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In recent days, we’ve noted a number of ways in which Libertarian Party presidential candidate Bob Barr has actually opposed American liberty: revocation of Americans’ citizenship rights and American fathers’ parental rights, voting for the Patriot Act, voting to prohibit abortion, and using government to promote discrimination against gays and lesbians.

There’s more. Bob Barr cosponsored a constitutional amendment that would give Congress the power to make burning the flag a criminal act. He did this more than once.

Restricting free speech? That’s not a pro-liberty position. It’s an authoritarian position. It holds that people should only be able to express sentiments that Bob Barr likes.

No, Bob Barr hasn’t repudiated his past actions to end freedom of speech. In fact, the issues section of his presidential campaign website has nothing whatsoever to say about freedom of speech.

Liberty’s candidate?

As I indicated yesterday, as a member of Congress Bob Barr cosponsored legislation to remove the American citizenship of American-born babies, even when the father of the baby is an American. This was a move to jointly remove the rights of fathers and the rights of their children born right here in the USA. In its place Bob Barr tried to implement a system that would mandate marriage for fathers of American-born babies, and institute a Nazi-style citizenship system in which purity of a baby’s bloodline trumps the place of a baby’s birth.

Introducing marriage mandates.
Instituting Nazi blood purity thinking.
Revoking fathers’ parental rights.
Revoking American babies’ citizenship rights.

And under the banner of what party is Bob Barr currently running for President?

Yes, Bob Barr is running for President with The Libertarian Party.

This afternoon, after a Barr supporter suggested that Bob Barr had perhaps changed his position on this subject, I checked Bob Barr’s current presidential platform statement on the subject. Here’s what he writes:

The U.S. also should reconsider the policy of “birthright” citizenship. The members of Congress and state legislatures that approved the 14th Amendment (in the late 1860s) never imagined that their work would turn the children of tourists, as well as illegal migrants, into citizens. Although a constitutional amendment likely will be necessary to do this, America should join most of the countries of the world and require more the than location of birth to determine citizenship.

Here’s what the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America currently states:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.

The only change Bob Barr has affirmed is that now he recognizes the existence of the U.S. Constitution. While in his previous legislation Barr tried to unconstitutionally overwrite Constitution with a bill in order to constrict Americans’ rights, now he wants to amend the constitution in order to constrict Americans’ rights.

No renunciation of Nazi blood line theories.
No renunciation of his attempt to revoke the parental rights of fathers.
A reaffirmation that Americans’ rights should be constricted.

This isn’t an aberration. It’s part of a trend.

Bob Barr voted for the Patriot Act.
Bob Barr worked to prohibit military women overseas from obtaining abortions, even when they pay for it themselves.
Bob Barr wrote an article explaining why it was a great idea for the government to pay for discrimination against gays and lesbians.

These positions should give any liberty-loving American pause.

As I noted yesterday, since Barack Obama knifed the Constitution in the back with his pro-FISA flip flop, people have been writing to me with advice about how I should switch my vote to Bob Barr for President. See, they tell me, Bob Barr is the Libertarian Party candidate, and so he will be a big supporter of Liberty. Never mind that he actually voted for the Patriot Act: he’s sorry about that now. And never mind that he voted to prohibit women in the military serving overseas from obtaining abortions, even if these women pay for it out of their own pockets: that’s, um, er, states’ rights?

Yes, I am highly skeptical of the claim that Bob Barr is the presidential candidate for those who care about American freedom. My skepticism is deepened when I find out that when he held office in the U.S. Congress as a Republican, Bob Barr cosponsored legislation to take away the citizenship of American-born babies. Read the legislation yourself.

Let’s get into some detail here so you can appreciate the extent to which Bob Barr’s cosponsorship is actually a rejection of constitutional liberty.

As it now stands in the United States of America, if you are born in this country, you’re a citizen. Being born in this country, not being of “pure blood descent” (a Nazi idea), is what brings you into the fold of citizenship. This idea about citizenship is so fundamental that it is formally enshrined in the United States Constitution:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.

The bill Bob Barr cosponsored, H.R. 73, proposes two conditions under which babies born in the United States should have their citizenship revoked:

1. IF THE PARENTS ARE MARRIED, then the American-born baby loses her citizenship if her parents aren’t themselves citizens or permanent residents.
2. IF THE PARENTS AREN’T MARRIED, then the American-born baby loses his citizenship if his MOTHER isn’t a citizen or permanent resident, even if his FATHER IS a citizen or permanent resident.

