Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Obama V. The Netroots

All might have been forgotten or forgiven between Barack Obama and the netroots over gospel singer/'gay-basher' Donnie McClurkin's appearance at an Obama Columbia, SC, gospel concert 10/28, but the fact that McClurkin emceed the event and reportedly "turned the final half hour of the three-hour concert into a revival meeting" became the last straw for many in the community. Reactions include:
  • AMERICAblog's John Aravosis: "Obama's anti-gay religious right activist used the opportunity Obama gave him last night to preach his hate to thousands of African-Americans. That's just great. And the white preacher who Obama picked to help explain to the audience that gays aren't minions of Satan? CNN reports that he said nothing at all -- just a short little prayer, then he left. ... So, in the end, Obama let his "best" and "favorite" artist slam gays to thousands of African-Americans, in his name, and neither he nor his hand-chosen white gay preacher said anything in response. Class act, that Obama campaign."
  • DailyKos' founder Markos Moulitsas: "It's an all-out implosion by the Obama campaign. This truly is indefensible."
  • Open Left's Matt Stoller: "Obama's not a homophobe, he is probably more comfortable around gay people than any presidential candidate and he has a great record on LGBT rights. It is a significant incident though, because it's about priorities. ... This looks like Obama is giving a wink and a nod to bigots. ... It's not about positions and it never has been about positions, it's about constituencies and identity, and prioritizing your values. And it's not an accident, it's a choice."
  • Atrios: "A fascinating thing about Democratic politics is that progressive activists, especially those in marginalized groups, are expected sit down and shut up and take it because they're supposed to be smart enough to know that nods and winks to bigots are just crass political maneuvers that candidates make to court votes."
  • Fire Dog Lake's Jane Hamsher: "Obama's message of hope and bipartisanship stays positive by letting proxies do his dirty work for him. Sorry, no sale here."
  • Pastor Dan at Daily Kos: "I tried to defend -- or at least recontextualize -- Barack Obama's association with Donnie McClurkin the other day, but the latest revelations are just too much. Clearly, Obama has thrown his lot in with defending a bigoted fathead. I kept hoping that he would take the appropriate steps to distance himself from said bigoted fathead, without much luck. If anything, he's even more tightly wrapped up in McClurkin now."
Obama's campaign did not help their cause by giving MSMers a three-page memo which included the following in all caps: "MCCLURKIN DOES NOT WANT TO CHANGE GAYS AND LESBIANS WHO ARE HAPPY WITH THEIR LIVES AND HAS CRITICIZED CHURCH LEADERS WHO DEMONIZE HOMOSEXUALS." AMERICAblog's John Aravosis responds: "So David Duke's only problem, per the Obama campaign, is that he vilifies the happy Jews and the happy blacks? Keep digging, guys. Obama keeps making clear that he hasn't learned his lesson, he doesn't understand what he did wrong, and he will continue to coddle those who attack our community so long as it wins him votes and money."
The memo even led Open Left's Chris Bowers to stop defending Obama: "This isn't simply a mistake, despite what I first wrote. If the Obama campaign is not only keeping McClurkin as the headliner of the concert, but also issuing memos defending his views, producing videos endorsing McClurkin before the event, and then allowing McClurkin to emcee the event, it is pre-meditated, not a mistake."


  
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Friday, October 26, 2007

Where Does the Right-Wing End and the Media Begin?

 
 
I had the opportunity to sit down this week with one of America's top economists, Paul Krugman, who of course doubles as an influential op-ed columnist for the New York Times. It's more than a bit surprising when the guy from the New York Times sounds more radical than anyone else in the room, but Krugman and his twice-weekly column have been more consistently surprising and radically different than anything else allowed to appear in the Times (or indeed anywhere else in the so-called "mainstream media") for so long that even Krugman himself no longer seems surprised by the force of his own outrage.
 
