Brownbaggers Not Teabaggers
VIGILS AGAINST WAR FUNDING SPREAD ACROSS NATION



Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) organized "brownbag" lunch vigils against war funding at noon on Wednesday, January 20th, at the district offices of 22 members of the U.S. House of Representatives.

On February 17th, PDA will be joined by CODEPINK, AfterDowningStreet, Democrats.com, the California Nurses Assn./National Nurses United, and United for Peace and Justice in holding brownbag vigils outside (or inside) at least 36 congress members' offices.

Brownbaggers are demanding commitments to vote against more money for war. Slogans on their posters include: "Healthcare not Warfare," "Corporations out of Politics," "Bailout Main Street not Wall Street," and "Brownbaggers not Teabaggers".

Vigils have been planned in the following districts: AZ-5, CA-6, CA-9, CA-10, CA-18, CA-22, CA-23, CA-40, CA-42, CA-45, CA-46, CA-48, CA-50, CA-53, FL-9, FL-10, FL-17, ID-01, IN-9, MA-1, MA-2, MA-3, MA-10, MI-9, NY-18, NY-28, OH-13, OH-17, PA-02, PA-7, PA-15, WA-2, WA-3, WA-6, WI-3, WI-7. These are almost all at noon on Wednesday the 17th, but a few are at odd times, so check the details: http://tr.im/NsUa

Get involved here and start a vigil in a new district: http://tinyurl.com/brownbagvigil

What We Want:

Brownbaggers are asking members of the House to publicly commit to voting No on any bills that fund wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, or Yemen, and to publicly urge their colleagues and the House leadership to make the same commitment. As lesser steps in the same direction, PDA is encouraging congress members to cosponsor HR 2454, calling for an exit strategy from Afghanistan, and HR 3699, prohibiting any increase in the number of U.S. Armed Forces in Afghanistan. Congress members' commitments are tracked at http://defundwar.org

"We have to choose between jobs and wars," said PDA's national director Tim Carpenter. "The American people are on one side, but our so-called representatives in Congress are on the other. The Supreme Court is busy increasing corporate control of our elected officials. We need to be busy enforcing the people's control before it is too late."

"Without wasteful war and military spending," said PDA's deputy director Laura Bonham, "we could have healthcare, jobs, housing, education, retirement security, environmental sustainability, diplomacy and foreign aid. No longer will we take seriously anyone's claim to support these things while voting to fund more war."

Learn more about Brown Bag Lunch Vigils here: http://tinyurl.com/brownbagvigil

Print useful information:
http://defundwar.org

What it would have cost us to publicly fund independent media that would have prevented the invasion of Iraq wouldn't amount, in a year, to what we spend on a month of occupying that country.

Diverting the cost of a month of war to a year of giving substance to our "freedom of the press" would mean that the last time someone asked you about the Teabaggers' genius in being smart enough to talk dumb enough to persuade everyone to be racists would, in fact, be the LAST time anyone would ask you how a creation of the corporate media manages to get coverage from the corporate media.

But what do I mean by government-funded independent media? Isn’t that a contradiction in terms? Aren’t we better off with a completely worthless and counterproductive corporate media system than with government-controlled media? Maybe, but I said publicly FUNDED, not government CONTROLLED. And the choice is between that sort of communications system or nothing. Corporate news rooms, journalism, and investigative reporting are dying out as surely as if a plague were spreading among reporters; and they were already dying out before the internet came onto the scene. We need to take a lesson from current European or early American history and begin treating the press as the public good that Jefferson and Madison considered it, or give up on the accountability imposed on government officials in the United States just a few decades ago.

"The Death and Life of American Journalism" by Robert McChesney and John Nichols will persuade anyone with basic reading skills of the above assertions. I highly recommend reading this book, and skipping only the first page of the introduction. The authors begin by quoting a mass-murderer who libels the blogosphere and opposes "opinion" to "serious" news. But they don't mean it any more than they mean to focus on early nineteenth century US history at the expense of examining more deeply the successes of European governments in the current era. That's just packaging for xenophobes.

The book is a tour de force, providing an extremely persuasive analysis of where our communications system is headed if left alone, and a terrific survey of ways in which we can rescue it from disaster. In short, the book shows us that corporate media is dying as a form of substantive political reporting. We need a different approach. But I'm not sure we don’t also need to work within the existing and dying system, as we could have done decades ago but never have, as a step toward a long-term solution.

That is to say, in the wake of "Citizens United" we cannot possibly compete with corporate ad buys and shouldn’t try. Civic groups and labor unions and concerned Americans should not give funding to any organization or political candidate who will pass a penny along to the corporate media. Instead we should finally create our own media outlets with all of the money we waste on each election cycle.

We don't have to do so in the corporate manner. McChesney and Nichols point to other approaches, such as the L3C Low-Profit Limited Liability Company. A low profit would be more of a profit than Air America managed, and its funding and purpose would not subject it to the same risks. While we need long-term public investment in media, we need short-term private investment in the same to achieve the public understanding necessary to get us there.

Then we need the emergency and long-term steps McChesney and Nichols prescribe, including a return to better subsidized postal rates for print media, an expansion of AmeriCorps to include journalist training, an investment in high school media, and serious government funding of news reporters:

"If by 2020 we roughly doubled the number of full-time working journalists in the United States," McChesney and Nichols write, "to, say, 160,000, it would require a U.S. government subsidy of $7.2 billion in 2009 dollars." That amount of money is what the Pentagon refers to as "a rounding error."

The fact is that the fourth estate is a more critical public good than the military, police, fire, electricity, roads, water, wall street bailouts, or many other things we treat as public goods, or -- for that matter -- healthcare, retirement income, education, or many other things that some of us try to force our government to treat as public goods. And yet we do not even ask that freedom of the press be supported in any way by our elected representatives. Despite our own nation's history and many other nations' current experience of publicly funding journalism without allowing politicians to censor and direct it, we are unable to even imagine such a thing, preferring to stick with the ever worsening pretense of corporate journalism in the name of a perverted freedom of the press that has been reduced to freedom of speech for corporate conglomerates.

We need to read "The Death and Life of American Journalism" and to think hard about the fate of media outlets that are not discussing this book despite it's convincing prediction of their early demise. If these institutions would rather perish than change, how much concern can they have for the future of you or me or our children's children?

Congresswoman Donna Edwards' bill proposing a Constitutional Amendment to deny corporations the free speech rights of persons in the form of unlimited election bribery spending has now been cosponsored by: John Conyers, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Jim McGovern, Keith Ellison, Chellie Pingree, Barbara Lee, Andre Carson, Jesse Jackson, Jr., Betty Sutton, Raul Grijalva and Ed Markey.

With the exception of Carson, these congress members are also all cosponsors of the Fair Elections Act, which seeks to address the fairness of our elections by providing public financing for campaigns.

Approaches to fixing the corporate ownership of our elected officials are proliferating, and many organizations and individuals will be backing more than one of them. Here are some of the courses of action already underway:

Constitutional Amendments

Legislation

House Amendments and Legislation

Senate Amendments and Legislation

State Legislation

State and Local and Organizational Resolutions in Support of a Constitutional Amendment

Congresswoman Edwards understands the need to build a popular movement better than any congress member I've seen before and is working to help build a campaign at http://freespeechforpeople.org Please go there and sign on, and then click on "Get Involved" to take further action.

