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We elect people to the United States Senate in order to be leaders in upholding our rights under the Constitution of the United States of America. We do not elect senators in order to watch them sit on the sidelines while the Constitution is being attacked.

Unfortunately, sitting on the sidelines is just what senators Charles Schumer and Hillary Clinton seem to be doing. I just called the offices of senators Clinton and Schumer in order to find out about their positions on the FISA Amendments Act and to express my hope that these senators will vote against the legislation. Here is what I discovered about the senators’ positions on the bill: They’re both sitting on the fence, waiting to see which way the wind blows before they act.

Senator Hillary Clinton’s office refuses to say anything other than that Senator Clinton opposes retroactive immunity for telecommunications corporations. That sounds good, until one remembers that turncoat Democrats in the House of Representatives have made the false claim that the FISA Amendments Act does not provide retroactive immunity. If actually read the legislation for yourself, you’ll see that providing retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that broke the law by helping George W. Bush to spy on millions of Americans is exactly what the FISA Amendments does.

Furthermore, there is a huge amount wrong with the FISA Amendments Act other than just retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies. The legislation also allows operationally unlimited spying against completely innocent American citizens.

Massive electronic surveillance of the sort envisioned under Total Information Awareness, combined with dragnet email searches and telephone wiretaps, is allowed by the FISA Amendments Act - without search warrants, and without any possibility for a judge to actually stop the spying from taking place. All a judge has the power to do under the FISA Amendments Act is to sit back and observe that the spying is taking place, unable to obtain meaningful information about the spying or to block the spying, even if the discover that it is abusive against American citizens.

Similar uncontrolled physical searches of Americans’ homes and places of work are also allowed by the FISA Amendments Act. In the case of both physical searches and electronic spying against Americans, the Attorney General of the United States, a political appointee of the President, has the ability to spy on whim, declaring that no evidence to support the spying is necessary, because of the unsubstantiated claim that somebody, somewhere might get hurt if the spying does not happen.

Even worse, the only person in the entire federal government who is given the power to serve as a watchdog of the Attorney General’s use of these immense spy powers is… the Attorney General himself. Any fool can see that this arrangement is an invitation for abuse.

When I called Senator Charles Schumer, the news I got was even worse than what I heard from Senator Clinton: Senator Schumer is refusing to take any position on the FISA Amendments Act. Senator Schumer won’t even be honest with his constituents, and tell them what he plans to do when the FISA Amendments Act comes up for a vote.

These signs are troubling, leading me to suspect that senators Schumer and Clinton could actually vote in favor of the FISA Amendments Act.

If you live in New York State, please call these senators now, and tell them that you want them to vote against the FISA Amendments Act:

Senator Hillary Clinton: (202) 224-4451
Senator Charles Schumer: (202) 224-6542

A representative poll of 3,000 respondents by Scott Rasmussen taken over the past three days finds that 52% of women support Barack Obama, while just 40% of women support John McCain. According to Rasmussen, that’s a wider gender gap in favor of the Democrat than John Kerry enjoyed in 2004.

This is not to say that there aren’t any women marching straight from the Clinton camp over to John McCain. Clearly, there are, and they’re being featured on national TV. But to say that this is an overall trend of significance would seem to be the promotion of a myth.

The representative from Hillary Clinton dropped a bombshell before the Democratic Party Rules and Bylaws Committee: “One final word: Mrs. Clinton has instructed me to reserve the right to take this to the credentials committee.”

Chants and cheers, clapping and whooping from Hillary Clinton supporters ensued. Gavel-pounding for a solid 15 seconds finally stopped their disruption.

“You are dishonoring your candidate when you do this,” they were advised, but the Clinton supporters continued, booing and jeering at representatives of the Barack Obama campaign, trying to shout them down.

The signs all point to this: Hillary Clinton has no intention of supporting Barack Obama when he wraps up the Democratic presidential nomination in the next couple of days.

Elizabeth Smith, member of the Democratic Party Rules and Bylaws Committee, just asked David Bonior a whiz-bang question: Why ever did Barack Obama choose not to put his name on the Michigan presidential primary ballot? Why would Obama decide to do that?

(Psst. Elizabeth Smith just so happens to be a supporter of the Hillary Clinton for President campaign.)

Here’s an answer for you, Ms. Smith: the Democratic Party Rules and Bylaws Committee told Barack Obama not to put his name on the ballot. The committee, of which Elizabeth Smith is a member, decided months ago that the Michigan primary would not count at the convention - that the delegates would not be seated.

Why is Elizabeth Smith puzzled that Barack Obama did exactly what her own committee in the Democratic Party told him to do?

Golly me, but why can’t Elizabeth Smith remember what she took part in just a few months ago?

Can you watch the Democratic Rules and Bylaws Committee meeting taking place right now? Yes you can (that’s a hint - Barack Obama is going to be the Democratic presidential nominee whether Hillary Clinton gets all the Michigan and Florida delegates she wants today or not).

Go over to C-Span There’s a link from the top of the front page.

The feed is a little gimpy, because so many people are trying to watch, but stick with it. There are important arguments being made. Right now, David Bonior, a Michigan Democrat from the Barack Obama presidential campaign is speaking in defense of the interests of Michigan Democrats who did not vote or were not able to vote for the candidate of their choice, because they were told that their votes would not count.

“This was not a normal primary election, and did not produce a fair reflection” of Democratic voters’ interests.

Democratic Convention Watch helpfully reports on three proposals to be put forward before the Democratic Rules and Bylaws Committee meeting on Saturday, May 31.

Barack Obama’s Michigan proposal: 64 delegates to Clinton, 64 delegates to Obama.
Hillary Clinton’s Michigan proposal: 73 delegates to Clinton, 55 delegates to Obama.
The Michigan Democratic Party proposal: 69 delegates to Clinton, 59 delegates to Obama.

The Michigan Democratic Party proposal splits the difference between Obama’s plan and Clinton’s plan.

Let’s assume that outside of the state of Michigan, Hillary Clinton gets everything she wants. This means two things:

1. In the Puerto Rico (55 pledged delegates), South Dakota (13 pledged delegates) and Montana (16 pledged delegates) primary votes to be happening on Sunday and Tuesday, Barack Obama gets only a third of the 84 delegates. 28 delegates for Obama, 56 delegates for Clinton.

This is a completely harebrained result, but let’s go harebrained for Clinton and assume Barack Obama gets blown out of the water with delegates in the remaining primaries.

2. Florida’s 185 pledged delegates would be fully recognized and apportioned according to vote results in the non-sanctioned primary. 121 of those delegates are apportioned according to congressional district results, with 67 delegates to Clinton, 13 delegates to John Edwards, and 41 to Barack Obama. To continue to favor Clinton, let’s have the remaining 64 delegates be apportioned according to the vote result: 33 to Clinton, 9 delegates to John Edwards, and 22 delegates to Barack Obama. The total delegate count would be 100 delegates to Clinton, 22 delegates to John Edwards, and 63 delegates to Barack Obama.

This is also a completely harebrained result, since even Florida is only asking for half its delegates to be seated. But again, let’s go harebrained to give Clinton the benefit of the doubt here. And let’s not even count the John Edwards delegates for Obama, even though Edwards has endorsed Obama. Woo hoo! Craaaazy!

With Michigan and Florida being fully seated, exactly as Hillary Clinton wants, the number of delegates a candidate needs to gain in order to grab the nomination is 2,209. Again, this is if Hillary Clinton gets absolutely everything she wants with Florida and gets huge blowouts in all three remaining states.

As of right now, Barack Obama has 1,982 delegates. As of right now, Hillary Clinton has 1,781 delegates. Adding in the miraculous pro-Clinton results for Florida, Puerto Rico, South Dakota and Montana — but not yet counting Michigan — Barack Obama would have 2,073 delegates and Hillary Clinton would have 1,937 delegates.

Now let’s move on to the Michigan decision, assuming Hillary Clinton gets all she wants in Florida and scores immense blowouts in all three remaining states.

1. If Barack Obama gets what he wants on Saturday, he ends up with 2137 delegates and Hillary Clinton ends up with 2,001 delegates.

2. If the state of Michigan gets what it wants on Saturday, Barack Obama ends up with 2132 delegates and Hillary Clinton ends up with 2006 delegates.

3. If Hillary Clinton gets what she wants on Saturday, Barack Obama ends up with 2128 delegates and Hillary Clinton ends up with 2010 delegates.

Yes, even if Hillary Clinton gets everything she wants with both Michigan and Florida and scores humongous wins in the remaining three state contests, she will still be 118 delegates behind Barack Obama.

With 2,209 delegates to win if Clinton gets everything she wants, 279 delegates will be left to go to the Clinton camp or the Obama camp. Some of these were awarded to Edwards and have to decide what to do, some of these are superdelegates who really should have decided by now, and some of these are “add-on” delegates that are confusingly awarded at state meetings after primaries are done. To win the nomination, Hillary Clinton will have to win 199 of those delegates.

The Bottom Line:

In order to secure the nomination,

Assuming Hillary Clinton wins two-thirds of delegates in all three remaining primaries,
and
Assuming Hillary Clinton gets all the delegates she wants from Michigan,
and
Assuming Hillary Clinton gets all the delegates she wants from Florida,

then she will still have to somehow gain the support of 72 percent of the remaining delegates in order to capture the Democratic presidential nomination.

No, it’s not literally impossible. But even giving her every benefit of the doubt (and then some) at every stage of the process over the next week, Hillary Clinton will still have to perform a Sisyphean task to gain the nomination.

If Barack Obama gets even something close to what he wants in any of the delegate-awarding events over the next week, Hillary Clinton doesn’t have a chance.

It’s a simple issue: Cluster bombs are very very bad things. They’re weapons designed to rip through human flesh, and are distributed over large areas as larger bombs detonate to scatter the cluster bomblets. About 40 percent of these bomblets don’t explode upon landing, but lie there, undisturbed, until hit by a farmer’s plow, or are picked up by curious children. Then, they explode and innocent civilians die.

111 nations agreed yesterday to ban cluster bombs. The United States of America was not among those nations.

There has been a bill in the United States Senate (S.594) for quite some time now - since February of 2007 - that would strongly limit the use of cluster bombs by the United States and the sale of cluster bombs by the United States to other countries.

This bill has 21 senators registered in support of it. Yet, John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have not cosponsored the bill. Why?

I suggest that you call the campaign of your favorite presidential candidate from the Senate and ask why.

John McCain: (703) 418-2008
Barack Obama: (866) 675-2008
Hillary Clinton: (703) 469-2008

“There is a difference between someone who could win and someone who will win.” — Top Clinton staffer Howard Wolfson, in a May 28 2008 conference call.

I don’t think he meant to, but Wolfson just articulated the succinct version of the case against his own candidate.

Throughout her presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton has been the pet of powerful influence peddlers within the Democratic Party. She’s taken big money from big lobbyists for big corporations. She’s hobnobbed with Democratic Party insiders, trying to win with a super delegate election. She’s cultivated contacts in the corporate media, and depended upon connections with Washington D.C. consultants and the Democratic Leadership Council.

What about us little people? Hillary Clinton didn’t need us - or so she thought. The Hillary Clinton for President campaign never put together an effective grassroots organization, and didn’t bother trying to work with small time media folks. She never reached out to us bloggers.

Oh, but now Hillary Clinton is panicking. She’s lost the Democratic presidential nomination, and now, she desperately searching for a way to undo her defeat, she’s finally calling upon us little people to help.

Hillary Clinton finally held her first conference call with bloggers last Friday, almost a year and a half after she began her presidential campaign. And which bloggers did she include? Only the A-list, the bloggers with corporate-sponsorships and insider connections - you know, the kind of people who “blog” for the New York Times.

Pardon, but I’m not impressed. It’s this kind of arrogant attitude that has taken Hillary Clinton from “inevitable” to infinitesimal in six months. Call us crazy, but bloggers don’t want to help elect a President who regards them as either insignificant pests or witless tools.

Well, Hillary Clinton is down, so I don’t want to be mean. Let me do my little bit to be a Clinton tool, then. Okay, Clinton campaign - take note: I’ve written about your candidate.

You got your publicity, Mrs. C. Hoo-ray.

You know, you can type in “Hillary Clinton button” into a google search engine box and three links to our pro-Clinton products — well over a thousand of them — appear on the first page of results. Pretty much the same thing happens when you search for “Hillary Clinton bumper sticker.” My point is that a good chunk of people who are looking to show their support for Hillary Clinton through the purchase of a piece of political gear are going to end up over here. Certainly they did last summer and last fall, when pro-Clinton items accounted for the largest share of our election 2008 sales.

If there had been a new wave of support for Hillary Clinton in the wake of her win in the West Virginia primary, we’d have caught it by now.

Percent of Election 2008 sales since WV polls closed yesterday evening:

Pro-Clinton bumper stickers, buttons, etc.: 5.8%
Pro-Obama bumper stickers, buttons, etc.: 94.2%

Although Democrats claim to represent progressives and progressive interests, they’ve got other ties as well. Consider Hillary Clinton, who has received multiple campaign contributions from the Tan family of the Northern Marianas Islands. The Tan family is well-known for running garment factories with sweatshop working conditions and low levels of pay. Even though Hillary Clinton has been informed of the sweatshop labor problems of the Tans, she refuses to return their campaign contributions. The money Clinton received from the Tans is soaked in sweat and belongs with the hard-working people she claims to care about. Here’s a case in which the desire to win has trumped progressive ethical standards. Watch what Clinton does, not just what she says. (Sources: The Hill, March 16 2006, Dengre of Daily Kos at dengre.dailykos.com)

Are you on the fence, not sure whether you intend to vote for Barack Obama in the fall of 2008? Consider who you would cast your vote with otherwise. You’d be casting your vote with people like the Lackawanna, PA Clinton supporter who, pointing at a picture of Barack Obama, blurted out: “He’s a half-breed and he’s a Muslim. How can you trust that?”

Lines like that belong in a Harry Potter novel. Sadly, they linger in America as well. Ignorant bigots like that Clinton supporter exist, they vote, and their votes need to be balanced out if our nation is ever going to make progress.

(Source: Washington Post, May 12 2008)

Since Election Day 2004, we’ve kept track of committed support for various 2008 presidential contenders, indicated by sales of Election 2008 bumper stickers, magnets, campaign buttons, and American Apparel t-shirts. Lately we’ve added yard signs, lapel stickers and union made t-shirts for the presidential candidates as well. While polls measure fickle opinions, our measure tracks the stronger commitment marked by the laying down of cash to promote a candidate in public. The more strongly committed are more likely to caucus and to vote. The following is the percent share of sales of our Election 2008 gear in the past week of May 4 to May 10, 2008:

Barack Obama 2008: 82.6%
Hillary Clinton 2008: 15.3%
Al Gore: 1.5%
Mike Gravel 2008: 0%
Others: 0.6%

Yes, that’s Al Gore in there. Some people are still nursing the hope that Al Gore will be the Democratic Presidential nominee. Nobody seems to care about the still-running Mike Gravel any more. I guess it helps to be an also-ran if you won a Nobel Peace Prize and junk.

According to ABC News, Barack Obama has taken over the lead in superdelegates for the Democratic presidential nomination. Peter DeFazio of Oregon is endorsing Barack Obama today, and Donald Payne of New Jersey has switched his support from Hillary Clinton to Obama.

I fail to see what argument Hillary Clinton can make now about why she is the real Democratic choice. What? Is she ahead in the secret bloc of fairy delegates?