United for Peace and Justice are determined to use their First Amendment rights and take the mandate for peace to Washington, DC, on Saturday, January 27th. They are under Petagon surveillance, but spying won’t deter them.

“One of the main things we have to be concerned about is how this whole war on terror plays out here at home and how they use it to justify absolutely everything they do no matter how outrageous.”

Are you going to Washington?

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News is just pouring in and overwhelming today. I think an important story is getting lost. I’m not saying it is more important than civil war in Iraq or deterioration in Darfur. No. Those stories rip my heart out every day. The days of Colin Powell’s acceptance of Pottery Barn foreign policy are over. (He says it’s a civil war.) I think more time is being spent on the vocabulary of uncontrolled violence than on the violence itself. Death and suffering are difficult to face, but they are there. We need to SEE it without allowing ourselves to turn away.

But what are we missing while the world suffers? While we look away, the nasty authoritarians still play.

When Newt Gingrich spoke at a First Amendment Award Dinner about how and why first the first amendment should be reexamined. What? Keith Olbermann interviewed a George Washington University law professor about the implications.

Newt Gingrich called for a reexamination of free speech at the Loeb First Amendment Award Dinner in New Hampshire this week, saying a “different set of rules to prevent terrorism” are necessary.

Gingrich’s call to restrict free speech is mainly focused on the Internet.

Keep your eyes on these people. Call your Representatives and Senators to ask them whether they think the first amendment needs to be reexamined.

Update 12/2: Love it when Keith Olbermann goes after a subject like Newt Gingrich’s desire to suppress free speech on the internet.

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NaBloPoMo

National Blog Posting Month, for those too pathetic to write a novel in a month. This has been a successful 30 days in a row for me, despite a 4-day road trip and nasty hotels in northern Nevada that say “Wifi” without really knowing what that means.

Now for my winner’s speech.

• I would like to thank M. Kennedy of Fussy for four-, six-, and seven-letter words and for organizing the contest that has become known in my house as NaNoBloMi.
• I would like to thank Write Wize of Write Wizely for her generous offer of a winner button for the other, I don’t know, thousand (?) NaBloPoers.
• I would like to thank my good friend Jessica of Kerflop for dragging me into the most interesting situations, over and over. She made me blog. I didn’t want to. I still refuse to read her blog to find out about her life. That’s just sick.
• I couldn’t have done this without my laptop and a lot of time sitting on my couch staring into space thinking about why I should want to write superficial commentary on the news. I am compelled to do it. If I didn’t do it, I would talk to much about it to the people around me with faces. They thank me for posting, too–probably.

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Hey, it’s not me saying it. It’s a student social worker at Southern Connecticut State University. He “found a correlation between the severity of a person’s psychosis and their preferences for president.” Not just any president, our president.

I remember an NPR story maybe 5-8 years ago that suggested most scientific studies fall into two categories: NOT! and DUH. This one is clearly marked. duh.

None of this is actually new information. That liberal voters tend to be much better informed as a group and tend to reject authoritarianism is well documented, from both the chicken came first angle and the egg came first angle.

Completely hilarious, especially coming from a Reagan Republican. All he set out to do was to register mentally ill voters.

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I’m just too blissed out on fish oil to raise the blood pressure today. So, rather than talk about the indictment of George Bush or discuss why George Bush can’t say the words “civil war” (even if Keith Olbermann and Jon Stewart can), I’ll just give you Mark Fiore’s animated Still Deciding at Mother Jones. I can’t even get too bothered out how insubstantial the video is, but I am wondering why Pat Bagley hasn’t created an animated Clueless George series.

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