A short story of something unique taking shape in Utah.

For 2010, Utah has two notable ballot initiatives circulating.

The first by Utahns for Ethical Government, intended to create an independent commission for ethics reform, has garnered public popularity in response to a legislature lethargic and arrogant when responding to blatant ethics violations in previous years.  The second, Fair Boundaries, an initiative aimed at similar independence in the coming redistricting of the state, has met with a tepid response, thanks mostly to the same hubris from state legislators directly responsible for the ethics initiative.

In short, the ethics initiative has them frightened, and even attempting to do some of what the initiative would achieve in their own way in the legislative session beginning in a few days, in the hopes they will undermine support for the UEG initiative by tossing the public a superficial bone.  The Fair Boundaries initiative, they have ignored, and panned, despite support from previous Republican representatives and Gov's, as well as the Utah State Democratic Party, and numerous grassroots and open government organizations.

In response, proponents of both initiatives and public engagement in general, have created a tool -- completely allowed by Utah ballot initiative signature gathering guidelines -- to collect signatures online, and we need your help.

There's more...

Cross-posted at Blue Jersey.

Josh Zeitz is the Democratic nominee in New Jersey's Fourth Congressional district. He is running against Republican Chris Smith, who has backed George Bush's economic and foreign policies and who serves as the chair of the anti-choice caucus in the House.

Chris Smith says that he wants to run on his record in Congress. Unfortunately, there are parts of his record that voters may find less than appealing. We are going to tell voters about some things Chris Smith doesn't want you to know about his record, like his opposition to ethics reform.

In 2006, Chris Smith voted against comprehensive ethics reform. The legislation would have banned travel on corporate jets, prohibit lobbyist gifts, and slow the revolving door between Capitol Hill and K Street. It would also require disclosure of earmarks so that special interest provisions receive public scrutiny. The measure applied to all special interest earmarks including the Alaska Bridge to Nowhere. It would force Members of Congress disclose if they had a financial interest in the earmark. (Vote 4448, 2006. Leadership Document, "Democrats Fight To Clean Up Culture Of Corruption; Republicans Fail To Change Washington," 9/14/06)

"Voters deserve to know why Chris Smith voted against banning corrupt lobbying practices and hidden earmarks," said Josh Zeitz campaign manager, Steve D'Amico.

If you'd like to volunteer, please contact ian_at_joshzeitz_dot_com. Please visit Josh's website to learn more about why we need to elect Josh to Congress.

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Why IL-14 mattered:

It didn't take long for Bill Foster to make an impact in Congress.

Foster, a Democratic scientist/businessman, won a special election Saturday to replace retired former Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) in the House. He was sworn into his seat representing the exurban 14th Congressional District on Tuesday afternoon. By evening, he was casting what was arguably the deciding vote on a white-hot ethics bill.

The bill, pushed aggressively by Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), creates an independent, outside panel to investigate ethics complaints against House members. The House approved it last night, 229-182, with most Democrats in favor and most Republicans opposed. That margin is deceptive: Before final passage, the bill first had to clear a much closer procedural vote, which gave House members a chance to kill the idea without, technically, voting against it.

The bill survived that test by a single vote, with Foster voting in favor.

And we all know what Hastert's or Oberweis's vote would have been; only 4 Republicans crossed party lines to join the Democrats on this one. This is why we do what we do and this is a perfect example of how every congressional election impacts us all, not just those in district.

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Back in October, John Hutson, former Judge Advocate General and Dean of Franklin Pierce Law School, changed his registration to vote in the New Hampshire Democratic primary and endorsed Barack Obama.  Hutson, a life-long Republican, had grown increasingly frustrated with the Bush administration's treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay.

"We fight wars to uphold the rule of law," he said in 2004, "but then we don't uphold the rule of law in our conduct of the war." Hutson eventually becoming a key leader among former military officials pushing back against Bush policies on Guantanamo Bay and torture, worried about the precedent it would set for future conflicts.  

"We are running the risk," Hutson said in announcing his endorsement of Barack Obama, "of historians looking back on the first few years of the 21st century and saying 'That's where America came off the rails, that's where we began to be the next former world power.'" Obama, Hutson argued, would be the candidate best able to bring about the changes we need.

And then on Monday, more than eighty attorneys volunteering their time on behalf of detainees at Guantanamo Bay collectively endorsed Obama for President:

The writ of habeas corpus dates to the Magna Carta, and was enshrined by the Founders in our Constitution. The Administration's attack on habeas corpus rights is dangerous and wrong. America needs a President who will not triangulate this issue. We need a President who will restore the rule of law, demonstrate our commitment to human rights, and repair our reputation in the world community. Based on our work with him, we are convinced that Senator Obama can do this because he truly feels these issues "in his bones."

We should accept nothing less than the utmost clarity and forcefulness when it comes to restoring the rule of law, ending for good our current administration's policy of tolerating torture, and rejecting the illegal detention of hundreds in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.  

Among the signatures on the letter were:

Washington lawyer Thomas Wilner, retired federal appeals court judge John Gibbons, Center for Constitutional Rights president Michael Ratner, and retired Rear Admiral Donald Guter, who was the Navy's top JAG officer from 2000 to 2002 and who is now the dean of the Duquesne University School of Law in Pittsburgh.

