Even as we recover from the heavy blow of losing the legislative fight against FISA protections for spying telecoms, last weekend and other occasions have me reflecting about the battle for what Obama (ironically) calls our "progressive future," how it is far from finished, and how blogging can be a powerful weapon of choice for those on the frontlines. But we have got to remain serious about our work. Our momentum can't ebb and flow as we lick our wounds and wait for another FISA.

This isn't a rant. I've got a few ideas about how we can keep our tanks fueled (ugh--please excuse the sickening reference to that other topic we love to discuss).

As a follow up to the NN panel I organized--on the right's agenda for tort "reform" and why our civil court system should be a top priority to progressive bloggers, especially in the aftermath of the grueling FISA fight--here's my companion memo about continuing this conversation beyond the convention. More on this below the fold.

hey folks,

i'm trying to put together a list of awesome blogs and bloggers who talk about the legal rights of ordinary americans, through the lenses of governmental abuse of power and corporate privilege (um, can someone say fisa?)

i'm especially interested in identifying the dailykos bloggers who focus on this. below is the list i've got, and why i'm doing this. please help me out! thanks!

Add this to  your WTF (Where's the Fairness?) file.

First Beatrice Vance, then Edith Isabel Rodriguez, and now Esmin Green. You'd think after the first two incidents in which women died in the ER while hospital staff just looked on, that maybe, just maybe, hospitals would be on red alert to avoid this bad publicity--and oh yeah, the loss of human life.

What does this story mean for women of color, who've been the victims of the most widely publicized hospital waiting room deaths? And what does it say about the importance of making sure women of color and their families have access to the court system to hold negligent corporations accountable? My rant below the fold.

After two of the most egregious among a recent influx of events that signal a quiet chipping away at the American public’s safety, economic security, and legal rights, how 'bout a little perspective? Exxon and FISA are the destruction and manipulation of the rule of law -- what Stephanie Mencimer, in her book Blocking the Courthouse Door, called "E Pluribus Screw 'Em". It's a politics of disdain for normal people and worship for big business.

Follow me below the fold where I argue that progressives have to stay keen to how closely linked these occurences are (that's right--a fun conspiracy theory!). I also argue that these should serve as both a reminder and an opportunity to do something, besides lament, about it all.

Opponents to the Fairness in Nursing Home Arbitration Act of 2008 (S. 2838) oppose restoring the legal rights of elderly nursing home residents, and their families, to sue  facilities for abuse and neglect that causes serious injuries, even deaths, to innocent people. Either they don't know about the real people injured and denied access to the courts, or they just don't want the larger general public to know about them.

That's gotta change. So I am sharing the poignant Senate Hearing testimony of David W. Kurth, whose father William Kurth died because of nursing home neglect. Stories like this often get lost in the debate, but these are the stories and the issues that really matter when all is said and done.

Share this with everyone. Keep an eye on Congress about this bill. When its turn comes, we should mobilize the way we did around FISA. Like the FISA bill, it's an issue of our Constitutional rights. Unlike FISA, it's also a life and death matter.

Mr. Kurth's testimony is below the fold. It's long but worth the read. I've highlighted for those with short attn spans.

Sen. John McCain has officially earned an "A" in Professor/President Bush's course, Tort Reform Tropes 101: Winning Elections With Empty Rhetoric and Pro-Corporation Propaganda. Maybe that's why they're embracing (quite awkwardly) in this photo (source).

An EPA spokesman told reporters that the agency's mission is "to protect the environment and human health". It looks like the agency's official decision-making protocol, also known as the Safety Is Too Expensive Business Model is seriously undermining this purported mission.

More below the fold.

As Stephanie Mencimer points out, maybe I shouldn't complain about getting carded at CVS for my allergy meds. After all, the plight of people who could be negatively affected by the recent Supreme Court case upholding Indiana's voter ID law (Crawford v. Marion County Election Board) is really nothing to sneeze at.

Okay, that was a bit cheesy.

UPDATE ON FAIR PAY ACT: Republican Senators just blocked a cloture vote on the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. The cloture vote (56-42) was just 4 votes shy. You can go hereto see who voted how.

This would have closed the debate and moved the bill forward for a vote on its passage. That means the debate on this bill continues and we've lost the opportunity to commemorate Equal Pay Day (yesterday, April 22) with passage of a law that restores our rights against discrimination and economic inequality. Why did this cloture motion fail? Why would anyone oppose equal pay for equal work? Read more about it here.

