Here is the best reason I have seen to filibuster Alito. An excerpt from a fellow bloggers' letter to his Senator. There are other reasons such as the very real possibility of Roe V. Wade being overturned and the fact that pretty much all of his decisions have benefited corporations over the individual. But this one really sticks in my craw. The founding folks of this country did not want a strong executive branch. They had just thrown off the yoke of King George in England and knew the importance of checks and balances. Judge Alito could very well take this country back to that.

The concept of a "unitary executive", which Judge Alito advocates, should be
repugnant to any conservative. For over 200 years, the United States Supreme
Court has been viewed as the final arbiter of what is and what is not the
law. "It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial
department to say what the law is," declared Chief Justice John
Marshall in 1803. "This is the very essence of judicial duty." Yet you are about
to confirm a Justice to that court who does not believe this. Judge
Alito apparently holds the view that the President, as Chief Executive,
has virtually no limits to his to executive power. This is utterly
opposed to the conservative notion of limited government, or the idea
that powers not specified in the Constitution are not permitted the Federal Government.

This was posted on Democratic Underground. Contact these US Senators if you want to preserve the balance of power between the 3 branches of government. It is vital that you contact these people TODAY or by Monday morning at the very latest. Seriously.

You can call/email/fax Senator McCain.
Phoenix5353 North 16th StreetSuite 105Phoenix, Arizona 85016Phone: (602) 952-2410Fax: (602) 952-8702
Tempe4703 S. Lakeshore DriveSuite 1Tempe, Arizona 85282Phone: (480) 897-6289Fax: (480) 897-8389
Tucson407 W. Congress StreetSuite 103Tucson, Arizona 85701Phone: (520) 670-6334Fax: (520) 670-6637

email here:
http://mccain.senate.gov/index.cfm?FuseAction=Contact.Home

You can call/email/fax Senator Kyl

WASHINGTON, D.C. OFFICE730 Hart Senate BuildingWashington, D.C. 20510Phone: (202) 224-4521Fax: (202) 224-2207

PHOENIX OFFICE2200 East Camelback, Suite 120Phoenix, Arizona 85016-3455Phone: (602) 840-1891Fax: (602) 957-6838

TUCSON OFFICE7315 North Oracle Road, Suite 220Tucson, Arizona 85704Phone: (520) 575-8633Fax: (520) 797-3232


Email here
http://kyl.senate.gov/contact.cfm

"Just talked to Kerry's office in Boston….I was told that Reid is on board for the filibuster - but calls need to be made to Landrieau, Salazar, Johnson, and Byrd BY EVERYONE no matter your location. "

Robert Byrd (WV)311 HART SENATE OFFICE BUILDING WASHINGTON DC 20510(202) 224-3954Web Form: http://www.byrd.senate.gov/byrd_email.htmlFAX: (202) 228-0002


Mary Landrieu (LA)724 HART SENATE OFFICE BUILDING WASHINGTON DC 20510(202) 224-5824Web Form: http://www.landrieu.senate.gov/contact/index.cfmFAX: (202) 224-973508

K. Salazar (CO)UNITED STATES SENATE WASHINGTON DC 20510(202) 224-5852Web Form: http://salazar.senate.gov/contact/email.cfmFAX: (202) 228-5036

Johnson, Tim- (D - SD) Class II136 HART SENATE OFFICE BUILDING WASHINGTON DC 20510(202) 224-5842Web Form: johnson.senate.gov/emailform.cfm
Also, worth a shot:

Susan Collins (ME)461 Dirksen Senate Office Building, Washington, DC 20510Phone: (202) 224-2523Web Form: http://collins.senate.gov/public/FAX: (202) 224-2693

Olympia Snowe (ME)154 Russell Senate Office Bldg., Washington DC 20510Phone: (202) 224-1946WebForm: http://snowe.senate.gov/Webform.htmFAX: (202) 224-1946

The Young Turks are filibustering Alito this weekend. Listen here

WTF does my credit score have to do w/ my aptitude as an employee?

Just about everyone who's ever applied for a job in recent years has had to succumb to a number of invasions into their privacy. Most of us just allow it for survival sake or we understand that the nature of the job requires a large amount of judgements about safety so we allow background checks and drug testing. But credit checks, what does someone's credit have to do with someones' performance on the job? Increasingly, in my search for a job, I am coming across release forms that allow an employer to check your credit. When I have asked why they need this form, I have been told that they don't use it for checking a potential employees credit but they use it to get other information like an MVD report. So, naturally, my next question is why don't you use an MVD request form if that's what you want? I never get an answer to that one. You won't be considered for the job unless you sign this form. Is that even legal or constitutional? It doesn't seem like it should be in America. If anyone else has any experiences with this I would love to hear them and what you did or didn't do about it. I just simply said goodbye. Would I do that for a better paying job? I don't know, but so far the decision has been pretty easy.

