What would The Founders say about the the Bush Doctrine of spreading democracy - through force, if necessary. Bush claims he is a strict constructionist, but is he when it comes to the use of force?

The National Interest includes an article that takes on this question.

This is an invitation to play. Nothing like examining our Constitution to honor the nomination of a Supreme Court justice. Nothing honors our constitution like exploring its protections and meaning.

But playing with the 3d Amendment? I bet you're going to have to look that one up.

WorkLife Law is a research and advocacy center supported by grants, university funding and private donations. Our mission is to provide valuable information to help shape the public conversation around changing families and their experiences in the workplace. We hope to influence the future of work so that individuals can participate in family life as they desire and deserve to do.

Do you want thought and action with your film? Do you want star power and great plotting?

Have you seen Good Night, and Good Luck? How about North Country?

Do you know who is behind it and other films on the horizon?

My parents raised me to believe that lying was wrong. Whether someone wants to dress it up by referring to it as “stretching the truth” or “forgetting the facts” doesn’t matter—it’s still lying.

There has been a lot of misleading information contained in advertisements, phone calls and mailings against Referenda C&D. I am so disgusted by the lies that I am writing to hundreds of fellow voters in our neighborhood—at my own expense—to urge you to consider the facts and vote your conscience.

Politics! Indictments! Oh my!

Tell us what's on your mind.

Yesterday, I posted information about the very bad education bill the Republicans are pushing. Yesterday, they passed it.

Lost amidst yesterday's news of the Miers' nomination (will she or won't she - she has) and waiting for indictments, there was yet another suicide bombing in Israel - 5 killed, more injured. Not in Tel Aviv, not in Jerusalem (the Hebrew means "City of Peace"), but in Hadera.

Why Hadera? And who cares?

While we all wait for indictments, the Republicans are busy proposing to cut or, as they prefer to say, "trim" up to $15-billion from the government's student-loan programs over the next five years.

Who wouldn't want a trim, lithe federal scholarship program?

Meanwhile, new studies on the value of higher education to us all and how to fund it are out.

You probably know that Wal-Mart has faced a growing chorus of criticism over the way it keeps employees impoverished, squeezes suppliers until they turn to sweatshop labor, and crushes small businesses to make way for its sprawl. Until recently, the company’s only response has been to spend millions on a PR campaign touting all of its supposed contributions to workers and communities. In fact, Wal-Mart has responded much as the Bush administration has to criticism, claiming that it cares about the little people and its critics are elitists who hate America.

Earlier this year, a coalition of labor, environmental, human rights, and other advocacy groups teamed up and set their sights on reforming Wal-Mart. They began planning a week of action –- called Higher Expectations Week –- to educate the public about what’s wrong with Wal-Mart. Robert Greenwald’s film Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price will be the centerpiece in numerous local events across the country from November 13 - 19.

Other corporations have caved to activist pressure to monitor overseas factories or improve their wood sourcing policies, but Wal-Mart has always responded to pressure by digging in its heels. When the meat-cutting department of a Texas Wal-Mart formed a union, the company announced a week later that it would phase out meat-cutting departments nationwide. When a Wal-Mart in Jonquiere, Quebec, received its union certification, the company shut the entire store down. Given this history, the campaign organizers probably expected that November’s week of action would be one of many that would have to occur before the company would budge on anything. But less than a month in advance of Higher Expectations Week, Wal-Mart has made two surprising announcements.

File this under example #6,934,201 why SOMEBODY needs to start calling these hypocrites out.

From the Lamar Daily News:

Rep. Musgrave Receives Taxpayer Hero' Award

Washington, DC - Congresswoman Marilyn Musgrave (CO-04) was awarded the Taxpayer Hero Award by the Council for Citizens Against Government Waste (CCAGW), a taxpayer advocacy organization based in the nation's capital. Musgrave received this award due to her voting record that scored 95 percent and promotes less taxes and a smaller government. This is the highest grade in the Colorado delegation.

