Today's Daily Digest of the Personal Democracy Forum, by Nancy Scola, titled "Defining "Mission Accomplished"", discusses how activists might have scored points that count, even while losing the fight for Barack Obama to lead the opposition to the FISA revisions now scheduled for a Senate vote tomorrow. This story is a very strategic look at how "a new kind of politics" is based on interactivity. How to break illusory paradoxes that used to paralyze the body politic, using communications and feedback to train everyone to get along, without necessarily abandoning our values - or each other. And therefore how netizens are advantaged in leading not just the entire citizenry, but the entire political discourse in America...

Rep. Robert Wexler (D-FL) has moved forward his tireless campaign to impeach Bush and Cheney by co-sponsoring Rep. Dennis Kucinich's (D-OH) 35 new impeachment articles targeting Bush for some overdue justice. I got an email from Rep. Wexler today explaining how we can help. Here's how, with links to YouTube videos of the impeachment articles and contact info for the House Judiciary Committee (which decides whether to impeach).

Lend a hand and help impeach these criminals...

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Update [2008-6-10.17:57]: Rep. Wexler's office has posted today's announcement in its own diary. Please continue this discussion there.

BlackBoxVoting.org , Bev Harris' "Consumer Protection for Elections" project, released a preliminary press announcement of suspicious results procedures in Oregon and Kentucky's primary elections as conducted yesterday, "Oregon, Kentucky: Scribble Sigs & Moonshine Math", along with a toolkit for you to investigate further yourself. BBV's investigators are suspicious of the data now available on Oregon's postal balloting system, and of Kentucky's raw data mismatches to its official results.

I personally want Obama to win the White House, but I want our election system to be accurate even more than that. I believe we can have both, but I also believe that without the people demanding both, we'll get neither.

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Update [2008-05-21-12:44/Pacific] at the end of the full diary.
Update [2008-05-21-13:29/Pacific] at the end of the full diary.

techPresident reported in "Daily Digest: Google Announces Political Checkout". That service is now in direct competition with ActBlue and other services that facilitate small contributions. And it puts Google right smack into the political ecosystem at perhaps its most important checkpoint. How will the political landscape evolve with Google so active in it?

I have republished this diary at a new entry, because of a glitch in the DKos diary publishing system. Please comment there.

techPresident reported in "Daily Digest: Google Announces Political Checkout". That service is now in direct competition with ActBlue and other services that facilitate small contributions. And it puts Google right smack into the political ecosystem at perhaps its most important checkpoint. How will the political landscape evolve with Google so active in it?

As diaried by The Baculum King  on Friday 3/21/08 (and requested therein for repost to keep it on the radar):

On a variation of "The dog ate my homework":

WASHINGTON - Older White House computer hard drives have been destroyed, the White House disclosed to a federal court Friday in a controversy over millions of possibly missing e-mails from 2003 to 2005.

The White House revealed new information about how it handles its computers in an effort to persuade a federal magistrate it would be fruitless to undertake an e-mail recovery plan that the court proposed.

Honest, Judge, they were just clutterin' up the place.

Muslim theocracies rule according to "sharia", the religious law interpreted by priests derived from the Koran and their traditions. Many Muslims prefer to live according to sharia than according to other legal systems in countries without sharia.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, head of the UK's state religion, the Anglican Church, claims that UK Muslims should be able to ignore UK secular law in favor of sharia if they choose.

Initial Liveblog diary: introduce the event, the people, the agenda, the way to tune in (eg. C-SPAN2 NYC TimeWarner Cable channel# 60).

Subsequent diaries (for overflow or retries at Rec List): Mention linked old liveblog mothership diary and reason for continuing. "Read and post here only until further notice."

When switching to next liveblog diary, announce this one is closed with links to all the next ones, and change append title with "Go to Liveblog N" when it fits.

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Update HH:MMAM-PM/Pacific: Note edits to diary, or that diary is closed to point at new liveblog diary

This liveblog is closed. Please continue at the new liveblog "Liveblog Mothership III: Justice Committee and Mukasey".

The old liveblog of Mukasey's hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee has fallen off the Recent List before getting recommended. This is a new diary to give the ongoing liveblog a chance to get recommended. Read and post here until further notice.

<HR>
Update 9:19AM/Pacific: Title "New Mukasey Hearing Liveblog" changed to "Liveblog Mothership II: Justice Committee and Mukasey"

Update 9:23AM/Pacific: This hearing's agenda is "Mukasey Offers View on Waterboarding", a letter Mukasey sent Congress last night implying waterboarding is illegal.

