Duty to Warn

There’s a new clue to the motivation behind the recent firing of federal prosecutors. Reporters Gordon, Talev and Taylor of McClatchy Newspapers established a likely relationship between the post 2000 hard right turn in civil rights policies at the Department of Justice and the promotion of the new cadre of right wing U.S. Attorneys who support restricting voter eligibility. Karl Rove’s own words on the subject indicate a further connection between recent appointments in nine states where very tight Congressional races were anticipated

The Bush Justice Department is imploding after years of consistently undermining the rights and freedoms of those citizens it claims to serve. From the Patriot Act to the unfettered sadism endorsed at White House inspired and sponsored torture centers around the world, the Justice Department stands with the White House. It provides a fig leaf of legal justification for the various adventures which involve war, death a suffering.

There's only one reason a man with a wife with incurable breast cancer and two small children at home should be running off to run for president.

         Not because he wants the job, or even because she wants it for him.

         Because she wants it for them.

         Of course, the obvious explanation for why a man whose wife's cancer recurs would keep running is that he's too ambitious to give it up. After all, presidential candidates never see their wives anyway. Why let it interfere with a campaign that is going well enough? We're used to political marriages that put family second to ambition.

         But I don't think that's it in John Edwards' case. First of all, it's not true. He was willing to give it up. Second of all, he didn't have to give it up forever, just for this time, against two very strong contenders no less.

"You is feeling like you was lost in the bush, boy? You says: It is a puling sample jungle of woods. You most shouts out: Bethicket me for a stump of beech if I have the poultriest notions what the farest  he all means."~~James Joyce, Finnegans Wake (1939)

My friend Bernie says ever since the Bush gang stormed the White House in 2000, then stormed the World Trade Center in 2001, we've done nothing but run in circles like a bunch of terrified chickens with our heads chopped off. "We have no sense of direction," Bernie said, "we're staggering around in a jungle of lies, deceit, and scandal with no way out -- and that's the way they planned it."

"You're kidding!" I exclaimed, astonished. "You mean they planned this mess? It's nothing but bloody chaos out there --"

Al Gore has leapt to center stage with well-founded concerns about global warming. He has been gratefully successful in publicizing the fact that there is a virtual library of irrefutable evidence that carbon dioxide levels are rapidly rising in our atmosphere, that this is being caused by human beings, and that the potential impacts are catastrophic.

What's not being said is that the solution to the problem---the necessary transition to Solartopia, a world based on renewable energy---is also the key to the future of our economic well-being, and would be whether global warming was a problem or not.

In short: even without the dire disaster of climate change, a transitioning to green power is the only hope our global economy has for future prosperity.

Indeed, moving to an industrial system that runs on wind, solar, bio-fuels and other renewable sources, along with increased efficiency, including a revival of mass transit, can and will do for the global economy in the next 25 years what the computer/internet revolution has done for the last.

If you could secretly tell a magic genie "Yes" and receive a million dollars but cause the deaths of a million people you've never met in China, would you say No?  This is no longer just a philosophical brain teaser.  The U.S. House of Representatives is expected to vote Friday morning on funding for a war that has already caused the deaths of possibly as many as a million Iraqis.  Some of the money might very well go to funding an attack on another nation (Iran).  Many members of Congress are expected to vote Yes in order to keep their committee chairmanships, or in order to receive funding for projects in their districts, or in order to receive assistance or not face opposition in their next reelection campaigns.  Among the most principled few who are holding out and voting No, some of them are encouraging others to vote Yes.

The Republican executive director of the Hocking County Board of Elections (BOE) may have written at least one memo outlining possibly illegal behavior during the scandal-ridden 2004 Ohio presidential recount. And an explosive five-count complaint has been filed by Ohio's new Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner, against two GOP directors in Cuyahoga County. It is built in part on evidence gleaned from the federal report issued by Congressman John Conyers (D-MI) after the 2004 election, from stories broken at the Freepress.org website, and evidence gathered by grassroots voting rights activists in Cleveland.

After the 2004 election, the Green Party and Libertarian Party paid $113,620.00 for a recount of the state's presidential balloting.

I think Karl Rove should be permitted to testify to Congress in private, without taking any oath, and without any record being kept of what he says.  I had hoped we could avoid the indecency of having to spell out the reason why, but apparently we can't.  So please remember this and then never say it aloud again: he wants to lie.  Sssshhh.  There, we said it.  And you're making it very difficult for him, and that's not very nice or respectful.

Friends, Romans, Countrymen,

I'm sorry that I haven't been up-to-date with every ebb and flow of this disaster, but believe me I have been following it all. A little background, please forgive me if you have heard this before. At my neighborhood peace group, Chelsea Neighbors United to End the War, back in November we were discussing what to do with Congress member Jerrold Nadler (NY 8th CD). We were considering making him our target. We were just about to challenge him on the issue of the war, considering sitting in at his office, etc. Then he came and stood with us at our weekly action: Chelsea Stands Up Against The War. He stayed a good while and we got to express ourselves on the need to stop funding the war. On January 12th he came out with his "Protect The Troops and Bring Them Home Act of 2007. We thought that this was as good as anything we had seen, endorsed it and started working for it.

We are all familiar with what has happend since January 12th. Here is my take:

Breaking news in vote fraud cases in both Ohio and Florida are feeding a firestorm of controversy that is likely to continue escalating, with major implications for the 2008 election and the future of e-voting machines.

In Ohio, Jennifer Brunner, the newly elected Secretary of State, has received two of the four resignations she requested from the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections (BOE). The two Democrats on the Board, Edward Coaxum, Jr. and Loree Soggs, have complied with her call for their departures from Cleveland's scandal-ridden election authority.

However, Robert Bennett, who chairs both the Cuyahoga BOE and the Ohio Republican Party, has thus far refused Brunner's request. So has Sally Florkiewicz, Bennett's fellow Republican on the BOE. Should they continue with their refusal to resign, Brunner has threatened to hold public hearings, in the wake of which she could force the resignations.