Acting head of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), Jonathan Scharfen, has promised several changes to the USCIS bureaucracy that would help speed-up the legalization and naturalization process.

While Scharfen claims that the USCIS is working on resolving the problem of backlogs in citizenship applications and background checks, he has also noted that moving from a paper-based bureaucracy to a computer age is the "ultimate solution." Indeed, computerizing applications would make the task faster and much more efficient, decreasing misplacement of documents and increasing effective communication. 

The USCIS seems to be gearing up for a change in administration and immigration policies. They have secured a "transformation" contract to modernize to an electronic system and get in touch with the 21st century.

"And we want to make sure that's in good shape, so when the new administration comes in, we're up and running and that contract is on the right track."

The big question is whether USCIS can deal with the legalization of 12.5 million undocumented immigrants. This is what Scharfen said: 

Go to www.mediamatters.org/billophobia to learn more and take action today!

"I think everybody's got to relax on all this gay stuff."
-- Bill O'Reilly, The O'Reilly Factor, August 15, 2007

From his suggestion that the "secular progressive movement" would like to have "poly-amorphous" marriage ("you can marry 18 people, you can marry a duck") to his statement that it would be "insane" and "inappropriate" to "cluster" gays near children, Bill O' Reilly has never been one to "relax on all this gay stuff."

When O'Reilly isn't dishing the homophobia himself, he's giving others a platform on his show to bash the LGBT community -- featuring guests like Marc Rudov, who recently advanced the bogus notion that "promoting a homosexual lifestyle" of gays and lesbians would cause "long-term consequences for children," that like a brain tumor, may take years to diagnose:

RUDOV: If there's going to be a brain tumor, it might not be discovered for 10 years -- and I kind of look at this in the same way, because children do form their sexual identities from their same-sex parents. And what's going on here is basically teaching children that there's no difference between a heterosexual marriage and a homosexual marriage.

Fox News and O'Reilly use the topic of same-sex couples and their families to promote his show and incite fear of the LGBT community. Never was this practice more clear than when Fox used footage from Rosie O'Donnell's cruise for gay and lesbian couples and their families to promote an upcoming edition of the Factor. The promo raised the question: "Is the media celebrating gay culture?" You can probably guess what the answer was.

Of course, we all know this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to O'Reilly and his attacks on the LGBT community.

Caleb McEwen kicks off our new political comedy series just in time for July 4 with a hilarious rant on the price of gas.

Produced by The UpTake in partnership with the Brave New Workshop Theater.

One of the key challenges that America faces is how to improve our educational system. I have recently begun a series of conversations, underwritten by the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, about the crisis in our public schools. This week, I spoke with Wendy Kopp, the founder and president of Teach for America. Here are excerpts from that show.

Visit charlierose.com to see the full discussion.

President Bush will seek to comfort victims of his presidency as they try to make sense of the destruction he has caused.

More at therealnews.com

Forrest Hylton: McCain visits Colombia and positions himself as the man who will "retake" Latin America.

In "Sly Fox (Fox News Diss)," Nas goes after the racist right-wing news station. Off his controversial new album yet to be released... 

Check out the scathing lyrics after the flip.

Attendees of the 2008 Personal Democracy Forum declare their independence.

Watch more at www.theyoungturks.com

Is Cindy McCain a Barbie Girl?

Complete video at: fora.tv

Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas discusses blogs, the internet, and the increasing democratization of modern media.

From Feministe's Jill Filipovic:

If this story doesn’t disgust you, I don’t know what will:

It was a nightmare captured on surveillance video. A woman who had waited nearly 24 hours to be seen in a Brooklyn public hospital collapsed, fell face-down on the floor, convulsed and for nearly an hour — while several hospital staff members looked at her and one staff member even prodded her with her foot — received no aid. At some point during that time, she died.

The New York Civil Liberties Union has been sounding the alarm about New York City hospitals for some time now, calling the emergency room and inpatient units at Kings County Hospital “a chamber of filth, decay, indifference and danger.” It’s disgusting that someone had to die before the city bothered doing anything about it.

And this is just the one that we know about because the video was released on YouTube. The callous disregard that the hospital employees showed to Esmin Green is not possibly a one-time occurrence. Ms. Green was a poor, mentally ill woman of color. She apparently didn’t matter one bit to the employees at the hospital who were supposed to be giving her care. I would bet everything I own that she is not the first “unimportant” patient to receive that kind of treatment — she is just the first to have her death broadcast on YouTube, and so she is the first that the city cannot turn a blind eye towards.

What should you know about Zimbabwe?

Joint Chiefs Chairman Mike Mullen said he can't send more troops into Afghanistan UNTIL he has made further troop reductions in Iraq.  Why then does the Bush administration continue to focus our military efforts on Iraq? 

Not only was June the deadliest month in Afghanistan for our troops, but it was the second straight month that the death toll was higher there than in Iraq.

More at therealnews.com

Hersh: VP Cheney believes he is going to save the world...by attacking Iran.  See part 2 of this interview here.

From C&L's SilentPatriot:

In order to determine whether or not “water boarding” is indeed torture, Vanity Fair’s Christopher Hitchens decided to do the most logical thing: experience it first hand.

“If waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture.”

Vanity Fair:

Arms already lost to me, I wasn’t able to flail as I was pushed onto a sloping board and positioned with my head lower than my heart. (That’s the main point: the angle can be slight or steep.) Then my legs were lashed together so that the board and I were one single and trussed unit. Not to bore you with my phobias, but if I don’t have at least two pillows I wake up with acid reflux and mild sleep apnea, so even a merely supine position makes me uneasy. And, to tell you something I had been keeping from myself as well as from my new experimental friends, I do have a fear of drowning that comes from a bad childhood moment on the Isle of Wight, when I got out of my depth. As a boy reading the climactic torture scene of 1984, where what is in Room 101 is the worst thing in the world, I realize that somewhere in my version of that hideous chamber comes the moment when the wave washes over me. Not that that makes me special: I don’t know anyone who likes the idea of drowning. As mammals we may have originated in the ocean, but water has many ways of reminding us that when we are in it we are out of our element. In brief, when it comes to breathing, give me good old air every time.

Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks debates Ben Ferguson and comes to the defense of General Wesley Clark's comments in regards to John McCain's war experience not automatically making him qualified to be Commander in Chief. To see more of Cenk, go to www.theyoungturks.com.

I believe there was a second part to this segment, however, my local cable station happened to cut in for some inconsiderate reason.

The Muppets take on the Constitutional Convention in a 1982 special created by Norman Lear for the People for the American Way.

Your Daily Politics Video Blog: Did John McCain say he didn't know much about economics or not? In today's episode of TPMtv, we go to the tape.

This hilarious video was part of The Colbert Report's Green Screen Challenge: Make McCain Interesting.  The Vogue Edition was created by Wayne Simbro.