why 'downballot' elections matter

Attorney General (and former Governor) Jerry Brown has the authority to approve the accuracy of the title and summary of ballot initiatives. He has, apparently, put this power to good use by showing the anti-equality amendment for what it really is: elimination of a civil right for a certain group of Californians. From Equality California via Pam's House Blend:

I'd like to share some good news about Proposition 8! This week, the California Attorney General's office announced changes to the title and summary of the proposition. Here's what voters will read in November:

Proposition 8
ELIMINATES RIGHT OF SAME-SEX COUPLES TO MARRY.
INITIATIVE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT

Changes California Constitution to eliminate right of same-sex couples to marry. Provides that only a marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.

Fiscal Impact: Over the next few years, potential revenue loss, mainly sales taxes, totaling in the several tens of millions of dollars, to state and local governments. In the long run, likely little fiscal impact to state and local governments.

Although the changes to the proposed amendment are subject to legal challenge, this summary accurately describes what the proposition will do. Prop. 8 would eliminate a constitutional right guaranteed to same-gender couples and would decrease revenues coming in to the state from marriages between same-gender couples.

So this is why 'downballot' races, i.e. not President or Governor, matter. Positions from state legislators to mayors to judges to Attorneys General and Secretaries of State have enormous authority and can make life better or worse for thousands at a time. In this case, having Jerry Brown as AG may be the final nail in the coffin for the hate amendment.

In related Prop. 8 news, PG&E, California's electricity provider, has donated $250,000 toward defeating the anti-equality proposition. Good for them.

another victory for marriage equality

Massachusetts became the first state in the Union to recognize same sex marriages in 2004, but it was immediately clear that the victory was only partial; couples wanting to marry in the Bay State had to prove residency. The culprit and remaining barrier to marriage equality? A now-infamous 1913 law prohibiting out-of-staters from marrying in Massachusetts, a law originally designed to prevent out-of-staters from circumventing their own states' anti-miscegenation laws (i.e., laws that prevented interracial marriage).

Well, after a full 45 minutes of debate, the Massachusetts House voted to repeal the law, following in the footsteps of the state Senate a fortnight ago, and bringing the state within a signature from Gov. Deval Patrick of becoming the second state with full marriage equality, after California.

New York is a strange kind of reverse of Massachusetts, now recognizing out-of-state same-sex marriages, by executive order of Gov. David Patterson, but not permitting in-state same-sex marriages.

the fafblog is back

And jumping right back in to the funniest, rudest political satire on The Internets:

What these namby pamby privacy-pamperers don't seem to realize is that in order for Barack Obama to affect real change, he has to get elected president, and in order to get elected president he has to appeal to the millions of ordinary hard-working Americans who want to get wiretapped by Barack Obama - ordinary hard-working Americans like the staff of the Obama campaign.1 Now that doesn't mean Barack Obama doesn't stand for change, because he totally does! He isn't just going to be spying on you and blowing up the mideast - he's going to be the first black man in history to spy on you and blow up the mideast!2 The next time a U.S. air strike kills a wedding party in Kabul, or an American-made cluster bomb tears up a refugee camp in the Gaza strip, the bloodied and limbless survivors will emerge weeping from the wreck to remember Obama's inspiring life story - his father from Kenya, his mom from whatever white place his mom's from - and think, "I'm so proud to be maimed by someone with such a unique appreciation of the American experience!"3


1. Giblets is given to understand that Ohio alone is populated entirely by David Plouffe.

2. Dr. King had a dream - a dream that one day the guy who was secretly wiretapping him would be a black dude.

3. It'll be just like that episode of This American Life where Ira Glass has David Sedaris kidnapped by the CIA and tortured in a Syrian prison camp!

Oh, how I missed you, Fafblog.

Speaking of The Internets, did you hear that Sen. Ted "Series of Tubes" Stevens himself was indicted yesterday for seven felony counts of concealing over $250K in gifts and house renovations? Talking Points Memo has the full rundown of Mr. "It's Not a Dump Truck" Stevens' wrongdoing.

If you don't get the "dump truck" and "series of tubes" references, see YouTube audio of the infamous speech and Dance Remix below. The Dance Remix is more entertaining; the original is sort of just sad.

Audio:



DJ Ted Stevens Techno Remix:

the carbon footprints of traveling for change

This week, Stephen Colbert featured Carl Pope, Executive Director of the Sierra Club, on the Report, as shown in the following clip. The part that got me thinking was at the very, very end, when Colbert references the significant fact that Pope used up a ton of energy (and emitted a bunch of carbon) to make it out to Comedy Central's NYC studios from San Francisco to appear on the show.



From my year working in the public interest legal advocacy world, I've seen that advocates do a ton of traveling. This is actually something that should have occurred to me much earlier, during my student advocate/organizer years. The point is, there are endless conferences, symposia, meetings, briefings, hearings and demos that happen all over the country, essential in the energy and current style of progressive activists. It's through this travel that new partnerships and alliances are forged, that potentially friendly policymakers or media elites are persuaded, and that the most crucial of capital resources that a non-profit organization has, their public faces, are used strategically.

