Hissyspit
Hissyspit's JournalWisconsin Approves Recall Votes for More Republican Senators
Source: Reuters
Wisconsin approves recall votes for more Republican senators
By Brendan O'Brien
MADISON, WISCONSIN | Mon Mar 12, 2012 9:20pm EDT
MADISON, Wisconsin (Reuters) - Four more Wisconsin Republican state senators, including the Senate leader, will face recall elections this year, bringing the number of state lawmakers forced to campaign in special elections to 40 percent of the entire Senate, officials said.
The state agency that oversees elections agreed unanimously on Monday that enough valid signatures by voters were submitted to require all four senators to face recall votes.
The four lawmakers include Senate President Scott Fitzgerald, a chief architect of an anti-union law passed last year that sparked the recall movement.
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The decision means 13 of the state's 33 senators will have already faced a recall vote or will soon face one since Republican Governor Scott Walker pushed an anti-union law through the legislature last March.
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Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSBRE82B1CJ20120313?irpc=932
“I felt like I had been arrested for a thought crime"
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/12/nyregion/occupy-wall-street-protesters-complain-of-police-monitoring.html?_r=1Wall Street Protesters Complain of Police Surveillance
By COLIN MOYNIHAN
Published: March 11, 2012
On Nov. 17, Kira Moyer-Sims was near the Manhattan Bridge, buying coffee while three friends waited nearby in a car. More than a dozen blocks away, protesters gathered for an Occupy Wall Street “day of action,” which organizers had described as an attempt to block the streets around the New York Stock Exchange.
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Then, Ms. Moyer-Sims said, about 30 police officers surrounded her and the people in the car.
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“I felt like I had been arrested for a thought crime,” she said.
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Although she told them they could not enter, Ms. Nurse said, an officer used his foot to prevent the front door from closing behind her, followed her into the building’s entryway vestibule, and threatened to arrest her for obstruction of government administration. Ms. Nurse said the visit did not feel like a coincidence.
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Tom Tomorrow: Eric Holder Says...
Daily Kos Link: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/03/12/1072822/-Eric-Holder-says-
UK's (Foreign Secretary) Hague Faces Suit Over Pakistan Drone Strikes
Source: Reuters
UK's Hague faces suit over Pakistan drone strikes
Sun Mar 11, 2012 2:45pm EDT
LONDON (Reuters) - Lawyers for the family of a man killed in a U.S. drone attack in Pakistan said they would begin legal action against Britain's Foreign Secretary William Hague on Monday, accusing him of complicity in strikes they say broke international laws.
London law firm Leigh Day & Co said it had "credible, unchallenged" evidence that Hague oversaw a policy of passing British intelligence to U.S. forces planning attacks against militants in Pakistan. It plans to issue formal proceedings against Hague at the High Court in London on behalf of Noor Khan, whose father was died in a drone attack last year.
Malik Daud Khan was part of a local "jirga", or council of elders holding a meeting in the tribal areas of northwest Pakistan when a missile fired from the drone hit the group, the law firm said.
Attacks by pilotless U.S. aircraft have become a key weapon in President Barack Obama's counter-terrorism strategy in Pakistan and officials say they have helped to weaken al Qaeda's leadership in the region.
Read more: http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSBRE82A0AP20120311?irpc=932
Glenn Greenwald: Dennis Kucinich and "Wackiness"
http://www.salon.com/2012/03/10/dennis_kucinich_and_wackiness/singleton.htmlSATURDAY, MAR 10, 2012 5:40 AM EST
Dennis Kucinich and “wackiness”
The now-defeated congressman consistently opposed destructive bipartisan pieties - and is therefore "crazy"
BY GLENN GREENWALD
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Establishment Democrats have long viewed Dennis Kucinich with a mixture of scorn, mockery and condescension. True to form, the establishment liberal journal American Prospect gave Kucinich a little kick on the way out, comparing his political views to the 1960s musical “Hair” (the Ohio loser talked about “Harmony and understanding”!), deriding him as “a favorite among lefty college kids and Birkenstock-wearers around the country,” and pronouncing him “among the wackiest members of Congress.” Yes, I said The American Prospect, not The Weekly Standard.
