September 18, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The most aggressive argument Republicans are now making about healthcare reform is that it would allegedly “gut Medicare and Medicaid”, two government-administered health insurance programs that provide treatment coverage for the elderly and the poor, respectively. The irony that emerges from the incoherent oppose everything Obama wants strategy being used by Republicans, shadowy front groups paid for by individuals linked to the insurance lobby, and conservative PACs, is that they are actually now arguing in favor of ‘socialized medicine’.
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September 3, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 6 Comments
With a profound philosophical rift emerging in the nation’s chief opposition party, intolerance and programmatic lack of empathy are becoming the hallmarks of a troubled Republican minority. Party strategists are now worrying that, whatever the benefit might be for “building the base”, a more hard-line, less flexible, less inclusive vision of Republicanism will hurt the party’s chances in national elections.
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August 26, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
This video shows an emotional introduction by Caroline Kennedy, along with a video tribute to the life and work of Sen. Ted Kennedy, followed by a rousing speech by the senator himself, who spoke before an adoring audience of Democratic delegates.
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July 4, 2009 :: Webb Tisch :: Comments Off
Sarah Palin says she wants to save Alaska the injustice of watching its governor galavant around the country visiting fellow governors in a “politics as usual” lame-duck end to a first term. The “lame duck” problem arises, of course, only because she has chosen not to seek re-election. And a woman who professes to be presidential material is now stepping down after just two and a half years as governor of a state with population 686,293.
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June 30, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
Democratic-Farmer-Labor challenger Al Franken has been declared the winner of the Minnesota race for US Senate, in the November 2008 election. The Minnesota Supreme Court ruled today that Franken was the winner, after a properly conducted recount. Norm Coleman, who had brought the election contest in the state courts, conceded defeat shortly after the ruling was announced, saying “We have reached the point where further litigation damages the unity of our state”.
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June 29, 2009 :: staff :: One Comment
Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty said on Sunday he would certify Al Franken as winner of the November 2008 US Senate race, if the Supreme Court of his state orders it. He told CNN that he would sign the certification as soon as the court gives him the “green light” and that he would not delay Franken’s certification just to facilitate a federal appeals process.
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June 23, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 3 Comments
When hearings were held to decide the outcome of the protracted Minnesota Senate race, Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, released a statement predicting that Al Franken, US Senate candidate for the Democratic Farmer Labor party (Minnesota’s branch of the national Democratic party), would soon prevail. More than 3 weeks later, there are questions as to what is stalling the delivery of a verdict that would seat the nation’s 100th senator.
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June 21, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
As concerned people inside and outside Iran try to get a grip on what is taking place in the anti-government demonstrations, pro-democracy rallies and security crackdown, following the presidential vote of 12 June 2009, social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook have been useful to those trying to get word out about abuses and harsh security measures; the use of proxy servers has allowed journalists, activists and concerned citizens, to circumvent controls on media freedom.
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June 19, 2009 :: Webb Tisch :: 4 Comments
This is not news, but it’s worth repeating: Sen. John Cornyn, of Texas, has in the past suggested that the Republican challenge to Minnesota’s seating Al Franken as its junior senator could last for “years”. Coleman has challenged every single court ruling so far, despite losing every one of them and losing more ground in the vote-count with each examination of new votes. The last court to rule found that there was no evidence of any legitimate votes still uncounted, and ordered that Franken be certified the winner and Coleman pay court costs.
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June 18, 2009 :: Denver Lessing :: 3 Comments
The state of Minnesota, and of course the netroots, are in a flurry of speculation today that the Minnesota Supreme Court may be preparing to hand down a ruling in the election contest between Norm Coleman and Al Franken. There is no news from the Court confirming the speculation that a verdict is imminent, but the hearing was more than two weeks ago, and Minnesota has been without its 2nd senator since January.
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June 10, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 4 Comments
Norm Coleman, incumbent senator for Minnesota until 3 January 2009, is gambling his political future on the likelihood the Minnesota Supreme Court will rule to allow the inclusion of absentee ballots ruled inadmissible by state officials and by every court venue to date, the counting of which he expects will overturn Al Franken’s narrow lead. Experts are saying the hearing before the court suggests Coleman has little chance of success.
