Many of the 2016 presidential candidates have online stores connected to their campaigns from which supporters can buy t-shirts, buttons, bumper stickers, and the usual products with campaign logos and slogans. Quite a few of the candidates are...
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Many of the 2016 presidential candidates have online stores connected to their campaigns from which supporters can buy t-shirts, buttons, bumper stickers, and the usual products with campaign logos and slogans.

Quite a few of the candidates are having a bit of fun, however, and offering non-traditional items for their supporters to enjoy.

Below, see some of the the most surprising things we found in the candidates’ stores, even if the most surprising thing is a basic t-shirt.

Chris Christie, Carly Fiorina, and Lindsey Graham did not have online stores.

(via 2016 Presidential Candidates - ProCon.org)

Source: procon.org

Gun Control and Lower Suicide Rates Linked in New Johns Hopkins Study

Researchers at John Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health issued a new study that concluded gun control was associated with lower suicide rates.

The study, “Effects of Changes in Permit-to-Purchase Handgun Laws in Connecticut and Missouri on Suicide Rates,” found that state requirements to license gun ownership are linked with lower rates of suicide by guns.

In 1995 Connecticut passed a law requiring a background check before someone could receive a handgun license. In contrast, Missouri removed its restrictions for gun ownership in 2007. The Johns Hopkins researchers looked at rates of suicide in those two states and found that firearm suicides in Connecticut had been reduced by 15.4% since passage of the 1995 law and that firearm suicides in Missouri had increased by 16.1% since it repealed permit regulations in 2007.

According to a press release for the study, states with laws requiring a special license or permit for someone to own a gun, “tended to have lower suicide rates than states without such laws after controlling for differences across state populations.”

Source: procon.org

Voting Rights Act 50th Anniversary Renews Debate

imageThe US Voting Rights Act, which outlawed legal barriers preventing African American voters from casting ballots, was signed into law on Aug. 6, 1965. On the occasion of its 50th anniversary, and one day after a federal appeals court ruled that a Texas law violates part of the act, its legacy is being debated by figures from across the political spectrum.

The Voting Rights Act was signed almost a century after the ratification of the 15th Amendment to the US Constitution, which declared that the right to vote must not be denied by the federal government or by any state “on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” Despite having been granted the constitutional right to vote, the ability for African Americans to exercise that right was infringed by numerous laws enacted in southern states after the Civil War, including requirements to pass literacy tests, the introduction of poll taxes and vouchers of “good character,” and the barring of black voters for supposed “crimes of moral turpitude.” Following the 15th Amendment’s ratification in 1870, the percentage of eligible black voters in Mississippi who were registered to vote dropped from 90% to about 6% in 1892. The percentage of voting-age blacks in the south who were registered to vote dropped to about 3% by 1940.

The burgeoning civil rights movement fought to oppose such disenfranchisement laws during the late 1950s and early 1960s. The efforts culminated on Mar. 7, 1965, when a planned march from Selma to Montgomery Alabama was disrupted when the protesters were confronted by state troopers, who fired tear gas into the crowd and attacked the marchers with nightsticks and whips. The national attention garnered by the incident hastened the progress of the nascent Voting Rights Act, which was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson five months later. Within one year, 302,000 previously disenfranchised Americans were registered to vote.

One of the act’s stipulations was that so-called “special coverage” states (states with a history of discrimination against African American voters) were required to secure “pre-clearance” from the federal government before making changes to their election or voting processes. This requirement was ruled unconstitutional and no longer necessary by the US Supreme Court on June 25, 2013. The ruling was controversial, and its implications are still being fiercely debated as the Voting Rights Act turns 50.

Source: procon.org

Abortion Controversy Erupts Around Planned Parenthood and the Fetal Tissue Trade

Reenergizing the debate surrounding abortion, on July 14, 2015, an activist group called the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) released the first in a series of undercover video recordings that it says shows Planned Parenthood doctors illegally selling tissue specimens from aborted fetuses for profit. Since the release of the first video, the CMP has released three additional undercover videos.

On July 28, the Los Angeles Superior Court issued a restraining order preventing the CMP from releasing any new undercover video containing officials from StemExpress, a company that obtains fetal tissue specimens from Planned Parenthood and then provides those specimens to researchers. The order remains in effect until an Aug. 19 court hearing.