"It is an honor to receive this award and I appreciate the recognition for my efforts to reduce the amount of taxes Americans pay," said Musgrave. "Coloradans sent me to Congress in order to hold the line on federal spending and to help reduce their heavy tax burden. We've seen the benefits of recent tax cuts, and I am currently working on Capitol Hill to pass much needed budget reforms."

"The budget process is in shambles, devoid of accountability, transparency, and enforcement measures. While most representatives shrugged their shoulders at this dire situation, Rep. Musgrave voted for all eight budget amendments and bills [sic] raged by CCAGW," stated President Tom Schatz.

Evangelicals - who are they? What do they want? Does evangelical = theocracy?

SheSource is an online resource for journalists that is dedicated to closing the gender gap in news media. SheSource.org provides journalists with a database of women who are distinguished experts in their fields and experienced spokespeople.

Experts found within this site range from high ranking military officers to deans of academic institutions to women who have become advocates on issues after an issue impacted and changed their lives forever. Collectively, the women have decades of experience in communications.

From national security and military spending to technology, health care, and the economy, SheSource.org brings experience women to the forefront of the news.

From an October 20, 2005 memorandum (PDF) by the director of Colorado's Office of State Planning and Budget to Governor Bill Owens:

This memorandum outlines the potential cuts submitted to the OSPB in preparation for the FY2006-07 budget. Over the last few months the OSPB and the executive departments have collaborated on a program prioritization exercise in preparation for the possible failure of Referendum C. The current revenue projection shows that we must find $365 million in reductions to balance the FY2006-06 budget.

In working with the Departments, we attempted to prioritize cuts so that the core missions of the departments were maintained. However, as you will note in the summaries below, if Referendum C fails, significant cuts across State government are unavoidable. Basically, the status quo menu of services and protections provided by the State are incompatible with the "ratchet down" provision of TABOR. While some of the cuts in recent years may not have affected the general public, this subsequent round of reductions would diminish public safety, and result in higher tuition for families and reduced consumer protection and services to the elderly.

To those of you fighting TABOR initiatives in your own states, please take heed of Colorado—the canary in the coal mine against anti-tax zealots like Grover Norquist.

This is creepy.

From: "Adam, Operation Democracy, MoveOn.org Political Action" [Add to Address Book] [View Source]
To: "Sassy Boots"
Subject: [OD] Vigil Plan for 2,000 Killed in Iraq. Can you host?
Date: Fri, 21 Oct 2005 20:47:22 +0000

Dear Operation Democracy volunteer,

It appears likely that next week we will top 2,000 Americans killed in Iraq. Just as we all did on the eve of the war, at 1,000 dead and in August to stand with Cindy Sheehan, MoveOn members will organize vigils across the country when we hit that tragic milestone. As of this morning 1,992 American soldiers had died in Iraq.

[snip]

Assuming we hear about the 2,000th death before 3:00 PM Eastern time, our plan is to hold the vigils the next day at 6:30 PM local time. If we hear after 3:00 PM Eastern time, we'll host the vigils two days later. As soon as the Pentagon announces the 2,000th death we'll e-mail vigil hosts again and activate our vigil scheduling website with the date and time set. Soon after we'll e-mail the entire MoveOn membership and invite them to attend a vigil near them or host their own. If we hit 2,000 dead this weekend we'll hold the vigils on Tuesday.

I have innumerable problems with MoveOn—once a good idea that's gone terribly wrong. But this latest "action" feels very unethical, very sanctimonious, and very ghoulish to time it based on someone's death.

What say you?

This is about cars. The business of cars has been very much in the news, especially if you live in Michigan. We are seeing the death of a middle-class life for thousands in this country. And why? Many reasons - costs of health care, failure to fund pensions while times were good. But one reason is American auto companies have focused on building ever larger cars and depending on them.