The group of lawyers felt moved to make an endorsement after hearing months of talk on the campaign trail that Obama had not acted during his time in the United States Senate:

When others stood back, Senator Obama helped lead the fight in the Senate against the Administration's efforts in the Fall of 2006 to strip the courts of jurisdiction, and when we were walking the halls of the Capitol trying to win over enough Senators to beat back the Administration's bill, Senator Obama made his key staffers and even his offices available to help us.

Senator Obama worked with us to count the votes, and he personally lobbied colleagues who worried about the political ramifications of voting to preserve habeas corpus for the men held at Guantanamo. He has understood that our strength as a nation stems from our commitment to our core values, and that we are strong enough to protect both our security and those values. Senator Obama demonstrated real leadership then and since, continuing to raise Guantanamo and habeas corpus in his speeches and in the debates.

When others were reluctant and cautious at taking on the fight, Obama stepped up, working with attorneys behind the scenes to organize opposition.  Despite their efforts, the Military Commissions Act of 2006 passed.  The Boston Globe writes:

The constitutionality of that law, which was part of the Military Commissions Act, is now being challenged before the Supreme Court in one of the most closely-watched cases this term.

As president, Obama would be a fierce advocate for restoring our civil liberties and carry with him that respect for human dignity that should underpin every decision made in the White House.

Indeed, one of the trademarks of Obama's time in the US Senate was his early alliance with Samantha Power, one of the most forceful advocates in academia for humanitarian intervention in refugee crises and genocides around the world, and whose brilliant book, A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide documented a century of our government's studied indifference to human rights violations around the world.

As many of the foreign policy experts who opposed the war in Iraq have gathered around Obama's candidacy, so too have legal experts eager to turn the page on the Bush administration.

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Due to a spectacular flame-out of my adapter cord, my post from a borrowed computer will have to be brief.  So I'll give merely an observation.  A number of commentators noted again today the peculiar way the Clintons have criticized rivals this campaign cycle.  Instead of defending their weaknesses, they either claim amnesia (on the Telecommunications Act at YearlyKos, on those funny charts of Perot's on NAFTA, etc) or, more often and more tellingly, the case made is that 'they're just like us.'  

Hillary Clinton, for example, has responded to charges that she was taking substantial donations from lobbyists mostly by claiming that her rivals were as well, just less conspicuously.  (We'll get back to that in a minute.)  Chris Bowers called it "the Blurring" here back in May.

Her recent attacks fit this mold.  Clinton's questions about fundraisers sounded particularly ironic to NBC's First Read:

It's also a bit ironic, too, given that the Clintons have had many more problematic donors than Obama (Hsu, Gupta, Chung, Denise Rich, those donations to the Clinton Library).

The tactic is, of course, clear: to try to prove that Obama is just like them.  

The spectacularcrassness of the Clintons' recent fundraising schemes among Washington lobbyists would be hard to imitate: Her "Rural Americans for Hillary" fundraiser at the lobbying headquarters of Monsanto, or her selling defense contractors access to chairmen of the House Defense subcommittees would be two favorite examples.

Clinton's response?  Not to change her behavior, but to find any sort of kink in Obama's shut-out of lobbyists from his campaign --- highlighting a state-registered lobbyist in New Hampshire, for example, one who, obviously, isn't covered by either Obama's or Edwards' ethics policies because they're not, say, Washington defense contractors trying to buy favors with those who hold the purse strings.  I'll leave you to ponder for a couple seconds whether those things are commensurate.

She has taken to mocking ethics reform efforts using lobbyist talking points:

So, to hear Senator Clinton tell the story, the most comprehensive lobbying reform in more than thirty years -- and one of the major accomplishments of the Democrats controlling Congress -- was a joke...

To hear Senator Clinton spin the tale, the law was a meaningless effort because lobbyists can still serve cheese platters and mini-weenies on a toothpick at a stand-up gathering, when just a few months ago they could feed targeted elected officials and their staffs at the finest restaurants in DC and elsewhere. This is an argument against corruption reform straight out of GOP backrooms and the gilded offices of K Street.

Leaving aside that that ethics reform act, championed by Russ Feingold as well as Barack Obama, also drove Trent Lott into early retirement so as to skirt the reinforced provisions that would have prevented him from taking up a plush lobbying position, we're to believe that it had no impact in Washington.  

Her position that you're not really against the war if you have ever voted to fund the troops is almost funny --- funny because it says what exactly about her own work in the Senate and her years of approving funding after approving the war resolution that brought this country into Iraq?  (It's worth noting on the side that a number of the two dozen Senate Democrats who opposed the Iraq war resolution later voted for funding resolutions once troops were deployed, Dick Durbin for example.)  This is apparently a "clever" way of derailing criticism of her own staunch support of the war by deflecting attention away from it.

Forgive if I take the candidate who from the start in 2002 argued against"the cynical attempt by Richard Perles and Paul Wolfowitz and other arm-chair, weekend warriors in this Administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne." (Yes, that's a quote.)  Only one of these two candidates stood up at the beginning and expressed their outrage, didn't they?  

The blurring goes on and on...

Update [2008-1-23 16:13:46 by psericks]: Her amnesia over previous telecommunications legislation doesn't of course prevent her from pushing industry-written plans to sell out the progressive goal of expanding broadband access.