In the complaint filed with the Los Angeles Superior Court, StemExpress accused CMP of purposely editing the first two videos it released “in a way to paint the [Planned Parenthood] doctors in a negative and factually-misleading light,” and said that CMP was planning on releasing more “false and misleadingly-edited video designed to further harm StemExpress’s business and subject StemExpress’s employees to additional harassment.” The complaint also accused the CMP of invasion of privacy, receipt of stolen property, and a number of other illegal actions.

According to Troy Newman, a board member of CMP and the President of the anti-abortion organization Operation Rescue, the videos show that Planned Parenthood “is selling aborted baby body parts for fees that exceed their actual costs and is modifying abortion procedures in order to produce organs that can be sold all in clear violation of State and Federal laws.”

Under federal law it is illegal for companies to profit from the sale of fetal tissue samples, however, companies are allowed to charge for costs incurred such as processing and shipping.

In response to the accusations, Planned Parenthood spokesman Eric Ferrero stated that “at several of our health centers, we help patients who want to donate tissue for scientific research, and we do this just like every other high-quality health care provider does — with full, appropriate consent from patients and under the highest ethical and legal standards… there is no financial benefit for tissue donation for either the patient or for Planned Parenthood.”

The controversy over the videos has rekindled public debate surrounding abortion and the federal funding of Planned Parenthood.

Source: procon.org

Climate Change Threatens 50 Years of Global Health Gains, Says New Lancet Study - ProCon.org

image A new study published in the medical journal Lancetfound that the consequences of climate change“threatens to undermine the last half century of gains” in global healthcare. The study was conducted by theLancet’s Commission on Health and Climate Change, a group of more than 30 researchers from universities in the United Kingdom, Germany, China, Kenya, and Sweden. It was a follow-up study to the Commission’s 2009 report which similarly concluded that “[c]limate change is the biggest global health threat of the 21st century.”

The June 22, 2015 study was titled “Health and Climate Change: Policy Responses to Protect Public Health,” and it reported that climate change results in increased storms, droughts, floods, and heatwaves, which lead to reduced water quality, increased air pollution, changes in land use, and ecological changes, which can impact public health by leading to increases in mental illness, undernutrition, allergies, cardiovascular disease, infectious diseases, injuries, respiratory diseases, and poisoning. The authors cited concerns such as changing patterns in the spread of disease, food insecurity, and displacement as also being consequences of climate change and contributing factors to rising health problems. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that, between 2030 and 2050, an additional 250,000 people globally would die each year due to climate change.

According to the authors, climate change could contribute to an increase in dengue fever and malaria because rising temperatures and changes in rain patterns change the area in which mosquitos carrying the diseases are found. They said instances of cholera and other waterborne disease could also rise due to increased flooding, hurricanes, and weather events such as El Niño. In the United States specifically, they wrote that the mortality rate attributed to rising ozone levels is expected to rise by 4-5% by 2050.

The authors propose a “rapid phase out of coal from the global energy mix” to safeguard against an increase in cardiovascular and respiratory diseases. The authors state that a reduction in fossil fuel emissions will not only cut respiratory diseases but will also contribute to…

Source: procon.org

College Education Leads to Longer Life, Study Finds

imageIf more Americans were college educated, hundreds of thousands of lives could be saved every year in the United States, according to new research. The study found that 554,525 US deaths in 2010 could have been prevented if those people had obtained a bachelor’s degree.

Published on July 8, 2015 in the online, peer-reviewed journal PLOS ONE, the study determined that 145,243 deaths in 2010 could be attributed to people not finishing high school, which is equivalent to the number of lives that could be saved by people giving up smoking. A further 110,068 deaths could have been averted if people who had some college but had not completed their degree requirements had instead gone on to get a bachelor’s degree.

The connection between lower education levels and dying younger is partly due to people with more education being better off financially, according to study co-author Virginia Chang, Associate Professor of Population Health at New York University School of Medicine. “People with more education have higher income and more money,” Chang stated. “They can afford to eat better, a gym membership or a personal trainer, support to quit smoking.” In addition to higher potential earnings, college graduates may also possess “more knowledge about health, more access to get that knowledge, more of a sense of agency, more self-efficacy, better peer connections.”

