Fair Wisconsin...

On November 7, 2006 Wisconsin citizens will vote on a proposed constitutional ammendment to ban civil unions and marriage for same-sex couples. Check out the blog talk that says this is truly a non-partisan issue at: noontheamendment.blogspot.com


Fair Wisconsin has a collection of "A Fair Wisconsin Votes No" downloadable pdfs to use in printing your own window signs and pins.

Whirlwind hero of cut 'n paste turns in his scissors

More Neochunks hitting the pavement as the castle continues to crumble, right before our eyes... If you haven't noticed, take a closer look at the Charlie Sheen firestom on CNN - 83% of voters in this ongoing poll agree with Charlie that the U.S. government covered up the real events of the 9/11 attacks... that's 32,817 YES votes so far.

And those Hispanic right-wing voters, they just filed out en masse. And that new right-wing blogger over on WaPo, he just resigned...

In the past 24 hours, we learned of allegations that Ben Domenech plagiarized material that appeared under his byline in various publications prior to washingtonpost.com contracting with him to write a blog that launched Tuesday.

An investigation into these allegations was ongoing, and in the interim, Domenech has resigned, effective immediately.

When we hired Domenech, we were not aware of any allegations that he had plagiarized any of his past writings. In any cases where allegations such as these are made, we will continue to investigate those charges thoroughly in order to maintain our journalistic integrity.

Plagiarism is perhaps the most serious offense that a writer can commit or be accused of. Washingtonpost.com will do everything in its power to verify that its news and opinion content is sourced completely and accurately at all times.

We appreciate the speed and thoroughness with which our readers and media outlets surfaced these allegations. Despite the turn this has taken, we believe this event, among other things, testifies to the positive and powerful role that the Internet can play in the the practice of journalism.

We also remain committed to representing a broad spectrum of ideas and ideologies in our Opinions area.

Jim Brady

Executive Editor, washingtonpost.com

Mmmmmm Tasty!

Worth reprinting...

While the Washington Post newsroom staff is being cut by 10 percent Washingtonpost.com is technically a separate operation from the print edition. "The dot com is widely viewed as the area of future growth, while the paper is struggling to keep making a profit in the face of declining circulation and growing competition for advertisers," says Post reporter Tom Edsall.

As evidenced by the popularity of "TV's bastard child," Reality TV, we are apparently thirsty for a clearer vision of reality, driven to news blogs and talk radio where anyone can ask a question and feel like they are getting closer to an unedited candid response.

One Kos blogger writes, "The girls in my office used to hop on the computer and read celebrity news. Now they spend their time on CNN talking to me about the latest atrocity." Washington Post dot com realizes this...

Don't want to miss out on the latest buzz in politics? Start each day at wonk central: The Post Politics Hour. Join in each weekday morning at 11 a.m (Eastern Time). as a member of The Washington Post's team of White House and Congressional reporters answers questions about the latest in buzz in Washington and The Post's coverage of political news. The Politics Hour is hosted by the following:

John F. Harris, National Political Editor
Dan Balz, Chief Political Reporter
Tom Edsall, National Political Reporter
Dana Milbank, National Political Reporter/Washington Sketch Columnist
Jim VandeHei, White House Reporter
Peter Baker, White House Reporter
Michael Fletcher, White House Reporter
Charles Babington, Congressional Reporter
Shailagh Murray, Congressional Reporter
Chris Cillizza, washingtonpost.com Political Columnist/blogger

The Post's dot com just set off a firestorm by hiring Ben Domenech, one of the founders of RedState.org, a leading right-wing political weblog, to write the Post's "Red America" blog. Another Cowardly Lion, Domenech's blog doesn't allow comments to be posted, and opens with an attack on leading left-wing political blogs such as DailyKos.com. But, thanks to Ben's latest whining I just learned How to spot a baby conservative - Ken Kleiner's Toronto Star warning, "Remember the whiny, insecure kid in nursery school, the one who always thought everyone was out to get him, and was always running to the teacher with complaints?"

Some reporters at the Post say Domenech is there to balance out "the rabid" Dana Milbank... If you have strong views about Red America you can e-mail them to Jim Brady at executive.editor@washingtonpost.com.

Worth reprinting...
On Monday the Washington Post's Congressional reporter Shailagh Murray answered questions from readers during the Post Politics Hour. Selected questions from the chat and a link to the full transcript are included below:

Philadelphia, Pa,: The Philadelphia Inquirer provided a sensible discussion into the question of impeaching President Bush in yesterday's newspaper. It seems to me that outside the Beltway the issue of censoring and impeaching the President is being treated without national panic, but within the Beltway it is a radioactive subject that no one outside Conyers or Feingold will approach. My question: Is this something on which the public may be ahead of Congress?

Shailagh Murray: Thank you for this thoughtful question.

Remember a while back, when the public was starting to go negative on the war, but no one in Washington believed it, and it was considered radical to even suggest we'd ever leave the place?

I am reminded of that moment as I see all these folks squirm over the censure idea. Contrary to what you might expect of people who are willing to run for office, politicians are generally risk adverse, and don't like being first on anything controversial.

Charlottesville, Va.: Do you have any information on how much correspondence and telephone lobbying is going on from constituents to their Senators regarding the Feingold resolution? I support the resolution and called both of my senators (who are Republican, so just to let them know...), but am under the impression that there is a huge groundswell among Democrats for their party to stand in solidarity with Feingold on this issue. I'm aware of the polls, but believe that people who support Feingold are quite passionate. What is your impression?

Shailagh Murray: I will start by saying this: I wrote a story about Feingold last week that resulted in the angriest, most passionate e-mail blizzard I have ever experienced. Clearly, this is an issue where blurry polls mask deeply held convictions on both sides, but particularly on the Left, where folks truly believe Bush is a war criminal.

That's a minority view. However, as Feingold points out, and I think he may be on to something, there has been a complacency in Washington since Sept. 11 that has extended with the Iraq war. Congress barely scrutinizes anything these days. Lawmakers in both parties are wary of undermining Bush when there are troops on the ground.

Talking to folks on the Hill, it is clear that the Feingold effort has touched a nerve in both parties. With Republicans, it exposes their great political weakness -- that they don't challenge Bush on anything. And Democrats are being pressed by their own base to stand up against Bush on this issue, to show they have backbone, and on the principle that in this instance Bush may in fact have violated the law.