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June 8, 2009 :: Webb Tisch :: 3 Comments
By refusing to follow the court order mandating that election results be certified and Al Franken seated as the junior senator from Minnesota, Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a Republican, has allowed the contest brought by a member of his own party to deprive his state of its second vote in the United States Senate since early January. Though a case is pending in the courts, the fact remains, Pawlenty is using his office to block the certification of results that would seat a member of the opposing party.
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April 30, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 2 Comments
The election of 2008 is historic for a variety of reasons: it saw the election of the first African American president, a second consecutive “wave election” —not seen since 1930 and ’32—, saw two women come very close to the most powerful job in the world, mobilized millions of voters and saw record amounts of fundraising from “small donors”. It was, however, also a watershed moment in the fundamental decentralization of the American political process.
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April 29, 2009 :: Webb Tisch :: 3 Comments
Democratic Senate candidate from Minnesota, Al Franken, declared the winner by a 3-judge panel after a series of recounts and election contests, has hired a chief of staff for his Washington office, should he be certified and seated. It had been reported Franken was hiring staff, even as his opponent, one-term senator Norm Coleman, mounts a new round of appeals in a quest to find more votes.
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April 28, 2009 :: staff :: 2 Comments
Progressives are pledging to contribute $1 per day to a political action fund until Republican Norm Coleman concedes defeat in the 2008 Minnesota senate race against Al Franken. Franken has been found to be the winner after every stage of recount and judicial review, and was ruled to be the winner by unanimous decision of a three-judge panel earlier this month.
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April 24, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 3 Comments
The Minnesota Supreme Court has agreed to hear Norm Coleman’s appeal of the ruling in which a 3-judge panel ordered the state to certify Al Franken as the winner in the November 2008 election. The date set for that hearing is 1 June 2009, meaning Minnesota may continue without its 2nd senator for another 5 weeks. Coleman had been ordered to pay court costs and the ruling had been issued not only unanimously, but “with prejudice”. The Republican governor of the state has not yet acceded to the Court’s order.
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April 15, 2009 :: Webb Tisch :: 5 Comments
After yet another recount, a Minnesota court has found that the total vote tally shows Democrat Al Franken winning the race for the US Senate seat, contested since November 2008. Then incumbent Norm Coleman, who said when he held an early lead, in November, that Franken should drop out for the sake of the people of his state, now intends a months-long court battle to ‘appeal’ the court’s finding.
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January 20, 2009 :: staff :: One Comment
That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Our nation is at war against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age…
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January 19, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
Thailand has jailed an author for 3 years for “insulting” the king and crown prince in just one paragraph in a self-published novel that sold only 7 copies; Harry Nicolaides, an Australian, received the 3 year sentence, in part because he pled guilty, earning him a lower sentence. According to the Christian Science Monitor, “Most [...]
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December 20, 2008 :: staff :: Comments Off
The Senate recount in Minnesota has revealed ball0t-examination processes that border on the absurd, but which are, in fact, a good-faith effort to ensure that all applicable laws are followed and each voter’s intent is accurately recorded. Each ballot is crucial in this election, which has seen the two candidates separate by 250 votes or [...]
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December 9, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
Rod Blagojevich, the current governor of Illinois, has been arrested in connection with a federal corruption probe. He was charged in federal court today, and has been released on bond. US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald said of the indictment “The breadth of corruption laid out in these charges is staggering”. The most prominent allegation being made against Blagojevich is that he attempted to sell the appointment he is to make to fill the Senate seat vacated by President-elect Barack Obama.
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November 29, 2008 :: Webb Tisch :: One Comment
E pluribus unum: of the many, one. We often forget the meaning of this legacy. We often conveniently slip into ignorance about the aspirational nature of the American political system. American democracy was designed to be everything that feudal monarchies, whether they included parliamentary processes or not, could not be, or had refused to be. It was designed to be a system in which authority was distributed across as wide a swath of the social landscape as possible, in order that fewer people suffer injustice, and that no one suffer injustice without recourse.
