Score another defeat for those advocating full accountability in our government. The conservative majority in the Supreme Court paid off. The court ruled 5 to 4 that government employees who expose misconduct at work do not have any First Amendment Protections. elaborates:
"It will have a chilling affect, but it will also mean that honestpublic servants, who are doing their job, expose wrongdoing, are goingto be fired and have no recourse," said Stephen Kohn, Chairman of theNational Whistleblower Center.
Kohn fears the impact won't just be on employees exposing crimes but on officials committing them as well.
"Every crooked politician has something to rejoice today," he said.
It was a five-to-four decision that represents a significant change in the law and in the role of whistleblowers.
This Supreme Court decision, , should be a lesson to everyone about what conservatives mean by "small government." What they don't mean is a government held accountable to taxpayers. What they also don't mean is a government with checks on itself. What they do mean is a body made up of an elitely small group of powerful micro-managers, and a group of drones that work for them who are not allowed to expose their boss's unethical behavior. What the Supreme Court is promoting are mob-like rules for our highest public officials. If you snitch, you get bit. This might be the most far-reaching Supreme Court decision, insofar that it pertains to how government functions, of our time.
This is what the far-right believes -- and it is why I call myself a moderate-progressive Democrat.
Wishful thinking on the part of the advocacy group :
A group of old Washington hands has launched a campaign to remakeInternet politics, taking a forum that until now has been associatedwith ideologues and angry partisans and using it to start a movementculminating in a bipartisan presidential ticket in 2008.
Thegroup is called Unity08, and no one would accuse its founders ofthinking small. They include Democrats Hamilton Jordan and GeraldRafshoon, who gained political fame for their role in electing JimmyCarter 30 years ago, as well as Doug Bailey, a media adviser to formerpresident and representative Gerald R. Ford (R-Mich.). They are beingjoined by former Maine governor Angus King, an independent.
Their goal is to offer an alternative to the two major party choices --a unity ticket that will emerge after secure, online balloting thatthey hope will include millions of Americans. In an announcementstatement, Unity08 said its efforts are a reaction to a system that has"polarized and alienated the American people" through partisanship andinterest-group politics.
A unity ticket never works because there would turn out to be a major argument over who would be on the top of the ticket. The president, not the vice president, has the ultimate say in Executive decisions.
Such a unity ticket would result in one of two polar extremes. One possibility is that the Democrat and Republican would secretly work against each other while in the White House. The vice president would constantly be trying to alienate the president, while the president would have to watch his back the entire time. As a result, with nothing getting done, this leads to an unhealthy decrease in the role of the Executive.
The other possibility is that the president and vice president would work together, bringing their parties together as a result. Therefore, the U.S. would only have a one-party system -- meaning no other party could be there to hold the party in power accountable. Is that really good for democracy?
So in either case, in my view, the unity party idea is a bad idea.
House Judiciary Chairman JamesSensenbrenner said on Tuesday he plans to draft legislationthat would protect congressional material during searches bygovernment investigators.
..."We want to make sure that when the next congressman isinvestigated for illegal activity that the procedure done bythe Justice Department is right," Sensenbrenner said.
The FBI obtained a court warrant before searching theoffice of Jefferson, a Louisiana Democratic, but lawmakers fromboth parties said the raid violated constitutional protectionsdesigned to shield lawmakers from executive-branch harassment.
This is obviously in response to the FBI raid on the property of Democratic Rep. , who is being investigated for his role in the Congressional bribery scandal. Many Republicans are worried that they too might have their property searched.
But if legislation is drafted that bans the FBI from conducting Congressional searches, even a court order, then that would open the flood gates to all kinds of things that lawmakers could get away with. Think about it: with all the corruption in Congress over the last two years, is Sensenbrenner even in a position to try the "poor me" approach? I don't think so.
Most Americans believe that laws you and I are supposed to follow should also apply to our elected representatives. I don't think that should change anytime soon.
A huge fuss has been created because Harry Reid accepted free boxing tickets. This is part of an effort led by conservative personalities on both talk-radio and Fox News television to try and prove that Congressional Democrats are no less corrupt than their Republican counterparts. But before we start comparing Harry Reid to Jack Abramoff and Duke Cunningham, let's make sure we know the specifics.
Reid accepted these between 2003 and 2005 courtesy of the (NAC), which is not a private firm. The NAC is a state-run wing of the Department of Business and Industry in Nevada, and was created in the year 1941 by the Nevada legislature. So what we have here is a public agency in Nevada allowing a public official in Nevada to have free access to one of its events.
So why the fuss? Conservatives raise the point that Reid received those free boxing tickets from the NAC at the same time as the agency was lobbying the U.S. Senate to vote on a measure that would have positively impacted that industry. So was Reid bought off? As it turns out, Reid actually voted against the side of NAC anyway -- meaning that Reid's vote was not impacted by the free tickets that they gave him.
Reid, himself, has served the NAC as a . Surely the NAC, not to mention just about every government agency, rewards those that serve in the public sector. This is completely different than Jack Abramoff and Duke Cunningham, who advanced a system that allowed private firms to manipulate the votes of lawmakers. While Harry Reid's boxing tickets that he lawfully received from the state were each around one-thousand dollars, made an estimated $2 million in bribes from Jack Abramoff's private firm.
See the clear distinction? Fox News and the rest of the Republican noise machine need to pick their fights more wisely.
The biggest buzz of the day has to be the increased speculation that Barack Obama could possibly run for president in 2008. was told by sources that the Illinois Senator hired two well-known national political consultants:
Anita Dunn, a partner with Squier Knapp Dunn, a media consulting company, and Minyon Moore, who is with the Dewey Square Group, are not serving as advisers to Obama.
And then over at the Chicago Tribune, Jeff Zeleny writes that "Senate Democrats and party activistshave privately , or at the very least,to leave the door open for a possible last-minute entry."
Kos, the founder of the most well-known political blog The Daily Kos, does not want the Senator to run until . But why not run in 2008? Obama would be an excellent antidote to Hillary, and might stand as the best chance the Democrats have of beating John McCain. I say, "Go for it Barack!"
In comparison to the 2004 primaries, 2008 will be a whole new ballgame as far as the impact that blogs will have on deciding who will emerge as the Democratic nominee. Technology is changing, and so is news. More than ever, a huge chunk of Democratic voters get their news from blogs, such as this one. So what happens in January of 2008 when there are somewhere between six and ten Democratic presidential candidates running against one another? The role of the progressive blogosphere could be huge.
In a commentary by Atrios last week, he acknowledged that the during the 2008 primary season. Most progressive blogs will endorse a candidate, stick to that candidate and slam other progressive blogs that endorse someone else.
Personally speaking, I have yet to decide whether or not I will endorse a candidate on this web site right before the Iowa Caucuses. I also have not determined whether to endorse a candidate at all. Will having a favorite Democrat prevent me from being an impartial blogger? Or, on the other hand, is it unnatural for bloggers like myself to abstain from a personal opinion? I give my own take on politics each day -- so why stop in January of 2008? Regardless of what I decide, I can guarantee that I will give it a lot of thought.
Generally speaking, this is very significant. The fact that I am even writing about how bloggers might need to exercise journalistic responsibility says a lot about what kind of news era we are in. This is unprecedented! In 2004, Howard Dean helped prove that it was possible to develop a winning campaign online. Today, we can be certain that the 2008 primary contest will be won or lost online.
Some might not like the idea of this new political revolution. But think about what this means as far as encouraging young people to get involved in our political process and public service. Take the recent immigration debate, for example. Today, Ari Melber of The Nation Magazine wrote about how the helped organize one of the largest nationwide marches in the history of this country:
Conventional campaigns, even on the left, are targeted at people whoalready exert influence in the political process, namely activists,voters and donors. But the immigration protest was the rare effortthat welcomed the apolitical, who do not usually vote, and those whocannot vote. The rallies and marches drew nonvoters, students andillegal immigrants into their inchoate coalition. And some of thepolitical novices were proficient in organizing technology, even ifthey did not think about it that way.
Keeping all this in mind, think about how this will encourage apolitical individuals to get involved in the political process. This is such a great moment for democracy -- that the netroots can connect people from all over the country, even all over the world, to promote a populist-driven political vision.
When it comes to 2008, especially the November election, the internet is the Democrats' solution as far as finding new voters. If we win the netroots, we will have a Democrat in the White House. Although I respectfully consider James Carville and Paul Begala to be among the greatest political strategists to ever have walked the earth, their time to shine has just about expired. In 2008, the big blogs -- like , , , , and -- each have a better ability to court new voters than Carville or Begala. Smaller blogs like this one (even though I hope that it does not stay small for too long), have a more reduced impact.
The point is that the American political landscape is changing. Blogs impact the political scene a lot more than Washington insiders give them credit. And unless we take advantage of this revolution, progressive groups on Capitol Hill and those seeking office will lose out on a great opportunity.
This evening, President Bush is scheduled to conduct his first major policy-related photo-op since last year's staged , which did not play so well publicly. The White House is hosting a selected group of families, who lost loved ones on the flight that crashed in Pennsylvania, for a of the movie "Flight 93":
President Bush invited relatives of some of the 40 passengers and crewmembers who are portrayed in United 93 to join him for a screening of the film at the White House Tuesday night.
Bush and his wife, Laura, planned to watch thefilm about the attacks in the family theater. The film focuses on thetragic drama aboard United Flight 93, the plane that crashed in ruralPennsylvania after passengers fought back against their hijackers.
"The president has always said that those whowere on the flight, that the passengers and crewmembers of the flight,were heroes," said White House spokeswoman Dana Perino.
Even the dumbest political strategist would admit that this private screening photo-op is part of a sustained effort by the Administration to regain the trust of the public on the issue of terrorism. According to the latest CBS News Poll, only 46% support the President's handling of "."
With the to the Treasury Secretary Post, Americans should at least be allowed to know the truth behind the curtain. Paulson is a Wallstreet guy who, in 2002 immediately following the Enron scandal, led the spin strategy to alter public disapproval of large corporations. His strategy was called "." In a nutshell, it was like convincing the public that the sky was black. With all those corporate scandals in 2002, such an optimistic take on Wall Street just did not fly.
Paulson is beloved by the for his supply-side, Reaganomical approach that advocates across the board tax cuts and subsidies for oil companies and other large corporations. After all, why should he not favor that approach? Skimble blog noted in 2003 that for the wealthy helped add $2 million to Paulson's personal finances.
On an positive note, Paulson will easily become the most green member of the Administration. Until his nomination by President Bush, he was the co-chairman of the .
However, all in all, the environment will not be Paulson's focus when serving this Administration. His pro-tax cut stances fit in quite well with an already pro-corporate welfare White House that, in this year's budget, allocates $6.1 billion worth of subsidies to . Paulson's job in this Administration, just as it has been ever since the Enron scandal, is to put a positive spin on corporate corruption. Judging from the fact that Bush chose Paulson specifically, the President probably believes he is up to the task.
Thanks everyone for your patience regarding the lack of posts over the last four days. It's been crazy with the flood in the basement and my latest philosophy paper. Expect a flood of posts to come later this afternoon starting in the 2 PM ET hour.
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