It Seems Like The Question Is Always: “What Is It Going To Take?” (Halliburton, Impeachment, Prosecution, Gaza, War Crimes, The Economy, Immigration, Justice.)
"The action I am taking is no more than a radical measure to hasten the explosion of truth and justice. I have but one passion: to enlighten those who have been kept in the dark, in the name of humanity which has suffered so much and is entitled to happiness. My fiery protest is simply the cry of my very soul. Let them dare, then, to bring me before a court of law and let the enquiry take place in broad daylight!"
- Emile Zola, J'accuse! (1898) –
White House Press Corps Quick to Show Republican Slant
“The minute the country has a Democratic president the press begins judging him on whether or not he has sufficiently Kissed The Far Right's Ass.”
President Barack Obama has been in power for less than a week and already we see elite White House reporters fretting about whether or not the new chief executive will be able to "convert" right-wing Republicans to support his agenda. Take for example Sheryl Gay Stolberg's "White House Memo" in yesterday'sNew York Times. In the article, titled "Great Limits Come With Great Power, Ex-Candidate Finds," Ms. Stolberg breezes past the sweeping Executive Orders President Obama signed on his first full day in office that open up presidential records, impose strict new ethics rules, ban torture, close the Guantanamo prison along with the CIA's secret gulags, and order a full review of U.S. detention policies. Instead of addressing the meaningful changes these executive orders represent and covering the other actions he took relating to the economy and foreign policy, Ms. Stolberg tisk-tisks about Obama's lack of success in winning over House Republicans -- exactly those elements in the Legislative Branch that an urban liberal Democratic president is least likely to win over. "During his transition, Mr. Obama managed to charm conservatives," Ms. Stolberg writes. "But just days into the Obama presidency, some conservatives sound wary."
Heaven forefend! Conservatives "sound wary!" Hold the front page!
So right-wing Republicans, who while in power drove the country into bankruptcy and ruin and lost two elections in a row, are now the primary sources for the White House press corps to judge the "success" or "failure" of the new Democratic president? Wow!
Ms. Stolberg turns to none other than the ubiquitous out-of-power Republican wag, Newt Gingrich, to set the record straight on the first days of the Obama administration: "I think they are right at the cusp of either sliding down into a world where their words have no meaning or having to follow up their words with real behavior." Granted, Gingrich is an expert on words that "have no meaning," but I hardly think he's qualified to be casting judgments on the six-day-old Obama presidency, which illustrates the inherent bias in the coverage.
The minute the country has a Democratic president the press begins judging him on whether or not he has sufficiently kissed the Far Right's ass. (more)
Reverend Doctor Sharon E. Watkins, in her candid manner, in the Inaugural Prayer, brought the Chief Executive of the United States to task. With knowledge of The Obama Administration's agenda, a plan to escalate the war in Afghanistan, Doctor Reverend Sharon E. Watkins shared a allegory and directly addressed the analogy. The President of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) spoke to the President of the United States.
Democracy is a verb. It is about action and politics is about who shows up and the commitment to and willingness to do what is necessary to preserve it!
The People's Petition to President Barack Obama and the 111th Congress
|
|
WHAT'S IT GOING TO TAKE for the Pentagon to revoke KBR's multi-million dollar contract in Iraq? Will it be the company's failure to ensure clean drinking water for US soldiers? Nope. How about the fact that they gave ice containing traces of putrefied remains to US soldiers? Still no. Not even the rape of former KBR employee Jamie Leigh Jones led our government to suspend KBR's contract. Indeed, accountability for the largest US military contractor in Iraq always seems just outside of our grasp.
Take the case of Sgt. Ryan Maseth, who was electrocuted while showering at the Legion Security Forces Building in Baghdad in January of 2008. All signs pointed to the fact that KBR ignored warnings about unsafe wiring. And now, CNN reports a US Army Criminal Investigations Division investigator wants the official manner of death for Sgt. Ryan Maseth to be changed from "accidental" to "negligent homicide."
This ought to do the trick, considering the CID investigator fingers KBR in the report. But no charges have been filed and the cause of death has not yet been changed officially. To top it off, the Pentagon issued KBR a "Level III Corrective Action Request" for "serious non-compliance," but didn't actually take the logical step of suspending their contract, hard to believe considering the Pentagon also found that 18 soldiers have been electrocuted for faulty wiring since 2003.
