Daily Topics - Tuesday November 4th, 2014
By shawnt56
Join Thom in our chatroom during the program!
Be sure to check out our new videos: CARBON, LAST HOURS & GREEN WORLD RISING - narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio
Hour One: It's election day 2014...have you voted? Tell Thom about your experience
Hour Two: Chasing dark money - Brendan Fischer, Center for Media and Democracy (CMD)
Hour Three: How Mitch McConnell Is Bending Every Last Campaign Finance Rule - Lee Fang, The Nation & Republic Report / PLUS, Protecting your vote-Chris Melody Fields, Election Protection
Comments
#2
My main criticism of the F.E.C. would be that its existence seems to preclude investigation by any other law enforcement agency.
But there's a problem with the setup too. Since 2 members of the 6-person commission are supposed to be replaced every 2 years, Obama should have replaced all the Bush appointees already. (Going through the list of previous members on Wikipedia, it looks like there have always been 6, not 7.) But since Republican obstruction wouldn't let Obama nominees through, 4 Bush appointees are still serving on the commission.
The law and the rules of the Senate should be changed to eliminate the possibility of obstruction that keeps such commissions from having complete membership, but also to make sure that when terms expire, the members cannot continue to serve.
#3
On the topic of nullification, here's an interesting document:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Report_of_1800.
I haven't been able to read it through fully yet, but Madison declares that the federal judiciary is the only entity that can enforce a determination that a federal law is unconstitutional.
#4
I'm not holding my breath until I see a newspaper headline that says, "Voter Suppression Works!"
It would make an interesting statistical study. However, no media picked up on Shrub's gift from the Reich-wing of SCOTUS. Nor will they comment on the manipulation potential of the proprietary voting machine software.
#5
"Personal Responsibility" is a means to shift responsibilty onto someone else. During the bank meltdown, the right kept saying it was the personal responsibility of the people taking out loans. In the case of Katrina, it was the "personal responsibility" of the people to evacuate New Orleans (even though Ike proved that you CAN NOT evacuate a large city (Houston) in a short order of time). We don't say that that it is the personal responsibility of the soldiers in the trenches for losing the battle. CEOs like to say that earnings improvement was their personal responsibility, but it's someone else's fault that earings are poor.
#6
Secret Ballot. I'm not an election judge in Florida, but it sounds like the voter that complained about his ballot # being recorded on a receipt was probably voting provisionally. In the case of provisional voting, they must record your ballot in order to decide whether to count it later or not. Hopefully their are safeguards to prevent access to how someone voted before deciding whether to count the vote or not.
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I've been annoyed at the titling of Presidents as "Mister" since the mid-90's, which is basically as soon as I was aware of politics. It's actually quite normal for the press to do, but I'm still annoyed by it, because there's a superseding title to use. And in Obama's case, he should be titled "Doctor", since he has a JD.