Mclean, Va.: Is Russ Feingold of Russellmania the only senator who actually takes a look at what is going on and then acts as their conscience dictates? Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, Barack Obama--none of these guys will even said Boo, unless it is a politically calculated, cameras on, Boo! that might somehow serve to keep them in Congress. This is why people believe the Democrats are the party of no ideas. The Republicans may be the party of bad ideas, and it is time for someone to stand up. Like it or not, Feingold did. What do you say about the lack of concrete ideas coming from the Democratic leadership?

Shailagh Murray: To be fair to Democrats, neither party has an interesting and fresh slate of ideas. The difference is that Democrats have been scampering around trying to assemble one for months, all very publicly, in their usual navel-gazing, disorganized way. Feingold is taking a different angle -- that people aren't looking for brilliant ideas these days, but for backbone and leadership. He, and a lot of others in both parties, believe that's what voters will be looking for in November.

Barr Feingold

Every now and again I find myself surprised shocked to be nodding in agreement with Pat Buchanan. You've gotta love this gnarly guy who is unafraid to take on all comers from the left... or the right.

He fearlessly defends the American majority reaction to the Dubai ports debacle against fellow conservative critics with an attack: "What Barnes calls paleo-conservatism is the conservatism of the common man, rooted in tradition and wisdom born of experience. It is not the Big Government, open-borders, free-trade, interventionist, globaloney of the neo-cons and their Rebel in Chief."

"Conservatives don't trash their countrymen, even if they think they're wrong. It is slander to say opposition to the Dubai deal exposed some deep, dark strain in the American soul.

"The cakewalk crowd doesn't understand America because it doesn't live there. It lives in an ideological world of its own creation, which, as it denies aspects of reality, is forever colliding with reality.

"And more collisions are coming.

'Nuff said, but never did I think I'd be reaching a hand out to conservative former Rep. Bob Barr of Georgia, who as Jesse Walker explains...

After entering the House of Representatives in 1995, Georgia Republican Bob Barr acquired a reputation as one of the most conservative members of Congress. It was Barr who in 1996 wrote the Defense of Marriage Act, which said states didn’t have to recognize gay marriages performed in other states; it was Barr who protested when he learned the military allowed soldiers to practice Wicca. A former federal prosecutor, a firm social conservative, and a strong supporter of the War on Drugs, Barr doesn’t fit most people’s image of a civil libertarian.

Barr started speaking out against domestic spying last year... “Here again, this is absolutely a bizarre conversation where you have a member of Congress saying that it’s okay for the president of the United States to ignore U.S. law, to ignore the Constitution, simply because we are in an undeclared war.”

Bob I know it's cold up nort hey... but there's this feisty Senator from Middleton that you seem to have a lot in common with. He calls himself a Progressive Patriot. And hey, this is the dairy state... We have more of the best organic whipped cream than any state in the Union.

Republican Splits
Bob Barr, Bane of the Right?

By Dana Milbank
Washington Post
Saturday, February 11, 2006

You could find just about everything at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference this week: the bumper sticker that says "Happiness is Hillary's face on a milk carton," the "Straight Pride" T-shirt, a ride on an F-22 Raptor simulator at the Lockheed exhibit, and beans from the Contra Cafe coffee company (slogan: "Wake up with freedom fighters").

As of midday yesterday, a silent auction netted $300 for lunch with activist Grover Norquist, $275 for a meal with the Heritage Foundation president and $1,000 for a hunting trip with the American Conservative Union chairman. But lunch with former congressman Bob Barr (R-Ga.), with an "estimated value" of $500, had a top bid of only $75 -- even with a signed copy of Barr's book, "The Meaning of Is," thrown in.

No surprise there. The former Clinton impeachment manager is the skunk at CPAC's party this year. He says President Bush is breaking the law by eavesdropping on U.S. citizens without warrants. And fellow conservatives, for the most part, don't want to hear it.

"You've heard of bear baiting? We're going to have, today, Barr baiting," R Emmet Tyrell, a conservative publisher, announced as he introduced a debate Thursday between Barr and Viet Dinh, one of the authors of the USA Patriot Act.

"Are we losing our lodestar, which is the Bill of Rights?" Barr beseeched the several hundred conservatives at the Omni Shoreham in Woodley Park . "Are we in danger of putting allegiance to party ahead of allegiance to principle?"

Barr answered in the affirmative. "Do we truly remain a society that believes that . . . every president must abide by the law of this country?" he posed. "I, as a conservative, say yes. I hope you as conservatives say yes."

But nobody said anything in the deathly quiet audience. Barr merited only polite applause when he finished, and one man, Richard Sorcinelli, booed him loudly. "I can't believe I'm in a conservative hall listening to him say [Bush] is off course trying to defend the United States ," Sorcinelli fumed.

Far more to this crowd's liking was Vice President Cheney, who stopped by CPAC late Thursday and suggested the surveillance program as a 2006 campaign issue. "With an important election coming up, people need to know just how we view the most critical questions of national security," he told the cheering crowd.

Dinh, now a Georgetown law professor, urged the CPAC faithful to carve out a Bush exception to their ideological principle of limited government. "The conservative movement has a healthy skepticism of governmental power, but at times, unfortunately, that healthy skepticism needs to yield," Dinh explained, invoking Osama bin Laden.

Dinh brought the crowd to a raucous ovation when he judged: "The threat to Americans' liberty today comes from al Qaeda and its associates and the people who would destroy America and her people, not the brave men and women who work to defend this country!"

It was the sort of tactic that has intimidated Democrats and the last few libertarian Republicans who question the program's legality. But Barr is not easily suppressed. During a 2002 Senate primary, he accidentally fired a pistol at a campaign event; at a charity event a decade earlier, he licked whipped cream from the chests of two women.

Barr wasn't going to get a lesson on patriotism from this young product of the Bush Justice Department. "That, folks, was a red herring," he announced. "This debate is very simple: It is a debate about whether or not we will remain a nation subject to and governed by the rule of law or the whim of men."

He invoked Goldwater and Reagan and even said he would support Bush's program if it had congressional support. But Barr was a prophet without honor in his own land. "Why does the FISA law trump the Constitution?" one woman demanded of him. "Why should a non-elected, non-briefed judge be able to veto our national security?"

