member of congress

Let’s face it, America needs a real debate about its society. We need to start talking about the violence plaguing our nation. It doesn’t matter if the violence occurs at some random work place, in a school or at a town hall meeting being held by a member of Congress, we need to have a national discussion on it and it must start now.

For such a discussion to be productive we must also all put aside our political differences and address every issue, rather it be from the 2nd amendment to rhetoric played on television and the campaign trail. Take the case of yesterday’s shooter, Jared Loughner. We now know that he legally obtained his firearm, yet all reports are indicating someone who is mentally disturbed. Is this a case for stronger background checks? I believe so. Let’s take another massacre, the one of Virginia Tech where 32 people lost their lives at the hand of Seung-Hui Cho and his guns. Once again, this was someone described as mentally unstable, with a long paper-trail to prove it, yet he was able to legally purchase firearms.

Now I am a person who firmly believes in the 2nd Amendment. I actually have been in heated debates with others on the left over this. Where I break with the right at is the open access to guns. Yes I want to be allowed to own a firearm, and if I got to go through a rigorous screening process to own one, then I feel that much safer. Such a process also won’t keeps guns out of the hands of those who want to do harm, but it could help limit these cases. In two incidents we may have seen 38 people still alive if their assailants weren’t able to get a gun so easily and legally.

Since the oil started flowing 83+ days ago there have been those on the right floating conspiracy theories. They range from “Liberals blew up the well” to “Obama doesn’t want to stop it quick so it looks bad”. Well now we have one of these claims coming from an actual GOP member of Congress. Here’s Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) making the later claim:

Transcript via Think Progress:

BROUN: Our President he is utilizing this crisis of this oil spill to try to promote this energy tax. And I’ve had numerous people, all over the district, question whether his poor response to this oil spill was purposeful so that he could promote his energy tax. I don’t know, maybe.

I remember when the truthers started showing up on the scene and the right going after the “loony left” for their conspiracy theories. Of course that whole argument was dealt a serious blow in 2008 when the truthers then became the birthers. They aren’t liberals, but rather very misinformed individuals living in a Dale Gribble world.

But the fact that we have actual Republican lawmakers out there making the most absurd of claims like this proves the real loonies lie on the right of the political spectrum.

Today we have another episode in the dementia that is John McCain. Remember the maverick? Well then you must be thinking of the wrong person, because John McCain says he never called himself a maverick.

For more than a decade, famed 'Straight Talk Express' rider John McCain has had 'maverick' as his and his supporters' moniker of choice. And friends and foes alike have followed suit to such a degree that it can almost sound like an official title ('maverick Sen. John McCain'). But running in a surprisingly contested Republican primary against a former member of Congress who says McCain is too moderate may be taking its toll.

Sen. McCain (R-AZ) now tells Newsweek that he was never a maverick.

"I never considered myself a maverick," McCain said. "I consider myself a person who serves the people of Arizona to the best of his abilities."

Does McCain really think such a flip-flop will win votes? Is he really that much of a dumb ass? If anything this ploy will cost him more votes. Of course that would be a good thing. We need to rid the Senate of the moron from Arizona.

Here’s the press release from his office:

Congressman John P. Murtha (PA-12) passed away peacefully this afternoon at 1:18 p.m. at Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington, VA. At his bedside was his family.

Murtha, 77, was Chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense.

First elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in February of 1974, Murtha dedicated his life to serving his country both in the military and in the halls of Congress. A former Marine, he became the first Vietnam War combat Veteran elected to the U.S. Congress.

This past Saturday, February 6, 2010, Murtha became Pennsylvania's longest serving Member of Congress.

The DNC Change Commission has been working on changes to the way the DNC handles primaries and it looks like the super delegates could end up losing their vote:

The Commission spent most of the meeting discussing the future role of automatic unpledged delegates (super delegates).  It discussed several approaches, but the final recommendation won’t be made until the final Commission meeting.

The Resolution authorizing the Commission called for a significant reduction in the number of such delegates, but many of the members favored converting all unpledged automatic delegates to unpledged automatic non-voting delegates.  Elected officials and DNC members could still attend conventions and provide guidance, judgment, and leadership, but they could not vote and therefore would not be able to counter the voter’s candidate preferences as expressed in the nomination process.  A component of this approach would be expansion of the number of pledged party leader and elected official (PLEO) slots.  So a member of Congress or DNC member who wanted to be a voting delegate could run as a PLEO, pledged to a candidate in reflection of voter preference.

So we would still have super-delegates but they won’t be able to vote. This would be an excellent move. The final decision should be made after the first of the year, and basically would require the people this affects to vote on it. I think it’s time for all Democrats to call the party and ask them to support this measure. A few powerful people should not have the ability to overturn the will of the party members as a whole. That is very undemocratic.

I have spent the last few days working on a couple of new features for the site.

Congressional Tool

First off you may have noticed the new widget in the sidebar to search for members of Congress. This is a great tool to find your representatives and ways to contact them, but it doesn’t stop there. You can also use the widget to show all the committees in Congress and who sits on them. If you are viewing a member of Congress and click on the “additional information” link, you will also find what committees that person sits on.

This great tool is powered by the Sunlight Labs API.

Tweetville

Another new feature I decided to build is something I am coining as “Tweetville”. I have what Twitter lists set up to follow members of Congress. Those lists are further broken down by party. You may have noticed the new Tweetville widget on the right. That shows the last 3 tweets from each list, cycling through each list every 10 seconds. There is also a link at the top of the page to go to Tweetville. From there you can view real time updates to those lists. You don’t need to refresh your browser, just go to the page and select the list you want then you are set.

I will be adding more lists to this feature in the near future, including Bloggers and Media types.

I hope everyone enjoys these new features and finds them highly valuable. Please let me know if you spot any problems so I can get them hammered out.

Not a real shocker here, but it turns out that a lot of the TARP recipients are lining the pockets of our leaders through political donations:

In recent filings with the Federal Election Commission, the political action committee for Bank of America (which got $15 billion in bailout money) sent out $24,500 in the first two months of 2009, including $1,500 to House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and another $15,000 to members of the House and Senate banking panels. Citigroup ($25 billion) dished out $29,620, including $2,500 to House GOP Whip Eric Cantor, who also got $10,000 from UBS which, while not a TARP recipient, got $5 billion in bailout funds as an AIG "counterparty."

With this kind of behavior, it’s no wonder that we are seeing plans that sound good and backed by leading economists fail in Congress. The problem is that we have no real fix for this. Are we going to see lawmakers cut off their own money train? If you think that will happen then I got some ocean front property in Ohio to sell you.

This also isn’t a partisan problem, it’s a systematic one. To right this major wrong we have to look seriously at redoing our campaign finance laws. Of course with the current people in Washington, loopholes are a given. Perhaps the only real way to get something done with the status quo is for some rogue member of Congress to introduce strict legislation limiting these donations, and then going out on a massive media blitz. That would help put enough pressure on law makers from their constituents that it might work.