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Free campaign adverisments? by Anonymous Coward · 2007-12-27 05:32 · Score: 0 · on FBI to Put Criminals Up in Lights

That's funny, I already thought they were doing this. Every Republican across the nation is under indictment for corruption or fraud, aren't they? And if not... they probably should be...

Seems to me the conservatives are just angling for more free campaign ads. I hear nobody is contributing anymore. Aside from Haliburton and Blackwater, that is.

Re:it's not like people don't play dirty by apparently · 2007-12-06 16:44 · Score: 2, Interesting · on Ron Paul Spam Traced to Reactor Botnet

A search at dailykos for robocalls yields an example, or two.

As we did our best to document, the National Republican Congressional Committee was responsible for repetitive, often harrassing robo calls in more than two dozen districts across the country in the runup to the election.

Unless practitioners are criminally charged and exposed for this kind of behavior, any fines that are imposed will merely be written off as campaign expense.

Re:Good as far as it goes by Scudsucker · 2007-10-18 13:04 · Score: 2, Interesting · on Senator Slaps Down FISA Telecom Immunity

The hold is quite likely to stick because Dodd is also backed by Arlen Specter and Leahey.

Unfortunatly it it's not likely to stick because it doesn't look like he has Harry Reid.

looks like Reid might ignore the hold by Scudsucker · 2007-10-18 13:00 · Score: 5, Interesting · on Senator Slaps Down FISA Telecom Immunity

According to this link, the majority leader has promised to bring the bill up for a vote regardless of Dodd's hold. Which is pathetic on so many fronts - the Republicans even whisper about obstructing a bill, and the Democratic majority buckles like a belt. But when another Democrat tries to stop a bill, he is ignored. Makes you wonder if Reid made a deal for something, and exactly what that deal is.

It is simply unfathomable to be why so many Democrats don't take a firm stand against NSA wiretapping, the Iraq war, etc. If they are principled, they would block it. If they only care about their political skins, they would still block Mr. 25% approval rating to make political points. Instead they buy shares in his messes by voting for them.

Robocalls by MillionthMonkey · 2007-10-10 04:32 · Score: 2, Interesting · on Hacking the Presidential Election

But honestly, we should be asking ourselves if we want people who stoop to such measures to make the policy for our country in the first place. I don't think I'm voting for any of them.

Those calls are designed to piss you off and make you want to stay home. So you look like a robocall success story. Just ignore the calls if you don't know who's making them. If you really want to know who's calling, listen to the entire thing because this information often comes at the end of the call.

Right before the last election people got flooded with robocalls where a dopey cheerful voice would say something like "Hello, I have some questions to ask you about Democratic candidate blah ... blah blah blah... blah blah blah... blah blah blah... paidforbythenationalrepublicancongressionalcommittee". Most people hung up before the end, but they kept getting the call.

Federal law allows political advocacy calls to numbers in the National Do-Not-Call registry, so those people had their lines tied up too. Nationwide, Democrats had narrow losses in seven Congressional districts that had been bombarded by the calls:

"We're just glad it's all over," said Betty Beatty, whose husband, Gale, was teaching a line dancing class at the recreation hall.
"They bugged us with their phone calls something terrible," said Betty, who voted for Buchanan because "with all her calls, Jennings, Jennings, Jennings, I wouldn't have voted for that woman if she were the only one running."
"The campaign was so ugly, so nasty, by the time the election came along I decided I couldn't trust either one of them," said Cheryl Crawford, a La Casa voter who cast a ballot in all the other categories, but left Jennings-Buchanan blank.
Crawford was one of only a handful of voters on Thursday who acknowledged protesting the campaign in the same way.
But most everybody knew somebody who knew somebody who refused to vote in that race.
Some were concerned that they may have missed the ballot line -- easily overlooked, they said, at the top of the second page, just before the gubernatorial candidates.
"I just didn't see it," said Monique Nadeau, who realized her oversight after reading newspaper accounts of the Jennings-Buchanan undervote.
Some residents suggested that the age of many of the voters in the 55-and-over community affected their ability to maneuver the electronic balloting equipment.
But Roger Lumley, who is about to turn 84, insisted that "the machines were very simple. Everything seemed to run smoothly." If people didn't vote in the District 13 race, he said, "I think it was all the backstabbing."
The phone calls were the worst of it, he said, "two and three and more a day -- most of them seeming to start out as an appeal from Jennings but I had a feeling," he said, that some of them were calls from her opponent's organization.
"I think many, many people were simply disgusted by the tone and tactics of the campaign, just turned off by it," said David Surles, a retired engineer who lives in La Casa with his wife, Fran, an on-premises real estate broker.
"One is just as bad as the other" he said, "and I would expect that a lot of people felt that way. Not voting for either one of them was a way of saying, 'Aha, I'll show you.'"

Thirteen percent of the people who actually showed up to vote in that election refused to pull a lever for either candidate in that race, to "protest". Jennings lost by 373 votes.

No recess appointments by PIPBoy3000 · 2007-08-27 03:05 · Score: 3, Informative · on U.S. Attorney General Resigns

There's an agreement between the president and the Senate Leader Reid to no longer due this. If the President breaks that agreement, it'll upset folks, plus the Senate can be kept perpetually in session by having a senator come in every few days throughout the normal recess. It's not legally binding, of course, but if the President wants to accomplish anything in the next year, I suspect he'll keep his word.

Analyzed on Josh Marshall's TPM Muckraker Site by Master+of+Transhuman · 2007-07-19 11:37 · Score: 1 · on Executive Order Overturns US Fifth Amendment

here and here.

"It applies to "U.S. persons," a category including American citizens. It had not previously been disclosed -- and still hasn't -- that U.S. persons are abetting the Iraqi insurgency, nor that Iraqi insurgents have property in the United States, raising questions about who in fact the order targets.

