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I'll repeat Schestowitz' question that wasn't answered. It's a direct question regarding the "wide range" of hosting services. Questions aren't "made up", they're asked. Maybe you can help?

I was unable to find a products/services page in Grassroots.com, but this one seems like the equivalent section:

http://www.grassroots.com/what/

Are they also doing hosting? I can’t find any information about that. How many companies do they provide hosting for? Where can one sign up?

the M. Moore story is here (unless my cookie timed out or something, which might have been the problem with the original post).

Dear friends,

DISCLAIMER: If you are planning to vote for Al Gore in November, good for you. Don't let what I'm about to say change your mind because I've been told by all the experts that if you do change your mind based on what I'm about to say, George W. Bush might win the election and I certainly couldn't live with myself if that connoisseur of pharmaceuticals (the kind you snort up your nose or the kind you inject on death row) won, in part, because of a letter I spit out over the Internet.

So let's review -- you like Gore, you vote for Gore. He's a decent guy. I met him last year at some benefit, he came up to me, big hug -- whoa, this veep is no stiff, I thought -- and thanked me for this and that. He even quoted lines from "The Awful Truth" - whoa, scary, I thought, what's he doing watching cable channels above 40 on the box...not much to do on this veep gig, eh?

I told him I admired what he did when he came home to America as a Vietnam Vet and spoke out against the war. That took a lot of courage, I said (his dad lost his Senate seat for being an early opponent of the war).

So, if Al Gore is your man, go for it. In fact, I insist on it, even if you are just throwing your vote away.

What I am about to say, though, is not intended for any Al Gore (or George W.) voters. If you are one, please click off now.

To Whom It May Concern:

I address this letter to the largest political party in the United States - the 55% of you in the voting public who are so disillusioned with politics and politicians, so sick and tired of all the broken promises, so disgusted with all the b.s. that you have absolutely no intention of voting in November.

You know who you are.

AND YOU ARE THE MAJORITY!

You rule. You are the Non-Voters, all 100 million of you!

Until now, you have been the subject of scorn and ridicule. You've been called apathetic, lazy, ignorant. Your actions have been viewed as unAmerican (I mean, what kind of citizen in the World's Greatest Democracy would not exercise his or her most important and cherished right - the right to freely choose your leader!).

Well, may I be the first to tell you that, not only are you NOT stupid and apathetic, I believe you are smarter than all the rest of us combined. YOU figured it out. YOU uncovered the scam. And YOU had the guts to no longer participate in a lie. Way to go! In 1996, you helped set the all-time American record for lowest turnout ever at a presidential election.

The reason you, the majority, no longer vote in America is because you, the majority, realize there is no real choice on the ballot. The "two" parties both do the bidding of the wealthy and agree with each other on 90% of the issues. They take 90% of their money from people who make over a hundred-grand a year, and then enact over 90% of the laws those contributors want passed.

On the ballot this November, you already know there is no contest. The independent Cook Political Report in D.C. last week announced that, out of 435 House seats up for election in November, there are only 47 seats where there is a "true race" between opponents - and, of those, only 14 seats have a race that is even "close" between the two candidates. 14 out of 435!

"Ninety-seven to ninety-nine percent of incumbents running for re-election will be returned to Congress in November," according to the Cook Report.

The Non-Voters already understand this. And they are not going to waste one iota of their day on November 7 driving to some smelly elementary school gymnasium to participate in a Soviet-style election with no friggin' choice on the ballot.

So, to you brave voter-resisters, I say congratulations on your act of civic disobedience! I joined you this primary season and refused to go along with this charade of "choice." Nearly 80% of those of us of voting age - over 160 million Americans - staged a sit-in on our living room couches during this year's primaries. THAT is the great untold story of this election year. How much longer will the punditocracy be able to get away with dismissing this massive no-show as "a sign Americans are content with the booming economy?"

