Take part today to show you want action taken to ensure your vote gets counted the way you want it to. I will be at the JFK Plaza (Love Park) event.

Congressman Ron Lewis has submitted a bill that will allow Congress to overturn decisions by the Supreme Court: H. R. 3920.

This bill is a fundamental threat to the system of government the founding fathers of this country worked so hard to achieve. This is a fundamental threat to our freedom. This is a fundamental threat to the American idea.

Ron Lewis should be thrown out of office for such an insult to the founders and the blood that’s been shed to defend the system they set up. The system might not be perfect – but it is far better than anything else the world has ever seen. To reduce the third branch of the government in such a reckless way cannot be permitted.

It MUST NOT be allowed to pass. If it does, in the dead of night, expect your freedoms to be whittled away. One by one.

Tonight see Kerry and Edwards on be on 60 Minutes.

Read this Sunday’s Washington Post interview with Kerry and Edwards.

Great quote: “”The value of truth is one of the most central values in America, and this administration has violated” it”. This administration obviously can’t handle the truth. Witness their firing of U.S. Park Police Chief Teresa Chambers (CNN) when she voiced concerns that security couldn’t be upheld with the budget cuts they are facing.

Read this Sunday’s New York Times interview with Kerry and Edwards. The New York Times interview is more in depth than the Washington Post one I mentioned. Read the full transcript.

Contrast with how the GOP is “playing dirty”, trying to personally attack Kerry and Edwards instead of commenting about their takes on the issues, and it’s enlightening. Read more about the techniques the GOP is using in “Playing Dirty” by Joshua Green in The Atlantic.

It’s being covered in some newspapers and on the web, but not TV. In any other news cycle, this would be major, major news. More on the Bush’s destroyed military records (NYTimes).

You should see Representative Bernard Sanders speaking his outrage (Real Video) at how the vote was secretly orchestrated (Washington Post) to stop an amendment to the Patriot Act. It would have had law enforcement go to regular courts instead of a secret ones to get library and Internet access records of people it is investigating. More at The Progress Report.

Left unsaid in the press is that a deal was made not to criticize the President, by the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee, until after the election. The report that was released found the CIA’s prewar estimates of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction were overstated and unsupported (CNN). Also left unmentioned are the claims some in the CIA were pressured by Cheney (SMH) via dangerousmeta.

Why isn’t the headline “We Went To War For Unfounded Reasons”?

“If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.”

Samuel Adams

So begins a terrific post at Hullabaloo on the 4th of July. Must read.

Bush, more so than any other incumbent President I can think of, is working his base instead of reaching towards center. He turned down an invitation to speak at the NAACP’s annual convention (CNN) held in Philadelphia this year. You wouldn’t know it from our local news papers however. Strangely silent.

Fewer than half of American adults now read literature (NEA). Scary. I can attribute almost my entire success on following Garret’s advice to “Read widely, read deeply, read tomes you wouldn?t necessarily pick up.”

Wow. Conspiracy theorists will have a ball with this.