Source: procon.org

Gay Marriage Legal in All 50 States, Rules Supreme Court

imageThe US Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in Obergefell v. Hodges that gay marriage bans violate the Due Process Clause of the US Constitution. The Court declared that “same-sex couples may exercise the fundamental right to marry in all States.”

In the Court’s majority opinion, Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote that “No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family… It would misunderstand these men and women [the petitioners requesting the right to marry] to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.”

In arguing that the Constitution guarantees the right to marry, Kennedy invoked the 1967 Supreme Court ruling that overturned bans on interracial marriage: “In Loving v. Virginia… a unanimous Court held marriage is ‘one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.’” While acknowledging that cases such as Loving “presumed a relationship involving opposite-sex partners,” Kennedy explained that “The history of marriage is one of both continuity and change. That institution—even as confined to opposite-sex relations—has evolved over time.” Kennedy was joined in his opinion by Associate Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan.

Dissents were written by Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. and Associate Judges Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Anthony Alito, Jr. Roberts cited heterosexual marriage’s long tradition, stating that the “universal definition of marriage as the union of a man and a woman is no historical coincidence… It arose in the nature of things to meet a vital need: ensuring that children are conceived by a mother and father committed to raising them in the stable conditions of a lifelong relationship.”

Scalia argued that the regulation of marriage was the province of individual states, and that the Court has undermined the democratic process by making “a naked judicial claim to legislative—indeed, super-legislative—power; a claim fundamentally at odds with our system of government.”

Source: procon.org

Medical Marijuana Legalization Does Not Increase Teen Use, New Study Finds

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A study published online on June 16, 2015 by Lancet Psychiatry found that state legalization of medical marijuana does not increase teen use of the drug. The rate of marijuana use amongst teens in states that have legalized marijuana for medical use was found to be higher than in states which ban the drug, however that was the case before and after the laws were changed.


The study examined data from 24 years of national surveys conducted in about 400 schools, which asked students in eighth, 10th and 12th grades whether or not they had used marijuana during the previous 30 days. After a law was passed to legalize medical marijuana, the rate of teen use amongst all age groups studied dropped from 16% to 15%, below the threshold required for statistical significance. When the results were limited to eighth graders only, the rate of use went down by a statistically significant degree after the law was passed, dropping from 8% to 6%.

When considering data collected both before and after medical marijuana laws were passed, the researchers found a higher prevalence of teen marijuana use in states that have legalized medical marijuana (16%) than in states which have not (13%).

Deborah Hasin, PhD, Professor of Clinical Epidemiology (in Psychiatry) at Columbia University and co-author of the Lancetstudy, stated that “Our findings provide the strongest evidence to date that marijuana use by teenagers does not increase after a state legalizes medical marijuana.” Seth Ammerman, MD, Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at Stanford University, found the study’s results “reassuring… if a state does put in medical marijuana laws, that that’s not going to significantly affect adolescent use.” Dr. Ammerman suggested that the higher rates of teen marijuana use in legal states may be due to attitudes toward the drug being more liberal in those states.

Source: procon.org

Gun Control - Pro Con

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The United States has 88.8 guns per 100 people, or about 270,000,000 guns, which is the highest total and per capita number in the world. 22% of Americans own one or more guns (35% of men and 12% of women). America’s pervasive gun culture stems in part from its colonial history, revolutionary roots, frontier expansion, and perhaps most importantly, the Second Amendment, which states: “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Proponents of more gun control laws state that the Second Amendment was intended for militias; that deadly, senseless, and costly gun violence would be reduced; and that a majority of Americans, including gun owners, support new gun restrictions.  

Opponents say that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to own guns; that guns are needed for self-defense from threats ranging from local criminals to foreign invaders; and that gun ownership deters crime rather than causes more crime. Read More…

Source: gun-control.procon.org

Climate Change Study Shows Most Americans Believe in Global Warming but Not Human Causation

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According to a study published in Nature Climate Change, a majority (63%) of Americans believeglobal warming is happening.  The same study also found that 48% of Americans think that human activity is primarily responsible for global warming, 35% believe natural changes are the main cause of global warming, and 17% were unsure or did not respond.

The statistical model was generated by a team of researchers from Yale and Utah State Universities who put together data from 12 nationally representative opinion surveys conducted between 2008 and 2013. In total, the study analyzed responses from 13,000 individuals across the United States.