Bob Barr was not required by his Republican party to cosponsor the legislation — only 48 members of the U.S. Congress out of 435 members total supported the bill. Bob Barr actively chose to support this bill. Bob Barr actively chose to affirm the following extreme ideas:

1. The Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is just a suggestion that any old law of Congress can overrule.

2. The purity of one’s bloodline, not the quality of one’s self, determines one’s rights.

3. Children who are born to unmarried parents have no status in the eyes of the law.

4. Fathers have no parenthood rights, bestowing nothing upon their children. If you are born to a father who is an American citizen and a mother who is, say, a visiting student from Latvia, you can forget it. You didn’t follow Bob Barr’s moral strictures, so you must pay.

To a citizen who respects the Constitution as the supreme law of the land, who believes in civil liberty and who believes that government should be open and free in the recognition of the rights rather than restrictive in constraining them, the ideas contained in these bills should be chilling to the bone. Remember who endorsed these ideas: Bob Barr.

Barack Obama disappointed freedom-loving Americans earlier this summer with his flip-flop from opposition to warrantless wiretapping to an embrace of it. Obama’s move is a betrayal of the notion that the U.S. Constitution is not a suggestion but a binding compact; it’s a betrayal of his oath of office as a Senator and his presumptive oath of office as a president — to support and defend the Constitution.

Since Obama’s move against the Constitution, I’ve been peppered with e-mails from people who tell me that they have rejected voting for Obama, and that former Republican congressman and current libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr is now the best presidential candidate for people who believe in liberty. When I write back and point out that Bob Barr voted for the USA Patriot Act, they tell me it was long ago and that he’s really, really, really sorry. But if you want to understand what someone will do in the future, the best predictor is what they’ve done in the past… and it’s not just the Patriot Act that looms in Barr’s past, but a wide variety of actions to undermine freedom in this country.

Take a woman’s right to control her own body. Flaming arch-conservative congressman Bob Dornan succeeded in getting the House of Representatives to vote for a measure prohibiting any federal funds or facilities from being used for women in the military to have abortions. Bob Barr voted for the measure. Rep. Rosa DeLauro pointed out that hey, in a number of countries with American military presence abortion cannot be obtained; American military facilities are the only places where American military women could obtain an abortion. Cutting off those facilities as a place for abortions means entirely removing the possibility for these women to have abortions at all. So DeLauro proposed an amendment to Dornan’s measure to allow women in the military to obtain abortions at American military facilities if those women paid the entire cost of the abortion themselves. Bob Barr voted against the DeLauro amendment.

So here’s another set of votes in which Bob Barr had the chance to choose between authoritarianism and freedom. Barr chose authoritarianism. I don’t trust Bob Barr.

When the FISA Amendments Act came up for a vote in the Senate last week, Barack Obama broke his promise to filibuster the law and vote against it if it contained retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies. Obama voted against the filibuster, and voted for the FISA Amendments Act. John McCain didn’t even bother to show up for work.

Two other presidential candidates, however, stood against the FISA Amendments Act. Green candidate Cynthia McKinney spoke against the FISA Amendments Act. Independent candidate Ralph Nader did too.

The following is Nader’s statement:

“I’m listening now to the debate on the Senate floor over legislation that will give President Bush new warrant-less eavesdropping powers.

The bill will also grant immunity to telecom companies for cooperating with Mr. Bush in his illegal warrant-less wiretapping on Americans–on any one of you.

We were taught as young children that in our democracy, under our system of justice, nobody is above the law– nobody.

But this bill puts the President and the telecom companies above the law.

It also conveniently assures a cover-up of Mr. Bush’s past crimes in this area–of wiretapping and surveillance.

On the Senate floor, Senator Feingold has just warned his colleagues that the Senate “will regret that we passed this legislation.”

As my home state Senator, Christopher Dodd, said:

“If we pass this legislation, the Senate will ratify a domestic spying regime that has already concentrated far too much unaccountable power in the President’s hands and will place the telecommunications companies above the law.”

What does it say that Senators Dodd, Feingold, Harry Reid, and Patrick Leahy have led the valiant fight against this bill, but Senator Obama has said he will vote for it?

Again, this bill gives the President vast new warrant-less eavesdropping powers and allows the government - for the first time ever - to tap into America’s telecommunications networks with no judicial warrant requirement.

