May 30th, 2006
Over the weekend my mom and I got on the subject of politics. That doesn’t really happen often. Usually if I’m going to chat politics with anyone it’s my dad. It’s not that I don’t think my mom knows anything about politics, it’s just that I think she tends to be more of a follower and less of a thinker. She’s definitely a liberal but she’s more of a follow-the-leader liberal though she doesn’t know it. She scoffed at my grandmother’s follow-the-leader Republicanism but she does tend to say “Well your father thinks…” more than she should where politics are concerned, which is why I prefer to go straight to the source.
Anyway, it’s really not her politics I want to talk about anyway (thought that sort of “follow-the-leader” mentality is a big pet peeve of mine). I want to talk about my politics or at least my point-of-view this year.
At first, at the beginning of the year, I was thinking that this would be a good year to back a third party. In fact, it may still be; I just don’t know if enough dissatisfied Dems and Reps could be convinced to jump their parties ships to do the same. It’s easier to get Independents like myself to vote for third party candidates because we don’t feel party loyalty or guilt and we don’t feel our hands drawn to check off the party candidate on the Diebold machine or the paper ballot. We haven’t been to any of the secret brainwashing meetings where we sold our souls and signed in blood or promised our first borns or anything. 
So, if we choose to vote Green Party this year, we can do so and walk away relatively unscathed.
I still think that now is the time to think about a third party. I think the days of the Republicans and the Democrats controlling the government have got to end. Obviously they’ve become complacent and they are feeding each other the power rather than doing their jobs — you know, their jobs, right? We elected them to take care of us, protect us, govern us, ensure our safety, provide for us, etc. Mostly they seem to bicker and struggle and fight for power and ignore the people who need help.
However, I think that the general public isn’t ready to consider a third party yet. At least not seriously. That’s the impression I’ve gotten the last few months.
So…where does that leave me? How am I going to vote in November? Well, it turns out that Olympia Snowe is up for re-election. She’s a republican and I was thinking of voting for her actually. I have enjoyed our letter exchanges and she and Susan Collins have been big supporters of the environment and the Katrina victims. However, Snowe has voted the party line consistantly even on issues where she claimed she did not want to vote for the issue — she always followed up in an interview stating that she “held her nose while doing it.” This is inappropriate. If you don’t thing you should vote for something, you don’t vote for it. This is exactly what has been wrong with the Bush Republican Congress.
Also, I made a decision the day the Patriot Act was renewed. I truly and honestly believe that anyone in Congress who voted to renew the Patriot Act should not be re-elected to Congress — that includes Democrats, especially John Kerry. I have begun my own personal campaign to remove the Patriot Act renewers from Congress. I could almost forgive them for voting for it in the first place because of how the Bush Administration manipulated the situation originally, but the renewal was completely different and most of them, like John Kerry, had spoken out against it. They can no longer be trusted to look out for the best interests of American citizens.
My mom thought this was very practical of me…of course she thought my father might agree with me. 
Anyway, while I was thinking this over, I couldn’t help but remember the movie Brewster’s Millions with Richard Pryor, where he has to spend a fortune in 30 days to inherit so much more. One of the ways he does this is by running for office in New York, when he starts winning, he drops out and instead starts running the campaign encouraging everyone to vote “None of the Above”.
What would happen if this November 2nd we all spoke out and voted “None of the Above”? Would they get the message that we’re tired of all the crap? We want them to stop playing games and start running the government. We want them to stop thinking just about themselves and their bank accounts and start thinking about our growing lower and middle classes and the number of starving children right here in the United States. We want the to actually keep their campaign promises.
Tags: vote, Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, politics, Green Party, Patriot Act
March 24th, 2006
In another nose-thumbing at the U.S. Constitution and Congress, President Bush wrote another love note to Congress and the American people on the Patriot Act when he signed the latest version on March 9th. He wants to make sure that everyone knows that he doesn’t have to answer to anyone no matter what the law. What happened to checks and balances?
WASHINGTON — When President Bush signed the reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act this month, he included an addendum saying that he did not feel obliged to obey requirements that he inform Congress about how the FBI was using the act’s expanded police powers.
The bill contained several oversight provisions intended to make sure the FBI did not abuse the special terrorism-related powers to search homes and secretly seize papers. The provisions require Justice Department officials to keep closer track of how often the FBI uses the new powers and in what type of situations. Under the law, the administration would have to provide the information to Congress by certain dates.
[…]
Past presidents occasionally used such signing statements to describe their interpretations of laws, but Bush has expanded the practice. He has also been more assertive in claiming the authority to override provisions he thinks intrude on his power, legal scholars said.
Bush’s expansive claims of the power to bypass laws have provoked increased grumbling in Congress. Members of both parties have pointed out that the Constitution gives the legislative branch the power to write the laws and the executive branch the duty to ”faithfully execute” them.
