Why am I?  After five years of lies, law-breaking, and disregard for the Constitution, the question of the hour isn't whether or not Bush's own cronies will finally see fit to give him a rebuke.  The question is why are we putting up with this crap?

It's certainly not my regular habit to post front page articles singling out a diary on another blog, but this diary by stephdray over at Daily Kos so perfectly mirrors my own frustration, that I want to do more than paste it here.  I want to print out a thousand copies and hand it out on street corners.

Know what?  I just might.

You didn't used to be like this.
You didn't used to get enraged at George Bush's picture whenever it came on the tube. Now you flip him the bird, even if you're standing in front of the bank of televisions at Best Buy. And you never used to wonder if you should even be shopping at Best Buy. You never used to worry about whether or not your money was financing the destruction of the environment, the constitution, your future, your kid's future. You never needed to know what 'Buying Blue' meant.

Update [2006-2-16 11:46:46 by Tom Ball]: I Edited this post to remove the Valentine's day theme because the day has come and gone but the content is truly valuable and holiday independent. Hopefully ilona won't strangle me.

Let's share our loving side with the ones who need it the most: our troops. Let's get busy and show them who really supports them, ok?

I've tried to make this as pain-free and fun as possible. Some of the action items can be done right in front of your computer screen. Other items will require you to get up and move about into the fresh air outside - maybe even mingle with other people. Still others will require you open up your wallet, if you so choose to do. No pressure there from me.

You ready to start showing the troops you care?

As your staff has probably already alerted you, your office has been barraged by e-mails, faxes and phone messages imploring you to either vote no or abstain on the upcoming cloture vote in the Alito confirmation.

I realize that you have heard in the media, and perhaps from your own advisors, that this massive outpouring of sentiment should be taken with a modicum of salt, due to the fact it has come from the Internet activists and bloggers.  After all, conventional wisdom dictates that this group exemplifies the far extreme in political thought, and is not representative of the greater constituency you represent.

But ... Before you make your final decision on this momentous vote, please take a moment to reflect upon the future. Not just from a moral or ethical position (in which the vote against cloture would be the imperative), but from a pragmatic, political one.

The Republican Party, which at the present time holds such a stranglehold upon all three branches of government, did not gain that position of power overnight. It was a long calculated battle waged over many years, utilizing a grassroots network of motivated activists, which put them in this position.

You too now have the power to harness such a force... but you must first recognize it in order to utilize it.

This is a little essay that has been brewing in my mind since hurricane Katrina, and which I put together in honor of Martin Luther King, jr.'s birthday, though it applies to all of us, not just blacks.

Today's focus for the Twelve Days for Justice Protest centers on Judge Alito's views regarding presidential powers, in light of the recent admission of George W. Bush that he has violated the 4th Amendment by authorizing unwarranted wire-tapping on U.S. citizens.

If you've been following along with us so far, you already know that Judge Alito's record on the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals clearly shows that he subscribes to a far right-wing judicial philosophy: he holds a very narrow and harmful view of the role of the federal government in protecting our health and safety; he believes in restricting a women's right to obtain an abortion; he is hostile to disability rights; he has belonged to groups supportive of gender discrimination; and he regularly sides with big corporations against workers and environmental protections, even when his mainstream colleagues do not.  The nomination of a judge with such extreme ideological views to the Supreme Court is a threat to our long-standing constitutional rights and legal protections, one that we must do everything in our power to oppose.

Links to previous diaries, today's sample form letter to send to the Senate Judiciary Committee, and contact information for the Senators below the fold...

As you may be aware, Sens. Leahy and Sununu introduced a legislation to extend the expiring provisions of the PATRIOT Act by 3 months so that the reauthorization legislation can be debated thoroughly before most of the act becomes permanent.

It is critical to pass this extension before the Senate recesses for the holidays, and I'll leave it to you to imagine the political calculus, given that 16 provisions will expire on 12/31.

The bill number is S. 2082, and it currently has 48 sponsor+co-sponsors. If we have 3 more senators onboard, the bill will have the 51 votes required to pass. Please help push it past that mark.

Key Words: Patriot Act, Defense spending bill, National Deficit, Legislative Activism, Activism

An observation: the run away Bush National Debt. which stood at $8.1 trillion on 12/15 will soon hit the National Debt Ceiling that was raised in November of 2004 to $8.18 Trillion (yes, after the election).

A simple estimation shows that the Federal Government will default on its payments, effectively a bankruptcy, from around the 12th of January, if not earlier, unless the Congress plays along with this grotesque mismanagement by Bush, Cheney & Co and raises the debt ceiling again.

Being X-posted across: Daily Kos, My Left Wing, Booman Tribune, myDD, political Cortex. Volunteers for posting this at Democratic Underground (I can't post a new topic there yet) are welcome.

On Monday the lamented folk singer Phil Ochs would have been 65 years old.  I'm going to post everywhere I can about him, for he heralded an idealism that we sorely need today.  And I will post about him again here through Monday.

Ochs was part of a tradition whose guiding light was Woody Guthrie, a generation older than Ochs.  By the 1960s, when Ochs did most of his recordings, Guthrie was incapacitated by Huntington's corea.  Ochs, like Bob Dylan, wrote a song for him, showing his appreciation.  That song is "Bound for Glory"

To honor Phil Ochs, I have taken that song and created a new version, one meant to honor Ochs himself:

Update 1: The house voted in favor of the conference report on wednesday by a 251-174 vote with 44 Democrats voting to pass the conference report (alas). Roll call.

I have added C-Span 2 feed below the fold. A must-watch on Friday (if you take headphones to work on Friday you can keep tabs on the developments all through the day). Thanks.

I'm setting up this posting so that we can do a liveblog on the breakout sessions at BlogLeft Massachusetts. The original thread is up to about 26 comments, so this will take some of the pressure off that thread.

BostonJoe, a regular diarist over at Booman Tribune, has quickly organized a grassroots protest that will target a couple of the Chickenhawk Republicans who slandered Rep. Murtha's military service last week.

Operation Yellow Feather is in full swing!

Click this link for more information, including downloads for faxes or mailings you can send to Rep. Jean Schmidt and State Rep. Danny Bubp of Ohio.

It is time to stop this new era of McCarthyism where the Chickenhawks in power question the patriotism of any American who disagrees with the lies and horrendous leadership provided by the Bush War Council.

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!

Please spread the word and let me know if you participated so I can alert BostonJoe and the rest of the BooActivists.

Excerpts from BostonJoe's diary below the fold...

A media controlled by liberals and remorselessly-biased  in favor of them would have covered this event on its front pages and during the first five minutes of its evening newscasts. It would be mentioned for days in conjunction with the polls that show how abysmally unpopular George Bush and the GOP are.

(Via Ethereal Fire)