Sports fans, the national media, and even National Basketball Association insiders are wondering how everyone missed out on Jeremy Lin, the where-did-he-come-from point guard for the New York Knicks who has set the sports world on fire over the last two weeks. Lin, after all, was barely recruited out of high school, undrafted out of Harvard, cut twice by NBA teams, sent to the NBA Development League, and nearly cut again, all before emerging to score more points in his first five starts than any player in NBA history.

The New York Times found what seems like at least part of the answer this week: Lin is of Taiwanese descent, and according to some coaches the Times talked to, “recruiters, in the age of who-does-he-remind-you-of evaluations, simply lacked a frame of reference for such an Asian-American talent.”

Racial stereotypes, taboo in virtually every other aspect of American society, still play a huge role in sports, particularly in how the media, analysts, and scouts evaluate talent and make comparisons. Analysts use adjectives like “crafty” and “intelligent” to describe how white athletes overcome their general lack of athleticism, while marveling at the sheer athletic ability of black players who supposedly lack the intangibles of their white peers. Whites are often touted as the tough-nosed, blue collar players; blacks, the ones who make it look easy.

The stereotypes then carry over to the comparisons we make between athletes. Analysts spent years looking for the “next Larry Bird,” putting the label on virtually every talented white player to reach the NBA. On a statistical level, though, the “next Larry Bird” was actually Kevin Garnett, a 6-foot-11 black forward who has been in the NBA since 1995, just three years after Bird retired. We ignore that black quarterback Donovan McNabb had a lot in common with white quarterback Mark Brunell, and that neither played much like white quarterback Dan Marino or black quarterback Warren Moon.

The same stereotypes are in play with Lin. Few other Asians have ever played in the NBA, and the majority have been tall centers like Yao Ming and Wang Zhizhi (Lin is 6-foot-3). The stereotype for Asian NBA players was easy, then: they’re tall, or they don’t exist. Now that Lin has proven that wrong, others persist. With no Asian to compare him to, analysts are matching Lin to the next closest thing — white point guards like Steve Nash who came out of nowhere to star in the NBA. That may be a compliment to Lin — Nash is a two-time MVP — but other than blossoming in similar systems and having lighter skin than most of the other players, Lin and Nash’s games bear little resemblance.

The stereotypes, many of which exist subconsciously, likely aren’t going anywhere. Which means whenever the next Jeremy Lin comes along, fans, the media, and even the biggest experts won’t see him coming.

One in a series of posts about the Heartland Institute’s inner workings, from internal documents acquired by ThinkProgress Green.

Internal documents reveal that General Motors Foundation has contributed to the climate-denial shop Heartland Institute, giving $30,000 since 2010 for its school-privatization publication School Reform News. GM has called for mandatory climate action, in sharp contrast to Heartland’s attacks on the fact of global warming.

Asked about the contributions, GM defended the Heartland Institute as “careful and considerate,” even though the radical think tank has accused “Government Motors” of “corporate welfare-sucking” and told people to “never again buy a GM car or truck.” In a statement to the Guardian, Greg Martin, GM’s director of policy and Washington communications, heaped praised on Heartland:

In light of that high praise, ThinkProgress Green reviewed what the Heartland Institute has said about GM on its website over the past two years. Here is a sampling:

Perhaps Martin might want to reconsider whether the group’s thought is really so “careful and considerate.”

House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) held a hearing today about the Obama administration’s new regulation requiring employers and insurers to provide contraception coverage to their employees, but they prevented women from testifying on the issue.

Democrats had invited Sandra Fluke, a third year law student at Georgetown University, a Jesuit school, but Issa prevented her from testifying. Fluke later posted her testimony on YouTube.

In her testimony, Fluke describes the financial barriers for female law students at Georgetown who need contraception because the school does not offer birth control coverage in its student health insurance plans. Contraception can cost women up to $3,000 over the course of law school without the coverage, she said, which adds up to an entire summer’s salary for students on public interest scholarships. And 40 percent of women at Georgetown Law say they struggle financially because of the policy. “Just on Tuesday, a married female student told me she had to stop using contraception because she couldn’t afford it any longer,” Fluke wrote.