We're talking about a war profiteer that not only has made hundreds of millions of dollars from this war, but has made it at the expense of our troops' lives. Their gross negligence has resulted in the sickness and death of far too many. How many will die before we actually hold them accountable?
Dangerous Executive Orders | http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/39276
By David Swanson
The Center for Constitutional Rights has expressed concern that President Obama's executive order banning torture may contain a loophole. But no president has any right to declare torture legal or illegal, with or without loopholes. And if we accept that presidents have such powers, even if our new president does good with them, then
loopholes will be the least of our worries.
Torture is, and has long been, illegal in every case, without exception. It is banned by our Bill of Rights, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, and Title 18, U.S. Code, Section 2340A. Nothing
any president can do can change this or unchange it, weaken it or strengthen it in any way.
Preventing torture does not require new legislation from Congress or new orders from a new president. It requires enforcing existing laws. In fact, adherence to the Convention Against Torture, which under Article VI of our Constitution is the supreme law of the land, requires the criminal prosecution of torturers and anyone complicit in torture.
Most of the seemingly noble steps taken by Congress in recent years and by President Obama in his first week have served to disguise the fact that torture always was, still is, and shall continue to be illegal.
| | | | |
Wanted By The International Criminal Court
And Still Looking For An Additional List!
Evidence Of White Phosphorus In Gaza
White phosphorus in Gaza: the victims
Ban Ki-moon outraged at Gaza devastation
Take Action: Pres. Obama Calls for Lifting Gaza Siege; Rep. Olver for Gaza Aid
http://www.endtheoccupation.org/
Israel’s Lies by Henry Siegman
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n02/sieg01_.html
Western governments and most of the Western media have accepted a number of Israeli claims justifying the military assault on Gaza: that Hamas consistently violated the six-month truce that Israel observed and then refused to extend it; that Israel therefore had no choice but to destroy Hamas’s capacity to launch missiles into Israeli towns; that Hamas is a terrorist organisation, part of a global jihadi network; and that Israel has acted not only in its own defence but on behalf of an international struggle by Western democracies against this network.
I am not aware of a single major American newspaper, radio station or TV channel whose coverage of the assault on Gaza questions this version of events. Criticism of Israel’s actions, if any (and there has been none from the Bush administration), has focused instead on whether the IDF’s carnage is proportional to the threat it sought to counter, and whether it is taking adequate measures to prevent civilian casualties.
Middle East peacemaking has been smothered in deceptive euphemisms, so let me state bluntly that each of these claims is a lie. Israel, not Hamas, violated the truce: Hamas undertook to stop firing rockets into Israel; in return, Israel was to ease its throttlehold on Gaza. In fact, during the truce, it tightened it further. This was confirmed not only by every neutral international observer and NGO on the scene but by Brigadier General (Res.) Shmuel Zakai, a former commander of the IDF’s Gaza Division. In an interview inHa’aretz on 22 December, he accused Israel’s government of having made a ‘central error’ during the tahdiyeh, the six-month period of relative truce, by failing ‘to take advantage of the calm to improve, rather than markedly worsen, the economic plight of the Palestinians of the Strip . . . When you create a tahdiyeh, and the economic pressure on the Strip continues,’ General Zakai said, ‘it is obvious that Hamas will try to reach an improved tahdiyeh, and that their way to achieve this is resumed Qassam fire . . . You cannot just land blows, leave the Palestinians in Gaza in the economic distress they’re in, and expect that Hamas will just sit around and do nothing.’ (More)
Crossposted From Http://Somepolitical.Blogspot.Com
At Jewcy, Howard Schweber is trying to make the case against prosecuting the Bush administration for war crimes. His bad argument can be divided into two essential ideas:
1. President Bush, Vice-President Cheney, and other administrative officials did not intend to violate the law, therefore they should not be considered culpable if they did, in fact, violate the law.
2. Partisan politics are threatening to consume our national dialogue, and an ugly trial unleashed by Democrats on Republicans is the last thing we need.
Corollary to 2: the peaceful transference of power is itself threatened when Presidents are led to believe they might be prosecuted upon leaving office.
Although #2 appears reasonable, it is actually a much more dangerous line of thinking than #1. But to go in order...
How shall we judge the intent of Bush administration officials? Mr. Schweber never answers (or even asks) that question, yet half his argument rests on the assumption that the past administration believed itself to be operating within the legal bounds of the constitution.