In short, it's hard to imagine a world in which this kind of travel doesn't take place.

On the other hand, it's hard to imagine that this is either the only or best way to do business when considering the major threat of global warming/climate change, or even just most efficient use of limited progressive infrastructure resources.

I'm in California now, via NYC, and my boss was here last week, per request of some of our sponsoring foundations. Many have been in the industry longer than I, but it strikes me as not the best possible alternative. Proxy representatives from partner organizations? A shift in focus off of Executive Directors as celebrities or sole/almost-sole spokespersons to a system of greater media/coalition responsibilities for regional staff? As I just implied, this isn't just a symptom of non-profit organizations; the way that foundations are operating and the physical presence they require of certain staff, especially EDs, definitely feeds into this (this isn't the only problem with the way that progressive foundations are currently working; they definitely also micromanage to a far greater degree than conservative foundations, and for much smaller amounts of money, restricting the amount of creativity that organizations are able to exercise with more flexibility and guaranteed income).

Not that I'm going to protest coming out West when given the opportunity, just saying that folks should be looking into this.

rich does not equal healthy (but it helps)

Click on image for a full-sized, readable view. Via Open Left.



You can imagine the rough trend line in there, with the countries above the trend line doing well for their wealth, and the countries below not as well. But generally speaking, with the exceptions of Cuba and Equatorial Guinea, there is a strong and statistically significant correlation between a country's health and wealth.

You can also imagine trend lines that make more sense on a continent-by-continent basis, in which case South Africa falls within its trend line as the wealthiest and healthiest of the larger African nations (Mauritius as an outlier). Cuba, however, is a significant outlier even by this analysis.

A host of countries are (relatively) poorer than the U.S. but healthier, with the most dramatic examples being Cuba (poorest country with better health than the U.S.) and Sweden (healthiest country overall, yet relatively poorer than most "post-industrial" countries).

Notably above the trend line: Cuba, Malaysia, Vietnam, Bosnia, Solomon Islands, West Bank & Gaza (Palestine).

Notably below the trend line: U.S., Saudi Arabia, Brazil, India, South Africa, Iraq.

Richest country: Luxemborg
Healthiest country: Sweden
Poorest and Sickest country: Sierra Leone

feist on sesame street

Aww... that's cute.



I heart Sesame Street.

list of things michelle malkin doesn't like

at pandagon.net:

Michelle Malkin doesn’t like the fact that the Fuck Panel called her out by name. She also doesn’t like Arabs, Muslims, the Japanese, liberals, sick kids, craftsmen, Mexicans, troops, Rachael Ray, filmmakers, black people, immigrants, feminists, John McCain, moderate Republicans, Michelle Obama and perhaps saddest of all...herself.

nph wouldn't do that man: nph as (wannabe-super)villain

Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog is the greatest thing ever.



Free on the website until Sunday, July 20th.

Finale this Saturday.

Best thing Joss Whedon has done since the musical episode of Buffy.

anti-equality initiative to stay on ballot

The LA Times reports this morning that the California Supreme Court rejected a challenge to the constitutionality of the anti-equality ballot initiative (Prop. 8); thus, this November, Californians will decide whether they believe in marriage equality or not.

I actually think this is a good thing. The ballot initiative, which would reverse the recent California Supreme Court decision supporting the right of gay couples to marry, is actually a great opportunity for Californians to show that the era of this sort of social conservative wedge politics may be coming to an end. The lawsuit sought to have the initiative thrown out on essentially a technicality (the argument was that this is a constitutional "revision," i.e. an inherent change to the document and thus only feasible by constitutional convention and not by initiative, rather than an "amendment" which can be made at the ballot box). All that would have done is to delay the anti-equality campaigners' effort in California, or worse, have them use a different state as a test case. Polls now show that a majority of Californians support marriage equality. A democratic (small "d") win here would be a major victory for the equality movement and a rallying point for advocates in other states to recognize the legitimacy of California's law as based in the will of the people, not simply in the constitutional scholarship of the California Supreme Court.

For more on marriage equality and the NO on Prop. 8 campaign, visit Equality California.

congress overrides bush's veto of bill reversing medicare cuts

As expected, Congress voted today to override the ninth veto of Pres. Bush's administration, by a vote of 383-41 in the House (223 needed) and 70-26 in the Senate (67 needed). The bill reversed planned cuts to Medicare reimbursement (i.e. the percentage of costs and services that doctors bill to the federal government for treating Medicare patients), and raises the reimbursement rate next year by 1.1%.

This is good news in a few ways.

First, it will encourage doctors to continue taking Medicare patients; when reimbursement rates are cut to a certain point, doctors can no longer treat Medicare patients without essentially working for next-to-nothing or sometimes even a loss, once overhead, time and other costs of care are factored in. 80% of Medicare patients, primarily seniors and persons with disabilities, use the normal Medicare program, while about 9 million use Medicare Advantage. For a personal story and history of the Republican attack on Medicare, read this.