We are eventually going to need to provide free media to campaigns, publicly fund campaigns, prevent the private funding of campaigns, require verifiable vote counting, open up ballot access to candidates, undo the gerrymandering, deny corporations rights that should belong only to real people, and much more. And to do some of the things we need to do we will have to amend the Constitution.

This means either winning over two-thirds of Congress and three-quarters of states or winning over two-thirds of states to have a convention and three-quarters of states to ratify amendments. Whichever route we take is going to require state-level organizing and national coordination. We are going to have to win clean election reforms at the state level to produce better legislatures before we can do what needs to be done.

And as we do this, I think we will lose the horror many of us have of holding a Constitutional Convention. Even if such a convention does pass undesirable amendments such as a ban on marriage for some Americans, we can mobilize in 13 states to refuse ratification to that amendment.

If, however, we do not amend the basic structure of our Constitution, we are not going to have anything human or decent to look forward to in this country. No public financing law will allow us to outspend the corporations that have been unshackled by the US Supreme Court.

Let's get to work. Twelve sponsors on an amendment in the House gets things started. Let's have at least 24 by next week.

Congresswoman Donna Edwards has just introduced a Constitutional amendment, together with Congressman John Conyers.

Watch this video:
http://freespeechforpeople.org/edwardsvide...

PUBLIC INTEREST GROUPS APPLAUD REP. DONNA EDWARDS FOR FILING CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT BILL TO OVERTURN US SUPREME COURT RULING ON CORPORATE MONEY IN ELECTIONS

HOUSE JUDICIARY CHAIR JOHN CONYERS, JR JOINS FILING

"Free Speech Rights Are For People, Not Corporations"

WASHINGTON, DC – Congresswoman Donna Edwards of Maryland introduced today a constitutional amendment bill to overturn the US Supreme Court’s recent ruling allowing unlimited corporate money in elections. Congressman John Conyers, Jr. of Michigan, the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, is a co-sponsor of the amendment bill.

A coalition of public interest organizations and independent business advocates praised the Congresswoman’s action. The groups, Voter Action, Public Citizen, the Center for Corporate Policy, and the American Independent Business Alliance, say the Court's ruling in Citizens United v. FEC poses a serious and direct threat to democracy. Immediately following the Court's ruling on January 21, 2010, the groups launched a constitutional amendment campaign at www.freespeechforpeople.org to correct the judiciary's creation of corporate rights under the First Amendment over the past three decades.

"Free speech rights are for people, not corporations," says John Bonifaz, Voter Action's legal director and the director of http://www.freespeechforpeople.org . "Our history has included prior amendments to the US Constitution which were enacted to correct egregiously wrong decisions of the US Supreme Court directly impacting the democratic process. The Court’s ruling in Citizens United v. FEC demands a similar constitutional amendment response. We applaud Congresswoman Edwards and Congressman Conyers for taking this critical step toward restoring the First Amendment to its original purpose."

"The Citizens United decision is wrong as a matter of law, history, and our republican principles of government," says Jeffrey Clements, general counsel to http://www.freespeechforpeople.org . "The decision is devastating to our democracy, which is already dominated to a dangerous degree by corporate interest money. Congresswoman Edwards and Congressman Conyers are showing the leadership we need in Congress at this hour."

"The First Amendment was never intended to protect the likes of ExxonMobil, Pfizer or Goldman Sachs, nor should it," said Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen. "Public Citizen thanks Representative Donna Edwards for her courage and leadership in responding to the Supreme Court majority's aggression with a proposal for a constitutional amendment to restore the First Amendment to its rightful purpose: guaranteeing the speech rights of real, live persons."

"An amendment allowing regulation of corporate spending in elections is not only necessary to correct the twisted logic of the Citizens United ruling," says Charlie Cray, director of the Center for Corporate Policy, "but will also go a long way towards rousing us as citizens to assert our authority over the now presumptively untouchable corporations."

"The American Independent Business Alliance is pleased to see Representatives Edwards and Conyers respond to public outrage over the Supreme Court's rewrite of our Constitution," says Jeff Milchen, co-founder of the American Independent Business Alliance. "America's independent businesses are among those which recognize that we need to limit corporations to their appropriate role--doing business. Allowing giant corporations even more power over our elections and government would be as bad for business as it is for democracy."

In addition to the filing of Congresswoman Edwards’ amendment bill, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts joined the call today for a constitutional amendment. In testimony before the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration, Senator Kerry said: "e need a constitutional amendment to make it clear once and for all that corporations do not have the same free speech rights as individuals."

For more information on the constitutional amendment campaign, including a video interview of Congresswoman Edwards, see http://www.freespeechforpeople.org

Last June we were handed an opportunity to block the funding of our illegal, murderous, counterproductive, catastrophic, and hated wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The president insisted on an off-the-books "emergency supplemental" bill, and the Senate added an IMF bailout to the bill, leading all the Republicans in the House to commit what for years they'd called treason: they all voted No on war money.

So, we only needed 39 Democrats to vote No, and we could have stopped the thing, at least temporarily. We had a week-long knock-down drag-out fight, with the White House telling freshmen Democrats they would be "dead to us" if they didn't vote Yes. And we still persuaded 32 Democrats to vote No.

Then we continued building opposition to the wars, and awareness of the need to choose between wars and jobs. But we had to hope that we would again be handed a "supplemental" vote and that again some crazy scheme would be found to get all the Republicans to vote No. If these wishes could be granted, then we would only have to find 40 Democrats to stand with the majority of Americans, soldiers, Iraqis, and Afghans. Otherwise, we'd need 218 congress members.

Our wishes have come true. President Obama has insisted on another "supplemental" this spring for $33 billion. And funding to close Guantanamo and move "the Terrorists" to "the Homeland" has been added into the bill.

Of course, the Democrats think this will force the Republicans to vote for closing Gitmo. Democratic loyalists and president worshippers are celebrating this genius stroke, oblivious to the fact that the funding of wars will destroy our nation along with those the wars are waged against, nevermind exactly where we imprison people. In reality, this maneuver will force the Republicans to vote against the war funding. And that will give us a chance.

We only need 40 No votes from Democrats in the House if the Republicans are voting No, and we can get them. Here's the whip list: http://defundwar.org Have at it!

Add Congressman Bill Delahunt to the list of misrepresentatives who claim to oppose wars when a Republican is president but agree to support them when a Democrat moves into the White House.

When Bush was president, Delahunt sometimes voted for war funding bills and sometimes voted against them. The inclusion in the bills of lipstick measures, such as relief for hurricane victims, etc., was not a decisive factor. Delahunt appears to have voted No when the Democratic leadership was most accepting of that action. But, with all the Republicans voting Yes, there was never a chance of a No vote actually helping to block funding.

Since Obama became president, Delahunt has voted yes at every opportunity to support the funding of wars that the majority of his constituents have opposed for years. Several weeks back, I had the opportunity to speak with some of Delahunt's more engaged constituents as part of a book tour, including members of Cape Codders for Peace and Justice. They had taken to calling their congressman "Dela-Won't" and had largely given up on him. I encouraged them to sit-in at his office and demand opposition to war funding. I was encouraged when I heard that they had done so and that he had agreed to meet with them.