He certainly pulled no punches during our conversation, stating in a forthright manner his opinions on such controversial topics as truth and lies in the newsroom ("The Big Lies are all on the right"), media bias ("A large part of it is in fact right-wing bias, because they are effectively part of the right wing") and corporate pressure ("It's very clear that when the parent companies of the major news sources have issues at stake before the federal government ... this definitely influences the coverage.) Perhaps the fact that he's a tenured professor at Princeton -- and not a professional journalist still on the make -- has freed Krugman to speak truth to naked emperors and Times readers on a biweekly basis.
We spoke at the beginning of a national publicity tour for Krugman's latest book, The Conscience of a Liberal, which ranges over the history of the past century to explain what went wrong in America -- and then attempts to point the way to a "new New Deal." Part of what went wrong with America, of course, was the role played in our democracy by the mass media, as Krugman recognized and parsed in one chapter in his book entitled "Weapons of Mass Distraction."
***
Rory O' Connor: You speak in your book about "movement conservatism," which you call a "radical new force in American politics that took over the Republican Party." What role if any do the media play in movement conservatism?
Paul Krugman: The media are a very important force in it. They shape perceptions, and they conceal issues. Look at the 2000 presidential campaign, for example, where the media were so heavily biased against Al Gore. That's what brought Bush to within a Supreme Court decision of the White House. So if you look at, certainly these last seven years, the role of the media in not telling you reasons why you should be skeptical about the course of the war, for example, it's enormously important.
We have a situation right now in which there are several major parts of the news media that are for all practical purposes part of "movement conservatism" -- Fox News, the New York Post, the Washington Times -- and in which other news organizations are intimidated, at least to some extent. I sometimes talk about what I call "asymmetrical intimidation." If you say a true but unflattering thing about Bush or in fact about any other prominent conservative, oh, boy! People are going to go after you. I mean, I've got people working full-time going after me, right? But if you say a false, unflattering thing about a Democrat or a progressive, no risk ... And that shapes coverage, no question about it. It's better now, but it's still very asymmetric. The other thing we should mention about the media is their addiction to the trivial. We've got the most substantive election coming up, I think, ever. We've got clear differences on policies between parties. And what are we seeing news stories about? John Edwards' hair and Hillary Clinton's laugh ... this is horrifying! And again -- it's asymmetric. I can think of lots of unflattering things to say about any of the Republican candidates -- Mitt Romney's saying his sons are serving the country by helping him get elected! -- but it doesn't get nearly as much play in the media.
ROC: It sounds like you're saying there's a bias in the media. If you are, what is the bias?
PK: The media's bias, a large part of it is in fact right-wing bias, because they are effectively part of the right wing. Fox News ... there's nothing like Fox News on other television networks that you can look at. There is no liberal equivalent of Fox News, there is no network that, if a conservative got the Nobel Peace Prize, would have responded the way Fox News did to Al Gore's Peace Prize, by first saying nothing at all, then when they figured out the line, talking about how fat he is ... So there's no correspondence there.
Beyond that, there's two things at least; first, the hatred of substance -- they really want to talk about all that trivia -- and there's also the fetish of evenhandedness. If one candidate says something that's completely false, and the other something that's true, the media will say, "Some people believe what that guy said was false, and some people say it was true." Way back in the 2000 campaign, I wrote a piece in which I said that if Bush said the earth was flat, the headline would read: "Opinions Differ on Shape of the Planet." I was thinking specifically about what Bush was saying about taxes and Social Security, which were just out and out lies! But no one would say that, and they still won't. It's better now, a little, but they still won't say it, and that tends -- I imagine in some future environment that might work to the advantage of some dishonest candidates on the left -- but the fact of the matter is the Big Lies are all on the right right now. So it works much more to their advantage.
ROC: Do you think it's possible that economics is driving politics in the media?
PK: The role of economics in driving the media is an interesting one. One question is simply, "Do they respond to what sells?" And to some extent the focus on the trivial is there due to that. And also, by the way, talking heads screaming at each other is a lot cheaper than actually having reporters out in the field doing reporting, so that's one reason why you get that.
I guess the question that you want to ask is, "To what extent is news coverage biased by the corporate interest of the parents?" And that's hard to pin down in any direct way, but one of the interesting things that you notice right now is the remarkable reluctance of some of the networks to follow what the viewer ship numbers seem to be saying. I mean, look at Olbermann's show versus anything else at MSNBC, for example. Why aren't there more programs like that? Why is CNN still trying to be Fox Lite, when you clearly can't outfox Fox and there clearly seems to be a bigger market opportunity on the other side? And you really do start to think that -- there probably aren't, at networks other than Fox, there probably aren't memos saying here is how we are going to slant the news today -- at Fox there are, every day. But there's probably this general sort of pressure to go for the views that won't upset the CEO of the firm that controls the network that has a lot of business interests that are best served by one side or the other ... so yes, this is a problem.
ROC: So deregulation, consolidation and corporate issues like that might affect news coverage?
PK: Oh sure. It's very clear that when the parent companies of the major news sources have issues at stake before the federal government -- and if one party controls the White House and both houses of Congress, and has made it very clear that it keeps lists and remembers who its friend and not-so-friend are -- this definitely influences the coverage. A lot of people I talk to in the media say that they have received pressure in ways that only seem to make sense if you think that at some level management -- not the guys that think about audience shares but the guys who think about broader concerns -- are taking into account the political liabilities. Which is one reason why it is remarkable, although it's still not what I want, that the news coverage has gotten a whole lot better -- funny, no? -- after the polls really turned the other way.
ROC: In your book, you talk about the media's use of "storylines" and what you've called the "Rambofication of history."
PK: Yes, I'm rather proud of the term "Rambofication." In the years immediately following Vietnam, all of this stuff that now seems so much a part of the story -- that we lost the war because we were stabbed in the back, that the "weak" politicians, the Democrats, can't be trusted on national security -- wasn't very much out there. I actually went back and looked at a lot of polling and what people had to say at the time. In 1977, people still remembered what Vietnam had actually been like, and why we needed to get the heck out of there.
It wasn't really until the 1980s that the history began to be re-invented, so if only we'd let Sylvester Stallone flex his muscles, we could have gone back and won the war. The idea of Democrats as "weak" on national security really got invented then -- and you know there were a couple of events that played into that, such as the collapse of the Soviet Union, which I really don't think had much to do with Reagan, but helped make the storyline. So when 9/11 came along, the realities of 9/11 were that the Clinton people had been working pretty hard to try to so something about Bin Laden, and the Bushies said as soon as they came in, "We're not interested, we want to think about a war with China." But the storyline that the media fell into was that, "We're the tough guys, the other guys neglected it." And that gave them a good run -- they won two elections, in '02 and '04, which I think otherwise they would have lost -- by playing on this notion of "We're strong, and they're weak." I guess the sort of good news is that they have done such an incredibly terrible job at all of that that we may have at least a while before all that scare tactic stuff comes back.
ROC: Or we may hear in four years how the Democrats "lost Iraq."
PK: I'm worried, obviously. Clearly, if it's a Democrat who withdraws from Iraq, which it appears likely it will be, then it will be more of the, "We were winning, we were on the edge of victory, then they stabbed us in the back ..."
ROC: "They spit on our soldiers ..."
PK: Yeah, that's amazing, the "spitting on our soldiers" thing -- because it never happened, there are no documented cases -- but it became part of the storyline. Will that happen again? Certainly they'll do their damnedest to make it happen ...
I guess I'm more optimistic about the American public, that it will take a lot more than four years, for us to see that again, because it took more than four years after Vietnam, and right now the American public has a pretty good sense of just what a disaster that's all been ... I think people have made up their minds that this is a disaster. Maybe 10 years from now, they'll have forgotten and be willing to, you know, see movies in which some heroic guy goes back and wins the Iraq war but ... not for a while anyway.
ROC: Well, I'm more of a Mencken disciple when it comes to the American public, but I hope you're right.
PK: I hope I'm right too!


  
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Thursday, October 25, 2007

RedState.com cracks down on Ron Paul supporters

 

From Wired News:
"Effective immediately, new users may not shill for Ron Paul in any way shape, form or fashion," wrote Leon Wolf, one of RedState's bloggers. "Not in comments, not in diaries, nada."
"If your account is less than six months old, you can talk about something else, you can participate in the other threads and be your zany libertarian self all you want, but you cannot pimp Ron Paul," he added. "Those with accounts more than six months old may proceed as normal."
Erick Erickson, RedState's CEO and editor-in-chief, told Wired News that the decision was sparked by a flood of repetitive pro-Paul messages on forum threads by 20 to 30 Paul supporters, along with some off-color comments. New users are still welcome to join the site and post comments relevant to ongoing discussions, and even to express support for Paul, said Erickson. But he said he'd delete the accounts of those who pepper the discussions with repeated plugs for the candidate. more...


