Kate's Blog

So, I moved away from my Driving Votes companions in Seattle this June, sad but true. But all you east coasters can be happy because now I am living in New York and we in the Driving Votes chapter here are looking for YOU!

Join us on the Independence Day Drive to Philadelphia. Email Dave, our fearless trip leader and learn about C.H.U.N.K. Accost people on the street. Admire the Betsy Ross house. And one other thing, I grew up in NJ and I kinda dig the turnpike.

Everyday it's something new.

Today's headline story in the Seattle section of the Post Intelligencer recounts the tale of a 15 year old boy questioned by the Secret Service for his gory representations of Bush in his sketch book. Apparently he placed Bush's head on a stick, colored burning flames around the constitution & titled the drawing The End of The War On Error. He probably had some fancy sketches of Bush as Satan, Bush as Bin Laden, Bush as his principal in there too.

Reported by his school officials, he was questioned to see if he was perhaps going to carry out his dastardly plans. The Chief of Police from the town is quoted as saying this is a "cut and dry case." His parents are mortified.

So here we are in a post-9/11, post columbine era. Police can't trust the kids- they might have guns. We must take all actions as a legitimate threat, but it seems to me we've backed ourselves into a corner. The government is giving itself the leeway to call anything it chooses an act of terrorism, or a potential threat towards the president.

The Patriot Act: Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism.

Kids sure are sneaky these days.

Click on this link link to follow the ACLU through a potential scenario involving the Vieques Island protesters as they find themselves in a quagmire of patriotic hell.

The New York Times printed an article on the Republican Party's co-optation of Democratic grass-roots political organizing strategies. But with a mighty eerie twist.

Take a look for an in-depth look at what we are up against. Here is an excerpt:

The campaign will use this same precinct-by-precinct design in more than a dozen so-called battleground states, including such critical theaters as Missouri, Florida and Pennsylvania. (If you're lucky enough to live in a less competitive state like Massachusetts or Utah, you'll be spared all the door-knocking and toxic TV ads.) Ohio is the site of the earliest and most intense effort. Already, the campaign has begun holding training sessions for its Ohio volunteers, which are designed to introduce them to the Plan and which have the general feel of a motivational workshop. ''No one is going to walk up to you and say, 'Can I help George W. Bush?' '' Dewey Stokes, the county commissioner for Franklin County, told about 100 volunteers at one of these sessions. ''You have to ask. Why are you all here tonight? Because someone asked you. You've got friends, relatives, co-workers -- ask them to help.''

On this morning, the colonel had come, clipboard under his arm, with the goal of registering 10 new voters, which would count toward the goal of 6,450 that the campaign had set for the county. (Volunteers get points for every voter they register, and these points can be redeemed on the Bush campaign Web site for hats or mugs.) Ashenhurst said he carried the clipboard everywhere he went, and if he saw a moving van by the side of the road in a Republican-rich neighborhood, he would pull over and see if the person was moving in and wanted to register. ''Voter registration isn't just a weekend activity,'' he told me. ''It really is a way of life.''