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November 17, 2008 :: staff :: 4 Comments
In Alaska, 7-count convicted felon Sen. Ted Stevens had narrowly led Anchorage mayor Mark Begich, but counting of early-cast paper ballots and absentee votes has favored Begich, a Democrat in a Republican-controlled state, and Begich is now favored to win. Georgia Republican incumbent Saxby Chambliss is now facing a heated runoff, in which more campaign cash is being spent than in the first round and John McCain has taken to the campaign trail. In Minnesota, author and radio-host Al Franken trails Republican incumbent Norm Coleman by just 200 votes, the count ongoing.
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November 17, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
Just a couple of years ago, the conventional wisdom dictated that financial minds must view “green technology” as pie in the sky, an unaffordable idealistic quest for something beyond the “easy” solution of endless oil. Then, almost overnight, the financial markets discovered that oil was not infinite, that the entire US economy was beholden to the pricing whims of an international cartel —this was long known, but tolerated—, and failure to go green could cripple the world’s most powerful democracy.
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November 16, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: 2 Comments
A “wave election”, with public sentiment clearly moving in a new direction, calling for principled governance, with a new focus on progressive aims… economic crisis, having built up over a decade, hidden in the esoteric workings of financial instruments reliant on advanced physics for mathematical proof of viability, worsened by unprincipled exaggerations and manipulations… the potential for a major swing in global opinions about the meaning of political systems… the climate is ripe for change, and we now face the problem of conceptualizing change, in order to see and understand its implementation.
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November 16, 2008 :: Denver Lessing :: One Comment
Since California voted to ban same-sex marriage —legal there since a state supreme court ruling finding in favor of gay marriage rights on constitutional grounds— on 4 November, there have been daily demonstrations against the ban. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has expressed his hope that the ban will be overturned or repealed. On Saturday, 11 days after the ban was voted in by referendum, a nationwide rally for same-sex marriage rights achieved unprecedented numbers, with a presence in all 50 states.
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November 10, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
To understand the relevance and virtues of Barack Obama’s economic vision, we have to look at the long history of struggle between American laissez-faire capitalism and American middle-class capitalism. We are on the verge of what is likely to be a comprehensive philosophical shift in economic policy toward generative investment, which means counting as economic imperatives the resilience and productive expansion of the positive bases of economic growth, i.e. human and environmental health and well-being, resource-density and cyclical models of resource use and reproduction.
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November 7, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: 4 Comments
Barack Obama’s election victory, making him 44th president of the United States, was resounding not only for its historic significance, not only because the nation faces monumental crises and is calling for serious reform at a potential turning point in political trends, but because mathematically, it was decisive. Obama carried at least 28 states —with Missouri still in recounts—, won more than 65.1 million votes —nearly 8 million more than McCain—, and if McCain takes Missouri and the one unassigned Nebraska vote, his Electoral College margin is 364 to 174.
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November 7, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
The Republican party has seen virtually every one of its over-arching policy assumptions discredited or rejected, in the 2006 and 2008 elections. It now faces an historic challenge, to reinvent itself in a climate where the other party dominates both houses of Congress and has elected a popular new president by a wide margin. The campaign of Sen. John McCain struggled to overcome the Obama message, in part because it was relying on the assumption that specific Republican party platform planks were the political ideas most en vogue with the electorate, when they were in fact at odds with current economic and political reality.
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November 6, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: 5 Comments
Sen. Barack Obama, as president-elect, now faces the daunting task of staging a transition from campaign to governing, and from the Bush years to the Obama years, in what must be the most artful and adroit performance of the task seen in decades. Facing two wars, looming multifaceted economic crisis, and the need to overhaul national energy policy and fight environmental degradation on an unprecedented scale, Obama is faced not just with forming a cabinet and White House team, but formulating a strategy for enacting the change he has promised in a time of historic difficulty.
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November 5, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
John McCain used to be a “maverick”, an independent thinker, a rebel against his party’s leadership, and that entailed adopting, promoting and furiously defending ideas that diverged from his party’s stated agenda and its leaders’ most prized political philosophies. He shed the trappings of the true moderate or independent in an apparent effort to win favor among his party’s decision-makers and financial backers, which dampened his appeal as an independent thinker. And most importantly, he seemed blind to the real spirit of the times, which rejected the politics of fear and called for an activist approach to crisis.