  
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Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Giuliani Comes To Aid Of Accused Child Molester

 
 
From ABC News:
Presidential candidate Rudolph Giuliani hired a Catholic priest to work in his consulting firm months after the priest was accused of sexually molesting two former students and an altar boy and told by the church to stop performing his priestly duties.
The priest, Monsignor Alan Placa, a longtime friend of Giuliani and the priest who officiated at his second wedding to Donna Hanover, continues to work at Giuliani Partners in New York, to the outrage of some of his accusers and victims' groups, which have begun to protest at Giuliani campaign events.
[...]
At a campaign appearance in Milwaukee last week, Giuliani continued to defend Placa, who he described to reporters as a close friend for 39 years.


  
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Monday, October 22, 2007

Entire Town Switches From Republican To Democrat

The entire membership of the all-Republican governing body in Lyndhurst New Jersey will switch from Republican to Democrat tomorrow. Nearly 60% of Lyndhurst's Republican County Committee will become Democrats too.
The party realignment, first reported in PoliticsNJ.com last summer, is far greater in scope than speculated. It represents, perhaps, the most massive shift in Party affiliation of elected and Party officials in a single community in one day. "It's safe to say something like this certainly doesn't happen in politics everyday," said Lyndhurst Mayor Richard DiLascio.
Lyndhurst has long been considered a swing town in general elections over the last twenty years.
 


  
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Scandal At the Values Voter Summit

The straw poll of Republican presidential candidates at the Values Voter Summit last weekend has resulted in controversy and a contested vote count.
Immediately after Tony Perkins announced the result of the FRC Action straw poll, in which Mitt Romney edged Mike Huckabee by 30 votes out of 5,775 cast, Huckabee boosters cried foul--and reporters peppered Perkins with questions about the legitimacy of the poll.
Turns out that Huckabee won a majority of the votes cast in person at the Values Voter Summit, 51 percent, and Romney only took 10 percent. Some unknown number of votes were cast online by people who also attended. But other votes were cast anytime online between August and Saturday. That's how Ron Paul showed up in third place with 865 votes even though he was picked by only 25 in-person voters.
Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, apparently spoke with Mitt Romney at length over the weekend. Perkins later refused to tell reporters who he voted for.


  
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Giuliani Shuts Out Kerik

Refuses to allow connected witnesses:
Rudy Giuliani's law partner has been told to monitor the criminal probe of disgraced ex-NYPD boss Bernard Kerik, which threatens to muddy up the former mayor's bid to become president.
As part of his sensitive assignment, Marc Mukasey has thwarted Kerik's lawyer from interviewing witnesses who might help his defense, sources told The Post yesterday.
[...]
Marc Mukasey's task to keep an eye on Kerik's criminal investigation shows Giuliani's concern with how the legal fate of his former NYPD and correction commissioner could affect his presidential campaign, sources said.


  
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Dobson Drama and Prayers for a Political Miracle

 
The Saturday gala honoring Focus on the Family founder James Dobson started with a hint at the controversy over the announcement of Mitt Romney as the straw poll's winner. Only the overall results had been announced to attendees earlier in the day. It was at a subsequent news conference that FRC distributed documents making clear that Huckabee won by a large margin among people who voted in person and in the hours since, Huckabee partisans were grumbling. FRC's Chuck Donovan promised that everyone would get a detailed vote accounting as they left the event.
 
When Dobson took the stage he claimed that the media had been telling everybody that the pro-family and pro-life movements are dying, and to the media still in attendance, said, "Welcome to the morgue." Dobson also complained about media reports of a closed-door meeting of conservative religious leaders at which Dobson and more than 40 others pledged that if neither party nominated a pro-life candidate they would vote for a minor party candidate, kicking off weeks of controversy and infighting. Dobson said reports that the group would try to create a third party were wrong, saying he agrees with Gary Bauer that a third-party would be political suicide and would limit the ability to influence the GOP.
 
Dobson voiced his frustration with the GOP, griping that in spite of Bush in the White House and control of Congress for six years, the Republicans "did almost nothing." Dobson echoed complaints from throughout the weekend that the Republican Party had taken the movement for granted, paraphrasing Richard Viguerie's analogy that the GOP had treated the Religious Right like a mistress -- "they need us to get elected but want us to act like we don't know them if we meet them on the street."
 
Dobson recognized the great anxiety in the movement over the lack of a consensus presidential candidate to rally around, and about the prospects of a Democratic sweep in 2008. There is an "ominous feeling" that there are "gathering storm clouds" -- by which he meant "there is at least the possibility that the far, far left is going to capture the triple crown in 2008 -- that means the White House, the House of Representatives, the Senate, it means all the offices of government of course it would mean the Supreme Court will quickly change and that could set the direction of the dominant branch of government for 30 years." He added that the scenario might include statehouses across the country.
 
Of that "catastrophic" possibility, Dobson shouted "We can't let that happen!"


  
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Senate candidate confirms the he's gay

See Neal's web site at  http://jimnealforse nate.com
 
 

Senate candidate confirms that he's gay, says it's 'no secret and no big deal'

Jim Neal wants to be the first openly gay member of the U.S. Senate. The Associated Press reports that a spokesman confirmed this morning that the North Carolina Democrat  is homosexual. The confirmation followed a discussion about the candidate's sexual orientation that took place this weekend on a liberal blog.
Here's what someone identified as Neal said in response to questions on BlueNC.com: "I am indeed. No secret and no big deal to me -- I wouldn't be running if I didn't think otherwise. ... I'm not running this race to make some social statement. I'm running to lead in the Senate for the voters in NC -- something Sen. Dole has not done. ... When people meet me, they'll see beyond the labels and into my character."
Neal, a former investment banker, is the only candidate who has announced plans to challenge GOP Sen. Elizabeth Dole in next year's general election.
 
 

Sunday Roundup Debate Edition: Hillary Who?

 

Last week we announced we would be posting video of a round up of the Sunday Spinning Heads Shows on Monday mornings. This week we are posting a special GOP debate edition. 
You would have thought that Hillary was on the stage and they were debating her.
 
