John Nichols over at The Nation seems to have what appears to be some good inside skinny on Al Gore’s speech in DC on Monday. Here’s a small taste…
Aides who are familiar with the preparations for the address say that Gore will frame his remarks in Constitutional language.
…
Indeed, his aides and allies are framing it as a “call to arms” in defense of the Bill of Rights and the rule of law in a time of executive excess.
The vice president will, according to the groups that have arranged for his appearance — the bipartisan Liberty Coalition and the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy — address “the threat posed by policies of the Bush Administration to the Constitution and the checks and balances it created.
…
Former U.S. Representative Bob Barr, the Georgia Republican who served as one of the most conservative members of the House, plans to introduce Gore. Barr, an outspoken critic of the abuses of civil liberties contained in the USA Patriot Act critic who has devoted his post-Congressional years to defending the Bill of Rights, refers to the president’s secret authorization of domestic wiretapping as “an egregious violation of the electronic surveillance laws.”
With Barr on board, and the event being co-sponsored by the Liberty Coalition, it’s gonna be a helluva lot harder for the wingnuts to try and discredit Gore here. Though, no doubt, they’re busy this weekend plotting exactly how they hope to do so.
It is time for every single whistleblower there is to spill their guts and sing, sing, sing….blow the whistle out loud one after the other constantly.
Blow the whistle: And blow it as loud as you want
Do it while we get rid of the voting machines……AND their propaganda public-relations democracy destroying tanks of war….
Doug Eldritch
People keep calling me deluded to insist there have to be sane Republicans lurking around to join the battle against fascism, and, well, here! Not deluded.
Yippee!! C-Span will cover it! Thanks for the heads up Brad!!
Monday, January 16, 2006
12:00 PM EST
1:00 (est.) LIVE
Speech
Civil Liberties
American Constitution Society
Albert Gore Jr., United States
The beginning and end of this live program may be earlier or later than the scheduled times.
Agent 99 There’s millions of republicans who are in that battle and you don’t know them, because they are being drowned out by the "neocons" and millions of ultra-liberal freepers…
The freepers are the most vocal on the internet, and many of them are patsies, too stupid to even know what fascism is and the rest don’t care and are braindead. On the opposite hand, actual conservative republicans and millions of others know well and by far what they’re playing now….and they are growing restless to take them out.
Doug E.
Why should the rightwing try to discredit Gore and his speech?
The media will ignore it, and it will be as if it had never happened. That’s the tactic they’ve used so far with Gore, and it’s worked depressingly well.
Gore’s speech will not be ignored by the media.
By the time he gives his speech the media will be talking about Alito’s wife crying for the 5th news cycle.
That night, pundits will wonder aloud if Al-Zawahri gets comforts from Al Gore’s words, then have a fair and balanced debate between some neocon shill and Pat Buchanan representing the left.
Okay, people, I admit that I may be quite nearly bin material over all this stuff, but I am DIRT CERTAIN we are very close to seeing something so transcendental on our political stage that it will:
Blow. Our. Minds.
In a good way. In a vastly better than we can imagine way. Don’t despair. Despair is the enemy.
Don’t despair at all….Keep focused and centered.
Tony Blair has gone off the border now and is wiretapping all his MPs, MPs force showdown…
Its time for the UNITED KINGDOM to force Blair out by force, and pressurize Margaret Thatcher to resign……..
Britain will break through Blair’s childish war game…
Doug E.
Agent99,
The last time Gore gave a great speech it was ridiculed far and wide. The mood is different now though. I think he’s got an ace up his sleeve by the name of Bob Barr this time. There’s lots of stuff comin up.. Conyers’ hearings, senate investigation, indictments, resignations, voting machine turnovers… and it’s not even February yet.
Give yourself some time and look back in the archives to where we were one year ago, it’s pretty amazing.
Ron Paul is a sane Republican. That’s why you don’t hear much about him in the MSM.
Jen #3 –
Thanks! I just came here to ask whether C-Span would cover this; I’m certain the MSM will give the speech as short a shrift as they possibly can…
I hope the true President will give one of his angry global warming/ democracy under threat speeches
It will be articulate and forceful if he does
(I can hardly wait)
Why doesn’t our MSM wonder why the Republicans breaking the constitution, isn’t giving "aid and comfort to the enemy"? There’s not much worse than that, that could give "aid and comfort to the enemy."
Beware of anyone using the following:
– unPatriotic
– unAmerican
– giving aid & comfort to the enemy
– you’re hurting the troops
These terms are being used exclusively by the people who are actually unPatriotic, unAmerican, giving aid and comfort to the enemy, and hurting the troops. Whenever someone uses these phrases, you know where they stand. The 3rd Reich used these tactics. It’s in the fascist handbook.