For some women, the consequences of forgoing birth control can be severe:

Watch Fluke offer her testimony here:

[ http://www.youtube.com/embed/RCPU0Qsv9wM ]

Fluke’s testimony and the experiences of her fellow law students could have been important stories for members of Congress to hear about the real impact that having or not having insurance coverage for contraception can have on women.

Yesterday, police arrested an unidentified man at the Kansas Capitol after discovering several homemade bombs in his truck close to the Kansas Capitol. The truck

This arrest came on the same day that Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R), an anti-immigrant official who drafted Arizona’s and Alabama’s harmful immigration laws, urged Kansas lawmakers to pass stricter immigration policies. Hundreds of peaceful protesters also showed up to the capitol to protest Kobach’s arrival.

Unlike far-reaching immigration laws, like the one proposed in Mississippi, Kansas legislators are considering a wide range of immigration measures. Some are designed to both help immigrants find jobs and others would crack down on undocumented immigrants living and working in Kansas.

The protestors argued that the policies are more likely to produce discrimination, worker shortages, and costly lawsuits. “If Mr. Kobach, who is promoting…laws that are separating our families, that are leaving children without their parents, and they’re hurting everyone in our community, we will not stand for that,†Sulma Arias, executive director of Sunflower Community Action, said to the crowd of 300 people who gathered outside of the Kansas Statehouse. They targeted much of their anger at Kobach, but they took their message to Brownback at the end of the day and asked him to distance himself from Kobach.

Although authorities believe that the protests and the explosives are unrelated, it is unfortunate that the man with the bombs did not follow the pro-immigrant protestors’ lead and express himself peacefully.

had stickers on its back window saying, “Welcome to America. Now speak English” and “Does my American flag offend you? Call 1-800-LEAVE THE USA.’’

In the escalating war on women’s rights in statehouse across the country, Iowa state Rep. Kim Pearson (R) may have just dropped the biggest bomb yet. Pearson, a freshman Tea Party lawmaker so extreme that she’s already drawn scorn from fellow Republicans and decided not to run for re-election, introduced a bill yesterday morning that would completely outlaw all abortions.

Among other things, the bill make it so a doctor that performs and abortion commits “feticide” — a Class A felony, which is punishable by life imprisonment without the chance for parole:

The bill makes “attempted feticide,” where the fetus does not die, a Class B felony, punishable by 25 years in prison. Iowans can even be punished for helping someone else perform an abortion, as, “joint criminal conduct shall apply to persons knowingly participating or concerned in the commission of feticide or attempted feticide under this section.”

Democrats complained the the bill — which would almost certainly violate Roe v. Wade — was a waste of time when there are pressing economic problems facing the state. “House Republicans and their colleagues in the Senate would rather put the lives of women in danger than have a real discussion about how we create jobs and move Iowa forward,†Iowa Democratic Party Chairwoman Sue Dvorsky said in a statement.

While the prospects of Pearson’s bill are unclear, a state House committee is currently debating a separate anti-abortion measure that would make doctors show a woman sonogram of the fetus before terminating a pregnancy. The focus on abortion does seem to violate a pledge made by Iowa House Speaker Kraig Paulsen (R) when he said in November, “we’re also not interested in squandering Iowans’ time” on divisive social issues.

The Economic Policy Institute released an analysis today of the programs in President Obama’s newly proposed budget plan which are aimed at boosting job growth. All told, it would yield approximately 1.5 million new jobs in fiscal year 2012, and around 1.3 million in 2013. This would result in a drop in the unemployment rate of 0.5 percent in 2012 and 0.4 percent in 2013, EPI estimated.

This is consistent with the overall macroeconomic strategy of Obama’s budget: boosting demand immediately, while holding off on significant budget cuts until later in the 10 year window. This approach drives up job growth and would leave the economy at a much more robust level of output when the budget cuts finally do hit — and thus much less likely to falter again in response to those cuts.

