Forwarded from a friend:

Domestic Partner Benefits Still Threatened - TAKE ACTION TODAY!

Governor Fletcher is under pressure from anti-fairness forces, to hold special legislative session challenging domestic partnerships Last summer the University of Louisville Board of Trustees voted unanimously to extend health insurance to all coupled employees, regardless of marital status. The vote marked a huge step forward for GLBT equality in Kentucky. This April the University of Kentucky followed suit.

Predictably, the anti-fairness industry caused an uproar. But after a tough fight in the 2007 General Assembly, fair healthcare prevailed at UK and U of L. The Senate passed legislation to ban state agencies from providing benefits to employees' domestic partners. That legislation died in a House committee.

Still, the fight is not over. The administration of Gov. Ernie Fletcher persists in trying to use GLBT Kentuckians as a political tool. His running mate Robbie Rudolph said in a televised debate that the governor might add a domestic partner benefits ban to the agenda of a special legislative session.

Early in the domestic partner debate Fletcher took the wise position of leaving personnel decisions to individual Boards of Trustees. Now, facing re-election, he is threatening to bring the issue back before legislators.

Just this week another national anti-fairness extremist group intruded into the debate. The Mississippi-based American Family Association issued an Action Alert to its members.

Take Action TODAY!

Call the Governors office and leave a message (in your own words) to encourage him to stand strong. I suggest something like this: "Thank you for your efforts to protect families in Kentucky. In the Special Session please stand strong – the state must stand together and support domestic partner benefits. Do not include SB152 in the agenda."

I've been pro-impeachment because of the Bush administration's attack on the constitution, especially with the claim of unitary dictatorship putting the executive branch on a level that is not answerable to the Congressional and Judicial branches of our government.

When Nancy Pelosi said that impeachment was off the table, I was very dissatisfied. What could be more important than Congress restoring the constitution and removing an individual who is either incompetent, or criminal, from the Oval Office?

Many anti-impeachment folks at the grassroots level argued that the reason impeachment was off the table was because Congress would not be able to get any work done if they also had to go about the process of impeaching Bush and Cheney. So I agreed to disagree with them.

They felt their reasons were valid. I felt they may be have a point but that they are missing the bigger picture. Congress may not get bogged down with the impeachment process, but they're already pretty friggin useless anyway because of a President who will veto anything they send along that might fix things. Besides, if impeachment is off the table then Congress is really a dog that's all bark and no bite. I'm sure President Bush was quivering in his brush-clearing boots when he heard the Democratic Leadership say impeachment is off the table.

What is Congress Gonna do?

Freely distributable under a Creative Commons license requiring attribution to www.ThisIsWhatDemocracyLooksLike.com and share-alike. See Creative Commons for more details.

Eight of the sixteen SOA Watch activists who were sentenced for carrying their protest to close the SOA/WHINSEC onto the Fort Benning Military Reservation on the weekend of November 17-19, 2006 will be reporting to Federal Prison facilities across the United States today, Tuesday, April 17. The sixteen received sentences which ranged from one year probation to six months in federal prison. Tina Busch-Nema, Don Coleman, Valerie Fillenwarth, Martina Leforce, Julienne Oldfield, Sheila Salmon, Nathan Slater and Mike Vosburg-Casey will be joining Melissa Helman, Cathy Webster, Alice Gerard, Philip Gates, Joshua Harris and Graymon Ward who reported to prison on Wednesday, March 21. Katherine Whitney Ray, 17 years old, was sentenced to one year of probation and 50 hours of community service and Margaret Bryant-Gainer was released after serving 71 days in Muscogee County Jail after refusing to post bail on November 19, 2006.

Write to the Prisoners of Conscience:

Code Pink in Ashland, Kentucky?

You can read my long boring wait here, but the only interesting bit are a few photos of Cincinnati Union Terminal.

I think I met the only two Code Pink members in Ashland, Kentucky. Pam nd Barbara are the ones sitting down in this picture. Linda Green and her friend are standing up and were on the train from Bloomington, IN.

The Cincinnati Union Terminal is pretty nice.  The main terminal’s roof is like ten stories high and it’s painted this bright orange and yellow. I’m guessing those are the original art deco colors from the 1930’s.  Two large murals and a bunch of art deco architectural features. You can read more about the history of Union Terminal on Wikipedia.

It turns out the actual room inside Union Terminal that is now the Amtrak train station doesn’t open until 11PM.  Luckily the people working the ticket booth at the main entrance are very nice and said that I can wait inside the main part of the building. After my brother drops me off, I’m sitting out soaking up the architecture in the main entrance hall and this guy comes over with a badge. After some inspection of the badge I determine he’s a security guard. He asks me if I’m waiting for a train, and if so could I please move into the vending machine area so they can clean the floors. He was friendly, and told me there were lockers back a ways if I wanted to put my bags in there so I could go see the Imax movie at 7PM. I'm now travelling with a huge backpack and I'm not used to it yet. I have to set my backpack on one of the tables so that it's high barely high enough with me being my knees to be able to get my arms through the loops and eventually I get it on my back straight enough that it won't fall off.  

Yesterday Cowalker wrote a diary asking us what our protest signs would be for this coming weekend. In the comments there were a couple of people asking about how to make signs. This diary elaborates on my comment from yesterday about how to make a protest sign and also includes some large size downloadable text and graphics that can be pasted together or pasted on your protest sign.

Before jumping below the fold, I'd like to remind you that RenaRF has organized a place for bloggers to meet for the march in Our Nations's Capitol for Saturday morning at 10AM. You can find more information, and pictures, from her excellent diary on the march.

My hope is that Venezuela will not be destabilized after this election. My worries about destabilization arise from several factors. The first is the history of U.S. intervention in Central and South American countries by putting into power, and supporting, brutal dictators. The second is seeing the Venezuelan ambassador speak at the School of the Americas Watch where he talked about regime change in South America being a very real concern of their's, based on current practices of the Bush Administration. And third, the recent diary of Florida Democrat, Another Coup in Venezuela, which talks about the possible efforts our country has taken in U.S. financed post-election destabilization plans around the world and also to oust Chavez. You can also read more about this at VenezuelaAnalysis.com.

Political ringtones!

I should be at the Norwalk office volunteering for Ned Lamont, but the friend I'm staying with had major plumbing problems yesterday and so I'm here baby sitting the plumbers while she heads out of town on a business trip. With nothing else to do, I decided to experiment with making a political ringtone for my cell phone. I've met with some success and while I'm here listening to the banging on the pipes I'd be happy to create political ringtones for your favorite race. Post a comment with the text you'd like to have and I'll work on getting an audio file created and uploaded for you.

Updated: Actions to secure electronic voting

With the new Princeton video on how easy it is to subvert elections using Diebold electronic voting machines, I think it's time to resurrect these old action items I had put together about a year ago. With the above video as evidence of malfeasance by elected officials, I think filing a complaint with your state's Attorney General is the best way to go at this point. Investigations into whether voting officials are being criminally negligent seems to be appropriate at this point in time. Check out Action Item 2 below.