Read the Google Cache of the "Arizona Sentinel" blog cut-and-paste hack job that right-wingers are claiming "proves" that Barack Obama applied to Occidental College as a foreigner. As you'll see with a quick read and the most minimal effort to find the faked sources referred to within, it's a hoax. Also a hoax, therefore, is the claim by right-wingers that the "Arizona Sentinel" is a newspaper website taken down by The Man because conspiracy theorists were TOO CLOSE to the truth! See here for a debunking of the fake "article."
Had it up to here with the silence of the Speaker of the House during years and years of U.S. Government torture? Then shout it to the highest clouds: Nancy Pelosi, Resign!
Looking at the dirty business conducted by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee yesterday, it’s no surprise that the committee chair, Jeff Bingaman, decided to censor the normal live webcast of the committee. If Americans could have watched the servile catering to fossil fuel lobbyists by several of the committee’s Democrats, they might have questioned the narrative of the 2008 election, that the Democrats would bring hope and change to Washington D.C.
It wasn’t just the way that four Democratic senators on the committee - from inland states - joined with Republicans to pass an energy bill amendment to expand offshore drilling in waters near Florida’s tourist beaches. Democrats supported other amendments favoring the fossil fuel industry, and opposing environmental concerns, as well. They voted in a second amendment offering yet more oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, and another amendment that creates a special loophole allowing the federal government to buy energy products from Canada’s tar sands - one of the dirtiest sources of energy on the planet. Currently, a law forbids the government from purchasing energy from sources that result in greenhouse gas emissions at a rate higher than ordinary petroleum. Yesterday, Senate Democrats on the energy committee helped to roll back that restriction.
Looking back to the 2008 election, I seem to remember that the Republicans, with their drill baby drill message of an America that hugs fossil fuels, lost. They lost the presidency. They lost seats in Congress. The old oil economy was rejected by voters, who supported candidates promising a new focus on sustainable energy.
Why, then, are the Democrats in Congress now acting like Republicans, and supporting dirty old energy interests? Do they really think voters won’t notice?
I understand that I’ve just made a very broad statement. However, the Democratic Party made a very broad move yesterday. The entire United States Senate gave its approval to an amendment to a war funding bill. The amendment gave the Secretary of Defense the power to censor any photograph of any captured and held prisoner by the US military. Take note of that - the legislation doesn’t just censor the specific photographs of torture that President Obama has chosen to withhold. It gives the Secretary of Defense the power to make any photograph of anyone held prisoner by the military a secret.
This includes photographs of prisoner abuse that are taken after the date of the passage of the legislation. This legislation is specifically designed to keep future acts of torture by the US military secret. If the Senate was an honest political arena, this legislation would have been entitled The Censorship of Photographs of Future Torture Amendment.
Stop for a minute and consider the following question: Why, if torture by the US military has really stopped, would the Senate create a new law that authorizes the Secretary of Defense to cover up photographs of torture by the military that will occur in the future?
It seems that the United States Senate is planning for further acts of torture by the US military.
Here’s the language, right out of the the legislation itself, amendment to S. AMDT. 1157 to H.R. 2346, the Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2009:
“any record– (A) that is a photograph relating to the treatment of individuals engaged, captured, or detained after September 11, 2001, by the Armed Forces of the United States in operations outside of the United States… shall take effect on the date of enactment of this Act and apply to any photograph created before, on, or after that date”
Not a single voice was raised in dissent. Every single Democrat agreed to this amendment, and right wing independent Senator Joseph Lieberman was leading the way. Amendment 1157 was written by him, and introduced with the added support of Republican Lindsey Graham.
In a larger sense, this is not a partisan issue to trouble the Democrats in particular. After all, Lieberman is an independent, and not one senator Republican, Democrat or independent stood against his amendment - not even Vermont’s independent Bernard Sanders. On the other hand, it was the Democratic Party that promised in the election of 2008 a clean break from the politics of fear. It was the Democratic Party that promised a return to the rule of law under the Constitution. It was the Democratic Party that promised an open government and an end to interference with Freedom of Information Act requests.
