It’s hard to believe, but even after having their asses handed to them in the last election, Republicans still haven’t gotten the memo on the issue closest to the hearts of America’s fastest-growing group of voters: immigration. With Tea Party extremists still throttling conservative common sense, it’s time for President Obama and the Democrats to seize the issue and own it. A clear and just pathway to citizenship must be at the center of the push for immigration reform.

Progressive immigration policy is not only politically wise; it is just. Undocumented immigrants and their children contribute to our economy and have earned the rights of all Americans. A reform plan without citizenship would create a new Jim Crow reality: They’d have the right to live here—but only as second class citizens. That would be wrong and completely at odds with American values.

This is a country of immigrants, and as long as it leads the world in freedom and opportunity, it always will be. It is also a rapidly changing society. The only way to ensure that our hard-won progress toward greater freedom and tolerance is embraced and carried forward by new citizens is to allow them to personally experience its benefits themselves.

Larry Flynt on Free Speech and Smut

Larry Flynt is celebrating dual milestones. Now 70, he heads a business empire that’s larger and more profitable than ever. He’s also celebrating the 25-year anniversary of an unlikely Supreme Court victory. Hustler Magazine v. Falwell, Flynt’s epic legal battle against evangelist Jerry Falwell, started out as a tasteless joke about the preacher losing his virginity with his own mother and ended up as a historical landmark that significantly bolstered our First Amendment right to free speech.

Flynt sat down with longtime friend Robert Scheer, one of the country’s foremost progressive voices, for an honest conversation about the lofty principles of Constitutional rights and the gutter realities of being a multimillionaire smut peddler.

ROBERT SCHEER: You once told me HUSTLER is the best magazine you could read with one hand. In your office you have a book of Helmut Newton’s photographs: classy, beautiful erotica. In the magazine you’ve got cum-shots.

LARRY FLYNT: You know something? Helmut Newton loved HUSTLER; it was his favorite magazine. People that love smut like it hard, and they like it unapologetic. If you’re a connoisseur of pornography, you really don’t like it camouflaged with a lot of aesthetics; you like it in your face. You’re one of the few people I know who define pornography very objectively when it’s really very subjective. It exists in various forms.

We all know that the old masters, Picasso or Rembrandt, had a penchant for doing nudes—for doing porn basically. When writers like James Joyce came along, they were in a league of their own. They made the desire for pornography more acceptable. Eventually there came a time when it was available to the masses. The genie was out of the bottle, and there was no way of putting it back in. It got very unfiltered and very unsophisticated. So, many of the people who appreciated very good pornography were extremely critical of the crudeness in a lot of it. But that’s the marketplace.

Congress Tunes Its “Instrument of Villainy”

by Nat Hentoff

My most exciting memory of growing up in Boston during the Great Depression was learning how our independence was born. A pivotal event occurred in 1761 in a Boston courtroom. Lawyer James Otis Jr. spent nearly five hours arguing against extension of the “writs of assistance,” which British officials drew up themselves—like today’s FBI does—so they could burst into unspecified colonists’ businesses and homes in search of smuggled goods and other items.

Outsourcing Torture
A HUMAN-RIGHTS GROUP DETAILS THE BRUTALITY OF THE CIA’S DETENTION-AND-INTERROGATION NETWORK.

If you are the least bit squeamish, don’t read “Globalizing Torture: CIA Secret Detention and Extraordinary Rendition,” an Open Society Justice Initiative report published by the Open Society Foundations. The OSF was established by philanthropist George Soros, one of the handful of the super rich still guided by a moral compass. Soros was a Hungarian Jewish teenager when Nazi Germany occupied his homeland and is therefore aware of the depravity which can emanate from a society that lays claim to being a high point of human civilization.

Asshole of the Month
Carmen Ortiz

Will dragging the name of U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts Carmen Ortiz through the shit bring back Internet martyr Aaron Swartz? No, but it’ll serve more justice than the poor guy ever got at the hands of this sadistic inquisitor. Ortiz is a bitter reminder that sometimes the good guys lose and the war must go on.

For Immediate Release

AN OPEN LETTER FROM LARRY FLYNT TO MARK SANFORD: “I WILL NEVER DIVORCE YOU.”