Also worth noting: This collection of programs in the new budget is a slight reworking of the American Jobs Act that the President proposed last fall, and which the GOP filibustered into extinction.

House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) has been catching flack for holding a panel today relating to women’s access to birth control that featured zero women, but Issa won’t let the fact that few Americans agree with his position deter him. Taking to Twitter this evening, he fired back with a always-appropriate Martin Luther King Jr. comparison:

Indeed, as King knew, the “arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice†and depriving women who work for Catholic hospitals of affordable birth control. Issa’s hearing also featured giant posters of King and other historical greats whose footsteps the panel was apparently following in, like President Kennedy, and Mohandas Gandhi.

But as Adam Serwer points out, King actually wrote that he hoped state and federal governments would appropriate “large sums of money” to educate people about birth control.

Mitt Romney has twisted himself into knots over the rescue of Detroit’s auto industry (which he initially opposed, then tried to take credit for, and now opposes again) as the GOP presidential primary in Michigan approaches. “This was crony capitalism on a grand scale,” Romney wrote of the auto rescue in the Detroit Free Press this week. “The president tells us that without his intervention things in Detroit would be worse. I believe that without his intervention things there would be better.”

However, Romney’s opposition to the bailout didn’t stop him from fundraising yesterday at the office of the law firm that made hundreds of millions of dollars representing General Motors during its rescue, as Politico’s Ben White pointed out:

Romney favored a “managed bankruptcy” for Detroit’s auto companies, without the bridge loans provided by the federal government. But as Yahoo! Autos reporter noted, Romney’s plan wouldn’t have worked because “before Obama was even sworn in, no one on Wall Street or anywhere else was willing to lend GM and Chrysler a penny — let alone the $81 billion they and their financial arms eventually needed.” And in the end, Romney is clearly fine with dialing for dollars from the offices of the lawyers that oversaw and profited from the whole episode.

Last November, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) told Republican presidential candidates to stop second-guessing the rescue of the automobile industry that saved thousands of jobs in his state. “I would have had some differences on how they did it, but I’m not going to second-guess it,†Snyder told the New York Times. “The more important thing is the results. And the auto industry is doing very well today.â€

Today, Snyder endorsed former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R), a candidate who opposed the auto bailout at the time, second-guessed it as it was happening, attempted to take credit for it when it was working, and finally second-guessed it again this week. But in his Detroit News editorial endorsing Romney, Snyder never mentioned the auto rescue or his and Romney’s conflicting stances on it, even though Romney had published an editorial on the topic in the same paper just three days ago. Instead, Snyder suggested voters focus on Romney’s business acumen and his ties to the state:

With the Michigan primary approaching, Romney has played up his ties to the state and its auto industry. But his editorials about the auto rescue — the first, from 2009, was titled “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt“; the second published Tuesday — raise questions about whether he understood the circumstances surrounding the rescue or how many jobs the collapse of General Motors and Chrysler would have cost the American economy.

Romney called for the two automakers to go into managed bankruptcy handled by the private sector. As Yahoo! Autos reporter Justin Hyde points out, though, the private sector wasn’t willing to make the loans necessary to keep the companies in business through a managed bankruptcy. Had they followed the Romney path, the companies likely would have liquidated, healthier automakers like Ford and Toyota (and their suppliers) would have been threatened, and an estimated 1.3 million Americans would have been out of work.

Instead, the auto industry is healthy, hiring, and posting record profits. The difference in those two paths is significant. To Snyder and Romney, however, it apparently isn’t worth mentioning.

By Jessica Goad, Manager of Research and Outreach, Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Speaking at a campaign stop in Idaho Tuesday night, Rick Santorum continued the Republican presidential contenders’ recent pattern of calling for the selling off of public lands.  According to the Idaho Statesmen, Santorum told Idahoans that:

Santorum failed to note that public lands—even those that aren’t national parks—are of incredible importance to Idaho.   Interior Department-managed lands alone (not including the 13 national forests in Idaho) provided more than $1 billion in economic impacts to the state in 2010.  Activities on federal lands such as recreation, drilling, mining, and timber also stimulated over 11,000 jobs.

