Call Senator Daschle on Monday to thank him for helping oppose the FMA

The One Million Bigoted Moms are planning to use Monday, July 19, 2004 as a call-in day to beat Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle up for helping stop the Gay Bashing Amendment to the US Constitution.  Please give Daschle's office a holler and tell them that you appreciate what he did - especially if you're from South Dakota, make sure all of your South Dakota friends call him and/or send a note.  Thanks.
 
As background, it was the Republicans who filibustered THEIR OWN AMENDMENT.  The Democrats wanted an immediate up or down vote, and the Rs refused.   And as for the "liberals" opposing the bill, so did John McCain and Senator Sununu, neither known to be very liberal.  Finally, the vote they're calling for is one that is predicted to lose even more miserably than the one they had the past week.  But what this appeal does prove is that the radical right is PISSED that the pro-gay forces outfoxed them this past week, and now they want another vote to nail down who is on their side and who isn't.  A big na na na na na to them.
 
And finally, is it just me, but why the hell is a man running One Million Moms? (See the end of the letter below?)  Do any women work at ANY of these radical right women's groups?
 
This is the email they just sent me:

July 19, 2004
Please make one phone call to Senator Daschle today!
 
Dear John,

Senator Tom Daschle, Senate Minority leader, was the one person who held the liberals together to filibuster the Federal Marriage Amendment, thus keeping the American people from having a vote in this matter.

Sen. Daschle is leading the fight to use our children and grandchildren as guinea pigs in a grand social experiment promoting homosexual marriage. You see, if the people are kept from voting, then some liberal federal judge will rule that homosexual marriage is legal and throw out the marriage laws in 50 states. That is precisely what Sen. Daschle is trying to do. He is willing to sacrifice our children and grandchildren to get the big money and a handful of votes from the homosexual activists.

Shortly before the vote, Sen. Daschle said that his office was not receiving any phone calls on the FMA. There will be another effort made to allow the people an opportunity to vote on the FMA later.

Would you please call Senator Daschle's office today and ask him to allow a vote on the bill so that the American people can have an opportunity to participate in the democratic process?

Just one phone call is all I am asking. Please make that call today. If the line is busy, please keep trying until you get through. Ask why he is unwilling to allow citizens to vote on this matter.

Sen. Daschle's number is 1-202-224-2321. If that number is busy, call 1-202-224-5556. Those numbers go straight into his office. Please be kind and polite, but firm.
 
Thanks for caring.
 
Sincerely,
Donald E. Wildmon, Chairman
OneMillionMoms.com

Andrew rips Bush

Time Magazine:

"...this President has decided it will help him politically to tear us apart. His base is restless over government spending and Iraq, and this is a means to placate and energize it. If that means turning a tiny minority into a lethal threat to civilization, so be it. If that minority's sole crime is to seek to live in fidelity, uphold the family, support responsibility, then that also is beside the point. In this battle, the President has shown his true colors. He is a divider, not a uniter."

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Tidbit on Mary Cheney & mom in Newsweek

Newsweek does a story on the Cheney family. Interesting how Mary Matalin is now trying to rewrite history regarding Mrs. Cheney having broken ranks last week in saying gay marriage is an issue that should be left for the states. Matalin's explanation is simply bizarre.

"Mary, 35, is a lesbian, a slightly awkward reality for a family identified with conservative family values. An M.B.A., she helped the Coors Brewing Co. handle a boycott by the gay community. (Gay-rights activists have targeted Mary, putting her face on a milk carton to pressure her to use her influence inside the Bush administration.) Last week, when the Senate voted down a resolution calling for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, Lynne Cheney spoke up to say that the issue should be a matter for the states to decide. Her remark was interpreted by some media outlets as breaking with the president, who had pushed the gay-marriage ban. Not so, says Matalin. 'She was really carefully, artfully calibrating not to part with the president' while at the same time being 'cognizant' of her role as a mother."

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Chicago Trib: Political blogs catching on

Interesting article about political blogs from the Trib. Read the rest of this post...

Minn. GOP Asks Activists to Report on Neighbors' Politics

First they came for gay-Americans, then they came for Muslim-Americans, now they're coming for you...

The [Minnesota] state Republican Party has developed a Web site that allows its activists to tap into a database of voters whose political allegiances and concerns it would like to know. But it is not just any group of voters -- they are the activists' neighbors.

The project, dubbed WebVoter, gives GOP activists the names and addresses of 25 people who live, in most cases, within a couple of blocks from them. The party has asked 60,000 supporters from across the state to figure out what issues animate their neighbors and where they stand in the political spectrum, and report that information back to the party -- with or, possibly, without their neighbors' permission.

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Mass grave numbers in Iraq prove to be inflated so far

Despite earlier claims that 400,000 bodies have been discovered in mass graves in Iraq, the actual number is slightly different and closer to 5,000.  This isn't meant to minimize the deaths of those people, but once again it weakens a justification for this war.  I recall the story of mass graves being pushed hard last year as Bush and Blair started to take heat for a lack of WMDs in Iraq.  One by one, every story that they spin to justify the war turns out to be a lie.
 

Downing Street has admitted to The Observer that repeated claims by Tony Blair that '400,000 bodies had been found in Iraqi mass graves' is untrue, and only about 5,000 corpses have so far been uncovered.

The claims by Blair in November and December of last year, were given widespread credence, quoted by MPs and widely published, including in the introduction to a US government pamphlet on Iraq's mass graves.
 
The USAID website, which quotes Blair's 400,000 assertion, states: 'If these numbers prove accurate, they represent a crime against humanity surpassed only by the Rwandan genocide of 1994, Pol Pot's Cambodian killing fields in the 1970s, and the Nazi Holocaust of World War II.'
 
'Local people would tell us of 10,000s of people buried at single grave sites and when we would get there they would be in multiple hundreds.'