activism

Former Vice President Dick Cheney will have to give his account -- under oath, in a legal deposition -- of what happened at a Colorado ski resort in June 2006 when a man stepped up to protest the Iraq war and was arrested, a federal district judge ruled Monday.

The protester, Steven Howards, sued five Secret Service agents in Mr. Cheney's security detail after the encounter at the Beaver Creek resort. Mr. Howards's lawyers have argued that Mr. Cheney's version of events is crucial to getting at the truth.

Mr. Cheney's lawyers had responded -- successfully until Monday's ruling by Judge Christine M. Arguello in Denver -- that a deposition was unnecessary. A federal magistrate agreed with Mr. Cheney last April; Judge Arguello's ruling reversed that decision.

Mr. Howards has admitted to approaching Mr. Cheney and saying the administration's policies in Iraq were disgusting, or words to that effect. He walked away unhindered by Secret Service agents, but he was arrested by them about 10 minutes later for what they said was the "assault" on the vice president.

Mr. Howards was detained by the Secret Service and local law enforcement officials, then released. Misdemeanor harassment charges were filed, then dropped by the local district attorney. Several of the agents, in their depositions, have accused one another of unethical and perhaps even illegal conduct in handling the matter.

It's a sad day when you can't tell the vice president to his face what you really think of his administration.

Read The Bill

"Congress should change its rules to require that non-emergency legislation and conference reports be posted on the Internet for 72 hours before debate begins." An online petition and more, ReadTheBill.org's mission is to strengthen our democracy by making sure elected officials and citizens have the chance to read and understand legislation. The effort has been endorsed by a variety of organizations and is a project of Sunlight Foundation.

A more transparent government begins with providing the people with the opportunity to tell their elected officials what they think of a piece of legislation, before it comes up for a vote. ReadTheBill.org is an effort to gather individuals and groups, luminaries and everyday folks, conservatives, liberals and independents behind the simple concept that all non-emergency legislation should be available online for 72 hours before debate begins.

February 19th: Rick Santelli, live on CNBC, standing in the middle of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, launches into an attack on the just-announced $300 billion slated to stem rate of home foreclosures: “The government is promoting bad behavior! Do we really want to subsidize the losers’ mortgages?! This is America! We're thinking of having a Chicago tea party in July, all you capitalists who want to come down to Lake Michigan, I'm gonna start organizing."

Almost immediately, the clip and the unlikely "Chicago tea party" quote buried in the middle of the segment, zoomed across a well-worn path to headline fame in the Republican echo chamber, including red-alert headlines on Drudge.

Within hours of Santelli's rant, a website called ChicagoTeaParty.com sprang to life. Essentially inactive until that day, it now featured a YouTube video of Santelli’s “tea party” rant and billed itself as the official home of the Chicago Tea Party. The domain was registered in August, 2008.

...

ChicagoTeaParty.com was just one part of a larger network of Republican sleeper-cell-blogs set up over the course of the past few months, all of them tied to a shady rightwing advocacy group coincidentally named the “Sam Adams Alliance,” whose backers have until now been kept hidden from public. Cached google records that we discovered show that the Sam Adams Alliance took pains to scrub its deep links to the Koch family money as well as the fake-grassroots “tea party” protests going on today. All of these roads ultimately lead back to a more notorious rightwing advocacy group, FreedomWorks, a powerful PR organization headed by former Republican House Majority leader Dick Armey and funded by Koch money.

The protesters were demanding that Mr. Pataki repeal the state's 30-year-old drug sentencing laws, widely regarded as the nation's most unforgiving. One of those placed in plastic handcuffs and carted off to a police station was a state senator named David A. Paterson.

Now, with Mr. Paterson in the governor's mansion and Democrats in control of both houses of the State Legislature, an aggressive effort is under way to finally dismantle what remains of the stringent 1970s-era drug laws, which imposed stiff mandatory sentences as a way to combat the heroin epidemic then gripping New York City.

In the largest pro-Palestinian demonstration in Europe so far, over 250,000 Spaniards denounce Israel's bloodshed in Gaza and call for ceasefire.

