Despite the fact that a male athlete in a team sport has never done it, pro soccer player Robbie Rogers coming out a Gay man was met with nothing but acceptance and love from his former teammates and fellow players. There's still work to be done, but this is a very good sign.

All Things Democrat: It's time for Obama to dismantle the private prison industry.

Raw Story: Students get better grades at private schools. Because they just delete the bad ones.

Back2Stonewall: Stop saying Mississippi is behind the times! They voted to ratify the 13th amendment to abolish slavery, after all. Of course, they did so yesterday.

Going Concern: Check out the new interactive map that lets you know where marriage equality stands in all 50 states, courtesy of Marcum LLP.

Finally, because you crazy kids have earned it, here's a pug singing the Batman theme.

Round-up by Bill Wolfrum of William K. Wolfrum Chronicles. Send tips to mbru AT crooksandliars DOT com.

Let me start this post--in which I plan to castigate several entities--with a castigation towards myself, a mea culpa, if you will. Over the weekend, I posted that the size of the crowds of the One Nation Working Together rally were roughly twice the size of the Glenn Beck 8/28 rally. I did that after hearing secondhand from an SEIU spokesperson that satellite estimates had placed the crowd at 175,000. After finding that number confirmed in a traditional media source (in my case, Reuters), I felt comfortable running with the post.

Turns out, not so much.

That number turned out to be the optimistic estimate of some One Nation organizers. Whether the SEIU spokesperson knew that, I'm not sure, but taking the unscientific word of one of the organizers is only slightly less ridiculous than asking Michelle Bachmann for a unbiased account of the 8/28 rally. And for that, I'm sorry to our readers. I'm also sorry because that post prompted a bunch of righty blogs and other media to pick up the article and try to use it in some way to discredit C&L, the progressive blogosphere, Democrats and judging from the vitriol in my inbox and Twitter stream, me personally. They put up the two photos above to try to prove how wrong I was. Well, frankly (and I'm looking at you, The Blaze blog), it's about as honest as listening to event organizers tell you how fabulous their event was.

The top picture was taken by Huffington Post's Nico Pitney. According to Nico, he took the photo between 12:00 noon and 12:30 pm EST, just as the event was about to start. The bottom picture, courtesy of Beck's site The Blaze, was not time-stamped, but clearly taken at the peak of the program. If the righty blogs had any interest in being intellectually honest, they would use photo, like this one from AP taken at approximately 2:00 pm

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I want to thank everyone that donated to C&L's Fellowship Action Fundraiser back in May. I've been using the funds to accomplish many things including the launching of C&L 4.0 very, very soon. With new standards changing the makeup of blogs and websites across the Internet because of many factors, C&L will have a cool new look and feel but with some very interesting features.

Video Cafe, Newstalgia and the Late Nite Music Club will still be here along with a much improved Blue America website, but the biggest one will be that we'll finally be adding a "Diary" section to the site. All of our committed members of C&L will now be able to write their own posts and add their own video to the diary. That won't be released until the new homepage is up and running for a few weeks

Anyway, as we expand on C&L 4.0, we'll let you know what's changing as we move along, but for the most part the site will be as easy to use and access as always only it will turn into an even bigger community blog with more bells and whistles.

Thanks for all your continued support.

As a native Hoosier, the Quayle family has a special place in my heart. The same way that red meat has a special place in my colon.

From what I've found, it's tough to determine exactly what ol' Ben Quayle has been doing for a living up till now. There's been some sweet financial industry gigs, and something involving a site called "TheDirty.com," which apparently involved scantily clad women, a porn pseudonym, and more scantily clad women. All that sounds fine, and now that he's to be a super-serious congressman candidate guy, I'll take his gig instead. If that's cool.

It's hard to even know what's going on with that campaign. Is it a birthday present from a generous relative? A vanity piece, like Glamour Shots for the ultra-wealthy? A nationwide fever dream? Whatever it is, it is a Beautiful Thing To Behold, and it should be treasured. You don't get to see a young douchebag flame out often--not this hard, not this fast. Let's enjoy the weirdness till November.