(May 2, 2013 – Beverly Hills, CA)

Dear Governor Sanford,

In a vain gesture to achieve respectability, your refusal to accept my endorsement and financial contribution of $2,600 for being America’s great sex pioneer has hurt my tender feelings.

First, you threw your wife overboard. Now you have tossed me aside. I will support you in spite of your hopeless posturing. Nothing can deter me. I came in to save you, like a member of SEAL Team 6, after the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) left you as road kill.

I would remind you Governor, that beggars cannot be choosers. While you have treated me like you have your former wife, you embrace Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) and proudly brandish his endorsement. But now the intelligent voters of South Carolina’s 1st District are asking whether or not you support Sen. Paul’s positions in favor of legalizing marijuana and deploying drones within the United States. Is there anyone you wish to target on Hilton Head?

Regardless of your answers to these and other questions, however reckless, dangerous or euphoric, I will always remain your staunchest supporter for the blow you have struck against traditional values.

I will never divorce you.

Sincerely,

Larry Flynt

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For press inquiries, email Media@LFP.com or call (323) 651-5400.

SANFORD OPEN LETTER 05-02-13

(May 1, 2013 – Beverly Hills, CA) HUSTLER Founder and Publisher Larry Flynt has announced his endorsement of Republican candidate Mark Sanford for U.S. Congress. He has also sent a maximum contribution of $2,600 to the Sanford for Congress campaign and extended a personal invitation to Sanford to meet with him and shake his hand.

Sanford, who gained national prominence in 2009 as governor of South Carolina when he abruptly abandoned his duties for a secret rendezvous with his mistress, is currently running against Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch for South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District seat. The election will take place on May 7.

In a statement released today, Flynt calls Sanford “the sex pioneer of our time.” In Flynt’s eyes “no one has done more to expose the sexual hypocrisy of traditional values in America today. Sanford’s open embrace of his mistress in the name of love, breaking his sacred marriage vows, was an act of bravery that has drawn my support.” Chastising the Republican Party for not backing Sanford following his run-off victory, Flynt declared: “I am willing to step in and stand erect for Mark Sanford.”

Flynt further elaborated: “My endorsement has not been an easy decision for …

Some people think I stir up trouble just for the hell of it. But the truth is, I never looked for controversy for controversy’s sake. There’s always been a principle at stake.

Twenty-five years ago I was in major-league trouble. I had picked a fight with preacher Jerry Falwell by making fun of him in a 1983 parody ad in this magazine. He claimed libel, and the case went all the way to the Supreme Court. Did anybody think I could win it? Hell no. But in 1988 I did—and by unanimous decision.

I learned a few things back then. One: Free speech is not something you can take for granted. Two: Starting trouble is worth it if your cause is just. And three: The bigger the enemy, the messier the fight.

I’m proud of what I did, but I know you don’t always win. Will Wall Street stop being driven by greed because thousands of troublemakers occupied it? No, but they showed that even in our cynical time, people still give a damn. Are you more likely to win your case if you flip off the judge? No, but it shows that the independent human spirit is alive and kicking. That, ultimately, is what justice in our country is measured against: the independent human spirit striving for freedom.

Keep in mind that starting trouble can be a lonely business. When I took my free-speech case to the Supreme Court, I was on my own. Now everyone’s reaping the benefits of my victory. Sometimes it may seem like you don’t have a chance of winning, but you sure as hell won’t if you don’t try.

Not a lot of people have gone looking for trouble as much as I have, and I have the scars to prove it. Everything I know I learned the hard way. Why didn’t I ever learn my lesson and shut the hell up? Because life may be a bitch when you’re fighting for freedom, but the other option is worse.

My greatest hope is that the next generation will look at what I’ve done and realize that sometimes there’s no greater honor than being a righteous pain in the ass.

You No Longer Have to Be a Suspected Terrorist to Be Databased by the Obama-Holder Regime.

“‘Will those ‘suspicious’ people even know they’re in one of these databases, which could conceivably stigmatize them for the rest of their lives?”

A White Paper on a Delusional Voting Bloc and Citigroup’s Strategy to Make the Superrich Richer.

“As the Citigroup report proudly claimed, ‘the world is dividing into two blocs—the plutonomies, where economic growth is powered by and largely consumed by the wealthy few, and the rest.’”