Protesters in Spain's capital Madrid and in other cities, including Seville, Malaga,Oviedo, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and Ourense, carried banners saying 'Peace', 'SOS Gaza' and placards with the word 'Gaza' above a red-stained hand and mock blood-spattered bodies of children.

Police declined to give a figure but the organizers, which included the Socialist Party and trade unions, estimated the Sunday turnout at 250,000.

The Free Gaza Movement ship, SPIRIT OF HUMANITY, left Cyprus Wednesday morning carrying doctors, journalists, human rights workers, and parliamentarians. The ship also carried over a ton of desperately needed medicines donated by the European Campaign to Break the Siege, and intended for overwhelmed hospitals in the Gaza Strip. At the request of the ship's organizers the passenger list and manifest were publicly released, and Cypriot authorities searched the boat prior to its departure in order to certify that it only carried humanitarian items. The organizers also sent an official notification to the Israeli government of their intent to break through the blockade of Gaza.

At roughly 3am UST (1am GMT), in international waters 100 miles off the coast of Gaza, at least five Israeli gunboats surrounded the SPIRIT OF HUMANITY and began recklessly cutting in front of the slow-moving civilian craft. The Israeli warships radioed the SPIRIT, demanding that the ship turn around or they would open fire and "shoot." When asked if the Israeli navy was acknowledging that they intended to commit a war crime by deliberately firing on unarmed civilians, the warships replied that they were prepared to use "any means" to stop the ship.

Greece is awesome!

As a child growing up in Connecticut, I visited the Bronx Zoo at least five to ten times a year.It was my Disney World and science classroom rolled into one and it inspired a lifelonglove of zoology that led directly (eventually) to ZooBorns .Therefore it was with extremeconcern that I learned of Governor Paterson's proposal to cut funding for New York zoos, aquariums and botanic gardens from $9 million to $4 million in 2009 andcut funding entirely by 2010.

The Governor's plan is to focus funding on "capital initiatives that provide ongoing environmental benefits" rather than "annual operating support" to organizations. I believe the rationale behind this approach to be deeply flawed. Zoos and aquariums communicate the importance of conservation ina tangible way that environmental engineering projects simply cannot. What is more, they reach a far larger and more diverse audience, including millions of children, sowing the seedsofconcern for the living world around us. Essentially whatthese institutions provide is education inits most captivating and inspiring form. I can think of no more worthwhile investmentfor "ongoing environmental benefits" than the education provided by the Wildlife Conservation Society - the umbrella organization for the Bronx Zoo, Central Park Zoo, and New York Aquarium.

The Governor's office can be emailed here: http://161.11.121.121/govemail

Tim DeCristopher, an environmental activist, walked into a federal drilling auction and placed a bid of $45,000 for the drilling rights on 22,500 acres of land with no intention of ever drilling on it. His hope is that incoming the Obama administration will withdraw the parcels from auction, because if forced to, he will have to raise the money or face prosecution.

Well, the money has been raised, but the Bureau of Land Management has said it's too late for him to make the down payment because the deposit was due immediately, after last month's auction.

See Tim DeChristopher's homepage for more information and to help out.

"WE WON'T rest until we have honored Oscar Grant by winning justice for his family and ending police brutality in Oakland."

Those were the words of Dereca Blackmon, one of the principal organizers of a rally and march of nearly 1,000 people on January 7 to protest the murder of 22-year-old Oscar Grant III early on New Year's Day by police on an Oakland transit station platform.

Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) officer Johannes Mehserle fired a bullet into Grant's back as the father of a 4-year-old girl lay on his stomach, his hands cuffed, according to a lawyer for the Grant family. The bullet went through Grant's body, ricocheted off the concrete station platform, and punctured his lungs.

The Madison, Wis.-based Freedom From Religion Foundation has taken its national billboard campaign to San Francisco, posting colorful "Imagine No Religion" billboards employing a stained-glass window motif, at three downtown locations: Broadway by Polk, Van Ness by Pacific and 9th by Folsom.