Cross Posted from Cross Posted from TortDeform.Com

An AgriBiz consultant walks into a government official’s home office, hands him an envelope full of hundreds, exchanges short pleasantries, shakes hands, and walks back out. Leaving the government official’s doorstep, the Agribiz guy whisks his hands across the front of his crisp Armani suit jacket, as if to clean the dust off of himself. As the warm outside air hits him, he puts on his designer shades and hails a cab. This shady transaction has secured for AgriBiz the ability to focus on accumulating big profits without having to worry about those pesky little environmental regulations that protect regular people from things like Agent Orange, DDT, and rGBHs. Ah, the free market.

This kind of sounds like something out of a movie or a John Grisham book, doesn’t it? But in the movies, the bad guy loses.  

Cross-posted from TortDeform:

The House of Reps took a bold step towards, well, repping the people, voting Friday to pass the version of FISA which has no amnesty for telecommunications companies that may have ("or may not have," but come on, must have or otherwise why all the fuss?) worked with the government to spy on American citizens without a warrant. (See all things mcjoan or go to TortDeform.com for details) This heartening development is an opportune moment to reflect on how to re think approaches to this now old trick of conflating our security with our civil liberties to foster complacency about the government's abuse of power at the sacrifice of our basic rights.

So: As the FISA fight plays out, how can Americans challenge the "security vs. rights/privacy" dichotomy that amnesty-supporters falsely present as a choice one has to make?

The other night we heard President Bush's final (!) State of the Union speech, and yesterday we heard responses from Presidential candidates and (sadness!) soon-to-be former candidates. Well what I have been thinking about and was thinking about during SOTU, besides the hilarious interjections of a co-worker "correcting" Bush's statements to reflect real life, was what the President had to say about our legal rights and our legal sytem. Civiljusticey as I am usually, this was particularly important to me given all the FISA stuff going on (go Netroots!) as well as the presence of 9/11 volunteers in the audience who STILL haven't received adequate health care and compensation for their sacrifices.

What Bush did say certainly had stunning implications for our rights. In brief review below the fold:

mcjoan has kept us updated on what's been going on on the hill, which is awesome, and I've already done my frustrated rant about the gall and contempt for the law that seems to be growing in the Bush Administration as evidenced by this latest effort to shield corporate friends from the effect of the law. A few times.

So this reflection on yesterday afternoon's affront to our constitutional rights will be narrowly focused on the lies of "protecting America" and "liability protection" and what these right-wing rhetorical talking points really mean for the public.

Liability protection. It sounds kind of harmless, like dry political jargon used to describe a reasonable, sensible policy. It protects. It deals with liability. It's liability protection. But who does it protect? And what's liable to happen to the rest of us and our rights as citizens as a result?

The running list of substantive topics that have not been adequately covered during this election period continues to grow, and alongside this list the American public grows tired of mainstream media attention to Clinton’s feminine tears, Obama’s blackness, Edwards’ evil profession (representing people victimized by someone else’s neglect is such a sinister calling, they’d like us to think), etc., blah, blah.

Wanting to do more than add "access to justice" to the growing list of untouched yet important topics that are overshadowed by the media madness, last week we launched a discussion about how the candidates can improve the legal system so that it works for regular Americans and not just corporations (here).

But it's not exactly that the candidates aren't talking about where they stand on issues affecting Americans' access to the courts; it's that the way they talk about it reveals that progressives aren't leading this discussion or enriching it with our values. Let's use as a case in point the candidates’ views about health care and patients’ rights. Healthcare in the headlines this week looks like this:

Quite timely given that today is Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday (he would have been 79 today!), we have a race case to discuss today.

In the Post, another racial quota lawsuit against NY Schools. This time, a South Asian couple from Brooklyn has initiated a class action lawsuit based on an antiquated quota system from a 1974 desegregation order. The deseg order required a 6:4 ratio of white to minority students in the schools. Although the couple's daughter, Nikita, scored 2 points higher on her music test than she would have needed to if she were white, she was rejected from the school's gifted program.

Cross-posted from TortDeform.Com:

I haven't blogged much about the 2008 Presidential Elections, and not just because I've grown tired of the topdog/underdog, back-and-forth of the primaries. You see, usually I write about why our civil court system is an important forum that allows everyday people to advocate for their rights and take on corporate, governmental, and other abusers (For more information about civil justice, visit here). But honestly, the candidates just have not been giving me much to work with.

Wake me up when the Dems stop borrowing their material from Republicans. Ugh. Obama's attack on Edwards as a (gasp!) trial lawyer is sooooo 2004.

Cross-posted from TortDeform.Com

Would you sign a contract that stipulated that if you were raped and brutalized by co-workers, and if your employer refused to do anything about it, you wouldn't be able to take this "dispute" to court?

Two and a half years after being drugged and gang raped by co-workers while on contract in Iraq, American civilian Jamie Leigh Jones has in essence been told, time and again, that if she's looking for justice for the crimes perpetrated against her, she need neither look to her employer, the Justice Department, nor our court system.