 

Anti-Immigraton Sweeping World Wide

It has elected Anti-Immigration candidates in Denmark the Netherlands Canada then in France and now,
 
 
Nationalists win big in Swiss election
 
 
It may remind people of Germany in 1932
 
 
Our GOP have two candidates that are running for president,  just on their anti-Immigration platform, Duncan Hunter and Tom Tancredo.
 
 
Will election 08 be about immigration and not Iraq or Iran?


  
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GOP Debate Wrapup

Republican Debate:
ABC News' David Chalian, Jan Simmonds, and Christine Byun: "Heated Republican debate focuses on the battle for the true conservative" LINKNew York Times' Katharine Q. Seelye: "Debate Wrap-Up: Everyone vs. Clinton" LINK
New York Times' MICHAEL COOPER and MARC SANTORA: "At Debate, G.O.P. Race Becomes More Personal" LINK
Washington Post's Dan Balz and Michael D. Shear: "Attacks Sharpen Among Party's Principal Rivals" LINK
Associated Press: "Quotes From the GOP Presidential Debate" LINK
Reuters: "Top Republicans defend conservative credentials" LINK
Politico's Jonathan Martin: "Republicans trade blows at fiery debate" LINK
Boston Globe's Michael Kranish: "GOP hopefuls turn up the heat" LINK
Los Angeles Times' Michael Finnegan: "Thompson, Giuliani spar over conservative records" LINK
USA Today's David Jackson: "Republican hopefuls spar over who's the real conservative" LINK
Bloomberg's Catherine Dodge and Nicholas Johnston: "Giuliani, Romney, Thompson Attack Each Other, Clinton in Debate" LINK
Washington Times' Joseph Curl: "GOP debate signals race to the right" LINK
New York Post's CARL CAMPANILE: "HILLARY'S THE 'ROAST' OF THE TOWN AT GOP DEBATE" LINK
Wall Street Journal's AMY SCHATZ and SUSAN DAVIS: "Clinton Is Focus of Debate" LINK

Sunday, October 21, 2007

Bush's War on the Children


In a grim marker of the longevity of the war, children who were infants or toddlers when they lost a parent in action are growing up. In the process, they are ...more

Janet Folger: God’s hand was on Huckabee and that he was going to be the next president

While he was clearly the favorite of the social conservatives at the Values Voter Summit, he has been savaged by the ant-tax right wing, including the loony anti-tax Club for Growth, for his supposedly big-spending record as a governor.
Unlike any of the other top-tier candidates, Huckabee had attended the Values Voter Debate in Florida a few weeks back. That event was sponsored by several of the Religious Right's lesser lights. One of them, Janet Folger, declared after Huckabee won that event's straw poll that God had anointed him to lead religious conservatives into the White House. At this summit, Folger was on fire after the former Arkansas governor's Saturday morning speech, telling a reporter in the hallway that God's hand was on Huckabee and that he was going to be the next president.
 


  
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Real Time Overtime With Bill Maher

With guests Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, Chris Matthews and Joel Stein discuss the likelihood of impeachment, the radical liberalism on campus today.
 
 From Real Time Overtime

Friday, October 19, 2007

'Why Are Democrats Still Afraid'

Boy Scouts’ rent hiked $199,999 for gay ban

Philadelphia says it can't legally offer reduced rent to discriminatory group

 
 The city has decided that the Boy Scouts chapter here must pay fair-market rent of $200,000 a year for its city-owned headquarters because it refuses to permit gay Scouts.
The organization's Cradle of Liberty Council, which currently pays $1 a year in rent, must pay the increased amount to remain in its downtown building past May 31, Fairmount Park Commission president Robert N.C. Nix said Wednesday.
City officials say they cannot legally rent taxpayer-owned property for a nominal sum to a private organization that discriminates. The city owns the land and the Beaux Arts building constructed by the Scouts in 1928.
 

Thursday, October 18, 2007

GOP Candidates Diss RNC Fundraiser

The Republican National Committee (RNC) held a fundraising dinner Tuesday night.

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former Sen. Fred Thompson (Tenn.) made brief remarks to a closed-press reception before the dinner began but then left even though they were scheduled to address the dinner.


Rep. Ron Paul (Texas), who was not scheduled to speak, addressed the dinner.

American Scientist Canceled by British Science Museum For Being A Racist and Homophope

 
Dr James Watson, who won a Nobel Prize in 1962 for his part in discovering the structure of DNA, was due to speak at The British The Science Museum  on Friday.
But the museum has cancelled the event, saying his views went "beyond the point of acceptable debate".
 
Dr Watson, currently director of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) in New York, has arrived in Britain to promote his latest book.
 
In an interview with The Sunday Times, the 79-year-old said he was "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not really".
 
He went on to say he hoped everyone was equal but that "people who have to deal with black employees find this is not true".
 
The scientist has courted controversy in the past, saying that a woman should have the right to abort her unborn child if tests could determine it would be homosexual.
 
 


  
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Wednesday, October 17, 2007

In local House race, a Barney Frank endorsement


Posted by Anthony Man

One of the four candidates in the Broward contest for the Florida House that could send the first openly gay legislator to Tallahassee has scored a high-profile endorsement.

U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, the openly gay Massachusetts Democrat, is recommending Mark LaFontaine for the seat that state Rep. Jack Seiler, D-Wilton Manors, vacates next year because of term limits.
 
LaFontaine, national treasurer of American Veterans for Equal Rights, an organization for gay veterans, is one of two openly gay candidates in the race. The other is Wilton Manors Commissioner Gary Resnick.
 
Also running are Wilton Manors Mayor Scott Newton and former Deerfield Beach Commissioner Gwyn Clarke-Reed.
The district -- which takes in parts of Deerfield Beach, North Lauderdale, Oakland Park, Poinsettia Heights, Pompano Beach, Tamarac, Victoria Park and Wilton Manors - includes sections with a large gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender population.
 
"Mark LaFontaine has been an effective defender and fighter for LGBT equality on a number of fronts," Frank said in a statement. "He will be an effective state representative, not just for the LGBT community, but for the broader community as well."