[…]
Bush’s signing statement on the USA Patriot Act nearly went unnoticed.
Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, inserted a statement into the record of the Senate Judiciary Committee objecting to Bush’s interpretation of the Patriot Act, but neither the signing statement nor Leahy’s objection received coverage from in the mainstream news media, Leahy’s office said.
Yesterday, Leahy said Bush’s assertion that he could ignore the new provisions of the Patriot Act — provisions that were the subject of intense negotiations in Congress — represented ”nothing short of a radical effort to manipulate the constitutional separation of powers and evade accountability and responsibility for following the law.”
[…]
David Golove, a New York University law professor who specializes in executive power issues, said the statement may simply be ”bluster” and does not necessarily mean that the administration will conceal information about its use of the Patriot Act.
But, he said, the statement illustrates the administration’s ”mind-bogglingly expansive conception” of executive power, and its low regard for legislative power.
‘‘On the one hand, they deny that Congress even has the authority to pass laws on these subjects like torture and eavesdropping, and in addition to that, they say that Congress is not even entitled to get information about anything to do with the war on terrorism,” Golove said. [“Bush shuns Patriot Act requirement” (Boston Globe)]
(Emphasis placed by myself.)
Hat tip to Tennessee Guerilla Women.
Tags: George W. Bush, Patriot Act, Boston Globe, The U.S. Constitution, Congress, Conspiracy Theories
March 24th, 2006
This Week the Republicans released a new radio ad in Wisconsin:
RNC AD: “Censure”
Announcer: September 11th changed our country. And it changed how America responds to terrorists. President Bush is working to keep American families safe. Passing the PATRIOT Act which has disrupted over one hundred and fifty terrorist threats and cells making sure the US is monitoring terrorist communications. But some Democrats are working against these efforts to secure our country, opposing the PATRIOT Act and terrorist surveillance program. Their leader is Russ Feingold. Now Feingold and other Democrats want to censure the President. Publicly reprimanding President Bush for pursuing suspected members of al Qaeda. Some Democrats are even calling for President Bush’s impeachment.
Is this how Democrats plan to win the War on Terror? Call Russ Feingold and ask him why he’s more interested in censuring the President than protecting our freedom. Paid for by the Republican National Committee not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee www.gop.com. The Republican National Committee is responsible for the content of this advertising.
FactCheck.org does a nice analysis of the inaccuracies and mischaracterizations of Feingold’s Censure Resolution in the Repulican’s ad. I’d like to review some of that here, but I want to be fair and point out that these kinds of commercials are a personal pet peeve of mine as they come from both sides. They were particularly aggrevating during the 2004 election and after awhile they sound less like spin and more like lies and after awhile I’m just offended by both sides.
Now Feingold and other Democrats want to censure the President. Publicly reprimanding President Bush for pursuing suspected members of al Qaeda.
This must be more of that “if they aren’t with us, then they’re against us” mentality. Feingold nor any Democrat has ever reprimanded President Bush or anyone for pursuing suspected terrorists. In fact, Feingold has repeatedly, publically said that we should be wiretapping terrorists and suspected terrorists; that isn’t the issue — the issue is the wiretapping of Americans on American soil without obtaining court orders as well as a failure to disclose what he was doing to the appropriate Congressional committees.
Some Democrats are even calling for President Bush’s impeachment.
But not Russ Feingold. John Conyers in the House, yes, but he isn’t even calling really for an impeachment so much as an investigation that could lead to an impeachment. The implication is that the Democratic agenda is to impeach President Bush, which I find hilarious because if they were paying attention, they’d know that the Democrats are too scared to do any such thing.
It’s really all about the spin. Scare Americans into thinking that only Republicans can keep them safe. God knows that the terrorists are going to attack Wisconsin any day now. You aren’t a patriot if you vote Democrat.
Tags: Terrorists, Patriot Act, Russ Feingold, Republicans, Democrats, George W. Bush, factcheck.org, Censure, 2004 election, Impeach
March 7th, 2006
No, seriously. I’ve been mulling it over since last Thursday when the Patriot Act got renewed.
Mostly I’ve been quietly seething as that’s just another nail in the coffin of our dying civil liberties and freedoms and my first impulse was to write a post about how every single one of those Senators who voted to renew the Patriot Act should be voted out of office when their seat came up — which is saying a lot since I actually like Snowe, Collins, Baucus, Vitter, and up until very recently McCain. However, I decided to sit on it and think on it.
More
Tags: John Kerry, Democrats, Patriot Act, Senate, loss of Freedoms
June 16th, 2005
According to CNN.com House limits Patriot Act rules on library records!
WASHINGTON (AP) — Advocates of rewriting the USA Patriot Act are claiming momentum after the House, despite a White House veto threat, voted to restrict investigators from using the anti-terrorism law to peek at library records and bookstore sales slips.
