By GottaLaff
Los Angeles surpassed its 100,000 count at their immigration rally, per CNN. Gutierrez was in D.C.:
Police arrested Illinois Rep. Luis Gutierrez at an immigration rally outside the White House on Saturday.
Several people interviewed said they had not been to a pro-immigration march since the massive protests in 2006, but that Arizona's law compelled them to come out.
More at Dave's.The story, from the Quincy Herald Whig.
There were a few tense moments when the crowd moved west down York toward Third Street after the president's motorcade arrived. A Secret Service agent asked the crowd to move back across the street to the north side.
When the crowd didn't move and began singing "God Bless, America" and the national anthem, Quincy Deputy Police Chief Ron Dreyer called for members of the Mobile Field Force to walk up the street.
The officers, mainly from Metro East departments near St. Louis and dressed in full body armor, marched from the east and stood on the south side of York facing the protesters.
There was no physical contact, and the officers did not come close to the crowd, but there were catcalls and more than a few upset tea party members, including a woman who shouted, "This is communism!"
By GottaLaff
My Twitter pal, Chi910, aka Midge Hough, is someone stubborn, obstructionist Congress members should be listening to. I've written about her and her family here, here, and here.
Tea Partiers thought it was more important to mock Midge than to rectify our abysmal health care system.
And as you know, the GOP has mocked, smeared and used scare tactics relentlessly.
She is now making an appeal to her own representative, Dan Lipinski, and I would like to give her a hand getting the word out via her video.
Please support her efforts:Midge Hough, who lost her daughter-in-law and unborn granddaughter due to lack of health insurance, urges Rep. Dan Lipinski to stop using misleading, abortion arguments to block health care reform. --- Please consider donating $10 to support the production & distribution of this video.
You can visit her website here.
By GottaLaff
How amusing that this news broke smack dab in the middle of the Super Bowl:
Scott Lee Cohen (D), the Democratic nominee for Illinois lieutenant governor, "removed himself from the campaign Sunday, freeing Gov. Pat Quinn from the baggage Cohen brought to the ticket, but also leaving him without a running mate," NBC Chicago reports.If? If?? Yeah, look where you are.
Said Cohen: "I'm someone who made mistakes in my life. And look where I am. If I let you down I"m sorry".
By GottaLaff
Even when Gitmo is finally closed down, there's still the problem of indefinite detention at the Illinois supermax prison.
President Barack Obama's commitment to close the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, by next month may be delayed until 2011 because it will take months for the government to buy an Illinois prison and upgrade it to hold suspected terrorists.
And in case you were wondering, Health Care Reform Stalling Tactic #1 is alive and well:
In the Senate, a spokesman for Republican leader Mitch McConnell promised that the GOP would use delaying tactics to prevent funding the Illinois facility and added that he expected support from Democrats.
How would Mitch feel if he'd been tortured and imprisoned for eight years? Would he write a thank you note to the GOP for extending his stay at Hotel Gitmo?
In addition to any appropriations struggles, current federal law requires that detainees can only be housed in the United States while their trials are pending. That law would have to be changed to cover detainees who have not yet been charged and will not be sent abroad. The change would have to specify that detainees could be kept on U.S. soil for any purpose.
Oh and hey! Remember all those high-value, evil, menacing, lethal, terrorists who were brutally abused and locked up in cells because they were such a threat to America?
A whole bunch of 'em were released.
I guess they weren't so dangerous after all.
The Justice Department said last weekend that since 2002, more than 560 detainees have departed the military prison in Cuba and 198 remain.
Oh well. Our bad.
******
All my previous posts on this subject matter can be found here; That link includes one specific to only Fayiz al-Kandari's story here. Here are audio and video interviews with Lt. Col. Wingard, one by David Shuster, one by Ana Marie Cox, and more. My guest commentary at BuzzFlash is here.
Lt. Col. Barry Wingard is a military attorney who represents Fayiz Al-Kandari in the Military Commission process and in no way represents the opinions of his home state. When not on active duty, Colonel Wingard is a public defender in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
If you are inclined to help rectify these injustices: Twitterers, use the hashtag #FreeFayiz. We have organized a team to get these stories out. If you are interested in helping Fayiz out, e-mail me at The Political Carnival, address in sidebar to the right; or tweet me at @GottaLaff.
