Cindy McCain stars in a dramatic advocacy video that says the government's actions--including those supported by her husband, Arizona GOP Sen. John McCain--encourage anti-gay bullying in schools.

"Our political and religious leaders tell LGBT youth that they have no future," she says in the video, which features an ensemble of famous people speaking out against bullying. "They can't serve our country openly."

Other speakers chime in, denouncing the ban on gay marriage and gay adoption in some states.

Then, McCain asks: "Our government treats the LGBT community like second class citizens, why shouldn't they?"

You can watch the video below:

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Here is our roster of stories that managed to evade the full-on blog treatment:

• Carnival Cruise Lines vehemently denies that Spam was served to passengers after an ill-fated  ship broke down at sea. (USA Today)

• A gay couple in Texas got legally married using Skype. (Buzzfeed)

• White House adviser David Axelrod says President Obama is not willing to permanently extend tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. (National Journal)

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Three British space buffs attached a paper airplane and a camera to a helium balloon that soared 23 miles above ground, and captured amazing images.

"We did it because we wanted to see if we could — and we could!" IT expert Steve Davies told Sky News Online. The plane, which had a three-foot wingspan, was made of straws and covered in paper. At about 90,000 feet, the helium balloon burst.

Check out more of the incredible photos below:

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Immigration judges dismissed nearly a third of all deportation requests from July to September, even as the Obama administration sent a record number of illegal immigrants back to their home countries.

In New York City alone, judges dismissed 70 percent of all deportation requests, according to a new report from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), a research center at Syracuse University. Portland, Los Angeles, Miami and Philadelphia also had dismissal rates above 50 percent.

The overall rate of deportation dismissals was closer to 25 percent only a year ago.

So why are judges suddenly refusing to deport in more cases?

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The Food and Drug Administration says it plans to plaster "gruesome" images on cigarette cartons in an attempt to scare away some of the 20 percent of Americans who smoke despite rising costs and proven health risks.

"Some very explicit, almost gruesome pictures may be necessary," FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg told the Associated Press. "This is a very, very serious public health issue, with very, very serious medical consequences."

Some of the proposed warning labels, shown below the jump, show a mother breathing smoke into her baby's face, rotting lungs, and what looks like a dead man post-autopsy. (You can see all of the proposed labels at the FDA website.) The labels will take up half the pack, as shown in the AP illustration above.

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A not-yet-released Pentagon study has found that lifting the ban on openly gay service will pose little risk to the nation's war efforts, according to sources who spoke with the Washington Post's Ed O'Keefe and Greg Jaffe.

More than 70 percent of troops who filled out a Pentagon survey on "Don't ask, don't tell" said letting gays serve openly would have positive, mixed or nonexistent effects on service members.

Repeal advocates are hailing the report as a major victory for their cause. "A measure of the full-report is still needed, and there are undoubtedly adjustments that will need to be considered as any transition to openly gay service moves forward," said Aaron Belkin, the head of the pro-repeal Palm Center think tank, in a statement to The Upshot. "However, the Pentagon itself has made the strongest case for the repeal of 'don't ask, don't tell' in stating that this can be done during wartime without harming unit cohesion or military readiness."

The group said the findings "end debate" on the subject.

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The number of federal workers paid over $150,000 per year has doubled since President Obama took office, and they now constitute about 10 times the proportion of that workforce compared with 2005, according to a USA Today analysis.

Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) told the paper that he will try to block President Obama's plan to raise federal salaries 1.4 percent across the board during the lame-duck session. He prefers a salary freeze or a 10 percent cut.

The key finding reported by USA Today's Dennis Cauchon:

Federal workers earning $150,000 or more make up 3.9% of the workforce, up from 0.4% in 2005. Since 2000, federal pay and benefits have increased 3% annually above inflation compared with 0.8% for private workers, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

But one government employee union says the report misrepresents pay trends for federal workers.
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There is a silent mental health crisis in rural America that's costing the lives of young people, Democratic Montana Sen. Jon Tester says in an op-ed today in The Hill newspaper.

Six children have taken their own lives on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation in Montana in the past year, he writes. One of them was only 10 years old. In the same time frame, 20 more young people attempted suicide on the reservation.

Tester writes that Congress needs to reauthorize the bill that provides health services for Indian reservations, but that a mental health crisis afflicts all rural Americans because it's difficult to access mental health services in sparsely populated areas.

Interestingly enough, writer Dan Savage, who started the "It Gets Better" project to urge gay teens not to take their own lives, says he especially hopes his project will reach teens who live in rural areas, where tolerance for homosexuality is often much lower than in cities and suburban areas.

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A new study reports that kids victimized by bullies develop abnormal brains that may make them more susceptible to depression and other psychological problems.  Harvard University researcher Martin Teicher, who oversaw the blockbuster study, has long been researching the ways that young people are harmed when they experience or witness physical abuse in family settings.

"The reason I think that verbal abuse is so powerful is that individuals exposed to it repeat it to themselves," Teicher tells The Upshot. "When you're told things about yourself--when you're told that you're fat or that you're ugly or that you're a spaz--you wind up in a situation where that voice gets incorporated in your thinking. You wind up in a repetitive pattern of humiliation.

"We're wounded in a way that's enduring by our exposure. It's really important to be mindful--and very important, I think, for teachers in school to not allow it."

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Here's today's list of stories that managed to evade full-on blog treatment:

• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pushed back on President Obama's criticism of expanded settler developments on the West Bank today: "Jerusalem is not a settlement." (NYT)

• Seventeen people were arrested for defrauding $42 million from Holocaust survivors. (New York Post)

• The Obama administration threatens to take back hundreds of millions in stimulus funds if Wisconsin doesn't continue with its high-speed-rail plan. (NYT)

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