Tag: House

Crossposted at Daily Kos

    I’d like to share with you all this comment that was placed in my diary yesterday by Dkos User lascaux, as I think it sums up what we as Progressive activists and the Democrtaic base MUST accomplish in order to effect REAL CHANGE we can believe in.

What I learned

What this reform fight has taught me:

it is not enough to elect a progressive president, we need to elect liberals and progressives in congress as well.

    The frustrating inability of this Democratically controlled Congress is PROOF that our job did NOT END when Obama won the Presidential election in 2008. In fact, our work has just begun, and we must face it with the same dedication, intensity and enthusiasm that we did in 2008, or we WILL lose, because we simply don’t have the money to compete with the special interests that control our Government.

    But we DO have the people, and they can’t beat that.

    So, here’s how we should FIGHT BACK.

Also, on Daily Kos President Carter: Many Children Were Tortured Under Bush

    Call Congress and AG Eric Holder TODAY and Demand Justice!

What more do you need in order to pick up the phone, send an e-mail and jump out of your chair to YELL LOUDER!

Yell Louder! Take Action against the Bush/Cheney criminals today. AG Holder is leaning towards a Special Prosecutor, H.Res 383 is calling for investigations and review, and now this . .

    The House Intelligence Committee asked the CIA to provide documents about the now-canceled program to kill al-Qaida leaders, and agency officials said it would comply with the request, congressional officials said Tuesday.

~snip~

    The House request for documents is likely a precursor to what would likely become a full-blown investigation into the secret operation and why the program was not disclosed to Congress. Panetta, meanwhile, has ordered a thorough internal review of the program, agency spokesman George Little said.

Huffington Post

bold text added by diarist

CIA? Death Squads? How do I know Dick Cheney is at the bottom of this?

Because he is . . .  

Crossposted at http://www.dailykos.com/story/…

    I was recently told that an effective way of contacting my Congress Critter is to write a hand written letter and then send it off to them. Apparently, the effort that goes into writing an actual letter is a clear signal that I mean business, much more so than a phone call that never reaches my Congressperson or an e-mail that can be easily deleted.

    Therefore, I propose that we all get some “Get Well Cards” and send them off to our Representatives in Congress. That way, they will know we really, really care.

    We know the votes are there. Are the vertebrae there is the question.

__________________________________________________________________________________________

Choosing the right card is important. It can be funny or angry, home made or store bought, and you should definitely personalize the message on the inside.

    The message should be as clear as daylight. We want health care reform with a real and robust public option. You want to get re-elected. We should work together in order to accomplish our goals.

    Send one to both your Senators and your Congressional Representative, as well as your local State Representatives. Let them know that the American public will not tolerate bullshit on this issue, or any other issue where the status quo and Big Business stands in the way of real reform and progress.

    Mailing addresses for your Representative in the House can be found here at writerep.house.gov

    And your Senators mailing address can be found here at www.senate.gov

Crossposted at http://www.dailykos.com/story/…

    Representative Barney Frank has introduced H.R. 2835, a bill which is intended to reschedule marijuana for medical use and end federal interference in state laws.

    To provide for the medical use of marijuana in accordance with the laws of the various States.

govtrack.us

   Moving the Overton window happens one step at a time. We need to take bigger steps. This bill does not address the problems inherit in the drug war or the marijuana prohibition issue. If you want a national drug policy that makes sense, this bill does not address the problem, and right now our national drug policy is a big part of THE problem.

    The bill, which was co-sponsored by 13 bipartisan Members of Congress at the time of introduction, would change federal policy on medical marijuana in a number of ways. Specifically, the Act would change marijuana from a Schedule I drug, classified as having no medical value, to a Schedule II drug, which would recognize marijuana’s medical efficacy and create a regulatory framework for the FDA to begin a drug approval process for marijuana. The act would also prevent interference by the federal government in any local or state run medical marijuana program.

commondreams.org

    What seems like a valiant effort to protect medical marijuana users is not quite the problem. Of course I want medical marijuana users to be able to get the medicine they are prescribed, but that is not the Problem.

I suppose this isn’t a shock to anyone, but once again the House Democrats are ignoring their Constitutional power of the purse and are working on funding the Iraq occupation well into 2009. Led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the House Democrats work on huge Iraq money bill according to a story in the San Francisco Chronicle.

House Democratic leaders are putting together the largest Iraq war spending bill yet, a measure that is expected to fund the war through the end of the Bush presidency and for nearly six months into the next president’s term.

Neither the Bush administration nor Congress has been forthright with Americans about the true costs of the Iraq invasion and occupation. Now, once again the House Democrats are betraying the voters who put them into power in 2006 as they maneuver to fund the Iraq occupation once again to a tune of $108 billion, plus $70 billion of “breathing room” funding for the next president.

Today Tom Hayden, Bill Fletcher, Jr., Barbara Ehrenreich and Danny Glover published a open letter to American progressives urging them to join them and support Barack Obama. Why? Because Obama’s campaign is a movement.

We intend to join and engage with our brothers and sisters in the vast rainbow of social movements to come together in support of Obama’s unprecedented campaign and candidacy. Even though it is candidate-centered, there is no doubt that the campaign is a social movement, one greater than the candidate himself ever imagined

I think this is a very important letter and I’ll take a deeper look at it in this essay.

On Monday, the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law released its 2007 Congressional Poverty Scorecard. The President of the Center, John Bouman, noted that in states with the highest poverty rates, their congressional delegations tended to score the worst.

“Poverty is everywhere in America, but it is interesting that in states with the highest concentrations of poverty, the Congressional delegations seem least interested in supporting initiatives that fight poverty,” said John Bouman, president of the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law, which released the study. “This appears deeper than simply opposing spending. A member could have opposed any of the measures we analyzed that called for new spending and still could have voted to support half of the poverty-fighting measures on our list.”

Former presidential candidate John Edwards was also on the center’s conference call with reporters.

“We can get the national leadership and we can get the congressional leadership we need,” Edwards said. “But first voters need to be educated as to who is doing the work and who is not.”