Today is Transgender Remembrance Day, a day set aside to memorialize the far too many that have been victims of anti-transgender violence. Jos at Feministing has a really excellent post -- you should read the whole thing.

The following video is from 2007, but still seems appropriate two years later:

WASHINGTON (Nov. 20, 2009) - Patrick W. Dunne, the Under Secretary for Benefits for the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), today announced his resignation for early next year. Dunne, who attained the rank of rear admiral while in the U.S. Navy, has been with VA since 2006.

As Under Secretary for Benefits since October 2008, Admiral Dunne has directed the administration of VA's disability compensation, pension, education, home loan guaranty, vocational rehabilitation and employment, and life insurance programs through a nationwide network of 57 regional offices, other special processing centers, and Veterans Benefits Administration headquarters.

I don't know Dunne's exact reasons for stepping down, but since he's only held the position about a year, and during that time there has been massive trouble with the distribution of the new Post-9/11 GI Bill benefits, it seems likely that that may have factored into his departure.

The VA received more than 25,000 applications for updated GI Bill benefits within two weeks of the new program. At the time, Dunne was quoted on PR Newswire as saying, "We are very pleased with the tremendous interest in the Post-9/11 GI Bill. The number of applications submitted in the first two weeks clearly shows the value and importance of this new benefit for Veterans."

But it quickly became clear the VA was worried about being able to process the volume of claims they received. Dunne himself noted, "Our top priority is providing our students and schools with accurate and timely benefit payments so veterans can focus all of their energy on studies," he said in a statement quoted by the Columbus Dispatch in late September.

Although veterans were scheduled to receive living stipends from the VA by Nov. 1, by the end of October, it was clear that wasn't going to happen. The Navy Times reported at the end of October that, "'It is possible, if we have not worked their case by the end of the month, that some may not receive their housing payment on the first,' VA officials said in a statement, referring to Nov. 1."

The VA was supposed to implement a new computer program that would process the new GI Bill benefits faster. But delays in implementing the program put the VA behind in processing claims. Eventually, some emergency checks were distributed to veterans that were written by hand.

In a late September story about the delays in the payments from the GI Bill program, the LA Times quoted Dunne as saying, "The learning curve has been steep for us all." Indeed.

(Flickr/mrmatthew)

Campus Progress is bringing back a renewed version of a feature called Campus Informer, a roundup of cool and interesting stuff happening at campuses around the country. Of course, the feature isn't only limited to campuses, since Campus Progress exists for non-college youth and to make higher education more accessible and affordable. If you think something in your area should be included in Campus Informer, just email us at campusprogresseditors [at] americanprogress [dot] org.

• Students at University of California-Santa Cruz present a 32-point list of demands to UC regents. [Student Activism]
• The University of Minnesota implements blood alcohol tests at football games to try to curb binge drinking on game days. [New York Times]
• Conservative students at the University of Toledo held a "Freedom Week" earlier this month involving members of the university's ROTC program; it got messy. [Independent Collegian]
• Harvard debates allowing all students access to gender-neutral housing. [Harvard Crimson]
• A Howard University student takes a year off to pursue an acting career in L.A. [The Hilltop]
• Some students at Kent State work their way through college at a bakery (Video). [Kent News Net]

There are two numbers to watch: (1) Can an anti-abortion amendment offered by, say, Utah Republican Orrin Hatch, or pro-life Democrat Bob Casey, get 60 votes? Probably not, but Reid will have to get 60 votes to even proceed with debate on the bill. (2) Getting that 60 could mean putting stronger anti-abortion language in the bill to get those red-state Democrats.

Leave it to the United States Senate to ... restore a program called Title V, which, since the Welfare Reform Act of 1996, has allocated a yearly $50 million in grants to abstinence-only education programs. Obama let the program lapse in June, leaving some abstinence-only groups in dire straits. So in September, Sen. Orrin Hatch offered an amendment to restore Title V via heath-care reform, which (much to the outrage of liberal groups) just squeaked through the Senate Finance Committee with a 12–11 vote. A similar amendment, offered in the House by Rep. Terry Lee from Nebraska, died in committee.

If the Senate language survives reconciliation, the Title V program will be extended through 2014. This will not, however, bring abstinence funding back to the levels of the past decade. In 2008, Title V grants accounted for just under 25 percent of the federal abstinence budget (the rest of the budget came from other abstinence-only funding sources not restored in the Senate bill, including Community Based Abstinence Education Grants and the Adolescent Family Life Act).