Now, with 1157, The Censorship of Photographs of Future Torture Amendment, every single Democrat in the Senate has embraced the politics of fear, has interfered with the Freedom of Information Act, and has joined the Republican attack against the rule of law and the Constitution.
Yesterday, the Democrats of the US Senate moved unanimously to help cover up all past and future acts of torture by our government. Not one newspaper has yet reported on the full impact of this amendment. If the word got out about this legislation, and the Democrats’ role in helping it pass, it would become clear as day that the Democratic Party no longer has any scrap of a legitimate claim to represent the ideals of progressive Americans.
On Friday, I noted that not one single member of the Democratic Party in either house of Congress had stuck his or her neck out to issue a statement criticizing President Obama’s decision to reinstate the separate-and-unequal system of military tribunal show trials created under George W. Bush. Although the scheme is profoundly unconstitutional and unjust, congressional Democrats haven’t criticized it. They’ve put partisan loyalty to their political party ahead of principle.
To be fair, when I looked, it was the same day that Obama had made his pronouncement about creating military tribunals. Perhaps the Democrats simply hadn’t had enough time to write their responses.
Today, I looked again. I searched the online offices of all the most celebrated “progressive” members of the House and Senate. Though they’ve had three days now to review, reflect upon and react to the military tribunal announcement, none of them have dared to challenge it. They’re not talking about it at all. They’re just pretending that it doesn’t exist, that they can’t see it at all.
The Democrats in Congress are now standing,shoulder to shoulder, with the President to support an authoritarian measure that Democrats widely opposed when it was George W. Bush who promoted it.
How does this qualify as the change we were promised during the election of 2008? All I see is a change of faces. The rotten policies begun under the Republicans remain the same.
Poor Sarah Palin. It’s hard enough going on a RNC-paid shopping spree for designer clothes at Saks while the economy tanks. All those hands on you, fitting, fitting, fitting! It turns out that wasn’t the hardest part of the campaign, though. No, no, see, the really hard part of the presidential campaign was being constantly surrounded by all those Republicans who had, you know, religious cooties or something. Whatever it was, they just weren’t righteous enough for Sarah Palin to pray with. Governor Palin explains how she just didn’t think her Republican staffers were Jesus-filled enough to pray with before her Vice Presidential debate:
So I’m looking around for somebody to pray with, I just need maybe a little help, maybe a little extra. And the McCain campaign, love ‘em, you know, they’re a lot of people around me, but nobody I could find that I wanted to hold hands with and pray.
And that, Palin explains, is why things just turned out so bad: she didn’t have the right sort around her. Sarah Palin: holier than thou, and thou, and thou, and thou, and thou, and even thee. I wonder if that act will work for her just as well in the 2012 presidential race as it did in 2008.
I am feeling the same bittersweet feeling this morning. How can such a historic moment for African-Americans in the US be paired with another huge set back for LGBT rights? How can the parallels between banning interracial marriage and banning gay marriage not be seen? How long will it be in the US before we have a gay president?
While there is evidence in representative surveys as well as recent exit polls to support the contention that black Americans (especially religious black Americans) tend to be more anti-gay in their social attitudes than non-black Americans, it is unwise to assume that this tendency automatically carries over to black political leadership.
Consider the United States House of Representatives. 9 out of the 39 members of the Congressional Black Caucus in the House (19.6%) are also members of the Congressional LGBT Equality Caucus. Those who share membership in both caucuses are:
Rep. Edolphus Towns (D-NY, District 10): Overall progressive action score: 29/100 Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX, District 30). Overall progressive action score: 29/100 Rep. Andre Carson (D-IN, District 7): overall progressive action score: 29/100 Rep. John Lewis (D-GA, District 5): overall progressive action score: 43/100 Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-FL, District 23): overall progressive action score: 43/100 Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-NY, District 11): overall progressive action score: 43/100 Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-TX, District 18): overall progressive action score: 57/100 Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN, District 5): overall progressive action score: 64/100 Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA, District 9): overall progressive action score: 71/100
These 9 members of the Black Caucus who are also members of the LGBT Equality Caucus have earned an average progressive action score of 45.3 for their work in the 111th Congress so far. In comparison, members of the Black Caucus who have NOT joined the LGBT Equality Caucus earn an average progressive action score of just 34.8. The membership of the Congressional Black Caucus is not a monolithically progressive body.
