Political cartoon: G. W. Bush’s Iraq Legacy by Mike Peters

Telecom immunity: where does your Rep stand?

Where does your representative stand?

For more than five years, AT&T and other telephone companies broke the law and violated their customers’ privacy rights by sending billions of private domestic internet and telephone communications and records to the National Security Agency.

The Bush administration has been lobbying Congress to let the phone companies off the hook. But recently, the House of Representatives stood strong and passed a bill that would hold them accountable.

Enter your zipcode at StopTheSpying.org to find out how your House representative voted on the recent bill denying the telecom industry immunity for their criminal involvement in spying on the American people.

See also:

• EFF: The Case Against Retroactive Amnesty for Telecoms
• Wikipedia: NSA warrantless surveillance controversy
• American Civil Liberties Union: FISA
• Wikipedia: Legal challenges to NSA warrantless searches in the United States

Could Hillary Bequeath Us Our Long-Awaited Third Party?

Could Hillary Bequeath Us Our Long-Awaited Third Party?

By David Michael Green, AlterNet. Posted March 7, 2008.

…

It is almost a mathematical certainty that neither candidate can win the nomination by means of gathering pledged delegates in the months ahead. Under the proportional allocation system Democratic primaries and caucuses tend to use, a candidate has to do exceedingly well in the popular vote to realize a significant shift in delegates. It would appear that Clinton’s got some favorable states ahead, and that Obama has as many or perhaps more, unless momentum has really shifted now, after Tuesday.

…

Anyhow, let’s say we end the primary season about where we are now, with Obama about 100 delegates up, and having won more votes and more states than Clinton, but with neither candidate over the magic nomination-clinching line. It would be fairly outrageous for the Clintons to seize the brass ring at that point, but they will not care in the slightest what the ramifications of their actions might be for the party or the country. The Clintons will do anything - and I mean anything - to get the presidency. This is a sickness that infects the hearts and minds of some people much more than others. Because of their own needs, most prominently a very deep-seated personal insecurity, they simply need the validation of being president, and they go after it like a heat-seeking missile headed toward a power plant.

…

Maybe it goes to the Supreme Court for resolution (you know, those nice people in black robes who gave you the George W. Bush presidency), and they decide in her favor. Most likely she employs a combination of all these gambits, and collectively they could possibly give her enough delegates for a narrow technical (and very Pyrrhic) victory.

If any of these scenarios play out, Obama should leave the Democratic Party and run as a third-party candidate. Simple as that.

It would be the morally proper thing to do, and it just might even be successful, especially in the longer term.

If this seems an improbable quest, remember that Obama’s support is quite passionate - he’s not just your standard-issue marginal political preference for, say, Joe Biden over Chris Dodd. Nor would this be some personal (and absurd) vanity project, like Ross Perot’s. His supporters would be outraged at the stealing of the nomination from its rightful owner, and they’re a motivated bunch. Black voters would feel particularly slighted, and would be likely to follow Obama elsewhere. That alone would be enough to finish off the already badly-damaged Clinton candidacy in the general election. Given this moral high ground, too, I don’t think Obama would be perceived as the Ralph Nader who gave the election to McCain. Perhaps, because of access restrictions, he wouldn’t even be able to get on the ballot in many places, except as a write-in.

In the end, I don’t think it much matters. If he can’t win in 2008, the country will be ripe for the taking after four years of John McSame. And Obama has shown us nothing this last year if not excellence in organizing skills. There’s plenty of time by 2012 to give birth to a real progressive party that has been aching to calve off from the Democrats for three decades now. If the Clintons and the Liebermans of this world want to hang tight with their DLC party of Diet Pepsi Wall Street, let them. If they feel a burning compulsion to become the Whigs of the 21st century, I for one won’t stand in the way.

…

Unfortunately - really, very unfortunately - it’s an almost impossible trick to pull off given the structure of the American political system, and I have joined lots of other smarter people counseling against the effort, suggesting an attempt at hijacking the Democratic Party instead. Not for nothing was the last new major party born in America 150 years ago. It’s not an accident that for about three-fourths of the country’s history it’s been Republicans or Democrats. Period.

…

(Read the whole thing here: http://www.alternet.org/election08/78973/?page=1)

Charming and Aloof, Huckabee Changed State

From the NY Times:

By ADAM NOSSITER and DAVID BARSTOW

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — In more than a decade of presiding over this state, Mike Huckabee produced a legacy like few other Republican governors in the South, surprising even liberal Democrats with his willingness to upend some of Arkansas’s more parochial traditions.

A review of his record as governor shows that, beginning in 1996, he drove through a series of changes that transformed education and health insurance in Arkansas, achievements that were never tried by most of his predecessors, including Bill Clinton.

But he is also remembered in the state for a style of governing that tended to freeze out anyone of any party who disagreed with his plans. He did not, for example, seek Mr. Clinton’s conciliatory middle, or try to court skeptical state lawmakers. Though he was considered as persuasive a speechmaker as he had been a pastor, Mr. Huckabee largely kept his own counsel — in politics, ethics and a singular clemency policy that continues to haunt him.

Against the political advice of his party and his aides, he pardoned or commuted the sentences of hundreds of convicts, including murderers, sometimes over the heated objections of prosecutors and victims’ families. He was cited five times by the state ethics commission for financial improprieties, and unapologetically accepted tens of thousands of dollars worth of clothes and other gifts while he was governor.

Republicans in Arkansas, a beleaguered minority, gleefully greeted his ascendancy but wound up embittered, in many cases, over a governor who “sided with liberal Democrats,” as one put it.

