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Even Congress denied access to basic details of NSA spying

Via BoingBoing and The Guardian:

GOP and Democratic Congressmen have been denied information from the House Intelligence Committee on details of NSA spying. When they ask for information on how the Committee voted, the Committee won’t tell them the details of the vote or how other House members voted. It is supposedly “classified”. These Congressmen are being asked to vote on continuing to fund NSA operations and can’t even get the information they need to make a vote based on the facts.

This is absolutely ridiculous.

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Get out and vote!

If you live in the U.S., today is the day. After almost 2 years of campaigning and listening to the candidates, it’s our turn as citizens to make our decisions and vote for our candidates.

I voted an hour ago – and the turnout was higher than 4 years ago, and I live in the state with the highest percentage of registered voters and those who vote. We had more voting booths than I’ve seen in 10 years of living here.

The best part? In Minnesota you can register to vote on election day, and vote. There were 6 people registering to vote, all, I would guess, under the age of 25. That’s what it’s about. For years the younger demographic has had the lowest turnout – I hope what I saw wasn’t just a fluke, and the young voters turn out today, and keep voting for the rest of their lives.

Please vote today. Every vote does make a difference.

Mark Shuttleworth: In defense of independent governance

Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Canonical and Ubuntu Linux, has a stirring blog post up titled In defense of independent governance.

I cannot due a summary justice, but Mr. Shuttleworth’s extremely well written words on culture, democracy and free speech have moved me, and I encourage you to read it.

I’ll leave you with this from Mark Shuttleworth:

At times like these, we are our own worst enemy. We hear what we want to hear. It is painful to hear that one might be wrong, that one’s hero might have flaws, that one’s leaders might not be all that we wished them to be. The awful truth of the media is that it pays to tell people what they want to hear, much more than it pays to tell people what they need to hear, and so society can whip itself into a frenzy of mistaken greed or fear or anger, and make poor decisions.

It takes great courage to speak out, when these basic principles are at risk. In a free society, there is nevertheless pressure to conform, to stay with the herd. In a society that is not free, one speaks out at some considerable personal cost to life and liberty. I salute those who do.

The Angry Liberal Club

Via BoingBoing, C.B. Shapiro has written an amazing piece of work, titled “Hark, the Angry Liberal Sings“. I’ll let his words explain, he does a much better job than I ever could, and I couldn’t agree with him more:

There’s been some ink spilled lately denigrating so called ‘angry liberals,’ that is, people who have allegedly lost their right to be taken seriously because they are ‘angry.’ And they are ‘liberal.’

Well, I hereby declare myself a charter member in the ALC (Angry Liberal Club).

Sure, at first I felt guilty — what right do I have as a patriotic American to be angry? Or liberal? Oh, I tried to repress the ‘angry thing,’ I tried — if I was asked, I claimed I was a ‘peeved moderate.’ Or a ‘mildly upset centrist.’ But after much work through ‘BIT’ (Blog Immersion Therapy), I stopped feeling the shame. I’m coming out of the closet to announce I am an Angry Liberal Guy. And I am pissed.

You might be saying “Man, what are you so angry about, Angry Liberal Guy?â€?

I’ve compiled a short (and by no means complete) list just so I could see it all in one place:

I’m angry about the shredding of the constitution…illegal wiretaps…falsified intelligence…secret prisons… use of torture as an accepted means of interrogation…Terry Schiavo…the war on science…denial of Global Warming…the fascistic secrecy of our elected officials… presidential signings that declare the President above the law…the breakdown of the wall between church and state…the outing of a clandestine CIA agent for purely partisan political gain…the corrupting influence of K Street… the total sell-out of the legislative process to corporate interests… appointments of unqualified cronies at every level of government…Harriet Miers…Brownie…Abu Ghraib… Scooter …the complete mismanagement of the war in Iraq…the lies about the complete mismanagement of the war in Iraq…the grotesque budget deficits… the pathetic response to Katrina… a civil rights division dedicated to undermining civil rights…an environmental protection agency that refuses to protect the environment… (Take a breath, Angry Liberal Guy.)

