What is it going to take for the majority of the American People to get the attention of Congress?

In this piece we will propose the simple, necessary, and what should have been self-evident, answer to this question. Many more people are speaking out every day, emailing and calling their members of Congress on the issues. It is not just that we need to engage even more people in political policy activism, because we need to do that anyway in any case. But our current Congresspeople have not yet made the connection between people speaking out, and the loss of their own seats when they fail to heed our voices. We need to help them make that connection on a more personal level.

Since before the last election the Democratic party has been operating from the assumption that they cannot be challenged from the progressive side. They have systematically taken their own natural supporters for granted, thinking that no matter how pathetic they proved to be in the majority, that most of us had no other choice because we would not vote for an overtly ideologically hostile member of the other party.

But we the people have a third option . . . systematic primary challenges.

If They Want A Condemnation We'll Give Them One

Once in a rare while a member of Congress will speak the plain truth without equivocation.

Action Page: http://www.usalone.com/condemnation.php

And when Pete Stark stood up to accuse the president of the United States of having no conscience about the deaths of the thousands of valiant troops he sent on a criminal war mission (for his "amusement" Stark said), while at the same time stealing the medicines out of the mouths of babes, not a word was voiced in protest by the Republicans present in the moment. There was only a mild generalized statement from the chair about avoiding personal references to the president.

And the reason there was not a peep of actual outrage when Stark spoke those indicting words (that they are so howling about now), is that they in knew in what was left of their hearts that it was all shamefully true.

Announcer: [cue peppy marching music] It's time once again to play Worldwide Preemptive War, the exciting TV game all America is playing . . . whether they like it or not . . . where members of our studio audience compete for fantastic prizes, like getting out of here alive without a serious injury. Our first contestant is Joe Grunt, from the Topeka, Kansas National Guard . . . COME ON DOWN!

Contestant 1: Hey, wait a minute, I just signed up for a weekend a month.

Announcer: [laughing] Read your contract, son, including the part about stop loss extensions. And our second contestant is George W. Bush from the Texas Air National Guard . . . COME ON DOWN! . . .

WE THE PEOPLE CUT THE HEART OUT OF THE LIEBERMAN-KYL AMENDMENT

It has taken a couple days for the actual disposition of the Lieberman-Kyl amendment to leak out, but in FACT, the two most offensive paragraphs (3 and 4), which we were objecting to so strenuously as amounting to a declaration of war on Iran, were REMOVED IN THEIR ENTIRETY prior to the vote. Which means we WON.

Behold your victory (page 8):

Yes, you did it, with your TENS of thousands of emails and phones to Congress this last Monday and Tuesday. We are so proud of our participants on this one. Claim your win.

We know that activism works. In just the last 24 hours Debra Bowen decertified every DRE (hackable electronic voting machine) in CA, and she did this courageous thing at least in part because of the tens of thousands of messages she was getting from her constituents in the state. We know. We were involved in helping to mobilize those voices.

So too with impeachment. The only hurdle between the consensus of the people and restoring Constitutional integrity is our own dedication in speaking out and encouraging everyone else we can to do the same. And as we look for opportunities to reach out to our fellow citizens with calls to action, we cannot help but notice that the fastest growing networked community on the internet is the Facebook® web site. In large part this is because they have opened up their platform to member created applications, which in practical use makes their entire base of about 30 million participants accessible to the activism of each other.

IMPEACHMENT ACTION PAGE: http://apps.facebook.com/fb_voices/

Call Good Morning America at 212-456-5900 and complain.
Call Hardball w Chris Matthews at 202-783-2615
EMAIL ACTION PAGE: http://www.peaceteam.net/ban_coulter.php

This last week Ann Coulter said the following on Good Morning America, and for the sake of fairness and completeness we quote its full original context:

"Bill Maher was not joking and saying he wished Dick Cheney had been killed in a terrorist attack. So I've learned my lesson. If I'm gonna say anything about John Edwards in the future, I'll just wish he had been killed in a terrorist assassination plot."

There are now more than 66,000 votes cast in the National Cheney Impeachment Poll, with 99.35 percent voting "Yes", he should be impeached. And now Maxine Waters has joined as cosponsor of H.Res. 333, the Dennis Kucinich proposed articles to impeach Cheney first. We are definitely approaching our first major tipping point in public political consciousness on this issue.

And if all that were not exciting enough, people can now vote instantly to impeach Cheney by cell phone.

CALL PROGRESSIVE RADIO SHOWS TO PUBLICIZE THE CELL PHONE VOTING TEXT NUMBER AND THE KEY WORDS

What we are asking concerned citizens to do next is start calling the various progressive radio shows and let them know that people can vote Yes in the National Cheney Impeachment Poll by texting the key word "IMPEACH" to 30644. This should work on any cell phone in the country, and is PERFECT for promoting this action at any live event, but on the radio on particular.

NATIONAL CHENEY IMPEACHMENT POLL: http://www.usalone.com/cheney_impeachment.php

The judge contemplating sentencing in the "Scooter" Libby case, after his conviction on five counts of perjury, false statements and obstruction of justice, took the unusual step of ordering the letters pleading for leniency on his behalf to be published. There were letters from Paul Wolfowitz, John Bolton, Don Rumsfeld, and others, in some part perhaps a veritable rogue's gallery of scoundrels who have themselves been forced to resign in disgrace recently.

But conspicuously missing was a letter from the Vice President himself, Dick Cheney.