Conservatives were sore that Barr put his disagreements with Bush in the pages of Time magazine. Another questioner scolded Barr for agreeing to introduce an Al Gore speech that was also sponsored by MoveOn.org. "I have nothing whatsoever to do with them," Barr pleaded.

Still, the old prosecutor managed to elicit a crucial concession from Dinh: that the administration's case for its program comes down to saying "Trust me."

"None of us can make a conclusive assessment as to the wisdom of that program and its legality," Dinh acknowledged, "without knowing the full operational details. I do trust the president when he asserts that he has reviewed it carefully and therefore is convinced that there is full legal authority."

The crowd was against him, but Barr, leaving the event, claimed the clear conscience of a conservative. "I just told them what they need to know," he said.

Barr elaborated on his conundrum. "It's difficult," he acknowledged. "It's not about sex, which was very easy to explain."

Love him or hate him, you have to give Barr high marks for consistency. "Whether it's a sitting president when I was an impeachment manager, or a Republican president who has taken liberties with adherence to the law, to me the standard is the same," he said.

And, besides, who cares about a little criticism?

"No more than normal," Barr reported.

Political researcher Zachary A. Goldfarb contributed to this report.

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

Saddam's Secret Bunkers

I waited for months for the troops to uncork Saddam's secret bunkers. I remember the drawings that showed how this evil despot had created a whole city underground, safe against any form of attack... Too bad it was all BULLSHIT! Just like all of the other WMD, bio-terrorist, mushroom cloud crap that was peddaled from the White House.

Forcing myself to listen to FOX, I just learned about... secret bunkers just completed in Iran. It seems they were built at record-breaking speed, in a few weeks. Amazing! This is worse than Rocky II, III, IV. Will someone please turn off the river of crap that flows out of the Whitehouse?

Iran completed building of secrete bunkers near Tehran
12 Mar. 2006 14:08

Taking into account possibility of a war with the West, authorities of Iran have built a secret underground military headquarter centre near Tehran (APA).

According to the information of the Sunday Telegraph paper, the secret bunker was built in Abbasabad region of the capital and underground roads were constructed to main government buildings from the bunker. Representatives of the National Council of Resistance of Iran said that information about the secret bunker was obtained through sources in the government. According to the information of the sources, construction of underground bunkers aims to disable satellite tracking system to watch operation of some secret enterprises. Official Tehran has not expressed its attitude to this issue yet. The Minister of Interior of Iran Mustafa Pirmahammadi said that if the UN Security Council decides to apply sanctions on Iran, then Tehran will reduce volume of oil transported to the world market.


Now, guess who'e first to report this besides the FOX network...
London's Telegraph Group Limited: North Korea to help Iran dig secret missile bunkers
Followed closely by the Azeri Press Agency, Azerbaijan
Jerusalem Post, Israel
The Standard, Hong Kong

Calling Judy Miller... late breaking story alert!

If 6 Was 9

Hi Sam,
Thanks for that disturbing morsel (below). Here's my instant reaction...

Lately I have been suffering from a kind of mental phase-shift, unconsciously turning things inside out as I hear them, reversing the intended meaning to reflect the truth contained within a morsel of twisted news. Here's an example...

Nina Totenberg reports that (Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day) " O'Connor began by conceding that courts do have the power to make presidents, or the Congress, or governors..." then I had to stop and reverse tracks - after I read the rest of the sentence, realizing the phase shift. "...the power to make presidents, or the Congress, or governors, as she put it, really, really angry."

Now I get it!

Courts have the power to make legislators angry...

Nonetheless, this power of the WhoDo (as described above) can, in this rare instance, simultaneously include both Al Gore and George Bush - no matter which way my mind spins it.

You've got the power!
What power?
The power of the hoodo.
Hoodo?
You do!
I do what?
You've got the power!

This all started back when the Ministry of Truth (MT) started churning out gems of framing-art like a bill that reduces controls on air polluters, and then gets labelled "The Clear Skies Initiative," or the bill that allows forests to be clear-cut that's entitled "The Healthy Forests Act."

When we invaded the wrong country (and became terrorists) in the War on Terror and the WMD excuse was eventually re-written by the MT (empty) to claim we are there to spread Democracy (Patriot Act) and to rid one nation of an evil dictator (which one? this one? that one?) who tortures, imprisons and kills his own citizens (in Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo?)...

While Zogby polls show that 72% of the troops want the US out of Iraq in a year or less, shockingly, 85% of those questioned believe they are fighting in Iraq "to retaliate for Saddam’s role in the 9-11 attacks." Remember Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s Office of Strategic Influence?

In the immortal words of Condi Jimi Hendrix, "Excuse me, while I kiss this guy."
Deborah Schoeneman reports that it happens to the best of us... "At a recent dinner party hosted by New York Times D.C. bureau chief Philip Taubman and his wife, Times reporter Felicity Barringer, and attended by Arthur Sulzberger Jr., Maureen Dowd, Steven Weisman, and Elisabeth Bumiller, Rice was reportedly overheard saying, “As I was telling my husb—” and then stopping herself abruptly, before saying, “As I was telling President Bush.” Jaws dropped, but a guest says the slip by the unmarried politician, who spends weekends with the president and his wife, seemed more psychologically telling than incriminating."

Yin/yangly yours,
Steve

On 3/12/06, samclem wrote:O'Connor Decries Republican Attacks on Courts
March 10, 2006 from Morning Edition NPR

STEVE INSKEEP, host: Supreme Court justices keep many opinions private, but Sandra Day O'Connor no longer faces that obligation. Yesterday, the retired justice criticized Republicans who criticized the courts. She said they challenged the independence of judges and the freedoms of all Americans.

O'Connor's speech at Georgetown University was not available for broadcast, but NPR Legal Affairs Correspondent Nina Totenberg was there.

NINA TOTENBERG reporting:

In an unusually forceful and forthright speech, O'Connor said that attacks on the Judiciary by some Republican leaders pose a direct threat to our Constitutional freedom. O'Connor began by conceding that courts do have the power to make presidents, or the Congress, or governors, as she put it, really, really angry.

But, she continued, if we don't make them mad some of the time, we probably aren't doing our jobs as judges. And our effectiveness, she said, is premised on the notion that we won't be subject to retaliation for our judicial acts. The nation's founders wrote repeatedly, she said, that without an independent Judiciary to protect individual rights from the other branches of government, those rights and privileges would amount to nothing. But, said O'Connor, as the founding fathers knew, statutes and constitutions don't protect judicial independence, people do.