What’s your reaction to finding out that 9 out of the 39 members of the Black Caucus are also members of the LGBT Equality Caucus? Do you want to insert the word “just” before the number 9? Before you do, consider that just 16.5% of the NON-black members of the House are also members of the LGBT Equality Caucus. Members of the Black Caucus are MORE likely than non-members to join the LGBT Equality Caucus.
Here’s another thought point: consider H.J. Res 37, Dan Lungren’s proposed constitutional amendment to exclude same-sex couples from the right to marry anywhere in the United States. H.J. Res 37 is supported by 35 members of the House of Representatives. None of those 35 are members of the Black Caucus.
Consider H.R. 1024, a bill to grant same-sex couples the same rights under immigration law that heterosexual couples have. 14 out of the 39 House members of the Black Caucus — that’s 35.9% — are cosponsors of this bill. Only 19.6% of of the non-Black members of the House have cosponsored H.R. 1024.
We see that three times over, members of the Congressional Black Caucus are MORE likely than non-Black members of the House to take a gay rights stand. If there’s a homophobia problem in the House, it’s really more of a NOT-Black thing.
So if there’s really more support for gay rights among Black congresspeople than non-Black congresspeople, why don’t we read op-ed columns writing in anguish about the problem of White (or at least non-Black) Homophobia in the Congress, and of the need for our national politicians to look to Black leaders for inspiration? Part of the answer may lie in the way that some prominent black political leaders, like Barack Obama, have managed time and time and time again to rub gay and gay-friendly Americans’ faces in intolerance. It’s not statistical for us to notice, but notice we do.
Another part of the answer may lie in our tendency to simply write off a large segment of White members of Congress: the Republicans. You can count on white Republicans in Congress to either actively persecute gay people or to sit on their hands while it happens. You can count on that behavior so much that after a while it becomes invisible in the discussion. Instead, we focus on what’s happening solely on the middle to left-hand side of American politics, and if we restrict ourselves to that side, then and only then do white moderates and progressives look comparatively better than black moderates and progressives.
A final part of the answer may be that we hold black national politicians to a higher standard. Many black members of Congress identify themselves as (and many indeed are) coming out of the historical civil rights movement, a social movement that embraced the words “opportunity,” “equality” and “rights.” Nobody likes a hypocrite. It’s entirely fair to ask recalcitrant black politicians why some people are worthy of opportunity, equality and rights but not others. But it’s just as necessary, perhaps even more necessary, to ask the recalcitrant white politicians who in greater numbers and in greater proportion fail to support gay rights the very same question.
In case you’re thinking that the case of Marion Berry was just a matter of coincidence, let’s look elsewhere for an example of much more direct attempts at influence by the pharmacy profession during the election season of 2008. Craig Burridge is not a pharmacist, but he is the executive director of the Pharmacists Society of the State of New York, an active participant in policy discussions regarding Medicare Part D drug coverage and costs, and has long complained about the plan’s financial disadvantage for pharmacists. Burridge ran in the Democratic Party primary for an open seat in the New York’s 21st Congressional District last year. According to Federal Election Committee data Burridge received only one campaign contribution that was not from a pharmacist, a pharmacy executive, an advocate for pharmacists’ interests, or a pharmacists’ political action committee.
The aforementioned Rep. Marion Berry shares Craig Burridge’s policy concern with pharmacists’ reimbursements under Medicare Part D. But that’s not all the congressman and the would-be-congressman share. Despite running campaigns in two states quite distant from one other, they share financial contributors:
Arthur J. Bradley, Pharmacist
Angelo De Fazio, Pharmacist
Stephen Giroux, Pharmacist
H. Edward Heckman, Pharmacy Auditing Executive
Joseph P. Lech, Pharmacist
James L. Martin, Texas Pharmacy Association President
Dirk White, Pharmacist
American Pharmacists Association Political Action Committee
National Association of Chain Drug Stores Political Action Committee
National Community Pharmacists Association PAC
One lesson to glean from this information is that professional interests are organized and coordinated in their efforts to influence the formation of public policy. But another lesson is that such efforts are not inevitably successful. Craig Burridge lost by a substantial margin in the 2008 Democratic primary.
In Washington, DC on the Inauguration Day, I’m aware of three progressive activist events that look forward into the administration of Barack Obama. Here they are, laid out on a map:
2. Ben Masel’s “Stop Government Spying” anti-FISA protest is on the NW corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and 9th St, in front of the FBI building, on the Inaugural Parade route.
3. The Oath of Office Demonstration reminding Barack Obama to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution” will be on the SW corner of Pennsylvania and 9th St, in front of the Department of Justice, also on the Inaugural Parade route.
All three actions will be taking place starting in the morning and continuing until the end of the parade. Note the green spots on Pennsylvania Avenue where pedestrians can cross the Inaugural route until 1:30 pm, about an hour before the parade starts. This is a great way to head from one activity to another as you visit them all.
It turns out that according to FEC data, while Cynthia Ruccia has given thousands of dollars to campaigns and politicians over the years, she never actually gave a penny to the campaign of John McCain.
There was no religious benediction or invocation prayer at the Inauguration of America’s first President. George Washington’s Oath of Office did not include the words so help me God. Neither did Abraham Lincoln’s Inauguration ceremony include these religious elements. In fact, the use of Christian preachers to give prayers at the Inauguration, and the addition of the phrase so help me God to the Oath of Office didn’t really take hold until the 1930s.
If George Washington and Abraham Lincoln didn’t need to insert Christian religious rituals into their inaugurations, why does Barack Obama feel the need to break with the weight of American tradition, as well as the Constitution, in order to do so?
Sadly, the reason Barack Obama is mixing Church and State with his very first act as President is that he’s seeking to build a political coalition with activists on the Religious Right. That’s a sad statement on the difference in stature between Barack Obama and America’s truly great presidents.
Barack Obama ought to remember that the Oath of Office is a promise to uphold and defend the Constitution, which includes passages outlawing religious tests for public office and banning the government establishment of religion.
Well, okay, this isn’t really a message from Rick Warren. It’s an imagination of what Rick Warren might say to American liberals duped into thinking that Barack Obama would represent their values… if Rick Warren were an honest man, and not just a self-serving political climber using his religious power as a tool for his ambition.
I’ll be writing more, much more about this in the days to come, but here’s quick word: I have just received official permit approval from the National Park Service for a political demonstration on the January 20, 2009 Inaugural Parade Route. You’re invited to participate in a pro-constitution Oath of Office rally where citizens will hold signs at our secured spot outside the Department of Justice building right on the Pennsylvania Avenue parade route, on the south side of Pennsylvania Avenue, just west of 9th Street.
I need your help: can you spread the word? The page on which individuals can find up-to-the-minute information on demonstration logistics is right here — please link to it and grab the banner graphic you see here and on that page.
Watch Irregular Times for more information and more ideas about getting the word out in the days that come. If you have expressed dismay at the erosion of constitutional liberty over the past eight years, I sincerely hope that you can make it to this demonstration and express your commitment to the Constitution and a return to the rule of law in America.
It may be hard now, in the post-election, pre-inauguration time when Barack Obama has made his victory, but isn’t actually responsible for government, to remember the serious flaws in Obama’s campaign. You may not be in the mood to try to remember these things, feeling that it’s better to concentrate on hope for change. If you do take a minute, however, to think back to the way that Barack Obama’s presidential campaign was conducted, some rather uncomfortable issues will come back to mind.
You might remember Obama’s use of preacher Donnie McClurkin, who combined religion and hatred of gays to build his base. You might remember how non-religious Americans were treated as second-class citizens at the Democrats’ presidential convention this summer. You might remember that Barack Obama campaigned against same-sex marriage. You also might remember how Obama submitted to the religious test of a faith-based interrogation by Christian preacher Rick Warren, during which which Obama declared that believes himself to be an instrument of God’s will.
Whenever these incidents came up, Obama’s supporters told those of us who care about equal rights not to worry. It’s just the election, they said. Well, the election’s come and gone, and Obama doesn’t have to pander for votes any more, but Obama is still up to the same old garbage he pulled during the campaign.
That’s the reason so many liberals like me are upset at Barack Obama choosing Rick Warren, of all people, to give a religious invocation at his Inauguration. It’s just one more confirmation that the worst aspects of the Obama campaign were not just political triangulation - they were a reflection of serious flaws in Obama’s personality, flaws that we’re going to have to deal with for as long as Obama is President. Barack Obama seems to have a real blind spot when it comes to discrimination against non-heterosexuals and non-Christians.
Rick Warren is the guy who announced that he wouldn’t ever vote for an atheist for President because an atheist wouldn’t have the capabilities necessary for the office. Rick Warren was a big supporter of Prop 8, a law which took equal rights away from same sex couples in California.
Now, Barack Obama is affirming these actions by selecting Rick Warren in particular, out of 300 million Americans, to introduce his Inauguration with a church and state blending Christian prayer. Obama says his choice of Warren isn’t about supporting Warren’s positions, but that’s bull. Obama didn’t speak out against Prop 8 during the campaign. Obama opposed same-sex marriage and embraced anti-gay bigots. Obama embraced Bush’s faith-based initiatives, and failed to stand up for non-religious Americans at the Democratic convention. All through the campaign, Obama pushed to mix religion and politics. Barack Obama has been a consistent supporter of the same arrogant and offensive agenda that makes Rick Warren unpalatable to Americans who believe in constitutional rights and equality.
This action lets me know that Barack Obama will never speak up for my rights as a non-Christian American. Barack Obama is not my President. He’s President of the United States, and I’m a citizen of the United States, so he certainly is President of my nation, but Obama is not a President representing me, or working in my interests. People like me are not part of Obama’s vision of America. Neither are the GLBT citizens of our nation.
Barack Obama defends his choice of Rick Warren by saying that he wants to have a diverse Inauguration Ceremony. Diverse? Is that why he’s following Christian Rick Warren’s Christian invocation with a closing religious benediction by another Christian preacher, Reverend Joseph Lowery? If the Inauguration is diverse, where are the non-Christians in the ceremony? Where are the atheists? Where are the gays and lesbians? Hm. They’re not in the ceremony.
For Barack Obama, diversity means making special room for bigots, while excluding the people that the bigots discriminate against. Barack Obama’s idea of diversity is not diversity at all.
One of the important undone legislative tasks of 2008 is the attempt to bring the White House back under the control of the Constitution and federal law. The CEOs from Detroit might not see things this way, but for the rest of us, ensuring that the President and his aides are not above the law is much more important than providing General Motors, Chrysler and Ford with billions of dollars of public money.
S. 3501, the OLC Reporting Act of 2008, would have taken a significant step toward restoring the accountability of the Executive Branch. The OLC in the title of this bill stands for Office of Legal Counsel. The Office of Legal Counsel is the entity that advises the President on the legality of proposed legal actions. Under George W. Bush, the Office of Legal Counsel became an entity that provided justifications for the violation of the law.
Current Attorney General Michael Mukasey has stated that he will not initiate any criminal investigation into the involvement of any members of the Bush Administration in the administration of torture, even though that involvement is clearly against the law. Mukasey’s justification: The Office of Legal Counsel wrote memos claiming that certain acts of torture are legal, and therefore, involvement in those acts of torture cannot be prosecuted. This declaration establishes the claim that the White House, through the Office of Legal Counsel, has the power to override the law as written by Congress and interpreted by the Judicial Branch. In other words, the precedent established under the Bush Administration is that the President has the power to place himself above the law when he deems it necessary.
