Al Franken likes to depict himself as a well-informed, straight-talking kind of guy. Franken says that if he is elected to the United States Senate, he will stand up for the rights of voters in Minnesota.
So why is it, then, that Al Franken refuses to take a position on the FISA Amendments Act?
Go ahead and search through Al Franken’s Senate campaign web site. Search the news. Search the blogs. Nowhere does Al Franken even mention the FISA Amendments Act.
This proposed law threatens to take away Americans’ constitutional rights, and to destroy the system of checks and balances that keeps our democracy alive. The FISA Amendments Act represents one of the worst policies of George W. Bush - spying on millions of Americans without a search warrant or any other form of judicial control. The FISA Amendments Act is corrupt to the core.
So, why won’t Al Franken take a stand? Has Franken been too lazy to bother to read the FISA Amendments Act, or is he just too afraid to condemn this latest abuse from the politicians of fear?
Barack Obama exposed - what is that like? Well, in Wilmington, North Carolina, it looks like humility. The text below is what Barack Obama had to say to a crowd of people there, and it wasn’t about what a great guy he is. Barack Obama talked about his failings, and the temptation to negativity he sometimes feels, and about how the important thing isn’t himself, but all the voters in America, and what they want.
When we started this campaign, I told my campaign team, “We can’t run the same old Washington textbook campaign. We can’t be just poll driven. We can’t be just worried about what the other candidates are saying. We’ve got to try to run a different kind of campaign that gets the American people involved,” and I am proud of the fact that we have succeeded.
But, I won’t lie to you. There are times when we sometimes get sucked into this whole negative thing. People throw an elbow at you, and you start feeling like oh, I’ve got to throw an elbow back. I’ve noticed over the last several weeks, I told this to my team, “We are starting to sound like other folks, starting to run the same negative stuff.”
It shows that none of us are immune from this kind of politics, but the problem is that it doesn’t help you. Having politicians bickering back and forth doesn’t help you. Having them worry about superdelegates doesn’t help you.
This selection is not about me. It’s not about Senator Clinton. It’s not about John McCain. It’s about you. It’s about your struggles, your hopes, your dreams.
Here’s a video of the speech:
Well, okay. So, Barack Obama says that the campaign is about the hopes and dreams and struggles of the people of North Carolina. But what are those struggles?
I’m talking about the silent struggle of a huge number of high school students in North Carolina who participated in the national Day of Silence protest. At one high school alone, 275 students joined in the protest. The numbers were record-breaking.
The Day of Silence was held to show solidarity against students and administrators who bully non-heterosexual students. It’s a shame that some school administrators, in coordinators with some church leaders, responded to the anti-bullying protest with new attempts at bullying of their own.
With the strength of the Day of Silence protests across North Carolina, in spite of massive efforts at intimidation, the Barack Obama campaign ought to take note, and remember that part of the hopes and dreams and struggles of many North Carolinians is just to live as equals, without having their safety endangered by people who cannot tolerate other people having the freedom to choose who they want to have sex with.
