NOTICE!!! Wounded Veterans and family members of Veterans who were killed as a result of injuries sustained in the Iraq War –

1. If you disagree with the Iraq War, and
2. If you believe that the Iraq War was illegal, and
3. If you believe that you or a beloved family member was placed in harms way without legal or just cause and
4. This deployment was the actual cause of your loved one’s death or of your injuries as a survivor,

JOIN CLASS ACTION SIGN UP

CASU Is registering injured Veterans and Family members of deceased Veterans for a Class Action Lawsuit against the President, Vice President and other members of their Administration for the Wrongful Death, Injuries, and Deprivation of Civil Rights related to the deaths and injuries of the deceased or injured Veterans.

To sign up as a Class Member, email: classaction99@nowaybush.info or visit www.nowaybush.info and click on link for “Class Action Sign-Up”

As a Latin Americanist who has spent not only a lot of time in the region, but lived in Mexico for most of the 90s, I find it interesting that you seek to compare the 2004 US election with Lopez Obrador’s pathetic populist-hero drama.  It would benefit your readership tremendously to explain this in light of the PRD’s tactics that included – preventing the election authorities from carrying out their legitimate tallying activities in pro-PAN states in an effort to delay the arrival of PAN votes in Mexico City; Lopez Obrador’s overt threats to call mass demonstrations if he was not declared the winner; and perhaps most importantly, the rampant corruption of his administration during his Mexico City mayorship last term.  Lopez Obrador is about as manipulative as they get in Latin American populism.

Give the Mexicans a break Bob. Their election has about as much to do with you or the 2004 elections or Chavez as you do with reality.

James T Anderson
Mexico Home Capital Holdings, L.P.

A group of civic organizations filed a lawsuit today seeking to overturn restrictions on voter registration in the state of Ohio. The requirements laid out by the state drastically limit the ability of civic groups to register new voters and threaten individual registration workers with felony charges for minor mistakes handling forms. The rules will limit voter registration, unnecessarily exclude eligible voters from the election process, and suppress the vote in Ohio.

The complaint filed today in United States District Court, Northern District of Ohio, raises several concerns with House Bill 3 and the rules and procedures set forth by the Secretary of State, including:

• In the past, citizens working to register voters were able to turn in the completed forms to a civic group or church that would review the forms for accuracy, turn them into the registrar, and follow up later to make sure the voter was actually registered. Now, workers collecting voter registration forms would be forbidden from doing that and would be subject to felony charges if the forms were to be handed in late or not directly to registrars' offices.

At the heart of what is often touted as the mightiest empire in world history, it's not a pretty sight at the start of July. After a few chipmunk squeaks from the White House a couple of weeks ago about there being somehow a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel in Iraq, the news rolls in that it's as bad, if not worse, than ever.

Bomb explosions in Baghdad wipe out scores of ordinary people in a single minute, the motive advertised -- maybe truthfully -- as sectarian hatred, between Shia and Sunni. The entire country, with the exception of the Kurdish provinces in the north, is transfixed with terror, as people flee neighborhoods because they are in the wrong religious faction.

Come to a road block and you don't know whether it's a unit of Iraqi police, a unit of Iraqi killers disguised as police, a group of U.S. soldiers intent on revenge on anyone because one of their buddies just got blown up by a roadside bomb.

The world's headlines are filled with one terrible story after another about atrocities perpetrated by U.S. forces. The latest is

A few days ago the Clean Money Elections bill, AB 583, died a quiet, lonely death in a California State Senate committee. This bill would have given candidates for public office a choice in financing their campaigns: Do what they do now, which is solicit and accept large donations from wealthy individuals and corporations or, they could collect only small, individual donations and receive public financing. More importantly, this bill would have given us voters a choice too. We would have been able to vote for a Clean Money representative able to vote his own conscious or for the usual, Pay to Play politician.

The wonderful thing that happened a few days ago was not the demise of the Clean Money Bill. No, that was awful. But the California Nurses Association, anticipating the moral failure of our elected representatives, sponsored a Clean Money initiative. 620,000 concerned California voters signed their petition and a few days ago, Proposition 89, the “Clean Money and Fair Elections Act” qualified for our November ballot. Regular Californians, you and I, will be able to vote on this issue and, if it passes, no corporate shill will be able