President Bush and the Democrats who support him argue that the telecommunications companies were only doing what they were told by the President and were acting as “patriotic corporate citizens.”

This is pure hogwash.

First of all, corporations aren’t citizens.

Second, the President can’t order anyone–citizens or corporations–to break the law.

This legislation, which the Senate is debating right now, sets up a double standard of justice.

Break the law as a citizen, go to jail.

Break the law as a corporation, go to Washington and get immunity.

Remember, there were telecom companies, such as Qwest, that refused to follow President Bush’s illegal wiretap orders and chose instead to obey the laws of the land.

The Senate is now poised to bury the rule of law.”

Some people may be considering voting for the Green Party candidate for President in 2008. Check out this map showing the places where the Green Party has ballot access:

An updated copy will always be available here.

If you’re in one of the states where a ballot access drive is underway, and you want to support the Green Party, one way to do that is to find a Green Party state-level group and add your signature.

Yesterday, I asked how one could assert that the Green Party is nutsy. Allow me to answer my own question with a piece of the Green Party’s tentative policy platform for 2008:

All viable candidates at the state and federal levels should have free and equal access to a regulated and neutral internet, to radio and television time, and to print press coverage.

You read that right: the Green Party wants to regulate the Internet so that it is politically neutral and provides free and equal access to all “viable” candidates, whatever “viable” may mean.

I find it hard to decide where to even begin. I mean, okay, how about this one: the internet is a forum for freedom of speech and freedom of the press. Someone wrote about those freedoms somewhere once:

Amendment I. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Oh, right, the Constitution! Hey, I know that the Constitution is getting less respect these days and it seems to be more of a suggestion lately, but gee, I thought the Green Party might still subscribe to the radical far-left wacko position that the U.S. Constitution is the law of the land and junk.

Then there’s the question of exactly how you would go about regulating the Internet to make it politically neutral. What? I mean really, what would you do? Make it the law that every time Yellow Swordfish posts a critique of George W. Bush, it must also say something nasty about Al Gore? Can John McCain make Progressive Patriots post pro-McCain campaign materials on its website? That’s equal access, you know. Or do you not let TalkLeft post another expose of George W. Bush’s shenanigans until some half-cocked Bush supporters write a piece of their own to balance it out? How do you have equal access for all the candidates during a week when a la Aaron Burr, one candidate shoots another in a duel?

The committee of people within the Green Party that wrote this silly, nutsy, bureaucratic piece of the 2008 Platform doesn’t seem to understand how the Internet actually works. See, every political candidate pretty much does have access to the Internet, or at least every candidate who can afford a $20 domain registration fee at $10 a month for a website. Someone tell the Greens how it all works: see, you write something, then others link to it if they like it, and bingo, you’ve got an audience. That’s, like, freedom in a self-organizing collective or some kind of anarchist decentralized Power to the People sorta thing. Why on Earth the Green Party would want to sweep aside the Constitution and use the Government to mandate some kind of bureaucratic bean-counted neutrality is beyond me.

Jake Tapper, writing in opinion-mode for ABC News, starts off his reporting with this quip:

For those voters who think Ralph Nader and Bob Barr are too conventional, the Green Party this weekend named former Rep. Cynthia McKinney, D-Georgia, its 2008 presidential nominee.

At the Green Party’s nominating convention Saturday in at the Chicago Symphony Center, McKinney received 313 out of 532 votes cast in the first round of balloting.

Cynthia McKinney’s status as the presidential nominee for the Green Party makes her the standard bearer for the Green Party platform. What makes the Green Party agenda so decidedly unconventional, so wildly out there that it eclipses Ralph Nader in unconventionality? Let’s look in the Green Party platform and see what is so nutty about the Green agenda:

The national Green Party is a federation of State Green Parties. Greens are dedicated to social, environmental, economic and political justice. The four principles that underpin our policies are grassroots democracy, social justice, ecology and non-violence.

Is that radical?

The Green Party is distinguished from other political parties by its independence from corporate control. We accept no contributions from Corporations and are not beholden to the corporate paymasters.

Nutsy?

We believe that humankind is threatened by two crises

* The survival of the human species, indeed, the survival of all living things on Planet Earth are endangered by over use, abuse and drain of nature’s resources which are our life-support system. Pollution of the land, the sea and the air call into question our acceptance of our obligation to ourselves and following generations.