By The Numbers

Just For Fun Let's Look At The Polling Numbers For '03

 

Poll Watch - 11/7/03

A Zogby poll asked likely Democrat voters, "If the Democratic primary for president were held today and the candidates were [see below], for whom would you vote?"
Not Sure 34%
Howard Dean 15
Wesley Clark 10
Dick Gephardt 9
Joe Lieberman 9
John Kerry 7
Al Sharpton 4
John Edwards 3
Dennis Kucinich 2
Carol Moseley Braun 2
Other 6
(Zogby America Poll, 558 Likely Democrat Voters Nationwide, Conducted 11/3-5/03, Margin Of Error +/- 4.2%)
Undecided Still Holds A Commanding Lead. A Marist College poll asked Democrats and Democrat-leaning independents, "If the next Democratic presidential primary were held today, whom would you support if the candidates are [list candidates]?"
Undecided 32%
Howard Dean 16
Joseph Lieberman 12
Richard Gephardt 10
John Kerry 9
Wesley Clark 8
Al Sharpton 5
John Edwards 4
Carol Moseley Braun 3
Dennis Kucinich 1
(Marist College Poll, 339 Democrats And Democrat-leaning Independents Nationwide, Conducted 10/27-29/03, Margin Of Error +/- 5.5%)
IN THE STATES
SOUTH CAROLINA (Primary February 3, 2004)
Kerry Behind Everyone But Kucinich. A poll of registered Democrat voters were asked, "If the South Carolina Democratic Presidential Preference Primary were being held today between [list names, rotate] for whom would you vote?"
Undecided 38%
Wesley Clark 17
John Edwards 10
Joe Lieberman 8
Howard Dean 7
Dick Gephardt 7
Al Sharpton 5
Carol Moseley Braun 5
John Kerry 4
Dennis Kucinich 1
(American Research Group Poll, 600 Registered Democrats And Undeclared Voters, Conducted 10/26-30/03, Margin Of Error +/- 4%)
VERMONT (Primary March 2, 2004)
Few See Clark As Dean Threat. In a poll conducted for CBS Burlington affiliate WCAX, likely voters were asked, "Which Democratic candidate do you think poses the biggest threat to Howard Dean winning the nomination?"
John Kerry 32%
Wesley Clark 15
Richard Gephardt 13
Joe Lieberman 6
John Edwards -
Al Sharpton -
Carol Moseley Braun -
Dennis Kucinich -
(Research 2000 Poll, 400 Likely Voters, Conducted 10/28-30/03, Margin Of Error +/- 5%)
NEW HAMPSHIRE (Primary January 27, 2004)
Undecided In Race With Kerry For Second Place. American Research Group's New Hampshire Poll asked random sample of registered Democrats and undeclared voters, "If the New Hampshire Democratic Presidential Preference Primary were being held today between [list names, rotate], for whom would you vote?"
Howard Dean 38%
John Kerry 24
Undecided 21
Wesley Clark 4
Joe Lieberman 4
John Edwards 4
Dick Gephardt 3
Carol Moseley Braun 1
Dennis Kucinich 1
Al Sharpton 0
(American Research Group Poll, 600 Registered Democrats And Undeclared Voters, Conducted 11/2-5/03, Margin Of Error +/- 4%)
NEW YORK (Primary March 2, 2004)
Sharpton Beats Gephardt, Edwards. A Quinnipiac University poll asked registered Democrat voters, "After I read all nine names, tell me which one you would most like to see the Democrats nominate for president in 2004."
DK/NA 19%
Lieberman 17
Dean 15
Clark 12
Sharpton 11
Kerry 11
Gephardt 9
Edwards 3
Moseley-Braun 3
Kucinich 1
(Quinnipiac University Poll, 483 Registered Democrat Voters, Conducted 11/2-5/03, Margin Of Error +/- 4.5%)
Hillary Holds Dem Hopefuls To Single Digits. The Quinnipiac University poll then asked registered Democrat voters, "Suppose New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton decides to run for president in 2004. Who would you most like to see the Democrats nominate for president in 2004?"
Clinton 48%
Dean 9
Clark 9
Lieberman 8
Kerry 7
Gephardt 6
DK/NA 6
Sharpton 4
Edwards 1
Kucinich 1
Moseley-Braun -
(Quinnipiac University Poll, 483 Registered Democrat Voters, Conducted 11/2-5/03, Margin Of Error +/- 4.5%)
 
For more election info about Nov 2003 CLICK HERE 
 
For a Non Partisan Look At Election '08


  
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GOP Attacks On Children

 

Bush Hits New Record Low Of 24% Hits a Nixon Low

A  new Reuters/Zogby poll finds that Bush's approval rating has fallen to 24% -- a full five points lower than his previous record low of 29% in Zogby polling. That less than one in four now approve of Bush's performance.
 
This matches Richard Nixon's  low in Gallup polling.

Suddenly Telling the Truth: CBS Correspondent Says 'We're Doing Extremely Badly' in Iraq

 
Last night on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, CBS News' Chief Foreign Correspondent Lara Logan was asked, "How are we doing" in Iraq? Logan responded, "It's much worse than the picture, the image we even have of Iraq":

"We're doing extremely badly, from my point of view. I was asked if I felt any guilt for the fact that the world has an impression of the war in Iraq as being very bad and going very wrong. And I said I really don't because I can't imagine the last time anyone saw a dead American soldier. We've hidden that from view. Nobody knows what that looks like, and I've seen plenty of it. It's much worse than the picture, the image we even have of Iraq."

In light of a recent Washington Post story reporting that the U.S. had "crippled" al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), Logan explained that AQI and al Qaeda are "two entirely different things." "To say that we have crippled them is suicide," she stated.

Video at link below...


  
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The Washington Post Continues to Shill for Bush and Republicans

 

 

A. Alexander - October 17th, 2007
In the lead-up to the Iraq War, the Washington Post willingly allowed their paper to be used as a propaganda outlet for the Bush Administration. Later, after there were 150,000-plus U.S. kids trapped in the Middle Eastern quagmire, the Post admitted its part in the crime of having lied the nation into war. The WaPo confessed that prior to the war the ...more

Senator McConnell Caught Lying About His Office's Attempt at Smearing 12 Year Old Boy

 

CNN blames Democrats for rightwing smear

 

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Parents of 12 Year Old Boy Attacked by Republicans Speak Out

McConnell Aide Acknowledges Smearing 12 Year Old

    Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's spokesman acknowledged yesterday that he alerted reporters last week to questions bloggers raised about the financial circumstances of a 12-year-old boy Democrats had used to urge passage of an expanded children's health insurance program.
 
