From Stop the Madness http://msnoh.tripod.com
CONTENTS: Stopping the Ashman, Senate Fax lists, Super
Ex-Presidents, DC Crackdown for Shrub Coronation, Undercounting the Overvote,
Kathy’s Comeuppance, March on DC, How the Networks Got It Wrong, Relativity,
Talk Soup, 585 Law Profs Protest Supremes, An Offensive Defense
Your help is required to Stop the Abominable Nomination of Ashcroft. Fax YOUR or my letter to these Senators: bolds (Judiciary Committee + liberals) first. This is the most important thing you can do in the next 5 years. It’s vital to stop this horror show appointee.
DEM SENATOR Mass E-Mail ‡ LIST of DEM SENATE E-Mails
SENATE DEM + Liberal Repub Fax List- pasteable (present below w less detail) SENATE JUDICIARY DEMS Fax List – not done
QUESTIONS for ASHCROFT- nation Ashcroft Defends CCC member-NYobserver
OpposeAshcroft- pfaw factsheets Ashford Nephew Gets Probation for 60 Pot Plants Ashcroft’s Failure to Separate Church + State
‡ Senate systems may be set to reject more than 5-10 grouped e-mails, or your browser/e-mail client may have a limit, so try small groups.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________
Dear Senator,
We strongly urge you to reject the nomination of John Ashcroft for Attorney General. He is the worst nominee for any cabinet position in the last half-century, way too extreme in philosophy and position to hold this sensitive and powerful position. Top-cop is not the place for someone who would deliberately violate the boundaries of church and state, someone who believes that birth control should be prohibited, let alone abortion, someone who has shown his contempt for the Constitution by conspiring to oppose and delay Judicial nominees for years, someone whose commitment to civil rights and the environment is negligible, someone who would endorse and expand the imprisonment of 2 million citizens by stiffening draconian drug penalties.
Please don’t adhere to the royalist notion that you can’t oppose a fellow Senator, another member of “The Club”. After this tawdry bitter election, that attitude smacks of another form of corruption. Don’t presume you must find a smoking gun to reject Ashcroft: his radical and reactionary principles are sufficient to render him inadequate (like the atrocious Clarence Thomas- we’ve seen the fruit of that bush). Coupled with 1-3 more appointments to the brazen right-wing Supreme Court, a hard-right AG could damage civil liberties in ways that would render America unrecognizable in a decade. The Afghan Taliban and murderous mullahs of Iran demonstrate the risks of the fundamentalist path. Although Ashcroft is congenial and friendly, Advise and Consent isn’t an opportunity to rubber stamp acquaintances - it’s a sworn duty to make sure that unqualified or dangerous candidates aren’t handed powerful executive reins. And his promises to defend women’s choice shouldn’t be taken seriously, as Bush’s promise to be a uniter shouldn’t have been.
Additionally, Ashcroft may be intended to fail: he may be a sacrificial lamb to appease and energize the extreme right-wing, and to give wounded Democrats some red meat to appease their outrage over the foul tricks of this election. If he is passed anyway, Democrats may as well lay down in the road to be rolled over, because it will be a signal that they are weak and perhaps afraid at the semi-coup that installed our new Loser-in-Chief. It’s a gesture of contempt to the vast center of the country.
All it would take is for 2-3 Democrats to state that he will not fly, or threaten a filibuster, and Bush would fold. Boxer, to her enormous credit, has. For the sake of our country, laws, and future, you must do so and force Bush to chose a more mainstream candidate.
Sincerely,
________________________________________________________________________________
In addition, you might mention something about Norton, who should be seen only on the Honeymooners- although I don’t want to confuse the issue. Norton’s miserable record: http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/13/politics/13NORT.html Ashcroft is the nightmare appointee that a Bush regime always had the potential to do. One Nation writer thinks Whitman would disembowel the EPA: http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010129&s=ireland
PASTEABLE
SENATE FAX LIST (dems + liberal Repubs)
Names relate to same position in faxes; Top 3-4 lines most important
If you must enter faxes as items use a,b,c…, but many programs allow you to paste in a group.