And I’m angry about a smug, simple-minded, incompetent, unqualified President, and a press that denies the obvious fact that we have a smug, simple-minded, incompetent unqualified President.

If these things don’t make you angry, I have to ask — what the hell is the matter with you?

And what would it take to make you angry? — C.B. Shapiro

Wisconsin Gets It

Gov. Jim Doyle of Wisconsin signed into law a bill requiring any vendor who provides electronic voting machines must provide the code that runs on those machines.

This, combined with paper copies of the vote you cast for (which Wisconsin also requires) are a must when it comes to electronic voting. Not just to avoid the fraud as seen in Ohio in 2004, or as a check against corrupt CEOs who publicly say they’ll do everything in their power to see an election go a certain way and they also just happen to provide e-voting machines, but the code and paper voting provide trust to the end user that their vote counts.

Learn more about e-voting courtesy of the EFF.

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Senate Rejects Extension of Patriot Act

Senate Rejects Extension of Patriot Act

Sen. Feingold has Senators listening! With a vote of 52-47, 8 short to override a filibuster, Senators today rejected extending the Patriot Act. Senators from all sides joined Sen. Feingold in opposing this terrible piece of legislation that stomps on American’s civil liberties.

“We can come together to give the government the tools it needs to fight terrorism and protect the rights and freedoms of innocent citizens,” said Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., arguing that provisions permitting government access to confidential personal data lacked safeguards to protect the innocent.

“We need to be more vigilant,” agreed Sen. John Sununu (news, bio, voting record), a Republican from New Hampshire, where the state motto is “Live Free or Die.” He quoted Benjamin Franklin: “Those that would give up essential liberty in pursuit of a little temporary security deserve neither liberty nor security.”

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Fight the Power

Just recently, I had mentioned Senator Feingold on the blog, and here is more proof that he gets it.

As Congress gets closer to extending the police state that is the Patriot Act, Senator Feingold says:

“I will do everything I can, including a filibuster, to stop this Patriot Act conference report, which does not include adequate safeguards to protect our constitutional freedoms,” said Sen. Russ Feingold (news, bio, voting record), D-Wis., who was the only senator to vote against the original version of the Patriot Act.

Secret laws requiring identification for interstate travel, wiretaps without judicial review, secret reviews of what books you check out from a library or you buy, and other invasions of privacy are about to be extended for another four years.

Talk to your representatives in Congress, and let them know it’s wrong.

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2008 Straw Poll

I don’t blog politics much, though I’m a pretty passionate liberal (no, really).

DailyKos, one of the more liberal and bigger blogs out there, shared their November straw poll results for the Democratic primary.

Surprisingly enough, Russ Feingold is 2nd in the straw poll for the 3rd month in a row, after Gen. Clark.

Now granted, DailyKos readers are extremely progressive, but I’m still surprised. I had the honor of meeting Senator Feingold one Sunday when we bumped into each other at lunch at Dotty Dumplings Dowry (alas, one of the best burger places ever is gone from Madison now) when he was still a state senator. I’ve followed his career avidly (being from Wisconsin myself), and have great respect for him. Not only is he a maverick, but he votes his conscience. That, combined with how he listens to his voters – every year he visits every Wisconsin county and has a townhall in each one, Sen. Feingold is someone in the party I have great respect for.

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Entrepeneur or Scam Artist?

The Star Tribune has a story up about E. Adam Web, a man who scans city ordinances around signs and billboards and petitions cities to put up huge billboards, up to 672 feet high. When the city declines the request, he goes after them in court pointing out that the local ordinances are so confusing and outdated that a homeowner couldn’t even put up a “Go Vikings” sign in their own yard.

This causes the entire ordinance to be struck down, and he gets his sign – which he then turns around and flips at a huge profit to someone who wants that advertising.

Mr. Webb claims he’s never lost a case yet out 110 completed or pending cases.

So the business model looks like:

  1. Find confusing city signage laws

  2. Request a huge sign

  3. Sue the city

  4. Profit!

This is the American legal system at work.