Howard2's blog

Peggy Deras: Help fund the Ohio recount

Finally! Something we can do besides sending each other all these great emails...

There's going to be a recount in Ohio, instigated through a joint endeavor by the Green and Libertarian Presidential Candidates (David Cobb and Michael Badnarik).

They need $150,000 by Monday, Nov. 15. Current count is $71K and has more than doubled the $35K it was at 8AM this morning. I just donated some money because I think this is the only way to prove fraud.

Check it out and pass this message along:
http://www.ohiogreens.org/
http://www.votecobb.org/
http://badnarik.org/

Let's get to the bottom of this and find out who really won!

Peggy Deras, CKD, CID

Kim Theobald-Stark: a cover-up in the Bush Medicare and Medicare Drug Bill.

Howard,

Hi. So good to hear from you. I would like to point out a cover-up in the Bush Medicare and Medicare Drug Bill for a Part D and what else that bill does to the consumer for health care that is not being brought to the forefront of discussion by our politicians, our lawmakers and yet little ol' me has found it to be true simply because I am a licensed insurance producer, that means sales and service agent of health care products. I have a captive license means I work exclusively for Combined Insurance Corpporation of America, an AON company.

Anyhow, first my beef is the same with the Medicare Drug Act for 2006 and the changes it brings in benefits and options for drug cost help as most seniors have. As Senator Kennedy and our Minnesota state Medicare department representative spoke at Anoka Senior Center on this bill in their attempt to glamorize it and run point for the government in their attempt to basically get in on the baby boomer market in the industry of drug revenue from this huge age group approaching retirement. They said the average senior, being according to them approximately 28 to be precise who responded prior stating they need drugs but could not afford them need this bill. Yet they bragged like it was so great, the savings was going to save this person 10-12% off the cost of their drugs!

What this bill states is that private insurance companies can no longer sell a medigap insurance policy with drug coverage in it after 2006, those grandfathered in are OK. What they don't tell you is that that policy in Minnesota for example is our Extended Basic Policy, other states Plan H or J I think, is those policies are providing long term care in the home and nursing homes for the highly medicated or early medicare disabled citizens who stand a snow balls chance in hell of getting through underwriting to get this kind of care the only other way it is available, unless one is wealthy and self-funds, by virtue of a Long Term Care policy! These wonderful Extended Basic policies provide 80% drug coverage and 100% after a $1000 out of pocket simultaneously is tabulated at the 80% level! My own company watchguards how many of these we agents sell because 5% of the senior population buys them because although expensive at $500+ a month for the supplemental policy, usually their drug expense, long term care, and all the other benefits it gives far exceed the policy premium. My own company tells me the expense of these policy for the insurance company 110% of the premium received so they are a burden for insurance companies. Wah, Wah, then my own company should raise it, as other companies Extended Basic policies run as high as $978 per month.

Did you understand that Howard? So after 2006 the passage of this drug bill puts the most critically healthy individuals literally on the streets for their home care and long term care or further driving up Medicaid and bankrupting this country instead of on the insurance companies which can leverage themselves well enough and raise rates to avoid bankruptcy if left alone. Analysis shows Part D only benefits the highly medicated because you don't even really started to save anything to make it better than other programs out there that can save you 30-60% through a Medicare approved pharmacy like SavRX, etc. But does it really benefit them, they need these Extended Basic policies as they cover all of ones out of pocket costs after Medicare pay first, and many things Medicare doesn't like custodial care, wheel chairs, ramps up the homes, major dental, and nursing home care. We are indeed in very scary times in this country. Bush stood on values, whose values? Big Business is a materialistic value core when you suffer your elderly and your children and they are so good are covering this up in the passage and discussion of this bill!!!

And also what's wrong with Medicare contracted with these HMO companies like Blue Cross Blue Shield? Lots, that is what's wrong with Medicare, is it has misled too many seniors to believe they still have Medicare when they are actually no longer in FULL medicare when they choose any other option than a private insurance supplemental to Medicare. And then they suffer high, unpredictable and unexpecgted and unpromised out of pocket expenses to one of our most vulnerable population groups. (OK BCBS does have an insurance division, but only sell their HMO/PPO product, senior gold to seniors), Medica, Health Partners and U-Care (Our Minnesota based Medicare Managed Care contracted companies) and then there is even more fundamentally wrong with the Unicare and Human choices being allowed to manipulate advertising to seniors to falsely represent their coverage)

Well, my kids are home and have earned a chinese dinner out for chores well done!

bye Howard,

Kim Theobald-Stark

Charles Auld: What else can go wrong?

