...not as a "founding father" (that was the suggestion) but rather as an inmate. Preferably in a padded cell.

yep; its lack of education

if you want to experience a scary moment some night, watch Jay Leno's "JayWalker" segment where he asks all kinds of people on the street very basic questions about political figures, geography, etc,. and the answers are horrifyingly wrong. Truly double face-palm moments.

For awhile, one loses all hope for humanity based on a late night TV thingy.

I met Sean Penn one time, he came to an event my peace and justice project was putting on.

Didn't have a clue it was him until a DFA member next to me told me. This was San in Francisco.

who refused to go back and fight in Iraq and was very public about it. We got our church declared as a CO sanctuary church and got lot of hate mail, some threats and an appearance on the Sean Hannity show so he could ream us.

Just like the Senate Dems trying to change the filibuster rule. They'll want it if the GOP gets a majority one day.

The Senate majority leader can change rules on the first day of a new congress, the second the GOP gains control of that house, they would have changed them and gave dems the finger. There is ZERO point in having the senate rules set up the way they are unless you want to purposefully allow the minority to perform obstructionist nonsense. Further, the current rule isn't even the original filibuster rule, they simply motion that they want to filibuster and the bill can't even hit the floor for a vote. This essentially gives the minority party veto power on the Senate floor, which is totally over powered and is breaking the system.

I heard the same thing from some other senator; saying well, if we change the rules we may have to live under them if WE one day are in the minority.
I guess i'm confused

What do you think the Republicans will do the very first second of the first day that they seize control of the Senate. They'll change the rules! Obviously if we can change them on day one every two years, anyone who gains power can.

I guess it makes good theater for the media to show the gop stopping something by filibuster? I mean, i know what Cruz did wasnt a real filibuster, but they have done it in the past.

I really didnt know they could change it that fast. Thought they had to have a super majority.
Thanks for pointing this out for me.

That takes a simple majority vote, and if you're the speaker and you can't whip your caucus to give you the vote, you shouldn't be speaker. However now it's irrelevant since the GOP controls the house. Since they won't get any good legislation anyways Reid instead used it for horse trading purposes when the 2013 crowd took office. That was probably the best use at that time, but he should have went bull in the china shop in '09 and scrapped the current rules and reverted back to the previous rule set. If we gain control of both houses of Congress we'll likely do that. I'm crossing my fingers for 2015.

Michelle Malkin's new website Twitchy is basically a Twitter aggregator website that collects attention-getting tweets about news and politics. Even dumber than Glenn Beck's The Blaze and Tucker Carlson's Daily Caller.

Almost all votes in the country are now 'counted' by ES&S (which bought out Diebold), a far rightwing-connected, private corporation, using 'TRADE SECRET' programming code to tabulate the votes, with half the states doing NO AUDIT AT ALL (automatic comparison of ballots to machine totals) and the other half doing a miserably inadequate 1% audit.

What can you expect from such a situation, except Ted Cruzes in Congress, Scott Walkers as governors, insurance corporation-run medical care and endless war?

This is the one thing that we can do something about now, today, cuz these easily--EASILY!--riggable voting machines are purchased by your local county registrars.

Need to go back to counting our votes IN THE PUBLIC VENUE.

For starters. Bottom line of democracy: transparent vote counting.

Sean Pean was just being funny. Ha-ha-ha. And I'm sure he knows that the government-wrecking traitors in Congress hide behind the Magna Carta, et al, so ain't nobody gonna put them in a padded cell. (Much like Cromwellians, they are, now that I think about it, i.e., fascist bastards, who don't represent anybody, pretending to be parliament). (--and equally crazy!) The joke is OK with me, since it ultimately points to the utter illegitimacy of this Cromwellian faction in Congress. But why not hit the nail on the head? They. Were. NOT. Elected. They were S/elected by the fascist bastards at ES&S.

Just sayin'. We need to look right at the voting machines. Coup d'etat, that.