Now we are seeing that these products are entering a new market where they are driving these companies off a cliff. And taking lots of us with them.

Why have SUVs been so popular? A new article has some suggestions. And it's not a pretty sight.

I think this is an unbossed first - a post about sports. Unfortunately, those of you who are placing bets for the weekend will have to look elsewhere.

This is a post about race and gender equality and inclusion in the business of sports. And the news is bad.

The government agency responsible for specific functions is usually a matter of public record. Normally, it is easy to find the names of city council members and the personnel running public agencies, their office addresses, phone numbers, and other contact and oversight information. But government itself can be arranged so as to disguise the identity of agencies and thus deny public access and thwart accountability. And privatization makes this easy - and makes accountability impossible.

Late last September, I floated the idea of creating listening commissions to make the invisible visible.

Last night I had the opportunity to attend one verison of a Listening Commission. I am here to testify just how powerful such a process is.

This short series looks at why some services or products are delivered by the private or public sector. It also considers the ways in which the public and private sectors provide different forms of accountability. In Part II, we looked at markets and competition as the way that the private sector provides accountability.

Part III focuses on the public sector. Have you ever asked why some services are in the public sector? Have you ever thought whether it makes a difference whether a service is private or public?

Below are some answers.

No analysis - just lots and lots of headlines and links - including some humor and something sure to affect you, those you love, those you hate, our country, the world . . . maybe even the universe as we know it.

In a March 27, 2005 Denver Post editorial, Wise use of taxpayer dollars, Steve Hogan, executive director of the Northwest Parkway Public Highway Authority, argued that toll roads should be treated like private sector entities. And he also argued that they need special support from government, but they should not have government oversight, because this will lower private investor’s return.

So which is it? Public or private? What is the difference? Why does it matter?

Footnoted.org is a blog that supports Michelle Leder's book Financial Fine Print: Uncovering a Company's True Value.

At footnoted.org, Michelle provides analysis of US businesses through the gems of information, accounting tricks, and foreboding red flags often hidden within the footnotes of SEC filings.

Remember: there’s no need to read every word or even understand everything that you are reading. What you’re looking for are signs of aggressive accounting and any significant changes that were not in the filing last quarter or last year. What makes something significant? That’s difficult to say. It’s kind of like the way the Supreme Court defines obscenity: you’ll know it when you see it.

Public? Private? Public-Private partnerships? The question of how to provide goods and services is both perennial and ancient. For example, the next new thing - the public-private partnership – has roots that go back to at least 1819 when the Supreme Court decided McCulloch v. Maryland and most likely even longer. Go back a few thousand years. Even the Bible has market controls.

In the prior post, I said that one reason we cannot find out where Larimer County's late or missing absentee ballots are is because Sequoia is a private company. Private? Public? Why does that matter?

Sequoia made the news after the last election along with Diebold, the more famous maker of voting machines. The news then was all about optical scan machines, black-box voting, lack of paper trails, and finagling with code and results.

Now we are approaching our first election period since the November 2004 election. Anniversaries are a good time to stop and reflect. So how are we doing, given the clear problems from last election? What steps have our election officials taken to safeguard our right to vote?

I'm not an actual reporter, but I get to play one on this blog. If I were a real reporter, here's what I'd look into:

1. What percent of people don't get their ballots within a reasonable time? Most voters who don't get an absentee ballot within a reasonable time probably don't file an official complaint.

Do you plan to vote by absentee ballot this fall?

If so, you may need more than a bit of luck if you expect to receive your ballot before election day.

In Colorado and other states, county clerks contract with private companies to mail absentee ballots to voters.

But many voters never receive their absentee ballots.

The stealth right wing is at it again. This story is about military recruiting on campus and a right wing cover group masquerading as a legitimate academic organization - all the while promoting fundamentalist and ultra-conservative values.

And there is a Cheney in the mix as well.

Read on.

Kleptocracy: not just government by theft; government by the institutionalization of theft.

