McCain Refers to Americans as his "Fellow Prisoners"

This gem comes courtesy of the fine folks at Talking Points Memo.

Check it out:

SurveyUSA Has Clinton and Obama Both Beating McCain

Josh Marshall over at Talking Points Memo posted the following two images from SurveyUSA, which has done pretty good polling in the primaries so far. Note that both Obama and Clinton are beating McCain. Obama carries more states, but Clinton carries bigger states.

Huckabee Polls Best Against Clinton in Ohio Poll by Survey USA

Talking Points Memo has two polls up on its website. One is a national polls that shows Huckabee running second among Republicans for the nomination. The other one shows that Huckabee is the Republican polling best against Clinton in a Survey USA Poll. These polls are very fascinating.

One reason why Huckabee may have moved up is that his campaign is tapping into a circle of evangelical ministers that is helping his spread his message. Giuliani doesn't play well to evangelical Christians because of his support for gay rights, abortion, and his rather messy life with his three marriages. Romney doesn't play well because a lot of evangelical Christians don't regard Mormonism as a religion but regard it as a cult. Interestingly Huckabee is not stating his views on Mormonism being a cult.

That is a very smart political move. By not getting involved he doesn't get criticized for being intolerant of others' religion. Yet, since he is an ordained Baptist minister, he also doesn't risk offending conservative Christians as he might if he said that he thought it wasn't a cult.

In a earlier post, we wrote that Huckabee is the worst Republican nominee from a Democratic perspective, especially if Clinton is the nominee. He would bring out conservative evangelical Christians without the down side of either Giuliani or Romney. Warning to fellow Democrats: Keep your eyes on "County Boy Huck".

Government Uses Cellphones to Track Americans, Often Without Showing Probable Cause

One of the ongoing legal issues in the United States is applying the United States Constitution to situations that arise over 200 years after its adoption. When the Constitution was drafted, there weren't telephones, computers, cell phones, email messages, and all the other devices we now use to communicate. So the issue becomes how do you apply the Fourth Amendment, for example, to situations that the drafters of the Constitution never envisioned?

This issue is seen in a story that appeared in the Washington Post dated Friday, November 23, 2007. Apparently, since September 11, 2001, the United States government has required that every cellphone sold in America contain a way that such phone can be tracked used global positioning systems. The idea is that if there is an emergency, and a person is lost, that person can be found if he or she is carrying his or her cell phone.

According to the Post story, this system is now being used by law enforcement agencies to track suspected criminals. In many cases, Federal law enforcement agents are obtaining warrants from Federal Courts without a showing of probable cause to believe that a crime has been committed or is being planned. The following quote is from the first two paragraphs of the story:

Federal officials are routinely asking courts to order cellphone companies to furnish real-time tracking data so they can pinpoint the whereabouts of drug traffickers, fugitives and other criminal suspects, according to judges and industry lawyers.

In some cases, judges have granted the requests without requiring the government to demonstrate that there is probable cause to believe that a crime is taking place or that the inquiry will yield evidence of a crime. Privacy advocates fear such a practice may expose average Americans to a new level of government scrutiny of their daily lives.

Apparently the argument is being made that two Federal statutes, the Stored Communications Act and the Pen Register Statute, authorize the collection of such information on a standard of "specific and articulable factsshowing reasonable grounds to believe the data are relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation."
While some Federal Courts are rejecting this argument, other Federal Courts are accepting it and using warrants for the collection of such data.

One Federal magistrate in New York reasoned that since the government "did not install the "tracking device" and the user chose to carry the phone and permit transmission of its information to a carrier, no warrant was needed." Of course, this argument overlooks the fact that the while the government did not install the tracking device, it required that the tracking device be installed.

In any event, if you are interested in the issue of privcy in an electronic age, you will find this article fascinating. We learned of this article through Talking Points Memo owned and operated by Josh Marshall.

Democrats At A Disadvantage Because Republicans Don't Care if Government Works

Democrats are at a disadvantage when dealing with conservative Republicans. The disadvantage stems from the fact that most Democrats believe in government and want to make it work. Many conservative Republicans, however, don't believe in government and really don't care if it works, unless, of course, its working benefits them.

One way this leads to problems for Democrats is seen in the recent vote regarding members to the Federal Elections Commission. The Republicans have nominated a Republican hack who has specialized in trying to deprive minorities of their right to vote in American elections. His name is Hans von Spakovsky and he is a real piece of work. Here is a run down on his infamous career to date.

So when his name and three other names came to the Senate Committee that had to vote to send the nominations to the Senate floor, Committee Chair Diane Feinstein was going to demand individual votes on each nominee so that she could block Hans's nomination. Only it didn't happen that way. Why? Because a Democratic Senator, Ben Nelson of Nebraska informed Feinstein that he would vote to confirm Hans and send his name to the Senate.