Apparently, Delahunt met with a coalition of groups and refused to commit to voting No on war money. As is typical of congress members who take their orders from the president or a party leader, Delahunt didn't say he would vote Yes, he just refused to commit to voting No. Spineless servants of a party boss want to vote against unpopular bills if the bills are guaranteed to pass and they can be sure that no one will punish them for their action, but they want to keep open the option of voting yes if their vote becomes necessary for passing the bill. This is why the behavior of the people we think of as the best congress members largely amounts to voting No on bills that have been guaranteed passage and voting Yes on bills that have been guaranteed to fail.

About 30 people met with Congressman Delahunt, including military veterans, Cape Codders for Peace and Justice, members of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, Greens, Socialists, anarchists, and representatives of Progressive Democrats of America (PDA). Everyone was united in pressing the single request that Delahunt vote against the next $33 billion for wars.

Bruce Taub, the state coordinator for PDA-Massachusetts, represented his organization's 4,000 members who are united in opposing more war funding. He reported that Delahunt refused to commit to voting Yes or No. Taub said that Delahunt offered two reasons for his position (or lack thereof). One was the fascistic-sounding nonsense that Delahunt called his "concern for the safety of the Homeland." Delahunt cannot be unaware that the wars are making us all less safe, just as he cannot have been unaware of that when he voted against funding them in the past.

The second reason was, in Delahunt's words: "President Obama is my leader. I respect him and trust him. I think he is earnest, someone who wants to genuinely do the best he can for the country, someone who considers all the options and is a thoughtful intelligent man. And if he thinks a supplemental is needed, I give that great deference."

And if he told you to jump off a bridge?

He may be telling you to risk your political career. He himself can afford to sacrifice dozens of servile Democrats and get himself reelected two years later, just as Clinton did. You want to run for reelection on nationalizing Massachusetts's disastrous healthcare plan AND using the money people need for jobs to fight hugely unpopular wars? Are you sure that's what you want to do, Bill? Congressmen Kucinich and Grayson don't need Rahm's support because they have gone public with a commitment to decency and peace. You want to obey a president who would throw you under a bus without a second's thought? You want to do that because you think he's earnest and have bowed down before him as your leader? You expect to have no regrets for this on your death bed?

We claim to have separated church and state, but we obviously have not separated stupid blind faith and obedience from the rhetoric of our statesmen. Or stateswomen. Last June Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky, who had voted against war funding while Bush was president, voted Yes with the explanation "I want to support my president." Congressman Donald Payne, who voted No on war funding when Bush was president and last June as well, told me last weekend that he would not commit to a No vote on the $33 billion, and this purely because Obama is president.

Payne gave no credence to talk of protecting the "Homeland" by killing Afghans and Iraqis. Payne made a lengthy speech about his passionate opposition to the wars and his desire to move our resources to human needs. Then he told me that he would like to vote No on the funding but could not commit to it because Obama is president. I blogged about this on DailyKos, where criticizing Obama is considered at least a misdemeanor. One of the comments posted in reply read:

<blockquote>"The 'only difference' is a different person is President? That's all the difference in the world, when one President is the apex of neoconservativism and the only President ever to govern with that philosophy, and the other is the only President to EVER run against neoconservatism . Bush wanted us in those countries, killing and destroying, as long as it made big corporations as rich as possible. He believed foreign occupation was limitlessly good. Obama believes foreign occupation is inherantly destructive to everyone involved, he watched the effects of it growing up in Indonesia and resented it everyday, not to mention its effect on his entire family history through Kenyan occupation; it's part of the understanding of and rejection of tribalism that has guided his entire life. From being the only Democratic candidate of the main three in 2008 to have had written a bill saying 'no permanent bases in Iraq', to his refusal to fear-monger on Iran, to his perfect handling of the protests there this year, to his pledge in the Cairo speech not to have permanent bases in Iraq OR Afghanistan (unprovoked by any progressive pressure and completely on his own) , to his beating the 6/30/09 deadline to withdraw out of all Iraqi town and cities , to his rush to get troops deployed quickly as logistically politically possible in order to begin withdrawing out of Afghanistan by July 2011, to his books that outline his thought process as inherently anti-occupation from childhood, assuming Obama will act like Bush with the same variables is an incredibly ignorant statement. This is because the problem with not giving Obama any more credit than Bush is that you're giving Bush the same amount of credit as Obama despite having done NONE of the things in the last paragraph, but rather for being the penultimate neocon and invading countries at every opportunity - and that, as someone who opposes wars vehemently, turns my stomach. I respectfully submit that this is what the Congressman gets that you do not."</blockquote>

So, there you see? Obama's obliging Congress has escalated the wars. There are more troops and mercenaries in Iraq and Afghanistan than ever during the Bush years, a larger military budget than ever, bases in more nations than ever, a dramatically increased use of drones, a complete failure to withdraw from Iraq the one to two brigades a month for the 16 months of Obama's presidency as promised, horrific war crimes routinely reported, and we are supposed to view the wars as decreased and improved because of a story about the president's childhood. This is what we've come to. Congress members don't believe this hooey. They just want the Party to fund their campaigns, throw them pork, and make them chairmen. But Party loyalists around the country actually think this way. That is fundamentally what is wrong with our country and what could end up killing us all, even though these president worshippers are still in a minority on the question of war.

Delahunt knows his constituents are paying a heavy economic price for these wars and that a majority does not want them funded. Anyone in search of such information need look no further than http://defundwar.org And, to his credit, Delahunt has agreed to hold a public meeting on the topic of war funding. Let us hope the outcome is not yet another elected representative bragging about his willingness to defy the will of the public.

I think we can count on Delahunt's constituents not to ease off on the pressure until he does, not just says, the right thing.

Last Three Events in "Daybreak" Book Tour

David Swanson is completing a tour of over 50 cities with his new book "Daybreak: Undoing Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union"
http://davidswanson.org/book

St. Louis, February 22
Chicago, February 23
Boston, February 27

DETAILS BELOW

St. Louis, MO, February 22
7 p.m. at Left Bank Books
399 North Euclid at McPherson in the Central West End, St. Louis, MO 63108
Sponsored by: Veterans for Peace
Contact Charles Smith: vfpch61 at riseup.net

Chicago, IL, February 23
7 p.m. - 9:30 p.m. at Northwestern University, the Evanston Campus
The Tech Institute on 2145 Sheridan Road, First Floor, Lecture Room No. 2.
Contact Karen Pallist: pallist3 at gmail dot com

Boston, Massachusetts, February 27
7 p.m. at the Harvard Coop Bookstore
1400 Massachusetts Avenue, 18 Palmer Street, Cambridge, MA 02238
Store telephone: (617) 499-2000
Contact Melida Arredondo: melida_arredondo at yahoo dot com
Elizabeth Ellis: ellisliza at hotmail dot com

Last Three Events in "Daybreak" Book Tour

David Swanson is completing a tour of over 50 cities with his new book "Daybreak: Undoing Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union"
http://davidswanson.org/book

