Partisan Free Politics

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) bill is making quite a few appearances in the MSM these days. Apparently, Congress is debating whether or not to grant telecommunications companies immunity for working with the National Security Agency (NSA) post 9-11 to spy on each and every American Citizen. AT&T is taking the brunt of the criticism, but Verizon is also know to have co-operated (providing the gov. with all of my phone calls). (Qwest is the only company known to have declined the NSA's request, and also maintains that the warrantless wiretapping began 7 months prior to 9-11.) Suspending the questions of whether or not the government should have co-opted the Telecom companies into violating the law, and ...

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The New York Times has a hilarious grid comparing the qualities of all the candidates here.  If you are a Gravel fan, I must warn you to stay far far away from that link.

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I had the opportunity to see the Mizero Children perform in D.C. today. They are a group of young Rwandan orphans who survived the 1994 genocide, and have somehow had their musical talents nurtured.  Which lead me to my question, what the hell happened to Africa? As I scan the news of Africa, it is either genocide in Darfur, civil war in Somalia, kidnappings in  Niger, coups in the Congo, Hyper-inflation-induced disaster in Zimbabwe, not to mention a South African government which refuses to believe in AIDs, or a litany of other issues. The problems of Africa are egregious violations of the most basic human values, but there are also more self interested reason that the U.S. should be more involved. ...

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If you were to ask Grover Norquist, Spencer Overton, David Keating, and Hendrik Hertzberg what values they shared in common, you might be shocked. Grover after all, is the man who is fighting for his right to “drown the federal government in a bathtub”. The left vs right divide does not get any more drastic. Nevertheless, when it comes to partisan free issues, these candidates found that there was a lot of common ground they could share. Transparency. They all emphatically agreed that some form of ReadTheBill ought to be passed This would mandate that all bills be made available online and to the public for a mandatory period ranging from 3 to 7 days, before Congress ...

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With all of the Buzz about third party candidates coming in to save the disenfranchised minority from Guiliani or Clinton, I thought that this may be an interesting time to say that I'll be at the Claim Democracy conference this weekend. This blog is being move to a new server, next week as part of a technological overhaul.

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Here's a simple little exercise that could potentially lead into a discussion of numerous issues. Go to the Google. Use Google News and search for "taxpayers for common sense" and woodstock. Sort by date, but include duplicates. You should get about eight pages of links. Most use the same "neutral" headline. A couple spice it up a bit. And one established news organization shows their ever so fair and balanced approach to the news. Pretty awesome.

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To declass this place up a little bit, here's a video courtesy of Slate V about Romney's claim that his sons are "serving America" by helping him get elected. Enjoy... By the way Andrew, it's hard to embed videos which are not Youtube or GoogleVideo here. Or maybe I just can't figure out the internets.

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For those of you who didn't know, I spent most of the last couple weeks on a journey to Washington D.C.  Overall, it was a great trip, thanks to the hospitality of my good friends Andrew, Ruben and the Matts, as well as the many new friends I was lucky enough to meet.  It was the coming and going of it all though, that made me feel the need to relate my story.  First, as a devoted fan of ABC's LOST, I found it hard not fantasize while I waited for the call to board Zone 6, thinking about the potential new life awaiting me upon the crashing of the plane in a remote, paranormal paradise.  Unfortunately, as I ...

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I took some time before I put up this post since I wanted to see how this story would do. Well, Hillary Clinton finally stated that she was no longer wanted to give each newborn 5 grand.  Now she wants federal matching funds for savings. Under policy, Americans who open up a 401K and put up to 5,000 grand annually and the federal government will "[match] refundable tax credit—dollar for dollar—for the first $1,000 of savings done by every married couple making up to $60,000 a year". This of course will cost the same annually as the baby bonds would've been. Now it is aimed for married couples as of now. The sad thing is this will be paid for by implementing a higher death, I mean, estate tax. ...

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