If I were an independent voter receiving McCain's garbage phone ad this weekend

You're making dinner and trying to sit down with your family to eat after an exhausting work week and pouring over your 401K loss report. You have just found out that the $42,000 you had accumulated as of last spring is now worth $26,040. You've just turned off the burner under the hot veggies when, BRRRINNNGGGG, the phone rings. It's the McCain campaign delivering an urgent message to you in the privacy of your own home, assuming you never listen to network news, read a paper or go on line and are unaware of their latest breaking news....telling you that Barack Obama is a terrorist who hangs with other terrorists, on the off chance that it might capture your previously uncommitted vote. If it happened to me, I would be up with the chickens Monday morning at the early voting polls telling every single peson within earshot that I had just voted a straight Dem ticket. How dare they?

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canvasing my city (live near a large university) area for O. It was a very dynamic experience. I met so many people who are excited about the election. I really enjoyed being a part of the campaign for change. I just stopped in to see how things are on the board. Unfortunately, all I see is a lot of bickering from same 3 or 4 people, so I just want to say hi to my fellow dems. I am going to be spending time productively getting out the vote. Have a campaign worker coming from out of state to stay in my home while he works my swing state. Go Obama!

This was on last weekend and will be repeated again this weekend. Good luck trying to condone the contents in this show.

The drive-bys will NOT report this. It's amazing that literally anyone would want to get news that someone reportedly smarter (that's sarcasm, but true) edited, twisted, and omitted.

Looks like one of your own started the modern NSA wiretaps. I think the Democrats fail to realize there's this thing out there called the Internet and not just the bullhorn of the leftist media to give the peasants amnesia to what they've done in the past.

In 1994 Sen. Pat Leaky Leahy co-wrote a law that forced telecommunications carriers to build convenient wiretap features into their networks enabling the kind of telephone records collection now at the heart of the controversy over the National Security Agency's terrorist surveillance operation.

In recent days Leahy has called the NSA's actions troubling and potentially illegal - saying they show that the Bush administration is treating Americans like terrorists.

'The secret collection of phone call records of tens of millions of Americans? he exclaimed after USA Today blew the lid off the program last week. Are you telling me that tens of millions of Americans are involved with al-Qaeda?

But according to the Rutland Herald, Leahy was singing a different tune 12 years ago, when he was pushing the Senate to pass his bill, the Communication Assistance for Law Enforcement Act [CALEA].

I suggest to senators if anybody does want to hold [CALEA] up, I hope that at this time next year, neither they nor their constituents, nor anybody they know, is a kidnap victim or victim of a terrorist, and have somebody ask why nothing can be done, and be told because a law that had probably 99 percent support in the House and the Senate did not pass.

Contacted by the Herald earlier this week, Leahy said there was an important difference between what his law authorized and the actions taken by the Bush administration.

That law talks of the technology of the interception and what technology can be used to intercept and it assumes very clearly that it can only be done with a warrant, the Vermont Democrat insisted.

Some legal experts say, however, said that assumption is not as clear as Leahy claims. Analyzing CALEA in 2003, the Rutgers Computer & Technology Law Journal explained:

CALEA requires a telecommunications provider to make 'its equipment, facilities, or services ... capable of ... enabling the government ... [without a warrant] to intercept ... all wire and electronic communications carried by the carrier.'

The secret search and wiretap provisions could lead to an age of Big Brother-like surveillance, the American Civil Liberties Union complained in the same Law Journal report. Americans who oppose U.S. policies and who are believed to have ties to foreign powers could find their homes broken into and their telephones tapped.

By LARRY MARGASAK, Associated Press WriterMon Apr 10, 4:55 PM ET

Key figures in a phone-jamming scheme designed to keep New Hampshire Democrats from voting in 2002 had regular contact with the White House and Republican Party as the plan was unfolding, phone records introduced in criminal court show.

The records show that Bush campaign operative James Tobin, who recently was convicted in the case, made two dozen calls to the White House within a three-day period around Election Day 2002 � as the phone jamming operation was finalized, carried out and then abruptly shut down.

The national Republican Party, which paid millions in legal bills to defend Tobin, says the contacts involved routine election business and that it was preposterous to suggest the calls involved phone jamming.

The Justice Department has secured three convictions in the case but hasn't accused any White House or national Republican officials of wrongdoing, nor made any allegations suggesting party officials outside New Hampshire were involved. The phone records of calls to the White House were exhibits in Tobin's trial but prosecutors did not make them part of their case.

Democrats plan to ask a federal judge Tuesday to order GOP and White House officials to answer questions about the phone jamming in a civil lawsuit alleging voter fraud.

Repeated hang-up calls that jammed telephone lines at a Democratic get-out-the-vote center occurred in a Senate race in which Republican John Sununu defeated Democrat Jeanne Shaheen, 51 percent to 46 percent, on Nov. 5, 2002.

Besides the conviction of Tobin, the Republicans' New England regional director, prosecutors negotiated two plea bargains: one with a New Hampshire Republican Party official and another with the owner of a telemarketing firm involved in the scheme. The owner of the subcontractor firm whose employees made the hang-up calls is under indictment.

The phone records show that most calls to the White House were from Tobin, who became President Bush's presidential campaign chairman for the New England region in 2004. Other calls from New Hampshire senatorial campaign offices to the White House could have been made by a number of people.

A GOP campaign consultant in 2002, Jayne Millerick, made a 17-minute call to the White House on Election Day, but said in an interview she did not recall the subject. Millerick, who later became the New Hampshire GOP chairwoman, said in an interview she did not learn of the jamming until after the election.

A Democratic analysis of phone records introduced at Tobin's criminal trial show he made 115 outgoing calls � mostly to the same number in the White House political affairs office � between Sept. 17 and Nov. 22, 2002. Two dozen of the calls were made from 9:28 a.m. the day before the election through 2:17 a.m. the night after the voting.

