I just came across this interesting little article by Saul Friedman at Harvard's Watchdog Blog. Saul notes that the BushCo, having ostensibly broken many, many laws here in the U.S. and abroad merits its own crime reporter. This is a great idea for two reasons.

This is an ongoing series from the national tour for THE UPRISING. You can order The Uprising at Amazon.com or through your local independent bookstore.

NEW ORLEANS - CNN today today published a long piece on its website about what an Obama presidency would mean for the African American community. The article fronts an absurd title asking whether an Obama presidency would "hurt black Americans." I'd say there's very little chance of that. However, I do believe the amount that Obama moves the country forward on all issues is contingent on how much we pressure him.

The real story of media accountability is how the tracking ability of internet advertising is re-shaping the editorial decision-making of the mainstream media.

Committee on the Judiciary Hearings

07/25/2008 Full Committee 10:00 A.M.
in 2141 Rayburn House Office Building

Hearing on: Executive Power and Its Constitutional Limitations

By Direction of the Chairman

This Friday, John Conyers will hold a hearing in response to Dennis Kucinich's resolution to impeach Bush.  If you will be in the metro Washington area, show your support by attending this important meeting.  

Contact your Congressman and ask him or her to go.  

In Maya Schenwar's Interview With Rep. Dennis Kucinich for Truthout.org, Dennis pointed out:

The case for war was based on fraud. That's the core charge in this impeachment resolution. And it just takes one article to be able to force the administration and the president to the consequences of their deceit.

As has been reported the NC Senate's failure to pass anti-bullying legislation in tact despite having the votes is disappointing shows a disturbing and unacceptable lack of courage and compassion. They threw kids in the state of North Carolina under the bus when they had an opportunity to protect them.

I have communicated privately with many members of the NC House and the NC Senate regarding passage of the anti-bullying legislation. In doing so, I made clear to them that mine was a private correspondence written as a parent, not as a politician and not as someone who planned to publicize our discourse so at to subject them to outside pressures. I did so in order to give them an opportunity to round the votes required for passage of bill without feeling as if I were trying to shame or embarrass them publicly. And I did have continued private conversations with members of both houses, Democratic and Republican.

Now that the bill has failed to pass, I'm am not going to break my word to kiss and tell about those conversations. However, am going to comment on the failure to pass this legislation and go on record publicly with my thoughts. First, here is an excerpt of a personal story which I related to them.

On the Subversion of Constitutional Protections...

Joe McCarthy once menaced political opponents with a list of names to stoke fear of encroaching Communism.  Instead of menacing, this list is meant to draw attention to legislative positions that aim to disassemble the Constitution of the United States of America.  The goal of this entry is to provide an accurate report of critical votes in the US Senate on questions of executive power, congressional oversight, and constitutional rights granted to citizens. The laws referenced in this article pose grave threats to freedom by creating an extra-legal framework in US law that allows the executive to monitor electronic communications without record or oversight, declare citizens as enemy combatants in the War on Terror, detain suspects without charge or trial, deny suspects access to lawyers and interrogate suspects using whatever methods the president personally deems "not torture."  In the interest of time and space, this entry will focus only on the votes of Senators.

I've taken some time to reflect on the Ask the Speaker session from earlier this morning.  While I didn't expect Speaker Pelosi to knock my socks off, I did expect SOMETHING from her.  I left feeling like I got nothing.

Many of the questions posed to Pelosi revolved around accountability and the lack thereof during the past two years.  Time and again Pelosi returned to the idea of electing more Democrats in the House and Senate and electing Obama as President as the remedy.  While I obviously stand with her in my desire to elect more Democrats, I couldn't help but feeling that she was laying these failings at OUR feet, that WE were to blame.  

Her basic argument was this - Leadership in Congress did what it could given its numbers, but if WE had only gotten more Democrats elected they could have done more.  While that may BE true, it doesn't FEEL true.  Now I don't want to go down the rabbit hole of "truthiness," but there is something compelling about feeling that our concerns are being heard and acted upon...

I’m sitting here in Austin listening to Sam Seder interview Don Siegelman about the horrific actions that Karl Rove orchestrated in order to wrongfully imprison him for 9 months, and even though I knew some of the background, I am frankly shocked as I hear it straight from his mouth.

Once again, as Don said, "all roads lead to Rove", and here is yet another example of a gross overstepping of any legal or moral lines by Karl Rove - carried out by fellow republicans and more importantly, yet again against a prominent Democrat.

And just as Rove (yet again) has skipped out on testifying before Congress, and just as we see more "sternly worded letters" or "stern comments" by top level Democrats and "significant interest" in investigating Rove and his illegal acts - such letters will be ignored, such subpoenas will be mocked, such comments will be dismissed by republicans, and the story will not be covered nearly enough by the corporate media.

