Cross-posted from My Left Nutmeg

A fellow DFA member brought this curious tidbit – which recently appeared in a local weekly – to my attention:

Washington, DC—Congressman Christopher Shays (CT-4) has been recognized by Amnesty International USA for his dedicated work in Congress promoting the issues of human rights. Shays has been a strong advocate for the causes of respect for human dignity, religious liberty, and the protection of all people based on race, ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation.

Amnesty International USA recognized Shays with the Human Rights Advocacy Honor for his valuable contribution to restoring human rights to the forefront of United States counterterrorism policy, and protecting the rights of lesbian and gay people worldwide.

Is this for real? Amnesty International awarding a pro-torture, anti-habeus Congressman for his commitment to human rights in the "war on terror"?

Some of you might remember that BlogPAC began selecting community state-based blogs earlier this year to receive a grant and billing as the state's "official" progressive blog. The idea was to build a network of progressive community blogs across all 50 states, and in the interest of getting more people talking to each other, a few of us have been kicking around the idea of doing a weekly post highlighting the best of the state-level blogosphere.

Last week West Virginia Blue set the ball rolling, and My Left Nutmeg is host to the 2nd week of this experiment. You can expect to see a post each Friday or Saturday somewhere on the tubes, hopefully crossposted here.

Since there's no real set rules as to how this works yet, I'm going to pick – as a theme – stories about progressive institutions and movement-building that give me some ideas about what could be done in my own state – over the fold.

Sometime this month, the number of Americans killed due to Bush's decision to invade Iraq will surpass the number killed on 9/11/01 due to terrorist attacks.

9/11: 2,973 + 24 "missing" = 2,997
Iraq: 2,925

35 have been reported as killed so far in the first 8 days of December. At the current rate of US fatalities per day (4.375), Americans killed in Iraq will surpass those killed on 9/11 between 6am and noon on Christmas day.

Update from Edrie:

for the update: how about WE MADE IT!!! $over the top of $500 for phil!

the winners will be announced around midday sunday - i need to go and make sure i haven't forgotten or missed anybody - but right now, there are 14 donors who have made this possible! one is the "big" winner - and he donated $200.01. our second highest was $100.01 (from a non-california, btw! - the rest of the stats when i am sure i have everybody - i'll post on sunday and will have the random drawing - i have an idea cooking on how to let the community pick! that way it really IS random! but i'm not sure exactly how i'll do it yet... am working on it!

GIVE TO PHIL HERE

Visit Nonnie's Pearl Thread here (with more photos + donation updates)

The word on the street is this:

Lamont closed the gap from -24 to -11 (or -13 if you count leaners). This is the rate of change that Lamont managed to achieve among the Democratic primary voters from April to August, so to see the same rate among general election voters is pretty impressive. (Better phrasing?)

Another phrase to interpret this poll: It shows that "non-partisan" Joe is, just like in 1988, running to the right of the Republican in the race. Hit those radio stations and local newspaper editors: your work to interpret this poll as favorable for Lamont, and as a sign of Lieberman's true colors, will help to make the coverage of this poll work to Ned's advantage. Poll details and editors to write to after the flip.

It's time to stop speculating and see what we're dealing with here.

Last Friday, we got a couple of clues from a Stamford Advocate article as to how many of the 18,000 signatures submitted to get Joe Lieberman on the ballot were valid. The town clerks should have received the petitions on Monday, so by now, they should be able to tell us what they're finding.

The down side is that there are 168 different town clerks to call. So follow me over the flip, and see how you can help pin down some hard numbers today, since hard numbers seem to be in short supply from our intrepid journalist corps...

So you want to get Lieberman's committee assignments stripped?

Me too. And here's what we should ask for. His fellow committee members are in each section, with those who have promised to support the nominee in the upcoming race in italics. If any of your Senators are on these lists, you may want to call their offices and ask for their support in asking the party leadership to appoint a new Senator to each position.

Via CT Local Politics:

WTIC and the AP are reporting that the gap between Joe Lieberman and Ned Lamont has closed to 6%. No link from Quinnipiac yet.

Lamont...........51% (54%)
Lieberman......45% (41%)
Undecided.......4% (5%)

Lieberman has still not broken 50%, and Lamont is still above it. But the trend seems to favor Lieberman. Undecideds may be breaking his way. 90% of respondants say their minds are made up.

Source

There have been hundreds of comments about the CT Senate primary and "Diebold machines," even though Connecticut's old-fashioned lever-style machines make this a moot point this year.

But something just clicked when I heard that the Lieberman campaign would be paying 4000 out-of-staters to come campaign for Joe in the final days.

I am very concerned that we might have a scam in the works, and I want your take. Follow me over the flip, s.v.p.

Hey all - I'm writing an editorial to either the Stamford Advocate or the CT Post, and was wondering if anyone had any suggestions to tighten it up. It's a little long, but I'm struggling to make cuts. I'd appreciate your advice.

