By ERIC LICHTBLAU
Published: February 13, 2008
WASHINGTON — After more than a year of wrangling, the Senate handed the White House a major victory on Tuesday by voting to broaden the government’s spy powers and to give legal protection to phone companies that cooperated in President Bush’s program of eavesdropping without warrants.

One by one, the Senate rejected amendments that would have imposed greater civil liberties checks on the government’s surveillance powers. Finally, the Senate voted 68 to 29 to approve legislation that the White House had been pushing for months. Mr. Bush hailed the vote and urged the House to move quickly in following the Senate’s lead.

The outcome in the Senate amounted, in effect, to a broader proxy vote in support of Mr. Bush’s wiretapping program. The wide-ranging debate before the final vote presaged discussion that will play out this year in the presidential and Congressional elections on other issues testing the president’s wartime authority, including secret detentions, torture and Iraq war financing.

Wednesday December 19, 2007
Washington, DC – Congresswoman Carol Shea-Porter today voted against a Senate amendment to the omnibus appropriations bill that added $70 billion in unrestricted funding for the war in Iraq.

“I have not been fooled by the President’s rhetoric about Iraq,” Congresswoman Shea-Porter said. “Iraq is a sinkhole, the Iraqi government has been unwilling to reconcile, and I do not believe in making our soldiers and the American people pay for President Bush’s war any longer. I believe the Iraqi Parliament meant it when the majority of them asked us to leave, and I think we should do exactly that. I have voted to provide funds for a safe exit, but I will not vote to provide funds for an endless war.”

On Monday, Congresswoman Shea-Porter voted to pass the House version of the Foreign Operations and Consolidated Appropriations bill, which included $35 billion to support ongoing operations in Afghanistan. When the Senate passed the bill on Tuesday, they attached an amendment adding $70 billion in funding for Iraq with no timelines, limitations, or withdrawal dates.

This month's meeting mirrored what's happening in households all over our state and region--putting away the memories of summer and getting ready for a winter that's going to require additional expense.

SOURCE: Blog for America
by Timothy Horrigan

Promoted Friday, 11/02/07 @ 9:57 pm. Published Thursday, 11/01/07 @ 10:53 pm

During the debate earlier this week in Philadelphia, Hillary Clinton was justifiably ridiculed by John Edwards for saying she was moving into "General Election Mode" even though (as she herself points out in her speeches) no votes have been cast yet. Her speech on a grey November afternoon in Durham, NH was, however, very much in General Election Mode.

SOURCE: NYT

Published: May 2, 2007

For a native New Yorker mounting a first bid for national office, Rudolph W. Giuliani has shown an impressive ability to raise money in Texas, where his Republican presidential campaign collected $2.2 million in the first quarter of the year, far more than any other candidate.

Mr. Giuliani has drawn support from Texans who were notable donors to President Bush, including a former Enron president, Richard D. Kinder, and business executives who direct many of the nation’s oil, gas and energy producers.

And a good part of this success, analysts say, stems from his affiliation with a well-established and politically connected law firm that is based in Houston and bears his name, Bracewell & Giuliani.

That affiliation adds to Mr. Giuliani’s personal wealth but also could pose political risks for him. The firm is perhaps the nation’s most aggressive lobbyist for coal-fired power plants, heavy emitters of air pollutants and carbon dioxide, a gas associated with global warming. Environmentalists say the firm played a significant role in persuading the Bush administration to roll back major provisions of the Clean Air Act.

Ron Paul Schools Dems; Stands Up Against Terror Hysteria
Posted on Alternet by Joshua Holland

http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/65836/

When he's not railing against public education or warning of the threat the Bilderbergs and their New World Order represent, Paul keeps busy being 100% right about the War on Terrrrrrr.

Behind the Ron Paul sensation is a desperate desire for someone, anyone, to stand up and call "bullshit" on the "War on Terror" and all that it has entailed, from illegal surveillance of citizens and nightmarish foreign adventures to an executive branch mad with power and drunk on its sense of entitlement.

Last week Paul, whose opposition to much of the 20th century makes him terrible on just about every issue which touches the political economy and whose Birchian isolationism leas him to embrace conspiracy theories about shady cabals of globalists undermining American sovereignty and sapping our precious bodily fluids (not to mention his little white supremacy problem), simply schooled Democrats on how to roll back the disasters of the Bush era introducing the "American Freedom Agenda Act of 2007."

We welcomed first-timer Ryan Silver from the Chris Dodd campaign and got an update on their steering committee on the Seacoast, as well as a heads-up about the Senator's next visit to New Hampshire on October 18-21.

Our major attraction for the evening was Dr. Jay Buckey (accompanied by Jay Jr.) who let us quiz him to our hearts' content. That the good doctor, a candidate for the United States Senate from New Hampshire, is a strong proponent of universal health care and an emphasis on preventive care didn't need a lot of explaining. (There's lots of detail on his campaign page, which I urge you to consult and, if it appeals to you, sign up).

Attendance at our Link-up for August was really sparse. How sparse was it? Sparse enough to let us subject the representatives from the Obama (Dan Grant) and Edwards (Eddie Vale) campaigns to a thorough inquisition. State Representative Doreen Howard dropped by with copies of the Hillary Clinton plan and I've already commented on it elsewhere.

As is usual nowadays, copies of issue papers can be found on the candidates' web sites. Back in the dark ages of the nineteen eighties, they were distributed in stacks to political headquarters offices and generally ignored. Current offerings can be found at JohnEdwards.com and BarackObama.com.



Keeping in mind that, unless we go to a full-fledged unitary executive with dictatorial powers, the President of the United States may propose but it's the Congress that disposes, no matter how detailed their plans are, the candidates' proposals won't go anywhere unless a majority in the House and Senate can be persuaded to set up another layer of bureaucracy--in Obama's case, the National Health Insurance Exchange, which insurance companies need to be persuaded to join; in Edwards' a new division in the existing Department of Health and Human Services which will, in effect, compete with private insurers and take advantage of the opportunity to integrate and upgrade the Federal Employees Insurance Program by combining it with Medicare. Which may well account for Obama's emphasis on bi-partisanship and compromise, while Edwards seems to be counting on the electorate sending like-minded representatives to Washington.