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Friday, July 21, 2006
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Josh Marshall: "Jim VandeHei has a piece this morning in the Post explaining that Ralph Reed's defeat Tuesday in Georgia has put political strategists in both parties on notice that the issue of political corruption has real traction, at least for candidates directly implicated in the on-going investigations."
"2008 pres"
6:39:02 AM 
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Andrew Sullivan: "I feel obliged to come to the president's defense on his embryonic stem cell research veto. I find the absolutism of those who view a blastocyst as a human person to be morally unpersuasive, but I cannot see how it can be seen as anything other than human life. I know also that many of these superfluous blastocysts and embryos will be discarded anyway and so not using them for research does not protect them from extinction. Nevertheless, it is hard not to be troubled by the line this crosses. Human life is created and then experimented on to save other human lives."
"2008 pres"
6:37:40 AM
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Denver Business Journal: "The Federation of Employers and Workers of America (FEWA) will host a National Immigration Forum on Aug. 26 at the Pinnacle Dinner Theater in Littleton. Two sessions will be held: one for employers in English and another for employees in Spanish. The presentations will review pending legislation on immigration reform, update the status of federal guest worker programs, discuss Department of Homeland Security policies and announce FEWA programs for Employers of Immigrant Workers (EIW). Any business or worker who could be impacted by immigration reform may register for the forum by calling 303-893-0344 or visit www.h2b-fewa.org. Admission is free."
"2008 pres"
6:36:26 AM
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Dave Winer: "Almost everyone missed the political significance of the Edwards endorsement (and use) of BitTorrent to distribute video. Aside from being an efficient use of technology, it is also a non-infringing use of BitTorrent. From a legal standpoint, the more non-infringing applications there are, the weaker the case of Hollywood as it goes after BitTorrent, as they have attacked other P2P technologies. Having a major national candidate using the technology for non-infringing purposes helps strengthen the case, and while I have not endorsed anyone for President in 2008, I do thank Edwards for stepping up for technology. This has a lot more impact than the kind of things bloggers usually ask candidates to do, like blogging their personal thoughts, or have video bloggers follow them into the bathroom (sorry, that's a small exaggeration). Use of BitTorrent, esp by a Democrat, is the kind of thing that politicians can actually do to help the Internet."
"2008 pres"
6:33:06 AM
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Jim Spencer weighs in on H.R.810 and it's veto this week, in his column in the Denver Post. From the article, "Curt Freed directs the neurotransplantation program for Parkinson's disease at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center. He wants to put dopamine cells in the brains of patients to ease their suffering. He never thought of himself as an accessory to murder. He still doesn't. Presidential press secretary Tony Snow claims that George W. Bush had to veto increased federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research because the president is 'against murder.' Snow's was a very cheap shot in the fight over embryonic stem-cell research. The president's spokesman sounded like who he was before he came to the White House - a fill-in for Rush Limbaugh. Men and women like Freed, who use embryonic stem cells in their medicine, don't kill. They heal.
"Snow smeared plenty of good people with his idiotic comment. But his boss injured a lot more with his veto. Folks like Doug McCulloch. McCulloch lives in Denver. He suffers from a degenerative nerve disease whose cure could lie in embryonic stem-cell research. McCulloch felt personally hurt by the president's veto. Congressman Bob Beauprez's vote to uphold the veto in an override attempt infuriated McCulloch, too. Beauprez may now kiss goodbye McCulloch's vote in Beauprez's bid for governor of Colorado. McCulloch doesn't condone murder. Like Freed, he condones science that might change the lives of hundreds of thousands of kids with diabetes or people with seizures or spinal cord injuries. Doing the bidding of a small cabal of anti-science, anti-abortion zealots in an election year, the president gave a figurative finger to millions of sick people."
"2008 pres"
6:12:24 AM
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Here's an article from the New York Sun about this weekend's Democratic Leadership Council meeting here in Denver. From the article, "At a time when centrism has become a dirty word in some Democratic Party circles, hundreds of the party's avowed moderates are convening in Denver this weekend to discuss their agenda for this fall's election and the presidential contest in 2008. The annual meeting of the Democratic Leadership Council, a group that came to prominence in connection with President Clinton's electoral victory in 1992, takes place as the organization has become a lightning rod for criticism from liberal Web-based activists known as the netroots. The Denver gathering is scheduled to hear from the putative Democratic frontrunner for 2008, Senator Clinton, as well as other possible contenders such as Senator Bayh of Indiana, Governor Vilsack of Iowa, and Governor Richardson of New Mexico...
"Since Mrs. [Hillary] Clinton took an official role overseeing the council's issues agenda, the group has tried to step back from the poisonous fight with the blogosphere. However, the DLC's president, Bruce Reed, said the group is still pressing the Democratic Party to reach out to the political center...
"To an extent, the council is a victim of its own success.The group's talk of fiscal responsibility, while rare in Democratic circles two decades ago, is now commonplace even among the party's most liberal officeholders. Another polarizing issue the DLC championed in the 1990s, welfare reform, no longer causes much consternation among Democrats. However, two centerpieces of the council's agenda, a 'muscular' foreign policy and support for free-flowing international trade, are squarely in conflict with positions many political analysts believe could carry the Democrats to victory this fall and beyond. Most Democratic lawmakers who backed President Bush's invasion of Iraq have been steadily retreating from their support...
"The bloggers' distaste for the DLC is not strictly ideological. 'I tend to think it's as much about elitism as about political philosophy,' a professor at the University of Virginia, Larry Sabato, said. 'They view the DLC as a bunch of insiders from Georgetown who try to control the party and it's nomination. The Web activists' struggle is a mirror image in many ways of the DLC's challenge to party orthodoxies two decades ago,' a Democratic strategist, Kenneth Baer, said. 'They would have been the DLC, when the DLC was founded,' Mr.Baer, co-editor of a new quarterly, 'Democracy: A Journal of Ideas' said. 'Their criticism that Washington insiders are calling the shots, it's exactly the DLC's critique,' he said."
"2008 pres"
5:44:51 AM
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© Copyright 2009 John Orr.
Last update: 3/15/09; 11:46:24 AM.
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