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Table of Contents * featured articles Commentaries from Our Members Nina
Laboy: Lieutenant Watada Wins Dwight
Rousu: Specific Charges Support Impeachment Dave Thomas:
It’s Affordable Housing, Stupid Liberals and Democrats State and Local
Links Christine
Gregoire Named Governor of the Year* Is Dino Rossi
On the Wrong Team? 48th
LD Legislators’ Transportation Town Meeting Nation and World
Links More than
Men, Women are Supporting Democrats Do Democratic
Voters Prefer Progress to Perfection? Differences
among Democratic Presidential Candidates* Labor
Unions On the Move Again* Our
Liberal Spirit Life is for Living, but Philosophy
Makes Living Better Our Political Priorities ·
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Fair Taxes and Competent Spending ·
Investment for Productivity ·
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Environmental Protection and Energy ·
Personal Security and Equal Rights ·
Justice and Peace Everywhere ·
International Cooperation and Leadership Conservatives
oppose all of these. Let’s End Our National Nightmare Let’s Restore Our American Dream Quote of the Week In our every deliberation,
we must consider the impact of our decisions on the next seven
generations. Iroquois saying
Saturday,
November 17 at 10 AM at Redmond Library (
Saturday,
November 17 at 1 PM at
Saturday,
November 17 at 7:30 PM at Kane Hall, UW campus,
Sunday,
November 18 at 2 PM at Kent Regional Library (212 – 2nd Avenue
North, Kent) – King County Legislative Action Committee, with Senator Claudia
Kauffman, Senator Karen Keiser (Health Care) and Representative Eileen
Cody. Discussion of 2007 legislative
recommendations.
Friday,
November 30, at 6:30 PM at
Wednesday,
November 30 at 7 PM at King County Library Administration Building (
Monday,
December 10 at 7:15 PM at
Sunday,
December 16 at 2 PM at Greenlake Library (
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Commentaries From Our
Members
Email from Nina Laboy
BIG VICTORY
FOR LT. EHREN WATADA!
On Friday
November 8th, the Hon. Benjamin Settle issued a preliminary injunction halting
any further court martial proceedings of Lt. Ehren Watada, effectively ruling
against the Army on virtually every issue in the case. This injunction
not only extended the stay until the conclusion of the habeas corpus proceedings,
but addressed the specific request for relief from any further proceedings,
stating "the remedy sought by Petitioner, while rare, is
appropriate". There is no word whether the military will appeal this
ruling to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Antiwar activists around the world salute Lt. Watada's courageous action, as
well as the courage displayed by the judge in finding that "for several
reasons...it is likely that (Lt. Watada) will succeed on the merits of his
double jeopardy claim". The court held not only that the military judge
acted "irrationally, irresponsibly, precipitately" in failing to
consider feasible alternatives to a mistrial, but there was no good reason to
stop the trial. This ruling came after the repeated refusal of the
military appeals courts to free Lt. Watada of the burden of a second
trial. Lt. Watada's attorneys have consistently argued that the military
was not allowed a "do-over" after the military judge halted the first
trial in the wake of admissions by the prosecution witnesses of Lt. Watada's
fine character and that his actions were an act of conscience.
"My fellow soldiers are fighting and dying in
Lt. Watada faced court martial and up to 6 years imprisonment for refusing to
deploy and for speaking out against a war that he believes is illegal. His
first trial in February, 2007, ended in a mistrial and he was assigned to desk
duty in
Nina Laboy, Associate Regional Director,
American Friends Service Committee, Pacific NW Regional Office, 814 NE 40th St,
Seattle, WA 98105, 206-632-0500, 206-355-4032,
http://www.afsc.org/pacificnw/default.htm
Letter by Dwight Rousu published by
This is regarding Kenneth F. Bunting's
"specificity" column in Friday's P-I. The motion to impeach Vice
President Dick Cheney is a motion to start the process of drawing up the
articles of impeachment, including the subpoenas and testimony that support the
process of delineating the specificity that may be appropriate.
Arguing that the motion lacked
specificity seems a relatively specious argument that denies the reality of the
process and denies the large body of specific charges that have been drawn up
and widely circulated around the nation.
The very light publication of the
specific charges in the
There are many independent sources with
very specific charges. Among examples are:
impeachforpeace.org/index.php.
The media seem to self-censor news and
charges that many would rather not believe about elected leaders of our
country. The sparseness of coverage of the impeachment charges is a case in
point. This can be as bad as official censorship with regard to preventing the
people from being informed of important issues. Dwight Rousu
Letter by
It’s
Affordable Housing, Stupid
It’s affordable housing, stupid.
Lack of affordable housing near jobs produces urban sprawl. Sprawl produces commuting and
congestion. These produce
pollution. Commuting also diminishes
personal and family time.
It’s not traffic congestion.
Even proponents of transportation fixes admit they won’t make much
difference. Unfortunately that’s where
the pork is. So we keep trying to fix
the symptom.
Let’s find out how much it would cost to entice people to live nearer
their work. Buying down the cost of
houses and apartments near jobs might be the solution to all these
problems. And it might be cheaper than
transportation fixes. At an average cost
of $100,000 per residence, $1 billion would provide 10,000 residences for sale
or rent at permanently lower prices.
Also see Charles Royer’s
commentary about Seattle’s housing squeeze.
Our commercial media and
their pundits speak of higher gas and food prices as bad, but higher housing
prices as good. Higher housing prices
may be good for owners, but they are not good for those who rent, or for those
who want to buy a house, especially our younger individuals and couples. Nor are they good for those who want to live
closer to where they work. Nor for all
of us who are affected by urban sprawl, traffic congestion and resulting
pollution.
Liberals and Democrats
Our Values and Policies
Our Values
We have
explicitly stated our values. Key words are freedom, opportunity, equality,
responsibility, competence, compassion and cooperation. Perhaps also, leadership. Our vision is a world in which these values
are everywhere realized. Our mission is
to realize this vision. To proceed, we
must first identify the obstacles to our vision and then establish strategies
for overcoming these obstacles.
Our National Nightmare
Our present National Nightmare is the most comprehensive that we have exp