"The part where they reserve lots of discretion to themselves is the list of conditions that goes beyond determination of acts of violence. 'Threatening the peace or stability of Iraq or the Government of Iraq,' that could be anything," says Ken Mayer, an expert in executive orders and a University of Wisconsin political scientist. "Think of the possibilities: it could be charities that send a small amount of money (to groups linked to) the insurgency, or it could be the government of Iran that has assets in the U.S. and has money that flows through a U.S. bank or something like that."

The order permits the targeting of those who aid someone else whose assets have been blocked under the order -- wittingly or not. And under Section Five, the government does not have to disclose which organizations are subject to having their assets frozen..."

The scope of the order has raised civil-liberties concerns. "Certainly it is highly constitutionally questionable to empower the government to destroy someone economically without giving notice," says Bruce Fein, a Justice Department official in the Reagan administration. "This is so sweeping it's staggering. I've never seen anything so broad that it expands beyond terrorism, beyond seeking to use violence or the threat of violence to cower or intimidate a population. This covers stabilization in Iraq. I suppose you could issue an executive order about stabilization in Afghanistan as well. And it goes beyond even attempting violence, to cover those who pose 'a significant risk' of violence. Suppose Congress passed a law saying you've committed a crime if there's significant risk that you might commit a crime."

Representatives from the ACLU are still studying the executive order. But preliminarily, says spokeswoman Liz Rose, the order appears to expand the assets-seizure provisions of the Patriot Act, known as Section 806, to organizations linked to Iraqi insurgent groups. Much like the order, Section 806 allows the government to seize assets of banned organizations without prior notice and without a conviction of involvement in banned activity. "It is by far the most significant change (in the law) of which political organizations need to be aware," the ACLU wrote in 2002, contending that the vagueness of Section 806 potentially implicates legitimate political protest as well as material support for terrorism. "

Analyzed on Josh Marshall's TPM Muckraker Site by Master+of+Transhuman · 2007-07-19 11:37 · Score: 1 · on Executive Order Overturns US Fifth Amendment

here and here.

"It applies to "U.S. persons," a category including American citizens. It had not previously been disclosed -- and still hasn't -- that U.S. persons are abetting the Iraqi insurgency, nor that Iraqi insurgents have property in the United States, raising questions about who in fact the order targets.

"The part where they reserve lots of discretion to themselves is the list of conditions that goes beyond determination of acts of violence. 'Threatening the peace or stability of Iraq or the Government of Iraq,' that could be anything," says Ken Mayer, an expert in executive orders and a University of Wisconsin political scientist. "Think of the possibilities: it could be charities that send a small amount of money (to groups linked to) the insurgency, or it could be the government of Iran that has assets in the U.S. and has money that flows through a U.S. bank or something like that."

The order permits the targeting of those who aid someone else whose assets have been blocked under the order -- wittingly or not. And under Section Five, the government does not have to disclose which organizations are subject to having their assets frozen..."

The scope of the order has raised civil-liberties concerns. "Certainly it is highly constitutionally questionable to empower the government to destroy someone economically without giving notice," says Bruce Fein, a Justice Department official in the Reagan administration. "This is so sweeping it's staggering. I've never seen anything so broad that it expands beyond terrorism, beyond seeking to use violence or the threat of violence to cower or intimidate a population. This covers stabilization in Iraq. I suppose you could issue an executive order about stabilization in Afghanistan as well. And it goes beyond even attempting violence, to cover those who pose 'a significant risk' of violence. Suppose Congress passed a law saying you've committed a crime if there's significant risk that you might commit a crime."

Representatives from the ACLU are still studying the executive order. But preliminarily, says spokeswoman Liz Rose, the order appears to expand the assets-seizure provisions of the Patriot Act, known as Section 806, to organizations linked to Iraqi insurgent groups. Much like the order, Section 806 allows the government to seize assets of banned organizations without prior notice and without a conviction of involvement in banned activity. "It is by far the most significant change (in the law) of which political organizations need to be aware," the ACLU wrote in 2002, contending that the vagueness of Section 806 potentially implicates legitimate political protest as well as material support for terrorism. "

Re:Rep. Don Young is not a Senator by Mark_in_Brazil · 2007-07-18 08:42 · Score: 1 · on "Tubes" Senator Being Investigated For Corruption

GP:

The other Alaskan senator, also a Republican, is under a cloud as well.

PP, responding to GP:

Don Young (R) is Alaska's sole Representative in Congress, not the other Alaskan Senator.

But the thing is that Alaska's other Senator, Lisa Murkowski (appointed to the job by her father), like the other two congresscritters from Alaska, is a Republican, and she is under an ethics cloud as well, just as the GP said.

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003718.php

I hope the parent poster doesn't feel bad. This kind of corruption is rampant after 6 years of Republican control of all three branches of the Federal government with no kind of oversight, and with the Republican leadership having willfully ignored or even removed the famous "checks and balances" we hear about in US history classes on the US government. Anyway, with all the corruption, it's easy to get confused.

Re:Are these the senators that wanted the bridge? by MillionthMonkey · 2007-07-15 19:17 · Score: 5, Informative · on "Tubes" Senator Being Investigated For Corruption

This story broke six weeks ago (I wrote up a great story submission that got rejected). Senator Stevens and a group of unnamed "friends" from a local oil company involved in bribery schemes got together one weekend to renovate the senator's house as a weekend project. They were going to lift the first floor off its foundation, build a new first floor, and drop the old first floor back on top as a second floor. Unfortunately they screwed it up somehow (imagine) and they had to bring in a local contractor; that's where the trail started on that one.