St. Louis, February 22
Chicago, February 23
Boston, February 27

DETAILS BELOW

St. Louis, MO, February 22
7 p.m. at Left Bank Books
399 North Euclid at McPherson in the Central West End, St. Louis, MO 63108
Sponsored by: Veterans for Peace
Contact Charles Smith: vfpch61 at riseup.net

Chicago, IL, February 23
7 p.m. - 9:30 p.m. at Northwestern University, the Evanston Campus
The Tech Institute on 2145 Sheridan Road, First Floor, Lecture Room No. 2.
Contact Karen Pallist: pallist3 at gmail dot com

Boston, Massachusetts, February 27
7 p.m. at the Harvard Coop Bookstore
1400 Massachusetts Avenue, 18 Palmer Street, Cambridge, MA 02238
Store telephone: (617) 499-2000
Contact Melida Arredondo: melida_arredondo at yahoo dot com
Elizabeth Ellis: ellisliza at hotmail dot com

Last Three Events in "Daybreak" Book Tour

David Swanson is completing a tour of over 50 cities with his new book "Daybreak: Undoing Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union"
http://davidswanson.org/book

St. Louis, February 22
Chicago, February 23
Boston, February 27

DETAILS BELOW

St. Louis, MO, February 22
7 p.m. at Left Bank Books
399 North Euclid at McPherson in the Central West End, St. Louis, MO 63108
Sponsored by: Veterans for Peace
Contact Charles Smith: vfpch61 at riseup.net

Chicago, IL, February 23
7 p.m. - 9:30 p.m. at Northwestern University, the Evanston Campus
The Tech Institute on 2145 Sheridan Road, First Floor, Lecture Room No. 2.
Contact Karen Pallist: pallist3 at gmail dot com

Boston, Massachusetts, February 27
7 p.m. at the Harvard Coop Bookstore
1400 Massachusetts Avenue, 18 Palmer Street, Cambridge, MA 02238
Store telephone: (617) 499-2000
Contact Melida Arredondo: melida_arredondo at yahoo dot com
Elizabeth Ellis: ellisliza at hotmail dot com

Congressman Payne: I Won't Oppose War Money Because Obama's President

Congressman Donald Payne (D., N.J.) has voted against war funding bills for years. Last summer he was one of 32 heroes to vote No under intense pressure from the White House to vote Yes. When I asked him a couple of years ago to sign onto impeaching Bush he immediately said "Sure!" and he did it.

Today I asked him if he would commit to voting No on the next $33 billion for war. I asked him privately, just after he'd given a long speech to a Progressive Democrats of America conference in New Jersey, a speech about how much he opposes the wars.

Payne told me that he didn't want to commit to voting No on the next "emergency war supplemental" because Obama is president, echoing Jan Schakowsky's comments last June when she made a similar reversal.

"Congressman Payne," I said, "aren't the bombs the same? Isn't the dying the same?" He agreed and told me I was preaching to the choir.

"And is the only difference that a different person is president?" I asked. "Yes," he replied.

When I had prefaced my question with praising him for standing strong last June, I had referenced the major promises and threats that other congressmembers had reported receiving from the White House. Payne said he had experienced the same. Yet somehow he had resisted, but is unsure about resisting further.

Earlier in the day, another Democratic congressman from New Jersey, Frank Pallone, had spoken to the PDA conference, and both PDA's national director Tim Carpenter and I had asked him publicly to commit to voting No on the war money.

I thanked Pallone for voting No on war supplementals in 2004 and 2005 and expressed disappointment that he had voted Yes last June. He refused to commit to voting No, with the excuse that something good might be attached to the war money. Yet he had voted No in the past, despite the fact that good hard-to-oppose measures were always applied as lipstick on these bills.

Was Pallone's real thinking that he wanted to obey the president? I can't say for sure, but I can say that he took a lot of questions from PDA members about his positions, and he tended to answer by explaining what Obama's positions are. And I can say that Pallone raised lots of rightwing reasons for not being stronger on issues like healthcare, and other members of the panel he was part of decisively refuted each point but had no impact on the congressman's position whatsoever.

Joining Pallone on the panel were Carpenter and PDA board member Steve Cobble, Co-Chair of PDA's Healthcare Not Warfare campaign Donna Smith, and the president of the New Jersey Industrial Union Council Ray Stever. They laid out the case and the strategy for shifting our resources from wars to human needs, especially single-payer healthcare.

The conference rooms were packed, and everyone involved was eager to get to work, including a lot of people new to PDA's organizing. Joanne O'Neil and the other leaders of New Jersey PDA were pleased with the conference, but far from satisfied with the positions of the two congress members who attended.

To their credit, however, everyone was focused on lobbying, challenging, and pressuring until their representatives agree to represent the people of New Jersey rather than taking their orders from a president who has three more years in office even if his followers get themselves voted out this November.

I expect more congress members from New Jersey, possibly even Payne and Pallone, to be joining those committed to voting No on the wars they claim to oppose: http://defundwar.org

No one disputes that Jay Bybee's name is at the bottom of memos that were, and to some extent still are, treated as laws which legalized aggressive war at the pleasure of a president and a variety of acts of torture. For many months the House Judiciary Committee has had two excuses for not impeaching Judge Bybee, even while proceeding with the impeachments of a judge for groping and another judge for petty corruption. The private excuse has been that impeaching Bybee would be opposed by Fox News. The public excuse has been that the Justice Department has not yet released its Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) report on the crimes of Bybee and his former colleagues.

But the Justice Department does not intend to ever release the more honest version of that report, the one which found that Bybee and John Yoo had engaged in misconduct. Instead, after taking the unprecedented step of allowing Bybee and Yoo to recommend edits to the report, lo and behold the new version finds that felonious acts of complicity in torture (not to mention aggressive war, which as far as we know really isn't mentioned in the report at all) don't amount to misconduct but rather "poor judgment", sort of like getting into a skiing accident. Here's Newsweek:

"NEWSWEEK has learned that a senior Justice official who did the final review of the report softened an earlier OPR finding. Previously, the report concluded that two key authors—Jay Bybee, now a federal appellate court judge, and John Yoo, now a law professor—violated their professional obligations as lawyers when they crafted a crucial 2002 memo approving the use of harsh tactics, say two Justice sources who asked for anonymity discussing an internal matter. But the reviewer, career veteran David Margolis, downgraded that assessment to say they showed 'poor judgment,' say the sources. (Under department rules, poor judgment does not constitute professional misconduct.) The shift is significant: the original finding would have triggered a referral to state bar associations for potential disciplinary action—which, in Bybee’s case, could have led to an impeachment inquiry."

Let me get this straight. Even though the secret memos are no longer secret, even though they constitute the most serious crimes possible, even though complicity in torture is a felony, and even though Bybee lied to the United States Senate in order to be confirmed a judge, our representatives in the House of Representatives can't impeach him because the Justice Department, the very same institution of organized crime in which he committed his abuses, only deemed Bybee's crimes to be "misconduct" in the first version of its report but not the new and improved version? Both the Robert Jackson Steering Committee and the American Civil Liberties Union have filed Freedom of Information Act requests for the initial report, but what was in it has been widely reported. And why we need it has not been explained.

