Posted by Congress Watcher on July 3, 2008 at 11:47 am · Filed under Personalities, Senate legislation
Another day has gone by in which Barack Obama has refused to address the concerns that a growing number of his supporters have expressed about the FISA Amendments Act, which Obama says he will vote for on Tuesday.
There’s a reassuring competence in the people protesting Obama’s support for the FISA Amendments Act. Take, for example, the comments below from Byron, a voter in Tucson, Arizona. Byron sees right through Obama’s claim that he must support the FISA Amendments Act in order to prevent the Protect America Act. Byron has the intelligence to remember that last summer, Barack Obama voted against the Protect America Act, and rightly so, because it has been an extremely abusive law.
Furthermore, Byron recognizes that Barack Obama’s move away from protecting the Constitution isn’t even the most pragmatic approach to earning the votes of wayward Republicans. Republican voters, after all, distrust Big Government. Why would they be convinced to vote for Obama with Obama’s support for a Big Government spying program?
Thanks for thinking for yourself, Byron. We need more thoughtful, informed citizens like you.
Here’s what Byron wrote to Barack Obama:
“Your support of FISA is a bellweather of things to come. It would be so easy to run against this bill: “Big government wants to wiretap your phone and email, with only a “trust us”. This is as unacceptable as gun registration. When I voted against this bill, I voted for freedom.” You want republican swing voters? That is the way to do it. Be strong. Instead you choose to flip flop from voting against the PAA (which we now can’t allow to expire?), statements of filibuster support, to now embracing a “better bad bill”. It is hard to remain much of a supporter and my wife and I certainly won’t be donating money or volunteering time to assist your campaign of triangulation.”
Posted by Congress Watcher on July 2, 2008 at 11:34 am · Filed under Personalities, Senate legislation
Barack Obama shocked his supporters last month by declaring his support for George W. Bush’s Orwellian program of spying against millions of Americans, codified and retroactively legalized by the FISA Amendments Act. It’s not too late for Barack Obama to change his mind, however. The Senate vote on the FISA Amendments Act is scheduled for next Tuesday, July 8.
With that in mind, a large number of Barack Obama’s supporters have organized a group urging Obama to keep his original promise, and vote against the FISA Amendments Act. As of this moment, the group is just 26 people short of having ten thousand members.
The members of this group against the FISA Amendments Act are willing to put their money where their mouths are. One member, David Fagelson from Pennsylvania, writes of Obama, “Apart from being such a gross assault on the constitution, it is an assault on the rule of law itself. If ever there was a time that he should have taken a principled stand, it was on this.” Fagelson continues,
“I am reluctantly diverting all the money I had earmarked for the Obama campaign in order to address a more urgent matter: stopping the FISA bill. This legislation undermines the rule of law, let alone the constitution and I deem it more important to stop or reverse that pernicious legislation than giving to Obama.”
Consider that Pennsylvania is a swing state, and you start to see the serious threat that Obama’s support of the FISA Amendements Act has become. Obama activists in swing states are one by one dropping out of his campaign, withholding their money and refusing to volunteer their time. Consider that these are the people who Obama had counted on to form the foundation of his campaign.
If Barack Obama has not heard the message of these pro-Constitution activists, it is because he doesn’t want to listen to anyone but professional campaign consultants anymore. Mr. Obama, it’s time for you to break out of your bubble.
Please, listen to your supporters. Keep the promise you made back in February. Vote against the FISA Amendments Act!
Update: In just the few minutes since I wrote this article, the number of members of the group against the FISA Amendments Act on the Obama web site has shot up to ten thousand eighty.
Posted by Congress Watcher on June 25, 2008 at 10:00 pm · Filed under Senate legislation
The following are the heroes of the Senate today. They came together to defend the Constitution, to stop the FISA Amendments Act, a proposed law that essentially removes the fourth amendment’s protections from unreasonable search and seizure from the Bill of Rights. They attempted to filibuster the bill. For that, they deserve your respect.