Let's see ... Fallujah is being claimed a victory, despite the fact that even the military is beginning to admit that it did nothing to weaken the enemy; they didn't find Abu Musab al Zarqawi and hundreds of "foreign insurgents." The power of martyrdom in the Islamic culture was badly underestimated ... the defenders of Fallujah are becoming national heroes.

And while our troops were preoccupied with that disaster, the freedom fighters have retaking Ramadi, Samarra, Latifiyah, Kirkuk, Mosul and several suburbs in Baghdad. It looks like the US hold on the "Green Zone" is increasingly tenuous ... Sunni clerics are calling for a boycott of the January elections, which I doubt will take place during that month.

What else can go wrong?

Charles Auld
Arab, Alabama

Johanne M. Dictor: I say Dean should start his own 3rd party.

Howard -

If Dean can't get the nomination to head up the DNC then I say he should start his own 3rd party.

I can't take the Democrats anymore. They are just a bunch of wimps. The other night I heard Pelosi quoting out of the bible. So, it looks as though they think we should take on religious zealots.

Johanne M. Dictor
Oakland CA

Steve Ybarra: Concerning Gov. Dean for chair of the DNC.

Concerning Gov. Dean for chair of the DNC.

OK, so here is the deal.

Get the list of the members of the DNC from the DNC. Get each DFA group to take on contacting the local member of the DNC and meet with them personally.

Then you will have a campaign.

Steve Ybarra
Sacramento CA

Jean Hehn-Bradley: attempts to weaken protections for our nation's wildlife and wild places.

Post-election Riders Threaten Wildlife & Habitat

Dear Friend of Wildlife:

Post-election attempts to weaken protections for our nation's wildlife and wild places have already begun. Behind closed doors -- with no public debate or scrutiny -- members of Congress are considering a
proposal to undermine protections for the wildlife and wild places that American cherish.

In question are a series of legislative riders that may be tacked onto the must-pass Omnibus Appropriations bill due to be voted on any day now. Legislative riders are backdoor attempts to pass legislation that
would likely not withstand votes on their own. Included on this list of threats are provisions that would approve a 200,000 acre land swap in an Alaskan Wildlife Refuge to promote oil and gas development, waive environmental reviews for cattle grazing on our public lands and prevent citizens from challenging timber sales in our nation's largest National Forest.

Another possible rider would literally gut the Endangered Species Act -- our nation's bedrock wildlife protection law. In this specific case, the rider would amend the Endangered Species Act to allow critical
habitat areas to be destroyed and to require continuation of development plans that are proven to threaten endangered species. If passed, this legislation would be the most major rewrite of the Endangered Species
Act since 1982!

ACTION: Help stop these attacks on wildlife by calling your representative and two senators. Be sure to make the following two points:

1) Tell them to oppose any riders that would undermine protections for America's endangered species and special places like our national forests, wildlife refuges and other public lands.

2) Urge them not to let these devastating riders be attached or voted through on the Omnibus coattails. Let them know that massive public policy changes should not be done through stealth riders. Rather, they
should be subject to rigorous public review and debate.

To reach your senators, call the Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3121.

To find your members of Congress, go to: http://action.nwf.org/nwf/leg-lookup/search.tcl

We need more recovery of endangered species and more protection of essential habitat areas, not less.

Thank you in advance for taking the time to speak out on behalf of our nation's wildlife and wild places!

NWF's Wildlife Team

P.S. Called your members of Congress and want to do more? Tell your friends and family to call their members of Congress, by forwarding this alert along to them.

Let us know you took action by sending an email with your name and address to alerts@nwf.org.
Please include "Appropriations" in the subject line.

Jane Cutler: Dear Friends - take heart!

Dear Friends - take heart! Listen to Mr. Jefferson:

Jane Cutler

"A little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their spells dissolve, and the people, recovering their true sight, restore their government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are suffering deeply in spirit, and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public debt. But If the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at stake."

--Thomas Jefferson, June 4, 1798, in a letter to John Taylor after passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts

Mayme Trumble: Gonzales not fit to be Attorney General!

Forwarded by Millie LaRuffa

This man is not fit to be Attorney General!