* The drift away from the rule of law by our government and the erosion of our Constitution. Government of, by and for the people depends on an educated public who do not surrender their citizen oversight when they elect candidates to office. Government accountability for its performance is a permanent obligation to retain the public trust. In contemporary times, our government has deliberately cut off access and shown indifference to the public will. It has made the rule of law a hollow promise. Furthermore our government’s defiance of international law and the UN Charter has undermined the willingness of other nations to accept the rule of law embodied in the Charter and international law.

Crazy, huh?

Redistricting - Support a Constitutional amendment that removes the re-districting power from the state legislatures and gives it to the Census Bureau - a non-partisan agency whose assignment is to count the number of citizens in each state every 10 years.

Viva la Revolucion?

There are some aspects of the Green Party platform that are untenable, but the same can be said of the platform of the Democratic Party. I mean, heck, the Democratic Party leadership just shoved through a bill that lets the government search and seize anyone’s communications or property for periods of longer than two months without a warrant. That’s unconventional. That’s nutsy. Jake Tapper, what’s so nutsy about the Green Party’s vision for remaking politics? Its mere existence?

Cynthia McKinney is now the official presidential candidate of the Green Party. Her vice presidential running mate is Rosa Clemente.

About a week ago, I wrote an article reporting that none of the Green Party presidential candidates appeared to have said anything about the FISA Amendments Act. It turns out that Cynthia McKinney did make a short statement, though that short statement received almost no coverage, and the one article, by San Francisco Bay Indymedia, that did provide coverage only recently was indexed by the search engines.

The statement was made on June 24th, at a protest organized by peace activist Cindy Sheehan, who is challenging Nancy Pelosi for her seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. Pelosi led the Democratic leadership’s effort to pass the FISA Amendments Act, and Sheehan, in response, led a burial for the 4th Amendment, a part of the Bill of Rights that the FISA Amendments Act blatantly violates.

McKinney said,

“Last week, Nancy Pelosi helped deal a double blow to Democratic Party grassroots supporters and to the U.S. Constitution itself. On Thursday, June 19, George Bush got another $162 billion from the Congress for war and occupation. On Friday, June 20, Nancy helped Bush give immunity to telecommunications companies that helped him spy on us!

Fannie Lou Hamer of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party remarked that she was sick and tired of being sick and tired. And she did something about it by standing up at the Democratic Party Convention that routinely had accepted all-white, non-representative state delegations from the South.

Well, I’m sick and tired and outraged, too. And I’m doing something about it.

Cindy Sheehan is my choice for Congress.

Nancy thinks that by November you will have forgotten about all of this.
Don’t forget! Remember–in November!

Vote Cindy! Vote Cynthia!”

It’s good to know that there is at least one presidential candidate who is against the FISA Amendments Act. However, Cynthia McKinney needs to do a much better job at publicizing her positions on the issues, though, especially on issues like the FISA Amendments Act which have large numbers of Democrats disenchanted with Barack Obama. If McKinney won’t provide information on these policy differences, it’s going to be very difficult even for well-intentioned independent progressive media sources to report on them.

Where can Americans of good conscience turn in these times when even Barack Obama, the supposed candidate of change and hope, is embracing the worst policies of George W. Bush - policies like warrantless wiretapping of Americans and “faith-based” religious kickbacks from the government?

Can we turn to the Green Party, perhaps? I don’t see much good support for that. I searched the campaign web sites of the Green Party presidential candidates: Cynthia McKinney, Jesse Johnson and Kat Swift. I expected to see vigorous opposition to the FISA Amendments Act. What better opportunity could there be, after all, for the Green Party to point out that the Democratic presidential candidate is breaking promises, and turning his back on progressive values?

There was nothing. I couldn’t find so much as a peep about the FISA Amendments Act from any of the Green Party candidates. Not one protest.

The Green candidates have had two weeks now to issue a statement on this issue, and they haven’t lifted a finger. They haven’t even written one paragraph, one sentence on their campaign sites to defend the Constitution.

I don’t think we have anywhere to turn. When even the Green Party won’t speak up for the cause of liberty in America, there are only us independent citizens to do the work.

America celebrates the 4th of July by eating hot dogs, and by completely forgetting the liberty for which the Revolution of 1776 was fought. We are losing that liberty, not with a coup d’etat, or even a great debate, but with a mere shrug.

Last week, I indicated in a video that because Barack Obama had not only broken his promise to oppose the FISA Amendments Act through filibuster, but had also turned his back on the Bill of Rights in general and the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in particular, Barack Obama had “lost my vote.”

