You Can Change Congress

From Larry Lessig, founder of change-congress.org:

Dear Friend,

I'm writing (and it's really me! No more ghostwritten emails -- more on that below) to let you know about some more progress at Change-Congress.org, and to ask for your help in launching the second stage of our project.

As you'll recall, on March 20, we launched the beta site for Change-Congress.org. That gave candidates and citizens the ability to pledge support for up to four planks of reform. We've been talking to literally scores of candidates and members over the past weeks to get them to sign on. So far we've got just about 24, including our first Member, Jim Cooper from Tennessee. (The list of candidates adopting the pledge is at the bottom of this email.)

Today we're launching the second stage of our project. We're asking wiki-worker-types (and that includes you) to help us tag all candidates and Members of Congress, by tracking for each whether they support the planks of reform in the Change Congress movement or not. We've built a set of tools that you can use to document -- for each plank of reform -- whether a candidate supports that plank or not. After that information is verified by a volunteer administrator, we'll add it to a map of reform that we're building. After we're done, we'll have a picture of the level of support for fundamental reform of Congress. And with that map, we'll launch stage 3 of our project -- raising money to support candidates who support reform.

I'm asking you today to go to the site and first tag the candidates in your own district. When that's done, then please work on as many other districts as you can. You'll get points as you do this (we're not sure what those points will get you beyond whuffie among reformers). And please spread this please of mine around to as many others as you can. Blog it, spam with it, talk about it at parties: We need to complete this map as quickly as possible and it will only get done with your help. Here's the link to get started:

http://change-congress.org/tag/

Thank you for your help.

IN OTHER NEWS:

1. We've launched a blog and the beginnings of a podcast. You can read the blog here and subscribe to it via RSS/Atom here. The podcast is filled just now with lessig propaganda, but we're keen to start publishing everything we can (preferably much shorter than my stuff) as soon as we can. If you have ideas or can help with this, please email volunteer@change-congress.org.

2. We need CHANGE ORGANIZERS -- meaning volunteer administrators who can help us verify the tagging information, and help us build out the volunteer force. If you've got some time, please email CO_volunteers@change-congress.org.

3. CLOUT, on Air America, has announced that it will soon begin to give a weekly report on the progress of Change Congress. We'll send an announcement when we get details.

4. We've got a new political director at Change Congress. You've actually heard from him before. His name is Japhet Els, and he ghost wrote a couple emails from me. That was my bad idea; I'm not going down that path. Everything you see with my name attached was actually typed by me (and I've got the typos to prove it). But from now on, Japhet will be writing here periodically to let you know of our progress, and to ask for your help. Japhet comes to us from the Dean world. More recently, he was working with my co-founder, Joe Trippi, on the Edwards campaign. Please join me in welcoming Japhet, and in thanking him for his work for us.

5. As I announced in the original launch of Change Congress, the purpose of Change Congress is not to become its own reform organization. It is instead to leverage, and amplify, the reform work of others. Each of the pledges (except the first) has a reform organization behind it. (The first was inspired by John Edwards.) We'll be adding functionality to the site to make this easier, but please be sure to sign up with the organizations that match your own vision of reform. The one's we've been following are below. If you've got other ideas, please send an email to partners@change-congress.org.

http://change-congress.org/about/

6. We need tech volunteers! If you're a Django developer, we need your help especially. If you can help, please send a note to tech_volunteers@change-congress.org



Lawrence Lessig
Founder
Change Congress

Unemployment up: Tell Congress to extend benefits

With 372,000 unemployed Americans filing for unemployment benefits last week (up 17,000 from the week before) and few jobs on offer, Congress needs to take action to extend the eligibility period for people to receive benefits.

Rep. McDermott (D-WA) has introduced legislation to address this issue, the Emergency Unemployment Compensation Act, HR 4934. As soon as the number of unemployed workers nationwide increases by over one million compared to the same month in 2007, unemployment benefits would be made available to workers for an additional 26 weeks and temporarily increased by $50 per week. This extension would put roughly $18 billion into the hands of struggling families and immediately boost the economy.


Contact your Representative at the Capitol switchboard(202) 224-3121 or look them up online. Urge him or her to cosponsor, support and vote for the Emergency Unemployment Compensation Act, HR 4934.

It is time to take it up again

A must read editorial in the Washington Post.....

Forty years ago, American liberalism suffered a blow from which it has still not recovered. On April 4, 1968, a relatively brief but extraordinary moment of progressive reform ended, and a long period of conservative ascendancy began.

The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and the ensuing riots that engulfed the nation's capital and big cities across the country signaled the collapse of liberal hopes in a smoky haze of self-doubt and despair. Conservatives, on the run for much of the decade, found a broad new audience for their warnings against the disorders and disruptions bred by reform. Read the rest here.

Murat Kurnaz

My question is this: why does it take mainstream media like "60 Minutes" this long to cover these sorts of stories?