And then she took aim at former House GOP leader Tom DeLay. She didn't name him, but she quoted his attacks on the courts at a meeting of the conservative Christian group Justice Sunday last year, when DeLay took out after the courts for rulings on abortion, prayer and the Terry Schiavo case. This, said O'Connor, was after the federal courts had applied Congress' one-time-only statute about Schiavo as it was written, not, said O'Connor, as the congressman might have wished it were written.

The response to this flagrant display of judicial restraint, said O'Connor, her voice dripping with sarcasm, was that the congressman blasted the courts. It gets worse, she said, noting that death threats against judges are increasing. It doesn't help, she says, when a high-profile senator suggests there may be a connection between violence against judges and decisions that the senator disagrees with. She didn't name him, but it was Texas Senator John Cornyn who made that statement after a Georgia judge was murdered in the courtroom and the family of a federal judge in Illinois murdered in the judge's home.

O'Connor observed that there have been a lot of suggestions lately for so-called judicial reforms, recommendations for the massive impeachment of judges, stripping the courts of jurisdiction and cutting judicial budgets to punish offending judges. Any of these might be debatable, she says, as long as they are not retaliation for decisions that political leaders disagree with. I, said O'Connor, am against judicial reforms driven by nakedly partisan reasoning.

Pointing to the experiences of developing countries and former Communist countries, where interference with an independent judiciary has allowed dictatorship to flourish, O'Connor said we must be ever vigilant against those who would strong-arm the Judiciary into adopting their preferred policies. It takes a lot of degeneration before a country falls into dictatorship, she said, but we should avoid these ends by avoiding these beginnings.

Nina Totenberg, NPR News, Washington.

Better late than never...

Let it be noted that on March 9, 2006 U.S. Senator Herb Kohl finally spoke out against the war on Iraq... as Secretary Rumsfeld testified before the Senate Appropriations Committee, on which Kohl serves, seeking $65 billion in emergency funds for the Iraq War.

I look forward to Herb's response to the House discussion of what is currently known as the Common Sense Budget Act that would direct $60 billion in military savings toward humanitarian assistance and food aid ($13 billion), modernizing public schools ($10 billion), providing health insurance to uninsured children ($10 billion), energy conservation ($10 billion), training unemployed workers ($5 billion), homeland security ($5 billion), deficit reduction ($5 billion) and medical research ($2 billion).

Speaking on Thursday in the committee hearing Kohl made the following critical comments to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld:

"You will tell me, as you have been telling the American people, that the situation in Iraq is not that dire. But Mr. Secretary, with all due respect, and speaking for a majority of the American people, that is hard to swallow," says Sen. Herb Kohl. "From the beginning, the Administration's Iraq strategy has been an amalgamation of misdirection and missteps. The intelligence about weapons of mass destruction that justified our invasion was wrong. You went into the war with no plan beyond the initial few weeks of military action. The estimates of the number of troops needed to accomplish the mission were too low. And now we are in Iraq with public support waning, American casualties mounting, and no apparent timetable or plan for turning Iraq back to the Iraqis and bringing our troops home."

Congratulations Herb! Please tell Hillary, Dianne, Henry and Joe that it's finally safe to add their voices to...

The Conservative Epiphany
By PAUL KRUGMAN
New York Times
March 10, 2006

Bruce Bartlett, the author of "Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy," is an angry man. At a recent book forum at the Cato Institute, he declared that the Bush administration is "unconscionable," "irresponsible," "vindictive" and "inept."

It's no wonder, then, that one commentator wrote of Mr. Bartlett that "if he were a cartoon character, he would probably look like Donald Duck during one of his famous tirades, with steam pouring out of his ears."

Oh, wait. That's not what somebody wrote about Mr. Bartlett. It's what Mr. Bartlett wrote about me in September 2003, when I was saying pretty much what he's saying now.

Human nature being what it is, I don't expect Mr. Bartlett to acknowledge his about-face. Nor do I expect any expressions of remorse from Andrew Sullivan, the conservative Time.com blogger who also spoke at the Cato forum. Mr. Sullivan used to specialize in denouncing the patriotism and character of anyone who dared to criticize President Bush, whom he lionized. Now he himself has become a critic, not just of Mr. Bush's policies, but of his personal qualities, too.

Never mind; better late than never. We should welcome the recent epiphanies by conservative commentators who have finally realized that the Bush administration isn't trustworthy. But we should guard against a conventional wisdom that seems to be taking hold in some quarters, which says there's something praiseworthy about having initially been taken in by Mr. Bush's deceptions, even though the administration's mendacity was obvious from the beginning.

According to this view, if you're a former Bush supporter who now says, as Mr. Bartlett did at the Cato event, that "the administration lies about budget numbers," you're a brave truth-teller. But if you've been saying that since the early days of the Bush administration, you were unpleasantly shrill.

Similarly, if you're a former worshipful admirer of George W. Bush who now says, as Mr. Sullivan did at Cato, that "the people in this administration have no principles," you're taking a courageous stand. If you said the same thing back when Mr. Bush had an 80 percent approval rating, you were blinded by Bush-hatred.

And if you're a former hawk who now concedes that the administration exaggerated the threat from Iraq, you're to be applauded for your open-mindedness. But if you warned three years ago that the administration was hyping the case for war, you were a conspiracy theorist.

The truth is that everything the new wave of Bush critics has to say was obvious long ago to any commentator who was willing to look at the facts.

Mr. Bartlett's book is mainly a critique of the Bush administration's fiscal policy. Well, the administration's pattern of fiscal dishonesty and irresponsibility was clear right from the start to anyone who understands budget arithmetic. The chicanery that took place during the selling of the 2001 tax cut — obviously fraudulent budget projections, transparently deceptive advertising about who would benefit and the use of blatant accounting gimmicks to conceal the plan's true cost — was as bad as anything that followed.

The false selling of the Iraq war was almost as easy to spot. All the supposed evidence for an Iraqi nuclear program was discredited before the war — and it was the threat of nukes, not lesser W.M.D., that stampeded Congress into authorizing Mr. Bush to go to war. The administration's nonsensical but insistent rhetorical linkage of Iraq and 9/11 was also a dead giveaway that we were being railroaded into an unnecessary war.

