Assuming you have time to follow up.... (one)
I've been asked to put the idea of state challenge to the bankruptcy in Washington in a series of political messages, which will be run in the final four weeks of the Democratic primary. Its my punishment or reward for having written ... the contest is for enrolled Ds who are votable. John's votable Ds are out of reach, but they're not the only votable Ds, and there are unenrolleds who are votable, who can be messaged to go to the polls and enroll as a D in order to issue vote...
Ad No. 1. Ad No. 2
Our problem, as a primary challenge campaign staff, is to convince you there is an issue on the ballot.
The campaign staff for the incumbant has to convince you there is no issue on the ballot.
There is an issue. The Bush Regime is waging an illegal, immoral and unjust war against Iraq.
They're losing.
They're using the Maine Guard. Mechanics and engineers. To drive gun trucks in Anbar Province and stand guard at Abu Ghraib prison and Guantanamo Bay.
The Governor of Maine can order the Maine Guard home.
Independent of George W. Bush. Independent of Donald Rumsfeld. Independent of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. Independent of House Speaker Dennis Hastert. Independent even, of Justices Scalia, Thomas, Roberts and Alito.
Because the Iraq war is neither to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections or repel invasions, and that is the plain and unambiguous constitutional limit on the Federal authority over the Guard.
Woodrow Wilson's Congress did not amend the Constitution when the National Defense Act of 1916 was passed. No governor has seen the need to challenge the 1916 Act, but no war since, no foreign war ever, has been both so wrong, and so exploited the Guard. And Governors with backbone routinely decline to federalize the Guard.
Any voter enrolled as a Democrat can vote in the June primary. Any unenrolled voter can enroll at the polls and vote in the June primary. Anyone, Mainiac or from away, Republican or Green, young or old, citizen or Somali, can contact us and offer us your time or your money. We need your help to get out our vote. Together we can say "No" and make it stick.
It takes five impressions to make a message, any message, effective. Five impressions in the Kennebec Journal, the Lewiston Sun, the Portland Press Herald and the Bangor Daily News. Its a primary so we need to reach just primary voters, Ds and enrollable-as-Ds, who turn out on an issue.
Comments in comments please, or via email. I need some test users for the new campaign drupal site also.
Below the fold is some discussion of a post on Daily Kos.
There is a post worth reading over at Daily Kos. It treats the question of State vs Federal control over the Guard in NOLA during and after the Katrina landfall, when the laws of the union, at least those relating to orderly evacuation, if not others, required execution by the Guard. On September 3, 2005 Louisiana Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco officially refused to allow the federalization of the National Guard and by doing so remained Commander-in-Chief over the Louisiana National Guard during the Katrina emergency. I recommend it highly to anyone interested in the problem of how we effectively, rather than simply symbolically, resist what Justice O'Conner (ret.) referred to recently as "a dictatorship".