I’ve been feeling that I ought to explain what that means. And I ought to explain what I mean by “means,” too. Obviously it doesn’t “mean” much of anything to Barack Obama’s chances of winning the presidency. No presidential contest in any state has hinged on one vote, so what I do nominally with my vote won’t determine whether Barack Obama is or is not the next president. I’m speaking in a much more limited sense of definition. What do I mean by Barack Obama having “lost my vote”?

I mean this: earlier this year, after Barack Obama had followed through to a considerable extent on his pledge to oppose the FISA Amendments Act, and after he had made a point of highlighting human rights and civil rights and the Constitution in a series of repeated speeches, I had not only decided to case my vote for Barack Obama in the Ohio primary but had decided to vote for him in the general election as well. My mind on these matters was made up, not only because Obama’s pledges put him in a better policy position than Hillary Clinton or John McCain, but because they put him by himself in a good policy position, period. It is about time we had a presidential nominee who makes it a priority to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States from all enemies foreign and domestic. You know, that Oath of Office thing.

It still is about time we had a presidential nominee who makes it a priority to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, and with Barack Obama playing flip-flop and running to the camp of anti-constitutionalists like um, er, a really fast thing that runs, we’re going to get worse than nothing from Barack Obama. Obama is committing to help enact into law, and then exploit as president, unconstitutional violations of Americans’ civil rights. With that reversal, when I say that Barack Obama has “lost my vote,” I mean that I have lost my decisiveness in support of his candidacy. Barack Obama had my vote in the bag. Now he doesn’t.

I don’t mean that I will vote for John McCain. That would be absurd, considering that John McCain is more anti-Constitutional than Barack Obama. You can pretty much bet that unless a squirrel hits McCain on the noggin with an acorn tomorrow and somehow reactivates his conscience, triggering a wholescale reprioritization of his platform, McCain will not get my vote.

So if I’m not voting for John McCain, and Barack Obama has not won my vote, what could I do? I don’t know what I will do, but here are some possibilities:

1. Vote for Barack Obama. Obama will have to affirmatively do a number of things to win my vote back. Most centrally, he’ll have to somehow convince me that he does not consider the Constitution to be a suggestion.

2. Vote for a third party candidate. Yes, this is an option. But yes, the third party candidate will have to meet the sniff test too. Don’t hold your breath on this option — but I can tell you I’m looking around.

3. Not show up to vote. This is different than voting for John McCain, because voting for John McCain actively negates another person’s Obama vote. Not voting at all has half the effect.

And in the meantime…

4. Not contribute to Barack Obama’s campaign. In the 2004 campaign, I ended up donating more than $1200 to the John Kerry presidential campaign. I haven’t yet sent any campaign contributions to Barack Obama, and I am not inclined to do so now. That’s because:

Regardless of how I vote…

5. I will always criticize Barack Obama when he does something that merits criticism. The sheep-like mentality that we all need to just put our heads down, shut up, bury our doubts and go with the herd is something I struggle against. I am not a robot, I am not a brainless tool, and I believe with a passion that the phrase “Dissent is the Highest Form of Patriotism” applies to dissent directed at Democratic party figures, too.

It’s a fairly important substantive question being considered in the Unity08 v. FEC lawsuit, filed back in January of 2007: ought groups attempting to engineer the election of third-party figures as presidential candidates to obey the fundraising restrictions of political action committees, which restrict contributions to $5,000 per person and require the amounts, terms and conditions of loans to be disclosed? Or should they be allowed to take very large contributions from single people and hide the terms of the large loans given to them by individuals — loans that may turn out to be no-interest, payback-optional backdoor contributions? In short, should inside players be able to front presidential bids without bothering to garner the support of a widespread donor base?

A year and a half later, and a year after arguments were completed in the case, Judge Richard W. Roberts has still refused to rule in the case, even though Unity08 has continued to persist as a nominal organization for the purpose of seeing the lawsuit to its conclusion. The last development, the last big change in the case? On May 14 2008, one of the lawyers for Unity08 informed the court of a change in his address.

Something’s more than a wee bit off-kilter here.

In today’s New York Times, Frank Rich writes with great skepticism about the notion that there is really and truly a movement of Clinton supporters eager to support John McCain:

Our new bogus narrative rose from the ashes of Mrs. Clinton’s concession to Mr. Obama, amid the raucous debate over what role misogyny played in her defeat. A few female Clinton supporters — or so they identified themselves — appeared on YouTube and Fox News to say they were so infuriated by sexism that they would vote for Mr. McCain.