The point is that pundits who failed to notice the administration's mendacity a long time ago either weren't doing their homework, or deliberately turned a blind eye to the evidence.

But as I said, better late than never. Born-again Bush-bashers like Mr. Bartlett and Mr. Sullivan, however churlish, are intellectually and morally superior to the Bushist dead-enders who still insist that Saddam was allied with Al Qaeda, and will soon be claiming that we lost the war in Iraq because the liberal media stabbed the troops in the back. And reporters understandably consider it newsworthy that some conservative voices are now echoing longstanding liberal critiques of the Bush administration.

It's still fair, however, to ask people like Mr. Bartlett the obvious question: What took you so long?

WI + Death Penalty = Iran + Gay Men

I found the following story while searching WI + death penalty. It serves as another example of the conflicted conservative agenda - pro-life and pro-death penalty; attack Iran while you support their attack on gays...

Rothman Insists Secretary of State Explain Anti-Gay UN Vote
Congressional Desk
February 8, 2006

Expresses Anger, Disappointment at U.S. Alignment with Iran against Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered (LGBT) Human Rights Groups.

(Washington, DC) - Today, Congressman Steve Rothman (D-NJ) led a group of U.S. Representatives in denouncing the United States' recent vote of support for a hateful, Iran-sponsored, anti-gay resolution at the United Nations (UN). In an open letter to Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, Rothman and 44 other lawmakers insist that she clarify the U.S. position and publicly repudiate the vote.

"It is clear to us that the United States' human rights diplomacy must encompass the protection of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. We therefore request a detailed explanation of the Administration's rationale behind the decision to drastically depart from its own past support of advocacy work on behalf of the LGBT communities within the United Nations," Rothman and his colleagues wrote to Secretary Rice. "It is imperative that the United States reaffirms its international human rights commitments regardless of gender identity and sexual orientation."

The Iran-backed decree that gained U.S. support this year sought to punish several organizations that support human rights for LGBT people by blocking their application for "consultative status with the UN," a special status that allows them to participate in UN decisions. This year's vote was a dramatic reversal from 2002, when the U.S. instead voted to allow applications from some of the very same human rights organizations to move forward.

"It is deplorable that the United States would suddenly align itself with countries such as Iran, which the State Department acknowledges will severely punish same-sex conduct and has even imposed the death penalty on gay men simply because of their sexual orientation," said Rothman.

In voting for Iran's resolution, the U.S. also aligned itself with Cameroon, China, Cuba, Pakistan, the Russian Federation, Senegal, Sudan, and Zimbabwe, where President Robert Mugabe has publicly blamed homosexuals for 'Africa's ills.' All of these countries have deplorable human rights records.

"As a person of faith, I feel moved to stand up for the human rights of all people around the world, including people of all sexual orientations and gender identities. I hope that Secretary Rice shares that value and will respond to our letter immediately to reaffirm the U.S. commitment to human rights," said Rothman.

U.S. Representatives Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Eliot Engel (D-NY), and Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD) joined Rothman in leading this effort and sending the Congressional group letter to Secretary Rice.

On March 7, 2006 the Wisconsin State Senate approved Senate Joint Resolution 5, which calls for an advisory referendum on the question of enacting the death penalty in this state as the legislature may prescribe by law for cases involving, "a person who is convicted of multiple of first-degree intentional homicides if the homicides are vicious and the convictions are supported by DNA evidence." Next, it must come before the Assembly.

Please explain...
When is a homicide (a killing of one human being by another) not vicious?

AYES − 19 - PRO-DEATH penalty

BRESKE
BROWN
COWLES
DARLING
ELLIS
FITZGERALD
GROTHMAN
HARSDORF
KANAVAS
KEDZIE
LASEE
LAZICH
LEIBHAM
OLSEN
REYNOLDS
ROESSLER
SCHULTZ
STEPP
ZIEN

NAYS − 13 - PRO-LIFE imprisonment

CARPENTER
COGGS
DECKER
ERPENBACH
HANSEN
JAUCH
LASSA
MILLER
PLALE
RISSER
ROBSON
TAYLOR
WIRCH

NOT VOTING − 1

KAPANKE

If Senate Joint Resolution 5 is considered at all in the Assembly, it will be at the yet-to-be-set April session, during which TABOR and a few select other items will also be up for debate. There is time, therefore, to contact your representative to the Assembly to ask that this NOT be considered, and if considered, that it be defeated. Check the History of Senate Joint Resolution 5 from time to time, to see if anything has developed!

Learn more about the "Pro-life movement" at... The Wisconsin Coalition Against the Death Penalty (WCADP).

The nuclear agenda...

The 3.1 meter-tall clock, designed by Atsuo Okamoto, a sculptor from Hiroshima, was built with the help of a Tokyo clock manufacturer. It contains an analog clock showing the current time. Under the analog clock, two digital clocks display the days since the most recent nuclear test and since August 6, 1945, when the A-bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.

The peace watchtower clock was reset to zero Friday after a subcritical nuclear experiment in Nevada was jointly conducted by the U.S. and British governments. It is the ninth time the number of days has been reset since the tower was erected on Aug. 6, 2001.

When Minoru Hataguchi, director of the museum, pressed the reset button, the tower displayed "639," the number of days since the last nuclear experiment was conducted by the U.S. government on May 26, 2004.

Hataguchi said, "I'm angry because it's an act that tramples on the feelings of the people of Hiroshima."

Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba sent U.S. President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair a letter of protest saying that nuclear experiments that lead to the development of new nuclear weapons cannot be tolerated.

On Thursday, March 2 Amy Goodman interviewed Greg Mello, director of the Los Alamos Study Group. Here's a small portion of what he says...

GREG MELLO: It’s hard for us to win friends while we are pumping up India's nuclear program, allowing it to go forward, turning a blind eye, meanwhile out here in new Mexico, preparing to manufacture a new generation of nuclear weapons, and then coming down so hard on Iran, and which, you know, Iran can enrich uranium under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. I don't think there is any ambiguity about that. But the United States cannot make a new generation of nuclear weapons under the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

AMY GOODMAN: And yet, it is?

GREG MELLO: Yeah. We are planning on it. Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about this new generation and what it means here for New Mexico?

GREG MELLO: Sure.

AMY GOODMAN: I mean, some have said that if New Mexico were to secede from the United States, it would be the world's third greatest nuclear power.