And then lo and behold, we were leaked a copy of one additional letter that had not been published with the rest, apparently signed by Satan, probably not the same person as the vice president, unless it's a pen name of some kind. We reproduce the text of that letter below at the peril of our mortal souls.

To answer the question of who will take Cindy Sheehan's place as spokesperson, first we must ask who CAN take her place. What one person can do all the work of making policy change happen in America? The short answer is that NO one person flying solo can do that. Even Cindy herself could not do that, and notwithstanding her own personal valor she never even had a chance of doing that. Because democracy can only happen when each of us speaks for OURSELVES.

ACTION PAGE:
http://www.usalone.com/cheney_impeachment.php

Where did the people ever get the idea that they NEEDED a spokesperson? It's really the same thing with our members of Congress. We can't just depend on them to automatically represent our interests just because we voted for them, unless we are constantly telling them what we want them to do. And when they dramatically fail to represent the will of the people, as last week in the latest appropriation for the occupation without accountability or end, who is to blame if the people are not continuously pressing their petitions for grievances?

ACTION PAGE: http://www.millionphonemarch.com/no_bush_surrender.php

WE'RE ASKING ALL OUR PARTICIPANTS TO TELL CONGRESS: DON'T SURRENDER TO BUSH ON IRAQ

Please call NOW toll free at 800-828-0498, 800-459-1887 or 800-614-2803 and ask for your own House member and Senators. And ALSO leave separate messages for both Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi at their leadership offices. They represent you too!

Drafting this alert has been an enormous challenge . . . to find a way to express our anger in a way that is still civil. Please, Lord, help us to express this in a way that will have a positive result.

TELL CONGRESS TO REMOVE GONZALES BY CONSTITUTIONAL FORCE IF NECESSARY

ACTION PAGE: http://www.millionphonemarch.com/impeach_gonzales.php

You can call toll free at 800-828-0498, 800-459-1887 or 800-614-2803 and ask for your own House member and Senators.

For an administration in which utter smirking defiance of law and the will of the American people is the only operational mode, IMPEACHMENT is the only remedy.

How bad can it possibly get before Congress will act? In explosive testimony this week before the Senate, the former number two official in the Justice apartment, James B. Comey, testified that Alberto Gonzales tried to bully a deathly sick John D. Ashcroft into signing off on a secret and massive domestic wiretap scheme which had already been determined to be profoundly illegal. Even the Washington Post was compelled to editorialize on Wednesday as follows:

NATIONAL CHENEY IMPEACHMENT POLL: http://www.usalone.com/cheney_impeachment.php

Good morning fellow citizens. Vice president Richard B. Cheney is known to have committed high crimes against the Constitution of the United States, including fabricating a threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and ties with Al Qaeda to justify an illegal war of aggression against Iraq. Cheney's corporate friends in the mainstream media have tried to persuade the American people that there is nothing we can do about it.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to speak out yourself in the National Cheney Impeachment Poll, which already has over 27,000 submissions, to send your vote to all your members of Congress at the same time, together with a letter to the editor of your nearest daily newspaper all with one click, and to rally everyone else you can to do the same thing, to overcome the media naysayers and make impeachment proceedings a reality.

And what would a secret mission be without an extraordinary new secret weapon which we DEBUT here, the Blog Voices Congressional Messaging Gateway. It looks like an ordinary internet web link, but just click on it below and see what happens.

http://www.usalone.com/blogvoices.php?Cheney%20Impeachment%3F

After listening to the questions asked by Brian Williams in South Carolina at the first debate of announced Democratic presidential contenders, one has to wonder how much worse the moderation would have been if it had been on the Fox Network.

There was hardly an inane smear, knock, superficial or unfair attack made against any of these candidates that Williams did not go OUT of his way to highlight or demand that they defend themselves against. We had the price of haircuts, misquotes about positions on Palestine, ties to Walmart, not to mention an entire segment on Giuliani's despicable "die under Democrats" rhetoric from yesterday, instantly elevated to the status of accepted mainstream gospel and framed as such. If most of the questions had been prefaced with the words "Karl Rove says" their slant could not have been more obvious. Even the questions selected from viewer emails seemed to be selected with that criteria in mind.

Let's Give Gonzales A PUSH, Shall We?

ACTION PAGE: http://www.millionphonemarch.com/goodbye_gonzales.php

The thing we must remember about people who ABUSE power is they do not volunteer to give it up. It's not just Gonzales, look at what's going on with Wolfowitz at the same time, with the entire World Bank staff in open revolt. So if Gonzales has not resigned by the time you read this, please contact your members of Congress and push them to speak out, to tell Gonzales it's time to go.

And if the testimony of the Attorney General clinging to power before the Senate Judiciary Committee was not enough of a comedy sketch, we offer the following:

FOX PROMISES TO INVESTIGATE HEN DISAPPEARANCES

Prepared Statement of The Fox:

Take Action Against The Imus HATE Speech

This form will submit your comments through the CBS Radio advertising department, the ONLY department there with an internet input function, but perhaps the best target anyway, with the message "Fire Imus permanently." Let them know contacting all their advertisers is next.

ACTION PAGE: http://www.millionphonemarch.com/fire_imus.php

For the truly outraged you might want to also personally call

Dana McClintock
Senior Vice President, CBS Communications Group
(212) 975-1077

There have been a rash of incidents lately getting national attention, involving people like Ann Coulter, Michael Richards, and now Don Imus. And what makes them especially notable is 1) the fact that people are finally starting to call out those who traffic in hate speech, 2) the amount of discussion the most recent incident has triggered, and 3) the persistence of talk as to what should be done about it.