* new Senators
Kennedy Leahy, Wellstone Reed Schumer* Durbin Kohl
Cantwell*, Stabenow*, Corzine*, Biden, Clinton,H* Carnahan* Feingold
Lincoln, Feinstein,
Boxer, Murray, Harkin,
Kerry, Mikulski
Daschle, Kennedy,P Nelson,Ben* Graham Lieberman Cleland Levin
Inouye Akaka Bayh Landrieu Breaux Sarbanes Rockefeller
Baucus Edwards Conrad Dorgan Torricelli Bingaman Reid
Wyden Hollings Johnson,T Byrd Nelson,Bill*
Miller* Carper*
Dayton*
202-224-2417, 202-224-3479,202-224-8438,
202-224-4680, 202-228-3027, 202-228-0400, 202-224-9787,
202-228-0514, 202-228-0325, 202-228-2197, 202-224-0139,
202-228-0282, 202-228-0043, 608-828-1203,
202-228-1371,
202-228-3954, 202-228-1338,
202-224-0238, 202-224-9369, 202-224-8525, 202-224-8858,
202-224-7895,
202-225-3290, 202-228-0012, 202-224-2237, 202-224-9750, 202-224-0072, 202-224-1388,
202-224-6747,
202-224-2126, 202-228-1377,
202-224-9735, 202-228-2577, 202-224-1651, 202-224-7665,
202-228-3687,
202-228-1374, 202-224-7776, 202-224-1193, 202-224-8567,
202-224-2852, 202-224-7327,
202-228-2717,
202-224-4293, 202-228-5765,
202-228-0002, 202-228-2138,
202-228-2090, 202-228-2190
202-228-2186,
Patrick
Kennedy is listed because of his influence with his father, Ted. A filibuster
(or threat of) may be necessary.
Chafee,L Collins Snowe Jeffords Grassley Specter Hatch
Not
fax nowß
401-453-5294,
202-224-2693, 202-224-1946, 202-228-0776, 202-224-6020, 202-228-1229,
202-224-6331
202-224-2207,
202-224-6519, 202-224-3149, 202-224-1353,
202-228-3997,
202-224-5213
Senate Judiciary Committee
202-224-2417, 202-224-3479,
202-228-3027, 202-228-0400, 202-224-9787, 202-228-0514, 202-224-0139,
608-828-1203,
202-228-3954,
202-224-6020,
202-228-1229, 202-224-6331, 202-224-2207,
202-224-6519, 202-224-3149, 202-224-1353
REPUBS
We’ve
missed 2-3 Dems- let me know who they are or if any fax numbers are bad. Most
right-wing (75%) Repubs aren’t listed, since they are beyond hope. It
might be smart to concentrate on Judiciary Com, but Ashford was a longtime member
and was assisted in his most grievous offense, conspiring to delay and
permanently block the Presidents appointments to the Fed. Courts by Orin Hatch
and others. This was the greatest offense to the Constitution in the last
decade (till Impeachment and bushycoup), simply preventing the President from
filling Judicial slots and violating the separation of powers. They are among
the Ashman’s best buddies. This must be stopped by the Dems in the Senate-
maybe by a filibuster (or threat of) by 3 or more committed Senators. That’s
why concentrating on Kennedy, Schumer, Wellstone and the women Ashcroft would
like to imprison if they violate his religious code, is best. They are in the
first 3 rows. The Repubs that might break w the lunatics are in the first row-
esp Chafee, who is furious at the right wing defeat at their liberal whip
nominee.
_________________________________________________________________________________
SUPER EX-PRESIDENTS:
Jimmy
Carter has said in interviews that if he was observing the election in Florida,
his International Vote Observer group would not have certified Florida, they
wouldn’t have even monitored USA, because the system is so varied and arbitrary:
http://www.herald.com/content/archive/news/elect2000/decision/058861.htm
BRAVE
NEW ABROGATION of RIGHTS: For the first time ever the
Secret Service is considering the inauguration a “national security event”,
with all the attendant restrictions. Henceforth protesters are all to be
considered potential terrorists (we haven’t seen this attitude since Nixon- no
we’ve never seen it). Thought those confused WTO + World Bank protesters were
cutting their own throat, by the time some serious outrage happens, like this
foul election, a massive preemptory police reaction force is in place- overwhelming police presence, million dollar
bail, unconstitutional arrests, absurd assessments (puppets are dangerous),
miles of chain link fence to separate people + force long detours Isn't political protest (esp. against such a rotten
election) a fundamental part of the Constitution and American democracy? Not,
perhaps, for long.DC
sealed: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A49708-2001Jan11.html
UNDERCOUNTING
THE OVERVOTE: When the Supremes were plaintively told by
Repubs about the lost overvote, it was obviously yet another cheap trick to
delay the counting. But they were RIGHT. An Orlando Sentinel investigation
in Republican Lake Co. (NW of Orlando) found 622 votes (out of 3114 overvotes +
88,000 total) in which people voted for a candidate and also voted for
that candidate as a write-in, normally voiding their ballot. The stunner was
that although the county went 15% more for Bush than Gore, the net change was 130
more votes for Gore. There were also hundreds more obvious ones crossed out
(w “wrong” or erased) that went heavily for Gore. Dems are just incompetent
voters. Although statistically worthless (since it only applies to the 16
counties that use the same machine), extrapolated out statewide that would
yield 43,000 more votes never before considered- 73% Gore. So GORE WON-
any way you counted em, except Kathy’s way.