You’ll notice the name of one very prominent senator is missing from that list. That name is Barack Obama.
While these heroes defended our rights, Barack Obama couldn’t be bothered to show up for work in the Senate. He was too busy holding a press conference at which he announced his support for the death penalty.
If Barack Obama wants to be President, let him campaign for President, but let’s not have him as a Senator in the meantime. Obama promised last Friday that he would be in the Senate. “I will work in the Senate,” he said, to remove retroactive immunity from the legislation.
Barack Obama wasn’t there.
He wasn’t there when the filibuster was attempted. He wasn’t there when the debate was held.
Broken promises and abandonment of the Democrats in the Senate. Who ever thought Barack Obama would sink this low to pander to the politics of fear?
Missouri Progressive Political Button
Posted by Congress Watcher on June 21, 2008 at 8:05 pm · Filed under House legislation, Senate legislation
A small post-mortem for the fourth amendment to the Constitution, which was thoroughly nullified yesterday with the House’s approval of H.R. 6304, the FISA Amendments Act:
Pete Visclosky, a Democrat who represents the first congressional district of Indiana, was not able to make it to Capitol Hill for the vote on H.R. 6304. He has, however, registered an official statement in the congressional record that if he had been able to be present for the vote, he would have voted against the bill.
Part of me wonders why Congressman Visclosky couldn’t be there for such an important vote. However, I know that his vote against would not have made the difference on its own. So, I give some small measure of thanks to Representative Visclosky for at least not joining the stampede of panicky Democrats who sold the Constitution down the river just for the sake of a talking point on the campaign trail.
Posted by Congress Watcher on June 21, 2008 at 6:28 am · Filed under House legislation, Personalities, Podcasts, Senate legislation
On Friday, we warned you about the impending vote on H.R. 6304 - the FISA Amendments Act. The FISA Amendments Act
- Allows physical searches of Americans homes and businesses without any search warrant or other evidence of a suspected crime.
- Allows George W. Bush to conduct massive widespread electronic spying against American citizens as they talk on the telephone, use the web, read email, and travel with GPS devices
- Gives retroactive immunity to telecommunications corporations that broke the law by helping George W. Bush spy against millions of Americans in secret
The Fourth Amendment of the Constitution, which clearly forbids all such surveillance, is no longer in effect. The Bill of Rights is in tatters.
The first piece of bad news we gave you is that 105 Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives betrayed their constituents and the Constitution - they voted in favor of the FISA Amendments Act.
Now we have even worse news: Barack Obama says that he will vote to support this attack on the Constitution when it comes up for a vote in the United States Senate next week. Furthermore, Obama pledged that he would keep the unconstitutional spying program against Americans going on if he is elected President. That’s exactly the opposite position that Barack Obama took during the primaries.
Barack Obama flip flops on the Constitution. I never thought I would see the day.
This is the theme of our downcast second podcast - and Barack Obama’s campaign should take note. It doesn’t matter if you carry the name of Democrat. You attack the freedoms guaranteed America in the Constitution, you lose our support.
Posted by Congress Watcher on May 28, 2008 at 11:36 pm · Filed under House legislation, Senate legislation
You are probably not aware of it, but the Equal Rights Amendment did not die back in the 1980s. It has been brought back to the House of Representatives and to the Senate.
Both the Senate and House versions of the proposed constitutional amendment state that:
“Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”
So, how is the Equal Rights Amendment coming along in Congress? In both the House and in the Senate, the amendment is stuck in the judiciary committees. The House version has been co-sponsored by John Conyers, the chair of the House Judiciary Committee. In the Senate, the chair of the Judiciary Committee, Patrick Leahy, has not co-sponsored the proposed amendment, but I have a difficult time believing that he would actually not vote for the ERA and work in its favor.
What can you do to get the Equal Rights Amendment finally passed by both houses of Congress? Call Congress and put the pressure on. The following are the co-sponsors of the proposed amendment in the House and Senate. If you don’t see the names of your two senators and one representative in the House, make a telephone call to urge speedy passage.
