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Table of Contents * featured articles Commentaries from Our Members Linda
Boyd: Impeachment, If Not Now, When? Dave
Gamrath: Bush, Cheney Are Criminals Bert Sacks:
Impeachment to End Lawlessnes Donald
Smith: Balanced Media Coverage Needed * Liberals and Democrats Links to
the Beef It’s Time for
LD Evaluation and Planning * We Just Did It: Canvassing and
More * State and Local Links to the
Beef Washington Economy Squeezes
Families Income Tax Necessary for Adequate
State Services Nation and World
Links to the Beef American
Federalism: 50 Experiments Our Liberal Spirit Walk Your Talk or Just Shut Up
* Our Political Priorities ·
Fair Clean Elections and Open Government ·
Fair Taxes and Competent Spending ·
Investment for Productivity ·
Quality Health, Education, Jobs, Income and Retirement ·
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 Interrupting Venezuelan
President Hugo Chavez, King Juan Carlo I of
I
strongly recommend that everyone see the movie Inlaws and Outlaws. With remarkable honesty, good
humor, great music and real heart, Inlaws
& Outlaws weaves together true stories of couples and singles,
gay and straight to celebrate what we all have in common: we love. For
more.
Wednesday,
November 30 at 7 PM at King County Library Administration Building (
Wednesday,
December 5 at 6 PM at Piecora’s Pizza (
Tuesday,
December 11 at 8:30 PM at the Comedy Underground (
Wednesday,
December 12 at 6:30 PM at
Join Working America in alliance with
labor union members
Join Fuse to identify and communicate and
cooperate with other Washington State Liberals
Order Democracy
in America ‘Precinct Organizing’ and other Night School Training videos
Order You Decide/Usted Decide, NARAL’s
bilingual English-Spanish resource guide for accessing reproductive health care
and safe abortion services across
Support the Dearborn Street Coalition to get better
redevelopment of Goodwill site.
Petition your national
legislators to restore low prescription birth control prices
Ask
your senators to support the Disaster Needs of Children act.
Ask you member of
congress to pass a bill to protect our privacy.
Tell your
congress members to pass a clean energy bill
Sign
NRDC petition to protect Moab area Red Rock Wilderness area.
Ask your congress to stop Bush from
committing us to an endless presence in Iraq.
Commentaries From Our
Members
Linda Boyd – Commentary published by the
Lawmakers need to stand up for the Constitution and support
impeachment. Read the entire commentary.
Simply put, through massive deception that everyday folks would plainly
call lies, The Bush administration has begun what very well could be the
beginning of World War III. Read the entire letter.
Bert Sacks – letter published by
Linda Boyd’s guest column “Impeachment: If not now, when?” offers many
grounds for impeachment, the most serious of which is “illegal war, in
violation of both international treaty and the constitution.” Read the entire letter.
Donald Smith – Commentary published by
the
The Proper Imbalance
Newspapers and
commercial broadcast stations are in the unusual position of being both
profit-making organizations and unelected guardians of the public trust. But
the only tools used to encourage responsible news coverage are the blunt
instruments of FCC regulations and market forces. Read the entire Commentary.
For radio and TV
stations, the obligation to serve the public is legally enforceable, since
public airwaves are allocated by the FCC, which can set rules about the amount
of programming devoted to news, local content and diversity of opinion. Indeed,
at the FCC hearings in
For print media,
regulations are nonexistent. Nothing but market forces prevent a newspaper from
publishing biased views. However, FCC cross-ownership rules make it less likely
that extreme views will dominate. Accordingly, at the recent FCC hearing,
numerous speakers appealed for a continuation of strict media cross-ownership
rules.
Yet there is no
legalistic way for the FCC to guarantee an equitably balanced diversity of
opinions. There will always be minority opinions suppressed by society —
sometimes for bad reasons (e.g., lack of money), but often for good reasons. If
the media gave equal access for all points of view, then it would give equal
space to deniers of the Holocaust (or global warming, or the theory of
evolution) as to its affirmers.
In short,
"balanced" shouldn't mean "equal access for all views."
But public opinion
evolves, and sometimes viewpoints that were once on the fringe become
mainstream. Not until the 1960s did civil rights become mainstream. Perhaps the
media should now be giving more voice to the issue of Palestinian rights, or
the dangers of Islamo-fascism, or the arguments for impeachment, or the
desirability of school vouchers, or the immorality of the war in
The active jockeying for access