Now that we have made our presence known (you all don't mind me speaking for us, do you? Good. In fact, I'll just assume the currently-vacant mantle of this majority party and serve as your leader until you say otherwise...), it is time to find a way that says, loudly and clearly, just how mad as hell we are and how we are not going to take it anymore. We need to find a way where our vote screams "None of the Above!" A chance to act, like that Chinese guy in Tieneman Square, standing in front of a moving tank and stopping it in its path.

In November, we should find a way to follow in the footsteps of those intelligent Minnesotans who, even thought they could care less about professional wrestling (and even less, I'm sure, for Jesse "The Body"), proved to the world that they not only have a sense of humor, but they know how to stick it to the whole bloody system. Think of just how high their level of anger must have been against the One-Party-With-Two-Heads monopoly! I mean, state government is no joke - somebody's gotta build the roads, run the schools, catch the criminals. You don't want to turn the asylum over to the chief lunatic but, damn it, that's what the people of Minnesota did - just to send a message! Wow. That took some guts.

So, for those of you who weren't going to vote anyway, well...what if you actually did? What if you drove down to that stinky gym where the little shell game behind the pretend curtains is taking place ("Pay no attention to the voters behind the curtains!"), walk in, sign in, take the ballot they hand you, and toss yourselves inside the booth like a political molotov cocktail.

Boom!

"You wanna tell me there's a choice here between two guys who both support NAFTA, WTO, the death penalty, the Cuban embargo, increased Pentagon spending, sleazy HMOs, greedy hospital chains, 250 million guns in our homes, more bombing of Iraq, the rich getting richer and the rest of us declaring bankruptcy?"

Boom!

Not me.

Boom!

I'm voting for Ralph Nader.

KAAAABOOM!

Friends, we are losing our democratic control over our country. We may have already lost it. I hope not. But in the last 20 years of the Reagan administration, Corporate America has merged and morphed itself to such an extent that just a handful of companies now call all the shots. They own Congress. They own us. In order to work for them, we have to take urine tests and lie detectors and wear bar codes on chains around our necks. In order to keep our jobs we have had to give up decent health care, the 8-hour day (and time with our kids), the security that we'll even have a job next year, and any unwillingness we may have to compete with a 14-year old Indonesian girl who gets a dollar a day.

And how frightening (and great) is it that the last place we can freely try to inform and communicate with each other is on this very Web? Six companies run by six men control the majority of the news we now get from newspapers, television, radio and the Internet. One out of every two books is bought at a bookstore owned by one of only two companies. Is it safe in a "free society" to have the sources of our information and mass communication in the hands of just a few wealthy men who have a VESTED interest in keeping us as stupid as possible - or at least in keeping us thinking like them so that we vote for THEIR candidates?

I fear the cement on this new oligarchy of power is quickly drying, and when it is finished hardening, we are finished. The democracy, the one that's supposed to be of, by, and for the people, will cease to exist.

We must not let this happen, no matter how cynical and disgusted we've become at the whole electoral process.

Ralph Nader, to me, represents a chance for us to at least temporarily stop the cement from drying. We need him in there kicking things up, stirring the pot and forcing a real debate about the issues. Whether it's Ralph as Candidate or Ralph as President, he may represent our last hope to get our country back from the clutches of the powerful few.

I am not writing these words lightly. I am hoping to sound a siren and rally the majority who, for good reason, have given up - but might just have it in them to find the will for one last fight against the bastards.

Can Ralph win? Well, stranger things have happened in the past decade. C'mon, think about it, not a single one of us ever thought we'd see the Berlin Wall come down or Nelson Mandela as President of South Africa. After those two things happened, I joined a new school of thought that said ANYTHING was possible. Jesse Ventura started with 3% in the polls and won. Ross Perot in '92 started with 6% and, after proving to everyone that he was certifiably insane, still got nearly 20% of the vote.

