical underpinning of opposition to everything—from bank bailouts to federal gun laws to the new health care bill. Among the speakers were the author of The South Was Right; a man who'd done time for evading taxes while running a gold and silver "bank"; and Roy Moore, the former Alabama Supreme Court justice who lost his robes after refusing to remove a giant Ten Commandments from his courthouse.

The odd man out was Michael Boldin, the founder of the Tenth Amendment Center, a tiny California think tank that cosponsored the event. Unshaven and dressed in jeans, an untucked button-down shirt, and hipster glasses, Boldin stood out from the crowd, which included the obligatory Tea Partier in a tricornered hat. The 37-year-old Wisconsin native told me that the Moore who'd inspired his activism was Michael, not Roy. Boldin describes himself as a "recovering Catholic" and reads Mother Jones. He got into politics because of the invasion of Iraq and has come to believe "that most of what the federal government does, from foreign to domestic policy, is a constitutional violation."

[Read the full article]

Separation Anxiety

Who needs federal health care when you've got state sovereignty?

—By Stephanie Mencimer

| July/August 2010 Issue

Fed up with the feds? Good news—24 state legislatures have already passed laws declaring themselves sovereign (only 7 governors actually signed the bills into law). Meanwhile, lawmakers in 11 states have passed measures to nullify federal health care reform (3 of those are now law).

Separation Anxiety Map

As of May 18, 2010
Source: Tenth Amendment Center

Tea Partiers Try K Street Fundraising Tactic

—By Stephanie Mencimer

| Tue Aug. 24, 2010 8:13 AM PDT

The Tea Party Patriots, one of the nation's largest tea party umbrella organizations, prides itself on its "leaderless" organizational structure, low overhead, and grassroots integrity. These things have distinguished the group from say, ordinary Republican political machines. But as the group matures, it's looking more and more like those top-heavy, insider and fundraiser-driven political organizations its members claim to despise.

Earlier this month, TPP sent out an appeal to its members offering them a chance to join "The 300," an exclusive group of donors who would help underwrite the group's big rallies planned for DC, Sacramento and St. Louis on Sept. 12. Joining "The 300" confers many benefits on its members—namely front row seats to the events (an enticing offering to aging tea party members who aren't used to being on their feet for hours at a time), a chance to schmooze with celebs and other rally headliners, and of course, their names in big letters on banners at the events. All this can be had for the low, low price of $1,000. The leaders of the leaderless organization emphasize that this won't be a club for the riff-raff; membership will be strictly limited. They write:

There are only 300 slots available for each group. After those spots are filled, we will be grateful to accept your donation, and it will be put to good use, but you will not receive the benefits listed above. So time is of the essence. Join now!

Thousand-dollar donations to join exclusive networking groups sound a lot more K Street than tea party, but then again, tea partying isn't cheap. There are all those Porta-Potties to rent, first aid tents to staff, security to hire and permits to be procured. Somebody has to pay for it all. TPP isn't the only conservative grassroots group discovering the hard way that exercising free speech isn't always free.

Earlier this month, Unite in Action, the coalition of "patriot groups" behind another big convention and march planned in DC on Sept. 11, sent out a desperate appeal for cash, saying it needed to raise $40,000 in the next few days to underwrite the event. Unlike TPP, though, Unite in Action was only asking for five bucks a person. Organizers Lynn Roberts and Stephani Scruggs wrote:

We come to you now asking for your urgently needed help. We had two major corporations lined up to underwrite our event. At the last moment, they backed out, because they were "AFRAID OF WHAT THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION WOULD DO TO THEM" if they openly supported this movement! God help us, the USA is now governed by fear. WE MUST STOP THIS!

So, all we are asking is five for freedom, just $5 to help us get tools in the hands of the people. ..."Give freely today, for liberty tomorrow."

The money needed to host all these big demonstrations and rallies doesn't always sit well with tea party activists on the ground, many of whom would rather see the funds go towards electing local conservative candidates. As Butch Porter, chairman of the American Conservative Party and a tea party activist in Northern Virginia, told me recently, "We had 1.7 million people here [in DC] on 9/12 2009, and what did that accomplish?"

GOP Spanking Caucus Fights UN Treaty

—By Stephanie Mencimer

| Tue Aug. 24, 2010 5:24 AM PDT

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child was first issued in 1989 as a landmark human rights document defining basic rights for children under the age of 18. It's so uncontroversial that every member of the UN has signed it. Every member, that is, but the U.S. and Somalia, and the only reason Somalia never signed it is that it hasn't had a functioning government capable of signing. But even that wretched country last year announced plans to ratify the treaty. So that leaves the U.S. as the only civilized country in the world that won't ratify an international document pledging to create a legal culture that acts in the best interest of the child (rather than, say, treats them like chattel). During the 2008 campaign, President Obama observed, "It's embarrassing to find ourselves in the company of Somalia, a lawless land." His administration has attempted to revive efforts to get the damn thing ratified after more than 20 years of political wrangling.

But it doesn't look like the treaty is going to get anywhere on Obama's watch, either, despite having renowned children's rights lawyer Hillary Clinton running the State Department. Religious conservatives, especially in the homeschooling movement, are raising a stink about the treaty and trying to get Congress to pass a constitutional amendment that would make it virtually impossible for the US to ever ratify it. Their main objections? Under the treaty, "parents would no longer be able to administer reasonable spankings to their children," the government couldn't sentence teenagers to life in prison, kids could get sex-ed and birth control if they wanted it, and--gasp!--children would be able to choose their own religion, according to a fact sheet published by ParentalRights.org, an outfit headed up by Michael Farris, the homeschooling movement's legal mastermind. The group is dedicated to winning passage of the parental rights amendment.

On Sunday, WorldNet Daily reported on the latest fury over the UN treaty and a renewed interest among conservatives in fighting it. WND noted that 31 Republicans in the Senate have expressed opposition to ratification in a move that seems directly related to the rise of the tea party movement. Farris told WND, "The whole notion that government wants to invade our lives in every sphere has awakened the American public, and frankly has aroused a sleeping giant."