So let’s recap the last few weeks.

Bush was just on TV, defending the necessity of the Iraq war in the face of massive antiwar protests taking place around the country.

The United States is the only industrialized nation to refuse to sign the Kyoto protocol and has objected to a UN proposal to significantly reduce carbon emissions by the year 2020. The Bush administration has slashed budget funding for renewable energy incentives. And Bush's 2005 Energy Policy Act gave a total of $4.3 billion in tax incentives to oil companies.

Yet, at the March 5th Washington International Renewable Energy Conference, Bush looked the world in the eye and said with a straight face, “America is in the lead when it comes to energy independence; we're in the lead when it comes to new technologies; we're in the lead when it comes to global climate change; and we'll stay that way.”

The Bush administration has refused to come clean about their unwillingness to address the United States' contribution to global warming. Instead, they rely on a campaign of propaganda, false “science,” and now, outright lies. They believe that if they repeat something often enough, the public will simply accept it as truth. And they believe that the American people won't bother to check the facts.

President Bush is undermining our society's commitment to fighting global warming to the world and making us a laughing stock in the international community. And he has made it clear that he has no intention of addressing this impending crisis.

Progressive Future is working to make the United States a true leader in renewable energy. It's simply a matter of being a responsible member of the global community. Show the Bush administration and the world our commitment to fighting global warming by signing our Priorities for a Progressive Future.

Yesterday, I finally chose a candidate and have decided to support Barack Obama. Neither Obama nor Clinton are perfect and each has questions that need to be answered, however, Mr. Obama has demonstrated that he can galvanize the country and possibly unite us in a positive manner we haven’t witnessed in years - and we’re long overdue to come-together and solve our problems and issues in a concerted spirit of healing the country. I do have some questions in regard experience, however, a good President is advised by a Cabinet that is hand-picked and “supposed” to be representative of the foremost experts in their fields. Presidents are sometimes made by the expertise of their advisor’s, as there are too many issues for one man to review in-depth himself. I believe the Obama Cabinet will adhere to those standards rather then partisan appointments such as we witnessed in the Bush administration, and now that we have seen first-hand the damage of unbridled partisanship and how it distorts a President’s world-view and perception of important events, I believe Obama will choose a cabinet that will represent some of the best talent America has to offer.

We need a President with charisma who can address the nation and the global audience and be taken seriously - who will inspire other nations to believe that America is making a turn toward the right course - to be accomplished in a responsible manner, but we also need a President that will form a strong diplomatic corp that will work to undue and attempt to mitigate the damage of the Bush administration. The GOP is already beginning to employ the politics of fear, and it’s time to end this primary with dignity and a belief that Mr. Obama will indeed be a true “uniter” that can help to lead America though times that have become extremely troubled and fraught with danger. I have hopes that uniting behind a Senator that has proven to be the most Liberal Senator on record during his short tenure will continue with those beliefs with his Presidency, but that he will also remain strong on national defense and work to create a multi-national task-force on terrorism where we involve the world in fighting and winning a bitter match that threatens much of Europe and other allies abroad instead of attempting to lead the fight, expending our recourses on no-bid contracts and billions of dollars that appear to have disappeared into thin air on a war that was started based on deceit and lies! Our wars that breed even more terrorism need to stop, and we need to concentrate on regions that harbor and encourage attacking American and allied targets.

But, even with the hope of electing a President that’s prepared to unite the country, we cannot forget the past Seven (7) long and disastrous years we’ve been through, and the financial ramifications are barely beginning to fully manifest themselves, and there’s rough sailing ahead for the entire country. Repairing this mess won’t be easy, however, the election of Barack Obama is likely to raise the value of the dollar and confidence in the United States, all key components of our economy as a whole. That won’t solve the problem, but it does go a long way to enhancing our recovery efforts.

Nevertheless, even though I maintain a strong belief in our Constitution and Bill of Rights, both have failed to protect the principles that established our nation this past seven years; the Justice Department has been stacked and has a distinctive conservative leaning, although that’s not representative of the US attitude and beliefs as a whole; the President himself stands in contempt of the American people and our Congress, yet a Congress voted-in to protect the people and uphold their basic function of protecting our constitution, the rule of law, and stand as guardians of our democratic process have failed miserably in their duty, leaving the people to suffer under the oppression of the Bush administration as we have watched in horror as our industry is outsourced and or economy has become as fragile as our ecology. LINK

No Matter Whether It’s Hillary or Obama elected as President - WE MUST INSURE THIS DOES NOT HAPPEN AGAIN!

I am one person with one idea, however, there must be hundreds, if not thousands of ideas on how we can legally protect ourselves from allowing this to happen to our nation again. In the interests of getting some of our more talented political writers and political strategists interested in taking off a few minutes of their time and editorializing on “how” we can prevent a catastrophe of this nature from happening again in our foreseeable future, Justanothercoverup is proposing a series of Op-Ed and articles, submitted by anyone that chooses, to expand upon and provide concepts and ideas that can be forwarded to our Congress and both Presidential Candidates.. The ugly head of fascism has risen across this great nation, and it appears that our only real defense, when it comes down to the nitty-gritty is the voice of the people themselves - and we need to insure that when it’s needed, the people will be heard!

