ACLU: Actions for Restoring America
6 NovHow to Begin Repairing the Damage to Freedom in America After Bush
Barack Obama will become chief executive of a nation that has been greatly weakened – in particular, our freedoms, our values, and our international reputation have been greatly undermined by the policies of the past eight years.
Presidents have enormous power not only to set the legislative agenda, but also to establish policy by executive order, federal regulation, or simply by refocusing the efforts and emphases of the executive agencies. The new president must use all of these tools to restore our freedoms and move the country forward.
Doing so will require determined action in the face of inevitable opposition. It will require conveying to the American people why grants of unchecked power do not actually make us safer, and why Americans must stand firm in protecting the values that at our best we have always represented and defended at home and around the world.
It will not be easy to undo eight years of sustained damage to our fundamental rights. But it can be done.
This paper lists many of the actions that the new president should take in order to decisively signal a restoration of American values and a rejection of the shameful policies of the past eight years.
The first year of any new administration is crucial and sets the stage for what will follow. The new President needs to hit the ground running and to make full use of that first crucial year.
We have grouped needed actions into those that the new president should take on day one, in the 100 days and then the first year. Those actions include executive orders as well as mandates or directives from the president to his cabinet secretaries and agency heads.
See the entire list, broken down by First Day, First 100 Days, and First Year priorities, at the link. I like what I see, and strongly support every suggested action.
I’m impressed by the argument
6 NovLegal Groups File Lawsuit Challenging Proposition 8, Should It Pass
The American Civil Liberties Union, Lambda Legal and the National Center for Lesbian Rights filed a writ petition before the California Supreme Court today urging the court to invalidate Proposition 8 if it passes. The petition charges that Proposition 8 is invalid because the initiative process was improperly used in an attempt to undo the constitution’s core commitment to equality for everyone by eliminating a fundamental right from just one group – lesbian and gay Californians. Proposition 8 also improperly attempts to prevent the courts from exercising their essential constitutional role of protecting the equal protection rights of minorities. According to the California Constitution, such radical changes to the organizing principles of state government cannot be made by simple majority vote through the initiative process, but instead must, at a minimum, go through the state legislature first.
I’m afraid to be hopeful, though. Still, it’s an interesting and impressive argument. Click the link above to read the full press release, or see the writ petition here.
California Prop 8 and bigotry
6 NovThe very turnout that helped Obama carry California also seems to have helped Prop 8 pass. Polls indicate that African Americans overwhelmingly supported Prop 8. It’s one of life’s true ironies that those who were victims of bigotry would support the same against a different class of people.
Barack Obama may have helped California Proposition 8 gay marriage ban pass
Around 70 per cent of the African-American voters who overwhelmingly backed Mr Obama also approved Proposition 8, helping pass the controversial ballot measure despite a small majority of whites voting against the ban on same-sex unions. Hispanic and Asian voters were split on the issue. […]
This is a real family…
3 NovSomething for anyone that’s still undecided on CA Prop 8, FL Prop 2, or AZ Prop 102:
Sarah Palin speaks on the First Amendment
1 NovSomehow, in Sarah Palin’s brain, it’s a threat to the First Amendment when newspapers criticize her negative attacks on Barack Obama. This is actually so dumb that it hurts:
In a conservative radio interview that aired in Washington, D.C. Friday morning, Republican vice presidential nominee Gov. Sarah Palin said she fears her First Amendment rights may be threatened by “attacks” from reporters who suggest she is engaging in a negative campaign against Barack Obama.
Palin told WMAL-AM that her criticism of Obama’s associations, like those with 1960s radical Bill Ayers and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, should not be considered negative attacks. Rather, for reporters or columnists to suggest that it is going negative may constitute an attack that threatens a candidate’s free speech rights under the Constitution, Palin said.
“If [the media] convince enough voters that that is negative campaigning, for me to call Barack Obama out on his associations,” Palin told host Chris Plante, “then I don’t know what the future of our country would be in terms of First Amendment rights and our ability to ask questions without fear of attacks by the mainstream media.”
Click through to read Greenwald’s complete analysis of why this hurts, if you enjoy seeing someone take the stupid people to task, and do it very well.
An Aging Trans Woman 