Second, relatedly, this will encourage doctors to continue taking patients with health care plans that link their own reimbursement rates to Medicare's rates. One important example that the article mentions is TRICARE, the health insurance program for military personnel and their families. TRICARE is a sometimes sad story, as decreasing reimbursement rates have made it difficult for military families to find doctors who will treat them and their children. Hopefully the 1.1% increase next year will help more this trend in the other direction.

Finally, this override is good because of where the money comes from to stop the cuts to Medicare: "Medicare Advantage." For those who don't know, Medicare Advantage is the pilot program by which Bush and the neoconservatives are seeking to privatize the core components of America's social safety net. What it basically does is pay private insurance companies to do more inefficiently what Medicare was doing just fine. Satisfaction with Medicare has always been quite high and it is widely considered to be the most efficient health plan in America (administrative overhead costs of Medicare are disputed, but are between 2.1% to 6%, while private insurers have admin costs of 8-15%), while Medicare Advantage was, from the get-go, confusing and sometimes misleading. The insurance companies benefiting from Medicare Advantage are being paid too much, between 13% and 17% more than doctors are reimbursed for treating normal Medicare patients. So while substantially less of each dollar going to a Medicare Advantage plan is actually used to treat patients, substantially more money is being paid to these plans. At the most, admin costs for the private insurers running Medicare Advantage are about 13% more than normal Medicare... surprising that the Bush Administration wants to keep paying them 13% more for the same treatment?

Anyway, props to Congress for doing some good. Hopefully next year they'll take even more steps toward fixing the "Advantage" problem. If conservatives truly believe that the "free market" is a better, more efficient way to run Medicare, they should have to prove it on the free market, and without 13-17% additional government subsidies propping up a generally unnecessary idea.

fisa fight update: aclu lawsuit filed; mybo fisa group founder responds to anti-free speech critics

As promised, ACLU immediately filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the new FISA Amendments as both chilling free speech as protected by the First Amendment and violating the Fourth Amendment's guarantee of privacy and protection against search and seizure without warrant.

The case is Amnesty et al. v. McConnell, as in Amnesty International USA versus Director of National Intelligence John McConnell. Other plaintiffs include Global Fund for Women, Global Rights, Human Rights Watch, The Nation Magazine, and the SEIU. The case was filed in the federal district court of the Southern District of New York (Manhattan).

Meanwhile, on the organizing front, Mike Stark, founder of the Get FISA Right group on the my.BarackObama social networking site, the largest group on the site at over 23,000 members, has written a response to critics of the ongoing organizing efforts, published at Salon.com. Though he modestly claims to only speak for himself, I'm sure he speaks for a large majority of those of us who joined the anti-capitulation effort:

I see several reasons for the group to continue. The main one is to try to reverse the near-decade-long Republican assault on American values. Every tool available should be used to further that goal; maintaining a line of open and frank communication with our party's standard-bearer is one of the most important tools in the progressive toolbox.

Notwithstanding the candidate's protestations, it has been clear in recent weeks that Obama has been distancing himself from the progressives who carried him to victory in the Democratic primary. That's his choice, but all choices have consequences. A likely consequence to this tactic may be that many of the newly energized voters who were so keen on volunteering and voting for him in the primary will be turned off by his rightward shift. I think it is important to give those voters a place on MyBo.com to continue doing what we can to pressure Obama to "dance with those who brung him."

[...]

From the moment George W. Bush took office and ripped this country to the right, Democrats in Congress ran after him like abandoned puppies afraid of being left alone in a dark house. They gave him extreme tax cuts for the wealthy, backed his rush to war, enacted draconian bankruptcy reform legislation and stood by meekly (or actively helped) as he trampled civil liberties and the Bill of Rights.

The Democratic establishment should have learned that we need a Democratic Party that will draw clear distinctions between itself and the Republicans, but it has not. Political cynicism on the left is growing, and with good reason. We won both houses of Congress back in 2006, but we've seen almost nothing change. Most recently, a bipartisan coalition -- which included Barack Obama -- voted to subvert justice by granting the telecom special interests retroactive immunity for lawlessly spying on Americans. (It's worth noting that the capitulating House Democrats received over twice the telecom campaign contributions that their constitutional stalwart colleagues did.)

By using the tools provided by MyBo.com in this new way -- call it friendly feedback -- we're providing the Obama campaign with an opportunity to engage its base, and letting progressive Obama supporters who are nonetheless critical of his shift to the center know that we aren't alone in the wilderness. The effort constitutes an opportunity for the campaign to increase hope and enthusiasm. [...]

I would even suggest our efforts are good for Barack Obama personally. He is now surrounded by Washington insiders. By providing Obama with a touchstone from outside the Beltway, I hope he will allow us to guide him toward the instincts he developed as a Chicago community organizer rather than those of a Beltway all-star.

