I guess the Neo-Cons brought us Obamacare, Marriage Equality, put women on parity in healthcare...

Didn't know Neo-Cons were for voting rights, the morning after pill, equal sentencing, immigration reform, lower college tuition, UEB, SNAP, Head Start, health coverage on pre-existing conditions, expanding Medicaid and Medicare, jobs, abortion rights, alternative energy and all that other piddly stuff. Gee, I feel so much better. Guess I'll take a nap through 2016...

LOL @ GOP tricks. Vote by mail has worked very well. The repukes have tried to undermine it...

By sending out blatant lies and distortions in the mail, pretending their candidates are not part of their cancerous brand, and even gone to the houses of people to 'pick up and mail their votes for them' FFS.



That was outright fraud. Also tried to get people to give them their ballots in other ways to toss in the garbage, no doubt. They have targeted voters from the public records that voted for Democrats in the past because they don't want their voices heard. The GOP shriek loudly about their First Amendment rights when they stomp around to shut others up so their voices aren't heard. Guess we should not be surprised at their stopping people from speaking with their vote.

But I have an suggestion to add into such bills as the one in Oregon. Since the NCLB, the federal government has used student information to recruit for the military. Why not use it for a more popular thing like voting?

Registration here requires drivers license info, or a state ID if one does not drive, and there is a lot of verification on that. In order to get my kid's ID, a lot of documentation is required, even year book photographs. It's best to get all of this during the time a person is involved in public school, and have modern documents.

I wish the government would combine a course in civics and how laws are made and the way the three branches of government work in the last semester of school. If the student passes the course they should be handed their registration application right then and there with someone to help them fill it out, if we are serious about the vote in this country.

Okay, even if they flunk the course, they will have been told a little bit, instead of learning it from media. The things I've read in the last year have almost convinced me the American people are not capable of being citizens anymore.



In almost every case of those older or who can't go the driver's license route, they have a social security number. That is a trusted data base, and why I laugh at some of what I read somedays.

If it's good enough for your company, landlord, mortage lender, property tax office, driver license, IRS, auto and healthcare insurers, pension funds, college, other schools, banks, ISP, telephone, cellphone, and dozens of other things we take for granted every day, why not make it the gold standard for voting?

I don't have to show or write down all of that when I mail my ballot. I just have to sign it, give a telephone number in case there's a problem, my street address, etc. They have all of that information on file.

The way the GOP is doing their best, with hate filled hearts to deny the 'peaceful revolution' of voting, is idiotic. The data is there, somewhere. They are obstructing the truth of who we are.

Thinking of the public workers and officials, military folks, active and current, denied their vote over technicalities, is outrageous. The reason I bring up the NCLB, the recruiting, veterans and people in the armed forces, is the same reason I spent my summers in my city's streets and parks to get people to go for this:

Twenty-sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution

Congress and the state legislatures felt increasing pressure to pass the Constitutional amendment because of the Vietnam War, in which many young men who were ineligible to vote were conscripted to fight in the war, thus lacking any means to influence the people sending them off to risk their lives. "Old enough to fight, old enough to vote," was a common slogan used by proponents of lowering the voting age. The slogan traced its roots to World War II, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt lowered the military draft age to eighteen.

On March 10, 1971, the Senate voted 94–0 in favor of proposing a Constitutional amendment to guarantee that the voting age could not be higher than 18.[11] On March 23, 1971, the House of Representatives voted 401–19 in favor of the proposed amendment.[12] Within four months after the Congress submitted it to the states, the amendment was ratified by three-fourths of the state legislatures, the shortest time in which any proposed amendment has received the number of ratifications needed for adoption.

On July 5, 1971, during the amendment's signing ceremony in the East Room, President Richard Nixon talked about his confidence in the youth of America.

'As I meet with this group today, I sense that we can have confidence that America’s new voters, America’s young generation, will provide what America needs as we approach our 200th birthday, not just strength and not just wealth but the “Spirit of ‘76’ a spirit of moral courage, a spirit of high idealism in which we believe in the American dream, but in which we realize that the American dream can never be fulfilled until every American has an equal chance to fulfill it in his own life.'[13]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-sixth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution

This goes to the heart of the matter, that even old Tricky Dick knew. The Tea Party Patriots and their bullying along with their Bircher pals, trying to bully anyone out of the right to vote is plain ANTI-AMERICAN. And denies us of the chance to make our nation be 'all that it can be.'

So I love the name of the proposed legislation and hope it passes quickly...