Mayme Trumble

ALBERTO GONZALES
A Record of Injustice

by Christy Harvey, Judd Legum and Jonathan Baskin
www.progressreport.org

Here is some information on President Bush's nominee for Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales.

As White House Counsel

GONZALES APPROVED MEMO AUTHORIZING TORTURE: An August 2002 Justice Department memo "was vetted by a larger number of officials, including...the White House counsel's office and Vice President Cheney's office." According to Newsweek, the memo "was drafted after White House meetings convened by George W. Bush's chief counsel, Alberto Gonzales, along with Defense Department general counsel William Haynes and [Cheney counsel] David Addington." The memo included the opinion that laws prohibiting torture do "not apply to the President's detention and interrogation of enemy combatants." Further, the memo puts forth the opinion that the pain caused by an interrogation must include "injury such as death, organ failure, or serious impairment of body functions‹in order to constitute torture." The methods outlined in the memo "provoked concerns within the CIA about possible violation of the federal torture law [and] also raised concerns at the FBI, where some agents knew of the techniques being used" overseas on high-level al Qaeda officials. [Gonzales 8/1/02 memo (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/documents/dojinterrogationmemo20020801.pdf) ; WP, 6/27/04 (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8534-2004Jun26.html) ; Newsweek, 6/21/04 (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5197853/site/newsweek) ; NYT, 6/27/04 (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F60E14FB3C5C0C748EDDAF0894DC404482) ]

GONZALES SAID MANY GENEVA CONVENTIONS PROVISIONS ARE OBSOLETE: A 1/25/02 memo written by White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales said "the war against terrorism is a new kind of war" and "this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions." The memo pushes to make al Qaeda and Taliban detainees exempt from the Geneva Conventions' provisions on the proper, legal treatment of prisoners. The administration has been adamant that prisoners at Guantanamo are not protected by the Geneva Conventions. [Gonzales 1/25/02 memo (http://msnbc.com/modules/newsweek/pdf/gonzales_memo.pdf) ; Newsweek, 5/24/04 (http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4989481/) ]

GONZALES ADMITTED HIS VIEWS "COULD UNDERMINE U.S. MILITARY CULTURE": The 1/25/02 memo shows Alberto Gonzales was aware of the risk that ignoring the Geneva Conventions could create for the military. One concern expressed is that failing to apply the Geneva Conventions "could undermine U.S. military culture which emphasizes maintaining the highest standards of conduct in combat, and could introduce an element of uncertainty in the status of adversaries," which is what happened at Abu Ghraib. Secretary of State Colin Powell strongly warned against taking this decision, as did lawyers from the Judge Advocate General's Corps, or JAG. This week, a federal judge ruled that "President Bush had both overstepped his constitutional bounds and improperly brushed aside the Geneva Conventions" when he established military tribunals in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to try detainees as war criminals. [Gonzales 1/25/02 memo (http://msnbc.com/modules/newsweek/pdf/gonzales_memo.pdf) ; Bloomberg, 6/14/04 (http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000039&refer=columnist_woolner&sid=aJEp1ExaMybo) ; New York Times, 11/9/04 (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/09/politics/09gitmo.html?hp&ex=1100062800&en=ef8ed60281cb7cb4&ei=5094&partner=homepage) ]

As Texas Chief Legal Counsel

DEATH PENALTY MEMOS: GONZALES'S NEGLIGENT COUNSEL: As chief legal counsel for then Gov. Bush in Texas, Gonzales was responsible for writing a memo on the facts of each death penalty case -- Bush decided whether a defendant should live or die based on the memos. An examination of the Gonzales memoranda by the Atlantic Monthly concluded, "Gonzales repeatedly failed to apprise the governor of crucial issues in the cases at hand: ineffective counsel, conflict of interest, mitigating evidence, even actual evidence of innocence." His memos caused Bush frequently to approve executions based on "only the most cursory briefings on the issues in dispute." Rather than informing the governor of the conflicting circumstances in a case, "The memoranda seem attuned to a radically different posture, assumed by Bush from the earliest days of his administration‹one in which he sought to minimize his sense of legal and moral responsibility for executions." [Atlantic Monthly, July/August, 2003 (http://www.fdp.dk/act/030928_texas_clemency.php) ]