The man's story began in 2001. It's 2008.

Pardon me, Congressman, but you dropped your crown...

In a timely pre-game show to the launch of Larry Lessig's Change Congress campaign, Ken Silverstein published a meaty tell-all piece in the March issue of Harper's, entitled Beltway Bacchanal: Congress lives high on the contributor's dime . Unfortunately, I just realized that you can only read the article online if you subscribe to Harper's. They really need to get with the times...

Despite my post, which is the opposite of timely (March is now nearing an end, after all), you can still learn a lot about PAC Leadership funds and campaign treasuries from Silverstein's article. For example, I learned how useful these funds can be when one wants to spend

• $32,036 to golf at the Kiawah Island Golf Resort (Rep. James McCrery, R-LA), or say, slam down
  
• $66,146 on luxury hotels over the 2006 election cycle (Congressman Steny Hoyer, D-MD).

As Silverstein very clearly shows, both sides' cups runneth over.

I hope to see a Change Congress link on ADA's site very soon.

John McCain can't tell the difference between Shia and Sunni

It seems like something out of johnmccainisyourjalopy.com, but John McCain has been claiming that Iran is supporting al Qaeda in Iraq. He says it's "common knowledge." Readers who haven't spent 20-plus years in the Senate might remember that the Shia Iranian ayatollahs aren't really too friendly with the radical Sunnis in al Qaeda.

Take a look at this video from the Countdown. Lieberman has to step up and whisper in his ear that, uh, that really isn't right.

Out of the mouths of babes

UPDATE: Via Slog via Queerty, looks like Sally Kern has a secret.

This is a little long for a blog post but I think it's incredibly powerful. Written by a high schooler who lost his mother in the Oklahoma City bombing, his words absolutely shred anti-gay state Rep. Sally Kern for her homophobic comments posted on You Tube last week.

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Rep Kern:

On April 19, 1995, in Oklahoma City a terrorist detonated a bomb that killed my mother and 167 others. 19 children died that day. Had I not had the chicken pox that day, the body count would've likely have included one more. Over 800 other Oklahomans were injured that day and many of those still suffer through their permanent wounds.

That terrorist was neither a homosexual or was he involved in Islam. He was an extremist Christian forcing his views through a body count. He held his beliefs and made those who didn't live up to them pay with their lives.

As you were not a resident of Oklahoma on that day, it could be explained why you so carelessly chose words saying that the homosexual agenda is worst than terrorism. I can most certainly tell you through my own experience that is not true. I am sure there are many people in your voting district that laid a loved one to death after the terrorist attack on Oklahoma City. I kind of doubt you'll find one of them that will agree with you.

I was five years old when my mother died. I remember what a beautiful, wise, and remarkable woman she was. I miss her. Your harsh words and misguided beliefs brought me to tears, because you told me that my mother's killer was a better person than a group of people that are seeking safety and tolerance for themselves.

As someone left motherless and victimized by terrorists, I say to you very clearly you are absolutely wrong.

You represent a district in Oklahoma City and you very coldly express a lack of love, sympathy or understanding for what they've been through. Can I ask if you might have chosen wiser words were you a real Oklahoman that was here to share the suffering with Oklahoma City? Might your heart be a bit less cold had you been around to see the small bodies of children being pulled out of rubble and carried away by weeping firemen?

I've spent 12 years in Oklahoma public schools and never once have I had anyone try to force a gay agenda on me. I have seen, however, many gay students beat up and there's never a day in school that has went by when I haven't heard the word **** slung at someone. I've been called gay slurs many times and they hurt and I am not even gay so I can just imagine how a real gay person feels. You were a school teacher and you have seen those things too. How could you care so little about the suffering of some of your students?

Let me tell you the result of your words in my school. Every openly gay and suspected gay in the school were having to walk together Monday for protection. They looked scared. They've already experienced enough hate and now your words gave other students even more motivation to sneer at them and call them names. Afterall, you are a teacher and a lawmaker, many young people have taken your words to heart. That happens when you assume a role of responsibility in your community. I seriously think before this week ends that some kids here will be going home bruised and bloody because of what you said.

I wish you could've met my mom. Maybe she could've guided you in how a real Christian should be acting and speaking.

I have not had a mother for nearly 13 years now and wonder if there were fewer people like you around, people with more love and tolerance in their hearts instead of strife, if my mom would be here to watch me graduate from high school this spring. Now she won't be there. So I'll be packing my things and leaving Oklahoma to go to college elsewhere and one day be a writer and I have no intentions to ever return here. I have no doubt that people like you will incite crazy people to build more bombs and kill more people again. I don't want to be here for that. I just can't go through that again.

You may just see me as a kid, but let me try to teach you something. The old saying is sticks and stones will break your bones, but words will never hurt you. Well, your words hurt me. Your words disrespected the memory of my mom. Your words can cause others to pick up sticks and stones and hurt others.

Sincerely,
Tucker
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Ouch.