On another reproductive health front, abstinence only groups are declaring victory. “It is encouraging that the hard work of grassroots constituencies from across the country have prevailed to ensure these common-sense programs will continue,” said executive director of the National Abstinence Education Association, Valerie Huber to The Americano. But abstinence-only programming has been scientifically proven to be ineffective.

UPDATE: Jodi Jacobson over at RH Reality Check has a more in-depth look at abortion in the Senate health care bill.

(Flickr/Illinois Springfield)

Late last night, the Associated Press reported that the Associated Press released its own report that its graduation rates were higher than ever. The AP reported the story as "dispelling myths" that athletes aren't good students. But it's always a little suspicious when the organization releases a report that analyzes itself.

The NCAA says that "nearly four out of five student-athletes earn their diplomas on time, an all-time high." But when you examine what "on time" means, it looks at six-year graduation rates, not four-year rates. The analysis also excludes transfer students. The federal numbers for college athletes are significantly lower than the 79 percent graduation rate touted by the NCAA. The 2008 federal analysis shows that college athlete graduation rates hover closer to 60 percent for Division I (data that incidentally can be found on the NCAA's own website). They point out that female athletes outperform male athletes on graduation rates, but this is unsurprising, since this is also the case among non-athletes as well.

That's not to say that there aren't student athletes that are also excellent academics, and I understand that the NCAA is often fighting stereotypes about athletes. But the AP got spun here. The NCAA released its own statistics that are significantly different than federal numbers and expanding the definition of "on time" is to make its numbers look better.

• The University of Montana is trying to help Native Americans fight Type 2 diabetes. [Montana Kaimin]
• MIT's graduate students are pushing for a tax exemption on stipends, more money for federally funded research, and higher caps on H1-B visas for advanced-degree holders. [The Tech]
• George Washington University has received its highest number of early decision applications ever. [GW Hatchet]
• NYU students protest a Forbes.com column that talked of "going Muslim." [Washington Square News]
• Texas A&M memorializes students who died in a bonfire 10 years ago. [USA Today]

(Flickr/Brian Rendel)

Via TPMDC, a George Washington University School of Public Health study of public health shows that the Stupak-Pitts amendment would eventually eliminate all abortion coverage. "We conclude that treatment exclusions required under the Stupak-Pitts Amendment will have an industry-wide effect, eliminating coverage of medically indicated abortions over time for all women, not only those whose coverage is derived through a health insurance exchange," the study says.

The study also calls out the rider alternative, an add-on women could purchase separately to cover abortion (incidentally, this is how many insurance providers handle coverage for pregnancy now), as bullshit:

In our view, the terms and impact of the Amendment will work to defeat the development of a supplemental coverage market for medically indicated abortions. In any supplemental coverage arrangement, it is essential that the supplemental coverage be administered in conjunction with basic coverage. This intertwined administration approach is barred under Stupak/Pitts because of the prohibition against financial comingling. This bar is in addition to the challenges inherent in administering any supplemental policy. These challenges would be magnified in the case of medically indicated abortions because, given the relatively low number of medically indicated abortions, the coverage supplement would apply to only a handful of procedures for a handful of conditions. Furthermore, the House legislation contains no direct economic incentive to create such a market. Indeed, it is not clear how such a market even would be regulated or whether it would be subject to the requirements that apply to all products offered inside the exchange. Finally, because supplemental coverage must of necessity commingle funds with basic coverage, the impact of Stupak/Pitts on states’ ability to offer supplemental Medicaid coverage to women insured through a subsidized exchange plan is in doubt.

The Young America's Foundation's "Conservative Marketplace" has a FREE poster of Sarah Palin. (Other bargain-basement items include a copy of Wit and Wisdom of Conservatism for 18 cents and a copy of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution for a quarter.)

Apparently they didn't get the message that she's no longer popular, even among conservatives. Yesterday TPM reported that a new CBS poll shows only 41 percent of self-identified conservatives want her to run for President in 2012 and 50 percent said they didn't want her to run.