GREG MELLO: Right. There is about 2,500 nuclear weapons just five miles from here, just a little south of the main runway.

The larger portion of what Mello says is that the Bush administration is:

• pushing for a new generation of nuclear weapons that clearly violates the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty,
  
• seeking to derail a 13 step nuclear disarmament plan that the US agreed to in 2000 at the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty review conference
  
• turning over control of Los Alamos National Lab from the University of California to a new 4-way consortium that will include three new partners alongside the University of California by June 1, to include Bechtel, Washington Group International, BWXT
  
• paying them about $2.2 billion per year for a 20-year/$40 billion no-bid contract.

Mello says, "We’ve never seen this kind of profit motive in the nuclear weapons business up to now. They can make more than, well more than $1 billion, more than $1.5 billion, in fees in management awards. Plus they get an entrée or leg up in the nuclear power business, which they expect to be growing. Los Alamos has for years, along with Sandia National Laboratory here, had a program to promote nuclear power worldwide. "

From switchgrass to a casual mention of nuclear power, the President's State of the Union address was all about getting US over "our addiction to oil..."

Sign of faith...

A Wisconsin witch is once again leading the fight for freedom of religion in the US. Circle Sanctuary's high piestess, Selena Fox met by phone with a Veterans Administration official on March 2 to confirm the Sanctuary's application for the Wiccan pentangle to be included with more than 30 other such emblems allowed on gravestones and makers in veterans cemeteries.

She has taken up the fight in support of family members of deceased National Guard soldier Patrick Stewart of Nevada who died with three other soldiers in September when their Chinook helicopter was shot down by a rocket-propelled grenade while returning to their base for refueling in Afghanistan. His dog tags, which his widow Roberta now wears around her neck, carry the word Wiccan on them to identify his religious beliefs.

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and its National Cemetery Administration prohibit any graphics on government-furnished headstones or markers other than those they have approved as "emblems of belief." From the Christian cross to the Buddhist wheel of righteousness, certain symbols are permitted including a symbol for atheists but not the pentangle - a five-pointed star facing upward, surrounded by a circle.

A Canadian boy has won the right for Sikhs to carry knives at school. Canada's Supreme Court gave the green light yesterday for the kirpan, a small knife of religious significance to Sikhs, to be carried in public schools. The case originated in Montreal's Marguerite-Bourgeoys school board in 2001 and involved Gurbaj Singh Multani. Now 17, Multani says he is not bitter over the five-year legal dispute launched when he accidentally dropped his kirpan while playing at recess.

"People are getting more interested in our religion, ignorance is going away because of this case," he told a news conference.

Sikh men wear the kirpan as a symbol of baptism. Sikhism, the world's fifth largest religion, was started in the 16th Century by Guru Nanak, a religious teacher. There are 25 million Sikhs in the world.

God, guns and gays...

Last night the Wisconsin State Assembly passed the constitutional ban on civil unions and marriage ammendment, sending it to the November 7th statewide election.

Hat tip to: State Rep. Gregg Underheim, R-Oshkosh, who sided with Democrats in opposition to the amendment. He questioned the motives of Republican legislators and stressed the importance of protecting all citizens under the constitution.

“What we’re doing today will change the nature of the constitution we have written,” he says. “This moves us from protecting people from their government to disenfranchising people.”

Fair Wisconsin is campaigning to defeat the ban. In the next ten days, they will hold kick-off trainings in every region of Wisconsin to introduce the campaign:

Milwaukee - Thursday, March 2
http://eqfed.org/aw/events/milw1/details.tcl

Fox Valley - Monday, March 6
http://eqfed.org/aw/events/fairfoxvalley/details.tcl

Central Wisconsin - Tuesday, March 7 http://eqfed.org/aw/events/fairwausau/details.tcl

La Crosse - Wednesday, March 8 http://eqfed.org/aw/events/fairlacrosse/details.tcl

Eau Claire - Thursday, March 9
http://eqfed.org/aw/events/faireauclaire/details.tcl

Superior - Friday, March 10
http://eqfed.org/aw/events/fairsuperior/details.tcl

Cowboys Are Frequently Secretly Fond Of Each Other
By Willie Nelson

There's many a strange impulse out on the plains of West Texas;
There's many a young boy who feels things he don't comprehend.
Well small town don't like it when somebody falls between sexes,
No, small town don't like it when a cowboy has feelings for men.

Well I believe in my soul that inside every man there's a feminine,
And inside every lady there's a deep manly voice loud and clear.
Well, a cowboy may brag about things that he does with his women,
But the ones who brag loudest are the ones that are most likely queer.

Cowboys are frequently secretly fond of each other
What did you think those saddles and boots was about?
There's many a cowboy who don't understand the way that he feels towards his brother,
Inside every cowboy there's a lady who'd love to slip out.

Ten men for each woman was the rule way back when on the prairie,
And somehow those cowboys must have kept themselves warm late at night.
Cowboys are famous for getting riled up about fairies,
But I'll tell you the reason a big strong man gets so uptight:

Cowboys are frequently secretly fond of each other
That's why they wear leather, and Levi's and belts buckled tight.
There's many a cowboy who don't understand the way that he feels towards his brother;
There's many a cowboy who's more like a lady at night.

Well there's always somebody who says what the others just whisper,
And mostly that someone's the first one to get shot down dead:
When you talk to a cowboy don't treat him like he was a sister
Don't mess with the lady that's sleepin' in each cowboy's head.

Cowboys are frequently secretly fond of each other
Even though they take speed and drive pickups and shoot their big guns;
There's many a cowboy who don't understand the way that he feels towards his brother;
There's many a cowboy who keeps quiet about things he's done.

(c) 1981/2006 --- Ned Sublette

Nothing but the flu and prohibition...

Today is the birthday of Victor Louis Berger, a Jewish American US politician and a founding member of the Socialist Party of America. In 1919 he was convicted of violating the Espionage Act of 1917, a law passed after our entry into WWI which made it a crime for a person oppose the war. The legislation was passed at the urging of then United States President Woodrow Wilson, who feared any widespread dissent in time of war constituted a real threat to an American victory. It was punishable by a $USD 10,000 fine and 20 years in jail.