We propose to offer a prize pool for articles and essays that address this issue and present viable solutions that could be presented to members of Congress for their perusal and consideration. I feel so strongly about this matter and wish to open a dialog between some of our best-known, and also the unknown writers that post exceptional material on the Internet in bursts of pure inspiration. To “sweeten the pot”, the writer who receives the most votes will receive a grand prize of $100.00; the second-place winner will receive $50.00 and third-place will receive $25.00 If we begin to receive some exceptional ideas that begin to garner support among the readership and the traffic increases appreciably, we will request donations to sweeten the pot even more and attempt to draw-in writers that otherwise may not have participated.

With enough work we could formulate viable and bipartisan solutions that one day soon may lead to legislation to Protect America from anyone that refuses to honor their sworn duty to uphold and protect the Constitution of The United States. We request that these suggestions be well laid-out and based on sound legal principles or new ones that are “res nova.” but have a firm basis in international law. The “prima facie” case for change to protect the people has already been made as witnessed by the past seven (7) years of incompetence, mismanagement, and downright cronyism that has cost the American taxpayers billions of dollars. We must first survive the initial onslaught of consequences that will result from President Bush’s poor management of our country, but it’s also imperative to enact legal measures to prevent a similar incident from occurring in the future as well.

I propose that the entry period be anytime from this Friday to the middle of May. (The entry date could be extended until the last minute of the contest, although it would take a flurry of voting to catch-up with a popular, earlier submission - but it could happen.) The official start date will begin on April 1st, 2008, and will end on midnight, the 1st day of May 2008. Entries will be voted on by the readership, and will be posted in an adjacent forum for discussion and voting after appearing on Justanothercoverup. Authors will be at liberty to post their material in other places as well; we’re not attempting to take traffic away from anyone, but create a “simmering pot” exclusively for this idea alone. The forum will entertain debate and suggestions as the readership dictates, but will be limited to the subject at hand. The popularity of the individual articles will be displayed by their position on the forum and the views each of them receive. The winner will be decided by individual votes, all made by the public which will be shown in real-time as the articles are read and rated by interested viewers. The only subject this forum will entertain are the suggestions and articles that are posted to prevent this type of tragedy from happening in the future, I have no interest in forming a full-time discussion forum, don’t have the time, and if this endeavor becomes successful, I may appeal to some of the better-known forums for help in part-time moderation of the forum. Good moderators are hard to come by, and I value the people who diligently supervise some of our best known political forums.

My suggestion to this debacle and preventing it in the future is a constitutional amendment that gives the American people the power to recall an errant President via a referendum process.  (This was an example, as I will not be participating in the contest myself to alleviate any suspicion of bias or improprity.)

All of my life I have been opposed to amending the constitution, however, when we find that the rest of our sacred safeguards have broken down, then it’s time to implement new ones that will give the final say where it actually belongs - firmly by and through the voice of the people of the United States! Obama says “Yes we can” and I say we can also prevent a situation such as this from arising again without the people themselves standing on the sideline, helpless to do anything meaningful other than feel the utter despair as we watch our great nation being torn-down economically and becoming a society that we normally would envision to exist in Russia or China.

As a nation, we stand perilously close to tyranny and oppression of a magnitude yet to be understood, but in Obama, baring any interference from the GOP or Bush’s Neo-ons, we actually stand a chance of reclaiming this country and when we do so, it’s imperative that we the people take measures to insure that it can’t happen again. If the response is good and we wind-up with three (3) proposals that make sense and appeal to the general public, it’s our intention to send each member of Congress a professionally bound copy of the top three essays/Op-Eds with any relevant comments that resulted from discussion of that particular submission from the discussion forum. We also intend to send each Presidential contender, Democrat and GOP, those same three articles.

Further, with the permission of a major news aggregator, we will highlight those three winning submissions and create an action page so they can readily be submitted via email to your appropriate Congressmen and or newspaper. Justanothercoverup is being submitted as a non-profit organization, and to date, all of our advertising income has gone back into enhancements for the site. Justanothercoverup is now hosted on an ultra high-sped server to handle increased traffic and graphics without noticeably slowing-down during high-traffic periods, and tomorrow an SEO organization will begin optimizing the site, creating Meta-Tags, and increasing our exposure to search engines we traditionally receive poor results from. In short, those authors who do enter this contest are likely to receive high exposure of their Op-Eds/Articles and ideas.

If you are interested in participating in this contest to discuss and attempt to raise a solution that will help to protect us from this ever happening again, please address an email to wjcormier@bellsouth.net . As soon as the total reaches 25 early entrants, I will open the contest and create the appropriate forum to host the entries in addition to them being posted initially on Justanothercoverup. Rules governing the contest will be sent out to each competing writer. All writers entering the contest will also have an account created with posting rights, but in order to reduce the incidence of Spam, all entries will have to be moderated before they can be published. (Only to check to make sure they fit-in with the theme we’re attempting to promote. Under no circumstances would an entry be posted that had been edited without express permission of the author - and unless it’s to add %$#*& where a foul word was used, there will be no editing of material. I request no foul language, as this site is constantly accessed by schools and colleges pursuing the many subjects that are written about herein.