How bogus is this narrative? How bogus are the self-identifications of Clinton supporters who say they will campaign whole-heartedly against Barack Obama and for John McCain? A local example of national prominence, Cynthia Ruccia, is not at all bogus in her identification as a long-time Democrat. Ruccia, after all, ran for Congress in Ohio against John Kasich in both 1994 and 1996. Her reflections on the experience can be found in Robert G. Boatright’s book Expressive Politics: Issue Strategies of Congressional Challengers, pp. 173-174:

[Of the 1994 race] It was not going to be an easy race, but on paper it was doable. It took me a fair amount of time to sell the DCCC on that, but I got a fair amount of assistance after I opened their eyes to it. Now when the 1996 election came around it was a whole different story, because Kasich had been on his own meteoric rise at the time, so he became sort of a target. People became involved in my campaign for philosophical reasons. When it came down to party help, I got more than a lot of people got, but it’s a horse race for them, they add up the numbers and see how people are going to do before they allocate the resources. They put me in a kind of special category, but I didn’t get to experience, for example, what Ted Strickland or Dennis Kucinich got. I wasn’t quite in that category….

I was received very well by the state Democratic Party. What I really appreciated was that I always had access to [state party chair] David Leland if I needed some help, and he was always straight with me, told me what they couldn’t do. I knew that in working with him, if I had specific requests, that if he could do it, he would do it. I didn’t get any double talk.

Boatright reports that as a congressional candidate, she had the assistance of the Ohio Democratic Party in gaining national figures such as President Bill Clinton, Jesse Jackson and John Conyers to campaign for her. After Ruccia’s two unsuccessful campaigns for the House of Representatives, she also ran unsuccessfully for a seat in the Ohio House in 1998, getting 40% of the vote. In her interview for Boatright’s 2004 book, she indicated hopes to secure some sort of political office as a way setting a foundation for future runs for national office.

It is not only in runs for office that Cynthia Ruccia has expressed herself as a Democrat. She contributed $1516 to Hillary Clinton this year, $300 to the Ohio Democratic Party in 2007, and $1750 to Ohio Democratic congressional candidate MaryEllen O’Shaughnessy in 1999. Ruccia ran for the Franklin County Democratic Central Committee in 2004 and before that in 2000. Ruccia is a Democratic ward leader in Bexley, Ohio, and sits on the Franklin County Democratic Party Executive Committee. As of last year, Ruccia was listed as a leader of the Eastside Progressive Democrats. A little bit more than a month ago, Ruccia held an event in her home that appeared to create income for herself in her work as a cosmetics salesperson along with donations of 25% of proceeds to the Franklin County Democratic Party.

Bottom line: Cynthia Ruccia is clearly NOT a Republican mole. She has years and years of experience in the Democratic Party as a functionary, a candidate and a contributor.

After her splash in the news media last month, with notes in Politico and a TV appearance on Bill O’Reilly’s show, Cynthia Ruccia has converted an old pro-Clinton website into a woman-identified website against Barack Obama and nebulously for John McCain. That website has not done much to date except to feature thoughts about the 2008 race, and it remains to be seen whether this will be a significant force in the 2008 election or a fleeting fancy. I encourage you to follow Ruccia’s website and see where it goes.

Are you heading to the Unity08 presidential nominating convention? Let’s set this page up as the unofficial Rider Board. If you have space in your car to spare, say so. If you need a ride, say so. Be sure to indicate where you’re driving from and your e-mail so you can coordinate schedules!

Hee. Yes, this is the month that the fake-grassroots public relations corporate disaster called Unity08 promised to have its presidential nominating convention. Didn’t work out so much.

One of my favorite quotes from the group:

“Did you know that 99% of American voters have NO say in who is picked to run for president on the party tickets? Unless you live in Iowa or New Hampshire, you’re left out in the cold. And everyone knows, these two races (and how filled the campaign coffers are) dictates what happens in the rest of the country.” — Sam Waterston, Unity08 corporate spokesbrow.

I’ll always have those happy times to remember. Family members and kids’ teachers appointed to executive boards. Missed FEC filing deadlines. Secret funders. Sharing office space with Republican operatives and the Draft Bloomberg Committee. Sigh. Misty colored memories of the way we werrrrrrrrrrrrrrre…