Ralph already has between 7% and 10% in the polls - before he's done any serious campaigning. He's gone from 3% to 8% in my home state of Michigan. These are amazing numbers and the pundits and lobbyists and Republicrats are running scared. Hey, you like to watch scared Republicrats running? Tell a pollster you're voting for Ralph.

Now, look, before you all send me a lot of mail about how weird Ralph is 'cause he doesn't own a car or is a "sell-out" 'cause he's got a few million dollars, let me say this: I used to work out of his office, and Ralph is definitely one of a kind. In a future letter I will write of those experiences but, for now, let's just agree that Ralph is at least half as crazy as Jesse Ventura - and about a hundred times as smart. I'd say he's also saved about a million or so lives, thanks to the consumer and environmental legislation he has devoted his life to.

And between Gore, Bush, and himself, he's the only person running who would guarantee universal health care for all, the only candidate who would raise the minimum wage to a decent level, the only one who would get up each morning asking himself the question, "What can I do today to serve all the people of this country?"

The list goes on and on. You can read more about what Ralph stands for by going to his website (http://www.votenader.org). You'll agree, I'm sure, there's lots of common sense there, regardless of what political stripe you are.

But remember. If you are even THINKING of voting for Al Gore, vote for Al Gore. Ralph Nader does not need a single Gore vote. There are a hundred million of us out there who are uncommitted and currently not voting. Right now, Gore and Bush are each hoping to win by getting only 40 million votes.

If you are in the Non-Voting majority and want to let 'em all have it, if you want to get our country back in our hands...well, if even half of you show up and vote November 7 then you won't be held responsible for Bush winning the White House.

In fact, you won't be held responsible for putting Gore in the White House, either.

Rather, you will have made history by putting a true American hero at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

And you will have given every company, every boss who's done ya wrong, the worst nightmare of their lives.

November 7. Payback Time.

The revenge of the Non-Voters!

So sayeth their unappointed leader, yours truly,
Michael Moore
mmflint@aol.com
http://www.theawfultruth.com
http://www.michaelmoore.com

PS. Come to think of it, Democrats should be on their knees thanking Ralph for running. Rather than taking votes from Gore, Ralph's going to be the one responsible for turning the House back over to the Democrats.

When millions of these Non-Voters enter that booth to vote for Ralph, and they come across their local race for Congress, they will find no Green Party candidate in most of the 435 Congressional districts. So who do you think Ralph's army of Non-Voters will plunk down for Congress? The Republican? I don't think so.

The Democrats are only six seats short of regaining control of the House. Ralph Nader will be the reason the Democrats get the House back for the first time since Newt's Contract on America in 1994.

Democrats should send their checks to Nader 2000, P.O. Box 18002, Washington, DC 20036.

(Or, better yet, let's try to elect enough Greens to Congress -- a dozen or so -- and they'll hold the deciding votes because neither the Democrats nor the Republicans will have the majority. It'll be a friggin' Knesset!)

PPS. If you're still worried this letter might convince a weak-kneed Gore voter to flip over to Nader - and thus lead to President George W. stacking the Supreme Court to make abortion illegal, well, it's all a bunch of hooey. Please read my latest grassroots.com column entitled, " I Ain't Fallin for That One Again. "

PPPS. Tonight, Wednesday July 19, on "The Awful Truth" (Bravo, 10 p.m. ET/PT), Crackers the Corporate Crime Fighting Chicken makes a surprise return visit. Don't miss it!

PLEASE PASS THIS LETTER ON TO YOUR FRIENDS AND FAMILY. PERMISSION IS GRANTED TO REPRINT ANYWHERE.

--

I think the first time I remember hearing this political urban myth was in the 1976 presidential election. Somebody told me the reason I had to vote for Jimmy Carter was because if Gerald Ford was elected, women would lose their right to choose to have an abortion. Abortion had been legal for only three years at that point. It was considered a great victory, one we all wanted to support.