• SUNY wants to go Division I, but the process has been fraught with problems. [NY Times]
• Graduate teaching assistants went on strike at the University of Illinois over the protection of tuition waivers. [Inside Higher Ed]
• Spellman College has its first ever pride week. [The Maroon Tiger]
• A Vassar dining hall worker serves a little hip hop with the hamburgers. [The Miscellany News]
• University of Minnesota students brewed some beer; now you can buy it in local bars. [The Minnesota Daily]
• The growing number of students taking remedial courses is rising at the University of Maryland, along with skyrocketing costs. Now, regents are beginning to require a fourth year of math to apply. [The Diamondback]
• The University of Mississippi William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation takes its roundtable on race on the road. [The Daily Miss]
• Green idea: The University of Arizona installs solar panels over parking lots. [Arizona Daily Wildcat]
• New York Times journalist David Rohde talks about his time as a prisoner of the Taliban at Brown University [Brown Daily Herald]

(Flickr/Joe Shlabotnik)

Campus Progress is bringing back a renewed version of a feature called Campus Informer, a roundup of cool and interesting stuff happening at campuses around the country. Of course, the feature isn't only limited to campuses, since Campus Progress exists for non-college youth and to make higher education more accessible and affordable. If you think something in your area should be included in Campus Informer, just email us at campusprogresseditors [at] americanprogress [dot] org.

• Trent Fuenmayor is Princeton's only male cheerleader, and says, "In high school, some people gave me crap, but no one’s going to be closed-minded in college." [The Daily Princetonian]
• The number of first-time international students have increased by nearly 16 percent, just as the cost of college is hitting an all-time high. [The Chronicle of Higher Education]
• As University of California schools are facing budget problems, out-of-state students are finding it hard to stay enrolled thanks to skyrocketing costs. [The Daily Bruin]
• It looks like student loan scandals aren't restricted to the United States. Ten executives at the Student Loan Company in the UK received nearly £2 million (more than $3.35 million) in bonuses as students are waiting for their loan and grant payments. [The Guardian]
• Indiana University will be offering a class on Twilight this spring. [Indiana Daily Student]
• The University of North Dakota creates the first graduate program in Sustainable Energy Engineering [The Dakota Student]
• The Oregon State University Students Alliance and the editor-in-chief of The Liberty at
  Portland State University are suing over the disappearance of seven distribution bins during the last school year. [The Daily Vanguard]
• Angry Asian Man, frequent contributor to Racialicious, shows his face on a panel at UT-Austin. [The Daily Texan]
• A student at Lehigh College discovered that her student health insurance plan doesn't cover birth control (although condoms are distributed for free on campus). [Change.org]
• A University of Florida graduate invented a new kind of condom; the new design makes condoms easier to put on. [The Alligator]

Double X, a "new kind of women's magazine" that also had a habit of publishing some anti-feminst screeds (although I'm still a big fan of many of Double X's writers, including Amanda Marcotte and Latoya Peterson), has announced that it will be folding back into Slate. Double X will become its "own section, with our XX Factor blog, articles, and special projects already in the works," announce editors Emily Bazelon and Hanna Rosin.

Double X didn't exactly get a warm reception among other popular feminist and women's sites when it first arrived. Ann Friedman, deputy editor at The American Prospect (and one of the editors at Feminsting.com), labeled the new site "an eerie resemblance to the women's pages of yore." Her main argument was that rather than having a site especially for women,  top news magazines and blogs should just have women integrated into the product.

Well, it looks like Friedman will get her wish. Gawker noted when it reported the news, "As you can see from the logo, Double X never made it out of beta." It's not yet clear if the consolidation will result in layoffs. If it does, I'm sorry to hear it in an era where the number of media jobs are endlessly shrinking.

(Flickr/Bruce Tuten)

On the campaign trail last fall, Sarah Palin, with her Alaskan accent, said, "Our opponents think that they have the women's vote all locked up, which is a little presumptuous. A little presumptuous since only our side has a woman on the ticket."

A year later, not only did Palin never make it to the vice presidency, but on the advent of the release of her book, Going Rogue, she is more unpopular than ever – at least, politically. In a Washington Post poll today, Sarah Palin has remarkable unpopularity ratings.

Respondents were asked if they would vote for Palin in 2012 if she ran for president; 53 percent said they would definitely not vote for her. Only 9 percent said they definitely would.

Another question asked, regardless of whether respondents would vote for her, was did they think Palin was "qualified" to run for president. A full 60 percent said she was not qualified to run for president, with only 38 percent thinking she was qualified.