At the center of the question are the John Yoo memos, which originally authorized 'coercive interrogation' and the suspension of habeas corpus for terror suspects. Since being revealed to the public, they have been condemned as faulty by nearly every legal expert who has seen them -- perhaps most infamously by Yoo's own alma mater, Yale Law, which assisted one of the victims of the memos in suing their author. Yet there was one distinct body of legal scholars who found no fault with Yoo's reasoning. That would be the Bush administration, led in this case by John Ashcroft.
How do we measure intent to follow the law? If we cannot rely on the public statements of the White House, and we also cannot rely on its ability to correctly parse the Constitution, what do we have left?
Nothing. There is no way to measure intent, nor should there be. More importantly, White House officials know this. Anyone who thinks John Yoo, a Yale grad, a Berkeley law professor, didn't know he was taking his career in his hands when he penned those memos ought to sit in on a class at Yale, and decide for themselves how stupid somebody can be to make it through. Yoo knew what he was doing, just as Ashcroft and Cheney (and perhaps even Bush) knew. Perhaps they believed it was for the good of the country -- perhaps not. That's a separate argument to be made. But given the number of instances we now know of wherein the administration directly lied to the country in order to advance a set of foreign policy objectives (speaking of which, please do read the above link), can Mr. Schweber credibly make the argument that somewhere, deep down in the core of this mess, an honest attempt was being made to follow the law? I don't think so.
At best, Mr. Schweber can fall back to the claim that no amount of inference can prove that the administration new it was operating outside of the law (at least based on the documents available to us today). Which proves the point. Intent cannot be used as a measure of legality. This is not a criminal prosecution of a single individual. It is by nature the investigation of a conspiracy, and that precludes any notion of intent.
The irony of Mr. Schweber's other argument, that Washington is too obsessed with partisan politics, is that such an obsession seems fully to have possessed Schweber himself. How else could he stand to write off the potential crimes of this administration purely for the sake of bipartisan camaraderie?
Let's be clear: putting the former White House on trial would certainly polarize Washington, and maybe the country. But since when was nasty debate more frightening than illegal wiretapping, imprisonment, and torture? For how long will we pretend that, because none of us was personally imprisoned, it's therefore somehow acceptable that other American citizens were? There are certainly Americans out there who truly believe that every inmate at Guantanamo, or any CIA prison, is guilty. But that should only encourage a reasonably informed individual like Mr. Schweber to stand up in defense of the truth. There are bigger things at stake than a descent into bitter campaigning.
Nowhere is Mr. Schweber's failure to see the forest for the trees more clear than in his suggestion that the peaceful transference of power would be threatened by a fair trial. Can anyone even follow the argument anymore? Somehow, it's not the overwhelming concentration of illegal power in the hands of the executive that threatens peaceful transference. It's the attempt to put a stop to that process. This is so backward it's almost painful.
Look, no one is suggesting that everyone from Bush on down be thrown into a secret prison, without trial, where Barack Obama could daily piss on the face of the former staffer of his choice (though God knows the precedent has all but been set). We are asking for a fair trial. If the President, Vice-President et al have nothing to hide -- if they acted within the law -- then nothing will come of such a trial. Would it be a partisan affair? Yes, that can't be helped. But it would be lawful, and no future executive would have anything to fear from such a process provided that he or she acted within the law.
And isn't that precisely the point? The message that Bush-Cheney sends, right now, is that with enough bureaucratic shuffling, and enough burnable lackeys, the President can get away with anything. If all you have to do is survive for eight years, even a fool could find a way to make use of the confusing rules surrounding the White House to protect himself.
That message needs to change. Not because Bush and Cheney deserve it (though they do), but to protect the office from future exploitation. If President Obama is serious about realigning the executive branch with the Constitution, he needs to pursue the Bush administration with the full force of the law.
Prosecuting Bushite Crimes: It's A Genuine Dilemma
By Andrew Bard Schmookler
It's true that a failure to prosecute the Bushite crimes and usurpations would set a dangerous precedent, making it more likely that future president would make similar assaults on the rule of law. But when we look at other dimensions of the damage the Bushites inflicted on America, we see that the issue of prosecution is complex. An optimal strategy for repairing America must therefore be similarly complex.
By Winston
Big bro 43 lied when he promised to bring honor and dignity to the White House, but to the eyes of the world we are covering up his crimes against humanity because we know that W and his v.p., during their exit interviews to burnish W's legacy, clearly proclaimed that they facilitated the waterboarding of detainees. For partisan GOP gain they declared that they were willing to do anything possible to protect the US.
