In a video interview with Tom Andrews posted at http://www.movecongress.org Congressman Jack Murtha makes clear that the limitations on additional war money that he intends to include in the forthcoming "emergency" supplemental bill are aimed only at undoing the recent escalation (a.k.a. "surge"), not at ending the war.

Murtha begins by claiming that this week's nonbinding vote opposing the escalation reinforces the message of the Nov. 7, 2006, election.  That would be quite a feat, given that Bush did not propose his escalation until after the election, an election that everyone understood as expressing opposition to Bush, Cheney, and their war.  Americans wanted then what they still want: to end the war.

Murtha explains that the next step after this week's nonbinding vote will be a House vote on a Supplemental bill adding more money to the war.  Murtha plans to include in that bill restrictions on how troops can be used in Iraq: 
1. They can't be kept there over a year.
  2. They can't be sent without proper training and equipment. 

When analyzing the consequences of and remedies for discrimination against African Americans, courts and scholars characterize African Americans as a minority.  This Article shows that the traditional approach is wrong: When it mattered, when the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments were enacted and for decades after, African Americans were a majority or controlling plurality in the states where most lived. African American-backed majoritarian governments controlled the South after the Civil War; while in power, they enacted strong civil rights laws and created a public education system. These policies were reversed, and segregation imposed, not because African Americans were a minority, destined to lose in the majoritarian political process, but rather through elimination of democratic politics and imposition of minority rule.  African Americans and their white allies were stripped of their electoral majority through fraud, violence and illegal disenfranchisement. This Article argues that the most important harm African Americans suffered was something that the law has until now overlooked: Loss of the right to control the governments of several

Right now, the House is debating the resolution against escalation in Iraq. While this is an important first step, we know that it's going to take more than non-binding resolutions to stop the surge and bring the war to an end. We've signed petitions, held rallies, and made phone calls -- now it's time to get face to face with Congress to hold them accountable to Iraq.

On Tuesday, February 20th, everyday people will be meeting with Representatives at their district offices to tell them that we expect them to act now to start bringing our troops home. Will you set up a meeting with Representative Patrick Tiberi?

Congressional contacts

It's a lot easier than it sounds. Click here to get all the information you need to start setting up a meeting with your Representative about Iraq.

Representatives will be home from Washington all next week and it's the perfect time to start talking to them about the next steps in Iraq. Congress has the power to stop the escalation once and for all and it's up to us to hold them accountable.

Journalism is not a profession or a trade. It is a cheap catch-all for fuckoffs and misfits - a false doorway to the backside of life, a filthy piss-ridden little hole nailed off by the building inspector, but just deep enough for a wino to curl up from the sidewalk and masturbate like a chimp in a zoo-cage."~~Hunter Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

If the Bush administration and the US mainstream media are united on any one issue, it's an absolute refusal to rock the political boat as they sail mercilessly through the seas of corporate profit on the good ship Terrorbush. For the most part, each group is an incurious lot -- undead creatures who neither care, nor dare, to glance over the side of the ship at the bloated, swirling bodies in the blood-red water below. From the beginning, their mission has been to perform so fantastically against a backdrop of such violent, explosive madness on so many fronts that we watch hypnotically but do not see -- listen intently but do not hear.

They are very good at what they do.

With the Bush administration taking increasingly provocative actions toward Iran, like the deployment of aircraft carriers to the Gulf, the arrest of Iranian representatives in Iraq, and the sharp escalation in bellicose rhetoric it seems clear that they’re at least considering a military strike. Here’s an idea that might help deter it.

Suppose groups like MoveOn, TrueMajority, and Democracy For America circulated a petition where those who signed it would ask our Senators, Representatives, and any of the other Democratic Presidential Candidates to pledge to oppose any attack on Iran and to also promise to initiate impeachment hearings if Bush attacked Iran without getting explicit Congressional authorization.