Wednesday’s 238-187 vote came as lawmakers ramped up efforts to extend the Patriot Act, which was passed quickly in the emotional aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. When Congress passed the law, it included a sunset provision under which 15 of its provisions are to expire at the end of this year.
Since the Patriot Act passed, liberals and libertarian-oriented conservatives have pressed for changes, citing privacy and civil liberties concerns. The administration has said weakening of the act would draw a veto from President Bush.
“No question, this is a real shot in the arm for those of us who want to make changes to the USA Patriot Act,” said Rep. Bernard Sanders, I-Vermont, sponsor of the provision that would curtail the government’s ability to investigate the reading habits of terror suspects. He said the vote would help “rein in an administration intent on chipping away at the very civil liberties that define us as a nation.”
The real irony is that the Patriot Act hadn’t been used to investigate bookstore receipts or library records as of March 30th. Yet, the Justice Department claims that the authority to be able to do so is a great benefit to investigating possible terrorists and terrorist enablers. WTF? Shouldn’t there be a rule that if they haven’t used it in 3 years, then it should just go away? Obviously they don’t need it. It’s kind of like my George Foreman Grill. Yeah, it’s trendy to have but I never use it and it’s just taking up space in my cabinet.
I particularly like this quote:
“It bodes well that the first vote Congress has taken on the Patriot Act this year has been in favor of liberty and freedom,” said Gregory Nojeim, a lobbyist for the American Civil Liberties Union.
And this is actually kind of funny:
Supporters of the Patriot Act countered that the rules are potentially useful and argued that the House was voting to make libraries safe havens for terrorists.
So, now I’m seeing the backrooms of libraries filled with smoke and bomb-making supplies and little gray-haired ladies in bifocals running after shady-looking types and fussing about how they treat the books on bomb-making. I really think that’s a bit extreme. Like the House wants terrorists to win. Please.
Anyway, it’s a small victories for people concerned with civil liberties and the freedoms Americans claim to be passing on to other countries, but with President Bush’s promise to veto any “weakening” of the Patriot Act, we still have a long way to go.
Tags: Public Library, Patriot Act, ACLU, House of Representatives, Freedoms, Terrorists
June 9th, 2005
From an address in October of 2001 on opposing the U.S. Patriot Act:
…There have been periods in our nation’s history when civil liberties have taken a back seat to what appeared at the time to be the legitimate exigencies of war. Our national consciousness still bears the stain and the scars of those events: The Alien and Sedition Acts, the suspension of habeas corpus during the Civil War, the internment of Japanese-Americans, German-Americans, and Italian-Americans during World War II, the blacklisting of supposed communist sympathizers during the McCarthy era, and the surveillance and harassment of antiwar protesters, including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., during the Vietnam War. We must not allow these pieces of our past to become prologue…even in our great land, wartime has sometimes brought us the greatest tests of our Bill of Rights…
…Now some may say, indeed we may hope, that we have come a long way since the those days of infringements on civil liberties. But there is ample reason for concern. I have been troubled in the past month by the potential loss of commitment to traditional civil liberties.
As it seeks to combat terrorism, the Justice Department is making extraordinary use of its power to arrest and detain individuals, jailing hundreds of people on immigration violations and arresting more than a dozen “material witnesses” not charged with any crime. Although the government has used these authorities before, it has not done so on such a broad scale. Judging from government announcements, the government has not brought any criminal charges related to the attacks with regard to the overwhelming majority of these detainees…
…Even as America addresses the demanding security challenges before us, we must strive mightily also to guard our values and basic rights. We must guard against racism and ethnic discrimination…
…And, of course, there is no doubt that if we lived in a police state, it would be easier to catch terrorists. If we lived in a country that allowed the police to search your home at any time for any reason; if we lived in a country that allowed the government to open your mail, eavesdrop on your phone conversations, or intercept your email communications; if we lived in a country that allowed the government to hold people in jail indefinitely based on what they write or think, or based on mere suspicion that they are up to no good, then the government would no doubt discover and arrest more terrorists.
But that probably would not be a country in which we would want to live. That would not be a country for which we could, in good conscience, ask our young people to fight and die. In short, that would not be America.
Preserving our freedom is the reason that we are now engaged in this new war on terrorism. We will lose that war without firing a shot if we sacrifice the liberties of the American people…
Tags: Russ Feingold, Patriot Act, Freedoms, terrorism, politics
and Oliver Gilson started in November ‘04 working on the prototype in Sooy’s garage. They are currently on Mark III. They hope to one day sell their product for $75 - $100 a pop. Oddly, while I didn’t mind LASIK or having my ears pierced twice or my nose pierced, I find Pierced Glasses a bit on the extreme side and looking a bit painful, but Sooy has a different opinion:
