Which Senate Democrats Have Failed To Confront Discrimination On The Basis Of Sexual Orientation?

June 5th, 2013 | Posted by Peregrin Wood in Democrats | Legislation | Sex and Gender - (1 Comments)

There’s good news for Americans who care about freedom from discrimination in the workplace. In the U.S. Senate, Al Franken has introduced S. 1088, a bill that would prohibit discrimination in public schools based on the sexual orientation, or perceived sexual orientation, of students.

But then, only 33 Senate Democrats actually have signed their names to support the bill. That’s not something to be proud of.
The Senate Democrats who seem not to give a damn about discrimination against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Americans are:

sneering donkeyMax Baucus
Tom Carper
Joe Donnelly
Dianne Feinstein
Heidi Heitkamp
Mazie Hirono
Tim Johnson
Tim Kaine
Mary Landrieu
Carl Levin
Joe Manchin
Claire McCaskill
Robert Menendez
Bill Nelson
Mark Pryor
Harry Reid
John Rockefeller
Jon Tester
Mark Warner

These Democrats are the congressional equivalent of the kids in high school who would look the other way while the gay kids got beat up. They’re cowards.

By the way, independent senator Angus King is refusing to support this legislation as well. How are you feeling about that, Maine voters?

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Sheldon Whitehouse Steps Up To Deal With Climate Change, But Senate Declines To Act

March 26th, 2013 | Posted by The Green Man in Environment | Legislation - (3 Comments)

For some months now, I’ve been poking at Senator Sheldon Whitehouse on the issue of climate change. Whitehouse has been an eloquent speaker on the issue, calling upon his Senate colleagues to take action… but until recently, Whitehouse hadn’t taken action on the climate issue himself.

A few days ago, that changed. Senator Whitehouse offered S.Amdt. 646 to S.Con.Res. 8, a legislative amendment that would have, if passed, begun the process for establishing a fee on the carbon dioxide pollution that is known to be causally linked to climate change. Republicans love to bluster about what they call a “carbon tax”, complaining that businesses will be economically crippled if they have to pay a fee when they release massive amounts of carbon dioxide pollution into the atmosphere. The fact is, though, that Americans are already paying a price for carbon dioxide emissions. The damage caused by carbon dioxide, in extreme weather events, is already costing American citizens and businesses immense amounts of money. The thing is that the corporations that release the lion’s share of the carbon dioxide aren’t paying for the expense. They’re expecting other businesses, the government, and individual Americans to pick up the tab for them.

Introducing his legislation, Senator Whitehouse warned, “We can ignore obvious facts, we can ignore the essentially unanimous science, we can ignore our generals and admirals, we can ignore the insurance industry’s warnings, but we ignore carbon pollution at our peril, and we have subsidized it long enough. It is past time to wake up from our sleepwalking. This vote is a test. Whether we pass or fail is a measure of us.”

senate democratsThe vote on the Whitehouse amendment was indeed a test, and every single Republican member of the U.S. Senate failed the test. They weren’t alone, however. Their names are:

Max Baucus, Joe Donnelly, Kay Hagan, Heidi Heitkamp, Tim Johnson, Tim Kaine, Mary Landrieu, Joe Manchin, Claire McCaskill, Mark Pryor, John Rockefeller, Jon Tester, and Mark Warner.

In the days to come, I’ll be detailing the corrupt financial relationships between these senators and the industries responsible for huge amounts of carbon dioxide pollution.

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Senator Merkley Tries To Reform FISA Amendments Act Spying Against Americans

August 3rd, 2012 | Posted by jclifford in Legislation | Liberty - (2 Comments)

In Congress, both the Senate and the House of Representatives are scheduling bills that will reauthorize the FISA Amendments Act for 5 more years. That’s bad news, because the FISA Amendments Act is one of the most abusive, unconstitutional laws from the Era of Homeland Insecurity. The law sets up an immense electronic dragnet that scoops up almost unimaginable amounts of Americans’ private communications in text, audio, video and other formats, regardless of whether they’re suspected of involvement in any crime – all without any search warrant, as the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution requires.

The Director of National Intelligence has recently been forced to admit that the government’s use of FISA Amendments Act spying powers has violated the Constitution. Yet, the bills that would reauthorize the FISA Amendments Act contain absolutely no reforms.

There are a few members of Congress who are attempting to take a stand against the reauthorization of this extreme surveillance system. One of them is Senator Jeff Merkley.

This week Senator Merkley introduced S. 3515, the Protect America’s Privacy Act. Merkley’s legislation wouldn’t end the FISA Amendments Act spying against Americans, but it would, if approved, result in some reforms. These include:

watching you online- Increased authority for the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court
- An end to continued unapproved surveillance during court review
- A new requirement that information gathered through FISA Amendments Act surveillance and stored in a database could only be searched for and used after the issuance of a search warrant for that specific purpose

So far, there are only two U.S. senators who have co-sponsored the Protect America’s Privacy Act. They are Jon Tester and Ron Wyden.

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Jon Tester Wants To Put The American Flag In A Cage

June 18th, 2012 | Posted by Peregrin Wood in Homeland Insecurity | Legislation - (2 Comments)

Across the USA, American flags are flying, unprotected.

The thought gives me shivers. What could happen to all those flags, and what would happen to the United States of America if it didn’t have those flags? It would be a disaster, a catastrophe. It would be worse than Godzilla tromping all over Dallas. Babies would cry. Puppies and kittens would die!

american flag politicsTo deal with the very very serious problem of unprotected flags, Senator Jon Tester has introduced S. 3296, legislation to “provide for the protection of the flag of the United States”. The law would require a hundred thousand dollar fine and a prison term of up to a year, as punishment for any act that harms an American flag in a context that creates a “breach of the peace” or seems intended to.

If you hadn’t guessed, Senator Tester is running for re-election this year. Tester says that the extraordinary fine and prison term is necessary, because many Americans experience a quavering in their “emotional well-being” when they see an American flag being damaged.

Of course, Senator Tester’s legislation does nothing to really prevent harm to American flags. It focuses only on punishment after the fact, providing no flag security to protect these beloved pieces of cloth.

If Senator Tester really wants to protect American flags, he should introduce a new bill requiring all people who display an American flag to construct an iron cage around it, with barbed wire snaking around every flag pole. Only such a measure would keep our American flags safe, and protect the precious emotional well-being of flag worshipers.

Only with a cage for every flag can the citizens of the USA sleep in peace.

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The Rehberg Circus: Is Deleted Publicity is Good Publicity?

June 1st, 2012 | Posted by Jim Cook in Media | Politics | Republicans - (3 Comments)

Welcome to the Denny Rehbergy Media Circus. In Ring One sits the Sunlight Foundation, which rolled out a Politwoops transparency website designed to reveal politicians at unguarded moments. The hook? Instantly tracking the Twitter posts of members of Congress and letting the public know when any of those “Tweets” get deleted.

Entering Ring Two is Republican congressman Dennis “Denny” Rehberg of Montana, whose legislative staff cleverly recognized the potential for self-promotion in the Politwoops revelations. Rehberg’s public relations handler has intentionally deleted Tweets over the past 2 days knowing full well that they’d be posted on the third-party Sunlight Foundation website and thereby gain an independent audience. The use of a #politwoops hashtag is the real tip-off of an intentional deletion:


Denny Rehberg ( R )
#politwoops archives things politicians may wish they could un-say - like "If you like your health insurance you can keep it."
Deleted about 16 hours ago after 2 minutes, originally posted via web

Denny Rehberg ( R )
RT @SpeakerBoehner You know what else has been deleted? Jobs in the Obama economy. Where are the jobs? #politwoops via @SunFoundation
Deleted about 18 hours ago after 40 seconds, originally posted via Tweet Button

Denny Rehberg ( R )
Scary thought: Many of the same pols that messed up 140 characters on #politwoops also wrote and voted for the 2,300-page Obamacare law.
Deleted about 20 hours ago after 2 minutes, originally posted via web

Denny Rehberg ( R )
Now, thanks to #politwoops, Twitter mistakes - like government mistakes - are around for good. Best to get both right the first time.
Deleted about 20 hours ago after 1 minute, originally posted via web

Denny Rehberg ( R )
If you think twitter mistakes on #politwoops are bad, just wait until you see the regulatory mistakes of the Obama Administration!
Deleted 1 day ago after 52 seconds, originally posted via web

In Ring Three are other politicians, reacting to Dennis Rehberg reacting to Politwoops. Yesterday, Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner and Republican Representative David Schweikert joined in with their own intentional deletions:


Speaker John Boehner ( R )
We need to delete excessive govt regulations, spending-driven debt, & tax hikes that hurt #smallbiz #4jobs http://t.co/aWvvft0z #politwoops
Deleted about 19 hours ago after 56 seconds, originally posted via web

Speaker John Boehner ( R )
You know what else has been deleted? Jobs in the Obama economy. Where are the jobs? #politwoops
Deleted about 19 hours ago after 36 seconds, originally posted via web

Rep David Schweikert ( R )
Wish #politwoops would hold Obama and Holder accountable for their missing facts on #FastandFurious just as it does missing tweets
Deleted about 20 hours ago after 17 seconds, originally posted via TweetDeck

Rep David Schweikert ( R )
#politwoops saves lost tweets, now if we can just get President Obama to save lost jobs...
Deleted about 21 hours ago after 38 seconds, originally posted via TweetDeck

Montana Senator Jon Tester and high school history teacher Ed Darrell entered the fray, using the hashtag #politwoops to criticize Denny Rehberg using the theme of “deletion”:


Ed Darrell ?@EdDarrell
#politwoops Scary thought: Rep. Denny Rehberg didn't read ObamaCare bill because > 140 characters http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/congressman-uses-exposes-deleted-tweets-advantage-141215879.html via @YahooNews

Jon Tester ?@jontester
#Politiwoops In 2011 @DennyRehberg tried to delete women's health care & Planned Parenthood funding #RehbergDeletes

Jon Tester appears not to have gone whole-hog — not yet — refraining from deleting his tweet so it can appear alongside Denny Rehberg’s on the Politwoops website.

Exiting this three-ring circus, the thought occurs to me that with Rehberg’s innovation and his peers’ reaction, Politwoops has been converted from an engine of critique to yet one more social media platform. With that conversion, does Politwoops lose its shine?

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Pipelines Preserved But Glaciers Going In Glacier National Park

March 26th, 2012 | Posted by The Green Man in Environment | Legislation | State and Local - (5 Comments)

On Friday, Montana’s U.S. Senators, Jon Tester and Max Baucus, introduced S. 2229, legislation to authorize right of way permits for a natural gas pipeline that runs through Glacier National Park. The pipeline has been there since the early 1960s, is deteriorating, and may rupture without repair work that the legislation allows.

I understand the need for this legislation. Though it’s not at all ideal for a natural gas pipeline to go through a national park, we don’t want to have flammable fossil fuels leaking out in that park, now that the pipeline is there. So, fine, I hope that the legislation is passed, and that the maintenance of the pipeline proceeds.

The thing is, that pipeline isn’t the only thing that needs maintenance in Glacier National Park. There’s a bigger deterioration going on – in the glaciers themselves. They’re melting because of global warming. Before too long, we may a Glacier National Park without any glaciers at all.

Communities near Glacier National Park need the natural gas that comes through that pipeline, but they also need the water that comes from the glaciers on the nearby mountains. When those glaciers are gone, where are they going to get their drinking water?

For that matter, how are those communities going to replace the tourist revenue that comes from people who have come to visit the glaciers? What are the going to do, rename the park as the Effects Of Global Warming National Park?

I’d like to see an amendment placed on that pipeline legislation, stating that no work on the pipeline can proceed until a comprehensive bill to slow the impact of climate change is passed by both houses of Congress and signed into law.

Big Drift

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Americans Organizing Recalls Of Senators Who Voted For Imprisonment Without Criminal Trial

December 26th, 2011 | Posted by Peregrin Wood in Activism | Legislation - (6 Comments)

When the National Defense Authorization Act was passed, I recommended that Americans who care about liberty as established by the Constitution work to oppose the re-election of every U.S. senator who voted for the legislation, regardless of the senators’ political party affiliation.

national defense authorization actWhy? The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) gives the federal government the power to shut Americans behind prison bars for long periods of time without criminal charge and without criminal trial. That’s against the 5th and 6th amendments to the Constitution.

Now, though it’s a tough time of year to organize, with schools closing and people focusing on holidays, people across America are coming together to deliver political accountability to senators who voted to the NDAA. Nationally, a movement has formed to Recall Every Congressman Who Voted For The NDAA.

In Montana, this movement has gotten specific, seeking to remove both Max Baucus and Jon Tester from the U.S. Senate. Jon Tester is up for re-election next year. Max Baucus is not, but Montana law allows for the recall of senators.

Only eight other states allow recall of members of Congress. So, the goal of recalling every member of Congress isn’t really possible. Nine states seems like a great start, however, and there are 23 members of the Senate, and every member of the House, who voted for the NDAA and are up for re-election in the year to come.

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They Voted To Throw Americans In Prison Without Charge: Target These Senators In 2012

December 16th, 2011 | Posted by jclifford in Activism | Election 2012 | Legislation | Liberty | Politics - (4 Comments)

Yesterday, the U.S. Senate had one final opportunity to defeat the National Defense Authorization Act (H.R. 1540). The NDAA grants the federal government the power to seize Americans and throw them into prison without trial for as long as it likes, on the mere accusation that the Americans imprisoned are somehow associated with a terrorist organization.

The accusation does not need to be substantiated with evidence. So, in essence the NDAA gives the federal government the power to imprison for life anyone it likes – citizen or not, within as well as outside U.S. borders.

Only 13 senators had the decency to vote against this terrible attack on American freedom.

senate accountability for arbitrary detentionBut what can we do now?

23 of the U.S. Senators who voted in favor of granting the federal government the power to imprison Americans without trial are running for re-election in 2012. Their names are listed below.

John Barrasso
Sherrod Brown
Scott Brown
Maria Cantwell
Thomas Carper
Robert Casey
Bob Corker
Dianne Feinstein
Kirsten Gillibrand
Orrin Hatch
Dean Heller
Amy Klobuchar
Richard Lugar
Joe Manchin
Claire McCaskill
Robert Menendez
Bill Nelson
Ben Nelson
Olympia Snowe
Debbie Stabenow
Jon Tester
Sheldon Whitehouse
Roger Wicker

Americans who truly care about the cause of freedom, and don’t just wave a flag on the Fourth of July, should work to ensure that none of these senators are re-elected next year.

Don’t just withhold your vote. Tell your neighbors. Tell your friends. Spread the word on your Facebook account. These senators voted against American freedom, and they don’t deserve to stay in the United States Senate.

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