So the compromise that was reached was that three of the names were sent to the Senate floor with recommendations for confirmation while Hans name was sent to the Senate floor with no recommendation. Immediately after that happened the GOP Minority Leader told the media that the Republicans would resist a separate vote on each nominee by the full Senate. Instead he is demanding that all four nominations be considered in one vote.

Now here is where Democrats' tendencies work against them. Republicans don't care if the FEC doesn't have a full commission or can't do anything. Democrats do, and so, our guess is that they will cave in to the GOP pressure. What Washington Democrats have to learn is that the government doing nothing is preferable to it doing what Republicans want.

Non-Coms of the 82 Airborne Have Great NTY Op-Ed Piece

Talking Points Memo alerted its readers to an excellent article in the New York Times for Sunday, August 19th, 2007. The article is written by enlisted men and non-commissioned officers of the 82nd Airborne. It is a realistic look at what is going on in Iraq. It is definitely not going to make the White House or its supporters of the Iraq War happy.

This is a quote from the article:

The claim that we are increasingly in control of the battlefields in Iraq is an assessment arrived at through a flawed, American-centered framework. Yes, we are militarily superior, but our successes are offset by failures elsewhere. What soldiers call the “battle space” remains the same, with changes only at the margins. It is crowded with actors who do not fit neatly into boxes: Sunni extremists, Al Qaeda terrorists, Shiite militiamen, criminals and armed tribes. This situation is made more complex by the questionable loyalties and Janus-faced role of the Iraqi police and Iraqi Army, which have been trained and armed at United States taxpayers’ expense.

A few nights ago, for example, we witnessed the death of one American soldier and the critical wounding of two others when a lethal armor-piercing explosive was detonated between an Iraqi Army checkpoint and a police one. Local Iraqis readily testified to American investigators that Iraqi police and Army officers escorted the triggermen and helped plant the bomb. These civilians highlighted their own predicament: had they informed the Americans of the bomb before the incident, the Iraqi Army, the police or the local Shiite militia would have killed their families.

Clearly the authors of this piece see this war far differently that politicians like Joe Lieberman or John McCain who go into Iraq for a few days, are heavily guarded, only talk to officers or troops picked by officers, and then come back and tell us how much better things are going. People like Lieberman and McCain don't want to hear that our efforts in Iraq are leading to us being viewed as an occupation, not a liberation, army.

Check out this piece and then see that your friends, relatives, everyone you know gets a link to this article. It is a powerful indictment of where we have been in Iraq and under Bush's leadership, where we are going.

Do You Worry About "Islamists" Taking Over the U.S.? Some Conservatives do.

Roger Simon writes for the conservative website Pajamas Media. He is convinced that America faces Islamist takeover. Such a takeover will result in women wearing burkas, gays being executed, and genocide against American Jews. You can read his article here. As Talking Points Memo has noted, this is apparently a very serious concern about American conservatives.

Now we have no doubt that there are Muslims who would like nothing better than to forcibly and violently convert the world to Islam. We have no doubt that such Muslims would gladly kill others in the pursuit of this goal. We also have no doubt that there are Christians who would gladly do the same. The point though isn't whether such people exist, the point is whether they have any ability to accomplish that goal.

Right now the United States has the most powerful military force in the world. We have a large Army, Navy, and Air Force. We have nuclear weapons. We are the only country in the world that has ever used nuclear weapons in a war, which means that we have demonstrated a willingness to use them. How in the world does such a country get taken over by Islamists? We just don't see it happening.

Driven by that curiosity, we left a comment on Simon's article last night asking him just how he sees Islamists accomplishing this goal. We checked this morning, (8/19/2007), and so far no answer. All this is not to say, however, that we doubt Simon's sincerity.

We think he is very sincere in his fear and we think that other conservatives are equally sincere. We just think that they are wrong. We also think that attributing power they don't have to people like bin Laden plays into their hands because it leads to overreactions. Such overreactions, like say invading a Arab country that doesn't pose a threat to our security, will in the long run harm American security. It will harm our security by radicalizing an increasing number of Muslims. Such radicalization will lead to more attacks on America and Americans. Will such attacks destroy our country? No. Will they lead to Americans dying needlessly in the sands of the Middle East and here at home? Definitely.

Why Media Doesn't Like Al Gore or John Edwards

Over at Talking Points Memo, Reed Hundt, who was on the FCC during the Clinton administration, has a post about how Gloria Borger and Gwen Ifill on the PBS show "Washington Week in Review" or whatever it is called now were dissing Al Gore.

Over at Daily Kos this past week, there was a post about how the media is attacking John Edwards for his supposed hypocrisy because he wants to help the poor and lives in a big house. That followed the attacks on him for his haircut and the attacks on him for consulting with a New York hedge fund.