William Cormier

The Bush administration on Monday again asked Congress to allow oil and natural gas drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, saying $7 billion could be raised in leasing fees from energy companies, according to Reuters. 

The Democractic-controlled  Congress opposes drilling, and hopefully their opposition proves to actually stop such efforts. But if their track record is any indication of whether it will be stopped, then prepare for more drilling, Alaska.

If the refuge were opened to drilling, it would take about eight years before the area reached full production of around 800,000 to 1 million barrels per day, according to the Energy Department's analytical arm, Reuters reports.

Last year, the teen birth rate rose for the first time since 1991, according to a report released yesterday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Among teenagers 15-19, the birth rate went up 3% from 2005 to 2006.

Unsurprisingly, these findings raise major questions about the effectiveness of the Bush administration’s abstinence-only sex ed programs—looks like we’re not getting much for the $176 million the federal government pours into such programs each year. The CDCP report comes on the heels of a major study of abstinence-only programs that

failed to demonstrate that they have any effect on delaying sexual activity among teenagers, and some studies suggest that they may actually increase pregnancy rates.

Robert Rector, a Heritage Foundation senior research fellow, said implicating abstinence-only programs in the rising teen birth rate is “stupid.” Always good to see a right-winger’s perspective on the mess he helped create.

With the announcement that the Sudanese government under President Omar al-Bashir is close to reopening negotiations with rebel groups in Darfur, promising a ceasefire in the meantime, the Sudanese people along with the rest of the world may finally see and end to the violence in sight. But we must not get our hopes up quite yet. Several attempts at peace including an actual ceasefire have all lagged and eventually broken down completely over the last three years as genocide has continued in Sudan. As the report details the upcoming negations in Libya, it is hard to believe that this time around any agreement will stick as the government has yet to acknowledge their support of the Janjaweed militias who carry out the genocide. Bashir’s rhetoric about bringing an end to the nearly decade long conflict have amounted to nothing but hollow promises. His Islamic government has financed and supplied the Janjaweed militias for several years in their attempts to destroy all existence of the non-Arab African population in the western Darfur region. As the African Union remains largely ineffective in containing the violence, constrained by weak mandates and poor logistical support, the UN now stands to beef up its police force in the Darfur region.

Just when I thought it couldn’t get worse, when I foolishly believed that this administration couldn’t do anything to even further neglect, abuse, and pretty much spit on the veterans who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, Bush went and one-upped me with a gem of statement given during a press conference today and covered by ABC News. 

Jim Nicholson, Secretary of the Department of Veterans affairs (located just a few blocks down the street from Campus Progress), signed his resignation letter today.  I know I just wrote a crib sheet on the history of veteran treatment in the U.S., but this news had to be highlighted.  Every time another Bush appointee admits he’s not qualified for job he got just for being a friend of the administration (I’m looking at you Mike Brown), it’s newsworthy to me. 

Perhaps the wounds are still a bit too deep for me to bring this up - rest assured, I am not saying this as a political exploitation, using a tragedy to highlight a point; I am simply saying this to draw a comparison.

What happened at Virginia Tech is a heartbreaking tragedy, I will never, ever deny that. The time to grieve is now, and the nation will continue to grieve.

Consider this, however: at the time of this being written, 3311 Americans have died in Iraq, in addition to hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. Unlike the war in Vietnam, Americans seem to be removed from this war. They seem to be going on with normalcy as Americans are losing their lives every day.

The truth is that the loss of lives at Virginia Tech isn't any more or less tragic than the lost of lives in Iraq. Those who have died in Iraq also had hopes and dreams, parents and loved ones, lovers and friends. It breaks my heart that we mourn the deaths of 32 Americans, but we turn a blind-eye to the thousands of other Americans, simply because we're so far removed from them.

It is my hope that, through the tragedy, we can realize that the loss of any human life to a needless cause should be a travesty, and should be mourned. Only then, I hope, can public perception of the war in Iraq be more negative. If an angry mob of right-doers could take Don Imus off the air, I hope such a mob can also end the war in Iraq.

The only thing, though, is that it seems almost classless for us to be speaking about this now -- at a time when there is still so much hurt going on and so much grieving still to be done.

But either we make the wounds deeper and make the American people see, or they'll become stoic again after the wounds have healed. Thoughts?

From the NYT, the Bush administration takes climate change denial and quashing of internal discussion to a new low:

"Internal memorandums circulated in the Alaskan division of the Federal Fish and Wildlife Service appear to require government biologists or other employees traveling in countries around the Arctic not to discuss climate change, polar bears or sea ice if they are not designated to do so."

 The memo is a response to an ongoing suit by environmental groups, pressing the administration to list polar bears as threatened (due to receding sea ice), apparently as leverage towards getting emissions-related regulations put in place.