Palin seems to like to paint herself as a popular, charismatic woman that simply gets attacked by the left wing, but far more people identify with her lack of qualifications than they do with the left.

This morning E.J. Dionne, a columnist that I generally have a lot of respect for, dismissed the objection over the Stupak amendment as a minor "skirmish" (via Igor at the Wonk Room). Dionne is perhaps thinking that the Stupak amendment is minor because the New York Times misreported the following facts about abortion:

Not many women who undergo abortions file private insurance claims, perhaps to avoid leaving a record. A 2003 study by the Alan Guttmacher Institute found that 13 percent of abortions were billed directly to insurance companies. Only about half of those who receive insurance coverage from their employers have coverage of abortion in any event, according to a study by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

This is wrong on both counts. Guttmacher itself has had to correct the record on the 13 percent statistic:

Our study included all women who obtained abortions in 2001, including women on Medicaid and those who are uninsured. If one looked only at privately insured women, the percentage of procedures billed directly to insurance companies would be substantially higher than 13 percent.

Perhaps even more importantly, the 13 percent statistic does not include women who pay for an abortion up front and then seek reimbursement from their insurance provider. This is common when a medical provider does not participate in a patient’s insurance plan, as is often the case with small, specialized providers, including abortion providers.

Lastly, some of the women whom our study identified as paying out of pocket likely had insurance coverage for abortion care, but may not have known they had it or chose not to use it for reasons of confidentiality. Given the stigma that still surrounds abortion, many women might not have wanted their insurer or employer—or their spouse or parent who may be the primary policyholder—to learn that they had obtained an abortion. That antiabortion activists who have worked for decades to perpetuate that stigma are now turning around and using it to argue why women should not be able to purchase insurance coverage for abortion is deeply cynical.

The Guttmacher study queried the medical directors of insurance companies and asked them about the typical insurance policy they wrote for employers.

KFF queried employers’ human resources staff and asked about their firm’s coverage.

Guttmacher’s study asked about “typical plans” and might not account for the fact that some employers may purchase atypical plans, such as plans with high deductibles that would not cover a range of services, including abortion.

The KFF study surveyed human resources staff, who might not know this level of detail about their coverage, and, in fact, it received a disproportionately high level of “don’t knows” (26 percent) in response to this specific question.

One law would require women to fill out a lengthy survey that asks, among other things, about their race, education and reason for seeking an abortion. It asks women whether they're having relationship problems, whether they can't afford to raise a child or whether having a baby would dramatically change their lives.

Another section requires doctors to provide detailed information about complications that arise as a result of the procedure. The Health Department ultimately would compile the information into a statistical report and post it on its website.

Lynn Harris at Broadsheet wrote, "According to proponents of the law, this extensive abortion data -- which will include the reason the procedure was sought -- will help health officials prevent future abortions. Yeah, I can see that. Because the requirement itself would scare the shit out of me."

The problem, ultimately, is that we're allowing politics to play into which medical procedures are covered and which aren't. For some women that have coverage already and might lose it if the Stupak amendment makes it into the final bill, they may not notice right away – until that day that they need to obtain an abortion.

Photo by Flickr user yarnivore.

Pew Research has an interesting set of numbers today on thrice-married individuals, noting that Arkansas and Oklahoma have the highest proportion of men and women that have been married three times.

It's sort of an interesting fact that doesn't mean much except for one thing: These states (along with Idaho) are also states that have some of the lowest median marriage age. Studies of marriage statistics show that the younger people marry, the more likely they are to get divorced. It stands to reason, then, that if people are getting married at a young age in these states, then it's more likely they'd have multiple marriages.

Interestingly, states that cling closely to "family values," like Arkansas and Oklahoma that passed same-sex marriage bans, also are states that have the most multiple marriages.

In a huge victory for groups that were part of the Basta Dobbs campaign, news broke yesterday that Lou Dobbs was airing his last program for CNN. The coalition, which includes Latino and netroots organizations, asked CNN to fire Dobbs for his xenophobic and offensive comments relating to immigrants.

Campus Progress has covered Dobbs in our "Know Your Right-Wing Ideologues" section recently:

Feeding Dobbs’s xenophobic flames are his guests, who often have troublesome connections. Twice in 2004, Dobbs hosted guest Glenn Spencer, who has close ties to the Council of Conservative Citizens, a white supremacist group that has described African-Americans as “a retrograde species of humanity.”