Berger and his parents immigrated to the United States from Austria-Hungary in 1878, settling near Bridgeport, CT. He moved to Milwaukee in 1881, where he was a schoolteacher and newspaper editor, publishing and editing a number of different papers, including the German language Wisconsin Vorwaerts (Forward) (1892-1911), the Social-Democratic Herald (1901-1913), and the Milwaukee Leader (1911-1929). His papers were tied to the socialist movement and organized labor through the Milwaukee Federated Trades Council.

"You got nothing out of the war except the flu and prohibition," Berger told readers after the US entered the war.

His continued opposition made him a target. In February 1918 he and four other Socialists were indicted for insubordination and disloyalty under the Espionage Act. In spite of his being under indictment the people of Milwaukee elected Berger to the House of Representatives. When Berger arrived in Washington to claim his seat, Congress formed a special committee to determine whether a convicted felon and war opponent should be seated as a member of Congress. On November 10, 1919 they concluded that he should not, and declared the seat vacant. Wisconsin promptly held a special election to fill the vacant seat, and on December 19, 1919 elected Berger a second time; the House again refused to seat him.

The trial began on December 9 of that year, and on February 20, 1919, Berger was sentenced to 20 years' hard labor in Leavenworth Prison by Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis. The conviction was appealed and ultimately overturned by the Supreme Court on a technicality. His twice elected seat in Congress remained vacant until 1921, when Republican William H. Stafford claimed the seat after defeating Berger in the 1920 general election.

Berger returned to defeat Stafford in 1922 and was reelected in 1924 and 1926. He dealt with Constitutional changes, a proposed elderly pension, unemployment insurance, and public housing. He also supported the recognition of the Soviet Union and the revision of the Versailles Treaty. After his defeat by Stafford in 1928, he returned to Milwaukee and resumed his career as a newspaper editor until his death caused by a traffic accident.

Thanks to Rick Kisséll and Wikipedia for inspiration and content.

War-morphing

I had to take a look into the way back machine... Senate approves Iraq war resolution, trying to find out when it was that Congress approved an endless "War on Terror." I can't seem to find out when it took place as there is no mention of anything like that back in 2002. How hard can that be?

Digging back through the archives of Bateman365, the work of an artist who is making an animated film a day for a year, I find that he has the fully animated truth - Day009: Actual Excerpts From The President's Speech of 2/6/03.

On May 1, 2003 the President declared Victory in Iraq, Mission Accomplished! ...and changed the name of the game to a War on Terror.

Yogi-ism

They're called "Yogi-isms..." statements of fact by Lawrence Peter "Yogi" Berra. Similar to Bush-isms in that they bend and twist the language, Yogi's are words of wisdom.

"We're lost, but we're making good time"
"When you come to a fork in the road.... Take it!"
"You can observe a lot by watching."
"The future ain't what it used to be."
"It gets late early out here."

It started with a few cartoons... GWOP

With a $10 million budget, the largest ever for a Turkish film, producers of Valley of the Wolves can now afford to compete using all of the same slick editing and pyro-techic action found in any Hollywood feature film - including a a very sharp Flash dedicated Web site. Turkish filmmakers intend to let the rest of the world know that both sides can play to win-friends-and-influence-people, while making tons of money in the Global War of Propaganda (GWOP).

Turkish producers spawned Valley of the Wolves: Iraq from their record-breaking, 3-season Turkish cult TV series, Kurtlar Vadisi (Valley of the Wolves). In the hit TV show hero Polat Alemdar battled the Mafia in Turkey. In the full-length feature film he battles the US military in Iraq.

Valley of the Wolves: Iraq is based on a real-life incident: the actual raid on July 4, 2003 by US Army's 173rd Airborne Brigade of a semi-secret Turkish special forces post in Sulaymaniyah, northern Iraq.

"Our film's a sort of political action," says script-writer Bahadir Ozdener. "Maybe 60 or 70% of what happens on screen is factually true."

After ransacking their headquarters, eleven Turkish soldiers were actually hooded, led out at gunpoint and held prisoner by US forces for more than two days. At this point the screenwriters step in...

To save his honor, one of the eleven Turkish special forces officers commits suicide, but leaves behind an explanatory letter. Polat Alemdar, now an elite intelligence officer, reads the letter and sets off for northern Iraq to avenge Turkish military honor. Meanwhile, American soldiers have already attacked a wedding party killing the groom and dozens of guests including a child in front of his mother. They have also dragged the survivors off to Abu Ghraib where a Jewish doctor (played by you-can-never-come-home-again American actor Gary Busey) harvests their organs for the rich clients waiting in New York, London and Tel Aviv.

Let's see how FOXy Americans respond to a "cartoon" drawn in their likeness as Valley of the Wolves opens across European and soon in the US. No fear... angry mobs of white Christians won't be found burning down your local theater (they own it), much less the Turkish Embassy in New York - because the film is all in Turkish. No one here bothers to pay attention to any movie with subtitles.

PS: Yesterday Deutsche Welle reported, German Calls to Ban Controversial Turkish Movie on Iraq - The film has so far sold 200,000 tickets and is ranked fifth in the German box office charts.

Itchy trigger finger

The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, which issues hunting licenses, said that it will start requiring hunters, wishing to bag a lawyer, to have the new "lawyer's stamp" on their hunting license. Currently Texas hunters are required to carry stamps for hunting birds, deer, and bear, at a cost of $7 annually. The new "lawyers stamp" will cost $1.00, but open season will be all year long.
The department further stated that although the "lawyers stamp" comes at hefty price, sales have been brisk and it is believed it will generate annual revenues in excess of $1 billion dollars the first year. Other states are considering similar hunting license stamps.

"Among moderate and liberal Americans, there is such an anger toward Cheney," says Paul C. Light, professor of public service at New York University. "There are people who believed he pulled the trigger figuratively on a lot of things. Vice presidents can get away with hitting people with golf balls, but they can't get away with shooting people with shotguns."

Interview of the Vice President by Brit Hume, FOX News

Veteran hunters and shooting experts said Thursday that they still did not understand how the vice president injured his fellow hunting partner so badly if he was actually 30 yards away as Cheney says.

"It just doesn't add up," said John Kelly, a quail hunter from New York with more than 36 years of experience. "With a shotgun, the pellets spread out the further you get, and for that many pellets to hit such a small part of this man's body means Mr. Cheney was far closer" than the 27-meter distance cited.