The study found that 52% of Americans are “worried about global warming,” and 51% believe global warming “will harm people in the US.”

Although fewer than half of Americans (48%) believe that human activity is primarily responsible for global warming, more than half of Americans (77%) believe the government should fund research into renewable energy sources and 74% believe the government should regulate CO2 as a pollutant. In addition, 63% of Americans believe that there should be “strict limits on existing coal-fired power plants.”

Source: procon.org

Nebraska Legislature Abolishes the Death Penalty, Overriding Governor’s Veto

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On May 27, 2015 the Nebraska state legislature voted 30 to 19 to override the governor’s veto of LB268, a bill to abolish the death penalty that was introduced by Sen. Ernie Chambers from North Omaha’s 11th District.

With the override of Republican Governor Pete Ricketts’s veto, Nebraska became the first conservative state to repeal the death penalty in over 40 years. The last conservative state that banned capital punishment was North Dakota in 1973.

Governor Ricketts had argued in favor of retaining the death penalty, stating that “repealing the death penalty sends the wrong message to Nebraskans who overwhelming support capital punishment and look to government to strengthen public safety not weaken it.” After his veto was overridden, he stated that he was “appalled” at the loss of “a critical tool to protect law enforcement and Nebraska families.”

During the last floor debate over the bill on Apr. 16, Sen. Chambers stated that the United States was the last remaining western democracy to still retain the death penalty, and that the risk of executing the innocent makes ending capital punishment necessary. He stated that “over 150 people in the last few years have been taken offdeath row because they were innocent. I know there are people who want to believe that no innocent person has ever been executed in this country. But when you have this many people conclusively proved by DNA evidence to be actually innocent, there is no escaping the conclusion that innocent people have been executed.”

Source: procon.org

Death Penalty Ban Loses by One Vote in Montana House of Representatives

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A bill to abolish Montana’s death penalty failed to pass the state House of Representatives by one vote on Feb. 23, 2015. It marked the closest an anti-death penalty law has come to being passed by the Montana House, which has blocked similar bills in the last two legislative sessions. Bills to repeal the death penalty have passed in the state Senate.

House Bill 370, introduced by Republican state House Representative David “Doc” Moore, failed in a 50-50 tie. The vote was taken after twenty minutes of debate, and after Moore advised his fellow representatives to “just vote your conscience.” 38 Democrats and 12 Republicans voted to repeal the death penalty, while three Democrats joined 47 Republicans in voting to defeat the measure.

The bill sought to replace the death penalty with a life sentence without parole. During the preceding debate, proponents of the measure argued that the death penalty drains millions of taxpayer dollars ($3 million to $4 million according to an earlier statement by Republican Representative Clayton Fiscus) to fund public defenders during the appeal process. Bill supporters also claimed that the death penalty is ineffective as a deterrent, and that it is unfair to require state prison workers to operate what Democratic Representative Margie MacDonald called “the machineries of death… It is a ravaging, horrifying task to put in the hands of our state employees.”

Opponents of the bill emphasized victims’ rights….
With so much controversy and partisan spin over the Keystone XL Pipeline, we knew that people just wanted a nonpartisan information source for this issue. Our resource gives people both sides of the Keystone XL Pipeline debate so they can become better informed and make up their own minds.

keystone xl pipelineProCon.org expanded its pro and con research about the proposedKeystone XL Pipeline. The pipeline, if completed, would transport oil extracted from tar sands in Alberta, Canada, through several US states, and ultimately to the Texas Gulf region.

The updated ProCon.org resource presents statements from authoritative sources in the debate over “Should the United States authorize the Keystone XL Pipeline to import tar sand oil from Canada?”

All statements are fully sourced and include a biography of the person or organization being quoted.

In addition to the expert statements, the updated ProCon.org resource contains:

* Keystone XL Pipeline Environmental Review by US State Department - featuring the final environmental impact statement released on January 31, 2014.

* President Obama’s Statements on Keystone XL Pipeline - featuring President Obama’s veto threat of the Keystone XL Pipeline Act on January 6, 2015.

* Keystone XL Pipeline Act (S.1) - including the text of the bill and the latest actions in Congress.

New Keystone XL Pipeline Pros and Cons

Source: procon.org