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Neither the Prospect nor the Post would ever dare mock as “wacky” the belief in invisible judgmental father-figures in the sky or that rendition of life-after-death gospel because those belief systems have been deemed acceptable by establishment circles. ”Wacky”, like its close cousin “crazy,” is a term of establishment derision exclusively reserved for those who deviate from such conventions. And that’s the point worth making here: the real reason anyone with D.C. Seriousness, including many establishment liberals, relished mocking Kucinich is because he dissented from the orthodoxies of the two political parties. That, by definition, makes one wacky and weird, even when — as is true for the Obama assassination powers and so many other bipartisan pieties — the actual wacky and crazy beliefs are those orthodoxies themselves (we’ve seen this repeatedly with those who stray from two-party normalcy). In reality, the actual crazies are those who fit comfortably within that two-party mentality and rarely challenge or deviate from it, while those who are sane, by definition, dissent from it (just today, the Super Serious Democratic Sen. Carl Levin, a prime co-sponsor of the indefinite detention bill passed late last year, called for a naval blockade of Iran).
It’s not difficult to see why Democrats, including progressives, often took (and continue to take) the lead in demonizing Kucinich as a wacky loser. After his Party leaders decreed that impeachment of Bush was “off the table” — both because they feared it would jeopardize their electoral prospects and because top Democrats were complicit in Bush crimes — Kucinich defied their orders and introduced articles of impeachment against Bush for the Iraq War, his chronic lawbreaking, and his assault on the Constitution: exactly what impeachment was designed to prevent and punish. He was one of the very few people in Congress who vehemently denounced the assaults on the Constitution with equal vigor under the prior GOP President and the current Democratic one. He was one of the very few people in Congress with the courage to deviate from the AIPAC script, opposing the Israeli blockade of Gaza, condemning Israeli wars of aggression, and repeatedly publicizing the oppression of Palestinians with the use of American funds and support. He repeatedly insisted on application of the law to the Executive Branch’s foreign policy when all of Washington agreed to overlook it. He repeatedly opposed bipartisan measures to intensify hostility toward Iran. When the Democrats won Congress in 2006 based on a promise to end the Iraq War, only to turn around and continue to fund it without restrictions (thus ensuring that this politically advantageous war would be raging during the 2008 election), Kucinich continuously demanded that they follow through on their promises.
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I find this unpersuasive on multiple levels. For one, enacting legislation is not the only way to have an important impact on our political culture. Shining light on otherwise-ignored issues, advocating rarely-heard political positions, using one’s platform to highlight the corruption of those in power and to challenge their warped belief systems are all vitally important functions. Advocacy of that sort may not produce immediate, tangible successes, but it is a prerequisite for changing prevailing political mores and persuading citizens to think differently. “Talking a lot” is a synonym for persuasion, advocacy and debate. It’s far from “doing very little.” Those are all critical steps in changing a political system. It’s true that Kucinich cannot point to any law he passed that, say, guts the National Security State or corporate-lobbyist control over Washington, but that hardly means his work was inconsequential. Those types of changes often take years, even decades, of advocacy, and urgently need those with public platforms to amplify the underlying views to change how citizens think.
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Long Beach Aquarium Withdraws Ad From Rush Limbaugh's Show
Source: Los Angeles Times
Long Beach Aquarium withdraws ad from Rush Limbaugh's show
March 8, 2012 | 1:01 pm
The Aquarium of the Pacific withdrew an advertisement from Rush Limbaugh's radio show this week, the latest organization to do so after he lashed out against a law student on a recent show.
The aquarium does not "support or condone his statements," spokeswoman Claire Atkinson said in a statement issued Wednesday. "We immediately called our media buyers and asked to pull our ads."