Notice who doesn’t use these phrases. Intelligent people, with reason. People who aren’t hicks, and don’t wave American flags made in China.
Well, sorry, but I have been using the term "unAmerican" on threads with my fellow progressives, and our darling trolls, quite a bit lately. I feel just fine about it when I am defending the constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence. I have also been taking the time to point out where certain liberal expressions are, in fact, unAmerican, when you take the head trip of honest dissent off their face. It has some, I hope, useful shock value when I use it.
For instance, it seems abundantly clear that the efforts at gun control ARE unAmerican, however well-intentioned. Some insist that sentence in the Constitution was poorly written. It appears to me that it was intentionally left that vague to allow for the preservation of our rights in all possible contingencies, and Americans have from the very beginning willingly assumed the risks and responsibilities of liberty, preferring them to the servitude of security. We have gone too far in our identification with civility when we let it cover for the inner fears making us wish for security from attack, security from our own government, security from having to think, security from risking what has always been at risk expressly to uphold liberty and justice for all.
So. I’m using the word.
{Comment Deleted. Al, you are not welcome to post disinformation here. Neither is it appreciated your posting this story elsewhere, and referring folks to BRAD BLOG as if we have anything to do with this story. Please knock it off, or all such posts will be deleted and you will be banned from commenting here at all. Thank you.}
Big Dan,
To anyone who has been paying any kind of attention, the neocon movement has made an art form of calling others on tactics that they use almost exclusively.
For example, when Bush says he’s tired of people "playing politics" – you can be sure that Bush is playing politics.
When they call other people "disingenuous", you can be sure that they are being disingenuous,
And so on, and so on. It’s the kind of thing that makes me want to throttle people who buy it, because anyone who is that stupid as to not realize the games that the fascists play is just flat out dangerous to me and my family. Makes me want to choke some sense into them.
I have confidence Gore will make a good show of things. He’s been so much better since he had the election stolen from him.
TeamBush must be shitting bricks right now. Too bad for them all the usual talking points are worn out now. The Republicans fear Gore more than any other Dem. They have no doubt he will enforce environmental regulations on corporations, and not staff regulatory agencies with industry lobbyists, as has Bush. The Repubs have no doubt that Gore’s tax policies would restore the Clinton era rates, ending Bush’s gilded age tax bonanza for the wealthy and restoring budget sanity. And they know he would restore a sane response to the threat of "islamic terror", in contrast to Bush’s Keystone Kop routine and putting an end to the insane feeding frenzy the corporate war masters are presently indulging at the public trough. That is why the media worked so hard against him from 1998-2000, and that is why the media coronated Bush over Gore in the tragedy of election 2000. People are finally getting wise to Bush’s lies and Cheney’s corruption. The spin is getting tired, and Gore is a shining example of what democrats can do and are all about. so when the puke spinners say "the dems don’t offer anything", respond with "President Gore would …" Gore is the best of any possible dem in 2008: he has always been against the war and spoken out forcefully against it AND he will pursue a progressive agenda. There couldn’t be a better contrast between the repubs and progressives than Al Gore. I wish that Dean would just draft him and say he’s the nominee. Right now. Today. I hope to god he is our next president.
I look forward to hearing what he has to say. He is one of two Dems I would vote for Prez – no, Hillary wan-a-be is NOT the other! He spoke of counting all votes in 2000 – let all voters be heard. Instead, Repubs just name-called. No, Gore has backbone and a voice. He is a moral, intelligent, family man with values and a conscience. Opposite of what we have now.
I would advocate a vote for Al over Condi, John McCain, or Hillary.
The flavor of Gore’s public statements are in accord with those of Arlen Spector, Chair of the Judicial Committe in the Senate.
He said today on This Week that impeachment and subsequent criminal prosecution is the remedy under American law (link here).
Thank you, Jen! I remember the GREAT fiery speech Gore gave before the ’04 "election" at NYU. Can’t wait to hear this one.
Dredd #21
Specter DIDN’T actually RECOMMEND impeachment, though. There was caveat after caveat in that interview. Yes, he said that impeachment was the remedy if the president broke the law, but he said just previous to that "I’m not suggesting REMOTELY there’s any basis [for impeachment]".
Re whistleblowers..
Nancy Pelosi was one of several Democrats who had been briefed years ago about the NSA’s spying program. None of them was apparenty brave enough to be a whistleblower…
Old news at this point?.. but worth reading…
"… As a condition of receiving a classified briefing, the congressional member agrees not to disclose any of the contents. That creates a double bind. The member can object but only privately.
