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Waiting for the Stand Up for Religious Freedom rally on Capitol Hill to begin on Friday, David Bereit, founder of the anti-abortion group 40 Days for Life, explained to me, with the patience of a dedicated crusader accustomed to repeating talking points, why he is proud to be standing with the coalition of groups who are protesting, relentlessly, that the contraception coverage requirement under the Affordable Care Act infringes on their religious freedom. But while Bereit, who is not Catholic, said he is opposed to the government mandating contraception coverage, he would not give me a straight answer on whether he is opposed to contraception.

As the religious freedom wars have heated up over the United States Department of Health and Human Servicess contraception mandate, and as non-Catholic groups have taken up the mantle of the Catholic Churchs opposition to abortion, there has been a blurring of lines between activists whose primary objection is to end abortion and those who are also opposed to contraception. Under the religious freedom banner, and in particular the Stand Up for Religious Freedom rallies, are a wide array of organizations that include those once considered fringe, such as Bereits former employer, the anti-contraception American Life League, and Operation Rescue.

Before Lila Rose started making her deceptive guerrilla videos at Planned Parenthood clinics, before the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops started investigating the Girl Scouts, before it became essential for any God- (and base-) fearing Republican to call for defunding Planned Parenthood, David Bereit was at the forefront of the spiritual and political warfare against what he has called Planned Parenthoods abortion empire. His 40 Days for Life organization organizes local activists to protest outside of Planned Parenthood and other medical clinics. In talking with me, he accused Planned Parenthood of systematically destroying innocent lives through abortion and through many of its other projects and programs, of devaluing human life, and of leading people into lifestyles where they will later feel the need for abortion.

Bereit cut his teeth as an anti-abortion activist in Brazos County, Texas, a state that has become, particularly under Gov. Rick Perry, a hotbed for spiritual warriors who believe they are carrying out Gods calling to fell the mighty Planned Parenthood. A federal courts injunction of the states latest effort to bar Planned Parenthood from receiving federally subsidized funding under the states Womens Health Program is currently on appeal.

In 2002, as head of the Brazos County Coalition for Life, Bereit, a former pharmaceutical salesman, developed a list of local companies targeted for a boycott over their donations of goods and services to a fundraiser for the local Planned Parenthood. The clinic was the communitys only abortion provider and one of only a few facilities where low-income women could obtain healthcare. Local business owners called the boycott a threat and blackmail. In Houston, activists made similar efforts to boycott local contractors who worked on a new facility that opened in 2010, which has been continually protested by anti-abortion forces as the largest abortion facility in the Western hemisphere.

Following his successes with the Coalition for Life in Brazos County, in 2004 Bereit launched the first local 40 Days for Life campaign 40 days being a biblical number of prayer and fasting outside medical clinics, or abortion mills as activists call them.

A year after launching 40 Days for Life, Bereit joined the American Life League, long considered one of the fringe players in the anti-abortion movement, serving as national director of its project STOPP, or Stop Planned Parenthood.

Shortly after joining STOPP, Bereit blamed the Supreme Court decision in Griswold v. Connecticut, which ruled state bans on contraception unconstitutional, for a tragic moral breakdown in our culture, adding, It is time for Americans to take a long, hard look at the real legacy of theGriswolddecision. Although we cant undo the consequences overnight, we can begin to take back our society one step at a time. The first step is to put an end to the destructive influence of Planned Parenthood, the organization that forced this tragedy upon our nation 40 years ago.

At the Stand Up for Religious Freedom rally, Bereit told me he opposed the legal precedent that Griswold set, as it laid the groundwork for Roe v. Wade. But when I pressed him about whether he agreed with ALLs opposition to contraception generally, he paused and said, I still agree with the position that anything that directly causes the destruction of human life, and there is evidence suggesting that certain birth control devices can have an abortifacient property. I do have opposition to those things, which he said included birth control pills. He, like other speakers at the rally, repeated the false charge that the emergency contraceptives ella and Plan B, which are covered by the HHS rule, are abortifacients.

In an online discussion titled Ending Abortion, Bereit interviewed Jim Sedlak, his former colleague and the current executive director of STOPP, calling him the most credible expert I have ever heard on the topic of Planned Parenthood. STOPPs petition web page to end federal funding of Planned Parenthood charges, among other things, that Planned Parenthoods top goal for the next 14 years is to push its agenda of promiscuous sex everywhere in our society, and that it pushes pornography to children, covers up for rapists and child predators, and is openly hostile to Christianity.

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V-word vs. P-word

OTTAWA Conservative Senator Patrick Brazeau apologized Tuesday after he suggested on Twitter that a parliamentary reporter who wrote a story about his poor attendance record was a bitch.

Brazeau, best known to Canadians for losing a boxing match to Liberal MP Justin Trudeau this spring, was reacting to a story written by Canadian Press reporter Jennifer Ditchburn that said Brazeau had the poorest attendance record for this session of parliament.

Taking to Twitter, Brazeau called the story one-sided.

"Change the D to a B in your last name and we're even!" Brazeau tweeted at Ditchburn Tuesday afternoon.

"Don't mean it but needs saying."

Brazeau was absent for 25 per cent of the 72 sittings between June 2011 and April 2012, the Senate attendance register shows. By the end of that period, the Quebecer was four days away from being fined, Ditchburn reported.

"The very simple answer to your question with respect to my attendance or lack thereof is for personal matters," Brazeau is quoted as saying in Ditchburn's story.

Ditchburn defended herself on Twitter, noting that she called Brazeau's office twice and exchanged emails prior to the story being published.

"Dear Senator: Many a person has made fun of my name and (the) word 'Bitch.' But never a Canadian senator. That's a first," Ditchburn tweeted.

Brazeau isn't the first parliamentarian to use intemperate vocabulary on social media. President of the Treasury Board Tony Clement has twice called someone a "jackass," interim Liberal leader Bob Rae tweeted "what bullshit is this?" in response to a spat between young Liberals last winter, and NDP MP Pat Martin raised a few eyebrows after an F-bomb-filled Twitter tirade in response to the Tories' move to end debate on a budget-related bill.

Originally posted here:
B-word gets Brazeau in Twitter trouble

OTTAWA Conservative Senator Patrick Brazeau apologized Tuesday after he suggested on Twitter that a parliamentary reporter who wrote a story about his poor attendance record was a bitch.

Brazeau, best known to Canadians for losing a boxing match to Liberal MP Justin Trudeau this spring, was reacting to a story written by Canadian Press reporter Jennifer Ditchburn that said Brazeau had the poorest attendance record for this session of parliament.

Taking to Twitter, Brazeau called the story one-sided.

"Change the D to a B in your last name and we're even!" Brazeau tweeted at Ditchburn Tuesday afternoon.

"Don't mean it but needs saying."

Brazeau was absent for 25 per cent of the 72 sittings between June 2011 and April 2012, the Senate attendance register shows. By the end of that period, the Quebecer was four days away from being fined, Ditchburn reported.

"The very simple answer to your question with respect to my attendance or lack thereof is for personal matters," Brazeau is quoted as saying in Ditchburn's story.

Ditchburn defended herself on Twitter, noting that she called Brazeau's office twice and exchanged emails prior to the story being published.

"Dear Senator: Many a person has made fun of my name and (the) word 'Bitch.' But never a Canadian senator. That's a first," Ditchburn tweeted.

Brazeau isn't the first parliamentarian to use intemperate vocabulary on social media. President of the Treasury Board Tony Clement has twice called someone a "jackass," interim Liberal leader Bob Rae tweeted "what bullshit is this?" in response to a spat between young Liberals last winter, and NDP MP Pat Martin raised a few eyebrows after an F-bomb-filled Twitter tirade in response to the Tories' move to end debate on a budget-related bill.

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Brazeau apologizes after B-word gets him beaten up on Twitter

Jeff Kravitz / FilmMagic / Getty Images

Skrillex performs onstage during Day 3 of Bonnaroo 2012 on June 9, 2012 in Manchester, Tennessee.

Name a DJ from the 1980s. Go ahead, well wait. Fast forward to the 2012 Grammy Awards when electronic music and the men (more on that later) who make it were everywhere. Deadmau5 showed up on the red carpet wearing his trademark mouse head with Skrillexs phone number scrawled across his t-shirt. Producer and DJ Skrillex won not one, but three Grammys. In a special performance superstar DJ David Guetta brought the beats while Lil Wayne and Chris Brown provided vocals.

Far from being a niche market, electronic dance music (EDM) is making inroads into almost every aspect of American life. It has fully infiltrated Top 40 radio. French DJ extraordinaire David Guetta hit No. 1 with the Black Eyed Peas on I Gotta Feeling and Rihanna worked with Scottish DJ Calvin Harris on her hits We Found Love and Where Have You Been. Chart-toppers by Gotye and Adele have been endlessly remixed into dance hits. Deadmau5, both the person and his music, are featured in commercials. Atlantic Records recently relaunched Big Beat, its dance-music imprint, with Skrillex as its cornerstone. The Wall Street Journal estimated that Dutch superstar DJTisto MixMagsGreatest DJ of All Time has an annual income of $20 million. Attendance at the Electric Daisy Carnival, one of the premiere electronic music festivals in the U.S., topped 250,000 last year. Forbes considers Skrillex the 92nd most powerful celebrity in the world, making their list right above 30 Rocks Tina Fey. The rise of the DJ as an artist and the ascension of electronic dance music to the mainstream seems unstoppable.

But just as we are all getting used to having DJs making the music scene, a few acts start to signal what could be the beginning of the end of this generation of electronic dance music mavens. Two days ago, Deadmau5, one of the most famous (and intentionally controversial) DJs of the era, posted an article on Tumblr entitled We All Hit Play. In the article, Deadmau5 (born Joel Zimmerman) claimed that anyone given about 1 hour of instruction can be a DJ, no talent required. He also alleged that when fans pay to see dance musics top-billed acts (himself included) play live its little more than watching them hit play on a mix tape. Then, Swedish House Mafia announced that the tour they are about to go on will be their last. Together the Swedes Axwell, Steve Angello and Sebastian Ingrosso sometimes referred to as the Holy Trinity of Dance, are one of dance musics most commercially successful brands and the group was at the front of EDMs American invasion. While the statement was worded vaguely enough for skeptics to wonder if the powerhouse trio would simply change their name, it was a surprising move for one of EDMs biggest acts that will headline a show in Milton Keynes Bowl in England next month. The venue holds 65,000 people. So why are they leaving the game now?

