Libertas Continued

We just passed another tragic milestone with the 4,000th death of U.S. soldiers in Iraq, while the uncounted death toll of innocent Iraqis climbs beyond 1 million. Yet in April, Congress will vote to give George Bush another $102 billion blank check for Iraq on top of past blank checks for $562 billion - unless we finally persuade our Representatives to Just Say No . One great way to persuade a Representative is to hold a Town Hall Meeting and fill the hall with people who care and are willing to speak passionately. That gets their attention! Democrats.com has 500,000 members, roughly 1,000 in each district. That's more than enough to fill 435 Iraq Town Halls, if just two committed activists in each district will take the lead in organizing one. We've created web tools and assembled useful links to make this easier. Will you help us organize an Iraq Town Hall? http://www.democrats.com/iraq-town-halls Thanks for all you do!

"All things equal, I would prefer to have a child in a school that has a strong appreciation for the values of the Christian community. In a religious environment the value system is set. That's not the case in a public school where there are so many different kids with different kinds of values." Rod Paige, U.S. Secretary of Education - 2003 Because they are designed to do so.

It is built by slave labor, costs more than The Pentagon, and takes longer to build than the Great Pyramid, what is it? To find out more watch Bill Moyers Journal, Report on Government Oversight

Operation Homecoming - Writing the Wartime Experience. "Any country that sends only it's young to war, deserves to loose, both its young and the war." - SGGT Edward Parker Gyokeres Watch Soldiers of Conscience . Eight US Soldiers today face the most difficult decision of their lives: to kill or not to kill. A film about ware, peace, and the transformative power of the human conscience. Their country asked them to kill. Their hearts asked them to stop. Four sincere war fighters and four sincere conscientious objectors (CO), all struggling over the question. Made with the official permission from the U.S. Army, this film transcends the usual divisive rhetoric of politics and instead reveals a surprising shared truth. All our soldiers are "soldiers of conscience" torn between the demands of duty and the call of conscience. "I was walking through the Garden of Eden with an M-16, and I had to ask, what am I doing here?" - Conscientious Objector, Kevin Bende

Not because it is wrong to outsource the U.S. Border Patrol, not because making money by killing is a bad thing, but because it just doesn't make good business sense. Here's what's on the UT website dated 3/7/08: Blackwater Worldwide officials have announced they are pulling their application to build a training center on an 842-acre site in the East County community of Potrero. The North Carolina-based company dropped off a letter to the county planning department today notifying officials of their decision not to pursue plans for the project on a former chicken and cattle ranch. "Although our project would have brought a great benefit to San Diego County, - providing local, state, and federal law enforcement with access to low-cost superior training facilities while bringing much-needed jobs to the area - the proposed site does not meet our business objectives at this time," states the letter from Blackwater vice president Brian Bonfiglio. See rest of article a

The Superdelegate Transparency Project is the central gathering place for compiling primary and caucus results--Congressional district by Congressional district--for states that have to date held their races, and going forward until the Democratic nomination is secured. We are compiling the district-by-district results of the popular vote and pledged delegates, and then tracking these results against how superdelegates are currently pledged (or have publicly endorsed a candidate), and how they eventually vote. The aim of this project is to open up the Democratic nomination process, and to gauge what effect the superdelegates have on the nomination. Rather than hypotheticals at the end of this nomination process, we seek to make hard data available to all interested parties, including citizens, activists, journalists, bloggers, campaign staffers and people around the world who are following this U.S. election. This is the only project currently tracking this data at the district level.

Source: NYT and Center for Media and Democracy, via Wired, February 27, 2008 As CMD recently reported, a federal judge ordered the Wikleaks website shut down. The site allows whistleblowers to post documents anonymously. Lawyers for a dozen news and public interest organizations, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, American Civil Liberties Union and Public Citizen, asked the judge to rescind his order. On February 29, Judge Jeffrey White reversed the ruling, reports the New York Times . The judge "acknowledged that the bank's request posed serious First Amendment questions and might constitute unjustified prior restraint." He also criticized the ability of online technology to evade legal jurisdiction, saying that "people can do some good things and people can do some terrible things without accountability." Thanks to the reversal, Wikileaks is again available via its U.S. web domain, Wikileaks.org . (Another win for the good. Make sure you let everyon