Tailoring anti-abortion messages to blacks

Anti-abortion activists are aggressively recruiting African Americans into their movement, targeting urban communities that they have long considered hostile turf. Framing their cause as the new frontier in civil rights — an effort to stop "black genocide" - these activists have turned to revered names in black history. A niece of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. tours the nation, speaking out against "the war on the womb." The great-great-granddaughter of Dred Scott recently compared Roe vs. Wade to the 1857 Supreme Court decision declaring blacks so far inferior that they had no rights. Los Angeles Times reports

Allen to market Reagan for YAF

Former Sen. George Allen (R-VA), who lost his seat to Jim Webb in the '06 midterm elections, will give talks on college campuses, write op-ed pieces, and promote the ideas of President Ronald Reagan for the Young America's Foundation, the conservative youth network. The post is part-time, and the foundation would not say what Allen will be paid. Times Dispatch reports

Blackwell Lands at Family Research Council

Former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell will become Senior Fellow for Family Empowerment at the Family Research Council,the leading beltway group of the Christian Right. In his new role, he will lead the organization's work on family economics, tax reform, and education. In 2006 Blackwell lost the Republican bid for Ohio's governorship. In 2004, while he was Secretary of State, Blackwell served as honorary co-chair of the Committee to re-elect George W. Bush while also overseeing a controversial election process that led to over a dozen lawsuits. Blackwell also helped to lead the successful campaign to ban same-sex marriage in Ohio. Family Research Council announces

Conservatives Target Congress for '08

Faced with a pack of GOP presidential contenders with spotty conservative credentials, the party's fiscal and social conservatives say they are making a special effort to reclaim power on Capitol Hill to hold the next White House in line. "For years, the party was completely president-centric, and put all their efforts into keeping the presidency," said Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform. "But going into 2008, it's going to be equally important to pick up the House and Senate." Paul Weyrich, president of the Free Congress Foundation, said the party's top-tier presidential candidates -- including Arizona Senator John McCain, former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani, and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney -- are too liberal for many conservatives. Boston Globe reports

Website fights pseudo-research on LGBT families

While James Dobson's Focus on the Family continues to cherry-pick and distort research on LGBT families, Soulforce and Truth Wins Out are raising the stakes to expose what they call a harmful and alarming disinformation campaign discriminating against American families. A week after Robynne Sapp and Dotti Berry were arrested as part of Soulforce’s new "Focus on the Facts" campaign, Truth Wins Out has launched a new Web site, RespectMyResearch.org. "Dobson's latest op-ed in Time was the last straw," declared Wayne Besen, executive director of Truth Wins Out. "I called five different mainstream researchers, all of whom were floored that their research was being used to denounce LGBT families." The Advocate reports