LAKE
recount: http://orlandosentinel.com/orl-recount-12192000-story.story
KATHY’S
COMEUPPANCE- As we predicted in the beginning of Dec, Harris
will spend years in court- the Fl Sec State (+ some supervisors) were hit with
a blunderbuss suit from a vast coalition of liberal groups (ACLU,PFAW,NAACP)
alleging suppression of votes, discriminatory practices, etc. We haven’t seen
Harris’s performance on Prime Time Live yet (in the can), but she finally got
some prof. make-up advice.
Fm
BosGlobe: “The largest single bill so far is for $682,266,
submitted by the law firm of Steel, Hector and Davis to represent Secretary of
State Katherine Harris in 40 lawsuits around the state. One item on that bill
is $10,000 for a chartered airplane to take attorney Joe Klock from Tallahassee
to Washington to appear before the US Supreme Court. Expenses for a special
legislative session ordered by House Speaker Tom Feeney and Senate President
John McKay to consider whether to appoint the state's electors for George W.
Bush total more than $425,000.”
MARCH ON WASHINGTON - January 20th - http://DemocracyMarch.org
HOW THE NETWORKS GOT
IT WRONG: The complete story of the
election night mistakes from our contributor Michael Hammerschlag on
MediaChannel.org The following story
about the nature of lies + evil is also on OnlineJournal.com http://www.onlinejournal.com/Commentary/Hammerschlag011001/hammerschlag011001.htm
_______________________________________________________________________________
Relativity
There was a point in this terrible election
where it became all clear, like a B+W photo in developer, that they were going
to get away with it- that the Republicans would manage to stop the recount and
force their man into the White House..
against all reason, facts, and fairness. That point was when Bob Dole
and Christine Whitman, moderates of whom one might have expected a dollop of
justice, paraded down to Florida and added their voices to the congealed
impervious mass of Republicans parroting the amazing lie that humans couldn’t
fairly count votes… though we had managed quite well for 200 years. It was a
betrayal of integrity, of honesty, of decency, that left one breathless in its
audacity. Wasn’t there one Republican who had any bedrock respect for our
Constitutional principles, who had any principles beyond their own Party’s
self-promotion, who would publicly speak out against this intellectual violence?
As in the Impeachment, apparently not. A candidate that had campaigned on
“bringing back integrity” endorsed the most cynical untruth possible, one that
dwarfed Monica. Republicans mobilized every branch of government in their
service- it was total war, while Democrats wrung their hands, and pundits
relentless pressured the winner (by 1/3 million votes then) to concede.
If
Katherine Harris couldn’t deliver Florida by her machinations (ordering
supervisors to stop legitimate hand counts, throwing thousands of out of state
innocent “felons” off the rolls- 30% of all blacks), then maybe the Fl Supreme
Ct. or US Court of Appeals would (they didn’t). If not them, the Florida
legislature prepared to usurp their own voter’s will in the most naked abuse of
power we have seen in ages. If not them, the Supreme Court prepared to throw
out every principle they espoused to cobble together a decision so shoddy that every
American election in history would be invalidated by its application. For
the Bushmen, losing was not an option. But if losing wasn’t an option, then
this wasn’t an election and we aren’t a democracy- which brings us back to
the conundrum of preventing a fair recount. Future eons of schoolchildren will
ask, “Why did people let this happen?” Simply, the Democrats didn’t care
enough, and the Republicans were willing to do anything to win. Add 98
million couch potatoes who couldn’t get off theirs’ to vote. And pundits just
didn’t like Al.
Democracy
and our entire electoral process rely on good will, on public-spirited decency
far more than people realize. Election officials (which I’ve been a couple of
times) aren’t supposed to be impartial, indeed, they aren’t allowed
to be impartial- you must be a member of the 2 parties to be a poll worker. The
theory is of balanced power and a passionate interest, but in practice, it
often relies on people to: ‘due unto others as you would have them (lest
they) do unto you’. If this overweening principle collapses far enough, the
entire system breaks down and isn’t easily reconstitutable, which is why
all-out political war is rightly feared by many. In this election, the Bush
forces shredded that principle and demonstrated a deep contempt for democracy.
If conditions had been reversed and Bush was ahead by 700 votes, do you think
for one second that Gore would have opposed recounting the votes? He is such a
civic stickler that he wouldn’t even let the black Reps talk about their
motion to contest Florida electors when the Loser-in-Chief was certified the
victor Sat.. The Republicans have been fighting no-holds-barred for 20 years
now, since 1980, Reagan, Terry Dolan, and NCPAC; and almost rabidly since
Clinton’s ascension. Democrats, however, have maintained a befuddled civility
as if they couldn’t quite understand why the Republicans hated them so much, as
the Republicans- fueled by hate radio - became dominated by extremists and
fringe fundamentalists. Nothing demonstrated this vicious hatred better than
the demonstrators picketing and harassing the Vice-President at his home
to “get out of Dick Cheney’s house”, as the Presidency was corruptly and
violently ripped from his pocket. At some point hated and lies must be
classified in their larger category: evil.
