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Sunday, June 22, 2008

Around the Blogroll and Elsewhere: Special 4th Amendment Trampling Edition
Posted by Jill | 10:12 AM
Last week was one for the ages -- one in which our own team decided, just like George W. Bush, that the Constitution and the Bill of Rights is just a fucking piece of paper, one that means nothing as compared to the siren song of campaign cash and the prospect of Joe Scarborough and Wolf Blitzer and Suckleupagus saying mean thing.

It's one thing to do what we can to elect "not just more, but better" Democrats, as Blue America PAC and Color of Change are trying to do. (And just as an aside, if any of the Alpha Dogs from said groups are reading this, you might consider a bit more inclusiveness of your lesser bloggren in this effort instead of having this be just another meeting of the Kool Kidz Klub -- we'd be happy to help if you'll just fucking ASK.) But if all of our civil liberties are destroyed by the time such Democrats are elected (even assuming that elections will last that long, which with this handing of ever more power to the executive branch remains questionable), will there be anything left for them to defend?

So while the Alpha Dogz and Kool Kidz are engaging in their laudable, if exclusionary, efforts to do something about sellouts like Steny Hoyer and get our nominee to do the right thing (and let's not talk about how Saint Hillary would have been any different, shall we? She wouldn't.), let's take a look at what some of us have to say:

First stop (as well it should be): Driftglass has a few words about the feckless "leadership" of Nancy Pelosi (which shows that just because an elected leader has a vagina instead of a penis doesn't by definition mean she'll be any less of a hack).

Hubris Sonic sez to Senator Obama, "You Don't Mess With the Netroots."

Carol Gee has an Ode to the Fourth Amendment.

Dave Johnson wants you to hear what Cenk Uygur has to say the Democrats' capitulation. (And I want you to hear what Sam Seder and Marc Maron have to say about it.)

I would SO buy one of these T-shirts if Batocchio has them made up.

Earth-Bound Misfit has some tips for writing your Senator demanding that they do the right thing and vote against this travesty.

Ornery Bastard writes his Congressman. (My Congressman is Scott Garrett, which means it would be a complete waste of my time. Still nothing from Dennis Shulman on his stand on telecom immunity.)

Another lower-case-o ornery lower-case-b bastard, PhysioProf, agrees with me that the wiretaps have been about first getting the goods on members of Congress, and wants to know what they have.

Doghouse Riley warns against assuming that OUR guy will only do GOOD things with this power.

I Can't Believe It's Not a Democracy promises to vote for Hillary in 2012 if she mounts a filibuster against this bill. (I for one am not holding my breath; see introduction.)

Even Jen Clark took time out from her sojourn around Europe looking for a place to settle that's more sane than the U.S. is at this juncture to weigh in.

What slim said.

OK, this has nothing to do with FISA, but Cookie Jill notes that missing hedge fund swindler Sam Israel has connections to ... wait for it ... the Bush family, through one John P. Ellis -- yup, the same Bush cousin who called the 2000 election for Captain Fuckup for Faux News.

This doesn't have to do with FISA either, except that the FISA foofarah is supposedly tangentially related to George W. Bush's War of Terror. But go read jurassicpork's post on other people's sacrifice today. Then think about the Orgy O'Grief And Self-Congratulation we've seen in the media this week by the members of the Timmy Cult. Then go watch this video of a 21-year-old Bergen County woman with a new baby whose National Guard unit is being sent to Iraq so that George W. Bush doesn't have to take the political heat of instituting a draft in order to have enough bodies to feed into the meat grinder of Iraq. Then think about Andrea Mitchell having the vapors on Press the Meat this morning because Barack Obama opted out of federal financing (mentioning nothing about how John McCain gamed the system for the primaries. Then put it all together and ask yourself what the fuck country we live in, how the hell we let it get this way, and if there's anything left for us to do to fix it.

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8 Comments:
Anonymous Anonymous said...
Thanks for the link, Jill! You're the best!