Fred Clark of Slacktivist writes one of those blogs that I just love. He's smart, compassionate and very, very perceptive. This piece on the credit report industry is timely -- go read the rest:

Kevin Drum makes a helpful comparison between your credit history and your medical history:

In the same way that medical records are available only to people with a legitimate medical need, I think that credit records should be available only to those who actually extend credit. Beyond that, they're private. Employers don't get them, the FBI doesn't get them, journalists don't get them and my neighborhood association doesn't get them. I don't care how much each of these people really, reallythinks it would be handy to have a peek at them. Short of a subpoena or a court order, my financial records are my business. You can't have them.... The credit reporting agencies [have] been placed in a privileged position where they're allowed to collect sensitive private information — just as doctors and banks and census takers are. That privileged position means they have a heightened responsibility for maintaining privacy, not a license to use their databases for anything that can make them an extra buck or two.

I think that's exactly right.It also seems to be exactly the opposite of the current relationship between citizens and credit reporting agencies.

Right now, the credit reporting agencies are permitted to collect and evaluate sensitive private information about anyone and everyone. (Although, again, "evaluate" may be too elevated a term for the crude reductionist number-crunching of their secret "scoring" formulas.) Almost no information about you and your money and how it is spent is off-limits to them. They are further permitted to sell this information to anyone to whom they wish to sell it, repackaging and marketing your private financial information for sale to insurance companies, your boss or your prospective employer.

Fred goes on to describe the carelessness with which those agencies treat your information, and why protecting consumers from the consequences is a political winner:

There are at the moment Democratic attorneys general in 31 states. Of those, I'm guessing, about 31 are hoping some day to be governors or senators. Advocating for their constituents against the costly and predatory negligence of credit-reporting agencies seems like a promising step toward fulfilling such ambitions. (I forget who it was who first observed that some seek power in order to enact policies while others seek policies in order to attain power, but I think this should appeal to those in either category.)

The Federal Trade Commission estimates that about 9 million Americans are victims of identity theft every year, so it's a safe bet that each of these AGs (or A's G) has thousands of constituents whose credit histories are scarred by such theft and who are therefore being forced to pay premium rates for everything from mortgages to consumer loans to insurance and utilities. Some of these constituents may have been denied employment or promotion on the basis of these lucratively inaccurate and uncorrected credit scores.

These costs are real and therefore they can be measured and quantified and added up into a single Very Large Dollar Amount -- the amount that constituents have been inaccurately and unfairly overcharged due to the negligence and irresponsibility of others. That VLDA is the basis for the class-action lawsuits that these attorneys general ought to be filing on behalf of their constituents.

Whether or not such lawsuits can succeed in achieving restitution for the millions of citizens who have paid dearly for the carelessness of the credit-reporting agencies, the lawsuits ought to be able to achieve at least a bit more of what is desperately needed and sorely lacking in the current system: accountability and transparency.

Without transparency and accountability, the power that credit agencies have will be abused and expanded and extended until its abusive presence is felt, as Matt Lauer put it, in "all portions of your life."

State lawsuits will allow AGs to subpoena information on the calculations and variables that go into the credit-reporting agencies secret-formula scores. Such information would empower consumers to improve those scores beyond what is currently knowable from the best-guesses of hack finance writers and "credit-monitoring" scams.

More importantly, the state lawsuits would allow the AGs to subpoena information on the marketing of citizens private financial information -- to gauge the full scope of the credit-reporting agencies' plans for the use of this private information beyond the realm of actual credit. Informed attention to the misuse of this information for employment decisions or by insurers or utilities would likely lead to the sort of outcry that would make limits on such misuse a legislative priority.

And that could lead to a situation in which the misuse or sale of private financial records is as obviously illegal -- and unthinkable -- as the misuse or sale of private medical records.