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November 5, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
I have long felt, as so many Americans do, a profound emotional attachment to the ideals we always speak of when we talk about our founding revolution, our enlightened democracy, our progress toward a freer and more just world. And I have always aspired to see those ideals put on display, not just by an historic moment, but by the collective awareness of millions of impassioned American citizens. This moment in history is a sea change in our collective mindset, and a victory for all Americans.
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November 5, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: 2 Comments
President-elect Barack Obama has reportedly offered the post of White House Chief of Staff to Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL), considered to be one of the most capable organizers in the House of Representatives, with military experience and a no-nonsense approach to policy. Emanuel, who has not yet accepted or declined the offer, is clearly a force in the House, was instrumental in the gains Democrats achieved in 2006 and 2008, and will have to wrestle with the decision to leave Congress.
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November 5, 2008 :: staff :: One Comment
If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer. It’s the answer told by lines that stretched around schools and churches in numbers this nation has never seen; by people who waited three hours and four hours, many for the very first time in their lives, because they believed that this time must be different; that their voice could be that difference.
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November 5, 2008 :: staff :: 3 Comments
They said this day would never come. They said our sights were set too high. They said this country was too divided; too disillusioned to ever come together around a common purpose. But on this January night – at this defining moment in history – you have done what the cynics said we couldn’t do; what the state of New Hampshire can do in five days; what America can do in this New Year. In schools and churches; small towns and big cities; you came together as Democrats, Republicans and Independents to stand up and say that we are one nation; we are one people; and our time for change has come.
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November 5, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) has defeated Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) to become the 44th president of the United States of America. Around 11pm Eastern Time, American news media and wire services began projecting that enough states would deliver their Electoral College votes to Obama to make him president-elect. Shortly afterward, Sen. John McCain phoned his rival to congratulate him on his historic victory. Sen. Obama is the first African American to win the presidency of the United States.
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November 4, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
In the state of Virginia, voters coming in from the rain have reportedly had problems when water dripped from their clothes, hands or hair onto paper ballots which later need to be optically scanned. Election officials have reported this may “spoil” the ballots, rendering them unreadable by optical scan machines. In many precincts across the country, long lines or computer glitches, or both, caused a scramble for quick fixes, usually emergency paper ballots, for those waiting on long lines.
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November 4, 2008 :: staff :: Comments Off
By mid-afternoon, CNN was already reporting record turnout among voters in key battleground states, Virginia and Ohio. Reports from across the nation also seemed to indicate huge turnout in the earliest hours, and radio reports have featured impassioned voters talking of a sleepless pre-election night, and getting on line at predawn hours. Efforts to get out the vote and to suppress the vote have been widely reported in both Virginia and Ohio, and Democrats have been forecasting that higher turnout means new younger and minority voters and a better chance for Obama.
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November 4, 2008 :: staff :: Comments Off
This paper presents a fully independent security study of a Diebold AccuVote-TS voting machine, including its hardware and software. We obtained the machine from a private party. Analysis of the machine, in light of real election procedures, shows that it is vulnerable to extremely serious attacks. For example, an attacker who gets physical access to a machine or its removable memory card for as little as one minute could install malicious code; malicious code on a machine could steal votes undetectably, modifying all records, logs, and counters to be consistent with the fraudulent vote count it creates.
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November 4, 2008 :: staff :: One Comment
Early voting —in some states actually in-person absentee voting— has allowed as many as 40% of registered voters in North Carolina to cast ballots already, before the opening of the first polls on Election Day. According to ABC News, in North Carolina more African American voters have already voted than in the 2004 election, and in Georgia some 85% of the 2004 African American turnout have already cast ballots. George Stephanopoulous reports that of so-called “likely voters” who have voted so far, fully 58% were leaning toward Obama, as opposed to 40% for McCain.