So, I voted for Jimmy Carter -- and guess what? One of the things he did was to stop all abortions provided for women or wives in the armed services! He also stopped any further funding to birth control groups overseas that offered abortion as an alternative. And he ended all Medicaid payments for poor women in need of an abortion.

I felt a bit abused. I mean, Gerry Ford had been pro-choice. His wife was an ardent supporter of women's rights. And it was a Nixon appointee to the Supreme Court -- Justice Blackmun -- that wrote the majority opinion making abortion legal. What was I thinking? (Other than that the Nixon Nightmare years had to come to an end! That, I correctly rationalized, was worth the vote for Carter.)

Four years later, Democrats and liberals were going nuts over the possibility that Ronald Reagan might unseat Carter. Dire warnings were issued to all: If Reagan gets in, abortion will be illegal, period.

Well, I didn't vote for Reagan OR Carter, Reagan got in, and then something strange happened: Abortion remained legal! Sure, Reagan built on Carter's abortion restrictions, but Roe v. Wade was still the law of the land when the Gipper rode off into the sunset eight years later.

Yet Reagan had appointed plenty of wingnuts to the Supreme Court, so when the doomsayers in 1988 warned that George Bush would CERTAINLY send women back to the alleys to have illegal abortions, another bizarre thing happened -- Bush got elected, and ... four years later ... ABORTION WAS STILL LEGAL!

But Bush did leave us with Clarence Thomas, so when the Democrats came to scare the bejeepers out of me with what Bush would do to a woman's right to choose if he got a second term, I decided to vote for Bill Clinton.

So what's happened under our first feminist-man president?

Perhaps Clinton misunderstood his mission: he was supposed to support a womanÕs right to choose, not his right to choose women. Roe v. Wade is still on the books (mainly because of the consistent and unwavering support from the Reagan-appointed Justice O'Connor, the Ford-appointed Justice Stevens, and the Bush-appointed Justice Souter! They have voted to uphold abortion rights every single time). But it is now twice as hard for a woman in America to obtain an abortion as it was when Clinton took office. The anti-abortion terrorists have been so successful in their campaign of violence against abortion clinics and doctors and hospitals who perform abortions that a woman can now get an abortion in only 14% of the counties in the United States. That's right. Terrorism has scored its first victory on U.S. soil by assassinating enough doctors and firebombing enough clinics so that no one wants to perform an abortion. So if you live in one of the 86% of counties where not a single doctor will do an abortion, let me ask you this: what good is a "right" to an abortion if you can't get one?

The stunning thing about this virtual elimination of abortion in America is that it has occurred at a time when nearly 70% of the country supports some form of legal abortion. The terrorists have literally gotten away with murder -- with a pro-choice attorney general sitting in Washington, D.C., doing damn little about it. About the only reason I voted for these clowns was because of this issue -- and where the hell have they been?

Which brings us to Ralph Nader. Vice President Al Gore, on Meet the Press this week, told Tim Russert WHAT WOULD HAPPEN if George W. were elected president. Women would lose their right to have an abortion, Gore bellowed, with no equivocation and no hint of shame for what has happened on the Clinton/Gore watch.

All the pundits -- and the Democrats -- tell us that a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush because all Ralph will end up doing is siphoning off votes that would have gone to Gore. This is their mantra:

"IF BUSH IS ELECTED, HE WILL APPOINT JUSTICES TO THE SUPREME COURT AND THEY WILL DECLARE ABORTION ILLEGAL!"

Well, I've fallen for this before and I ain't fallin' for it again. In fact, I will go so far as to say that George W. Bush, if for some reason he is magically elected, will NEVER do ANYTHING to make abortion illegal.

Here's my proof:

1. To recap what I have already stated: Roe v. Wade was written by a Republican, and upheld for 27 years by Republicans. No Republican president has made abortion illegal, and none will this time around.

