From the diaries - Todd

For those of you not familiar with Bob Bauer, he is one of the nation's leading election lawyers, representing, among others, Barack Obama on personal matters, the Obama for America campaign, the Democrat's House and Senate campaign committees, and the Democratic National Committee.  Last year, Bauer took on Republicans throughout the campaign, fighting against attempts to "callously attempting to dismantle needed reforms to make up for their fundraising deficiencies." Bob Bauer also led Barack Obama's massive nationwide voter protection network over the course of the campaign.

This week, Bob Bauer put his thoughts on the Change Congress Donors' Strike on paper, giving a thorough analysis of Change Congress' fight to remove big money from American politics.  Bauer posted his take on his blog, and the full post can be viewed below.

For more on the Change Congress Donor Strike, visit http://change-congress.org.

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(Crossposted at Veritosity.com)

NOTE: For an explanation of what Blogrolling for Change is and how to get involved, click here.

When I was a senior in high school, The Nation had a contest where they asked high school and college students across the country what the most important issue facing young people was. In writing my response I deliberately chose to misread the question - rather than telling The Nation what I thought young people cared about the most, I decided to tell them what I thought the most important issue was, period. The answer? Undue corporate power and influence, particularly when it comes to the American political process.

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Fake intellectual property law "reformer" and fanboy favorite Larry Lessig has chickened out of running for Tom Lantos' old House seat (CA 12). Lessig announced his non-candidacy in one of his signature long, tedious, virtually unwatchable, and curiously low-tech videos.

http://lessig.org/blog/

Lessig purports to advocate some sort of anti-copyright "free culture," dedicated to egalitarian and democratic access to knowledge and information, while at the same time drawing a six figure income from a private, closed to the public, billion dollar endowment, elitist university (Stanford), that could serve as the epitome for a class-based monopoly on learning and knowledge.

http://fakesteve.blogspot.com/2006/11/ea t-my-ass-lawrence-lessig.html

For more of Lessig's hypocricy, see here:

http://fakesteve.blogspot.com/2007/03/la rry-lessig-coin-operated-legal-expert_18 .html

Lessig claimed that he wanted to run for Congress because of his opposition to PACs and "corruption" in politics. Now that he has cancelled his bid, however, he will not be refunding his donors' campaign contributions. Instead, without a trace of shame (or even appreciation of the irony of it), Lessig has announced that "all [of the money] will go to (the yet to be established) Change Congress organization." Whenever Lessig gets around to "establishing" this august body, please do not be surprized to learn that it is in fact a PAC, with either Lessig, or one of his toadies, in charge. In other words, Mr. Reform is going to take the money donated to his campaign to "clean up Congress" and use it instead to establish his own personal slush fund. Nice.

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This (Public Policy Polling) set of figures out Wisconsin is very very telling. On or about Valentines day, it appears America made up its mind. The numbers from Wisconsin match closely to the numbers in much of the rest of America. It wont be a blow out for Obama, but it will signal that the decision has been made. In the great way that momentum feels like 'we' have made up 'our' mind now.

This is the Gallup National Trendline. Three-day rolling average. N=approx. 1,200 Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters nationwide. MoE ± 3.

You can find the raw data at the top of the page here, and elsewhere. http://pollingreport.com/wh08dem.htm



There was a dance where they were even but Clinton's fall is obvious and continous, and Obama has been embraced, he has reached 49% support. Please note the dates for Obama's new momentum, its since this new growth started again just February 10th. This is well past the SuperTuesday bump. This is now confirmation on a national scale.

When you combine that with, for example, todays poll in Wisconsin. It is cited above, not the one showing Obama ahead of Clinton, but the numbers for McCain against our Candidates. America has said OK we're buying.

McCain 42 Obama 52

McCain 49 Clinton 42

This could not be any more clear.

Lastly, I have a youtube video from Lawrence Lessig explaining why he endorsed Obama. My faith in the will of the voters is reinforced, as I feel more strongly about their wisdom choosing Barack Obama. It is 20 minutes long, and needs professional help with its graphics, I warn you. Lessig is the American intellectual hero of rights and the internet and corruption.