Angry Bear: A number of the big libertarian & rightwing blogs are putting up links to this post by Scott Sumner. I'm kind of surprised because the argument seems to have more than a few weaknesses.

Obsidian Wings: I hear screams to “take over” the operations from BP. And do what? Is there some secret naval division that handles deep-sea drilling that we have not deployed?

Hullabaloo: Throwing the tea party a bone

DownWithTyranny!: At least at the NYRB it's possible to discuss seriously what it means to be Jewish in America (and how that relates to Israel)

Brilliant at Breakfast: It's about holding the well-being of an entire nation hostage to PERSONAL GREED

Progressive Blog Digest: Git along little bloggies...

George Galloway interviews Andy Worthington on UK knowledge of torture on Guantanamo detainees for Digital Radio.

I don't know that there is anyone on this planet who knows more about what went on at Guantanamo than independent journalist Andy Worthington, and that includes those inside the administration. Through incredibly hard work, diligence and a mountain of FOIA information, Andy has been chronicling this deepest, darkest chapter of American history.

Andy has written a book, The Guantanamo Files, that I am reading now and on which I will be hosting a book chat in the very near future. I can't lie, it's taking me longer to read it than it should, because I have to keep putting it down. There's not a chapter I've read that I haven't wanted to scream, "This should never have happened! This is not what a democratic country does! NOT IN MY NAME!" It is a detailed and unblinking look at not only a strange mixture of fear and incompetence, but of real evil as well. Indeed, Andy Worthington has been instrumental in documenting just what a legal black hole Guantanamo is:

My life as a full-time chronicler and analyst of Guantánamo and the “War on Terror” began with the 14 months I spent researching and writing my book The Guantánamo Files, which (with additional chapters published online) tells the stories of the 779 prisoners who have been held at Guantánamo throughout its eight-year history. I then began writing articles following developments at Guantánamo, helping to spread the word through various websites, and am delighted to report that my website now receives an average of 150,000 page views a month.

My thanks to all who have discovered my work, and especially to those who follow it on a regular basis. Three months ago, despite stalling and compromises on the part of the Obama administration, I thought that we were at least still proceeding in the right direction, but the last few months have proved me wrong, and have demonstrated that a huge amount of work still needs to be done. This is where your help — reading my work, helping to get it out to other people and providing financial support to enable me to keep spreading the word — is so important.

The one-year deadline that President Obama set for the closure of Guantánamo has passed, those who oppose the prison’s closure appear to have gained the upper hand in an ongoing propaganda war, and the administration has made numerous fundamental mistakes: failing to provide new homes on the US mainland for cleared prisoners who cannot be repatriated because they face the risk of torture, reviving the Bush administration’s reviled Military Commission trial system, and insisting that it has the right to hold some prisoners indefinitely without charge or trial.

With widespread indifference in the mainstream media, my mission — to educate people about the terrible mistakes that have been made, and the human cost of those mistakes — continues, not just with regard to Guantánamo, but also in researching the “ghost prisoners” of the CIA’s secret detention program (whose whereabouts are largely unaccounted for), exposing the baleful history of the prison at Bagram airbase in Afghanistan, calling for accountability for those who made America a “Torture Nation,” and exposing British complicity in torture and the injustice of my home country’s own anti-terror laws.

In the last three months, I have updated my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, produced an annotated version of the first ever Bagram prisoner list, and published five articles listing all my work in chronological order, as well as reporting the stories of the prisoners released from Guantánamo, reporting on their habeas corpus petitions in the US courts, exposing right-wing lies and misinformation, and the spinelessness of many Democrats, and criticizing the administration for its inability to place principles above pragmatism.

Andy is currently seeking donations to help continue his important work. Please donate if you can. But if that's not possible, I urge you to considering purchasing Andy's book, The Guantanamo Files, in advance of our book chat. It's an excellent read, if a bit harrowing and should make for a very lively book chat.

