Activism Across America

This August, Hawaiians are scratching their heads, trying to figure out what Senator Daniel Inouye was thinking. In the last hours before the United States Senate’s summer vacation, Senator Inouye abandoned the Democratic majority in order to join the Republican Party in spporting George W. Bush’s plan to give extraordinary new spying powers to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and the Director of National Intelligence, John Michael McConnell.

It’s a perplexing decision, given that Alberto Gonzales had been exposed as lying to Congress on multiple occasions, and abusing the power of his position as the nation’s top law enforcement official to promote the partisan political interests of the Republican Party. Why on earth would Daniel Inouye reward such outrageous behavior by giving Alberto Gonzales additional powers?

The Protect America Act gives Alberto Gonzales and John Michael McConnell the power to run electronic eavesdropping programs that create an immense dragnet scooping up the private emails, telephone calls, and web activity of American citizens. Essentially, there is no oversight of the spying - not from judges who would ordinarily give search warrants, or from Congress, which is supposed to have the power to conduct oversight of espionage - especially when it is directed against Americans. Only McConnell and Gonzales have the power to ensure that abuses do not occur. They’re given the power by the Protect America Act to be their own supervisors, with no one else able to say no to them.

In fact, the Protect America Act makes it a crime for anybody to deny an order from Alberto Gonzales or John Michael McConnell to join in an electronic spying operation. You can be thrown in prison for refusing their commands. You may not remember when you signed up for the Homeland Security Citizen Spy Brigade, but the Protect America Act doesn’t quibble about such things.

Why would Senator Inouye vote in favor of such a law? Part of the explanation may be that Inouye voted for the law without bothering to read it. After all, the Protect America Act was voted on just two days after being introduced into the Senate.

If that’s not the explanation, then I have no clue why Daniel Inouye would support such an obviously outrageous and unconstitutional law. If you’re one of Senator Inouye’s constituents in Hawaii, why don’t you call his office and ask his staff for an explanation:

808-541-2542

This afternoon, the Colorado for Obama campaign resource directory is online. The directory links to an official Barack Obama for President Colorado community, of course, but more interesting than that are the activities of grassroots Colorado Obama supporters on social networks like Ning and MySpace. There’s also a video of a speech given by Barack Obama in Broomfield, Colorado in June, 2007.

In the heat of the summer, it may seem like there’s a long time to go before the Democratic presidential primary, but it’s only a few months away now. It’s heartening to see that a lot of activity in support of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign is taking place in Colorado.

We have been working on the Irregular States Progressive Directory since 2003, searching out great politically progressive organizations, sources of information and candidates, and putting them together for the benefit of the good causes they represent.

Now, we’re adding this Progressive States Directory blog to the static, though updated, Irregular States directory. We wanted to give people an easier way to get in touch and suggest sites, and comment on the sites we’ve put up. We also wanted to have state-focused progressive political information available for us to spread through RSS.

Most importantly, we wanted to help the progressive organizations and sources of information we’ve already linked to by giving readers news of what the people behind these resources have been up to lately. There are too many progressive web sites that operate as little more than parrots for the mainstream media and national organizations, repeating or commenting on what they’ve said. This new blog will give news from the perspective of the progressive groups that are in our directory. Imagine - news that hasn’t been approved by the Associated Press or MSNBC.

Give us a bit of patience as we seek to fill you in - it’s a big country, and we’re just a small group of people working on many projects. It will take a while to get to each and every organization in each and every state, but we will get there, and then back again, given time.

In the meanwhile, don’t let us do all the talking. If there’s a state or local progressive organization or source of information that we don’t have in our directory that deserves a look, leave a comment and let us know.