If you'd like to see other ways you can take action, go here and scroll down to the end of the article.
Then read Jane Mayer's book The Dark Side. You'll have a much greater understanding of why I post endlessly about this, and why I'm all over the CIA deception issues, too.
More of Fayiz's story here, at Answers.com.
Terrorists in the coffee shops? Oh my.
By GottaLaff
This morning, while appearing on Chicago's FOX32, Rep. Mark Kirk (R-IL) who is running for the Republican nomination for US Senate in Illinois, referred to the proposal to move terror suspects to the Thomson Correctional Center as the "Great Lakes GITMO." [...]Kinda cuts into his credibility, don't it?
The Hill also shares the following quote from Kirk:
"I will offer the Kirk Amendment to the upcoming supplemental appropriations bill requiring a ‘Homeland Insecurity Impact Statement’ on the potential impact on O’Hare and the Willis (Sears) Tower in Chicago before federal funds can be used to bring al Qaeda terrorists to Illinois." [...]
[H]is "concerns," aka political grandstanding, are baseless if you consider that the Thomson Correctional Center is almost on the banks of the Mississippi River and is 152 miles from the nearest Great Lake, Michigan. Additionally, he should also be reminded that O'Hare is 145 miles away, while the Willis (Sears) Tower is 148 miles away.
Man, they must hate it when they punk themselves.
By GottaLaff
A seat opens up. Grab it, Dems:
Rep. Mark Kirk's (R-IL) decision to run for U.S. Senate from Illinois moves the state's 10th congressional district House seat to the top of Democrats' list of open seat takeover opportunities.
Cook Political Report: "One of only six remaining Republican-held districts won by John Kerry in 2004, the North Shore seat has been trending towards Democrats quickly. Still, it would be premature to count this seat in the Democratic column. Democrats could well host a competitive primary if either state Sens. Susan Garrett or Michael Bond faces 2006 and 2008 nominee Dan Seals, and Republicans retain a bench of local officeholders who share Kirk's moderate views. The race to succeed Kirk starts out as a Tossup."
Just when you thought The Hair had been forgotten.
A federal judge today authorized the release of audio tapes of secret recordings of coversations between U.S. Sen. Roland Burris and former Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s brother to a Senate ethics committee.
Burris’ criminal lawyer, Timothy Wright, federal prosecutors and an attorney for Robert Blagojevich were in court this morning before U.S. Judge James Holderman, who handles grand jury matters.
Reporters were kicked out of the courtroom as the hearing was set to begin.
Before the hearing, Wright said, “the truth will finally come out,’’ in an apparent reference to recordings that took place last November and involve discussions between Friends of Blagojevich campaign fund chair Robert Blagojevich and Burris regarding fund-raising for the ex-governor.
By GottaLaff
The Illinois General Assembly is expected to approve a measure next week that would legalize civil unions, according to an LGBT activist.Rick Garcia, political director for Equality Illinois, said Thursday he's "absolutely" expecting the full state House and the Senate to pass a civil union measure either Tuesday or Wednesday. The bill has support from Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn (D).
The House Youth and Family Committee, chaired by Rep. Greg Harris, who's gay, intends to attach an amendment legalizing civil unions to a "shell bill" that's already been approved by the Senate, Garcia said. If the full House votes in favor of the legislation, the bill would be sent to the full Senate within hours for a vote of concurrence.
...Should the measure become law, both gay and straight couples could enter into civil unions. As there's no explicit language regarding an effective date, couples could start entering into civil unions 30 days after the bill is signed into law, Garcia said.
I think it's pretty cool that they've raiser over $70k for state libraries.
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. - Special Illinois license plates featuring Barack Obama have set a record, and officials expect sales to keep going strong.If you want one, you can get them here.
Illinois sold more than 1,800 of the Obama license plates during a 60-day period this spring. The secretary of state's office says the previous record was 800 plates featuring the Illinois Police Association.
The plates were official but temporary. They've expired now, but the state is still selling them solely as memorabilia.