Update 11:22AM/Pacific: This liveblog is closed.

Chris Dodd made protecting FISA from telco immunity/amnesty and other issues critical to returning America to justice and freedom the center of his presidential campaign. Then he effectively flipped it around, using his campaign as a platform to fight for those specific issues at the center of America's crisis, well after it wasn't to get the Democratic nomination.

I watched, impressed. And I watched tonight as the butchery Bush's Republicans tried to work on FISA got rolled back to the baseline, with all the momentum moving towards a proper FISA that actually protects us from both terrorists and our own government.

So I gave a significant amount of money to paying down Chris Dodd's campaign debt, so I could repay my debt to him. I'd like you to join me, so Dodd can do more for us.

New York State, like many other states, has spent years since the 2000 election balloting catastrophes working back and forth through the problems of properly counting votes in elections. It has looked bleak, but the good news is that NY will be replacing its old mechanical voting machines not with untrustworthy electronic devices, but with more trustworthy devices that create a paper trail verified by the voters.

NY dodged a digital bullet. Read more of what we got, and how that helps the rest of us get it, too.

Is Edwards' entire campaign image just the most transparent of lies? That's the most toxic criticism I hear, along with "he's too broke to win" and "close third isn't worth considering". But maybe "insincerity" really is a problem for Edwards, if the career of his economic adviser Leo Hindery, is a clue.

Edwards is defining himself as the anti-corporate crusader, whose economics serves the disadvantaged America, even when it costs the privileged. But how can the details of that crusade work out that way, when the person in charge of his economic policies is living a lie contradicting it?

Updated below, at the end of the body of this diary.

Representative Robert Wexler (D-FL-19) has been leading a new charge to impeach Cheney from his House Judiciary Committe seat (along with committee Democrats Gutierrez (D-IL) and Baldwin (D-WI)). You might already have heard about it, as DKos has covered it a little, but the corporate mass media has ignored the story. These three Judiciary members couldn't get any major newspapers to publish their editorial making the case for hearings. So Wexler is diverting his own reelection campaign into promoting impeachment. Here's how you can help.

Last night's Democratic debate featured a round of questioning by Wolf Blitzer pitting "national security" against "human rights". DemocraticLuntz remarked on Dodd's wrong answer, which got me to research that section of the debate, and reply in more detail, which I share in this diary.

The context was depending on Musharraf's new dictatorship in Pakistan to defend the US. But Blitzer the crude soundbiter reduced the question to an overall conflict between national security and human rights, as a presidential policy. First Chris Dodd, then (after an uncharacteristically brief concurring grunt from Joe Biden) also Hillary Clinton, all claimed national security as if it were an obvious choice, or even a legitimate choice at all. Though Clinton did indeed challenge Blitzer's false choice premise, she first endorsed it.

I'll show how they went wrong, and how a good leader would go right.

(Updated 11:49AM/Pacific with Obama's correct answer)
(Updated 12:28PM/Pacific with Richardson's correct answer and add poll)

Philip Smith blogged about getting ripped off by an eBay dropoff store, which sued him abusively, for "trademark infringement", to shut him up. It took Smith a year and a half, but he just won the court's decision to throw out the case, and sanction the abusive plaintiff attorney. One (not so small) step for a blogger, one giant leap for blogkind.

DKos includes advertising for advertisers not necessarily consistent with DKos community values, and some directly contradictory to them. Like Chevron, just a recent example that got me to thinking.

These ads appear on the same front page (and internal pages) as the most featured stories in DKos, sometimes competing with DKos editorial stories condemning those same advertisers. Like last Friday's "For the Burmese, We Can Do More than Talk and March, promoting an immediate, strong campaign against Chevron for its role supporting Myanmar's abusive government.

I've got ideas for getting those ads to be more consistent with how DKos works, by linking them to discussions.

NOTE THAT I AM NOT RECOMMENDING ANY AD CENSORSHIP

Salon.com is reporting that Fred Thompson, campaigning in Sioux City, Iowa on Friday 9/7/07, announced that he wants a Constitutional amendment that would be used to stop "deviancy" like gay marriage.

Matt Margolis is a Republican blogger who runs the 2008 Republican online straw poll which excludes Ron Paul. According to Margolis, Paul is excluded not because he is a "maverick" Republican, somehow voting with Republicans all the time but a nonpartisan. But rather because Paul's campaign is committed to cheating in online polls to fake widespread support that doesn't exist.

Here's the "new Republicans" turned "libertarians" who will "save their Party" by returning to the "core Republican values" of cheating to win...

(updated below...)