polling place

If Fred Phelps and his band of merry little hate mongers don’t boil your blood enough, check out this from Fox:

Westboro has been accused of being a hate group, but one detail that has been largely overlooked is that, unlike most hate groups, this group is not required to pay taxes because of its status as a religious institution.

Critics of Westboro argue that the church's activities cross the line, but watchdogs of hate groups say these protesters carefully and deliberately don't.

"They're very legally savvy," said Marilyn Mayo, co-director of the Anti-Defamation League's Center on Extremism. "They're familiar with the line of what is permissible within the law and what is not."

Phelps is an attorney, as is a lot of his followers, so they know how to skirt the law. There is one perfect fix in my opinion – make churches pay taxes.

Over the past several years we have seen more churches crossing the line over into politics. It used to be a taboo for a church to endorse a candidate, but no more. It’s time to change that. Instead what should be done is to make the churches taxable the same way as business, but give them better deductions on civic activities. If a church is opened as a polling place (something I totally disagree with), then they get a decent tax credit on the use of their facilities. Do they help the poor? Fine – tax break. What that would do is leave a lot of churches still tax exempt, but people who try to abuse the law, like Phelps, ends up getting nailed by the IRS. Honestly I think such a move could gain bi-partisan support.

One factor that helped push Democrats over the top last week was the campaign ads. The Republicans took to their typical negative campaign ads, as well as new stunts such as the automated robo-calls. This pissed off a lot of voters and they showed their dissatisfaction with these tactics at the polls.

Now we have a Democratic Congress and they are planning on putting their new found majority to work to help rid our democracy of these vile problems:

With their new power, Democratic leaders want to craft a constitutional way to stop voters from being flooded with robo-calls peddling deceptive information. They are floating the notion that authorizing calls with fraudulent content should be a crime. "These robo-calls, somehow, constitutionally, we are going to have to find some way to stop this," Reid said.

Schumer said he and Rep. Rahm Emanuel -- the boss of the House Democratic campaign committee, who is expected to be elected to a leadership spot today -- made a list of what they consider abusive campaign practices. In some cases, the volume of calls that went out to targeted likely Democratic voters was so heavy as to constitute harassment.

In other examples, the calls peddled disinformation -- whether about a candidate or the location of a polling place. Criticizing the robo-call dirty tricks, Schumer was blunt. "It's despicable" and the perps "should go to jail for 10 years."

Schumer said he and Emanuel are looking at legislation applying criminal penalties to certain kinds of campaigning and creation of a separate unit at the Justice Department to prosecute.

This is very good news for America as a whole. If a candidate can only run on smears, then they have nothing to offer. If they can only win by tricking voters or suppressing them, then they have already lost the battle.

In a push to get answers to the Downing Street Memo, Rep. Conyers wrote a letter to the President demanding he answer for it. As of yesterday, June 3, Rep. Conyers has received over 110,000 signatures on this letter, which can be view and electronically signed here.

When asked by members of Congress about the Downing Street Memo, the President has repeatedly refused to comment. Rep Conyers is one of the initial members of Congress to ask the President about the memo. He has taken the Presidents refusal to a whole other level. He is showing him that the people who make the decisions in this country, the ones who enter that sacred polling place, demand the leader they elect answer to allegations of his unethical conduct.

We need more representatives in office that stand behind the people the way John Conyers does. In a time when the mainstream media seems to be hiding a story that could lead to a scandal that rivals Watergate, John Conyers is focusing his efforts on keeping the story alive.

Hats off to you John Conyers, you are truly a man of the people.