Text below...

Well, since comments on CQPolitics.com are collected and edited before posting, I thought I'd share this long-form comment to this article debating the likelihood of a Lieberman loss on August 8th.

I'd like to note that Lieberman learned that being the first to attack a Democrat would get you on television back when Bill Clinton was president, and he's only sharpened his claws on his own party in the years since.

This month alone has seen Joe using a time-worn Reagan line on challenger Lamont, and the Republican line "retreat and defeat" on the Senate floor against John Kerry (who I'm sure heard more than enough of the phrase in his 2004 campaign).

(more below...)

Visiting our local politics bulletin board, I spent a minute responding to one of the board's more irritating posters, but even the ravings of a clown can have a value for political debate. (Think "infinite monkeys" - though a warehouse full of primates would have a better rate of turning out at least Ionesco-level work than these guys have in making coherent points).

In any case, a comparison was made between Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter, and it occured to me that while praising Reagan and demeaning Carter does show a sort of unique set of priorities, there was a significant shift to be found after their two presidencies that has an impact on our current political conditions, a shift which had nothing to do with Reagan's mythical "effectiveness."

Hi there, all-

I live in a Republican-leaning city (pop: 180,000) in Southern California, and, working with my local Democratic Party club, am trying to get a precinct organization system in place.

Though we don't have a lot of elected officials to show off, we do have some small triumphs: we out-registered the GOP by roughly a third in 2004, and got over 300 volunteers involved in the quest to unseat Bush. Our club membership is growing at 3X the speed of the local GOP club. And, in a city with just over a hundred precincts, we have reason to believe that we have the activist base to get a presence in every neighborhood.

I've written a proposal to convince the local party steering committee to add a "Precinct Committee," (we now have 6 other committees in place on various topics) and adopt precinct organizing as a priority for club volunteer resources. I'm looking for feedback, advice, and also want to offer this effort up for use by anyone else in the same boat. My letter's under the fold - check it out, and leave behind any comments or suggestions you might have. Thanks!

An interesting factoid in for Dean and the DNC race... I was talking with my mom this weekend, a legal assistant who went to the NYC DNC meeting, who mentioned that in the primaries, trial lawyers were not big fans of Dean -- they definitely preferred Edwards, and after than, the Lieb or "ABD."

But in searching for how they feel about Dean these days, I found this news nugget on one of the state trial lawyer association pages:

1/21/05
Association of Trial Lawyers of America hires new CEO
This afternoon, the board of the national organization voted unanimously to hire Jon Haber, an attorney at Fleishman-Hilliard in Washington and former Senior staff member for Howard Dean, Former Chief of Staff for Diane Feinstein and  committee counsel to Patrick Leheay.

This news doesn't seem to be out there so prominently, but it is interesting to see that the ATLA hired - this week - a senior staff member from the Dean campaign as their national CEO.

(As an aside, it may also mean that trial lawyers may get more savvy about pushing their view on tort reform/protection law in public... keep an eye on that one!)

Add Ray Mabus of Mississippi to the list -- he was both the ambassador to Saudi Arabia and was run out of office, tagged with the nickname "yuppie governor", for seeming too "aloof" to Mississippi voters.

http://www.clarionledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20041208/NEWS01/412080338/1002

WASHINGTON -- Former Mississippi Gov. Ray Mabus has joined a growing list of candidates vying to head the Democratic National Committee.

Mabus, who lost his office to Republican Kirk Fordice in 1991 and later became President Clinton's ambassador to Saudi Arabia, is on a growing list of contenders to replace current DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe.

Hi, all - Went to Nevada today to GOTV with MoveOn, heard all was going well, pollworkers reported 80%+ turnout, and then... Bush won?

I came back to school and talked to some seriously freaking out friends, and when I checked some of the Nevada voting data...

(http://nvresults.nv.gov/)

...there were some strange things going on in Clark county, home of Las Vegas and the great majority of voters in the state.

If you haven't seen it in a while, Michael Moore's website allows you to search for theatres in every state where Fahrenheit 9/11 will be playing. While it's fun to annoy a bunch of right-wing punks like that PR firm in California, I'd like to suggest calling/writing your local theatres (especially those that have already decided to show the movie) and informing them of the organized smear/harassment campaign, and your intent to attend the film at their theatre.

Hi there, all-

I was wondering if anyone here could offer any information, good reading, etc regarding the meat and potatoes of conducting polls. I live in California, north of L.A., in a somewhat conservative district, and I know that before crafting questions, and before figuring out area codes and exchanges to call, I need to determine "likely voters" and population distributions for my geographically diverse area.

Could any Kossacks offer advice on how to determine how these things break down using public data, and what sorts of things you need to conduct polls to learn? I'm sure making up useful questions will be challenging as well, but we won't even know who the Dem congressional candidate will be until after Super Tuesday.

If you can offer any advice -- or resources to read -- it would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance.