New York Times editorial: Republican voter intimidation is a big fail

While voter intimidation may be attempted in Wyoming, it won't have nearly the impact that it will have in swing states such as Colorado and Florida.

Here's a brilliant staff editorial in today's New York Times:

This year, voting is more than just the core responsibility of citizenship; it is an act of defiance against malicious political forces determined to reduce access to democracy. Millions of ballots on Tuesday — along with those already turned in — will be cast despite the best efforts of Republican officials around the country to prevent them from playing a role in the 2012 election.

Even now, many Republicans are assembling teams to intimidate voters at polling places, to demand photo ID where none is required, and to cast doubt on voting machines or counting systems whose results do not go their way. The good news is that the assault on voting will not affect the election nearly as much as some had hoped. Courts have either rejected or postponed many of the worst laws. Predictions that up to five million people might be disenfranchised turned out to be unfounded.

Read the rest at http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/04/opinion/sunday/voting-rights-upholding-democracy.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0

Celebrate campus free speech and human rights with a pledge to Ann Coulter's Homo Rainbow on Facebook

Ann Coulter's Homo Rainbow page on Facebook is growing by laps and bounds.

I originally posted about this on March 11, just after the project was started by Laramie rabble-rousers Meg Lanker and Will Welch. The idea is to make a pledge for each minute that Fox "News" commentator and Liberal-hater Ann Coulter speaks at UW on March 31. The funds go to three Wyoming LGBT organizations: GetEqual WY, Equality for All and the Matthew Shepard Foundation.

Such a great way to turn this event on its head. You will recall that the UW College Republicans made their own pledge back in the spring of 2010. Miffed that education reformer and one-time '60s radical Bill Ayers was allowed to speak on campus, the Repubs started working on an Ann Coulter engagement. It took awhile. Ann's busy as heck and couldn't come until a year later. And she only costs $20,000. Plus we hear that she wants only red M&Ms and pure, undiluted and unaltered American-made water in her hospitality suite. Any other beverage would compromise her precious bodily fluids.

Ann Coulter speaking at UW is not an issue. She has every right to speak. The college president has not sought to rescind the invitation, as he did with the one to Bill Ayers. Gov. (then gubernatorial candidate) Mead has not objected, as he did for the Ayers' speech. Former Superintendent of Public Instruction Dr. Jim McBride hasn't said a thing, although he was plenty miffed about Ayers. He wasn't the only one. Former Democratic Gov. Dave Freudenthal and Sen. Al Simpson also objected to the Ayers visit. Certain rich alumni threatened to withdraw funding from crucial projects, such as the new football stadium skyboxes with their unlimited supply of fresh Republican water (a.k.a. Freedom Water!). These alumni also said they would hold their breath until they turned blue. Or -- preferably -- red.

I could go on and on. Pledge now at http://www.facebook.com/AnnCoultersRainbow

More good news from the legislative session

Another dumb bill failed to advance during the Wyoming State Legislature's 20-day budget session. This dumb bill was based on the recent anti-democratic Supreme Court ruling endowing corporations with the rights of citizens especially the right to buy any election they want.

Here's the info, via Jeremy Pelzer's story in the Casper Star-Tribune:

State representatives on Wednesday voted down a proposal that would have erased state restrictions on independent political spending by corporations, labor unions and other groups.

The rejection keeps Wyoming's election law at odds with a recent landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision and could make the state the target of lawsuits this election season.

Currently, corporations, labor unions and other groups are not allowed to make independent expenditures on behalf of political candidates in Wyoming. But last month, the Supreme Court ruled that such bans on the federal level violated corporations' First Amendment rights to free speech.

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Ben Barr, a Maryland-based constitutional attorney with the Wyoming Liberty Group who wrote a legal brief cited in the Supreme Court decision, said a corporation or other group could resort to a lawsuit to overturn the state rules.

"The Legislature does need to act on this, otherwise Wyoming is in a way being a renegade and quite frankly unlawful after the Supreme Court has spoken on the issue so definitively," Barr said.

Yes, Mr. Barr, the Supreme Court spoke definitively and its five reactionary judges are beyond the pale on this issue. They're not so much renegades as Palin-style mavericks pretending to be populist champions but really being stooges for multinational corporations. Congress is working on legislation to block the impact of the Supreme Court's ruling.

Why would Wyomingites want to turn over their elections to big corporations? Aren't Wyoming Republicans concerned about the right of individual citizens? We know that they are very concerned about second amendment rights (more legislation coming up on that topic). But what about the all-important first amendment?

And who is this Mr. Barr? Another darn outside agitator? Doesn't he know that Wyoming likes being a renegade? Much better than being mavericky.

Nov. 22: Ask what you can do for your country

On this 45th anniversary of Pres. John F. Kennedy's assassination, I keep hearing this amazing sentence from his inauguration speech:

And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.

I thought of these words during the past week when the Detroit auto execs were up on Capitol Hill seeking bailout money. I've been thinking of JFK's words a lot during the past year, as many of "my fellow Americans" worked hard to reclaim our democracy. Ask what you can do for your country! During the past eight years, all we got was Bush's version of this line: "...ask what you can do to your country." Yes, and the Bushies did plenty to us. But we also deserve a share of the blame and the burden. Now it's time to clean up the mess. Persevere, and ask what you can do for your country beside vote and write a few pro-Dem blog posts.

Kennedy's words will be in the air when Barack Obama is inaugurated on Jan. 20, 2009.

Kucinich web site attacked following his introduction of Articles of Impeachment

The Dennis Kucinich web site was one of the first I linked to when I began blogging in earnest in 2005. Now it's June 2008 and Kucinich is no longer running for president but still performing brave and amazing acts to defend the U.S. Constitution. I already noted how he stood up and introduced 35 Articles of Impeachment against George W. Bush. And then something mysterious happened. This comes from the Committee to Re-elect Congressman Kucinich:

Under circumstances that can best be described as "suspicious," the http://www.kucinich.us/ website was crippled early this morning a few hours after Congressman Dennis Kucinich introduced 35 extensively documented Articles of Impeachment against President George W. Bush.

Until we can restore the website and implement additional security measures, you can find the full list and detailed Articles at http://www.democrats.com/files/amomentoftruth.pdfand http://chun.afterdowningstreet.org/amomentoftruth.pdf

If you would like to show your support for the Congressman's efforts, please go to myinfo.kucinich.us to offer your comments and provide us with contact information so that we can continue to keep you informed.

Makes you wonder, doesn't it?

Winning the West in 2008

McJoan wrote Sunday on Daily Kos about the presidential race in the West, concentrating on the Rocky Mountain states. The Democratic Party started its run for the White House by paying a lot of attention to the West, and providing money for state parties to beef up their staffs and outreach efforts. Wyoming's a great example of that. The state party has consistent leadership, and PR guy Bill Luckett does a good job of getting out the word, both in person and on the web. Howard Dean's 50-state strategy has helped Wyoming Democrats, although we're not too welcoming when he actually shows up in the state. But that's the key issue, isn't it? Democratic candidates in Wyoming need to be strong progressives but can't be seen as beholden to to the DNC. The only way Dems can win is to woo Republicans, Libertarians, and independents. Gov. Freudenthal did it twice in his campaigns. Former Gov. Mike Sullivan is another good example. Gary Trauner snagged a lot of votes in 2006 as the anti-Barbara Cubin. That won't be so easy this time, as Cubin is retiring.

McJoan made a lot of great points in her DK post. Here's a paragraph that rings true:

Finding avenues of nonpartisan, and even anti-partisan, appeal have been critical to the survival of the Western Democrat in the lean years since Ronald Reagan helped solidify the region as solidly red, as has keeping the national party at arm's length. The key for the Democratic Party in shaping a strategy for the 2008 elections will be allowing Democrats running in the region to run with a high degree of independence from the national party's message and structure. The key for national Democrats running in the West will be to find those issues that can be branded as Democratic and that uphold our progressive values.

Notice that she doesn't use the term "bipartisan." Here's why:

There is also the risk of misreading the basic anti-partisan orientation of these voters as a longing for bipartisanship. It's important to note that, in the context of this region, anti-partisan is not the equivalent of bipartisan. Western voters are highly pragmatic, looking for problem solvers first, and ideological debate is of less interest than action. Misreading this as some great yearning for comity can result in short-lived and uneasy compromises that erode the Democratic brand and end up diluting policies and programs. That doesn't have to happen. Voters in the Mountain West are more swayed by results than by process. Battles can be won, even in the most unlikely of places, by taking strong, principled, progressive stands.

Standing up for constitutional rights, a living wage, energy independence, etc., will go far in the West.

January 11: Close Guantanamo

Beware of that "brief flash of fear"

I'm a sucker for good literary references. It's the English major in me. Possibly no book has been more abused in this arena than George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. It's the no-brainer lit reference for our times, the era of John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzalez, true champions of the abridged Republican version of the Bill of Rights.

But here's a good one regarding new security methods in use by the Transportation Satety Administration. It was posted Jan. 1 by Avram Grumer at Making Light:

George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Part 1, Chapter 5:
He did not know how long she had been looking at him, but perhaps for as much as five minutes, and it was possible that his features had not been perfectly under control. It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself — anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face (to look incredulous when a victory was announced, for example) was itself a punishable offence. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime, it was called.

Us, now:
TSA officials will not reveal specific behaviors identified by the program — called SPOT (Screening Passengers by Observation Technique) — that are considered indicators of possible terrorist intent.

But a central task is to recognize microfacial expressions — a flash of feelings that in a fraction of a second reflects emotions such as fear, anger, surprise or contempt, said Carl Maccario, who helped start the program for TSA.

“In the SPOT program, we have a conversation with (passengers) and we ask them about their trip,” said Maccario from his office in Boston. “When someone lies or tries to be deceptive, … there are behavior cues that show it. … A brief flash of fear.”