A spokesman for Secretary of State Jesse White says the $50 plates are now attracting buyers from around the country and as far away as Germany.
Didn't see this one coming. He looks like just another overly polished Republican to me.
WASHINGTON (CNN) – Having mastered the Hollywood gossip scene, celebrity site TMZ apparently has set its sights on a new conquest — Capitol Hill.
The site — owned by Time Warner, CNN’s parent company — has started accosting members of Congress, including Illinois Republican Rep. Aaron Schock, as they go about their work in Washington.
“I didn’t know what was going on,” Schock said of his first encounter with TMZ. “I was on my way to the floor for a vote, I’m talking to a constituent literally on my cell phone and there’s some guy with a handycam in street clothes walking next to me. And, so, I didn’t know what to expect.”
(snip)
The young Republican was recently voted the hottest freshman in the current Congress by readers of the Huffington Post, a liberal Web site, and he has already received a fair amount of personal attention from President Obama — though it was not enough to convince Shock to support Obama’s $787 billion stimulus package.
Looking forward to it, I've missed the primaries. And we have quite a few good progressive choices.
A special primary campaign for the House seat vacated by Rahm Emanuel concludes today, as voters in Illinois' 5th District -- most of whom are Democrats -- choose the candidates for the April 7 general election, CQ Politics reports.
The Chicago Tribune has profiles of the twelve candidates running.
Polls will close at 7 p.m., which is 8 p.m. Eastern time.
By GottaLaff
The son of embattled Sen. Roland Burris (D-IL) "is a federal tax deadbeat who landed a $75,000-a-year state job under former Gov. Rod Blagojevich five months ago," the Chicago Sun-Times has learned.Bye now.
"Blagojevich's administration hired Roland W. Burris II as a senior counsel for the state's housing authority Sept. 10 -- about six weeks after the Internal Revenue Service slapped a $34,163 tax lien on Burris II and three weeks after a mortgage company filed a foreclosure suit on his South Side house."
By GottaLaff
The Senate Ethics Committee has opened a preliminary inquiry into Sen. Roland Burris’s (D-Ill.) conflicting testimony on the circumstances surrounding his appointment while Senate Democrats and Republicans take a wait-and-see approach to the potential impact on the 2010 election. [...]
“We know the Republicans are salivating, but I’m not sure they should be,” said the Democratic source. “This is far from the ‘Apocalypse of the Illinois Senate seat.’ “
A senior GOP aide dismissed that as “pure spin,” noting that Burris stridently insisted on being seated and has resisted any efforts to remove him ever since. And as investigations become possible at the state and federal levels, the aide said Burris will inevitably become more weakened.
“He’s not going anywhere, at least voluntarily, and any investigation won’t happen overnight,” said the GOP aide. “You can’t just remove a U.S. senator like they impeached the governor. This will take a while, and if anything, the Democratic infighting will further the divide over him. Look at what happened the first time he tried to enter the Senate.”
But several Democrats have expressed interest in the seat, even before news of Burris’ conflicting testimony on his contact with Blagojevich emerged. [...]
Two prominent Republicans are also weighing getting into the race. [...]
But first Burris will have to deal with potential state and federal investigations.
By GottaLaff
More here.Roland Burris has now admitted he tried to raise money for Rod Blagojevich, at the request of the former governor's brother.
The Chicago Tribune reports:
U.S. Sen. Roland Burris has acknowledged he sought to raise campaign funds for then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich at the request of the governor's brother at the same time he was making a pitch to be appointed to the Senate seat previously held by President Barack Obama.Burris' latest comments in Peoria Monday night were the first time he has publicly said he was actively trying to raise money for Blagojevich. Previously Burris has left the impression that he always balked at the issue of raising money for the governor because of his interest in the Senate appointment.
By GottaLaff
Months after being deluged with calls about a commemorative plate, Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White unveiled an "Illinois Salutes Barack Obama" temporary license plate Friday.
The plates, featuring President Obama's smiling face on top of a waving American flag, can be used for 60 days, beginning Feb. 17 and ending April 17. They cost $50 and all proceeds benefit state libraries.
Go here to order a set. But remember, on April 17, when the clock strikes twelve, they disappear. Poof.
By GottaLaff
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