Word.

fbi plans to religiously/racially profile muslim and arab americans; good thing we have the 4th... oh wait. nevermind.

Fresh off of their victory to make unconstitutional, warrantless eavesdropping and domestic spying completely and utterly legal, the Bush Administration's Department of Justice (oh the Orwellian irony!) did not wait long to put those new powers into effect. Juan Cole reports at Salon.com this morning that the FBI is about to change its guidelines for investigating U.S. citizens and legal residents to allow:

[FBI] agents to establish a terrorist profile or pattern of behavior and attributes and, on the basis of that profile, start investigating an individual or group. Agents would be permitted to ask "open-ended questions" concerning the activities of Muslim Americans and Arab-Americans. A person's travel and occupation, as well as race or ethnicity, could be grounds for opening a national security investigation.

Cole explains that this is a problem for two reasons. Most importantly of all,

using race and ethnicity as the -- or even a -- primary factor in deciding whom to stop and search, despite being widespread among police forces, is illegal.

Since we know that the Bush Administration apparently no longer cares if what they do is legal or not, perhaps this argument is more persuasive for them: racially profiling doesn't work.

Such tiny, cultlike terror organizations are multinational. Richard Reid, the shoe bomber, is a Briton whose father hailed from Jamaica, and no racial profile of him would have predicted his al-Qaida ties. Adam Gadahn, an al-Qaida spokesman, is from a mixed Jewish and Christian heritage and hails from suburban Orange County, Calif. [...]

It is a mystery why the Department of Justice has not learned the lesson that terrorists are best tracked down through good police work brought to bear on specific illegal acts, rather than by vast fishing expeditions. After Sept. 11, the DOJ called thousands of Muslim men in the United States for what it termed voluntary interviews. Not a single terrorist was identified in this manner, though a handful of the interviewees ended up being deported for minor visa offenses. Once it became clear that the interviews might eventuate in arbitrary actions against them, the willingness of American Muslims to cooperate declined rapidly, and so the whole operation badly backfired.

only 27 u.s. senators take seroiusly their oath to uphold the constitution; aclu lawsuit last chance to perserve constitutional right to privacy

Here are their names (call and/or email them your thanks for trying their best to preserve the Fourth Amendment):

Akaka (D-HI)
Bingaman (D-NM)
Boxer (D-CA)
Brown (D-OH)
Byrd (D-WV)
Cantwell (D-WA)
Cardin (D-MD)
Clinton (D-NY)
Dodd (D-CT)
Durbin (D-IL)
Feingold (D-WI)
Harkin (D-IA)
Kerry (D-MA)
Klobuchar (D-MN)
Lautenberg (D-NJ)
Leahy (D-VT)
Levin (D-MI)
Menendez (D-NJ)
Murray (D-WA)
Reed (D-RI)
Reid (D-NV)
Sanders (I-VT)
Schumer (D-NY)
Stabenow (D-MI)
Tester (D-MT)
Wyden (D-OR)

That's 26... the 27th is Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA), who is still recovering from surgery for a brain tumor and was unable to make today's vote, but has been a vocal opponent of the unnecessary FISA Amendments Act that today shredded the Constitution. A clip is below, and his full speech in December 2007 is here.



Meanwhile, the ACLU announced after the Senate vote that they will be bringing a lawsuit to challenge the new law as unconstitutional as soon as Pres. Bush signs it.

mccain's big idea on health care: throw sick peope overboard, force everyone onto the individual market

I don't blog much about Republican nominee John McCain (Not Your Friend) here, for two reasons: 1) Seems like he's self-destructing pretty well on his own; recent predictions have Obama blowing him out in the electoral college with over 300 EVs, maybe as much as 350 (with only 270 needed to win), and 2) For all things McCain (Not Your Friend), I have the John McCain Is NOT Your Friend blog. But his terrible health care "reform" idea perhaps bears some discussion here.

Basically, McCain's idea stems from the following (factually wrong) concepts:

1) The private insurance industry is totally awesome and kicking ass, and we need to just get more people into it.

2) Individual insurance markets are totally problem-free. Really, we promise!

3) The first two concepts may be wrong, but who cares because we love big insurance companies. Right?

So, that being said, the logical thing to do is to try to get as many people on individual, private insurance as possible, such that when they become sick, unregulated insurance companies can kick them out and/or refuse to insure them and/or make them pay exorbitant premiums and out-of-pocket costs.

In April, USA Today gave us a brief look at McCain's plan, the summary of which was that he'd create tax credits a fraction of the actual cost of individual-market private insurance premiums, and then destroy the employer-based insurance system:

Steve Smith, a spokesman for the AFL-CIO, said McCain's plan "would push employers to drop health care coverage they currently provide, put insurance companies in charge, increase costs, and force tens of millions of Americans to fend for coverage on their own with inadequate tax credits."

Today, the NY Times goes deeper, and the details aren't pretty. What follows is an item-by-item breakdown that shows that McCain's plan actually more radically changes the American health system (for the worse).