(MORE: Justin Biebers Believe: The Pop Prince Comes of Age)

Are we at a tipping point for electronic music? Maybe. But lets start at the beginning. When did the ascension of EDM in America start? When did it become a phenomenon that would allow a DJ (Deadmau5 again) to close out the Lollapalooza festival or pack a coliseum? Electronic music has been around for awhile. William Orbit was making a name for himself on the dance music scene for more than a decade before becoming known to audiences worldwide for his work on Madonnas 1998 album Ray Of Light. Dutch DJ Tisto has been performing since the mid 1980s, spinning prerecorded music and creating mixes in clubs before headlining Ultra Music Festival last year and raking in the estimated $20 million income. The electronica boom of the late 90s produced artists like Moby, Fatboy Slim and the Chemical Brothers. The Prodigy even managed to produce a No. 1 album Fat of the Land in 1997 that became one of the fastest-selling UK albums of all time.

But earlier iterations of electronic music followed the well-laid track of rock music. They were short, fast and to the point as EDM chronicler Phillip Sherburne says, a dance-music DJ needs hours, not minutes, to get across his or her ideas. Luckily, dance music grew from those early days. While the rave and dance party scene had always been present in Europe, in the 80s and 90s dance music in America was a relatively underground scene. But slowly attendance at festivals like Miamis Winter Music Conference, which was founded in 1985; the Detroit Electronic Music Festival, which started in 2000; and Montreals MUTEK began to grow by the tens of thousands. Indie electronica took off in the new millennium. Acts like Justice from France, Lali Puna from Germany, and Ratatat and The Postal Service from the US paired the soft niceties of indie rock with an foot-pounding electronic beat and helped ignite a new interest in the genre, kickstarting a nostalgia for bands like the Chemical Brothers and, of course, Daft Punk.

Daft Punks groundbreaking set at the Coachella Music and Arts Festival back in 2006 was the defining moment for the new wave of dance music in America. While the duos debut album, Homework, came out in 1997, their turn on the Coachella stage was perfectly timed for American interests. You can watch parts of the performance on YouTube, but the videos only capture the tip of the iceberg, or, more aptly, the tip of the giant light-up pyramid that filled the stage. Daft Punks futuristic sound and wild set made waves at Coachella by tapping into a zeitgeist of music that combined a nostalgia for 90s acts with a burgeoning American dance music scene fueled by crossover indie dance bands like LCD Soundsystem and !!! . That was life-changing for me, said Steve Goodgold, the dance music specialist at the Windish Agency, a booking agency, speaking to the LA Times. Coachella promoter Goldenvoices Senior Vice President Skip Paige agreed. We built that tent for Madonna, and she phoned it in. Daft Punk used it all and blew us away. I talked to them afterwards and they said it was the best set theyd ever played. The performance by the robot-costumed Frenchmen brought cynical concert-goers to tears and the notoriously compliment-stingy site Pitchfork called the performance mindblowing.

(MORE: De La Soul Duos First Serve: Hip-hop Made Fun Again)

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Beat Boys: The Rise of the Superstar DJ

June 26, 2012 13:04

The '212' star speaks about her forthcoming release backstage at BBC Radio One's Hackney Weekend

Video: Azealia Banks - 'I'm Releasing A Prodigy Cover'

Azealia Banks has revealed that her new mixtape 'Fantasea' will feature a cover of a track by 90s rave icons The Prodigy - click on the image above to watch a video of the interview.

Speaking to NME backstage at BBC Radio Ones Hackney Weekend, where the singer performed alongside the likes of Rihanna, Lana Del Rey and Dizzee Rascal, Banks stated that the tape has, "a sea theme, but its less obviously mermaid stuff and more like witchy hip-hop and some real rave shit," before divulging that she "covers Prodigy on there."

Yesterday, Banks tweeted that 'Fantasea' will now be released on July 11 instead of its originally planned date of July 4, which follows a host of cancelled festival dates and the delayed release of previous EP '1991'. She wrote:

'Fantasea' (which was initially entitled 'Fantastic') will feature previously aired tracks 'Jumanji' and 'Aquababe' and will precede Banks' full-length debut, 'Broke With Expensive Taste', due out in September.

Earlier this month, Azealia spoke out about wanting to disassociate herself from the rap scene, stating that "from now I'm a vocalist, and will not be associating myself with the "rap game" or whatever the fuck that means". She also announced that she would be deleting her Twitter account @AZEALIABANKS, although swiftly returned to the social network four days later.

Azealia Banks will play Reading and Leeds festival this August, before returning to the UK for a headline tour this October.

To check the availability of Reading Festival tickets and get all the latest listings, go to NME.COM/TICKETS now, or call 0871 230 1094.

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Azealia Banks covers The Prodigy on new mixtape 'Fantasea'