I first want to say that I generally disagree with the lawsuit against M.D.E. because he seemed to be largely ignorant of intellectual property and copyright laws, and has since rectified it (and there may be a case to be made about 'fair use' since he was using the graphic as proof for one of his many unfounded accusations). I also disagree with the notion that MDE should be exposed through the courts, since I believe in protected anonymous political speech (if MDE exposes himself through carelessness, that's another story) and he hasn't broken any serious laws.

I also disagree with the notion that Inside Minnesota Politics is doing this just to spite MDE because he is a threat to DFLers. That's just silly, MDE is, if anything, a poor man's Drudge Report (except MDE never had his Lewinsky moment). A lot of blowing things out of proportion, recycling other people's stuff (i.e. reprinting MN GOP press releases and calling it news), and a bunch of "exclusives" which are either petty, rumors, or never pan out. I think that while we don't feel threatened by MDE, it would feel good to give him a taste of his own medicine.

The last thing we should do is make a martyr out of this man, frankly he's no Nelson Mandela nor should he be thought of that way. I also believe in consistency when it comes to these sorts of things. I don't want to see a good anonymous blog to go through this in the future, so why should I support it when it comes to MDE?

I would suggest that MDE should talk to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, sort of the ACLU of the internet, and they might be a big help in this case. Any sort of lawyer you can hire with the money gathered from bloggers will probably not go very far, talk to the EFF. If they won't offer help, then talk to the ACLU, they might be interested.

The final question is, will MDE eventually stop deleting/blocking my comments on his blog?

Now that I have subscribed to Screech Kennedy's e-mail alerts, I was alerted that Congressman Kennedy is actually the champion of fiscal discipline.

He sent this out to his supporters (and me):

In an effort to curb out of control spending in Washington, Mark Kennedy cast the deciding vote for fiscal responsibility early Friday morning, helping pass the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005. He issued the following statement:

“Washington shouldn’t have a blank check, and as a CPA and businessman I’m happy to see us act to reduce our federal deficit. This bill reduces spending in a way that reflects our Minnesota values and sets priorities. We owe it to our children to lower the deficit.

“Only in Washington would you hear slowing the rate of spending increases called a ‘cut.’ This bill preserves important student financial aid, Medicaid and safety net programs while providing low income heating aid.”

“It’s [sic] never easy to restrain the growth of spending, even modestly. There are so many special interest groups advocating for more spending. But my job is to stand up for hard working, taxpaying families in Minnesota (Editor's note: This does not include the moochers who use food stamps and Medicaid). That’s what this bill does. It protects important programs while getting spending under control. The answer is not higher taxes and even more government spending

So, Screech (can I call you that?), Minnesota's priorities are to cut funding to Pell grants? Or to not assist the state of Minnesota in collecting child support? Are you now courting the deadbeat dad vote? Are Minnesota's priorities represented in the trillions of dollars in tax cuts for the wealthiest of its citizens? Why is fiscal responsibility a priority over programs for the poor but you insist on cutting revenue sources as well? I want a pledge right now that you will oppose any and all new tax cuts until there is a balanced budget then. If fiscal responsibility is your new battle cry, you better damn well stick to it. As a CPA, you do know that you can't exactly balance the books if you cut revenue every since chance you get.

Yesterday (and early this morning), the "honorable" Mark Kennedy voted for two appropriation measures that will make for some fantastic commercials that Amy Klobuchar can run as she storms towards victory next year.

This first measure failed because the Republicans couldn't keep 22 members of their own party from swallowing that pill. But Mark Kennedy seems to be willing to swallow anything the Bush administration gives him. He voted for these bills to cut enough from social programs, healthcare for the poor, federal loans for students and aid for family farms, so that he can come back in a few weeks to give tax breaks to the people that really need them: namely the people that won't be hurt by the previous cuts.

The second, more "moderate" bill, did pass, although I'm sure that Kennedy was ticked that they weren't able to cut enough from health care and education programs like the old one did.

The second bill:

"[The measure enthusiastically endorsed by Kennedy] would cut about 220,000 people off food stamps, allow states to impose new costs on Medicaid beneficiaries, squeeze student lenders, cut aid to state child-support enforcement programs and trim farm supports."
Source: Washington Post 11/18/05

The text of my ad, ala John Kerry 2004.

"Mark Kennedy campaigned on helping college students and family farmers. Why is it that Kennedy voted to cut funding from these groups, as well as child support enforcement and assistance for the poor?

[Caricature of Mark Kennedy's head with President Bush in the corner. After each vote is announced, Kennedy pauses, looks to Bush, Bush then starts nodding, then Kennedy votes.]