MEMORANDUM ON TERRY WASHINGTON: A CASE STUDY IN INCOMPETENCE: In his briefing on death-row defendant Terry Washington -- a mentally retarded 33-year-old man with the communication skills of a seven-year-old -- Gonzales devoted nearly a third of his three-page report to the gruesome details of the crime, but referred "only fleetingly to the central issue in Washington's clemency appeal‹his limited mental capacity, which was never disputed by the State of Texas‹and present[ed] it as part of a discussion of 'conflicting information' about the condemned man's childhood." In addition, Gonzales "failed to mention that Washington's mental limitations, and the fact that he and his ten siblings were regularly beaten with whips, water hoses, extension cords, wire hangers, and fan belts, were never made known to the jury, although both the district attorney and Washington's trial lawyer knew of this potentially mitigating evidence." Nor did he mention that Washington's lawyer had "failed to enlist a mental-health expert" to testify on Washington's behalf, even though "ineffective counsel and mental retardation were in fact the central issues raised in the thirty-page clemency petition" it was Gonzales's job to review. This all came at a time when "demand was growing nationwide to ban executions of the retarded." [Atlantic Monthly, July/August, 2003 (http://www.fdp.dk/act/030928_texas_clemency.php) ]

As Texas Supreme Court Justice

GONZALES ACCEPTS DONATIONS FROM LITIGANTS: In the weeks between hearing oral arguments and making a decision in Henson v. Texas Farm Bureau Mutual Insurance, Justice Alberto Gonzales collected a $2,000 contribution premium from the Texas Farm Bureau (which runs the defendant insurance company in this case). In another case, Gonzales pocketed a $2,500 contribution from a law firm defending the Royal Insurance company just before hearing oral arguments in Embrey v. Royal Insurance. [ Texas for Public Justice (http://www.tpj.org/page_view.jsp?pageid=117&pubid=60) ]

For more information on Gonzales check out this American Progress rapid response document.

Read the American Progress Statement on Alberto Gonzales

Jennifer Willis: problems with electronic voting machines have surfaced.

ACTFORCHANGE ACTIVISM UPDATE: November 10, 2004

You are receiving this newsletter because you have previously taken action on ActForChange in support of progressive values.

IN THIS BULLETIN:

FEATURED ACTION: Investigate Electronic Voting Machines
ACTIVISM OPPORTUNITY: Pass Meaningful Election Reform

Investigate Electronic Voting Machines

Now that November 2 has come and gone, some disturbing reports of problems with electronic voting machines have surfaced.

Click here to take action!

For example:

In Columbus, Ohio, an electronic voting system reported that Bush received 4,258 votes while Kerry received 260 votes in a precinct where records show only 638 voters cast ballots;
In North Carolina, a machine lost more than 4,500 votes due to a mistaken assumption about the memory capacity of a computer;
In Youngstown, Ohio, and South Florida, numerous voters complained that when they tried to cast votes for Kerry, the machines instead recorded their votes for Bush.

All in all, more than 30,000 complaints have been gathered from across the country. In the midst of such turmoil, it's crucial that an independent authoritative investigation be undertaken to sort this all out.

Click here to take action!

Please forward this newsletter to your friends and help spread the word about this important campaign!

Pass Meaningful Election Reform

While the 2004 election experienced an increased turnout that should be celebrated, the 2004 election was also flawed by far too many obstacles to full participation.

Click here to take action!

Our national elections are run via a mishmash of local, city and state regulations and agencies, so that voters in one state are subject to different rules than voters elsewhere. While Congress passed the Help America Vote Act as a first step toward election reform, November 2 demonstrated that much more is needed. Congress should make the passage of meaningful election reform the first order of business during the upcoming November special session.

Click here to take action!

Please forward this newsletter to your friends and help spread the word about this important campaign!

Thank you for working to build a better world.

Jennifer Willis
Director
ActForChange.com

PLEASE SEND QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS TO: info@actforchange.com.

http://www.actforchange.com

Nancy Brannigan: I am a Catholic on a crusade of my own.

Hi Howard,

I had a few bad days and occasionally slip into gloom, but I think if I keep active in the fight against this growing power of the Republican religious right to control America I will come out of it. I e-mailed NY Times today regarding an article in Sunday's paper and it felt good.