 
Hours later, he said, he sent two follow-up e-mails waving reporters off.
"Forgive me if I already told you this, but a blogger that I trust (and who hadn't written anything on this issue yet) tells me that after spending a lot of time on this, they now believe there's no story there, that the family is legit," Stewart wrote in one e-mail, according to the text he provided to The Courier-Journal. "So I'm passing that along to the folks I wrote to this morning. Fair is fair."
In the other follow-up e-mail, Stewart wrote, according to the text he provided: "I just heard from a blogger I know who did some research. Says it's not a story, they're the real deal."
 
 

High Ranking Military Committing Suicide

 
 
The second-highest ranking member of the Air Force's procurement office was found dead of an apparent suicide at his Virginia home Sunday, Air Force and police officials said today.
 
The official, Charles D. Riechers, 47, came under scrutiny by the Senate Armed Services Committee earlier this month after the Air Force arranged for him to be paid $13,400 a month by a private contractor, Commonwealth Research Institute, while he awaited review from the White House of his appointment as principal deputy assistant secretary for acquisition. He was appointed to the job in January. ...
 
The Air Force has disputed The Post's portrayal of Mr. Riechers's role and said in a statement today that he was "employed in a scientific and engineering technical assistance capacity to the Air Force and made recommendations that were instrumental in engineering our acquisition transformation and continuing the Air Force's modernization of our aging fleet."
Specifically, the Air Force said that Mr. Riechers, a retired Air Force officer and master navigator, provided technical advice on several programs including converting commercial aircraft to military using and modernizing the C-130 transport plane. Loren Thompson, an expert on the military at The Lexington Institute said it was unclear whether Mr. Riechers's suicide had anything to do with the inquiry. However, he said that Mr. Riechers's death would cast a further shadow over the Pentagon's beleaguered procurement system.
 
 
This is the second high ranking military offical to committ suicide in 2 years.
suicide of Col. Ted Westhusing, as reported in the Los Angeles Times, resonates with loss, tragedy, and meaning. He was a professional ethicist, specializing in the concept of a soldier's honor, who was assigned to supervise a civilian military contractor in Iraq. Col. Westhusing saw everything he believed in trashed by civilian leadership that understood neither ethics nor honor, under a Republican government that disrespects and mistreats its military. Sound like a facile interpretation? Then listen to the facts.
 
Westhusing, reports the Times, "was one of the Army's leading scholars of military ethics ... His dissertation (for a Ph.D. in philosophy) was an extended meditation on the meaning of honor." Once in Iraq, Westhusing received an anonymous complaint that the contractor he oversaw, USIS, had been cheating the government - and that it concealed gross human rights violations to protect its contracts.
 
Writes the Times:
"In e-mails to his family, Westhusing seemed especially upset by one conclusion he had reached: that traditional military values such as duty, honor and country had been replaced by profit motives in Iraq, where the U.S. had come to rely heavily on contractors for jobs once done by the military."
But then, it comes from the top, doesn't it? Dick Cheney still holds that infamous Halliburton stock, and the scandal-plague contractor still pays him a six-figure income. Halliburton employees have been found guilty of fraud in Iraq, fraud investigations against the company itself are ongoing, waste and mismanagement are rampant -- and meanwhile Cheney challenges others ... on ethics. Irony is not supposed to be a great soldier's strong suit.
Col. Westhusing's devotion to the military and its mission seemingly had no place in the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld Pentagon. In fact, a military psychologist made his ethical stature and devotion to honor sound like a mental disorder. "Despite his intelligence, his ability to grasp the idea that profit is an important goal for people in the private sector was surprisingly limited," wrote Lt. Col. Lisa Breitenbach, reducing a lifetime of integrity to a clinical dysfunction. Shades of the USSR ...
And yet ... no wonder Lt. Col. Breitenbach saw Col. Westhusing's values as a medical condition. His commitment to completing the mission - to serving the country over making a profit -shows a notable detachment from the reality that is today's Pentagon. Sen. Patrick Leahy's attempts to pass a law preventing excess corporate war profiteering and fraud has been blocked by Republicans for several years now - with the aid and support of Sen. McCain and the other "mavericks" in the GOP.
Coincidentally, the Times article on Col. Westhusing's death was published during the same week that an amateur video was released showing military contractors' employees apparently killing Iraqi civilians at random. The video, which appears to have been filmed and assembled by the perpetrators, shows a variety of "gross human rights violations" being conducted while the Elvis Presley version of "Mystery Train" plays in the background.
The Administration supporters who rush to their defense when its war crimes are pointed out- as I did here - usually say "There you go again, Mr. Liberal, accusing the military of war crimes." Let me say it again: I don't accuse the military of these crimes, but their leadership. Time and time again these leaders order soldiers to do what is wrong, then turn on their own troops and accuse them of crimes when it becomes public.
 
This week's case in point: The burning of Muslim bodies - a violation of Islamic law - followed by a propaganda broadcast. This was clearly a psy-ops operation, albeit a clumsy one. Or are we to believe that they just happened to burn the bodies, because it was hot outside, and then just happened to broadcast the fact - in Arabic? To cover their own asses, the top brass issued reprimands to the soldiers who were following their orders. Rather than maintain silence, once again this Administration turned on America's men and women in uniform - and blamed the rank and file for their own bad decisions.
Great men and women like Ted Westhusing have dedicated themselves to the defense of this country, only to see the military they love treated like an ATM by greedy non-combatants like Dick Cheney - and as a fantasy camp for draft dodgers like G. W. Bush.
Each suicide is a unique tragedy. A depressed person - and Col. Westhusing's sleep disruptions and loss of weight are consistent with severe depression - collapses into his or her own soul, becoming a black hole from which at last no light can escape. There is always more to the story than any outsider can ever know. Ted Westhusing - soldier, Catholic, intellectual, human being - deserves more than any news report or essay can give.
 
As in "The Souls of Soldiers," when good people are ordered to do bad things they - as well as their victims - are made to suffer. For those who see the wrong being done and cannot stop it, there is yet more suffering. For Col. Westhusing, the suffering is over. He stood for something Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Rice will never understand: Honor. May he rest in peace.
 


