I’m frankly frightened. The California Senators I relied on to protect my civil liberties caved. Is ducking the vote any better or worse than voting against your constituents’ liberties? What rights do we lose next?
Under the assertion that “We need to protect ourselves from attack”, the US Congress granted to George Bush a pardon for his ILLEGAL acts.  This Congress, the Democratic Congress with the new ideas and the vow to stop the illegal acts of this President, cowed to the old rhetoric and made it legal for the Bush Administration to deny the citizens of this country the right to privacy, pardoned the Administration’s illegal intrusions into citizens private electronic conversations, and permitted the abrogation of the rule of law, and the right to due process.  And then, in a capping move that added insult to injury, they put Alberto Gonzales, George Bush and one other hand picked Bush flunky in charge of overseeing it. Yes, the same Gonzales who has defied a Congressional subpoena, the same Gonzales who believes it is perfectly ok to defy the Geneva Convention and torture citizens and non-citizens who he, in his infinite wisdom, designates as enemy combatants.The same Gonzales who refused to allow the US Surgeon General from reporting to the American people the results of life saving research on health and sexual practices and the same Gonzales who fired nine Federal prosecutors because they did not follow the party line–the Republican party that is.  Indeed, our new Democratic Congress gave to George Bush their blessing in his bid to overthrow the Constitutional gifts and freedoms for which our forefathers, and all our brave men and women in uniform, fought and died, the right to due process under the law, the right to hold a private conversation beyond the prying eyes of the government, and the requirement that intrusions into these freedoms would only occur in extreme circumstances as determined by a duly appointed and unbiased court order.
What battle cry then will draw the American people to fight our enemies when the cry “Let Freedom Ring” can no longer be spoken? 

The Rural Caucus of the California Democratic Party is sending the following letter to Senators Feinstein,Senator Boxer and Speaker Pelosi.
  The California Democratic Party Rural Caucus members are outraged! We are appalled and frankly, frightened. The two Senators we trusted to uphold our civil liberties caved.
We worked for and elected a new Democratic Congress in 2006, with the assurance that doing so would make a difference.  A new Congress would change the direction of this war: it would put a stop to the illegal wiretapping used by the Bush Administration to spy on its citizens; it would restore the right of citizens to confront accusers, restore Habeas Corpus; it would restore the sacred rights to privacy that we all believed had been guaranteed by the Constitution.  But what we got was the same old Congress.

  This past week, acting very much like the previous Republican Congress, the House and Senate, each, separately and unequivocally knuckled under to the demands of a President whose policies have been renounced by the American people and even a hand-picked Supreme Court. 
With the suspension of Habeas Corpus, the recent Executive Order allowing the seizure of property for dissent, the calling of Senator Clinton nearly treasonous for asking about an exit strategy from the war
Accepting the claim that our enemies are determined to take away our freedoms, our Congress beat them to it.  They bought the peace with this Administration with our freedoms.  And these are our protectors?  I for one, would rather have my freedoms ripped away from in an eye- to-eye combat with my enemies than to lose them to my friends whose claim is that they give up these freedoms of ours for our own good.

And what is to befall us once the rest of those precious freedoms guaranteed in the Bill of Rights go the way of these? 
We 200 members of the Rural Caucus of the California Democratic Party have lost something else precious, respect for the integrity and sincerity of our California Senators. We expect a response other than a form letter.
CDPRC

( – promoted by Brian Leubitz)

xposted at terryfaceplace
I’m at the California Speaks event in San Diego today, where participants are discussing the healthcare reform legislation that’s currently under consideration in the state of California.

The process by which this conversation is being held is interesting in itself. Forums are being held in eight locations throughout the state today, and they’re all hooked up by satellite and computer links.

More below the fold…

There are around 600 participants in San Diego, and about 3,000 total throughout California, and they are representative of the population as a whole, with some slight variation (because it depended on who showed up out of that representative sample). They’re broken up into groups of ten, and each group has a facilitator with a laptop who is communicating their table discussion to a “theme team” who is compiling the most common topics, comments and remarks for the entire state.

As the discussion progresses and common themes emerge, participants use individual keypads to document their votes on a variety of opinions. At the end of the day, the statistical data and discussions will be compiled into a preliminary report which will be handed out to everyone as they leave. Eventually a final report will be written utilizing today’s data, and that will be presented to Governor Schwarzenegger and the California Legislature, who have agreed to consider the opinions of Californian’s as they move forward in enacting healthcare reform legislation.

Pretty cool, eh? This is big geeky fun for big geeky me.

Both the Governor and Assemblymember Fabian Nunez provided opening remarks via satelitte link, the MC of the event is in Los Angeles, and I am completely digging the whole democracy via technology thing here today.

I’ll be back later with further details about the discussion and the outcome of today’s conversation. Talk to you soon!

I’m on my cell, so this will be a short post. And I point you to the Courage Campaign blog for more detailed coverage. But what I want to say right now is that this is clearly an organization that is growing and beginning to understand how important the bridges between labor and bloggers really are. I’ll post more when I get a chance.

UPDATE: I’m back at home now, so I wanted to post this picture of SEIU-UHW president Sal Roselli. Elliott Petty of Courage Campaign and I had a few minutes to sit down with him. He had some really great ideas on how to connect labor with new constituencies and the internet. I’ll get a much broader post on this up on Monday.

It’s now time to re-coronate the Gav. With Chris Daly  out and Matt Gonzalez not so much interested, and well, the entire laundry list of other serious contenders out of the mix, meet your new Mayor. The filing deadline of 5PM this afternoon seems to have gone by without a peep.

Ladies and Gentlemen of San Francisco…Gavin Newsom.  Oh well, at least we have three more years of Daly v. Newsom fights.

The LA Times today had two letters to the editors about their story on Yearly Kos, and boy, do the Billo talking points come out loud and clear. “Hate-Filled!”  “Vicious!”  “Anti-American!”  They cry out for a response. I sent mine in, will you?  Here are the offenders…..

Democratic guilt by association
August 10, 2007

Re “Democratic candidates try to woo blogging crowd,” Aug. 5

The attendance of all the major Democrat presidential candidates at the Daily Kos convention over the weekend should give mainstream, centrist and independent voters cause for concern. The Daily Kos is a vicious, hate-filled blog that routinely spews far-left hyperbole and smear attacks. What is alarming is that none of the leading candidates saw fit to attend the Democratic Leadership Council’s convention as well. The council is a well-established, centrist organization that plays within the lines of American politics.

The radical left has almost completely taken over the Democratic Party. Democrat candidates cannot even debate on the Fox News Channel because it has been deemed as politically incorrect by the powers that be among Democrat activists.

Such stultifying political correctness cannot be considered a healthy development when respectable organizations such as the Democratic Leadership Council are shunned and everyone is now genuflecting before shrill left-wing organizations such as the Daily Kos and MoveOn.org.

Geoffrey C. Church

Los Angeles

—

The article on the Kos convention is extremely misleading: The term “liberal” applied to the many leftist fringe groups that make up Kos is simply a disservice to liberals and the mainstream Democratic Party. In its original use, “liberal” referred to the centrist and anti-Communist wing of the party.

Today, The Times feels comfortable including the 9/11 conspiracy theorists and the anti-American, anti-military and anti-capitalist bloggers in the mainstream of the Democratic Party.

Would the same Times writer refer to Pat Buchanan or David Duke as GOP centrists?

I think not.

Richard Friedman

Los Angeles

Send your hate-filled, vicious opinions to [email protected] and don’t forget your name, address and phone number, or else they won’t print it.

I’m sitting at lunch yesterday when I see a certain Mark Leno staffer call me. I ignore it because I’m in the middle of a meeting for SF Young Dems. Another call. I ignore it again. He calls a third time, and I finally pick it up.

So, he invites me up to the debate in Rohnert Park between Sen. Migden and Asm. Leno in the Leno campaign bus. Aka, Asm. Leno’s car. So, I run back home and grab my computer (gotta have that, you know). I then run back onto MUNI to meet the staffer  and the Assemblyman at a parking garage on Mission. All fun stuff, there.

On the way up, I take my conference call with the Speaker and half-listen. Now, I’m a pretty good multi-tasker, so I really had few problems actually getting both conversations. But one thing that I did miss was the line about this budget not being a Republican budget — referring to a line in a George Skelton story.  But when you get down to it, this budget seems pretty darn close to a Republican budget. It’s hard to imagine a less progressive budget coming out of a Dem Legislature.

But, we continue driving, and I learn some cool things about the Assemblyman. Did you know that Mark Leno used to work for Art Garfunkel? Yup, the lesser-know half of Simon and Garfunkel. It’s true. Mark Leno helped Art Garfunkel to break out of S&G and skyrocket to superstardom. Oh, um, right…just flip it… Oh, and for more 2/3 goodness, check out Assemblyman Leno’s op-ed in the Chronicle.

So, we’re driving through the streets of the Rohnert Park area, pretty place, that Rohnert Park, and we keep going. The GPS tells us to keep going and make a right, and then three more rights. And guess what? We’re back on the street that we were on before, now trying to make a left with no stop light. It turns out we really could have just made a left (with the light) a few blocks before where we originally turned right, but, um, I guess the GPS likes fun drives through subdivisions. I dunno, but I just hope nothing like that picture happens to the Assemblyman, you know getting your car stuck in a tree by listening to GPS. Anyway, beyond the detour, no poor driving decisions were made. In fact, I’d be happy for Mr. Leno to chauffeur me every day.

We eventually get to the forum location, an old business park that is going to be converted into a housing development using smart growth and green technologies. I think that’s cool, but apparently nobody bothered to tell them that there is no frickin’ way to get there without sitting in traffic for like 2 hours. The roads are narrow, so that’s one issue, and the people will likely be commuting back to at least Santa Rosa, possibly San Francisco. That’s far.  But, on the plus side, the development will be high-density, like 8 stories or something like that. You can get more info about Sonoma Mountain Village here. Ok, that’s all well and good…

When I got there, I was standing in the corner with my backpack when Senator Migden came up to me and asked if I was working for the enemy. I said no, I was a blogger who wrote about California politics and, um, unfortunately, nobody pays me. *sigh* It’s interesting, because I’ve kinda told her this like, I dunno, 10 times. I understand that she’s busy and meets a lot of people, but, um, can we cease the accusatory overtones?  However, I will cut her some slack, as I did come out of Asm. Leno’s car. How would she know that I was trailing the Asm. for the blog, not because, um, he’s paying me.

So, the debate, was um, the debate.  Senator Migden was peppy! She told the crowd to get some pep into you! Which, is always interesting, considering that this was, shall we say, a pretty mixed age crowd.  But, they asked some good questions. Answers were what you would expect, you know, nothing too crazy, nothing to rock the boat really. You know, they both support affordable housing and Debra Bowen. The moderator praised them both before the concluding remarks for their good behavior. So Asm. Leno concluded with remarks about the importance of ethics, and how politicians must work to ensure that they do everything to obey laws and to conduct themselves as role models.  Then, Sen. Migden kind of went, um, excited! Yes, she was very enthusiastic to talk about her car accident, and how it wasn’t her fault. To me, it seemed like someone doth protest too much.

The way home seemed a lot quicker. I’m guessing that’s because it was. Traffic clears out once you get past that magical 7 hour or whatever, and we cruised back home. The conversation was light and cheery. We talked about all the inside baseball stuff that so delights um, me, and like 3 other people. But, you know, I find it interesting. So there! Oh and he offered me a protein bar from his personal stash of protein bars. I declined, mostly because I had spent ten of the final twenty minutes stuffing my face with junk food. I tell you what, the No-name Woman’s Club really knows how to throw down a spread!

At the end of the evening, he dropped me off at my house. What service! Certainly, it was 2/3 of a blast.