2. George W. is, first and only, a politician. For crying out loud, if 70% of the country favors legal abortion, trust me, that party boy is NEVER going to cook his goose on this issue. He is already moving to the center on abortion and has been doing so since the primaries. He wants to win. He already has the majority of women supporting him in the polls, in part because a lot of women are confident he will not upset this apple cart.

3. The New York Times two weeks ago did a study of Bush's court appointees in Texas and found that he did NOT appoint right-wing crazies, but rather moderates or moderate conservatives who have upheld legal abortion in Texas and struck down some cases that tried to put restrictions on a woman's right to choose.

4. Sometimes even conservatives end up accepting that the tide has turned against them. The most stunning example of this came last month when ultra-conservative Chief Justice William Rehnquist insisted on writing the MAJORITY opinion for the court upholding the Miranda ruling that requires the police to inform an arrestee of his or her constitutional rights. Now, you know a guy like Rehnquist personally just hates forcing the police to read someone their rights. But in his decision keeping Miranda the law of the land, Rehnquist wrote that the Miranda rights are now "part of the American culture" and therefore should not be done away with. Even pro-Miranda liberals had never heard that line used by the Supreme Court in backing a decision, but it was, in essence, the truth. Reading someone their rights is now like apple pie -- and so is a woman's right to choose what to do if she should become pregnant. The overwhelming majority of Americans believe it a decision best left with a woman, her doctor, her God -- and it's nobody else's dang business. That, too, is part of the American culture. It's called privacy, and it's been around for over 200 years. Nobody, regardless of their political stripe, wants the politicians or the justices in their bedroom.

So, this year, I'm not going to let the fearmongers scare me into voting against my conscience. And I'm not going to let the Democratic candidate for president cynically use this issue when he himself has served in D.C. for 8 years allowing the right to get an abortion to be whittled away to near nothing.

Plus, I believe the true Nader constituency out there is among the 100 million nonvoters who have given up, thinking they no longer have a say in what really goes on in Washington. Gore shouldn't worry about Ralph taking votes from him. Rather he should think about what his administration with Bill Clinton has taken away from the women of this nation.

Come November 7, I plan to enter the voting booth and vote not from fear, but from a desire to see this country returned to the people.

--

I see a similar issue here in academia. They shouldn't focus on commercial appplications because the market is good at that!! Instead, they should be focusing on studying what the VC's and commercial enterprises don't want to do but that would benefit the public good.

I don't the outcome of the commercialization trend is inevitable. Money is a means, not an end, and we can choose to value academia, education, democratic space, . But if we don't speak out, like Katz has done, and actively challenge this trend, it is certainly threatening much of the non-profit sector.

Michael Weiksner, founder of Quorum.org a politics forum w/open editorial control

Although I never heard back from either of the Senators, I did get a reply from Mr. Weldon's office. At least some congressmen ('s staff) read email. The reply was even in the form of a printed, mailed letter.

Jeff

Votation can blow hype all day, but the reality is that secure internet voting is impossible under any OS that lacks memory protection - such as Win9x, DOS, MacOS - because there's no way to prevent a malicious program (e.g., a virus) from stealing my vote. You can have google-bit key encryption and the most secure server in the world, but you can't keep malicious programs from reading and writing the memory of my voting program/browser to take control of my vote. On Windows NT, Linux, and other real operating systems, this is much less of a problem.

There's still the issue raised by someone else above: you can't detect or prevent vote coercion when you're doing it remotely. Of course you can't do that with absentee ballots either, and coercion hasn't been a big problem (that I've heard of, anyway).

The intersection of democracy and the internet is a whole lot bigger than voting. Decreasing the cost of political communication strengthens and expands our democracy. To paraphrase a comment John Sununu made yesterday, "It's not about voting, it's about bitching." (This does not constitute an personal endorsement of John Sununu's political beliefs. :)

This is what Grassroots.com is all about (and /. for that matter!) The site hasn't launched yet, but it will rock when it does. Keep your browsers peeled.

David Noha