Too often, local governments avoid the media attention that state and national governments do. And, yet, many of the decisions made by school boards, city councils and county commissions are often the ones which affect our daily lives the most. With reduced scrutiny, some local governments make decisions on behalf of the public without the necessary input to make the right decision for the community, and may even lapse into excluding the public from participating at all.

Crossposted at VoteBrianSayrs.com

This is less a diary and more an attempt to start a "hopefully" reasonable discussion. I've tried this here a couple of times before with rather poor results. But I am an old college professor (so I can't help myself) and this is a different issue and I am willing to try again. The question I put forth is:

Why do you think that the Democratic majority in Congress has been so reluctant to hold the Bush administration accountable? That's it in the simplest form I can put it.

I have a deal breaker. Mine would probably be global warming.  I can't imagine backing a Presidential nominee who did not believe in global warming.  

But what if that candidate had a superb record on war issues, and education, and health, and constitutional rights, etc.?  Would I vote for him/her?  I don't know.  That would be a tough call that I would not want to make.

There is a small but significant and growing number of young evangelicals from the south that have decided that global warming is a Christian value.  These people are mostly not pro-choice, but they have decided to vote on global warming issues -- not because one issue is more important than the other, but because they want to get something done.

I just read this from Reuters:

Susan Rice, a top Obama foreign policy adviser, told MSNBC on Tuesday that "we absolutely have to draw down and redeploy our forces from Iraq."

"But he has said over and over again we have to be as careful getting out as George Bush was careless getting in. So he will redeploy our forces responsibly, at a rate that our commanders say is safe and sustainable."

Letting commanders have a say in the pace of withdrawal is new language from the Obama campaign.

This is an ongoing series from the national tour for THE UPRISING. You can order The Uprising through your local independent bookstore.

LAFAYETTE, IN - I chatted with the Washington Post on Friday about Barack Obama's recent moves to the right. You can read what I told them in the Post's big story from yesterday. It juxtaposes nicely with an important post from Chris Bowers at OpenLeft, in which he urges us to judge Obama on his actions - and not come up with wild theories to explain them away. I can't agree more.

In the early morning hours, sipping coffee and mindlessly hearing the noise from the infomercials on the television as I peruse the blogs and news, I had found myself contemplating.  It's easy to be reflective, now that the initial shock and emotion of feeling betrayed has died down.  To look at things objectively, at least a little, and to formulate a plan on what to do next.

I guess to figure out where you're going, you have to look back at what got you here, or at least that's the way it is for me.  Most recently my feelings on the passage of the FISA bill by Congress.  Yet this wasn't the start of it, it was the abuse of power by an executive branch and the failure of the system to provide the checks and balances that became blatant after 9/11 and the attempt to carry it through to today.

So as I look to place blame and try to hold those responsible accountable, I look at myself and have to admit, it began with me, it's my fault.  

I should mention that I had never heard this topic addressed by him (here, MSM, Democracy Now, BBC, etc.) and had assumed based on his prior speeches that impeachment and/or criminal investigations were on the radar in the event of an Obama presidency.  However...

As an Obama supporter and campaign contributor, I regretfully report Senator Barack Obama's response to my question regarding his stance on the 35 articles of impeachment brought to the House floor by Dennis Kucinich.

There's a special circle of Hell reserved, in the minds of liberal and moderate Democrats, for anyone who claims to oppose the crimes and delusions of the Republican Party who then ends up voting for a third party candidate, or who doesn't bother to vote, or who (worst of all) ends up voting for a Republican. The very mention of the name Ralph Nader sends these folks into verbal fits of frothing at the mouth and textual fits of ALL CAPS. The Green Party and the Libertarians can induce similar if not quite so violent seizures. And the targets of their wrath are generally to be found in those groups known as the independents, the "swing voters", the hopeless idealists, and the disaffected non-voters or infrequent voters.

I’m a little slow tonight because it is hard to type with a big old knife sticking out of your back. If you had any hope that the 110th Congress would do the right thing, you know how I’m feeling tonight. I try to not inject highly political diaries into Top Comments, but like many folks today, I’m too angry to think about much else.

Occasionally when someone like Chris Dodd or Dennis Kucinich would stand up and do something like filibuster a bad bill or file articles of impeachment, I would allow myself a little hope that maybe the Democrats weren’t as bad as the Republicans. And they aren’t all as bad – but quite a few of them are.

And as my dear old Dad always said, "Don’t get mad, get even."

I've been emailing my Senators and Representative pretty regularly regarding various topics of interest, including but not limited to impeachment.

This morning, I recieved something I never thought I'd get from dear Senator Feinstein...a response.

Guess her staffers figured out how the mail merge function works in Outlook.

The response, my response to her response, and her response to my response to her response, under the fold.