This year I am endorsing quite a mixed bag for the general election. It is an unusual list for me, mixing Greens, WFP and Democrats. I have some serious beefs with both the Greens and WFP, but sometimes they do hit on a superior candidate. But I am so not about Party line this year (somewhat uncharacteristically).

Mayor: Bill Thompson (Democratic Party)  read more »

I like the National Jewish Democratic Council's take on this news story better than anyone's:

NJDC welcomes Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter to the Democratic Party.

The Democratic Party of 2009 is an inclusive party that believes political parties should be big tents. In contrast, the Republican Party of 2009 is a party which believes in circling the wagons into an ever smaller and smaller circle until only the ideologically pure are welcome. Senator Specter has been a Republican since 1966 but he has never been a conservative ideologue. It has become increasingly clear in recent years that he is not ideologically pure enough for the Republican activists of today.

The Republican Party’s continued shift to the right has had negative implications for GOP support in the Jewish community. Despite the fact that in every election cycle conservative Jewish activists claim that Jews are becoming more Republican, the Jewish vote for Republicans at the national level is stuck at about 20%. Moreover, over the last decade there are fewer and fewer Republican Jewish office holders at the national level.  read more »

This week Obama named one of his best cabinet picks yet: Dr. Steven Chu, director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, former chair of Stanford University's physics department, and Nobel Prize-winning (for research in laser cooling and trapping of atoms) physicist, was named Obama's Energy Secretary. Chu also has been an early and strong supporter of alternative fuels and renewable energy research. THIS is the kind of leadership this country needs!

It should be noted that this is the FIRST Energy Secretary who is genuinely an expert on energy.

Dr. Chu's impressive biography can be found here.

Here's a video of Steve Chu at the Davos Annual Meeting, 2007, talking about Climate Change:  read more »

There's not much to add to what Phil writes here on the shameful, catastrophic, un-American bill that passed the House today, the one that gives telecom companies legal immunity for spying on American citizens and retroactively legalizes the Bush administration's orders to do so.

The House today overwhelmingly approved a sweeping new surveillance law that effectively would shield telecommunications companies from privacy lawsuits for cooperating with the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping program.

Ending a year-long battle with President Bush, the House approved, 293 to 129, a re-write of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that extends the government's ability to eavesdrop on espionage and terrorism suspects while providing a legal escape hatch for AT&T, Verizon Communications and other telecommunication firms. The companies face more than 40 lawsuits that allege they violated customers' privacy rights by helping the government conduct a warrantless spying program after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

"Warrantless" - such a benign expression, isn't it? The better word for it is "in violation of the Fourth Amendment", but that would be too, well, in-your-face for the stewards of our public welfare to contemplate.

The ten Democratic representatives who voted for this monstrosity in our state, and who should be primaried as the barest tolerable retribution for this offense against the Constitution and your rights as a citizen, are:

Ackerman (NY-5) - Contact
Arcuri (NY-24) - Contact
Bishop (NY-1) - Contact
Crowley (NY-7) - Contact
Engel (NY-17) - Contact
Gillibrand (NY-20) - Contact
Higgins (NY-27) - Contact
Lowey (NY-18) - Contact
McCarthy (NY-4) - Contact
Meeks (NY-6) - Contact

Or, if you prefer, the Capitol switchboard is at (202) 224-3121.

They need to hear from you. Ask them why they think the Fourth Amendment (and that quaint rule-of-law stuff that was so important in the matter of one Monica Lewinsky) ceased to have any real meaning, and which other fundamental freedom of this Republic they're going to offer up next to Mr. 28%.

[Update: The Squadron campaign emails over their endorsement by the Communications Workers of America (CWA, Local 1), and I now have my own tag with the New York Observer.]

This has already been discussed here and here, but I'd like to chime in along with Messrs. Anderson and Harding on some recent developments in the Progressive Movement.

First, on DFNYC's primary endorsements: I'm not sure I get it. That organization, the local chapter of Democracy for America, adds to its list of incomprehensible endorsements - Tasini over Clinton comes to mind, because that was such a winnable fight, or DFNYC's phase as the committee to elect Norman Siegel - with their newest round, in which they decided to back Powell over Towns in the Tenth CD, Henry over Newell and Silver in the Sixty-Fourth AD, and took a pass on the Twenty-fifth SD, featuring Connor versus Squadron. I'm going to reserve judgment on the Tenth, given that neither of the Democrats running is really all that much to write home about; Towns has been co-opted by a Washington culture of the moneyed interest and regularly votes against the interest of his constituents, and Powell has a history that is marred by some episodes best not discussed. In the Sixty-Fourth and Twenty-Fifth, however, the choices are clear: Luke Henry is a very pleasant guy, no question, but there's a discernible gravitas gap, organizational gap, stature gap, money gap, and any number of related gaps between Henry and Paul Newell, the Blue to Bluer netroots candidate. Maybe the good people at DFNYC see something I don't, but what is clear is that their Henry endorsement splits the Progressive community on the arguably most important race in this state. I fail to see how this helps in the larger strategic effort, frankly.

As to the Squadron-Connor race, there's a strategic imperative as well, and it runs like this: Connor is not, by any stretch of the imagination, the worst of Albany's incumbents. But the Albany incumbency as a whole could use some shaking up, insulated as it is from the concerns of the citizenry. We need, as a state, to infuse fresh blood into both chambers of the legislature; Dan Squadron's campaign could be the first ripple of a wave of new fresh faces who are suddenly considering public service. With the Senate about to flip, membership in that body will become very attractive to some smart younger people who could transform it into a bastion of Progressive leadership. First up to the bat is Dan Squadron. There's a reason the Working Families Party is practically entranced by that race, and this is it.  read more »