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November 4, 2008 :: staff :: Comments Off
Madelyn Payne Dunham, nicknamed “Toot” —grandmother, in Hawaian— by grandson Barack Obama, has passed away, one day before the election which may make him president of the United States. Dunham died after a long struggle with cancer, and the candidate said she passed peacefully in her sleep. He told a rally in Charlotte, NC, that “She’s gone home”, and that it was a difficult joy amid the tragedy that his sister was able to be with her when she passed.
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November 3, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
We have seen the old punchcard ballots ridiculed for their potential flaws in 2000, in Florida. We have seen the dangers of touchscreen voting machines almost everywhere they have been used, at one point or another. Indeed, the state of New Jersey is using them even after having commissioned a study that demonstrated comprehensively they could be easily manipulated to swing an election. And none of the solutions we’ve heard seem able to guarantee an errorless or tamper-free count.
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November 3, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: 4 Comments
An electronic voting machine made by Premier Election Solutions (Diebold) has been found to flip votes repeatedly to Republican candidate John McCain. A local election official in Adams County responded to the complaint by halting the machine’s use and sequestering it, so it could be examined for evidence of tampering and/or persistent malfunction.
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November 2, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
The confluence of viciously hard economic times and an election that has stoked tensions over social and political conservative values and their place in our future course, pushing ideology to the side —even as vastly divergent approaches to multiple crises play out in the national political discourse—, has illuminated a dark corner of institutional conservatism: the empathy deficit. The struggle of conservative ideologues and politicos to be relevant in the present economic unraveling is tied to a rhetorical habit of demonizing the Other, i.e. the underprivileged, the alien, the non-institutional, the marginalized.
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November 2, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: 4 Comments
Any individual, be they low-level election officials, state governors, or non-state actors, who participates in an effort to deprive legitimately registered or entitled-to-be-registered voters of their vote, should be prosecuted. The denial of Constitutional rights is not just a civil liberties issue, not simply a matter of accidental incompetence, and when it involves the actual election process, it is an assault on the government of the United States, which is ultimately supposed to be led by the will of the voter.
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October 30, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
There are reports coming out of Virginia suggesting that an unidentified person or group has been distributing fliers targeting minorities and registered Democrats, instructing them incorrectly that Election Day will be Wednesday, November 5. ELECTION DAY IS TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 4, for everyone who has not voted early or by absentee ballot.
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October 21, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: 5 Comments
Barack Obama, the senator from Illinois, is the candidate that is best positioned to offer the solutions our nation requires, in these troubled and challenging times. His positive vision of a dynamic American society, capable of innovating to combat a global energy crisis, principled in defending Constitutional law and human rights, combines the open and dynamic nature of American democratic culture with an energetic commitment to tackling new challenges, motivating a resurgence of the kind of major projects that will help rebuild and spur our economy.
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October 20, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
It has for some time been a hallmark of American politics that conservative ideologues speak of “liberals” with disdain and condescension, and liberals view “right-wing” politics as nasty and unsavory. But the recent eruption of anger, vitriol and even violent hatred, from some individuals attending McCain-Palin rallies brings up the question of whether conservatives have blinded themselves to political reality, to the meaning of democracy, to the virtues of balance, by entertaining an irrational hatred of liberals.
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October 20, 2008 :: staff :: Comments Off
Sen. Barack Obama has begun to raise the issue of how rival Sen. John McCain plans to pay for added costs in his budget, particularly healthcare, given his tax cut plan and his claims about coverage. According the Wall Street Journal, which cites his own campaign, he will do so with massive cuts to Medicare and Medicaid. Sen. Obama used the figure of an $882 billion cut to Medicare coverage alone.
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October 19, 2008 :: staff :: One Comment
In an interview with Meet the Press, former Sec. of State Colin Powell said he knows both John McCain and Barack Obama to be “distinguished Americans, who are patriotic, who are dedicated to the welfare of our country”, criticized his friend Sen. McCain for “a little unsure” what to do about the economic crisis, suggesting he “didn’t have a complete grasp of the economic problems”. Powell also questioned a number of McCain’s judgments on policy and campaign tactics, and praised Sen. Obama’s “intellectual vigor” and “steadiness” in dealing with serious challenges.
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