civil liberties

A Film About The Destruction of The U.S. Constitution

Washington, You're Fired is capturing the imagination of audiences across the United States as more people awaken to the realization that we must all join together in a battle for human rights and constitutionally guaranteed liberties or face losing them forever.

John Boy Edward does nothing for the fundamentals of democracy, save Kucinich and Nader. No one else qualifies that I have heard.

First of all: why do we, the people, allow the candidates to frame the issues? I think we should define those and demand answers, if not on specifics, general philosophies!

Ask them the below questions (yes, I am hung up on this item). For example:

What will he or she do to repeal the Patriot Act, all of it? What about the Military Commissions Act and all amendments associated with both?

What will he or she do to repeal the Bankruptcy Act? What will he or she do to corral the egregious interest rates allowed today by national law? How will he tackle the out of control financial community and its international arbitrage - against us?

What will he or she do to corral finance companies (think anti-trust)?

So, you guys encouraged me to send in some of my blogs to local papers. Thanks for that advice. Here is the condensed version of my previous BlueNC post as published in today's Winston-Salem Journal.

There's a full report of today's Immigration Town Hall Meeting on the way, but here's a wee snippet to whet your political whistles. Thanks to syntax and Photoshop Guru for their fraternity as we entered the acidic belly of the Republican beast.

Google Video:

An AP Story on the Technical Corrections bill in the NC State House has this little nugget:

There are some nontechnical changes. One provision would allow company police officers authorized by the state to make arrests to carry concealed weapons without receiving a permit. There is no opposition to the change, Hackney said.

This seemingly innocuous provision is a union-busting gift to the hog industry.

According to the NC Council of Churches the Smithfield Company Police have wide powers to arrest and intimidate workers. This provision would give them the ability to carry concealed weapons without a permit.

BURGAW – The ACLU of North Carolina Legal Foundation (ACLU-NC) applauded a state court decision that declared North Carolina’s 201-year-old ban on cohabitation to be unconstitutional. State Superior Court Judge Benjamin Alford issued the ruling yesterday afternoon in a lawsuit filed last year by the ACLU-NC on behalf of Debora Hobbs, an unmarried woman who lost her job as a 9-1-1 dispatcher with the Pender County Sheriff’s Office simply because she chose to live with her unmarried boyfriend in violation of a 201-year-old state law that makes it a criminal offense for partners of the opposite sex to live together out of wedlock.

I've posted the ACLU-NC Legal Foundation's full press release here.

I can't wait to see how North Carolina's Republican Theocrats in Congress vote on this critical issue. I'm betting they bat 1000, with each of our smarmy hypocrites voting to chip away at the freedoms guaranteed in the Constitution. At a time when the world is going to hell in a handbasket, the US House is fiddling in the fire.

The bill's sponsor, Rep. Todd Akin, R-Mo., said America was a nation of God-given inalienable rights and that's why the country is in a war against "radical Islamists." Democrats wouldn't want to "cut and run" in Iraq, he said, "if they understood the importance of those basic principles and that inalienable rights are impossible without a recognition of God and that's why the pledge bill is important and not irrelevant or trivial."

Consumers Union has begun a campaign to stop Congressional offices blocking emails sent through organizational websites like Consumers Union

Last month, Congressional offices began to adopt new software that blocks the delivery of email their constituents send from a wide range of nonprofit organization websites. The Internet has opened up democratic communication between millions of Americans and their elected representatives. This new, higher level of participaion should be welcomed, not disabled.

This new technology--launched just a short while ago and already in use by more than 30 Representatives--requires you to answer a "logic puzzle" question before you can submit a comment. This is designed to limit communications to only those constituents who go directly to the lawmaker's own website to send a message. Unorganized individuals will be able to talk to their representatives, but people who wish to communicate as part of a movement through nonprofit organizations will be blocked.

  

Sometimes I am truly embarrassed to be a registered Democrat, and this stupid story is almost enough to push me into my own damn Blue Party - a party in which pandering to right wing patriotic bullshit would be cause for excommunication. The Greensboro News & Record has the sad saga.

RALEIGH — Rep. Maggie Jeffus can remember when she started her career as a school teacher saying the Pledge of Allegiance with her class every day. "That just kind of dropped off over time," the Greensboro Democrat said. Lawmakers would prod school systems into bringing back the pledge in classrooms where it has fallen out of the daily routine under a bill that cleared a key committee vote Tuesday.

I've been invited to go to the NC Democratic State Party Convention on June 23rd with a few other people from the UNCG College Dems group. I'm seriously thinking about going and I've already RSVP-ed to go but I started thinking tonight... Why should I?

Why should I waste my time going to the convention of a party that really doesn't do anything for me as a gay North Carolinian. Sure, the NC Dems will be the ones to most likely (God willing) to stop the anti-LGBT marriage amendment. Sure... that is a big thing. BUT it isn't anything progressive. It isn't anything that most politicians consider to be a gay rights issue. Most see it as a "let's not mess with our Constitution unless absolutely necessary" issue.