Do Senate Democrats Lie About Why They Can't Prosecute Bush?
By Michael Cavlan
The excuses and apologist rhetoric has started already. It is based on lies
Vigilance: The Nightmare We Are Waking Up From
By Christine
Number of U.S. cities and towns that have passed resolutions calling for the impeachment of President Bush: 92. Percentage change since 2001 in U.S. government spending on paper shredding: +466. Percentage of EPA scientists who say they ...Vigilance - http://www.teachthefacts.org/vigilance.html
Prosecute George W. Bush For Illegal Acts
“The Obama administration is reluctant to turn over too many rocks in the Bush administration's conduct in the War on Terror. Obama has pledged to reach a post-partisan nirvana, and Republicans could condemn any investigation of Bush administration abuse of the republic as a partisan witch-hunt. Also, the Obama administration has a conflict of interest in pursuing investigations and prosecutions against Bush administration officials because now that Obama is president, he may not want to entirely discredit Bush's precedents, which significantly expanded executive powers.
Yet in the expanse of human history, the existence of republican government has been rare and short-lived by comparison. Even in recent years, when republicanism has spread the farthest, we forget how fragile the experiment is. The stakes are high, and the Obama administration needs to beat down the autocratic precedents left by the previous administration. The only way it can do so is by bringing criminal cases against the high level perpetrators….”
|
|
The panel of Bob Woodward, Kelly O'Donnell, Anne Kornblut and Howard Fineman making excuses for the Obama administration and Congress if there are no prosecutions for torture committed by the Bush administration.
Are We Civilized Enough to Hold Our Leaders Accountable for War Crimes? The World Is Watching
By John W. Dean, FindLaw.com
Other countries are likely to take action against officials who condoned torture, even if the United States fails to do so. Read more »
Holy Cow: Top Democrats Are Actually Talking About Investigating Bush's Criminal Acts
By Jason Leopold, Consortium News
To the surprise of progressives and consternation of the GOP, top Dems are backing the idea of investigating torture and other crimes under Bush. Read more »
OpEdNews » George W. Bush's Sci-Fi Disaster
To them, it seemed that taunting Bush and Cheney was the least that could be done, since the pair had been spared impeachment and, so far, any other accountability for the harm they caused. But what was perhaps more striking was the ...
OpEdNews - OpEdNews.Com Progressive,... - http://www.opednews.com/
| | | | |
We Don’t Torture… But We Let Torturers Run Free In America ...
If it elects instead to put every ex-Bushie before a congressional committee, to investigate every alleged crime and misdeed of the Bush administration, the opportunity will be lost. We will return to the bomb-throwing, trench-warfare ...
BuelahMan's Redstate Revolt - http://buelahman.wordpress.com/
Spytalk: Obama Terminates Bush Anti-Terror Policies With Extreme Prejudice | By Jeff Stein … Even Bush administration officials had come to realize that Gitmo was doing more harm than good in the fight against extremist Islam, and planned to shut it down. Obama merely sealed the deal, ordering the CIA out of the prison business altogether.
Pakistan Afghanistan Waziristan
Political Punch: VP Biden: Expect More US Casualties In Afghanistan
January 24, 2009 -- -Press TV: Professor Chomsky, we better start with Pakistan. The White House not commenting on the killings of people [in cross-border drone attacks from Afghanistan into Pakistan]. Richard Holbrooke, someone whom you've written about in the context of Yugoslavia, is the man [President Barack] Obama has chosen to solve the situation.
Chomsky: Well, it was pretty clear that Obama would accept the Bush doctrine that the United States can bomb Pakistan freely, and there have been many case which are quite serious.
There has been for example a great deal of chaos and fighting in Bajaur province, which is a adjacent to Afghanistan and tribal leaders- others there- have traced it to the bombing of a madrassa school which killed 80 to 95 people, which I don't think was even reported in the United states, it was reported in the Pakistani press of course.
The author of the article reporting it, a well-known nuclear physicist, Pervez Hoodbhoy pointed out at the time that this kind of massacre will of course engender terror and reactions, which will even threaten the state of Pakistan. And that has been what is happening. We are now seeing more of it.
The first message of the Pakistani government to General [David] Petraeus, the American General when he took command of the region was that they did not want any more bombings in Pakistan.