I am a Catholic on a crusade of my own to oppose a return to the old hell and damnation church, which with the inspired dedication of Pope John XXIII, was changed by Vatican II. The Catholics who have held on to old traditions were a big factor in defeating John Kerry, a really fine Catholic who could have made a change for the better for America.

I want to congratulate you on all of your hard work and was happy to hear you are keeping in touch with those others who put so much of themselves in trying to save our country from another four years of Bush. I hope the U.S. can survive it. I want to keep in contact with "seniorsforamerica".

Thanks again for all of your prompt e-mail returns to my requests. We have a lot of work to do in the next four years. Be happy about all the time and effort you devoted to the cause of our country. The people like you were my inspiration.

Nancy Brannigan

Jack Krooss: Alberto Gonzales, War Criminal.

Hi Howard-

I got this email today from a lawyer friend who is totally freaked out about this monster becoming AG. It's the letter he wrote to his Senators:

"Ashcroft was bad enough, but even he claimed to have fleeting second thoughts about the erosion of our civil liberties. Gonzales is a war criminal. His was the final signature on the memos leading to the authorization of isolation and torture in Guantanimo. Even in this "time of war" the Supreme Court has rejected his extremist "reasoning." If you cave on this war criminal the right wing forces will be emboldened to bring even more outrageous Supreme Court nominees before you. Stopping government is a bad alternative, but it is a better alternative than allowing people such as Gonzales to be appointed. It is time to send a message that you will not stand idly by and allow war criminals to sit in high office. I hope you will realize that history does not judge favorably those who do not oppose immoral action."

Gonzales is the man who edited Bybee's memos authorizing holding prisoners incommuncado and torture at Guantanimo. This is the man who's opinions led to the abuse at Abu Ghraib. This is putting the lead torturer in charge of Justice. What does this say about America?

Please ask members of Seniors for America to contact their Congressional representatives about this man's record.

Jack Krooss
San Francisco

Donna Wentworth: E-voting Forensics: What They Can - And Can't - Tell Us.

The media are buzzing about whether the electronic voting systems used in this election really worked as "smoothly" as they appeared to work. Is it possible that some machines malfunctioned in ways that skewed results? Could problems like the 4,530 votes lost in North Carolina due to a data storage error be only the tip of the e-voting iceberg?

The good news first: From what we can tell, it is unlikely that the problems with touchscreen machines changed the outcome of the presidential race. But that doesn't make it impossible, and EFF is still looking into some problems in Ohio and elsewhere that could be very important.

The bad news: Let's suppose for a moment that the picture of the presidential race stays unchanged. Does this mean, as some vendors are claiming, that the machines "passed the test"? In a word, no. If the election had been closer in such key states as Florida, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, or even Ohio, the problems we saw could easily have thrown this election into chaos, and that chaos could have affected either candidate.

It will take some time to analyze the information collected in the Election Incident Reporting System (EIRS), but regardless of what we find, the current figures show that machine malfunctions were the third most common voting problem reported. And recent reports demonstrate that not all problems were obvious. EFF is therefore moving to examine the machines that exhibit the most troubling malfunctions, with the goal of determining whether what we've seen indicates even more serious or widespread problems.

Which brings us to the ugly news: There's one story about this election that we'll never know - what happened inside the machines that do not have a paper trail. It's somewhat reassuring that, in most instances at least, final exit polls and other external systems give us roughly the same picture that the election results do.

But suppose that wasn't the case? This is what audit trails are for. The figures in cooked books often look perfectly fine; so would a cooked vote tally. In this election, we are forced to take it on faith that our votes were recorded in the way that we intended. But as the late former President Ronald Reagan noted long ago, when important issues are at stake, we need to both "trust" and "verify." That's why the battle continues to persuade election officials nationwide to adopt systems that are 1.) verified by the voter, and 2.) can be audited after the fact.

To learn more about the e-voting problems that have been reported so far and EFF's concerns, check out the links below, including the audio recording of the joint EFF and Verified Voting Foundation (VVF) press tele-conference held on Election Day.

CLICK HERE or the original version of this article online.

They Said/We Said: EFF E-voting Conference on MP3.

The Nation: "A Stolen Election?"

Donna Wentworth
The Electronic Frontier Foundation
San Francisco CA

Elizabeth Edwards: Your strength is carrying my family.

First, I want to thank each of you for the support you have given to John Kerry and John Edwards. You gave it in a thousand ways: coming to our events, volunteering to set up and clean up, working the phone banks, knocking on doors, contributing, blogging, standing on corners with signs, whatever it took. Your strength carried us through.