[Sound of a "roll call vote" announcer]: "Cut funding for student loans. Mr. Kennedy"
[Slight pause, Kennedy looks to Bush, Bush nods]
[Voice of Screech from Saved by the Bell]: "Yes"

["Roll call" announcer]: "Cut assistance for family farms. Mr. Kennedy"
[Slight pause, Kennedy looks to Bush, Bush nods]
[Screech]: "Yes"

["Roll call" announcer]: "Cut funding that helps enforce child support payments. Mr. Kennedy"
[Slight pause, Kennedy looks to Bush, Bush nods]
[Screech]: "Yes"

["Roll call" announcer]: "Cut $11 billion in funding for Medicaid. Mr. Kennedy"
[Slight pause, Kennedy looks to Bush, Bush nods]
[Screech]: "Yes"

Minnesota "The Sky is Falling" Democrats Exposed today called for Amy Klobuchar to demand that Sen. Mark Dayton sell his stock in Exxon Mobile. This is because Amy (rightly) believes that a fraction of their record profits should go to help families that will need to heat their homes this winter. Anyway, MDE posted one page of a 25 page Personal Financial Disclosure form as proof that Dayton is in on the gouging too! Except that he isn't, and he probably couldn't sell the stock if he wanted to. Want to know why?

First of all, all of Dayton's stocks are controlled by a trustee, and he has little to no control over them (just ask Fristy). Second, if you were to actually show the full Personal Financial Disclosure form (which is here), you would see that "Okabena Partnership C" owns the stock. Guess what else, his trust (it appears from 1936) is invested in that partnership (hence the indentation for all the stocks listed under it).

He simply has no control over it, do you honestly think that Mark Dayton would go out and buy stock in Wal Mart?? (look down at page 12, for example) Why doesn't he have them sell that stock and use the money to buy stock in the great Minnesota company his family used to own, Target? Because he has no control over what stocks his trustee buys, but he does have to report it.

Come back MDE when you actually have something legitimate. You see, in our government, we think there is the potential for a conflict of interest if Senators could, say, buy stock in oil companies right before they open up ANWR for drilling. That's why they have trusts (the other reason why Mark Dayton has a trust is because his family has boat-loads of money and they gave him a lot of it in a trust).

This lesson in American civics was brought to you by a state school liberal arts education.

I am proud to report here first that Republican Minnesota and triple_a (Andy Aplikowski) from Screech v. Machine are going to be running for Hennepin County Attorney in 2006! Apparently the person who currently holds the job, Amy Klobuchar, turned out to not be a seasoned prosecutor because she seems to be letting people clearly guilty of murder roam the streets of Minneapolis! I was shocked too, but read on.

I mean, it is clear enough from the Star Tribune article that the man arrested for taking the dead man's stuff is clearly guilty of murder. Who needs any sort of evidence or witnesses? The man was near the dead body (duh, hasn't anyone heard the phrase "guilt by association"), what more do you need to arrest him? The Minneapolis police are in on it too, because they are still looking for suspects for the murder! This is just futile because Republican Minnesota and Mr. Aplikowski have already solved the case! They had the murderer all along and just let him go!

I don't know what law school RM and Mr. Aplikoski attended, but I'm sure between the two of them, they have the sharpest legal minds in the entire state. Ms. Klobuchar, however doesn't seem to know the law at all (is this "University of Chicago Law School" a real school anyway?).

Maybe they'll make a new Law and Order series out of these two crack legal minds. I can see it now, each episode would be about 2 minutes long. The new convention will be the two of them reading through Twin Cities' newspapers, finding the guilty party through the articles, and then "dunk-dunk" -- another crime solved by Republican Minnesota and Andy Aplikowski. Maybe Dick Wolf will make me co-creator.

Triple_a made a post today on KvM talking about the irresponsible "blogger" campaign finance legislation (which, ironically, has very little to do with actual bloggers). One of the opponents to this legislation, the Hon. Marty Meehan D-Mass, made an excellent point about this legislation opening up a huge loophole that would allow corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money on internet advertising in exchange for Congressmen like Kennedy supporting friendly legislation. Kennedy v. Machine thinks this is a good thing; go figure. Anyway, Triple_a then went to show Rep. Meehan's campaign finance records for 2004 (below), implying that Meehan only listens to political action committees. Triple_a said, "Maybe it’s time to start a Blog PAC…"

Maybe it's time to understand what that information means when you cut and pasted it without actually reading it. By my count, in 2004, Meehan took $7,010 from PACs. Screech Kennedy, on the other hand, took $1,186,150 from PACs in the same year. Almost all of Meehan's money came from individuals, nearly half of Screech's money came from special interest political action committees.

Behold, the truth:

This is the PAC/Individual breakdown for Kennedy:

---

This is the PAC/Individual breakdown for Meehan:


Source: Opensecrets.org [Meehan] [Kennedy]

I don't know where to start with all this Kennedy blog bullshit. H.R. 1606 was not written to protect 99.995% of bloggers out there; they are protected by free speech and will never be regulated by the FEC. Even blogs that are obvious shills for the MN and National GOP (MDE, KvM, etc.) won't ever be regulated because they are run by individuals and are not affiliated with federal campaigns, parties, corporations and interest groups which are and should be regulated.

