Rep. John Salazar Operates from Right-Wing Frame

An article in the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel yesterday is a good example of how there is too much emphasis by Democrats on a Republican-framed issue. Here is what Rep. John Salazar (“D”, CO-03) had to say about this year’s election:

“In order to win Colorado, he has to win the 3rd Congressional District,” Salazar said, referring to his own district, which includes most of western and southern Colorado.

He said in order to convince the region’s voters that he deserves to be president, Obama will have to show he supports the Second Amendment and gun rights.

In the wake of last week’s ideologically-based Supreme Court decision to interpret the 2nd amendment for Americans for the first time since it was written, I wrote that too much focus has been placed on the 2nd, and not nearly enough on the remainder of the amendments. According to Republicans, the rest may as well not even exist. Every race in every election year is cast under the shadow produced by Republicans’ obsessive attention on the 2nd amendment. What about the 4th amendment? Bush wants to gut that one. But we don’t hear Colorado Republicans saying in order for McCain to do well, he has to show he supports the Fourth Amendment, do we? It’s a good thing too, because John McCain supports illegal searches of Americans’ effects. Have you heard McCain say he’ll support a filibuster of the FISA bill sent to the Senate by the House? Of course not.

And that’s the reality of the situation: John McCain doesn’t support the Fourth Amendment. Barack Obama does support the Second Amendment. How are the two treated by the corporate media? Well, the first isn’t touched at all. And they completely get the second part incorrect. How very journalistic of them!

Back to Rep. Salazar: operating from the Republican frame of “the 2nd amendment or nothing” does not and will not help Sen. Obama get elected president. Neither will it help him govern effectively if he is elected. Rep. Salazar should have rejected, without qualification, any insinuation that Sen. Obama does not support the 2nd amendment. But here’s the kicker: Rep. Salazar voted to grant retroactive immunity to the telecoms. He’s on the same side of that issue as Republican Sen. John McCain! What else will Rep. Salazar say and do that will eventually hinder a President Obama?

CO-03 needs a better Democrat.

Recent Supreme Court Decisions

With regard to the Exxon Valdez spill – the Court greatly reduced a pre-determined penalty from $2.5 billion to $507.5 million. The spill, remember, happened in 1989. 20 years later, litigation continues. A couple of things here. Last year, Exxon made $2.5 billion in less than 2 days of business. Meanwhile, 32,000 fishermen, Alaska natives, property owners and others (including uncountable wildlife populations) had their lives irrevocably changed the day a drunk captain ran his ship full of crude aground. Further, I don’t think the Court should have heard the case. What’s unconstitutional about awarded damages? Lower courts have the capability and jurisdiction to decide these matters.

I’ll raise a related question: do you think it’s important now how much gas and oil cost? Do you think it’s important how much one corporation profits every year? Thousands of lives were ruined and Exxon took this case all the way to the Supreme Court. How much do you think doing so affected their bottom line? Whatever they pay will be pennies on the dollars they continue to make off our backs every day.

Which brings up another important point: this Court is really solidifying itself as being pro-corporatist. Does it matter now what kind of person gets put into the White House, whether by the Supreme Court or by the electoral college? You’re damn right it does. Had Gore or Kerry won, you can bet the kind of Justices nominated by Bush wouldn’t have been considered. These Justices, and many more on lower courts across the country, get to sit on the bench for their lifetime. They’ll be issuing decisions like these for the next 20-30 years. Welcome to the Corporate State of America.

To: House Dems Who Voted for Telecom Immunity

The modern Republican: defender of the 2nd amendment, with no thought to its conditionality and destroyer of the remainder of Rights, including the 4th amendment. I guess I can see why they’ve spent so much time and energy on the 2nd now. With searches no longer hinging upon probable cause, maybe we all should have guns to defend our property, physical and electronic. The government, purposefully wrecked by Republicans, obviously has no interest in doing so any longer.

Is the House vote the end of the world? Obviously not. I’m angry the vote happened the way it did. Just as Pelosi and Hoyer learned that they needed to quickly schedule this vote to avoid hearing from constituents, activists will learn from this event as well. There are other things need attention too. FISA is definitely important, but only one facet of a larger war going on. Longer-term goals need to be established, fought for, monitored, and “audited”. I’m going to transform my emotions on this vote into continued action to make a difference. It’s what got me started as an activist and maintaining that drive to improve my country will be fed by this capitulation. As part of this, I’m no longer going to use an AT&T/Cingular cell phone. They charge too much and now I know where all that extra money is going. Instead, I’m going to do business with CREDO mobile. They didn’t lobby Congress to absolve telecoms of admitted lawbreaking. It’s an easy choice.

The fact that FISA isn’t the only story we should are about doesn’t mean we should be quiet and simply accept blatant political maneuvering. I think back to my participation in a Politics West roundtable: when Dems do something I consider wrong, I will not hold back my criticism of those actions. As a Dem, I expect more from other Dems than I do of Republicans. I’ve written before about the role of elected officials: they are our employees. Any time an employer gives an employee a task or project and the employee doesn’t perform to the employer’s standard, it is the responsibility of the employer to do something about it. And do something we must. Displeasure left uncommunicated festers and destroys relationships. We have the opportunity to let those officials know how we feel about their performance. Take it.

Udall, Coffman, the 4th Amendment & the Media

Udall told members of the White House Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health last Thursday that the way the federal government treats sick nuclear weapons workers and their families “speaks volumes about us as a society.” It’s pretty typical stuff for our current administration and Republicanism in general: workers get screwed as those in charge change the rules mid-stream. It once again boils down to: Republicans don’t believe government works. So why elect them and let them prove their ideology stinks?

By the way, what is Bob Schaffer’s (Rep. Udall’s opponent for CO’s 2008 Senate race) take on this issue?

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From Colorado Ethics Watch:

Through open records requests and other research, Colorado Ethics Watch has identified significant blocks of time on the official calendar of [Republican] Secretary of State Mike Coffman that were either used for meetings with potential funders of his congressional campaign, or are unaccounted for as private appointments and meetings. In the meantime, it is unclear whether Secretary Coffman is meeting critical goals and deadlines required of him as Colorado Secretary of State.

Coffman was elected to this office in 2006, despite the horrid performance of his Republican predecessor. It was unfortunately an under-the-radar kind of race. Coloradans, in their search for a type of bipartisanship that simply doesn’t exist with today’s Republican Party, elected Coffman in the hopes he would “balance” Gov. Bill Ritter. The balance that has been put on display: unethical Republican activities and ethical Democratic activities. You know Republicans would make this the headline-du-jour for weeks if a Democratic Secretary of State did the same thing.

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The corporate stenographers working at major media outlets are serving the country well, don’t you think? I sure do: In the past 30 days (from Apr 5th backwards), 65 times more Obama-bowling articles showed up on a NEXIS search than Yoo-4th Amerndment articles. What’s the significance? John Yoo, while at the U.S. Department of Justice, wrote a memo which authorized torture and presidential lawbreaking. The Bush administration has declared the Fourth Amendment to be inapplicable to “domestic military operations” within the U.S. Barack Obama went bowling.

Which story did the corporate stenographers decide to report on? The bowling story. Why? Well, according to Republicans, because the media is too liberal. It seems to me that if liberals ran the corporate media outlets, they would raise a red flag about the 4th Amendment being declared inapplicable. No, the media has been led around by right-wing extremists who want Americans to believe liberals want to take their guns away. Liars and fear-mongers: today’s Republican Party.