First,

With the goal of making the insurance marketplace more equitable and competitive, Mr. McCain would end the longstanding exclusion from income taxes of health benefits paid by employers.

Without the income tax exclusion for employer-based health insurance, pretty much all employers will drop coverage for their employees. Result? Everyone will be forced onto the individual market.

Second,

Mr. McCain would replace the exclusion with refundable health care tax credits of $2,500 per person and $5,000 per family in the hope of driving consumers into the individual insurance market.

Well, the plan doesn't really need to "hope [to] drive consumers into the individual market" via these tax credit "incentives," given that employers will all be dropping their coverage and patients won't really have a choice. FYI, in 2005 the nationwide average premium in the individual market for individuals was a national average of $3664, and $5568 for family coverage. So, at first glance, this might seem like a net savings over the employer-based system, where individuals in 2005 were paying $1665 (as compared to the $1164 remainder after subtracting McCain's proposed $2500 individual tax credit). But that's not the end of the story, as you might have guessed, since it only looks at premiums, not all out-of-pocket costs. A Center for Budget Priorities & Policy report shows that nearly half of individual market policyholders pay more than 5% of their income in out-of-pocket costs because of high deductibles and/or high co-payments, due to the fact that individual market insurance covers a much smaller share of medical costs than small business group, employer-based insurance (55% versus 83%, respectively, in one California study). So while the raw numbers of premiums make it look as though tax credits will save you about $500 in actual costs, the truth is that the individual market is much more brutal. As reported by Health Affairs last month:

The average deductible in the individual market was $2,136, more than six times the size of the average small-group-market deductible ($348).

(emphasis added)

Third, McCain then proposes:

To help push down premiums, he would allow the purchase of policies across state lines.

As I've discussed before, this may theoretically seem like a good idea, but is in fact a way to subvert basic consumer protections existing at the state level. You know, minor things, like insurance policies actually being required to provide common, medically-necessary health care.

Fourth,

Currently, those who buy insurance individually often face higher costs because their risks are not spread across broad groups of workers. Though insurers cannot discriminate against participants in group plans, they evaluate consumers seeking individual coverage case by case to determine if they are worth the risk of coverage, and at what price. Insurers contend that if they had to charge the same rates to all comers, many would wait until they were sick to buy policies.

The McCain campaign recognizes that in an invigorated individual market, even larger numbers of chronically ill people would go without the protection afforded by group coverage. High-risk pools would theoretically serve to fill the gaps.

And how would they do that? Not through massive federal government spending... a 'fiscal conservative' would never do that, right?

Mr. McCain’s proposal would represent a huge increase over the $50 million a year that Congress now appropriates in grants to the state pools, in a program that began in 2002. But several analysts questioned whether even $10 billion would be nearly enough, given that the states now spend about $2 billion to insure 207,000 people.

“I do not for a minute think it will cost 7 to 10 billion dollars a year,” [Georgetown professor Karen] Pollitz said. “It may cost 7 to 10 billion dollars a week.”

Okay, one last point in this long analysis. McCain's plan for "high-risk pools" is based on current state models like one in Maryland. Let's see how those are going. First, for the state program itself:

In an admonition for Mr. McCain, Maryland’s five-year-old plan, like others before it, has quickly become a victim of its growth. As enrollment expanded by 30 percent in each of the last two years, actuaries forecast insolvency as soon as 2010 and compelled the plan’s board to apply the brakes.

Over the last two years, it has raised premiums, deductibles and co-payments, increased out-of-pocket maximums, lowered the lifetime cap on payments and added a waiting period for pre-existing conditions, which rose to six months from two months on July 1. It also increased the amount applicants must pay to buy their way out of the waiting period.

Finally, for the uninsured these pools are supposed to help:

If Senator John McCain’s radical plan for remaking American health care is to work, he will have to find a way to cover people like Chaim Benamor, 52, a self-employed renovator in this Baltimore suburb. Mr. Benamor never found it necessary to buy insurance before having a mild heart attack last year and now, 13 years shy of Medicare, has little hope of doing so.

The heart attack left Mr. Benamor with a $17,000 hospital bill, $400 in monthly prescription costs and a desperate need for insurance. After being rejected by a number of commercial carriers, he turned to the Maryland Health Insurance Plan, one of 35 state programs for high-risk applicants whom no private company is willing to insure.

He decided that the annual premium — $4,572 for a plan with heavy deductibles — was more than he could handle on an income of about $35,000. Yet his earnings were too high for him to qualify for state subsidies.

“I’d like to get it, but what do you pay first?” Mr. Benamor asked at his dining room table. “Do you pay the mortgage? Do you pay your child support? Do you pay your car insurance? Do you pay for your medicine?”

sen. chris dodd's eulogy for the rule of law

Today's votes:

Dodd-Feingold Amendment to strike retroactive immunity for telecoms: Fails, 32-66.
Bingaman Amendment to delay retroactive immunity until after full disclosure of facts from an Inspector General's report (maximum of one year): Fails, 42-56 (60 votes needed).
Vote on cloture to end debate on bill that shreds the Constitution: Passes, 72-26 (Obama voted FOR it).
Vote to approve unnecessary expansion of Executive powers to spy on Americans without warrants: Passes, 69-28 (Obama voted FOR it).

