Progressive News Feeds

The ties between conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and right-wing megaphone Matt Drudge remain strong, with Jones revealing that he spent time yesterday with one of Drudge’s employees and crediting Drudge with pushing one of his conspiracy theories ”into the mainstream media.” Matt Drudge, who has  described  2013 as the “year of Alex Jones,”  promoted  Jones’ website, Infowars, 244 times over the last two years and 50 times since the year began on The Drudge Report. Conservatives have urged Drudge to stop linking to Jones after the latter suggested the Boston Marathon bombings were a “false flag” attack perpetrated by the federal government. On his radio show today, Jones said he was “hanging out” with The Drudge Report’s Joseph Curl at a hotel in Houston, Texas where the pair tried “to crash the private Bush-Cheney party” being held in concert with the dedication ceremony for President George W. Bush’s presidential library.

Tags: breaking news, environment, foreign-policy, government, hanging-out, media, media matters, texas, war

In reporting on the factory explosion in West, Texas, cable news virtually ignored the fertilizer company’s storage of 270 tons of ammonium nitrate at the plant, which is 1,350 times the amount that is allowed to be stored without disclosure to the federal government. Reuters: Plant Had Been Storing 1,350 Times The Allowed Amount Of Ammonium Nitrate Reuters: TX Fertilizer Plant Was Storing “1,350 Times The Amount Of Ammonium Nitrate That Would Normally Trigger Safety Oversight By The U.S. Department Of Homeland Security.” On April 20, Reuters reported that the West, Texas, fertilizer plant that exploded on April 17, owned by West Fertilizer, had been storing 270 tons of ammonium nitrate.

Tags: america, cnn, discrimination, economy, fertilizer, health, media, security, texas

Fox News and National Review Online gave credence to claims about immigrant’s use of social benefits by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) without noting that immigrants are less likely than native-born Americans to rely on such programs. In a Fox News segment about the cost of comprehensive immigration reform to taxpayers, host Neil Cavuto allowed CIS research director Steven Camarota to repeat the myth that immigrants use social benefits at higher rates than native-born Americans because they are less educated, and that, if given legal status, they would stay on welfare

Tags: article, children, conservative, director, elections, feeds, income, science, texas

Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) is the latest Democratic Senator to offer his full support for marriage equality: It is generally accepted in American law and U.S.

Tags: action, bill nelson, economy, facebook, health, marriage equality, security, texas, yahoo

The Voting Rights Act forbids state laws that place a heavier burden on minority voters than on other members of the electorate. Additionally, Section 5 of the law requires many parts of the country to “preclear” new voting rules with DOJ or a federal court in order to ensure that they do not violate the Voting Rights Act’s protections for minority voters. The Supreme Court is currently considering a challenge to Section 5

Tags: california, congress, gun-control, media, polls, texas, tweets, war, yahoo

Susan Rice MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell said this afternoon that Susan Rice’s withdrawal as a candidate for Secretary of State will not “help Republicans at all” because members of the party “forced out” a woman of color “before she was nominated.” For months now, Republicans, in an effort spearheaded by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), have relentlessly pursued blocking Rice’s chances for a Secretary of State nomination

Tags: author, color, feeds, health, obama, texas, united nations, white house

The three largest newspapers in Texas have so far failed to report on comments made by Texas Health and Human Services Commissioner Dr. Kyle Janek over the past two months in which he claimed not to believe the official number of people without health insurance in Texas. Nearly two weeks after Republican Gov.

Tags: dallas, health-insurance, house, houston, newspapers, planned parenthood, progressive news, texas, the nation

Americans who suffer from an eating disorder face enormous physical, emotional, and mental hurdles — and with spotty insurance coverage, they face the added burden of significant financial hurdles as they try to cope with their disease. As Kaiser Health News reports , the complex, often wide-ranging nature of eating disorder treatments often leads insurers to skimp on benefits, and state and federal consumer protections do not go far enough in ensuring sufficient coverage for Americans with anorexia, bulimia, and other eating disorders: According to the Eating Disorders Coalition, a lobbying and advocacy group based in Washington, D.C., 14 million people are affected with anorexia, bulimia and binge eating disorder

Tags: #abortion, action, congress, eating, feeds, mental-health, public-health, science, texas, virginia

The Daily Caller and the Drudge Report are hyping the fact that Barack Obama attended vice presidential debate moderator Martha Raddatz’s wedding to Julius Genachowski (now the head of the FCC) in 1991 as evidence of a conflict of interest.

Tags: america, author, conservative, economy, education, elections, environment, feeds, foreign-policy, health, texas

HOUSTON, Texas — Last week, the nation learned about True The Vote, a Houston-based tea party group that fans out to heavily-minority precincts and challenges voters’ ballots. As they work to suppress voters this election, across town, a far different story was unfolding: scores of volunteers fanning out not to stop people from voting, but to help them vote. ThinkProgress was on the ground for the first annual National Voter Registration Day, a nationwide event for grassroots groups to help register voters.

Tags: economy, elections, health, lgbt, national-voter, network, progressive news, texas, the nation, video, voting rights, war