Actually, the first message to the new Obama administration by President [Hamid] Karzai of Afghanistan was the same, that he wanted no more bombings. He also said that he wants a timetable for the withdrawal of the foreign troops, US and other troops, from Afghanistan. That was of course just ignored….
President Obama: Meet Citizen Bob Who Answered Your Call!
OpEdNews - Newtown,PA,USA
After years of thinking that Bush, Cheney, and Rice would walk away from their crimes, here at last was hope that something could be done to help right ...
How to Push Obama | AfterDowningStreet.org
The United Steelworkers union has been way ahead of the curve in critiquing the financial services bailout and in working with Congressional allies such as Ohioans Marcy Kaptur and Dennis Kucinichto challenge the basic assumptions of a ...
AfterDowningStreet.org - Convict... - http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/
Obama’s Partisan, Profane Confidant Reins It In
Mr. Emanuel is arguably the second most powerful man in the country and, just a few days into his tenure, already one of the highest-profile chiefs of staff in recent memory. He starred in his own Mad magazine cartoon, won the “Your New Obama Hottie” contest on Gawker.com and has become something of a paparazzi icon around Washington.
In recent months, he has played a crucial role in the selection and courtship of nearly every cabinet member and key White House staff member.
Renowned as a fierce partisan, he has been an ardent ambassador to Republicans, including Mr. Obama’s defeated rival, Senator John McCain of Arizona. He has exerted influence on countless decisions; in meetings, administration officials say, Mr. Obama often allows him to speak first and last.
“You can see how he listens and reacts to Rahm,” said Ron Klain, the chief of staff to Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. “You can see that his opinion is being shaped.”
A reason Mr. Emanuel, 49, has drawn so much attention is that he seems to be in a kind of recalibration mode.
How will the feisty, bombastic and at times impulsive former congressman blend with the cool, collegial and deliberate culture of Obama World? And one that is trying to foster bipartisanship? This is someone who once wrote in Campaign and Elections magazine that “the untainted Republican has not yet been invented” and who two years ago — according to a book about Mr. Emanuel (“The Thumpin’ ” by Naftali Bendavid) — announced to his staff that Republicans are “bad people who deserve a two-by-four upside their heads.”
Efforts at a New Aura
It is clear to friends and colleagues that Mr. Emanuel is trying to rein himself in, lower his voice, even cut down on his use of profanity.
“As chief of staff, you take on the aura and image and, in some instance, the political values of the person you work for,” said former Representative Ray LaHood, an Illinois Republican who is now transportation secretary. “I think he’s beginning to morph himself into the Obama image.”
Mr. Emanuel acknowledged in an interview Friday that a stereotype of him as a relentless hothead has some factual basis. But it is an exaggerated or outdated picture, he said.
“I’m not yelling at people; I’m not jumping on tables,” he said. “That’s a campaign. Being the chief of staff of a government is different. You have different tools in your toolbox.”
Still, his high profile and temperament are at odds with that of some past White House chiefs of staff: they were often low-key types who put the “staff” part of their job titles before “chief” — as Andrew H. Card Jr., the longtime chief of staff to former President George W. Bush, suggested to Mr. Emanuel last month. (More)
Feingold Proposes Direct Election of ALL Senators
The corrupt process of legislative selection of senators -- bribes and political calculations were common -- became a focus of the progressive movement which argued for "direct election" of all members ofCongress. ...
The Nation: The Beat - http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat
Interview with Larisa Alexandrovna of Raw Story
OpEdNews - Newtown,PA,USA
In late 2007 and early in 2008, there were discussions behind the scenes with some of Conyers's people, and some of Kucinich's people, among others. ...
Twenty-Five People At The Heart Of The Meltdown ...
The worst economic turmoil since the Great Depression is not a natural phenomenon but a man-made disaster in which we all played a part. In the second part of a week-long series looking behind the slump, Guardian City editor Julia Finch picks out the individuals who have led us into the current crisis Poll: Who Led Us Down The Road To Ruin?
Pelosi And Summers: More Money Needed For The Banks (Bulls#*T!)
Lawrence Summers and Nancy Pelosi delivered the bad news this morning. The remaining $350 billion of TARP money is going to be insufficient to take care of the banking system.
The Sunday morning news shows are a good way for politicians to ladle out bad news gently. Here is what Summers and Pelosi had to say this morning.
“We can make important progress and get started with the support that has been provided,” Summers said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” when asked whether taxpayers should expect another request for funding to shore up the financial system.
“What ultimately will be necessary is something that will play out over time.”