Politics
all involves some damage to the truth, but when one repeat an egregious lie
over and over, until half the country repeats (or believes) that untruth, you
haven’t just damaged the system, you’ve damaged the very language and
changed the firmament on which the system sits. And nothing is ever the same
again. It’s been so in every dictatorship, as rulers conditioned their people
to accept constantly rising levels of outrage, of violence, of enemies –
internal and external - that must be warred against. And this lie involved the
voting that’s the very basis of democracy. The next step of shifting
relativity, already floated by Bushmen and perhaps soon to be picked up by
vapid commentators, is to seal the votes- to prevent all this uncertainty
and instability.
This
is a different Bush, not one of noblesse oblige, but one of simmering
anti-intellectual resentments; a compassionate conservative who drives his
heart-surgeried Veep pal out of the hospital like a plow horse, who goes
golfing 800 miles away as his daughter recovers from emergency surgery with
orders to “clean out her room”; an Ivy league graduate so bereft of ideas that
he had to reach ¼ century back to staff his administration, his Corporation
USA/Bush; a West Texas product who believes that millionaires should be in
control and what’s right for corporations is right for America. We are moving
from the best public speaker in a century to the worst. Contrast this man with
the Gore that warmly and graciously greeted every Senator in the historic
swearing-in*, including his sworn opponents. It’s a matter of class. Bush only
values money, power, and loyalty. Witness White House Counsel appointee Alberto
Gonzales (who helped Bush avoid jury duty in DUI case), a potential Supreme
Court nominee, as he swore his fawning fealty, his undying loyalty to Bush
at his public debut. He would have kissed his ring, if Bush had one. It was
embarrassing, and chilling in its exposition of the quality of Bush’s nominees.
The
Ashcroft nomination could be seen as an act of contempt- offering up an extreme
right-wing ideologue for top cop, but it’s something else. It’s a test: a sop
to the hard right, who will be suitable energized if he is defeated, and some
red meat to aggrieved Democrats to chew on. He isn’t supposed to be
confirmed. If he is, the shell-shocked Dems will have demonstrated how weak
and directionless they are (frightened?), and set themselves up to be
steamrollered on a variety of issues. And America, prosecuted by a religious
fanatic, judged by the Supreme Republicans, will take another giant step
towards the terrifying shifting landscape of a dynastic reactionary
relativistic ether, where the truth itself will…. depend.
And
red is gray and gray is white, and we decide which is right. --- Moody Blues
*You
have the President of the Senate: the Vice President who became President, but
had the election stolen from him, greeting his running mate, the real next Vice
President, but now Senator again, and the President’s wife, who is now also a
Senator, while the President watched from the gallery; and the opposition beamed
with pride, as if they hadn’t banded together en masse to strip the Presidency
from Veep, who would in 2 weeks, …. be nothing. If this were a TV movie with
Alan Alda, you’d turn it off for being too absurd.
As
an example of this shifting realty: in Texas, Stalinist TX Repubs prevailed on
the publisher to remove Gore from student textbooks: http://www.dallasnews.com/texas_southwest/205959_textbooks_03te.html
585 LAW PROFESSORS Protest Supreme Decision: http://www.the-rule-of-law.com/statement.html
AN OFFENSIVE
DEFENSE: Gb2’s
obsession with creating the massive military defense contractor subsidy of a
Nat. Missile Defense will blind him to the dangerous and negative affects on
allies and enemies. The only reason for an NMD is an accidental or terrorist
launch of missiles by Russia, which has some small measure of probability.
Against any massed attack, it would almost assuredly be worthless. Immediately,
it would threaten the SALT agreements and enrage our allies, Russia, and China.
And of course, Moslem terrorists would use a cargo ship docking at 42nd
St., not some Pakistani missile that would ensure the origin country’s
destruction.
More alarming is Bush’s determination to not make any special effort to relate to Russia, to treat them as just another country in some West Texas macho tough guy way. This will throw away the connections painfully gained in the last decade (inc. those by his father) and is contemptibly stupid. Russia is the only country that has thousands of nuclear warheads pointed at us and the only one that’s ever seriously contemplated their use- it will always be special, and so deserve special treatment and handling. Not doing so will mean that during some mistake or accident, precious personal relationships that could stop terrifying escalation… won’t exist.
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