Some of Idaho’s best places are on public lands, such as Craters of the Moon National Monument and the Nez Perce National Historical Trail.  Even the Bald Mountain ski area in Sun Valley is on public lands.   Forests, grasslands, and national monuments are of tremendous use to hunters, anglers, hikers, ranchers, gas companies, and many others who utilize these places that are managed for all of us to use and enjoy.

Santorum also told the Idaho Statesman that “the federal government doesn’t care about†public lands.  It is difficult to measure how much the federal government “cares†about a particular issue, but all one needs to do is talk with employees of the BLM, National Park Service, or the US Forest Service to find the people that “care†about public lands. As for President Obama, just Monday he released an $11.5 billion budget request for the Interior Department, up slightly from last year.

Two weeks ago, Mitt Romney told a Nevada newspaper that he doesn’t know “what the purpose is†of public lands.  And Ron Paul told a crowd in Nevada that he wants “as much federal land to be turned over to the state as possible.â€

This morning brought two new signs that the economy is improving: a four-year low in weekly unemployment claims and record profits at GM, which was nearly left for dead just a few years ago until intervention by the Obama administration saved it. But where most see good news, some conservative see danger — and a secret media plot.

Appearing on Fox News this morning, Sarah Palin said she doesn’t believe the good job numbers:

Meanwhile, displaying characteristic cognitive dissonance, the cast of Fox and Friends — which previously wondered if the Labor Department was “cooking the books” on jobs data — tried their hardest to find the dark lining in the silver cloud. Co-host Steve Doocy discredited GM’s success because it helped unions, while co-host Eric Bolling questioned the means of saving GM: “We usurped the constitution, we usurped free-market capitalism” to do so. As for claims that the bailout saved jobs by saving GM, Bolling offered a ridiculous counter-factual to explain why Obama deserves no credit:

Watch both:

As The Economist, which was initially opposed to the bailout, points out today, even Ford worried the entire auto industry would implode if GM were allowed to fail, so it’s unclear why Bolling is so convinced that every person employed at GM today would still have a job without the bailout.

But Doocy really gave away the game a moment later when he said, “We just have done two business stories that are good for the president of the United States…Now here’s some bad news for president of the Untied States,” turning to high gas prices, just as Palin did.

The suggestion that falling unemployment and that the revival of a major American auto-maker is good for Obama, and not, say, the country as a whole, and that rising gas prices are bad for Obama, and not, say, every driver in America, illuminates the Fox News world view which politicizes everything from jobs to Christmas in a nihilist effort to tear down the president.

Good news is bad news for the conservative echo chamber, as it undermines the narrative they’ve doggedly constructed of the past three years that president Obama is bad for the economy.

Perhaps it’s just that, as Comedy Central host Steven Colbert noted, facts have a “liberal bias.”

Appearing of MSNBC with Andrea Mitchell today, Foster Friess, the main donor to the Super PAC backing Rick Santorum’s presidential bid, dismissed the controversy surrounding President Obama’s new birth control rule by suggesting that women should just keep their legs shut. Asked if he worried that Santorum’s Puritanical views on sex and social issues could hurt the candidate in the general election, Friess offered a more home-spun family planning scheme:

Watch it:

[ http://www.youtube.com/embed/XRU13_L76R4 ]

Given that Aspirin is not a contraceptive, Friess seems to be suggesting that women keep the pill between their knees in order to ensure they legs stay closed to prevent having sex. Conspicuously, Friess doesn’t put the same burden on men.

Friess’ general attitude seems consistent with the candidate he supports. Santorum personally opposes contraception, has pledged to lecture women on the dangers of birth control if elected president, and thinks states have the right to outlaw it.

Mitt Romney’s latest Michigan ad, entitled “Growing Up,” features a photo of himself as a young man with his father, then-Michigan Gov. George Romney (R) as Mitt narrates, “I remember going to the Detroit auto show with my dad.”

