For Joplin, MO, area folks, there is a new group on Facebook: Joplin for Obama. Please join and get all the latest info on the campaign in southwest Missouri. We expect a field coordinator to be named in the next week or so.

Lee McD Joplin for Obama

Joplin for Hillary

Thanks to all the Joplin for Hillary supporters and volunteers. We love you and Hillary loves you. The primary season is over. And, as Hillary said in suspending her campaign, "This isn't the party I planned, but I sure like the company."

Please join our Obama and other Democratic friends as we gear up for the fall campaign. We stand ready to put a Democrat back in the White House and that Democrat is Barack Obama. Joplin for Hillary is part of a united Democratic Party with a fresh burst of life and and a general election to win. Can we do it? YES, WE CAN!

Please sign up to volunteer, donate, and follow the campaign with us.

www.barackobama.com 

Lee McDaniel

Moderator

Joplin for Hillary 

Ga. sex offenders challenge church volunteer ban
By GREG BLUESTEIN, Associated Press Writer
[Jun 24, 2008; 11:13 am EDT]
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080624/ap_on_re_us/sex_offenders_volunteers

ATLANTA - Five sex offenders filed a lawsuit Tuesday claiming that a tough new Georgia law that bans them from volunteering at churches also robs them of their right to participate in religious worship.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Rome, claims the Georgia law effectively "criminalizes fundamental religious activities" for sex offenders and bars them from serving as a choir member, secretary, accountant or any other role with a religious organization.  ...

The latest challenge, which was filed by the Atlanta-based Southern Center for Human Rights, claims that the measure deprives Georgia's sex offenders of the "rehabilitative influence" of religious activity.

"Certain people on the sex offender registry should not work with children in a church setting or elsewhere," says Sarah Geraghty, an attorney with the center. "But criminalizing the practice of religion for all 15,000 people on the registry will do more harm than good." ...

--

complete copyrighted story at above link

 Rocky Mountain News - Sara Burnett, June 17, 2008

Denver police are stocking up on guns that fire a pepper spray-like substance instead of bullets - a less-lethal weapon used to disperse crowds - in advance of the Democratic National Convention.

The department recently ordered 88 Mark IV launchers and projectiles at a cost "in the low six figures," the company that makes the weapons stated in a news release Monday.

The request was for delivery in advance of the DNC, according to Louisville- based Security With Advanced Technology Inc.

The convention, scheduled for Aug. 25 to 28 at the Pepsi Center, is expected to draw thousands of protesters to sites throughout Denver.

The city received a $50 million federal grant for security. A senior adviser to Mayor John Hickenlooper has said the city plans to spend up to half that amount on equipment, with the rest going to pay officers.

But the city has refused to disclose how it is spending the money, prompting the American Civil Liberties Union last month to file a civil lawsuit.

The court filing alleges the city is violating the Colorado Open Records Act.

City officials say releasing the information is "contrary to the public interest" because it could disclose important tactical information, potentially jeopardizing security.

A city spokesperson could not be reached for comment Monday. Meanwhile, speculation about what the city is buying has run rampant.

Some organizers of protest groups believe police are buying extended-range Tasers and weapons that incapacitate people with high-intensity sound.

The Mark IV weapons the city ordered recently fire plastic balls filled with powder that's "like a combination of cayenne pepper and baby powder," the manufacturer said.

It can be fired from up to 100 feet away, said Ben Cook, director of Veritas, a subsidiary of Security With Advanced Technology.

The balls burst open on impact. While the powder will incapacitate a person like pepper spray, it doesn't cause some of the more severe reactions, Cook said.

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008/jun/17/denver-stocks-up-on-pepper-weapon/

NYT - June 20, 2008 by David Brooks

God, Republicans are saps. They think that they're running against some academic liberal who wouldn't wear flag pins on his lapel, whose wife isn't proud of America and who went to some liberationist church where the pastor damned his own country. They think they're running against some naive university-town dreamer, the second coming of Adlai Stevenson. [an insult to Adlai, if you ask me].

But as recent weeks have made clear, Barack Obama is the most split-personality politician in the country today. On the one hand, there is Dr. Barack, the high-minded, Niebuhr-quoting speechifier who spent this past winter thrilling the Scarlett Johansson set and feeling the fierce urgency of now. But then on the other side, there's Fast Eddie Obama, the promise-breaking, tough-minded Chicago pol who'd throw you under the truck for votes. This guy is the whole Chicago package: an idealistic, lakefront liberal fronting a sharp-elbowed machine operator.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/20/opinion/20brooks.html?_r=1&em&ex=1214107200&en=98dbf7f8bae1fe38&ei=5087%0A&oref=slogin

So said Obama on the Jimmy Kimmel Show. Got some laughs. What I find funny is how Obama supporters are quick to come to his defense about making the lame joke.