Mr. Huckabee is a son of small-town Arkansas, yet he deeply angered many in his rural constituency, touching the third rail of the state’s politics by shutting down money-draining, redundant school districts in the hinterlands. Protesters rallied at the state Capitol, fearful of losing schools, football teams, and age-old identities, but the governor insisted his way was the best and the schools were closed.

He proclaimed himself a fiscal conservative, but startled legislators with his proposals to raise taxes — for roads, in 1999, and for schools, prisons and other services three years later. He sought the electoral defeat of Republicans who opposed him, according to some in the party.

A constant throughout was his presence at the microphone, the former television preacher delivering his word from the pulpit though hardly mingling in the Capitol’s marble halls.

“He would go out and stump and do his shtick and tell his jokes and charm you,” said State Senator Jimmy Jeffress, a Democrat and critic of the former governor. “He has the gift of gab. He’s the only person I know, other than Bill Clinton, who can pick up a rock and give you a 10-minute talk on it.”

Follow the link for more:  http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/22/us/politics/22huckabee.html

One Nation under the dollar, for corporations, by corporations

It just don’t stop. “Democracy for sale! Come one, come all (super rich)!”

I feel like my congresspeople are whoring me and my Country out:

The INQUIRER: FCC Chairman is owned by media conglomerates

FreePress.net petition & Facebook community

ConsumerAffairs.com: FCC Votes To Relax Media Ownership Rules

DailyKos.com: Making the World Safe for Rupert

Reuters via Truthout.org: FCC Votes to Ease Media Ownership Restrictions

Chris Dodd single-handedly protects our rights

This guy really deserves some props for being the only one to hold up a filibuster of the new FISA bill. This bill would have given immunity to telecomm companies for committing illegal and unconstitutional infringements upon U.S. citizens’ privacy or helping government agencies do so.

Why weren’t more of our representatives – on either side of the aisle – adamant about protecting the Constitution in this case? Do the phone companies have so much power that everyone wanted to protect them more than the people of the U.S.? Where are the congresspeople who work for us (the people)?

This seems an issue that should have been dear to conservatives. I have always understood the Republican party to traditionally be the party to protect citizens’ privacy and curb government intervention in our lives.  Where are the Republicans in fighting this injustice? If the perception of what happened in the Senate is accurate, then there was only one person, a Democrat (and without much help from the other Democrats, either), who kept this bill from being passed at this time. It’ll come around again in January.

Chris Dodd’s my hero today.

Articles:

Electronic Frontier Foundation

Threat Level blog @ Wired

Crooks and Liars (MSNBC Countdown video w/great talking points)

Chris Dodd’s voting record at Project Vote Smart – certainly not squeaky clean (supports PATRIOT act? Oh boy)

Boing Boing

The Raw Story

We’re not gonna take it anymore!

Source one (PDF link); Source two

Address by Mayor Ross C. “Rocky” Anderson

October 27, 2007

City & County Building

Salt Lake City, Utah

Today, as we come together once again in this great city, we raise our voices in unison to say to President Bush, to Vice President Cheney, to other members of the Bush Administration (past and present), to a majority of Congress, including Utah’s entire congressional delegation, and to much of the mainstream media: “You have failed us miserably and we won’t take it any more.”

“While we had every reason to expect far more of you, you have been pompous, greedy, cruel, and incompetent as you have led this great nation to a moral, military, and national security abyss.”

“You have breached trust with the American people in the most egregious ways. You have utterly failed in the performance of your jobs. You have undermined our Constitution, permitted the violation of the most fundamental treaty obligations, and betrayed the rule of law.”

“You have engaged in, or permitted, heinous human rights abuses of the sort never before countenanced in our nation’s history as a matter of official policy. You have sent American men and women to kill and be killed on the basis of lies, on the basis of shifting justifications, without competent leadership, and without even a coherent plan for this monumental blunder.”

“We are here to tell you: We won’t take it any more!”

“You have acted in direct contravention of values that we, as Americans who love our country, hold dear. You have deceived us in the most cynical, outrageous ways. You have undermined, or allowed the undermining of, our constitutional system of checks and balances among the three presumed co-equal branches of government. You have helped lead our nation to the brink of fascism, of a dictatorship contemptuous of our nation’s treaty obligations, federal statutory law, our Constitution, and the rule of law.”

“Because of you, and because of your jingoistic false ‘patriotism,’ our world is far more dangerous, our nation is far more despised, and the threat of terrorism is far greater than ever before.

It has been absolutely astounding how you have committed the most horrendous acts, causing such needless tragedy in the lives of millions of people, yet you wear your so-called religion on your sleeves, asserting your God-is-on-my-side nonsense – when what you have done flies in the face of any religious or humanitarian tradition. Your hypocrisy is mind-boggling – and disgraceful. What part of “Thou shalt not kill” do you not understand? What part of the “Golden rule” do you not understand? What part of “be honest,” “be responsible,” and “be accountable” don’t you understand? What part of “Blessed are the peacekeepers” do you not understand?

Video - Leave It To Dennis Kucinich | The 35 Percenters

Dennis Kucinich (1) (2) (3) has the best platform of any candidate (4), bar none. Even the Beav thinks so (5):

(Thanks Mom)

Lawrence Lessig on ending corruption

Lawrence Lessig (1) (2), professor of law at Stanford Law School, founder of the Creative Commons (3) and board member at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (4) has announced his next ten years will be dedicated to ending corruption (5) (6).

Where do I sign up?! Well, probably at Lessig’s Corruption wiki (7).

(If you would like to see more of Mr. Lessig, take a look at “The Withering of the Net: How DC Pathologies are Undermining the Growth and Wealth of the Net” (8) (9). Very worth the 40 minutes.)