However, as Jed Lewison at Daily Kos points out, the photo Mitt uses (seen at right) to tout his Michigan roots was not taken at the Detroit auto show. It was actually taken at the 1964 World Fair in New York.

What’s more, commentor TheCrank notes, is that Romney and his father took the photo not among the masses at the World Fair. Rather, it appears that the two were looking down on fair atop a 120-foot helipad. Note the position of the giant blow-up car in the photo above on the following map of the 1964 World Fair (red circles are ours):

It is not clear from the photo whether the Romneys arrived at the fair by helicopter or simply climbed the helipad on their own.

Romney, who has tried effortlessly during the campaign to present himself as an everyday man, was hurt earlier this year when it was revealed that despite being worth in excess of $250 million, he paid a tax rate of less than 15 percent in 2010 and has accounts in notorious tax-dodging havens like the Cayman Islands and Switzerland.

The image of Romney atop a helipad will give critics who view him the former Massachusetts governor as an out-of-touch elitist more fodder.

Huffington Post points out another headache for Romney’s campaign with the “Growing Up” ad: it features the presidential hopeful driving a Canadian-made car.

ThinkProgress contacted the Romney campaign for comment. We will post their response if one is provided.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) echoed Democrats’ concerns about Republicans excluding female witnesses from a hearing focusing on President Obama’s new regulation requiring insurers and employers to provide birth control in their health insurance plans. “This is an issue about women’s health and I believe that women’s health should be covered in all fo the insurance plans,” Pelosi insisted at her press briefing this morning, refuting the GOP’s claim that the debate should focus on “religious liberties.”

“Where are the women? And that’s a good question for the whole debate. Where are the women?” she asked. “Imagine, having a panel on women’s health and then not having any women on the panel, duh!”:

Watch it:

Last Friday, the Obama administration addressed the GOP’s concerns that Catholic-affiliated colleges and hospitals would have to provide contraception coverage that is inconsistent with their religious beliefs by issuing a revised regulation that will allow these nonprofit institutions to stop offering birth control. The change pleased several moderate Catholic organizations, but most Republicans — and some conservative Catholic organizations — continue to insist that women in their employment should not have access to these medications.

In four short years in the U.S. House of Representatives, congressman Allen West has earned a reputation for making the most irresponsible statements which are clearly intended to attract media attention, spark debate, and fire up his most fervent right-wing supporters. West may be running in a new (more conservative) district this fall, but he’ll still be running on his old record of divisiveness and discord. To refresh everyone’s collective memory about who Allen West is, ThinkProgress has compiled a list of his most outrageous quotes (and it’s anything but pretty):

Read more

This morning, Democrats tore into House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) for preventing women from testifying before a hearing examining the Obama administration’s new regulation requiring employers and insurers to provide contraception coverage to their employees. Republicans oppose the administration’s rule and have sponsored legislation that would allow employers to limit the availability of birth control to women.

Ranking committee member Elijah Cummings (D-MD) had asked Issa to include a female witness at the hearing, but the Chairman refused, arguing that “As the hearing is not about reproductive rights and contraception but instead about the Administration’s actions as they relate to freedom of religion and conscience, he believes that Ms. Fluke is not an appropriate witness.â€

And so Cummings, along with the Democratic women on the panel, took their request to the hearing room, demanding that Issa consider the testimony of a female college student. But the California congressman insisted that the hearing should focus on the rules’ alleged infringement on “religious liberty,” not contraception coverage, and denied the request. Reps. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) and Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) walked out of the hearing in protest of his decision, citing frustration over the fact that the first panel of witnesses consisted only of male religious leaders against the rule. Holmes Norton said she will not return, calling Issa’s chairmanship an “autocratic regime.”

Watch a compilation of the heated exchange:

A picture of the witness table:

Issa also dismissed the Democrats’ woman witness as a “college student’ who does not “have the appropriate credentials” to testify before his committee.