We all know that opponents of any kind of campaign finance regulation use "free speech" as their justification as to why corporations should be able to give millions of dollars directly to candidates. But as a society (and the courts have held this up), we value elections that are free of the appearance of corruption. This is why there are limits on what individuals can give to campaigns, because unregulated political contributions can give the appearance of corruption as well as undermine the faith in the public of our elective system. The internet is the next phase of political communication, and we need to be cautious. Just like on television, radio, and other forms of media, we need to have accountability when it comes to spending large amounts of money trying to affect the outcomes of elections.

Free speech is not at issue here, we're talking about opponents of campaign finance reform trying to undo decades of progress when it comes to the internet. The bill, as it stood unmodified, would allow any corporation, interest group or political party to say spend $50 million on an e-mail and online advertising campaign without any sort of disclaimer, and could frankly act directly on behalf of a candidate. The FEC does not and will not regulate individuals and their right to unlimited political speech, including anonymous political speech.

Supporting this bill would be to say that MoveOn.org should have been able to send e-mails to every voter in America telling them to vote for John Kerry, and not even say who was paying for the e-mail. We don't allow them to do that through the mail or on TV, but we should allow them to do it on the internet? That's what supporters of this bill wanted, I guess, otherwise they would have regulated it.

The internet is the future of campaigns in this country, and campaign finance reform opponents, like Screech Kennedy, want to open up the internet to the heydays of "soft money" influence that we all loved so much. It isn't about free speech for bloggers, it is about accountability for campaigns, corporations and interest groups that should be held accountable for the sake of public faith in the system.

Over the past week or two, I've noticed that my comments, which I know were posted (and have been independently verified by another person on another computer), have disappeared after a short time from Minnesota Democrats Exposed.

I figure it is one of two things, either Blogger is acting up (which is probably the case) or MDE is taking my exposing Michael Brodkorb as MDE personally and removing anything I say from his blog (if the second is the case, wouldn't that just confirm that MDE is Brodkorb?). To be honest, MDE doesn't seem like the type of blogger that would delete comments (outside of the immature ones posted by 'I Hate MDE' which should be deleted). But it is strange anyway. I'm not going to make that accusation, just present the evidence that I have. I just wrote the headline because it seems like the type of headline that MDE would use in this sort of situation :)

Take a look:

In this case, I had written a crude but still humorous response to what MDE and the MN GOP were asking of these DFL campaigns. Check the time stamps there (my computer's clock is an hour fast)


About 30 minutes later, my post is gone, and a new one is up.


I then ask if my comments are being deleted


Only to find that once again my comment disappears!

First of all, a hearty "thank you" to Senator Harry Reid for growing a pair and showing it yesterday. His call to closed session under Rule XXI to highlight the Intelligence Committee's failure to act on its investigation of Bush's intelligence manipulations was brilliant.

I found Bill Frist's crazy-man attack on Democrats very humorous. He statement that Democrats "...have no ... ideas" was downright hilarious! Well I'll admit it, Democrats did not think of using old Soviet prisons as torture jails, as was reported today. The Bush administration came up with that one all on its own.

For whatever reason, the good folks at Kennedy v. "The Machine" and Minnesota Democrats Exposed seem to think that R.T. Rybak trying to deflect responsibility is somehow going to doom Amy Klobuchar's campaign. That somehow this is the story of the century, and the "legacy media" is ignoring it. There are a number of flaws in this erroneous argument.

1. Amy Klobuchar is a prosecutor, not a probation officer. Just because he claims that 70% of the murderers in Minneapolis were on probation from Hennepin county is because that's the way things work! Is she the one sentencing them? Can you show me one city in America where a majority of homicides are committed by people with no criminal history?


2. Please, MN GOP and NRSC, go through that list and find those murderers, and show me the leniency from Amy's office for the crimes for which they were arrested and convicted. You have like 12 months. Ready... Go!


3. Rybak is facing a tough re-election campaign, would it be easier for him to A) accept his share of the blame or B) try to blame someone else? (I should disclaim that I will certainly be voting for Peter "Pete" McLaughlin next Tuesday)


4. When you do attack literature like that, take a hint from someone who knows a thing or two about it: If it takes like 13 paragraphs to explain something that isn't that hard hitting, people get confused and it weakens your whole case. (Take a look at my blog, I just ramble on and on and the message gets lost) Anyway, you could never turn this into a 30 second spot, and even if you could, who the hell would care?


5. Why doesn't Mark "Screech" Kennedy come out and say that Amy Klobuchar is a bad County Attorney? Isn't that why you guys are trying to say? By the way, what is it with Screech and his unhealthy obsession with meth?