These attacks are happening because Gore and Edwards are attacking the traditional media (Gore) and the way America treats the rich compared to the poor (Edwards). This makes the major corporations which own the media companies very unhappy. This in turn is going to be known to the reporters who work for those media companies, which will lead to negative stories about Edwards and Gore. Such stories will, ironically, prove Gore's point that he made in his book "The Assault on Reason."

The traditional media realizes that it is under attack from the left. Reporters are used to being attacked from the right, but these attacks from the left are really ticking them off. Just look at the reactions of people like David Broder of the Washington Post to bloggers. People like Broder realize that more and more readers are using the Internet for news and leaving traditional media like the Post.

The Post, for example, is suffering a decline in readers even though its only competition in D.C. is the Moonie paper, the Washington Times. Its not that the Times is picking up readers at the Post's expense. More than likely younger people, and Washington is a pretty young city demographically, are using the Internet and not the Post for information.

This lost of readers to the Internet threatens the Post's parent company's bottom line, which impacts Broder's salary. It also threatens the self-image of the Post, which prides itself on being one of the nation's premier papers. The Post's self-image, in turn, is probably important to Broder's self-image. It is hard to maintain that self-image if the Post is losing readers to bloggers.

There will be more such attacks in the future. Any politician, like Gore, who is seen as supporting the use of the Internet in public discourse runs the risk of being the subject of such attacks. Maybe what Democrats should do is create a website where such attacks are listed and any candidate who is not being attacked by the traditional media shouldn't be supported by Democrats.

If Bush & Business Want Immigration "Reform" Tell Them We Want Easier Unionization

If you click on the link in this entry's title, you can read a short critique by Nathan Newman of the proposed immigration law that is being talked up in the media. This bill is being hailed as a compromise and apparently has the support of Sen. Ted Kennedy. As Newman points out in his critique, however, this bill will allow 450,000 "guest" workers a year into the United States. These workers have the potential to become a second-class labor force with no intent on becoming American citizens and with the potential to undercut American workers' ability to organize.

Here's our suggestion: tell our Senators and Representatives that Democrats want an easier way for unions to organize. There is a bill in the Congress right now that is being pushed by Democrats that would do away with the need for union representation elections if a majority of a workforce signed cards indicating that they want a union. This would stop employers from conducting campaigns where they intimidate workers by bringing them in for meetings, firing organizers, and hiring expensive law firms whose business is stopping workers from organizing.

Don't make the mistake of thinking of the issue of illegal immigrants as separate from the issue of labor rights. Such division is how the right beats the left. Leftist organizations become too interested in protecting their own interests and fail to see how their interests mesh with the interests of other progressive organizations.

Why Using "Win" or "Lose" with Iraq Helps Bubble-Boy

Josh Marshall of www.talkingpointsmemo.com has an excellent post this morning about why using the words "win" or lose" with reference to Iraq plays into Bush's hands. His point is that using such terms obscures the fact that American policy about what would happen in a post-war Iraq was bound to fail because our objectives aren't the same as the Iraqi objectives. He argues that Bush wanted to create an Iraq that would be unified, allied with America, secular, and democratic. The Iraqis seem to want a state that is not necessarily allied with America, not necessarily secular, and one where the Sunni minority is under the control of the Shia majority. His point is that using a "won/lost" dichotomy is artificial and doesn't really describe the problems facing America in Iraq. Click on the link in this entry's title to read Marshall's analysis.

GOP Allegations of Voter "Fraud" are Purpose-Driven BS

The New York Times has an article about how the U.S. Justice Department has been going after so-called "voter fraud" cases across the nation. Not surprisingly, even though under Ashcroft and Gonzales, the Justice Department has been aggressively pursing these cases, very few prosecutions have taken place. No evidence of any conspiracies have been found and most of the cases that have been prosecuted seem to be examples of immigrants and convicted felons not knowing the rules.

The same thing was shown here in Ohio when an organization representing the homeless surveyed the local board of elections to find out how many instances they had of people voting illegally. The number was extremely small. Yet, despite little evidence, the Republican General Assembly passed a restrictive voter identification law that is clearly aimed at poor people, senior citizens, and minorities.

As we have pointed out before, while voters are required to show identification when they vote in person, they are not required to provide copies of such identification when they vote absentee. Why? Because Republicans in the General Assembly figured that their voters would vote a higher percentage of absentee ballots and they didn't want to disenfranchise the "right" kind of voters, only the "wrong" kind, ie, those that vote Democratic.

What the media doesn't get, though, is that Republicans in Washington and Columbus know the truth about their so called "voter fraud" theories. What they are looking for is a way to cloud the issue so that the media won't call them on their bs. If it was up to the mainstream media, they wouldn't, because most of those idiots are willing to parrot the GOP line. Unfortunately for them there is developing across America truly independent media in the form of websites and blogs that they can't control. Because of the pressure from these sites, like www.talkingpointsmemo.com mainstream media companies like the New York Times are beginning to pay attention.