For all my berating of her this primary season, props to Sen. Clinton for voting for the Constitution (both against cloture and the bill itself).

via Open Left:

Mr. President, I rise to offer an amendment to strike Title II, which would provide retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies.

Mr. President, for many Americans, this issue may seem very difficult to follow - it may seem like just another squabble over corporate lawsuits.

But in reality, it is so much more than that. This is about choosing between the rule of law and the rule of men.

For more than seven years, President Bush has demonstrated time and time again that he neither respects the role of the Congress, nor does he respect the rule of law.

Today, we are considering legislation which will grant retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies who are alleged to have handed over to this Administration the personal information of every American-everyone phone call, every email, every fax and every text message. And all without a warrant.

Some may argue that in fact the companies received documentation from the Administration stating that the President authorized the wiretapping program and that therefore it was legal.

These advocates will argue that the mere existence of documentation justifies retroactive immunity-- that because a document was received, companies should be retroactively exonerated of all wrong-doing.

But, as the Intelligence Committee has already made clear, we already KNOW that the companies received some form of documentation, with some sort of legal determination.

But that logic is deeply flawed Mr. President.

Because the question is not whether companies received a "document" from the White House. The question is, were there actions legal? It's a rather straightforward and surprisingly uncomplicated question. Did the companies break the law?

Either the companies complied with the law as it was at the time, or they didn't.

Either the companies and the President acted outside of the rule of law, or they followed it.

Either the underlying program was legal or it wasn't.

If we pass retroactive immunity, none of these questions will ever be answered. Because of this so-called "compromise," the judge's hands will be tied, and the outcome of these cases will be predetermined. Retroactive immunity will be granted.

So Mr. President, this is about finding out what actually happened between these companies and the Administration.

It is about holding this Administration to account for violating the rule of law and our Constitution. It is about reminding this Administration that, "Where law ends, tyranny begins."

And those aren't my words, Mr. President - those words were spoken by British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

Mr. President, it is time to say "no more."

No more trampling our Constitution.

No more excusing those who violate the rule of law.

No more.

These are our principles.

They have been around at least since the Magna Carta.

They are enduring.

What they are not is temporary. And what we should not do in a time where our country is at risk, is abandon them. That is what is at stake here today. Allowing retroactive immunity to go forward is by its very nature an abandonment of these principles.

Like generations of American leaders before us, we too are confronted with a choice.

Does America stand for all that is still right with our world? Or do we retreat in fear?

Do we stand for justice that secures America? Or do we act out of vengeance that weakens us?

Mr. President, whatever our political party-Republican, Democrat-we were all elected to ensure that this nation adheres to the rule of law. That is our must fundamental obligation - not as partisans but as patriots serving their country.

The rule of law is not the provenance of any one political party - but of every American who has been safer because of it.

President Bush is right about one thing: this debate is about security. But not in the way he imagines.

He believes we have to give up our rights to be safe.

I believe the choice between moral authority and security is a false choice.

I believe it is precisely when you stand up and protect your rights that you become stronger, not weaker.

The damage that was done to our country on 9/11 was both tragic and stunning.

But when you start diminishing our rights as a people, you compound that tragedy. You cannot protect America in the long run if you fail to protect our Constitution. It is that simple.

As Dwight D. Eisenhower who served our country both as President and as leader of the Allied Forces in Europe during World War Two, said:

"The clearest way to show what the rule of law means to us in everyday life is to recall what has happened when there is no rule of law."

That is why I believe history will judge this President harshly for his disregard for our most cherished principles.

And if we do not change course and stand up for our Constitution, for what is best in America, for what we know is right and just, then history will most certainly decide that that it was those of us in this body who bare equal responsibility for the President's decisions-for it was us who looked the other way, time and time again.

Mr. President, this is the moment. At long last, let us rise to it.

Support this amendment.

Stop retroactive immunity.

Stand up for the rule of law.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

obama's response: "well, to address your first point... hey, look, a unicorn!"

Don't get me wrong, Sen. Barack Obama is great. I'm voting for him, not just because I think he's some lesser of two evils, but because I think he's a genuinely good man with the potential to do much good in office.

Emphasis on potential.

But I can't help be a little pissed off when he repeatedly tells supporters that this is their campaign and that they should correct the campaign when it is going in the wrong direction, and then completely writes them off when they try to do exactly that. 18,000+ members in the my.BarackObama Vote NO on FISA group, and Barack thinks it's swell and dandy that you learned how to use the internet. Fourth Amendment-champion Glenn Greenwald has the whole step-by-step deconstruction of Obama's non-statement. Here's just the part on telecom immunity:

Obama says he will vote to remove immunity from the bill, but he knows full well that this effort will fail and that the final bill will have telecom immunity in it. The bottom line is that he will nonetheless end up voting for this bill with immunity in it even though he previously vowed to support a filibuster of "any bill" that contains retroactive immunity. Put another way, Obama claims he opposes telecom immunity but will vote for a bill that grants it.