Sign my petition to support progressive radio in Arizona. Shout out to your favorite progressive/liberal radio host.

Watch Al Gore's Speech On Executive Power

In Martin Luther King Day address, Gore compares wiretapping of Americans to surveillance of King

.......Yet, just one month ago, Americans awoke to the shocking news that in spite of
this long settled law, the Executive Branch has been secretly spying on large
numbers of Americans for the last four years and eavesdropping on "large volumes
of telephone calls, e-mail messages, and other Internet traffic inside the
United States." The New York Times reported that the President decided to launch
this massive eavesdropping program "without search warrants or any new laws that
would permit such domestic intelligence collection."
During the period when
this eavesdropping was still secret, the President went out of his way to
reassure the American people on more than one occasion that, of course, judicial
permission is required for any government spying on American citizens and that,
of course, these constitutional safeguards were still in place.
But
surprisingly, the President's soothing statements turned out to be false.
Moreover, as soon as this massive domestic spying program was uncovered by the
press, the President not only confirmed that the story was true, but also
declared that he has no intention of bringing these wholesale invasions of
privacy to an end.
At present, we still have much to learn about the NSA's
domestic surveillance. What we do know about this pervasive wiretapping
virtually compels the conclusion that the President of the United States has
been breaking the law repeatedly and persistently.
A president who breaks the
law is a threat to the very structure of our government. Our Founding Fathers
were adamant that they had established a government of laws and not men. Indeed,
they recognized that the structure of government they had enshrined in our
Constitution - our system of checks and balances - was designed with a central
purpose of ensuring that it would govern through the rule of law. As John Adams
said: "The executive shall never exercise the legislative and judicial powers,
or either of them, to the end that it may be a government of laws and not of
men.".............

Watch the full speech here.

It's long but informative and important.

Air America has chance at another spot on dial

This is about KXXT in Phoenix, Az.

Air America has chance at another spot on dial

Randy CordovaThe Arizona RepublicJan. 14, 2006 12:00 AM

.....According to Christy, the plug will not be pulled on the network
anytime soon. He says Communicom will change the station's format; however, it
has graciously agreed to keep Air America programs on the air until it finds a
new home. .....

Sign this petition to show your support of progressive radio in Arizona. Make a comment or give a shout out to your favorite KXXT host!

First Freeway Blog Post

Oh My GOD! I was so scared, my mouth was so dry. I started off before dawn so i could catch the morning rush hour and be more discreet. I had some scrap masonite and had painted a sign saying, "BorkAlito, Call your Senators". I felt an urgency to get this one out there so I had not had an opportunity to find the right spot for the type of sign I had. There are several small buttes around me that have great views of freeways but I had decided that my sign was too small for those so, I chose a freeway overpass close to my house. The first thing I learned was to post in a place that you can get to quickly and leave quickly. I had thought there was a place to park fairly close but I ended up parking in a city facility and hoofin' it almost half a mile with the sign straining my thumb and fingers. I wanted to keep it out of sight behind the 3 foot concrete wall so i did not carry it under my arm. And I know that lots of police officers gas up around there somewhere so that was making me nervous too. But, like the time I started up the down escalater at the movie theater and the ticket taker started yelling at me to stop, I hesitated, but realized I couldn't go back. I had to finish what i started. Especially when someone was telling me to stop(my fear/antipathy towards authority) So, I kept running up the down escalater and kept on with my sign, not caring that I felt like everyone was staring at me. I'm sure they didn't even notice me on their way to their cubicle jobs. I finally made it to the spot that would get the most visability and realized that the bottom fence railing would cut off "Senators". I had thought of drilling holes and wiring it to the fence but had decided that leaning it against the fence would be less conspicuous to a pedestrian or passer by than that. But I soon realized there aren't enough pedestrians or bike riders going by to really matter that much and the concrete wall would hide it from any drivers or cops. So I think that zip ties would work really well for this situation. Anyways, I ended up leaning the sign against the fencing and leaving it at that. I drove round to get onto the freeway so I could see how it looked but by the time I got there it had most likely fallen over. Hopefully a sympathetic pedestrian put it back up. I think I will bike to that site in the future with a fold up sign.

For those unfamiliar with freeway blogging check out the link. Fun times!

Ghostgrrrl & Sweet Jane

Ghostgrrrl is born

Hello,
Let's see where this goes.