Furthermore, the precedent has been set for the President to use the Office of Legal Counsel to overrule the law in secret. Those torture memos Michael Mukasey cited as reason that the President and his aides are immune from prosecution were written in secret. The public was never informed, and neither was Congress, until the existence of the memos was leaked by a whistleblower this year.
S. 3501, the OLC Reporting Act of 2008, would take the small but important step of requiring that the Office of Legal Counsel make a report to Congress when it issues an opinion to the President that he does not need to obey a law. The idea of the law, introduced by Russ Feingold, is that, if Congress knows that the President is using his legal staff to justify the defiance of the law using particular legal arguments, Congress can then write legislation specifically intended to end the Office of Legal Counsel’s interpretation.
The committee report on S. 3501 released last week suggests that no argument can be reasonably made against S. 3501. The Congressional Budget Office has analyzed the legislation, and concluded that it would result in no significant increased spending. The Senate Judiciary Committee has concluded, upon its own analysis, that “no significant regulatory impact will result” from the passage of the bill.
Yet, S. 3501 has not passed the Senate.
Some shortsighted Democrats might say that this isn’t really an urgent issue any more, given that George W. Bush is leaving office in a month from now, and Barack Obama will occupy the Oval Office. That conclusion depends, however, upon the belief that it’s acceptable to have a tyrant in control of our nation, so long as that tyrant’s agenda happens to agree with ours.
Barack Obama, upon entering the role of President of the United States, will do so as a tyrant. This isn’t a personal judgment on Obama’s character. It’s a practical fact. The tyrannical powers of the presidency as established under George W. Bush - arbitrary imprisonment, unjust trials, torture, spying on Americans without any real oversight - will not disappear just because Bush himself is gone. Barack Obama is assuming the powers of the Presidency on January 20, and right now, those powers include the powers of a tyrant. That will make President Barack Obama a tyrant.
Does that not matter to Democrats? Is the United States of America really a nation in which people don’t care whether their executive leader is a tyrant, so long as they regard him as a benevolent tyrant? I hope not, but I’m really not sure.
Here’s significant cause for concern: Barack Obama never cosponsored S. 3501. Neither did Hillary Clinton - now to become Secretary of State. Neither did Joseph Biden - now to become Vice President. Three of the top four leaders in the line of succession to the Presidency (including Obama himself) have come from the Senate, where they failed to support efforts to take away the power of the President to overrule federal law. Nancy Pelosi, as Speaker of the House is the fourth in the group in line now to take the Presidency, and she has a similar poor record of standing up for constitutional balance of powers.
Under our Constitution, and the system of laws that it establishes, we aren’t supposed to have to trust our elected leaders to be good people, and to use their powers in accordance with the law. We’re supposed to have assurance that our leaders are acting under the law - assurance through a system of checks and balances between the three branches of federal government. As Barack Obama prepares to take office, that system of checks and balances remains dismantled.
If you actually care about the rule of law in the United States of America, I don’t care whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican, a Green, a Libertarian, or an independent. You need to call your two United States senators and urge them to support the passage of S. 3501, the OLC Reporting Act of 2008.
It is a time of fear in the face of freedom, a time for the widening of previous roads and the opening of new paths, a time of an emptying country and swelling cities, yet a time when these paths are mined by knowing algorithms of the all-seeing eye. It is the time of the warrior's peace and the miser's charity, when the planting of a seed is an act of conscientious objection. These are the times when maps fade and direction is lost. Forwards is backwards now, so we glance sideways at the strange lands through which we are all passing, knowing for certain only that our destination has disappeared. We are unready to meet these times, but we proceed nonetheless, adapting as we wander, reshaping the Earth with every tread. Behind us we have left the old times, the standard times, the high times. Welcome to the irregular times.
In case you’re thinking that the case of Marion Berry was just a matter of coincidence, let’s look elsewhere for an example of much more direct attempts at influence by the pharmacy profession during the election season of 2008. Craig Burridge is not a pharmacist, but he is the executive director of the Pharmacists Society of the State of New York, an 
You might remember Obama’s use of 
Recent Comments