Senate:
House of Representatives
Georgia is for Obama 2008 bumper sticker
Posted by Congressional Aid on April 30, 2008 at 3:24 pm · Filed under Ideas, Senate legislation
Irregular Times reports today on the sponsorship (offering a bill for consideration) and cosponsorship (promoting a bill by signing one’s name) activity by members of the United States Senate in the years 2007-2008, offering figures for 98 Senators that range from a low of 22 bill (co)sponsorships to a high of 469 bill (co)sponsorships. See if you can guess who ranked lowest and who ranked highest in the Senate before you go see for yourself.
The article mentioned that “74.5% of Democratic Senators are located in the top half of the activity rankings, and 76.6% of Republican Senators are located in the bottom half of the activity rankings.” Looking at the figures, another way of expressing the relationship between party and sponsorship/cosponsorship bill activity is to say that being a Democrat is positively correlated (at a level of +0.46) with bill activity. Democrats on average tend to sponsor or cosponsor 89.7 more bills than Republicans. That’s a large substantive difference, but is the explanation of party telling the whole story? No: squaring the correlation tells us that variation in party accounts for only 21.6% of the variation in bill activity.
A 21.6% explanation isn’t awful when trying to predict the thoroughly chaotic behavior of people in groups, but we can do better. I’ve looked at ratings of Senators on an progressive political index at Progressive Patriots, and the correlation between Senators’ progressive action score and Senators’ level of bill activity is higher (+0.69). Just by itself, Senators’ progressivism accounts for 48.0% of the variation in bill activity.
When these two explanatory variables are combined into a single model so we can take a simultaneous look at the separate effects of party and progressivism, a record of progressive action trumps party in explaining the extent of a Senator’s bill activity. The scale of the progressive action score runs from 0 to 100, and the slope of the effect of that score on bill activity is 2.94. Substantively, this means that we can expect a Senator earning a progressive score of 100 to sponsor or cosponsor 294 more bills (2.94 * 100) than a Senator from the same party who earns a progressive score of 0 (2.94 * 0). What about the effect of party, controlling for progressivism? Such effect is very small (and would be considered statistically insignificant if we were making an estimation about a sample rather than the whole population of the Senate). Substantively, the effect of party on bill activity actually runs in the negative direction, meaning that if you compare two senators who are have the same progressive score, the Democrat will tend to have a slightly lower level of bill activity than the Republican (with 24 fewer bills to the Democratic Senator’s credit).
The bottom line is that if you’re wanting to understand why some members of the U.S. Senate are more active in bill sponsorship and promotion than other members, ditch party as an explanation. A much better explanation of that variation is the progressivism that a Senator maintains in his or her legislative conduct.
Posted by Congress Watcher on April 15, 2008 at 10:39 pm · Filed under All Articles, Ideas, Senate legislation
The energy crisis may be about to get even more desperate, thanks to John McCain. The price of gasoline has gone up by almost two dollars since the 2004 presidential election. Half of that increase has been over just the last year, and gasoline prices are going even higher by the time we reach summer.
What’s John McCain’s bright idea for dealing with this crisis? He thinks he can solve the problem by reducing the price of gasoline by 18.4 cents per gall. 18.4 measly little cents.
Who does McCain think he’s kidding? He thinks he can get people to agree to this plan by calling it a “tax cut”. McCain is proposing legislation to cut federal gasoline taxes, which are, in fact, already the lowest among all the industrial nations on Earth.
It gets worse. Guess where that 18.4 cents per gallon is going to go? It’s not going to go into your pocket. That’s because, as economists explain, a temporary reduction in the price of gasoline will stimulate purchases of gasoline, which will actually drive the price of gasoline up, not down, over the long term. ”
That price increase, without any taxes paid on it, will funnel huge amounts of money into the pockets of big oil corporations. “Higher demand just pushes the world price a bit higher, giving a sizable share of the tax refund to oil producers,” explains Lee Schipper, an energy expert from the University of California.