There also were other calls between Republican officials during the period that the scheme was hatched and canceled.

Prosecutors did not need the White House calls to convict Tobin and negotiate the two guilty pleas.

Whatever the reason for not using the White House records, prosecutors tried a very narrow case, said Paul Twomey, who represented the Democratic Party in the criminal and civil cases. The Justice Department did not say why the White House records were not used.

The Democrats said in their civil case motion that they were entitled to know the purpose of the calls to government offices at the time of the planning and implementation of the phone-jamming conspiracy ... and the timing of the phone calls made by Mr. Tobin on Election Day.

While national Republican officials have said they deplore such operations, the Republican National Committee said it paid for Tobin's defense because he is a longtime supporter and told officials he had committed no crime.

By Nov. 4, 2002, the Monday before the election, an Idaho firm was hired to make the hang-up calls. The Republican state chairman at the time, John Dowd, said in an interview he learned of the scheme that day and tried to stop it.

Dowd, who blamed an aide for devising the scheme without his knowledge, contended that the jamming began on Election Day despite his efforts. A police report confirmed the Manchester Professional Fire Fighters Association reported the hang-up calls began about 7:15 a.m. and continued for about two hours. The association was offering rides to the polls.

Virtually all the calls to the White House went to the same number, which currently rings inside the political affairs office. In 2002, White House political affairs was led by now-RNC chairman Ken Mehlman. The White House declined to say which staffer was assigned that phone number in 2002.

As policy, we don't discuss ongoing legal proceedings within the courts, White House spokesman Ken Lisaius said.

Robert Kelner, a Washington lawyer representing the Republican National Committee in the civil litigation, said there was no connection between the phone jamming operation and the calls to the White House and party officials.

On Election Day, as anybody involved in politics knows, there's a tremendous volume of calls between political operatives in the field and political operatives in Washington, Kelner said.

If all you're pointing out is calls between Republican National Committee regional political officials and the White House political office on Election Day, you're pointing out nothing that hasn't been true on every Election Day, he said.

Somehow, their receiving this particular contract seems more heinous than all the other ones that they received, given the current controversy surrounding it.

Frankly I do not see much good coming from the policies of the last 8 years. An out of sight deficit, home foreclosures, terrible price hikes and job losses, I can;t see the pluses in these. Has Iraq made us safer? My gut tells me no. If there had, in fact been weapons of mass destruction than I would feel differently. I think what has matterd the most protecting the US have been more careful survellience domestically in the form of airline survelliences and the like.

I think Obama has the potential to make some positive changes, domestically and worldwide as well. While there is no guarantee of that I really don't feel that McCain will do to much except to continue more or less to promote the same policies as in the last eight years. We can do better than that. The post 9/11 politics of fear are eating the country alive economically. While there is never a guarantee that another terrorist attack will not occur, as they do every so often world-wide, I think it is foolish to sink your economy and play on the fears of its people on the remote chance that another one 'might occur someday.'

I like the message of hope and change that Obama speaks of, and if elected I hope that he is able to achieve some of his goals.

CNN just reported in Raleigh, NC-- people standing in line for 2 hours, and opps, all the sudden there are no ballots....there they are.....they are wet and will not go through the machine, so just put those to the side and we'll run them later.

There seems to be a HUGE list of this kind of stuff. And who benefits from a lower voter turnout? Hmmm.

First, let me say this testimony by a Cal State professor of economics pertaining to the proposed "cap-and-trade" program isn't light reading, but it isn't very long or overly technical, either. It's only a little over 3 pages, double-spaced with generous margins, and takes less than 10 minutes to read, especially since the whole first page is taken up with the economist's credentials and background which you can skip if you wish.

Second, we have to bring a certain mental framework to things like this, which I compare to digging the meat out of a walnut shell. People like this don't typically use the kind of sensational language that we're accustomed to hearing on the news, and they tend to be rather polite and very low-key in the way they say things, especially when they're addressing a Congressional committee.

So nothing here is "bolded" or "underlined" in the way it's expressed, and ordinary reader like ourselves can easily miss the significance of what this economist is trying to tell the committee, which - if you want to cut right to the chase - is that "cap-and-trade" will destroy our economy. Now, the economist uses somewhat less drastic terms but only SLIGHTLY less so, and if you simply think about the consequences of his predictions (which he expects the committee members to do), his meaning is quite clear.

Cap-and-trade is admittedly INTENDED to make energy costs higher, on the theory that higher prices will induce reductions in energy use, hence pollution, etc., etc. While this might sound like a good theory (odd, though, that those who support it are the very same people who laugh at "trickle-down" economics, which is exactly what this is, in reverse), it actually hides new taxes that consumers will ultimately pay for either directly or in the form of higher prices for literally everything because every good and every service includes an energy cost of one sort or another (and that, in turn, will also mean another layer of increased tax because you pay a higher sales tax when the price of anything goes up - a double whammy, in other words). At 8%, something that costs you $10 today = $10.80. If the price goes up to $15, you pay $16.20 - which is not only a 50% increase in the price, but also a 50% tax increase on that item. (It's critical to learn to think in percentages, and also to learn how prices are related to taxes!)

Cap-and-trade may just be the most horrendous idea ever to come down the pike. This economist thinks so, calling it the "most anti-consumer" idea proposed to any Congress in our history. This has nothing whatsoever to do with any political party. It's simply another example of the absolute madness that seems to grip Washington these days - and members of both parties are afflicted with this insanity.

So, as always, here's the link for those who wish to paste it into their browsers, and it's also in the clickable link below. This is a PDF file and I can assure you that there's no virus risk.

http://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/robert-michaels-testimony-april-23-2009.pdf