Copyright 2011 The Slate Group | Privacy Policy The Slate Group | c/o E-mail Customer Care | 1350 Connecticut Avenue NW Suite 410 | Washington, D.C. 20036
If you are on a mobile device or cannot view the images in this message, click here to view this email in your Web browser. To receive the text-only version of The Morning Scoop click here. Please add thedailybeast@e.thedailybeast.com to your address book.
In the New York streets outside the historic Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village on Friday night, there was one man celebrating that was cursed among the gay community. Ken Mehlman, the leader of President George W. Bush's re-election campaign in 2004, had once campaigned for a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. But Mehlman came out last year, and then about-faced about same-sex marriage. Mehlman worked alongside a host of conservative donors and operatives to get same-sex marriage approved in New York, reports The Daily Beast's Samuel P. Jacobs.
The first Des Moines Register Iowa poll of the cycle has been released. According to the results, Mitt Romney and Michele Bachmann lead the pack, with 23 percent and 22 percent respectively. One pollster said of Bachmann, "This would indicate that she's going to be a real player in Iowa." Herman Cain came in third with 10 percent, while Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul tied with 7 percent each. Meanwhile, Tim Pawlenty, who has already spent 26 days in Iowa this cycle and has already started airing television ads in the state, came in fifth with just 6 percent. Jennifer Duffy of the Cook Political Report said, "If I were the Pawlenty camp, I would be enormously worried about this poll."
The death toll from a Friday collision between a truck and an Amtrak train in Nevada has risen to at least six. Officials found the bodies of the truck driver and one of the train crew late Saturday. Twenty-eight people still remain unaccounted for, though the National Transportation Safety Board said some of the 210 with tickets might have gotten off the train before the crash. Emergency workers spent Saturday searching for bodies among the wreckage of the California-bound train, though the severe damage hampered their efforts to confirm a death toll. Investigators said visibility was excellent the day of the crash, and they said they are baffled why the head driver didn't stop upon seeing the train approaching. The engineer, who survived the crash, also tried to bring the train to a halt. The truck dragged half a mile down the tracks before a fire broke out in two of the passenger cars.
Less than a week after renowned artist Ai Weiwei was freed, another prominent Chinese dissident, Hu Jia, 37, was released from prison and is now home with his family. Jia's wife, Zeng Jingyan, said they were not speaking with the press for fear that it "might cause problems." Although Jia has been freed, security forces are keeping watch outside his home and preventing him from talking the media—similar conditions to Weiwei's. Jia was imprisoned in 2008 for writing articles and doing interviews with journalists in which he openly criticized the Chinese government, and was outspoken during the time leading up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The country's state-run news agency declared that he had "spread malicious rumors, libel and instigation."
Tens of thousands of people turned out for the gay pride parade in Paris on Saturday, strengthened by the passing of the gay marriage bill in New York. But elsewhere, Russian police detained 14 gay rights activists trying to hold a rally in St. Petersburg. New York's own gay pride parade is set to begin at noon local time on 36th Street and Fifth Avenue, making its way down to historic Greenwich Village, where the Stonewall Inn melee sparked the gay rights movement.
As Iran heats up this summer, the morality police are cracking down more than before. Men are not allowed to wear necklaces, and women can be fined for wearing nail polish.
Getting Serious About the 2012 GOP by Mark McKinnon The until-recently blobular lineup of Republican candidates is finally solidifying. Mark McKinnon on who's ahead—and why Rick Perry, not even yet in the race, leads in momentum.
Jeff Divine: Surfing Photographs from the Eighties by The Daily Beast Legendary surf photographer Jeff Divine has been shooting the waves and their riders for over half a century. See his most iconic pictures from the eighties.