This bizarre situation parallels that in England where a commission has been questioning Tony Blair about his role in lying his nation into our war in Iraq. What Blair did is widely known in detail from numerous leaked and undisputed memos and documents, but the commission won't mention them because they are still "classified." And yet, how the details of what Blair said on what date could possibly legalize a war of aggression has never been explained at all.



Another parallel is that between what is now being done to the impeachment power and what has been done over the last few years to the subpoena power. During 2007 and 2008, Congress subpoenaed many top officials in our government who refused to comply. While any congressional committee can instruct the Capitol Police to enforce compliance, they all choose not to, waiting for the Justice Department, the headquarters of the criminal executive branch, to enforce the subpoenas. In April 2009, when some of the Bybee torture memos were leaked, Senator Patrick Leahy asked Bybee to come in for questioning, and Bybee told him to go to hell. To which Leahy replied "I'm sorry I troubled you, your honor." No subpoena.

Not a single subpoena has been reissued in 2009 of those rejected in the previous two years. This congressional power to hold the executive branch and the various departments of the government accountable has been transferred to the executive branch. And now the greater power of impeachment is meeting the same fate. If a former employee of the Justice Department cannot be impeached without the approval of the Justice Department, Congress no longer exists.

And yet, sometimes I think I can sense a pulse. And life support might work if we were to take the following emergency steps. First we find a courageous member of Congress whom we can pressure to introduce a one-sentence bill, as was done to Alberto Gonzales resulting in his resignation, stating simply:

"Resolved, That the Committee on the Judiciary shall investigate fully whether sufficient grounds exist for the House of Representatives to impeach Jay Bybee, for high crimes and misdemeanors."

Second, we pressure members of Congress to sign onto that bill. Third, we do the same for Tim Geithner, thus making it harder for Fox News to call the effort partisan, thus making it more likely that John Conyers will finally cease committing treason against his country through his refusal to perform his duties as chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. It's been almost a year since Congressmembers Jerrold Nadler and Jan Schakowsky said they wanted Bybee impeached. How long will it be, while ordinary Americans make great sacrifices in this cause, before Nadler or Schakowsky or any of their colleagues lift their little finger to make this happen?

The resources needed to make this happen are at http://impeachbybee.org

Former prime minister Tony Blair's testimony was streamed live at 4:30 a.m. ET at the Iraq Inquiry website and on other sites, such as the UK newspaper the Telegraph which allowed viewers to rank Blair's responses on a "Lie Meter". Telegraph readers' top desired questions pre-hearing were:

* What was the real motivation for invading Iraq?
* Why did you not act like a Statesman and stand up to Bush?
* Do you think the world is a safer place after our illegal Iraq crusade/mission for regime change?
* I would like Tony Blair to tell us what he knows about the death of Dr Kelly

Try to imagine a U.S. media outlet proposing such questions to Blair's senior partner in crime! But the Inquiry itself did not put these questions to Blair in any effective way.

In the lead up to Blair's testimony, a London protest was planned here.

Documents were thought to be the key, and while the existing evidence more than proves the case of the war's illegality, this Inquiry, it was feared, might be barred from asking Blair about the public (and still secret) evidence. Bizzarely, this could have turned the thing into a whitewash, adding to the general impression that specific evidence is still needed to prove that a war is illegal. Any war not fought in self-defense or through UN authorization simply is illegal. But these fears turned out to be justified. Blair was not confronted with public and undisputed evidence that he knew he was lying about weapons, that he lied about his commitment to making war a last resort, and so forth. And nobody broke out of the whole charade to point out that an aggressive war is still illegal even if the nation attacked has weapons and even if other options have been pursued.

Some recent stories on the ongoing inquiry:

Elizabeth Wilmshurst is first witness to be applauded by the public.

Now we know: Blair went to war on an "assumption".

How Alastair Campbell changed Iraq dossier.

Liveblog:

9:40 a.m. GMT The opening question was pretty discouraging: How did Blair view containment of Saddam Hussein? Blair responded that his view changed entirely on 9/11. This is bizarre, given Hussein's total lack of involvement in 9/11, but it went unchallenged. Blair spoke in terms of the "risk of Saddam reconstituting programs" - quite different from his blatant lies in 2002 and 2003 about his certainty that Hussein had "WMDs" and could attack the UK with them in 45 minutes, a claim already shown in this inquiry to have been a lie. Nobody questioned him on his shift to now talking about a "risk" of SH developing weapons "progams".

9:46 Blair's being allowed to go on and on with fearmongering about the people behind 9/11, whom he identifies only as "they" and nobody explains to him that "they" were not Iraqis, and nobody points out that the attack on Iraq inspired more would-be terrorists, not fewer. Blair says he had to go after North Korea, Pakistan, and "all of this", but he did not of course do so.

9:49 Now the questioner, Sir Roderic Lyne, points out that SH was not behind al Qaeda, but Blair seems not to comprehend the point.

9:51 Blair tries to refer to a document, and Lyne responds that, while it is public he's not sure it's been declassified, resulting in laughter from the audience - first sign of life from them, and only sign of life from them. This is not encouraging in terms of the prospects for bringing in documents.

The Aug 7, 2001, document, an Iraqi Policy Framework or Options Paper, Blair says was declassified yesterday. He drones on about sanctions. He argues that the sanctions might not have "worked," but nobody asks what that means or how the sanctions did not work, given the complete absence of the weapons this was all supposedly about.

9:56 Sir Roderick simply asks again if the sanctions might have worked, whatever that means. Blair says that the sanctions had to be watered down to please the Russians, etc., and weren't working (whatever that means), the implication apparently being that if the UN would not create successful sanctions (whatever that means) it would be necessary to go around the UN with an illegal war (without calling it that).

10:00 am GMT Lyne is trying to soften his softballs. He wants to know whom Blair met with and consulted. Blair names Jack Straw. Blair says the options were:
1. sanctions that worked
2. the UN inspectors doing their job
3. removing Saddam
Blair refers to "WMD".
But how were the sanctions not working?
How did the UN inspectors fail?
Since when is removing a nation's leader a legal "option"?
Maybe someone other than this "Sir" should have been allowed to do this questioning. Here's how Wikipedia describes him:

"He is an advisor to JPMorgan Chase, who have been chosen to operate the Trade Bank of Iraq, which will give banks access to the financial system of Iraq. He was a special adviser to BP, which currently has major interests in Iraq."

10:05 Lyne points out that by April 2002 Blair was inclined to "regime change". Blair says the key issue was "WMD". But no "WMDs" could legalize an aggressive war. It's tempting to be frustrated with Lyne for not pointing out that the WMD claims were lies, but the deeper lie here is the concerted pretense that it matters. An illegal war of aggression is simply illegal regardless.

10:10 Blair is insisting on quoting from his 2002 speeches to show that his concern was in fact his and Bush-Cheney's pretenses about "WMD". Nobody even objects to this crazy conflation of various types of weapons, used to suggest a nuclear threat without actually claiming it. Nobody points out that we know they knew no such threat existed. Nobody brings up the Downing Street Minutes or the White House memo or any of the dozens of other smoking guns on this. Presumably they are all "classified".