Last week, Limbaugh called a law student a "slut" and a "prostitute" because she was advocating for more access to birth control. Dozens of organizations have pulled ads from the show.
About 45 national and local companies pulled their spots, according to liberal activist groups angered by Limbaugh.
Read more: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012/03/aquarium-withdraws-ad-from-rush-limbaugh-show.html
Daily Mail Issues Retraction 10 Months After False Claim WikiLeaks "Hacked" US, Got People Killed
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/article-2111822/Clarifications-corrections.html?ito=feeds-newsxml*********************************************************************************************
A column on 12 July suggested that Wikileaks founder Julian Assange had hacked into the security services and published information which got people killed.
Mr Assange asks us to clarify that Wikileaks does not itself ‘hack’ but provides a secure facility for anonymous sources to deposit information online.
While the U.S. government has warned that Wikileaks disclosures put lives at risk, no such deaths have to date been reported.
Law professor: U.S. in State of Perpetual War
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/03/07/law-professor-u-s-in-state-of-perpetual-warLaw professor: U.S. in state of perpetual war
By Eric W. Dolan
Wednesday, March 7, 2012 18:38 EST
University of Southern California law professor Mary Dudziak appeared Wednesday on MSNBC to explain why she believes the United States has been in a permanent state of war.
“The idea of wartime is doing a lot of work in American politics,” she said. “The way we think about history is history passes through two different kinds of time, from wartime to peacetime to wartime et cetera.”
“That’s the way we learn about it in school, that’s the way that we imagine it. When we use to concept of wartime, we assume that wartime is by definition temporary.”
But Dudziak noted that over the past 100 years, there had been few times when the United States was not engaged in a some sort of military conflict.
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Republican Support of Limbaugh Plummets in Georgia, Ohio and Tennessee
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/03/05/republican-support-of-limbaugh-plummets-in-georgia-ohio-and-tennessee/Republican support of Limbaugh plummets in Georgia, Ohio and Tennessee
By Eric W. Dolan
Monday, March 5, 2012 16:57 EST
Republican’s view of conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh has fallen deeply in the wake of misogynistic remarks he made about a Georgetown University law student.
Less than half of Republicans in Georgia, Ohio and Tennessee have a favorable opinion of Limbaugh, according to Public Policy Polling. The last time PPP surveyed his popularity nationally, 80 percent of Republicans had a favorable opinion of him, while only 12 percent had an unfavorable opinion.
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His favorability rating among women is even lower. In Ohio, 39 percent of Republican women have a favorable opinion of Limbaugh. In Tennessee, 36 percent of Republican women have a favorable opinion.
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http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2012/03/limbaugh-and-birthers.html
March 05, 2012
Limbaugh and Birthers
On our Georgia, Ohio, and Tennessee Republican polls in addition to looking at the Presidential race we also polled on some of the issues that have been in the news over the last week: Rush Limbaugh and the reemergence of
Our numbers suggest that Rush Limbaugh has seen significant erosion in his popularity with Republican voters over the last week. The last time we polled on him nationally he was at 80/12 with GOPers. But now we find him below 50% in all three of these states: he's at 45/28 in Ohio, 46/29 in Tennessee, and 44/30 in Georgia.
Republican women in particular have become very skeptical about Limbaugh in the states holding tomorrow's 2 most competitive contests. He's at only 39/28 with them in Ohio and 36/30 in Tennessee
Feelings about Limbaugh produce a pretty big divide in who GOP voters are planning to cast their ballots for tomorrow. Among Ohio Republicans who like Limbaugh Rick Santorum leads Mitt Romney 39-35. With ones who dislike him Romney has the 39-30 advantage.
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National Iranian-American Council Runs Full-Page WaPo Ad Against War with Iran Quoting Military
@ggreenwald: National Iraniain American Council runs full page WashPost ad against war with Iran quoting military officials: http://t.co/3x1aHu2E
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