House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said earlier that “some increased investment” may be needed beyond the $700 billion approved last fall.
More Money for Floundering Financial Industry?
Should the new administration seek more money from Congress to aid the ailing financial industry, House leaders would be willing to listen, Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Sunday. Lawrence H. Summers, President Obama's top economic adviser, said that the administration was open to seeking additional money. READ MORE
Nationalization Gets a New, Serious Look
WASHINGTON — Only five days into the Obama presidency, members of the new administration and Democratic leaders in Congress are already dancing around one of the most politically delicate questions about the financial bailout: Is the president prepared to nationalize a huge swath of the nation’s banking system?
Privately, most members of the Obama economic team concede that the rapid deterioration of the country’s biggest banks, notably Bank of America and Citigroup, is bound to require far larger investments of taxpayer money, atop the more than $300 billion of taxpayer money already poured into those two financial institutions and hundreds of others.
But if hundreds of billions of dollars of new investment is needed to shore up those banks, and perhaps their competitors, what do taxpayers get in return? And how do the risks escalate as government’s role expands from a few bailouts to control over a vast portion of the financial sector of the world’s largest economy?
The Obama administration is making only glancing references to those questions. In an interview Sunday on “This Week” on ABC, the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, alluded to internal debate when she was asked whether nationalization, or partial nationalization, of the largest banks was a good idea.
“Well, whatever you want to call it,” said Ms. Pelosi, Democrat of California. “If we are strengthening them, then the American people should get some of the upside of that strengthening. Some people call that nationalization.
Financials rise, Pelosi resists bank nationalization idea
MarketWatch - USA
House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi resisted the notion that the government would nationalize some banks during an interview Sunday on ABC's "This ...See all stories on this topic
Yard Sale Nation: The Change Required to Salvage U.S Society Runs Much Deeper Than Most Imagine
By James Howard Kunstler, Kunstler.com
Say goodbye to the 'consumer society.' Familiar touchstones of contemporary American life have to go. No more fast money and no more credit. Read more »
The Blood on Holbrooke's Hands - by Joshua Frank
1/22/2005. Joshua Frank is the author of Left Out!: How Liberals Helped Reelect George W. Bush, just published by Common Courage Press. You can order a copy at a discounted through Josh's blog at www.brickburner.org. ...AntiWar.com - http://www.antiwar.com/
Gillibrand Needs to Change Her Stance on Immigration
By Cristina Jimenez, DMI Blog
Gillibrand needs to change her position on immigration now that she is representing the whole state of New York. Read more »
Gov. Paterson has picked Congresswoman Kirsten Gillibrand to replace Hillary Clinton in the U.S Senate. As described by the New York Times earlier today, Gillibrand is “known for bold political moves and centrist policy positions.” Gillibrand—endorsed by the National Riffle Association and the recipient of a high grade from an anti-immigrant group called NumbersUSA—is not an encouraging pick for the immigrant community.
According to her website, Gillibrand opposes a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants and co-sponsored the Secure America through Verification and Enforcement (SAVE) Act in 2007. The SAVE Act aimed at reducing the inflow of undocumented immigrants by increasing border security and internal enforcement and complete the fence along the border.
The SAVE Act failed to pass DMI’s two-part test for immigration policy that benefits the middle-class. Part one requires that immigration policy should not undermine the critical contribution that immigrants make to our economy as workers, entrepreneurs, taxpayers and consumers. Part two holds that immigration policy must strengthen the rights of immigrants in the workplace. Most Democrats and immigration advocates opposed the bill.
Gillibrand needs to change her position on immigration now that she is representing not only the 20th district of upstate New York, but the whole state, including New York City, where immigrants are the backbone of the economy. We shouldn’t let the debate over TARP and other issues distract attention from this glaring deficiency in her legislative record.
“oh, we believe that we can’t be wrong” « THE ONLY BLOG THAT MATTERS
Tags: obama, big shoulders ball, ted leo, the hideout, change, hope, inauguration, accountability, manifest hope dc, shepard fairey, obey giant, moveon.org, paul mccartney, the black cat, yes we can. p1000015 ...
THE ONLY BLOG THAT MATTERS - http://theonlyblogthatmatters.wordpress.com/
And Some Additional reading for all:
http://feralhouse.com/titles/kulchur/35_articles_of_impeachment_the.php
| |
THE PRESIDENT’S HERO by David Remnick
No comments:
Post a Comment