But why keep campaign promises when you can preemptively cave-in to the unconstitutional demands of Bush/Cheney to look "strong on security" when you are, in fact, making Americans less secure (from their own government)?

To put it another way, on this Independence Day, Obama had a choice to side with The People, or The Worst President Ever. He chose the latter.

Many of us are angry about this (at least 18,000 people), but we aren't the ones who can single-handedly stop this assult on the Fourth Amendment. Democratic nominee and Senator from Illinois Barack Obama is.

Step up. Be a leader. End the politics of fear.

Happy Fourth.

happy independence day!

Today we remember our victory in securing independence from an oppressive government who didn't listen to the people and whose gross violations of decency were the basis for the creation of the Bill of Rights.

In honor of the 222nd anniversary of this historical event, I'm going to help my friend prepare for a BBQ, and then go to the beach.

Huzzah!

an open letter to sen. obama

From the 15,000+ (and rapidly growing) members of the my.BarackObama.com group

"Senator Obama – Please Vote NO on Telecom Immunity – Get FISA Right"

Dear Senator Obama,

On October 24, 2007, your campaign spokesman said, "To be clear: Barack will support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies."

On June 20, 2008 you said, of retroactive immunity, "I will work in the Senate to remove this provision so that we can seek full accountability for past offenses."

As the largest grass-roots group on your campaign website, my.BarackObama.com, and in the spirit of your open/responsive government campaign pledges, we wish to share our ideas for how we may work together to further the goal of eliminating retroactive immunity from the FISA legislation scheduled for debate in the Senate next week. Although this is only one of the problems we see with legislation allows the government to wiretap the communications of its citizenry without a warrant, it's the area we think we can help you the most.

First, Senator Obama, we ask that you make [available] the same tools that we used to call undecided voters in Iowa and New Hampshire available for us to call our fellow citizens in West Virginia, Nebraska, Delaware, Florida and other states that have Senators committed to voting against the amendment that would strip telecom immunity. You have the tools and we have the people power. Together, we are confident we can bring Change; we can make the government listen to the people instead of the telecom lobbyists.

Second, Senator Obama, we ask that you attend the Senate debate and schedule floor time to speak about the violence done to the rule of law when Congress retroactively immunizes the illegal conduct of a special interest. We know you understand that justice should not be sold to the highest special interest bidder; we also know that you can persuade other Senators that are not so clear on the issue. Of course, if you do this, our committed members will surely capture the video of your inspiring oratory, load it to YouTube and spread your words to our friends and family far and wide. We trust in your ability to bring a new way of doing business to Washington and look forward to helping you make that Change a reality.

Senator Obama, the my.BarackObama.com caption reads, "I'm asking you to believe. Not just in my ability to bring about real change in Washington… I'm asking you to believe in yours." We're ready to put these words into practice.

Thank you.

The 15,000+ (and rapidly growing) members of

"Senator Obama – Please Vote NO on Telecom Immunity – Get FISA Right"

why is the obama campaign against the fourth amendment?: "we're not really sure"

This is awesome. You know, shred the Constitution a little bit, because it will make you seem TOUGH ON TERRORISTS. Forget the fact that you have no idea what you're actually doing (from Glenn Greenwald, quoted at length because it is so very much on point as to how ridiculous Obama's position on this is):

[NYT reporter and Pulitzer Prize-winner James] Risen spoke with Obama adviser Greg Craig, a partner at the Washington law firm Williams & Connolly, and this is what Craig told Risen:

Greg Craig, a Washington lawyer who advises the Obama campaign, said Tuesday in an interview that Mr. Obama had decided to support the compromise FISA legislation only after concluding it was the best deal possible.

"This was a deliberative process, and not something that was shooting from the hip," Mr. Craig said. "Obviously, there was an element of what’s possible here. But he concluded that with FISA expiring, that it was better to get a compromise than letting the law expire."

Craig's statement is flat-out false. FISA -- enacted in 1978 and amended many times to accommodate modern communications technology -- has no expiration date. The Protect America Act, which Congress enacted last August to legalize warrantless eavesdropping on Americans, had a 6-month sunset provision and thus already expired back in February, restoring FISA as the governing law. Thus, if Congress does nothing now, FISA will continue indefinitely to govern the Government's power to spy on the communications of Americans. It doesn't expire. What Craig said in defense of Obama is just wrong.

I emailed Craig this morning about his comments (here) and when I received no reply, I called him, left a message, and he called me this afternoon. After I read him his quote, explained that FISA won't expire, and pointed out that his comment in the NYT therefore made no sense, Craig paused for awhile and then said that he meant that the "warrants under FISA would expire in August," and Obama supported the FISA "compromise" to prevent that from happening. When I asked Craig if he was referring to the surveillance orders authorized by the Protect America Act that allow the Government to spy with no individual warrants (which have a one-year duration and do expire in August), Craig said that this is what he meant, and that Obama wanted to avoid having those surveillance orders expire.