Earth is not real. None of this means anything. So give me your money.

And a picture of Obama talking to the students at the University of Buffalo:

I loved the Gazette pic so much I had to hunt it down. He looks all of 20 years old there...

That first quote is almost Reaganesque. 'My friends are the good guys!'

Blaming President Obama for Loss of Privacy? What about the Supreme Court?

August 22, 2013 By Ilyssa Fuchs

Over the past several decades, the Supreme Court has routinely and incrementally narrowed the scope of the 4th Amendment, which protects against unreasonable search and seizure, practically circumscribing it completely. Until recently, when the news broke about the National Security Agency’s data collection practices, few had really been paying attention to its disappearance. With the plethora of news surrounding the controversy over the NSA’s sweeping collection of metadata (and the subsequent debate about how to strike a balance between liberty and security) it seems as though everyone’s attention is focused on the Obama Administration rather than on Congress and the Supreme Court. However, while pointing the finger solely at the Administration might seem like a good idea, doing so is misplaced for two significant reasons.

First, while the executive branch can in some cases act unilaterally – through the use of executive orders – the Obama Administration did not unilaterally endow the NSA with these sweeping powers. On the contrary, the NSA gained the authority to carry out its data collection program because it was authorized to do so by the Patriot Act – which was enacted bilaterally by both the legislative and executive branches when it was passed by Congress in 2001 and signed by former President Bush, and then renewed by Congress in 2011 and signed by President Obama. Our government operates on a system of checks and balances, so no single branch can consolidate all government power. Notably, Congress recently debated reining in the Patriot Act, but ultimately did not pass any new laws repealing, replacing, or scaling it back. In fact, on July 24, 2013, the House voted 217-205 to reject limiting the law.

More importantly, the government institution that poses the biggest threat to the 4th Amendment, privacy, and liberty, isn’t the President or any executive agency per se. It is the Supreme Court, the only government institution with the power to determine the circumstances under which the 4th Amendment applies, carve out exceptions to the rule, and decide the constitutionality of the Patriot Act. Moreover, the Court has continuously scaled back the rights codified by the 4th Amendment over the past several decades. These exceptions, operating in tandem with the Patriot Act, allow the executive branch to legally take actions which would seem to contravene the rights the 4th Amendment exists to protect.

For starters, the Court has ruled that the 4th Amendment simply isn’t triggered unless law enforcement performs a search or a seizure. [1] Once a search or a seizure transpires, then and only then will a lower court inquire into whether a 4th Amendment violation occurred. For instance, the Supreme Court has explicitly held that a person cannot manifest a reasonable expectation of privacy (and thus the 4th Amendment is inapplicable) when it comes to abandoned property, conversations with others (because there is no expectation that the other person will keep the conversation a secret), bodies of land that are open to public view (aka the “open fields doctrine”) or in anything that a member of the public could easily access, such as ones trash...

Read the infuriating details of what over a generation of conservative rulings have done to this country. The GOP mantra since the Warren court has been to get the Presidency in order to appoint people with their point of view. It's done terrible damage to this country and undone most of our progressive laws.

http://www.forwardprogressives.com/blaming-president-obama-for-loss-of-privacy-what-about-the-supreme-court/

Beware:

This is not GD or any other forum, but a group, or safe haven for like minded people. You are entering the BOG (or BORG per Moi). It is for supporters of Barack Obama who come here to celebrate our 44th POTUS.

And one more for 'you and I.' Just like Barack, 'Made in the USA!'

I also don't get the 'traitor to his country' phrase. It's more of a political term than legal one.

The word has lost its meaning now, especially after being abused by the chickenhawk RWers like O'Reilly, Hannity, Beck and Limbaugh. And as you say, he wasn't found guilty of that or aiding the enemy.

Treason is far beyond Manning's abilities:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benedict_Arnold

That entry describes a man of the world, who knew well what he was doing, actively worked to defeat the USA and hand it over the 'enemy' of that time, Great Britain.

Manning did what he did in his own way to save his ideal of the USA, but sloppily.

I also feel he was used by others for their purposes, and they were not benign.

Money is coming in with each interview, with every web appeal for donations, etc. And sorry that..

I haven't gotten back with you on those figures. If s4p kept files, he might know. It was from one of his links when we were discussing this last winter. About the same time he posted about the Srratfor files and the dustup bertween Assange and his financial partners, not those who helped after the Swedish affair, but put Wikileaks together. High rollers, all of them.