C&L and other blogs have been documenting Fox News' use of misleading and false graphics for years. Usually, when a Republican gets in trouble or falls out of good graces, they mislabel them as Democrats -- but over the past few days Media Matters has caught some real stinkers that makes one wonder if they really are, just that bad:

Almost three months to the day since Fox News instituted its "zero tolerance for on-screen errors" policy, the following on-screen graphic was displayed during the February 22 edition of America's Newsroom: Read on...

Why does Fox News hate J.D. Hayworth? Isn't he the fluffernutter candidate who makes Senator John McCain look like a die hard progressive? To make matters worse, the very next day, Media Matter caught another goof.

Is Rupert Murdoch so cheap he won't spring for basic spell check software?

C&L sends our best wishes to the family and friends of Martin Bosworth, who passed away yesterday.

Martin was a strong and clear voice, gifted writer and valuable advocate in the progressive blogosphere. He was a founding member of Scholars&Rogues, Boztopia.com and the Managing Editor of ConsumerAffairs.com An official cause of death has not been announced, but it is believed he died of a heart attack. Martin was just 35.

Jason Rosenbaum at The Seminal and Elana Levin at Daily Kos honor Martin's memory. He will be missed by many.

One of Martin's more recent posts speak to the urgency of fixing our broken health care system after a health scare of his own pointed out its glaring deficiencies:

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President Obama met with the Senate Democrats today, just like he did last week with House Republicans, and he made a point about the media and the influence they are having on the members of the Democratic party.

President: Last point I would make about this. You know what I think would actually make a difference, Michael -- I think if everybody here -- excuse all the members of the press who are here -- if everybody here turned off your CNN, your Fox, your -- just turn off the TV -- MSNBC, blogs -- and just go talk to folks out there, instead of being in this echo chamber where the topic is constantly politics -- the topic is politics. It is much more difficult to get a conversation focused on how are we going to help people than a conversation about how is this going to help or hurt somebody politically.

And that's part of what the American people are just sick of -- because they don't care, frankly, about majority and minorities and process and this and that. They just want to know, are you delivering for me? And we've got to, I think, get out of the echo chamber. That was a mistake that I think I made last year, was just not getting out of here enough. And it's helpful when you do. (Applause.)

It's a little late with this recommendation, Mr. President. The time to have spoken up was long before the August recess. Your strategy basically allowed conservatives to take over the messaging and make the debate exactly what political operatives like Frank Luntz and Newt Gingrich had hoped for. Hell, Luntz told Samantha Bee that not being able to control a town hall meeting in 2005 could produce disastrous results for Bush. Well, that came true. The town halls became an exhibition of hatred, insanity and ignorance.

And as usual Fox News ignored this event, as they usually do.

The president also told Senate Dems to stop being afraid and get health-care reform done.

The president's appeal on health care was especially noteworthy, given the initiative's precarious future. As has been the case of late, Obama didn't give lawmakers specific instructions -- at least not publicly -- but he made clear they must take advantage of this opportunity and deliver on the promise of reform.

"So many of us campaigned on the idea that we were going to change this health care system," the president reminded the senators. "So many of us looked people in the eye who had been denied because of a pre-existing condition, or just didn't have health insurance at all ... and we said we were going to change it. Well, here we are with a chance to change it.... I hope we don't lose sight of why we're here. We've got to finish the job on health care." Here's hoping Democrats take the advice to heart.

And Obama made the point that they still have a huge majority in the Senate, which is something they don't know how to use. I understand that the GOP is using the filibuster at an insane level, but for those of us who worked hard to help get Dems elected, this has been incredibly frustrating.

And just as an aside, it was also interesting to see that the president apparently keeps up fairly well on media developments: "There was apparently a headline after the Massachusetts election. The Village Voice announced that Republicans win a 41-59 majority. It's worth thinking about. We still have to lead."

If the majorities change hands, you can be sure that if the Democratic Party obstructed like conservatives have, and turned the filibuster into a potent weapon for saying "no", the Villagers would be screaming for the Dems to not be obstructionists, with David Broder leading the way.

The rule is that conservatives can do NO wrong.