10:12 Lyne points to Blair's recent interview (which may turn out to have done a better job than this Inquiry) in which he said he would have favored regime change even were there no WMDs (as of course he knew there were not -DS). Blair lies that what he meant in the interview was purely that you cannot talk about the threat now in the same way, given what we now know. Lyne does not point out that Blair knew it then.

10:15 Blair calls SH "a monster" and nobody asks him to define that in terms that do not include himself. He goes on to recommend doing the same thing to Iran that he did to Iraq, thereby establishing more firmly his own monsterhood.

10:18 Now Chilcot announces that only two documents were "declassified" yesterday, including the one Blair brought up, so those two will now (or sometime soon) go on the Inquiry website.

Questioning now will be done by Lady Usha Prashar who wants to know exactly why Blair wanted regime change, (never mind its illegality).

10:24 More softballs. More details about who was at which meeting. Then she asks about Blair's understanding that regime change could not be done without UN approval. Blair seems to acknowledge that. (So why is he not immediately handcuffed? Why does this thing drag on?)

10:27 She asks what Blair and Bush discussed privately at Crawford. Possibly the softball of all softballs. Why would Blair reveal anything? He doesn't.

The Telegraph's liveblog is pretty useless, but points to better information:
"10.22 It seems that everyone is talking about the #iraqinquiry on Twitter... everyone accept Alastair Campbell, whose @campbellclaret account has been silent for 17 hours."

10:34 Blair is now taking credit for having pushed Clinton to bomb Yugoslavia. He's straying off into his OTHER war crimes, given the absence in this Inquiry of any serious confrontation of his Iraq war crimes.

10:39 Lyne questioning again. Blair says that the "UN route" could have succeeded or failed, and either way they (he and Bush) would have to go ahead with the regime change. "Success" here means sanctioning the pre-determined war. (Again, why not handcuff him now and get the reward?)

The Guardian has a better liveblog than the Telegraph's here.

10:49 a.m. GMT TAKING A 15-MIN BREAK having thus far accomplished next to nothing.

Here are what the Guardian considers the key points thus far:

"• Blair strongly denied doing any secret deal with Bush at the meeting in Crawford in April 2002. He said he was quite open about his determination to deal with Saddam Hussein. He insisted that he made this point publicly in the press conference he held with Bush. (See 10.26am)

• He said that did not set conditions when he told Bush that he would support him in his drive to deal with Iraq. Blair said the US/UK relationship was an alliance, not a contract. (See 10.26am)

• He suggested that there was no real difference between wanting regime change and wanting Iraq to disarm. (See 10.20am)

• But he also admitted that he made a misake when he gave an interview to Fern Britton last year and said that he would have wanted to get rid of Saddam even if he had know Iraq had no WMD. (See 10.05am)

• Sir John Chilcot signalled that Blair is likely to be called to give evidence again. (See 9.32am)

• Blair said he was "frustrated" by George Bush's unwillingness to make more progress on the Middle East in 2002 and 2003. (See 10.39am and 10.43am)"

11:12 a.m. Back to more "questioning" from Baroness Prashar and then Sir Martin Gilbert.

Pales beside the fictional version of Blair's criminal trial: video.

Pales, indeed, in comparison with the case laid out for Blair's impeachment in August 2004: PDF.

11:25 Blair trying to tie Iraq to 9/11 via Zarqawi - is he serious??

Super softballs are from Sir Martin:

"He was appointed in June 2009 as a member of the British government’s inquiry into the Iraq war (Headed by Sir John Chilcot). His appointment to this inquiry was criticised in parliament by William Hague, Claire Short, George Galloway, and Lynne Jones on the basis that Gilbert had once compared George W Bush, and Tony Blair, to Roosevelt and Churchill."

11:30 Blair claims Iraq was chosen for a war, rather than various other potential victims, because of UN resolutions being breached. Odd, given the UN's opposition to Blair's (and Bush's) crime.

Sir Lawrence Freedman, a former advisor to Blair is the one now questioning, and he asks also about Blair's lie regarding an Iraqi ability to attack the UK with WMDs within 45 minutes. Blair tries to evade.

This will be seen as the toughest significant questioning. Bliar: Blair the liar, is a big concern to everyone. But how is his aggressive warmaking any more or less illegal because of his lies? Even if Iraq COULD have attacked within 45 minutes, no claim was ever made that it was going to do so.

That it had no such ability, and that Blair was lying, has long been established. But what legal case does he have, regardless? No one has asked Blair about the opinion of his top legal officials that the war would be illegal. He was informed that it would be illegal and went ahead with it. What more do we need to know?

Blair is now asked to explain his claim that SH had chemical and biological weapons beyond doubt. Freedman asks "your doubt or anyone's doubt?" and Blair evades. He swears he himself had no doubt. And yet -- I hate to dwell on this -- an aggressive war would not have been made legal even if he really had had no doubt, or even if he had been correct.

11:45 Blair asks what if he had been correct "That was what I was worried about." He was worried that he might be right. That sounds like he had some doubt.

1:47 I'm having some doubts about watching the rest of this when I have other obligations. Nonetheless, if the United States Congress, in which Democrats pretended to care about this issue up until they gained a majority in 2006, were to even hold this weak a hearing, it would be a dramatic step upward from the hole we've sunk into on this side of the pond.

Those are the words used in Article II Section 3 of the US Constitution. The president is also to "recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient." Why does this not come up in Article I with all the other supreme powers of our Commander in Chief? Well, because only the military has one of those, and Article I is devoted to the most powerful branch of our government, the Congress.

The president is supposed to inform Congress on how things are going in his work of executing the laws they pass. We didn't hear much of that on Wednesday. President Obama did not mention his ban on prosecuting torture, his advisors' claims that he has the power to torture, his use of rendition, his removal from the Constitution of the right to habeas corpus, his list of Americans to be assassinated, his warrantless spying, his protection of Bush, Cheney, and gang from exposure or prosecution, his continuation of illegal wars, his use of unmanned drones to assassinate and slaughter, or his assertion of the power of aggressive war in a Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech. All of that went without saying.

And how's the bailing out of Wall Street billionaires going? Obama asserted that he hated it but was doing it because it needed to be done even if unpopular. He bragged more than once through the speech about doing unpopular things, as though democratic representation was the new enemy. Thankfully, there wasn't the same level of fear mongering about Terrorists that we'd grown used to in these speeches from Bush. But Congress cheered for the president ignoring the public and even cheered for the president unconstitutionally ignoring Congress. The whole room cheered when Obama said this:

"he cost of Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security will continue to skyrocket. That's why I've called for a bipartisan, Fiscal Commission, modeled on a proposal by Republican Judd Gregg and Democrat Kent Conrad. This can't be one of those Washington gimmicks that lets us pretend we solved a problem. The Commission will have to provide a specific set of solutions by a certain deadline. Yesterday, the Senate blocked a bill that would have created this commission. So I will issue an executive order that will allow us to go forward, because I refuse to pass this problem on to another generation of Americans."

This is like Bush admitting the United Nations must sanction an aggressive war, failing to get that sanction, and proceeding to invade. Obama acknowledged that Congress needs to set its own agenda, failed to obtain the agenda he wanted, and went ahead anyway. And Congress cheered.