Arianna Huffington cuts through all of the smoke and mirrors in... Happy Valentine's Day, Dick: Why the Press is Acting Like a Jilted Lover.

Cheney and the Bush White House have been blatantly lying to the press -- and the American people -- for over five years now. Lying about WMD, Saddam's links to 9/11, looming mushroom clouds, being greeted as liberators, the insurgency in its last throes, the war being able to pay for itself, torture, NSA wiretaps, Plamegate, and on and on and on.

But this is the story they are shouting "How could you?!" over.

It's like being involved with a serial philanderer. You find out that he had sex with your sister -- in your bed -- and you live and let live, so as to not rock the boat. Then you find out about the secret love child he had with his secretary, and you take it and hope that your kids will like their new half-sibling. Then he gambles away your life's savings and puts you in debt, and you let him slide with a promise to never do it again.

Than comes Valentine's Day... and he gives you a box of milk chocolate when he knows damn well that you love dark chocolate and can't stand milk chocolate. How dare he! All hell breaks loose: "You don't have to yell." "I will yell!" And you finally kick him and his milk chocolates out of the house.

The Humane Society calls Dick's style of "hunting" pheasant shooting... Cheney's Canned Kill, and Other Hunting Excesses of the Bush Administration.

The Marlboro Man

His family is still missing Blake Miller - the Miller who left Kentucky for Iraq a couple of years ago. The man who left was easygoing, quick to laugh, happy to sit in a relative's house and eat and smoke and talk. The man who came back is quick to anger, they say, and is quiet. He still smiles often but does not easily laugh.

And when he takes a seat in his adoptive grandmother's home, amid her collection of ceramic Christ figurines, it is in a chair that faces the door.

Mildred Childers, who owns those figurines, sees Miller's difficulties as a crisis of faith. She still remembers Miller's call just before the assault on Fallujah, and his terrible question: "How can people go to church and be a Christian and kill people in Iraq?"

"He was raised where that's one of the Ten Commandments, do not kill," she said. "I think it's hard for a soldier to go to war and have that embedded in them from small children up, and you go over there and you've got to do it to stay alive."

Recently, some of his Marine buddies have been calling Miller up, crying drunk, and remembering their war experiences. Just like Papaw Joe Lee used to do when Miller was a boy.

"There's a lot of Vietnam vets ... they don't heal until 30, 40 years down the road," Miller said. "People bottle it up, become angry, easily temperamental, and hell, before you know it, these are the people who are snapping on you."

Jessica interrupted. "You're already like that," she said.

She recalled her own first glimpse of the Marlboro Man -- an image seen through tears of relief that he was alive, and misery at how worn he looked.

...from THE WAR WITHIN by Matthew B. Stannard, SF Chronicle Staff Writer

Why we fight...

I told you so!
WhyWeFight.com

Born: October 14, 1890
Died: March 28, 1969

Dwight David Eisenhower was an inspiring military leader, best-selling author, head of Columbia University, and president of the United States. As the top American general and later Allied Supreme Commander in the European theater, he directed Allied forces in World War II to victories in North Africa and Italy and coordinated the massive and successful D-Day invasion of France. Extraordinarily popular with both his soldiers and the American public, Eisenhower was twice elected to the presidency, where he led the United States with determination and purpose during the difficult early years of the Cold War. After his retirement from public life in 1961, Eisenhower continued to serve his country as an advisor to presidents Kennedy and Johnson.

Why We Fight: New Film Takes a Hard Look at the American War Machine From World War II to Iraq
Amy Goodman plays excerpts from the film and speaks with award-winning director Eugene Jarecki.

Power to the People

Yuki Noguchi of the The Washington Post reports that there is a lot of effort being made by Democrat and Republican staffers to reshape the political listings in Wikipedia. "On Capitol Hill, Playing WikiPolitics, Partisanship Tests Web Site's Policies."

"A popular change in recent weeks has been deleting mentions of former House majority leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) from politicians' profiles."

The Wikimedia Foundation asks us to, "Imagine a world in which every single person is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge," but they go one step further in giving people the power to edit.

On 12/8/2005 Kos comments on A new study (PDF) by the USC Annenberg School shows that People feel increasingly empowered by the Internet. But Kos mentions, "so-called reformers" like Fred Wertheimer at Democracy 21; Carol Darr at the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet; the Campaign Legal Center and Common Cause, want to put a stop to the threat of freedom of speech.

Democracy 21 filed an FEC complaint on Jan. 15, 2004, along with the Campaign Legal Center and the Center for Responsive Politics, that charges ACT and The Media Fund - the pro-Democratic 527 groups that are the principal recipients of George Soros's campaign contributions - with violating the nation's campaign finance laws. It also charges the Leadership Forum with similarly violating the campaign finance laws.

Kos fears the threat of bloggers being regulated by the FCC, "By classifying this (his Web site) as a political action committee, reporting requirements and spending limits would force me to shut down. And as I've mentioned before, it's not the Republicans who are threatening this. It's Democrats."

The dialogue that follows the initial Kos entry is worth tracking in regard to how screen activity can be transformed to real grassroots action. Five of Diamonds says, "The Internet is the GOP's worst nightmare. That makes us the GOP's worst nightmare. I like the sound of that."

The Kos discussion fails to make note of the fact that during the 2003/2004 national election cycle, a half-million American citizens conducted over 25,000 official political Meetups using Meetup.com, a non-partisan, publicly accessible and open community organizing tool. Other tools, largely inspired by Meetup, were used to enable thousands more political gatherings. While voting levels increased an impressive 15-20 per cent, grassroots activism skyrocketed several hundred percent.

"Providing the catalyst to transform grassroots politics and ushering in a new era of participatory democracy was not the intention of Meetup's creators, but as with many great inventions, users employed it in unforeseen yet world changing ways," says Don Means, Meetup.com's Chairman.

"Meetup... helps to enable citizens to make their voice heard, and to organize on their own grounds, not against formal politics, but outside formal politics. So doing, Meetup greatly contributes to undo the rampant crisis of legitimacy that is deteriorating the quality of political life around the world." says Manuel Castells, Wallis Annenberg Chair in Communication Technology and Society.

"Around the world, political participation is increasingly taking place using online tools and applications. The potential and implications of these new forms of political activity are enormous yet barely understood by researchers or political experts." says Jane Fountain, Director of the National Center for Digital Government, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.

"In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act." says George Orwell.