While that last version at least generally comports with reality, it makes no sense whatsoever as an explanation for Obama's FISA position. Back in August, when he was seeking the Democratic nomination, Obama voted against the Protect America Act. Therefore, had Obama had his way, there never would have been any PAA in the first place, and therefore, there never would have been any PAA orders possible. Having voted against the PAA last August, how can Obama now claim that he considers it important that the PAA orders not expire? How can he be eager to avoid the expiration of surveillance orders which he opposed authorizing in the first place?

I asked Craig that question several times and received completely incoherent replies, after which he started insisting that he already answered me and had nothing else to add (he then changed the subject to talk about the "improvements" the current bill achieves over the Rockefeller Senate bill). The fact is that there is no answer. In the past, Obama has opposed the type of warrantless eavesdropping which those PAA orders authorize. He's repeatedly said that the FISA court works and there's no need to authorize eavesdropping without individual warrants. None of that can be reconciled with his current claim that he supports this FISA "compromise" because National Security requires that those PAA orders not expire and that there be massive changes to FISA. It's just as simple as that.

So, to summarize: Obama thinks the FISA court works fine, and we don't need to authorize warrantless wiretaps. However, he thinks that this "compromise" which authorizes warrantless wiretaps is the "best deal" we can get, because we need to extend the government's ability to conduct the warrantless wiretaps that expire in August that Obama was opposed to.

Does that make sense to anyone?

defend the fourth amendment; hold obama accountable

If the words "FISA," "retroactive immunity for telecom" or "warrantless wiretapping" doesn't cause visceral anger or frustration, let me sum up for you one of the most critical issues that this country will deal with over the next week:

The Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution is under attack.

Candidates of all stripes must be held accountable when he or she is about to make a horrible mistake, like shredding the Constitution in order to give big telecom companies retroactive immunity from liability for their participation in illegally invading your privacy. Because that is what this is about; the ability of the government to spy on you without a warrant, with the help of phone and internet providers.

If you haven't already, please take a minutes to sign up on my.BarackObama and join the group "Senator Obama, Please Vote NO On Telecom Immunity - Get FISA Right," a group which has gone from 500 members last Friday to about 13,000 members as I write this email. It is less than 600 members away from being the largest group on Barack Obama's networking site. This group made the NY Times print edition today, as well as the WSJ, NY Post, and countless other publications, and is gaining momentum that could possibly convince Obama to revert to his original promise: to filibuster telecom immunity and a bad FISA bill that will grow the powers of President Bush to conduct illegal, warrantless spying of Americans.

Please sign up by going to:

http://my.barackobama.com/page/group/SenatorObama-PleaseVoteAgainstFISA

It only takes a couple of minutes! NOTE: The group listserve has a lot of emails, so make sure to set your email preference to either "Daily Digest" or "Do Not Receive Emails"; otherwise your box will be full before you know it (the default is to individual emails).

For more information and actions to help stop a bad bill that Sen. Russ Feingold has called “a great blow to the rights of the American people” and the passage of which would be “a very, very sad day for the Constitution," visit the Get FISA Right wiki.

update: Sen. Chris Dodd, champion of the Fourth Amendment, draws a parallel between Congress's potential abandonment of fundamental civil liberties here--acting out of fear--with the great error of Japanese American Internment (not in prepared remarks; only in video): "While not of the same magnitude at this point, we're about to make another grave error out of fear."

huffington: "moving to the middle is for losers"

Hear, hear!

I looked at the Obama campaign not through the prism of my own progressive views and beliefs but through the prism of a cold-eyed campaign strategist who has no principles except winning. From that point of view, and taking nothing else into consideration, I can unequivocally say: the Obama campaign is making a very serious mistake. Tacking to the center is a losing strategy. And don't let the latest head-to-head poll numbers lull you the way they lulled Hillary Clinton in December.

Running to the middle in an attempt to attract undecided swing voters didn't work for Al Gore in 2000. It didn't work for John Kerry in 2004. And it didn't work when Mark Penn (obsessed with his "microtrends" and missing the megatrend) convinced Hillary Clinton to do it in 2008.

Fixating on -- and pandering to -- this fickle crowd is all about messaging tailored to avoid offending rather than to inspire and galvanize. And isn't galvanizing the electorate to demand fundamental change the raison d'etre of the Obama campaign in the first place?

[...]

The Obama brand has always been about inspiration, a new kind of politics, the audacity of hope, and "change we can believe in." I like that brand. More importantly, voters -- especially unlikely voters -- like that brand.

Pulling it off the shelf and replacing it with a political product geared to pleasing America's vacillating swing voters -- the ones who will be most susceptible to the fear-mongering avalanche that has already begun -- would be a fatal blunder.