And what is the agenda? It is to attack things that do not cost us a dime, that more than pay for themselves, and that the American people overwhelmingly approve of. Obama also proposed in the same speech freezing all spending on anything other than these programs (since he can't easily do that) or on killing people (his central mission, if we are to judge by actions rather than words). But it's on killing people that we are spending the vast bulk of our money, and ever increasing amounts of it. And that did not come up.

Nor did the president's failure to withdraw from Iraq come up. Instead, that is still in the future. Obama promised to withdraw "combat troops" by August and to withdraw "all troops" by some unstated date in the future. On Afghanistan he still only specified a date to begin a withdrawal that could never end.

Most of what the president talked about was jobs and the economy, healthcare and education. But his proposals ranged from undefined to small to puny in comparison with most of what he and Congress are doing. They are dumping ever greater shares of our money into the one place that creates the fewest jobs: wars and the military. There were some good proposals, some vague proposals, and some proposals to cut more taxes for the plutocracy. But it was all small-scale in comparison with the budgetary choices being acted upon. And it was all a president telling Congress what to do in the future.

As for reported accomplishments, they were rather pathetic. Obama has put White House visitors' names online "for the first time in history". For how much of history has there been an "online"? And what about those sickness industry execs' names he refuses to put online? And what ever happened to televising the meetings? Now we're supposed to be happy with getting some of the names? This is pretty weak.

This speech could have benefitted from an audience more willing to shout and respond in ways other than applauding the worst parts and demanding something even worse.

Wow, I was gone less than a week to the Conch Republic, and now return to a nation in which I would heartily recommend to any city, county, or state that it follow the example of the Florida Keys and secede from the so-called union.

We now have an official presidential list of Americans to be assassinated -- by America's government. A pollster says Fox News is the most trusted news source in the United States. The Supreme Court says corporations are people and bribery is speech; and people like Jonathan Turley and Glenn Greenwald, not to mention the AFL-CIO, support this insanity.

A rightwing nut at least came close to winning a U.S. Senate seat in Massachusetts, his opponent broke the land speed record for conceding, and progressive blogs are posting defenses of the filibuster rule. Peace groups, which shall go unnamed purely because they're so damn unpeaceful when you criticize them, have begun lobbying for a better war spending bill, instead of opposing it, while the president has proposed freezing spending on everything except killing people -- sending former advocate for the working class Jared Bernstein out to complete the sale of his soul defending this policy.

Meanwhile our real progressive geniuses now want the same president to fix healthcare with a signing statement, oblivious to Obama's opposition to decent healthcare, the ease with which a future president could unsigning-statement the bill, and Obama's evolution to worse legislative abuses than those oh-so-2009 signing statements. And, finally, China is afraid that if its people see "Avatar" they'll rebel, but America is relaxed and focused on better ways to sell its sedated moviegoers more popcorn.

Of course, there's lots of good, but smaller, news too, as there always is. Various labor unions broke with the AFL-CIO's backing of fascism, and even the ACLU is considering dropping its free speech fundamentalism. Oregonians voted for progressive taxation. Congressman Grijalva at least feinted in the direction of taking a stand on healthcare, breaking a 19-year streak of the Congressional Progressive Caucus not even appearing to do anything. Peace protesters in DC and at the School of the Americas went to jail while others stepped up and escalated the protesting. PDA began holding monthly vigils against war funding, and other groups began to support the effort. Millions of people across the full half centimeter of our political spectrum became more energized this week by the Supreme Court's latest outrage than had been off their asses in the past two years. But I'm not going to point out all the good signs to a bunch of victory-dependent slobs when we have a moral duty to resist injustice regardless, and I've spent a five-month book tour evolving from an analyst into a public therapist for discouraged activists who got their wittle feelings hurt when the new emperor acted like an emperor. That's not my job, and if you really had given up you wouldn't be making the effort to try to convince me to give up, which only makes you feel worse no matter what I do.

There are some very smart people -- I've been reading Morris Berman -- who claim to have scientific knowledge that we're all inevitably doomed, and they are exactly as childish as blissful global warming deniers and cheerleaders for empire. What we have to do can very easily be done, if we choose to do it, which is entirely up to us. But we've got to be thinking straight. So let's try. And let's start with corporate personhood and the First Amendment rights to bribery and plutocracy.

My first step dipping my toes into our national swamp north of the Conch Republic came when I spoke to the Palm Beach Democratic Club on Monday Night in West Palm Beach. Great bunch of people in a great organization, and John Heuer, leading advocate in North Carolina for accountability of high federal officials, was there. Eric Johnson and Brian Franklin, who did great work for Congressman Robert Wexler and helped try to impeach Dick Cheney, were there. Nobody asked any "Why don't we all kill ourselves?" questions. People who gave speeches instead of asking questions, actually explained things that not necessarily everybody knew, and concluded by advocating their favorite solutions. And yet the whole thing was still drenched in infantile partisan discouragement over the "betrayals" of a political party, not to mention the Supreme Court.

I talked about some of the possible responses we should be working on. I've heard proposals ranging from the useless to the certifiable. One idea is for Congress to sit up on its hind legs and declare people to be creations of god, and corporations to be creations of people. Time to destroy the first amendment to save it!

Other ideas involve focusing on the foreign influences on corporations, playing into good ol' xenophobia. Of course it's unconstitutional and possibly treasonous to allow foreigners to influence our elections, but so is the whole enterprise, and U.S.-based corporations and corporate friends like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are going to do far and away the worst damage to our country, just as they do to other people's countries. I'd take the focus on foreign companies seriously if we were going to expel Delaware Inc. from the United States at the same time.

Others have urged lobbying media outlets, or organizing shareholders or consumers. I favor all such activities, but they're harder than forcing action out of our elected officials, and pointless unless we can control our elected officials (or the corporations' elected officials as the case may be). We need more local and state clean election laws, plus free media for campaigns laws. We need reforms like those Maryland State Senator Jamie Raskin is introducing (two-thirds of shareholders must pre-approve corporate election spending, dissenting shareholders get rebates, state contractors cannot spend on elections, and --euphemism for bribery here-- cannot be deducted as a reasonable business expense).

We need similar reforms from Congress, and two other Congressional approaches as well. Congressman Alan Grayson has introduced bills to bar government contractors from spending on elections, to tax such spending at 500%, to banish election-spending companies from stock exchanges, to apply anti-trust laws to PACs, and to require majority shareholder pre-approval of election spending. All of this can be done without undoing the Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United, but all of it is quite limited. Ultimately we'll have to amend the Constitution, and Congresswoman Donna Edwards has already introduced a good amendment. Other campaigns are pushing for similar amendments or for a Constitutional Convention. And others are pursuing the equally necessary strategy of impeaching Justices Roberts, or Alito, or in fact five members of the Supreme Court.

And yet there are those voices of appeasement. Jonathan Turley thinks the Supreme Court's ruling will be very bad for the country, and he supports it. He also opposes amending the Constitution to directly fix it. Glenn Greenwald takes a similar approach:

"Critics emphasize that the Court's ruling will produce very bad outcomes: primarily that it will severely exacerbate the problem of corporate influence in our democracy. Even if this is true, it's not really relevant."

