Well, in the wake of the Onion's report on Diebold accidentally leaking the 2008 election results, it looks like there's been a slipup in the upcoming Russian elections. It looks like a pretty safe bet that results will show (note that I did not say this will actually happen) a 68-70% voter turnout with mini-Putin winning around 72% of those votes ( Read more... )

So in the recent past, Oregon voters passed a measure limiting donations for local and state campaigns. This was ruled a violation of our state's constitutional free speech protection, which I've heard is actually stricter than the national governments. So this year, there were two measures on the ballot: one was the same the same law that courts ( Read more... )

Tonight things are lookin' gooooood!

...makes me sick.

So I've heard many times the recent NSA spying-on--Americans thing defended with phrases like "if you haven't done anything wrong, you don't ahve anything to hide." Now, I'm under no illusions that anyone who reads this LJ feels that way and I'd be preaching to the choir trying to refute that, but I do have a not unique, but uncommon personal ( Read more... )

So let's see... We had Georgia a while ago, Ukraine more recently, sort of had Serbia, and recently Krzygstan tried and failed, now it seems Belarus, a country right on Europe's doorstep with some rather severe problems, is trying to do the whole peaceful mass revolution thing. They have the eyes of the west more than Kyrzygstan did and have let it ( Read more... )

This just in, Treasury Secretary John Snow has asked Congress to raise the national debt limit of $8.2 trillion to keep the US from running out of cash by late March. Yes, this month. Perhaps even scarier, "Treasury Secretary John Snow notified Congress on Monday that the administration has now taken "all prudent and legal actions," including ( Read more... )

Looks like McCain and Obama are having a tiff over ethics reforms. I think McCain's response is a bit harsh, but he has a point about Obama choosing the Democratic plan over the bipartisan one being kind of counter-productive. It's not like a bill with only Democratic support has a chance of passing. Anyway, I'll let you read it for yourself. There ( Read more... )

So those of you who watched the Daily Show last Monday already know about this, but I just wanted to put a plug in for Why We Fight (link goes to IMDb listing the plot outline there is - "Is American foreign policy dominated by the idea of military supremacy? Has the military become too important in American life? Jarecki's shrewd and intelligent ( Read more... )

According to Capitol Hill Blue"White House insiders tell disturbing tales of invasion of privacy, abuse of government power and use of expanded authority under the USA Patriot Act to dig into the personal lives of anyone the administration deems an enemy of the state ( Read more... )