  
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Randi Rhodes was Attacked on Sunday Night

UPDATE:

AAR's official blogger, Nancy Scola, posted the following message on the website this morning:Air America host Randi Rhodes experienced an unfortunate incident hindering her from hosting her show. The reports of a presumed hate crime are unfounded. Ms. Rhodes looks forward to being back on the air on Thursday.


UPDATE :

Morning talk host, Lionel filled in for Rhodes on Monday, but did not say anything about why she wasn’t on hand to do her show. The Randi Rhodes board reports that Sam Seder, who does a Sunday afternoon show for AAR, will be filling on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Elliott was extremely agitated when he reported on the incident. He opened his show by saying "it is with sadness that tonight I inform you that my Air America colleague Randi Rhodes was assaulted last night while walking her dog near her New York City home.
"Pointing out that Rhodes was wearing a jogging suit and displayed no purse or jewelry, Elliott speculated that "this does not appear to me to be a standard grab the money and run mugging.""Is this an attempt by the right wing hate machine to silence one of our own," he asked. "Are we threatening them. Are they afraid that we're winning. Are they trying to silence intimidate us."Some of blog posters also expressed concerns that the attack on Rhodes was hate crime.
Other posters warned that we need more facts before any judgements are made.According to Elliott, Rhodes was resting in her New York City apartment and was not hospitalized.




Randi Rhodes was attacked on Sunday night on 39th Street and Park Ave, nearby her Manhattan apartment, while she was walking her dog Simon.

According to Air America Radio late night host Jon Elliott, Rhodes was beaten up pretty badly, losing several teeth and will probably be off the air for at least the rest of the week. At of late Monday night we have not able to locate any press accounts of the attack and nothing has been posted on the AAR website.

Monday, October 15, 2007

Sunday Show Roundup: Talking About Spreading War

Giuliani's Bad Radios Responsible for Mayhem on 9/11

 
This post, written by Robert Greenwald, originally appeared on The Real Rudy
 
Rudy Giuliani is running for office on how he handled 9/11 and here we have proof positive that firemen were killed because his administration did not fix the long-standing (since 1993!) problems with the radios.
 
This BNF investigative report calls attention to four key questions about Rudy's handling of the broken radios from firemen's families and experts:
* Why was nothing done to improve NYFD radio performance for seven years after a clear need was demonstrated in the 1993 World Trade Center attack?
 
* When new radios were finally ordered, why did the city block other companies besides Motorola from bidding on the contract?
 
* Once Motorola was given the contract, why did its cost jump from $1.4 million to $14 million?
 
* Why were these new radios never tested?
 
These questions should and must be investigated. New York City councilman Eric Gioia has the power to begin an investigation. If we can garner enough attention and signers, we have a major opportunity to help launch an investigation.
 
 


  
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GOP County Chair Charged With Fondling Underage Boy

This post, written by Pam Spaulding, originally appeared on Pandagon
Here we go again. The party of family values really needs to do a lot of housecleaning; it seems to be up to 2-3 pervs a week that turn up in the headlines.
The chairman of the Republican Party in Brown County faces criminal charges for allegedly fondling a 16-year-old Ethan House runaway and providing the boy with beer and marijuana late last year.
Donald Fleischman, 37, of Allouez, was charged last month with two counts of child enticement, two counts of contributing to the delinquency of a child and a single charge of exposing himself to a child.
The WisPolitics Courtwatch blog has even more details of this sordid story and has a copy of the criminal complaint (PDF).
Fleischman allegedly allowed at least two 16-year-old boys to stay at his house and told one of them he could "smoke pot and drink alcohol" at his house and not have to worry about anything, according to the criminal complaint.
...The boys lived at home for at-risk youth receiving court-ordered treatment that is located across the street from Fleischman's house. Fleischman allegedly offered the boys marijuana, and one of the juveniles alleged that Fleischman said he could stay at his house if he ever ran away.
One of the victims said Fleischman allegedly told him "it would be cool for him to have two 16-year-old roommates and he stated he would even do their laundry for them."


  
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Saturday, October 13, 2007

Merle Haggard Endorses Clinton

Merle Haggard is now a Hillary & Bill Clinton promoter. He says he hasn't changed, but he just knows more than he used to; and "Fear's the only issue the Republican Party has." If they've lost Merle Haggard ... He also wrote a campaign song for Hillary.
 
 
 

Gore Wins Nobel, NY Times Slights Him

So Al Gore wins the Nobel Peace Prize yesterday for his years of work on global climate change, and what does The New York Times decide to do? Representative of the most shameless type of "Fair and Balanced" reporting, made popular by Fox News and long de rigeur in our mainstream press, The Times very prominently placed reader comments on its front page - specifically, in sets of two directly beneath photos of Mr. Gore, giving two sides to an issue on which the scientific community has already reached a consensus: man has, and is, contributing to the warming of the planet and we must take substantive action before it's too late.
 

Friday, October 12, 2007

Al Gore wins 2007 Nobel Peace Prize


 Al Gore wins 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for work on global warming,
sharing award with the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
 
Aide says prize will not affect Gore's calculations about new White House run.
 

Thursday, October 11, 2007

Pres. Carter: ''I don't think US Using Torture, I Know It''

Sen. Mitch McConnell Behind Terrorizing 12 Year Old

 
 
Mounting evidence suggests that the right-wing smear campaign may have been orchestrated by a staffer in Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's (R-KY) office.

First, ABC News reported earlier this week that a staffer in Sen. Harry Reid's (D-NV) office received an email that was not intended for him. The email from a "Senate Republican leadership aide" showed the minority leader's office was intently tracking the smear campaign well before it had gained widespread attention.
 
Christy Hardin Smith writes, "Is anyone in the media going to actually dig into this and find out how involved the McConnell oppo shop has been in all of this?"
Republican congressional offices say they had nothing to do with the investigative reporting work of the conservative bloggers. But at the same time, they did nothing to distance themselves from the byproduct of that work. 'We're clearly going to promote the truth and show Democrats didn't do their research' into whether the Frost family should be receiving subsidized health care, said one Senate GOP aide. 'We're going to ride this story.'"
 