The fine folks at Soapblox Colorado are on the case. Evidentally, Grover Norquist's front group "Americans for Tax Reform" are push-polling Colorado voters on Referenda C&D, a temporary fix to the abysmal Taxpayers' Bill of Rights that is bankrupting this state and severely impacting quality of life.

Follow the trail of breadcrumbs:

Push Poll C&D Robocall
C & D Camp Aware of Robo-Calling
Bread crumbs on Push Polls
Norquist Challenges Owens to a Duel

Pissed? You should be. Now let's have some fun.

A quick pedantic overview of government.

Democracy - government by the people.

Monarchy - government by a queen . . . OK, most of the time by a king.

Kleptocracy: not just government by theft; government by the institutionalization of theft.

In early 1991, with official unemployment in New Zealand above 13% and the enactment of a new employment law that titled power toward employers, New Zealand employers began to offer no-pay, experience-only jobs - and they had workers lining up by the hundreds. See p.15.

In the United States, we call these internships. Each year, the work of thousands of employers is performed by unpaid students who hope that this is the route to eventual paid work. While some of these are legitimate programs that comply with wage and hour laws, others are not. Professor David Yamada of Suffolk University Law School.has written on this problem.in The Employment Law Rights of Student Interns, 35 CONN. L. REV 215 (2002).

Conservatives in state after state are working hard to undermine it. Should liberals therefore be pushing to make support for education and especially higher education to the fore?

Is this a winning issue for the Dems? Is it an issue whose time has come?

I've been writing an on-going series on the sometimes inspiring and sometime frustrating intersection of good intentions and urgent need in the wake of a natural disaster. This installment considers the political ramifications of charities founded to respond to a specific disaster over long-term health and human service concerns.

The most recent issue of The Chronicle of Philanthropy reports:

By last week, the Internal Revenue Service had received 135 requests from organizations seeking tax-exempt status so they can provide services to the victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

But many lawyers, scholars, and nonprofit officials have questioned whether that is really beneficial to the victims of such disasters, or whether creating new organizations wastes time and resources while people who have no experience providing services learn to operate such groups. What's more, they say, catastrophes often bring out as many con artists as people with a sincere desire to do good. Others argue that one of the strengths of America's nonprofit system is a flexibility that allows people to come up with ideas that fill voids left by existing organizations, and that without the new charities, some victims might not get the help they need.

So much work for Liberals to be doing these days that perhaps you have failed to consider the wording of your obituary.

I want to assure you all that I took the first steps in that direction as a teenager when I stumbled across an obituary that was headlined:

Never Late a Day in His Life

ProgressNow Action

The best news coverage, the most clever ads aren’t enough to change public opinion. Change has to be made one person at a time, community by community, all across the state and the country. ProgressNow Action gives you the tools you need make this change happen:

Get connected with others in your area by starting a group and organizing locally around the issues important to you.

Get current by choosing the news you want, delivered the way you want it.

Get active by reaching out and influencing your local media, your elected officials, and voters near you.

The running joke among my circle of friends is to discover the world's dumbest product that people can't live wihout. We'll be millionaires!

The Ronco™ Egg Scrambler? Pshaw. That's mere child's play.

A Text-Messenging Light Bulb to warn you of an impending burn-out. A "Dear John" SMS from a dimming 60 watt? Hmmph.

My friends, let us all bow our heads in silent reverence for, what I believe, is truly the world's dumbest product.

Come with me to the dawn of time—2003. In a small town in northern Vermont, a juggernaut arose from the ether to change the political landscape forever: Dean for America.

And, like HAL9000, we sometimes endangered our Common Sense by caffeine-fueled web developers, lackey consultants and the Blog for America run amok. Web tools were conveniently developed and randomly disgarded like Tom DeLay's ethics.

Today, we need to build a new monolith to help advance the netroots evolution.