Incidentally, have you seen the poll Glenn Greenwald posted on this week showing that Republican members of the public approve of the nominally Democratic Congress more than Dems do?
6/22/08, 2:26 PM  
Blogger Unknown said...
Here's why none of these folks' efforts will amount to diddly squat. I can explain it in two simple sentences.

1. No matter what, you guys will somehow rationalize voting for Obama and the other Dems anyway.

2. They know it.
6/22/08, 2:45 PM  
Blogger Phil said...
Thanks for the link honey, cracked me up, lower case o, lower case b.

Funny as hell.

I guess I'll have to start a club. I'm thinking Bumperstickers, "I'm an Ornery Bastard".

Yer invited.
6/22/08, 5:44 PM  
Blogger Jill said...
What's the female equivalent of an Ornery Bastard? Cranky Old She-Bitch from the Bowels of Hell? I think I like it. It's kind of Aging Biker-Chick-ish...which is pretty out of character for a middle-aged suburbanite with a pedicure and a J. Jill T-shirt.
6/22/08, 9:54 PM  
Blogger Phil said...
Don't forget to ask 'em if the have a problem with that.
Lol.
6/23/08, 12:58 AM  
Blogger Jeff Hauser said...
I'm Dennis Shulman's campaign manager, and wanted to make very clear that Dennis is adamantly opposed to bailing out the telecom industry.

Dennis was quoted by Howie klein, one of the leaders on this issue, Thursday:

""It is unfortunate that it appears that the telecom industry has managed to falsely conflate its quest for retroactive immunity for lawbreaking with the issue of national security. The Founding Fathers understood that our safety as a nation depended on our being a nation of laws. Retroactive immunity undermines the rule of law, and therefore undermines our principles and security as a nation." http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2008/06/steny-hoyer-plays-shameful-games-for.html

Shoot me an e-mail at jeff@shulmanforcongress.com if there is ever a question of where we stand.
6/25/08, 7:27 PM  
Blogger Jennifer Briney said...
Wow, you got the attention of your congressman's office. Pretty sweet there, Jill!

I've been talking to some American's I've met out here and running an idea by them- I want to run it by you before I post about it.

I was thinking that nobody (except for us politics nerds) really knows who their congressman is. A lot of people can name their Senators, but the House? I'd bet 8 out of ten don't have a clue.

The entire House of Representatives is up for reelection this year. How about we fire them?

The instructions would be simple: look up the name of your representative in the House, and don't vote for them. Vote for anyone else.

I know that we might lose a few good people this way (Kucinich and Wexler come immediately to mind), but I think the greater good would be served by shaking up the system and getting fresh faces in the House. It'll be chaotic. We won't know who would take office in 2009, but the beauty part is, neither would The Club or the media.

In order for this to have a chance though, the idea would have to go viral. I was thinking we could start by doing the same kind of publicizing that we did for the blogswarm: a catchy widgit on the top of all our blogs saying something like "Fire the House of Representatives, November 5th". And then link it to a more detailed explanation.

It's a long shot, but if we can get some of the bigs on board, maybe some Huffington posters will like the idea, then the media will have to comment on how there is no chance in hell - and more and more people could hear about it and do it.

In my opinion, it might be the only chance we've got of really sticking it to Congress and reminding them who's boss- especially since we know that all their polling data is being used to rig elections.

We make their edge (polling data) irrelevant, we might make ourselves relevant again.

What do you think? Would you do it? I'm starting to work on the post this week. I'll also need someone to design some cool widgits, if you know of anyone...
7/7/08, 5:23 AM  
Blogger Jill said...
That's not my Congressman's office, though I hope he will be soon. :) Dennis Shulman is running against one of the worst wingnuts in the House, Scott Garrett. I had asked the question about telecom immunity over at Blue Jersey because Steny Hoyer came here to campaign with Shulman and handed him a $2500 check. I wanted to know if that meant Shulman was on board with Hoyer in terms of granting telecom immunity, given that Hoyer is a big recipient of telecom $$$. So I was glad to see this response.
7/7/08, 6:17 AM  
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