 
 


  
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Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Clinton Leads in Swing States



  
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GOP, Lord's Of Loud Attack 12 Year Old Recipient Of S-Chip

 
12-year-old Graeme Frost, who along with a younger sister relied on the program for treatment of severe brain injuries suffered in a car crash, to give the response to Mr. Bush's weekly radio address on Sept. 29, Republican opponents quickly accused them of exploiting the boy to score political points.
 
 
 Graeme and his family have been attacked by conservative bloggers and other critics of the Democrats' plan to expand the insurance program, known as S-chip. They scrutinized the family's income and assets — even alleged the counters in their kitchen to be granite — and declared that the Frosts did not seem needy enough for government benefits.
 


  
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Tuesday, October 09, 2007

Larry Craig's New Music Video

 

ACLU Statement on RESTORE ACT

ACLU Statement on RESTORE ACT, ACLU Urges Congress to Include Individual Warrants for Americans
 
 
For Immediate Release
Contact: media@dcacluorg
 
Washington, DC – Today the Democratic leadership unveiled the RESTORE Act. What follows are the ACLU's comments on that draft.
The following can be attributed to Caroline Fredrickson, Director of the ACLU's Washington Legislative Office:
 
"The ACLU sees one major flaw in the RESTORE Act. As drafted, the RESTORE Act still allows for the US government to collect phone calls and emails from Americans without an individual warrant. 
 
Program warrants - sometimes called basket warrants, sometime called blanket warrants - included in the draft bill are a crucial sticking point. There is no specific target when you use basket warrants, which contradicts the heart of the Fourth Amendment.  Essentially, a basket warrant really means no real warrant. 
 
Program warrants are the 21st century version of King George's heavy-handed intrusions on individual privacy. We would not tolerate allowing government agents to sit in our living rooms recording our personal conversations, so why would we permit it to monitor us remotely and without our knowledge?  The Fourth Amendment requires individual warrants if Americans are involved and without them, the RESTORE Act won't pass constitutional muster."
 
This bill is better than the so-called Protect America Act: here are the areas where the ACLU has seen real improvement.
 
Overseen by the court. Re-iterates that FISA is the go-to court
Requires six-month audit and a database to go to Congress for review.
Telecom companies are not granted immunity from illegal activity in this draft of the bill.
The scope of the searching has been narrowed to "foreign affairs intelligence and improvement over a more broad definition in the so-called Protect America Act.
What follows is an explanation of why we oppose the year-long program warrants in the bill.
Baskets, Buckets, and Blankets? What's wrong with these so-called "warrants"?
Called baskets, buckets or blankets, the new warrants created by the Protect America Act, and maintained in some form by the RESTORE Act (Conyers/ Reyes) are most commonly known as "program" or "general" warrants that have been held unconstitutional for violating the Fourth Amendment. They may have a new name this go-around, but they are the same program warrants believed to be used the in the President's illegal spying program after 9/11 and codified in the FISA modernization bill introduced by Rep. Wilson that Democrats opposed in the 109th Congress.
 
The Fourth Amendment has several requirements before a search or seizure is constitutional -- that a judge is involved, that there is probable cause, that the search or seizure is reasonable and most important for this discussion -- the things searched or seized have to be stated with particularity. Particularity was written into the Fourth Amendment due to past abuses by King George, whereby the government would issue blank warrants that allowed government officials wide discretion to rifle through personal belongings or search people, without particularized suspicion, to look for anything illegal. No description was actually given of the illegal behavior that was being investigated, because the government was on a fishing expedition. This abuse of power was one of the injustices that led to the American Revolution. Statutes and even individual searches and seizures have since been held unconstitutional in the past because they violate the particularity requirement.
The Protect America Act and the RESTORE Act allow the government to issue these broad program warrants that state neither the targets of the search, nor the facilities that will be accessed. They do not describe what is going to be seized, and eventually used, by the government. They are virtually a blank check that only requires the surveillance be directed at people abroad, which may very well be unconstitutional.
 
The RESTORE Act does not require individualized court orders for anything collected under the new surveillance program. The program can collect any communication as long as one leg of it is overseas, leaving open the distinct possibility--and probability-- that the other leg is here in the U.S. and is an American. If Americans' communications are swept up by this new, general program warrant, there is no requirement that a court actually review whether those communications are seized in compliance with the Fourth Amendment.
 
The RESTORE Act, as currently written, allows the Attorney General to negotiate secret guidelines with the secret FISA court about how to use US information, and whether to go back to the court for an individualized warrant to access US communications.
 
There is no requirement in the RESTORE Act that individualized warrants be issued before the government collects communications to which an American is a party. If a US phone call or email is picked up in these general warrants -- not based on any suspicion of wrongdoing, or even based on a link to terrorism -- they can be saved and used by the government without any court review. The procedures for this court have always been secret and no one, save a few Intelligence Committee members, know how well they work or how they are really implemented. Something so fundamental as whether the government can listen to our phone calls or read our emails should not be left to be decided in secret by a handful of people. These issues have to be written into statute so there is no question about our privacy and so there can be accountability when the rules are broken.
 
Attempts to find a procedure that gives the government flexibility while respecting the constitutional requirement of particularity have been rejected. It is perfectly reasonable to allow program warrants to collect calls and emails among foreigners, but Americans deserve -- and the constitution requires -- that their communications be treated differently when swept up in the new dragnet.
 
Even if one believes that the government really can't tell where each end of a communication is in "real time," or at the time of collection, they will be able to eventually. As the Director of National Intelligence testified last month, the heart of these programs is about storing communications and accessing them later. The government should be forced to go back to court to get a particularized warrant that meets Fourth Amendment standards before it can access American communications that have been swept up in these new blanket or general warrants. Just because the program is directed at people overseas, it doesn't mean that the Fourth Amendment rights of Americans who have contact with them have been respected. There has not been a surveillance program since FISA was created that allows massive, untargeted collection of communications that will knowingly pick up US communications on US soil without any suspicion of wrongdoing. This creates novel and fundamental Fourth Amendment problems that Congress should seek to avoid instead of sanctioning. Going back to the court may be inconvenient, but doing so is just a matter or resources and protecting our Fourth Amendment rights is worth the cost.


  
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23 Days, 23 Hours, 32 Minutes, 38 Seconds.

"The Playa" said he wouldn't resign as head of the RNC ("Not me Baby! Nuh-uh. Not happening. No way, no how.")

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