Pelosi got caught in this bind. If she [blew] the whistle …she ran the risk of being stripped of her security clearance — and sanctioned by the Republican-controlled House. Even worse, she might have betrayed some of her closest political allies, such as the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Jane Harman, who seems to have approved the secret spying program. So Pelosi shut her mouth, kept her grave misgivings private — and betrayed the American people.
She didn’t have to…whistle-blowing is rare but not unprecedented. In 1995…then-Rep. Robert G. Torricelli, D-N.J., was told…that a paid CIA informant, Guatemalan Col. Julio Roberto Alpirez, was involved in the killing of an American citizen’s husband…
…Alpirez’s identity and ties to the CIA were classified; Torricelli revealed them anyway. In March 1995, Torricelli listed Alpirez’s name and his connection to the CIA in a letter to President Clinton and gave a copy of the letter to the New York Times.
Torricelli was sanctioned for his actions, but they stand as a reminder that members of Congress can blow the whistle on classified briefings in extraordinary circumstances. Bush’s domestic spying program qualifies."
"Bush’s Unlikely Co-conspirators"
By G. Pascal Zachary, AlterNet. Posted January 10, 2006.
http://www.alternet.org/story/30600/
Chomsky: ‘There Is No War On Terror’
By Geov Parrish, AlterNet. Posted January 14, 2006.
http://www.alternet.org/story/30487/
AGENT99: I’ve been using those words, sarcastically, a lot lately, to prove a point. It’s about time we started calling the rightwingers unPatriotic, unAmerican, and saying that they’re hurting the troops. They’ve been doing it too exclusively. And they are the ones that these words and phrases apply to, not us.
big dan: I know it shouldn’t, like it hasn’t already, devolve into one big grade-school name-calling match, but there is a real need to wrest our native tongue back from the Orwellian semantics of this regime. It is NOT unAmerican to disagree with, or even undermine, the president. It IS unAmerican-leaning to disagree with, and unAmerican-in-fact to try to undermine, the Constitution. Many of us to the left on the spectrum are so blinded by our identification with upholding the well-being of all that we fail to see where we are, indeed, trying to undermine the Constitution. When we support gun control, we are seeking to undermine it, is one clear case of where we have wrongfully given-in to our fear, and let the whole us against them thing grow into a very serious rift in the citizenry.
This kind of liberalism is my only gripe with Al Gore. He is very identified with a few hot-button issues for the religious right (which effectively is the opposition just now)… and that is not the unifying approach I want to see. We could outright concede the gun issue because we are wrong. We could turn off the rational thinking vs. magical thinking bit, because it cannot be refuted that the intellectual elitism about which they complain is REAL, ugly, petty, vicious, rude, disrespectful, oppressive, wrong and unAmerican…. We hold it to be self-evident that all men are created equal. I believe Howard Dean was ready to address the recovery of that bloc by ceding the point on gun control, to gain tolerance of that which we find to be protected under the implied right to privacy, and making some progressive-while-still-not-so-offensive compromises on other of the liberal issues they find so repugnant.
I’m avidly looking forward to Gore’s speech tomorrow, have set my heart on it being the starting gun for a revolution of sense and Americanism to sweep the nation, and I want to see my side working harder to reclaim the people so outraged by the bacchanalian face of atheistic liberalism that they will happily, avidly, rabidly vote against their own sustenance to stamp it out.
The 2nd amendment exists as insurance against a military takeover of the country or something like that. Government should not have a monopoly on weapons. The right to manufacture, buy, sell, and own armaments is a critical right that separates the US from so many dictatorships over the past few centuries.
That said, unfettered access to guns, bombs, rockets etc. is dangerous in this day and age. Gun laws can be both practical and constitutional.
"A well-armed populace is the best defense against tyranny"
Tomorrow, Monday, January 16, 2006
Al Gore to Warn of President’s Threat to Constitution
WATCH LIVE ON C-SPAN
Schedule date: Monday, January 16, 2006
12:00 PM EST
1:00 (est.) LIVE peech
Civil Liberties
American Constitution Society
Albert Gore Jr., United States
The beginning and end of this live program may be earlier or later than
the scheduled times.
http://inside.c-spanarchives.or...d=212004163016
http://releases.usnewswire.com/...e.asp?id=59207
Al Gore to Warn of President’s Threat to Constitution
News Advisory:
— Major Address: Monday, Jan. 16 at 12 p.m.