6. Amy's record as a prosecutor is her strongest point, why are you trying to make it an issue in the race? That would be like Amy's campaign bringing up how proud Kennedy is that he votes with President Bush 99% of the time; that's Kennedy's strongest point! :) You need to attack your opponent at their weakest point. I don't want to help you out too much, but I think the GOP did a pretty good job recently [1] [2] of showing how women are unqualified to work in our legal system. Amy is a lawyer and a woman, just pull out the Harriet Miers playbook!


7. Finally, do you think that anyone within the city limits of Minneapolis will vote for anyone but Amy Klobuchar come November 2006, regardless of what cRybak says?

My whole point is that KvM and the NRSC claiming that this is the biggest news story in the race is just silly. Rybak was being a politician and trying to pass off the blame. Also, he never said one word about Amy or her office. Of course the "legacy media" is going to ignore it (Hint: IT ISN'T NEWS). Good thing you guys have News Max and Matt "Hurricanes and Homosexuals" Drudge to cover stuff like this.

Let us consider the press releases by Sen. Coleman over the three individuals nominated by President Bush for the U.S. Supreme Court. See if you can guess in which of these he is talking about the female nominee, Harriet Miers.

#1

July 19th, 2005 - Washington, D.C. - I am pleased that after extensive and unprecedented consultation with the United States Senate, President Bush announced Judge John G. Roberts, Jr. as his nominee to be the next Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, filling the vacancy left by Justice O'Connor. Judge Roberts has a distinguished record, having served as associate counsel to President Ronald Reagan in the White House Counsel's Office and as Principal Deputy Solicitor General in the Department of Justice, before being confirmed unanimously to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in 2003.

All along, the President has said that that he had wanted to nominate a distinguished and highly qualified American, committed to equal justice under the law. I cannot think of a better qualified person than Judge Roberts to fill this vacancy. His extensive experience and sound legal judgment, along with an exemplary record of 39 cases argued before the Supreme Court, shows that the President has chosen a nominee of high integrity essential for the High Court.

I look forward to a thorough and thoughtful floor debate in which all are heard. Above all, Judge Robert's nomination should be treated with the fairness, dignity and respect, which are the hallmarks of the nominee himself. The American people fully anticipate an up or down vote on the Senate floor before the Supreme Court begins its next term October 3rd. A full Court is in the best interests of the nominee, our work in the Senate, and the American people.

#2

October 3rd, 2005 - ST. PAUL, MN - "I am pleased that President Bush has moved quickly to nominate White House Counsel Harriet Miers to replace Justice Sandra Day O'Connor as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. The President's decision to nominate a woman to the court is praiseworthy and sends a very important message to all of America. It is my intention to withhold judgment on this nominee as we continue to get a better sense of her qualifications as the confirmation process moves forward."

#3

October 31st, 2005 - Wasington, D.C. - Judge Samuel Alito, Jr. today was nominated by President Bush to serve as Associate Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. I am encouraged by the wealth of judicial experience and dedicated public service Judge Alito brings to the table. During his nearly 30 years of public service, Judge Alito has served with distinction on the third Circuit Court of Appeals for 15 years, and worked as Assistant to the Solicitor General and U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey, earning a reputation as a litigator who has worked for justice and equality, as well as a fair-minded judge who is committed to the rule of law. Judge Alito's outstanding qualifications appear to meet the standard of excellence for Supreme Court nominees, and I look forward to a careful review of the nominee's credentials so that we may have a full, working bench as soon as possible. Now is the time to focus on Judge Alito's qualifications and set aside partisan politics so that we may have a fair and dignified confirmation process, ending in a timely up-or-down vote.

So Mr. Coleman, it is all well and good to have the court filled ASAP, as long as the nominee is a man? I'm not calling you sexist, the numbers speak for themselves. I have a theory, I think that as soon as you hear that the nominee is a man, it's "well qualified this" and "well qualified that", but when the third woman to ever be nominated to the highest court in the country comes up, you have to withhold judgement. So it is praiseworthy to nominate women to the court but then you object to 100% of the women that Mr. Bush has tried to put on the Supreme Court. I don't want excuses Mr. Coleman, the numbers speak for themselves.

Why is it full speed ahead "up or down vote" confirmation when it's a man being considered, but a "slow the hell down" attitude when it is a woman? I'm just asking.

Do you have a problem with women, Mr. Coleman? Do you have a problem trusting them when they say they are qualified to sit on the Supreme Court? Does this stem from your wife moving to Los Angeles to become an "actor" while you were stuck as mayor of St. Paul and raising your kids? Marriage counseling is the place to work out these problems, not the Supreme Court.

NOTE: I wrote and tried to post this at like 9 AM but I'm having hosting problems I think. Please stand by as I may have more difficulties.