But where does that money come from? Not out of thin air. It will come from the 10 billion dollar increase in the federal budget deficit that will result from John McCain’s dirty scheme. American taxpayers will have to pay that 10 billion dollars back, plus interest.
A summary of the results of John McCain’s oil scheme:
- You don’t actually pay less for a gallon of gasoline
- The federal budget deficit increases by 10 billion dollars
- Oil companies take the money
- There’s even less gasoline available than before
If this is John McCain’s vision of leadership, American voters need to run away from him as possible, screaming out a warning to anyone who will listen. John McCain promises to take America out of the frying pan, into the fire, and then pour gasoline on it all.
Posted by Congress Watcher on February 17, 2008 at 7:34 am · Filed under All Articles, Senate campaigns, Senate legislation
Will 2008 be the year that Senator Jay Rockefeller loses power? If some Democrats back in West Virginia have anything to say about it, yes.
Unfortunately, it’s not just Democratic voters who have a say in the matter. Big corporations are trying to help Senator Rockefeller spend his way to re-election. Money flows to Jay Rockefeller from corporate executives who love the way that Rockefeller does special favors for them.
Oh, and what nasty favors those are. One of them is the FISA Amendments Act, which gives the Bush White House to spy against you, without any search warrant or oversight, through electronic communication networks like the Internet, cell phones, and telephone landlines. What a lot of people don’t realize, is that the FISA Amendments Act also gives the power to physically search your home or office without a warrant.
What’s important to the big corporations, however, is that the FISA Amendments Act gives legal immunity for any corporation that helped the Bush White House spy against American citizens, even though it was illegal. Any self-respecting Democrat would never vote for such a thing.
Jay Rockefeller, however, doesn’t seem to have much need for self-respect. He’ll take the money instead. After receiving huge amounts of money from executives in telecommunications corporations, Jay Rockefeller announced that he would support the FISA Amendments Act.
That was a betrayal of Rockefeller’s oath of office. It was also a betrayal against the Democratic voters of West Virginia. It wasn’t the first time.
Jay Rockefeller has a long history of betraying Democratic voters.
Think back to 2002, with Rockefeller’s vote in favor of starting the Iraq War. Or consider the Patriot Act, which Jay Rockefeller voted for without even reading. Then there’s the Military Commissions Act, which revoked the power of habeas corpus, and legalized torture.
Over and over again, when time came for Democrats in Congress to show some backbone and stand up for the Constitution’s guarantees of freedom, Senator Jay Rockefeller left his backbone at home.
The Democratic congressional primary for West Virginia is on May 13. If you’re a West Virginia Democrat, show up, and vote for anybody but Jay Rockefeller.
Wayne County Democrat! Sticker (Bumper)
Posted by Congress Watcher on February 13, 2008 at 12:24 am · Filed under All Articles, Personalities, Senate campaigns, Senate legislation
Montana’s U.S. Senator Max Baucus may have thought that he was going to be able to cruise to re-election this year, but his once smooth sailing has started to encounter some very choppy waters.
With a Progressive Patriots legislative rating of only 27, it’s no wonder the Senator Baucus re-election campaign has begun to show a distinct limp. You can only knock around Montana Democrats for so long before they’ll take things into their own hands.
It seems that some progressives have begun a lens on Squidoo focused on the problems that Max Baucus is having convincing Montana Democrats to support his re-election bid in spite of the fact that he votes more like a Bush Republican than like a genuine Democrat.
Today’s vote by Max Baucus to support the new spy powers for George W. Bush was the tipping point for many. It seems that progressives are in no mood these days to give Democrats a blank check.
It’s understandable, given all the promises of 2006, that many progressives feel let down, or even lied to. If the Democratic majority in the Senate can’t block unchecked electronic espionage powers for the President, the feeling seems to be that the right wing Democrats in Congress are as much to blame as the Republicans.
Max Baucus, that means you. Watch out. Your name has been named.
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