In 2008, Dobbs broadcast from the “Hold Their Feet to the Fire” conference in Washington, D.C. This conference was organized by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), a controversial anti-immigration organization whose founder, John Tanton, has made comments comparing immigrants to bacteria. Dobbs has frequently invited members of FAIR on his show, billing them as experts and citing them as reliable and objective sources. In fact, FAIR, along with two other leading anti-immigration groups, Center for Immigration Studies and NumbersUSA, were all founded by Tanton.

Between 1982 and 1994, FAIR received $1.2 million from the Pioneer Fund, a “not-for-profit foundation established in 1937 to advance the scientific study of heredity and human differences.” According to documents obtained by Paul Lombardo of The Albany Law Review through Truman State University, the Pioneer Fund’s founding president, eugenicist Harry Laughlin, declared that “‘the great mass of defectiveness’ swelled by immigrants, the feebleminded, and children of racial intermixture would swamp America.” Laughlin has also argued for the legal definition of the “American Race.”

The removal of Dobbs, despite the fact that his contract was supposed to expire in 2011, is certainly good news for the groups that fought Dobb's racially distasteful comments. Still, I've been observing the media world long enough to know that pundits who are asked to resign in shame simply find homes on new networks.

• Planned Parenthood's "real life" analysis of the whole House health care reform bill. [RH Reality Check]
• Ruth Marcus says that the health care reform bill is supposed to increase choice, but apparently not for women. [Washington Post]
• A New York Times editorial calls the amendment a "sharp departure from current practice." [NYTimes] 
• Robert Pear reports what's next for the Stupak amendment, and what Obama's position is on it. [NYTimes]
• Robin Marty, the director of special projects at the Center for Independent Media, asks the essential question of how the Stupak amendment will affect women who miscarry. [RH Reality Check]
• Former Campus Progress associate editor Dana Goldstein reports on the activists fallout from the amendment's passage. [Daily Beast]
• Emily Douglas does an analysis of how the bill will affect women. [The Nation]
• And finally, the director of CAPAF's Women's Health and Rights program, Jessica Arons lays out why the Stupak amendment is a "monumental setback" for women's rights. [Wonk Room]

Reports of domestic abuse have grown by 75 percent since 2001. At the same time, violent crime in Killeen has risen 22 percent while declining 7 percent in towns of similar size in other parts of the country. [...]

Since 2003, there have been 76 suicides by personnel assigned to Fort Hood, with 10 this year, according to military officials.

Let’s run through the stupidity, shall we?

First, Nick Kovaleski and Alex Cornell leave their homework at the dump site. Where’s the Spanish teacher in all of this? Then Phi Psi leadership—that’s you, Keith Peters and Daniel Levy—come to the Wildcat offices wanting our evidence, and then slink out like the rats you are when we ask you to go on the record. Minutes after you left the offices, you placed a call to the University of Arizona Police Department claiming someone who looked like they might work for the Daily Wildcat was found dumpster diving at your house the previous night. That guy, you claim, is actually our 60-year-old production manager who found the homework.

No one’s buying this crap.

A fraternity worth a damn would have raised holy hell after the Police Beat item went out, shouting its innocence from the hilltops. But you didn’t shout your innocence, did you, Phi Psi? Instead, you snuck into your cars in the wee hours of the morning and decided to hide the information at the source—by stealing thousands of the very newspaper that printed an item where a woman claimed you might have drugged her.

If anything, Phi Kappa Psi made things worse for themselves. What would have been a forgettable Police Beat item has turned into a firestorm picked up by news outlets local and national.

Well, Phi Psi, you got off scot-free. All of the legal and judicial avenues have been exhausted. Only one thing left for you to do—grow some balls and confess already.

Let’s call a spade a spade. You stole our newspapers. I don’t even want the $8,500 back. I just want your names and faces forever associated with censorship and idiocy.

Sadly, this incident only gained notoriety when the paper was stolen. It's important to remember here that the real story is that someone at this fraternity drugged a woman, possibly with the intention of raping her. It's also pretty terrible that members of the fraternity were allegedly willing to steal so many papers, but it's mostly terrible that a woman got drugged in the first place.