I was thinking of New Zealand as I was listening to a speaker from the break-away unions last night. As with most of them, his union represents service workers, that is, workers whose jobs cannot be sent abroad..

I have been reading some of their statements and was puzzled about details. The statements seemed long on platitudes and very short on detail - and thoughtfulness. Last night's speaker - and one I heard in Las Vegas - only confirmed that view.

I'm not gloating. This is very bad news for workers and for those of us who work or whose lives depend on someone who works.

One would think that with news of Senator Frist's peccadillio involving potential insider trading that our ethics-o-meters would be turned up high.One would think our representatives would be clamping down on any opportunities for insider trading, graft, inappropriate use of one's office, without DELAY. One would think they would especially concerned with corruption and the constant problem presented by revolving-door appointees who shuttle between high government office and defense contractors, otherwise known as Cheney-ization.

Nah!

As faithful and faithless readers of unbossed know, the Bush Administration suspended Davis Bacon wages for workers cleaning up after Katrina (and some other laws as well).

Less publicized was the fact that in its haste, the Administration forgot to declare a national emergency, a mandatory requirement for suspending Davis Bacon, as Rep. George Miller reminds us.

Ooops!! Proof that riding bicycles in the hot Waco, Texas (aka Crawford) sun is not good for the memory.

But there's more. There's always more.

Now much less than two years till the next national elections, elections that can determine the makeup of Congress, we need to keep the public thinking seriously about the process of voting.

Where were you on election day 11 months ago? What are you doing to prepare for election day 13 months from now? 37 months from now?

Below is my election day experience last November. It opened my eyes to the many small grass roots things we could do that would make a difference. They say: many hands make work light. Will you pledge your hands to do some piece of this light work?

In response to a question at this morning's Rose Garden news conference on why federal authorities did not react more quickly to help state and local officials to aid rescue efforts.

Bush: Because they didn't want to be moving federally paid dozers on private property. Imagine cleaning up a debris and the person shows them, says, "Where's my valuable china?" or, "Where's my valuable art?"

Poor people were dying! Rescuers can't maneuver around the wake of destruction to reach folks trapped in their homes while the water continued to rise. "Where's my valuable china?"

Are you fucking kidding me?!

News conference transcript courtesy of The Washington Post.

This is Rosh ha-Shana, the first day of the New Year, a day that kicks off 10 days of serious soul searching and reflection, culminating in Yom Kippur. These days are intended to help us do teshuvah - to turn ourselves to a right path and right life. Repentance is the usual translation, but it's more complex than that.

On the second day of Rosh ha-Shanah, we read the story of Abraham's binding of Isaac and near sacrifice of his beloved son. The story has been much interpreted, including in the movie, The Believer.

Here is another interpretation. One we all can share and, as a society, do teshuvah for what we do to children.

Elected officials tell us they want to export democracy and free-market capitalism to more countries around the world. Listening to them, you'd think that democracy and capitalism were the same thing, or at least go hand-in-hand.

But in many respects, capitalism and democracy are opposites.

The October 2 Dilbert cartoon is a case in point. In this cartoon, a worker, Ted, is fired for writing negative things about his company in his personal blog. He replies, "I have freedom of speech. ... The only way you can legally fire me is if my work isn't good."

Ted, like most Americans, thinks his boss needs a valid reason to fire him. But Ted is wrong.

Much blood has been spilled in the liberal blogosphere recently over Tom DeLay's latest ethics peccadillo, Barack Obama's call for moderation, ANSWER's anti-war tactics, and virtually any hypocrtical spew from moralist-in-chief Bill Bennett.

While I have an abiding appreciation for the cathartic nature of writing and the community-building aspects of the liberal blogosphere, I am greatly troubled by the disconnect between knowledge and direct action.

According to an excerpt from The Chronicle of Philanthropy, Moody's Investment Service predicts that Tulane University in New Orleans will run out of money by April 2006 if its students don't return to the school.