My guess is that if Hillary or a Republican or, for that matter, a person of any race other than Obama's...had made the joke, these people would be demonized severely.

An example of a blog that touched on the topic:

http://cincymoms.cincinnati.com/f/ShowThread.aspx?tid=54684&cid=15&fid=129

Some Cuban Americans are planning to protest Democrat Barack Obama's visit to Miami on Saturday.

Posted on Fri, Jun. 20, 2008

By BETH REINHARDMARISOL RUIZ ZOTO/AP

 Elian Gonzalez, right, smiles as he attends an event marking the 80th anniversary of the birth of Ernesto "Che" Guevara in Havana, Cuba, June 14, 2008.Summoning a time of political upheaval in Miami, a great-uncle of Elián González plans Friday to publicly denounce two Barack Obama campaign advisors who helped send the boy back to his father in Cuba eight years ago.

One day before the expected Democratic nominee addresses a conference of mayors in Miami, Delfín González will hold a 1 p.m. news conference outside the Little Havana home where Elián lived with relatives for several months in 2000.

Earlier this week, CNN reported that Elián, now 14 years old, has joined Cuba's Young Communist Union. Obama was an Illinois lawmaker during the 2000 dispute and did not take a public position.

At issue are foreign-policy advisor Greg Craig, who represented Elián's father in the custody battle with the Miami relatives, and legal advisor Eric Holder, a member of Obama's vice-presidential search committee who was deputy attorney general when the 6-year-old boy was seized by federal agents and returned to Cuba.

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/florida/story/576791.html

In a stunning announcement Friday, the Pentagon skipped over Boeing and awarded a massive $40 billion contract for a new fleet of refueling tankers to a Northrop Grumman and European Aeronautics Defense and Space (EADS). While Air Force officials claimed the choice of the KC-45 tankers jointly developed by Grumman and Airbus' parent company was based on its superior design, politicians in both parties are howling about the devastating economic impact on U.S.-based Boeing. And they might just have John McCain to thank for it.

Back in 2004, McCain launched a one-man to crusade to undo the scandal ridden lease for Boeing aerial refueling tankers based on the 767 design. Subsequent congressional investigations showed a systematic failure of the Air Force's procurement process in opting for a lease of the Boeing aircraft that would be more expensive that purchasing the tankers outright. While Air Force officials blamed one Pentagon official about to start a her new career at Boeing as responsible for swinging the deal to hr new employer, Senator McCain was having none of it. As the Washington Post reported in November 2004:

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who has conducted an equally vigorous campaign against the lease, said in releasing the internal Pentagon communications in a speech on the Senate floor that the missives reflect a "systemic Air Force failure in procurement oversight, willful blindness or rank corruption."

McCain said top Air Force officials have recently been trying to "delude the American people" into believing that a single person is responsible for misconduct in the $30 billion leasing plan -- namely, Darleen A. Druyun, the Air Force contracting official who pleaded guilty two months ago to overpricing the tankers as a "parting gift" to Boeing before she became one of the firm's executives.

"I simply cannot believe that one person, acting alone, can rip off taxpayers out of billions of dollars," said McCain, who said he will keep pursuing internal Defense Department and Bush administration communications until "all the stewards of taxpayers' funds who committed wrongdoing are held accountable."

In the fallout from the reversal of the Boeing lease, Air Force Secretary James G. Roche and Marvin R. Sambur, the Air Force's top acquisitions manager, resigned several days before McCain's speech. (As the Post noted, emails revealed that "Roche asked a lobbyist for Boeing Co. to use the company's Washington contacts to 'quash' a deputy undersecretary of defense and make him "pay an appropriate price.")

For his part, John McCain has made his role in unearthing the Boeing scandal and billions of dollars the lease would have wasted a centerpiece of his campaign for the White House. In October 2007, the McCain web site proclaimed that "in one successful effort, John McCain eliminated up to $2 billion in wasteful and corrupt spending in the Boeing tanker deal" and boasted of his being named a "Taxpayer Hero" by Citizens Against Government Waste. During the November 28, 2007 CNN/YouTube GOP presidential debate, McCain championed his efforts to scuttle the Boeing deal:

"I have the record of fighting against wasteful spending. I have a clear record of winning. I saved the taxpayers $2-billion on a bogus Air Force Boeing tanker deal where people went to jail."

None of which is to suggest that McCain's actions were improper. Far from it, the original Boeing lease deal was shockingly corrupt. It is with good reason that Keith Ashdown of Taxpayers for Common Sense concluded, "It was probably the best example of oversight in the 108th Congress."

Incidently, Lou Dobbs thought this export idea was ludicrous.

http://www.perrspectives.com/blog/archives/000962.htm