Do you want to gamble with your vote? A slot machine is far more secure than our voting system. We have a chance to make voting in Arizona more secure. SB 1557 is now being considered by the Arizona legislature. Write your local Representatives and Senator, and tell them to support this bill. You can … Read more
Link: Bolton compares Iran threat to Sept 11 attacks I’m surprised Bush’s PR assault on Iran has jumped the shark so soon. People are going to be, rightfully, offended and dismayed at such an obvious lunge for Americans’ rhetorical jugulars. But there you have it. On Nightline Bolton said, "Just like September 11, only with … Read more
President Bush’s announcement of a cooperative agreement with India on
nuclear power generation technology should have come as no surprise. As
early as 2001 the Bush Administration was looking at ways of expanding
the American relationship with India. The 2004 India-U.S. Next Step
initiative suggested a ‘presumption of approval’ for American dual use
nuclear equipment exports to India, and that policy is essentially what
the Bush Administration’s agreement with India attempts to accomplish.
However, the Administration’s initiative is not legal under current
American law, and poses a significant danger of collapsing the core
obligations of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NNPT) – the
central source of authority for global non-proliferation, and the very
treaty under which the Administration currently seeks to refer Iran to
the Security Council. In order for the Administration to open India to
American exports of nuclear technology, the Congress will have to pass
a concurrent resolution waiving several provisions of the Atomic Energy Act. (for details Download CRS Report).
There are significant reasons why Congress should not do so. The most
salient being the damage it would do international reliance on core
commitments of the NNPT, and the resulting encouragement of nuclear
proliferation and regional escalation, especially in Asia.
Political science professors Poole and Rosenthal
analyze the political behavior of Congress over time using Roll Call
votes to determine the relative position of representatives on a basic
liberal-moderate-conservative scale. The results of the their study
confirm what many would intuit; that American politics is becoming
increasingly polarized, and the views of elected officials have become
more extreme.
The data sorts officials by a single score reflecting their voting
patterns. The lower a score, the more liberal the official; the higher,
the more conservative. This ranking
separates the parties with perfect accuracy, except for a few outliers
who persist in marginally hostile districts. For Arizona in the 109th
Congress, the data shows that several of Arizona’s representative are
among the most extremely conservative in the nation – I would contend
far more conservative than the mainstream of even the Republican
electorate. The Arizona Delegation is ranked here, with #1 being the
most liberal member of the House, and #435 being the most conservative.
Link: DeWine’s bill to make it a crime to report Presidential lawbreaking. Senator Mike DeWine is set to introduce a bill in the Senate to retroactively legalize Bush’s NSA wiretapping program; which begs the question, why does Congress need to ratify it if it is, indeed, legal as the President’s tools in Congress claim? DeWine’s … Read more