— Al Gore to Warn of Threat to Constitution From President’s Actions
— Wake-Up Call for Legislative, Judicial Branches: Wiretap Policy Only
Latest Extension of Unchecked Executive Power
— Introduction by Former Rep. Bob Barr highlights breadth of ideological
concern over abuse of executive power
WHAT: Major address by Al Gore
WHEN: Monday, Jan. 16 at 12 p.m. (doors open at 10:30 a.m.)
WHERE: DAR Constitution Hall, 1776 D Street, NW, Washington, D.C.
Gore is the most the un- intellictual power hungry blind bitch since Hillary. Fools folow idoits, please continue.
Ask them why they killed Sec. Mr. Brown in route from Germany, inside autopsy said a single gunshot to the head was prior to the pancake on the dirt.
travel secratary ……wacked by Clinton….Hillary is a leabian, Eagle squad security in mid- 90’s confirms all.
Al sent an email to the INS prior to Clintons last election chanceasking for the release of criminal immagrants visa’s for confirmation of votes for Dem’s at the port. Inbound crimanals just for the vote, theWhite House email scandal was the deal, but it was errased. wow. all just .04% of shit on the wall. As always the Dem’s for trying to win without arealistic non-multidimensional lythium dependant reason for progress, and completly without merit.
Sincerely.
Kurt Hensey
a non-partisan fucker
That’s 9:00 AM PST, but you should tune in a little earlier, just in case.
bvac #25: Even if we keep gun control laws, or some, we HAVE to lose the attitude about gun owners. People freak every time I mention it, but it’s TRUE that people kill people, and guns only facilitate it a little. Lots of countries, ones that take better care of their poor, have plenty of guns and a RADICALLY lower murder, crime, rate. Gun ownership does not make you a cracker or a killer or a lawless criminal waiting to happen.
In fact, a lot of "crackers" have a kind of intelligence that eludes many of the more refined, sophisticated, urbane intellectuals, and if one is too busy throwing a party for one’s own intelligence to appreciate theirs, we just don’t have any hope of reclaiming a large enough bloc of Americans to obviate this grab for fascism.
Go, President Gore! I think if he gets PISSED enough, he will throw down. THAT I can’t wait to see. Man, I so want him to run in ’08! He’s about the only candidate I could get excited for.
#27 Can you post that again…in English please? I’m not sure what you mean about Gore being power-hungry. He’s had an almost non-existent spotlight profile in the last four years. He has redefined himself politically, out of the shadow of Clinton’s behemoth presence, and returns to champion the Constitution and deliver the message that he wanted to (I gather from things he has said and done in the interim) five years ago but was too stifled by the establishment to do so: that is, that there has never been an administration that poses more danger to Democracy than these criminals currently in power, and if we don’t start acting NOW, it will get unimaginably worse.
So perhaps you can explain yourself. Again, in English preferably.
Just found BradBlog -(it’s excellent)….
As to Gore, BRAVO….I hope he really sticks it to this corrupt group of scum.
Of course, we all know what will happen on the nauseating Faux news channel tonite: Hannity will use the "U" word. It’s Hannity’s "go-to" word every time a democrat has some formal speech on any particular day: That word, of course, is "Unhinged."
Just one more example of how these scum always try their best to frame every topic, EVERY SINGLE TOPIC.
You will, I promise, hear the word, "unhinged," at least once today, if not more, on Faux News. Bank on it.
bob bar just blew off gore intro for his talk. made everyone un ready, tried to take his moment…
jerks……goe on …. gore tell us anyways…..
no media is on gore only -span. tanker on fire in ny is on all media no gore…………
hope the venue is full to over flowing ,anybody going ,is it open to the public ?
Please consider asking politicians for the text of their speech so you can present it as soon as the pre-speech excitement is delivered. I can understand why the interlocking directorships of the businesses of Oil, Drugs, Arms, Media ignore Gore and his text. ???
The only reason I came wandering over to this web site is because I am searching for that idiot cartoonist Glenn McCoy. Just like David Reinhard of the Oregonian, opinions seem to matter more than the facts. Opinion, GW Bush wouldn’t be spying on fellow Americans if he weren’t looking for people with Al Qaeda connections? Fact, how will the NSA FIND people in this country with Al Qaeda connections when they are mostly spying on anti-war activists and critics of GW Bush? According to the New York Times (presumably) the NSA has mostly spied on innocent Americans and what "intelligence" has been gathered has led to dead ends. With a ton of useless information added to the overload of intel gathering now, trying to find that ONE kernal of information that would lead to a prevention of a terrorist attack would be next to impossible. Especially if time is truly of the essence. Instead of GW PROMOTING national security, he is effectively CRIPPLING it. Yeah, I’d have to say that Al Gore ought to discuss this issue and even argue for an impeachment in the near future.