You may have heard that I have been diagnosed with breast cancer. Your strength is carrying my family through too in this latest struggle, and this is a fight we will win. We have (and I say we because John has been with me every minute) started chemotherapy with tremendous confidence, confidence in our doctors, in our ability to face obstacles, and in our friends far and near who we know give us their thoughts and prayers and support today and will continue to do so in the months ahead.

So many of you have tried to reach me recently with your support, and I know that the Senate office and the Wade Edwards Learning Lab have been flooded with calls and e-mails. No complaints there, but in order to take a little pressure off of them, I have resurrected my old e-mail address at elizabeth@oneamericacommittee.com, where you can reach me. I will e-mail periodic updates to you about my progress from there, if you would be interested in getting those. Treatment should last until about next June with follow-ups every three months or so.

I hope you understand how much your support has meant to us. This thank you is to our new and expanded family.

Elizabeth Edwards

Michael Meurer: Those crazy neocons!

Those crazy neocons! They are just irrepresible. Last week, the giddy crew of pundits at William F. Buckley's National Review declared between their ritual bashing of the "Michael Moore/Howard Dean/Al Franken extremist fringe" and their calls for the Patriot Act to be made permanent that Bush now has a mandate to fight and win what they call "World War IV." They casually note that we should expect military actions and "regime change" against both Iran and North Korea in W's second term, with stepped up military pressure on China.

The same is planned for Cuba. The Bush administration has funneled $59 million in federal money to a White House "Commission For Assistance to a Free Cuba" that is working to topple Castro. In the lead up to this election, friends of the Commission were running around south Florida handing out "Iraq today, Cuba tomorrow" bumper stickers, and the Commission is actively drawing up plans for Castro's overthrow during W's second term.

While I will admit there is a certain comic exuberance at work in the excited prattling and planning of these chirpy neocons, there is also the grim reality that their overlords in the White House are now armed not only with another four years, but with a freshly minted pre-emptive first strike military doctrine. Additionally, the administration's Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) of January 2002 has taken this doctrine to a dangerous new level by authorizing first use of "tactical" nuclear weapons.

There was shock the world over in 2002 when details of the NPR were leaked to the press. The Review explicitly called for the development of tactical nuclear weapons for first strike use and included a list of target countries that included China, N. Korea and Iran. Democratic Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island captured the prevailing view when he said, "We have tried for 50-plus years to make these weapons unthinkable, and now we're talking about giving them a tactical application. It's a dangerous departure."

The NPR is given extra punch by a crash development and testing program for tactical nuclear weapons (euphemistically referred to in the NPR as "low-yield, precision-guided nuclear weapons") including nuclear bunker buster bombs. At the Bush administration's urging, this crash development program was approved by both the House and Senate in early 2003. The administration insisted the program was essential for the full implementation of the NPR's recommendations.

The legislation authorizing the program also mandated that the normal 24 to 36 month development time be compressed to 18 months, meaning tactical nukes could be ready for production in early 2005. In practical terms, this means that Bush could have new tactical nuclear weapons available for use midway through his second term. Make no mistake, Bush and Cheney would not hesitate for one moment to use these weapons, either in Iran or N. Korea, possibly even in Iraq or Afghanistan. At a minimum, they are itching to test them under actual field conditions.

During the 2004 Presidential campaign, John Kerry explicitly called attention to this tactical nuclear weapons development program. His exact words were: "I¹m going to shut that program down, and we¹re going to make it clear to the world we¹re serious about containing nuclear proliferation."

Now that he is essentially freed from any political constraints, one would hope that Senator Kerry will become George W. Bush's nemesis on this issue and lead the opposition during the remainder of his term. He could not find a more important job as he returns to the Senate.

Michael Meurer
Los Angeles CA

Gwen Curran: Demand an investigation.

Dear friends,

Questions are swirling around whether the election was conducted honestly or not. We need to know -- was it or wasn't it?

If people were wrongly prevented from voting, or if legitimate votes were miscounted or not counted at all, we need to know so the wrongdoers can be held accountable, and to help prevent this from happening again.

Members of Congress are demanding an investigation to answer this question. Join me in supporting their call, at:

http://www.moveon.org/investigatethevote/

Thanks,

Gwen Curran
Oregon