Greenwald undoes much of his wonderful past work to back this up:

"One of the central lessons of the Bush era should have been that illegal or unconstitutional actions -- warrantless eavesdropping, torture, unilateral Presidential programs -- can't be justified because of the allegedly good results they produce (Protecting us from the Terrorists)."

Who has posted more evidence that these policies have had disastrous results than Greenwald? Even setting that aside to climb our ivory tower, how could the above "lesson" have been learned from the Bush era? Either we recognize the value of the rule of law, and the disastrous consequences of diminishing it, or we do not. There could be positive consequences to violating a law and negative consequences involving the damage thereby done to the rule of law. But that is not a description of anything that happened during the Bush era. And a Supreme Court decision radically reversing long-standing and widespread precedent, overturning past Supreme Court decisions and threatening dozens of state laws can -- at best -- appeal to a new conception of what five people want the First Amendment to mean. They cannot appeal to secret holy revelations of what the First Amendment REALLY meant all along. And to my notion of what that amendment should mean, the outcomes of that meaning are perfectly relevant. In fact nothing else is relevant at all.

Two paragraphs later, Greenwald turns to the question of outcomes, which he had previously dismissed, and writes:

"I'm also quite skeptical of the apocalyptic claims about how this decision will radically transform and subvert our democracy by empowering corporate control over the political process. My skepticism is due to one principal fact: I really don't see how things can get much worse in that regard."

Can't get worse? There's a key lesson from the Bush era: It can always get even worse! Corporations want Social Security gone. If they get a bit more influence it will be gone. They just got a boatload of more influence. This shouldn't be hard to see. Why the sudden lack of any imagination whatsoever? Why the it-can't-happen-hear tranquility? It will happen here if we fail to imagine each additional step until it's happened and we've accepted it. Greenwald supports public financing as an alternative solution (as do we all), but corporations will always render optional public financing impotent unless we limit private financing. And Greenwald concludes his first blog on this topic with this absurdity:

"There are few features that are still extremely healthy and vibrant in the American political system; the First Amendment is one of them."

Ignoring the theocratic trends in our government (remind me to post an unintroduced article of impeachment on that one) and the deficiency of press freedom in our country, are free speech zones and the privatization and militarization of public space now healthy signs for freedom of speech? We need to strengthen the First Amendment in many ways, just as we need to weaken it, if that's what restricting it to human beings amounts to. The people who wrote the thing would be shocked at the silly reverence with which we treat our momentary notions of what the First Amendment is or is not, even though their intention was to provide rights for real people.

Greenwald and other defenders of corporate spending as speech argue in terms of the rights of good non-profit groups and labor unions, but such groups are and will be monstrously outspent by corporations. So they are not gaining effective rights in this bargain.

If these entities are really "collections of people" and that's what gives them personal rights, then why wasn't it good enough to have ways of funding election spending (through PACs) that involved the people? Why the need to allow corporations or unions to ignore their members?

Greenwald also defends allowing Lockheed Martin to buy elections on the grounds that we allow GE to do so as a media outlet. But NBC gets its funding from the ad buys made by the other corporations, and -- to a lesser extent -- from the ad buys made by good progressive groups and the candidates they fund. I'd love to see that money channeled into creating other media outlets. I'd also love to see serious investment in independent public media and community media, and free air time for candidates. Lots of reforms are needed, but our media being dominated by international mega-corporations ought not to serve as an excuse for our elections to be put up for sale in toto. I can't imagine why the one thing must follow from the other.

Greenwald argues elsewhere that anyone who believes money is not speech,

"would have to say that there's no First Amendment problem with any law that restricts the spending of money for political purposes, such as: 'It shall be illegal for anyone to spend money to criticize laws enacted by the Congress; all citizens shall still be free to express their views on such laws, provided no money is spent'; or 'It shall be illegal for anyone to spend money advocating Constitutional rights for accused terrorists; all citizens shall still be free to express their views on such matters, provided no money is spent'; or 'It shall be illegal for anyone to spend money promoting a candidate not registered with either the Democratic or Republican Party; all citizens shall still be free to advocate for such candidates, provided no money is spent.' Anyone who actually believes that "money is not speech" would have to believe that such laws are necessarily permitted by the First Amendment (since they merely restrict the expenditure of money, which is not speech)."

But no one argues that money and speech don't overlap and interact. The problem is that they are not identical, and are in fact different in a very fundamental way. Everybody has roughly the same power to speak, until barriers are erected and advantages claimed (and work is needed there). But a very small group of people has most of the money. We pass laws, other than the Constitution, for a reason. They serve useful purposes. And laws can quite coherently, constitutionally, and beneficially bar corporations from eliminating all impact of real persons in elections without banning new political parties or forbidding certain political views. The point of arguing that money is not speech is that not all spending of money must be free of restriction. (Indeed, for some of us, the same goes for some other forms of speech as well.) That is different from claiming that all spending of money must be subject to severe restriction. Nobody has argued that, and logic cannot compel them to.

Similarly, Greenwald argues:

"--A--nyone who claims that since corporations are not persons, they have no rights under the Constitution --should answer--: Do you believe the FBI has the right to enter and search the offices of the ACLU without probable cause or warrants, and seize whatever they want? Do they have the right to do that to the offices of labor unions? How about your local business on the corner which is incorporated? The only thing stopping them from doing this is the Fourth Amendment. If you believe that corporations have no constitutional rights because they're not persons, what possible objections could you voice if Congress empowered the FBI to do these things? Can they seize the property (the buildings and cars and bank accounts) of those entities without due process or just compensation? If you believe that corporations have no Constitutional rights, what possible constitutional objections could you have to such laws and actions? Could Congress pass a law tomorrow providing that any corporation - including non-profit advocacy groups -- which criticize American wars shall be fined $100,000 for each criticism? What possible constitutional objection could you have to that?"

But I haven't seen anyone argue that corporations should have no rights, although many specific corporations should lose their charters, and many should be criminally investigated. The argument is that they should have the rights that states choose to give them when creating them. Those might overlap with our personal rights in the Constitution, but they need not be identical. For example, they need not contain the same right to freedom of speech. And it is that right that this amendment would deny them.

So am I in favor of amending the Constitution or seceding from the union? That depends on whether we can force Congress to behave sufficiently independently of corporate rule, and that begins with defunding the wars in order to fund all the things that wealthy nations have that don't fund militaries and wars the way we do: healthcare, clean transportation, paid paternal leave, vacations, pensions, free education from preschool through grad school. If we can't get Congress to make that shift, I'd support any state that chose to try and withdraw its support from the corporate war machine. Infact, like many in the other 49 states, I'd want to move there.

West Palm Beach, FL
January 25, 2010

David Swanson will discuss and sign copies of "Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union"

7:30 p.m. at
Crowne Plaza Hotel
1601 Belvedere Road
West Palm Beach, FL 33406

Sponsored by:
The Palm Beach Florida Democratic Club

FREE and OPEN to the Public

CONTACT THE ORGANIZER:
Anthony Jordan
tonyjordan57 at hotmail dot com