Condemn Expanded US War On Syria and Pakistan

From the International Action Center:

Sign the online petition at: http://www.iacenter.org/syriapakistan

All who want to stop the Bush White House from starting another war should immediately protest the unilateral, unjustifiable and criminal October 26 US assaults on Syrian and Pakistani sovereignty. Don’t let Bush get away with expanded war crimes in the Middle East. Condemn his efforts to hand a wider war to the next administration.

Make your opposition heard NOW! Sign the online petition (text below) and send a strong, clear message to the White House, Congress, the media and the UN.
You can also help by donating now to help circulate anti-war material in an urgent national campaign - donate online at http://iacenter.org/donate.

Online petition text:

To: U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Security Council President Wang Guangya, President Bush, Secretary Rice, Secretary Gates, Senators Obama and McCain, and Congressional leaders
cc: members of the media

The criminal acts of war on October 26 against both Syria and Pakistan by U.S. armed forces violates the sovereignty of both countries and must be roundly condemned. The attempt by the Bush administration to justify them by invoking an expanded theory of a right to carry out acts of war on any country's territory without permission or even consultation with the country's government is a complete repudiation of the principle of national sovereignty on which the UN charter is based.

These acts of war are unjustified and illegal, and can lead to wider US wars in the Middle East and South Asia. The US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have already cost hundreds of thousands of deaths and over $1 trillion. At the same time, the entire world is in the grip of the largest economic catastrophe since the great depression. It is more urgent than ever that all the US troops be brought home now and money be used for human needs, not newly expanded wars of aggression whether in Syria or Pakistan or Iran.

Sincerely,
(Your signature here)
To sign, edit and send the above statement to the UN, administration officials, congressional leaders and the media, go to http://www.iacenter.org/syriapakistan.

Just Days Left to Raise an Outcry

From Planned Parenthood:

The Bush administration recently proposed a radical federal regulation change that would allow doctors to knowingly withhold information from their patients about widely accepted medical treatment options like birth control, emergency contraception, and abortion services. Even worse, this new rule could allow individual health care providers to redefine abortion to include the most common forms of birth control -- and then refuse to provide them.

DO SOMETHING! Submit a comment to the Department of Health and Human Services during the official 30-day comment period -- it ends
September 25. And please, please spread the word to friends and family.

With more than 600,000 health facilities nationwide affected, including hundreds of Planned Parenthood health centers, millions of patients' access to basic, comprehensive reproductive health care may very well depend on your action.

US: Support the Kucinich Impeachment Hearing on Friday

from Democrats.com

If you are a US citizen, tell your congresspersons to support impeachment by cosponsoring H. Res. 1345!


Rep. Dennis Kucinich has led the fight for impeachment since April 2007, when he courageously introduced 3 Articles of Impeachment (H.Res. 333/799) against Vice President Cheney. On June 10, Kucinich introduced 3 5 Articles of Impeachment (H.Res. 1258) against President Bush.


When Speaker Pelosi refused to allow hearings on any of the 38 Articles, Kucinich returned to the floor of Congress to introduce one more Article of Impeachment against President Bush (H.Res. 1345).


Thanks to massive pressure from Democrats.com and our pro-impeachment allies, Speaker Pelosi finally allowed Chairman Conyers to hold a hearing this Friday. Kucinich will get a few minutes to argue for impeachment along with Rep. Robert Wexler, former Rep. Liz Holtzman, and former Salt Lake City mayor Rocky Anderson. Kucinich made a video to thank us for our efforts.


H.Res. 1345 focuses on Bush's ultimate crime - invading Iraq on the basis of lies. The evidence is overwhelming that George Bush and other top officials manufactured those lies to "sell" an invasion whose real purpose was to gain control of Iraq's oil and establish military bases in the heart of the Middle East - the agenda of the Project for a New American Century that Bush and McCain fully embraced.


When Kucinich testifies on Friday, he will naturally face hostile questions from rightwing Republicans who impeached President Clinton. But Kucinich will also face hostile questions from key Democrats who oppose impeachment.



Some of these Democrats supported the invasion of Iraq: Howard Berman (CA28), Rick Boucher (VA09), Adam Schiff (CA29), Brad Sherman (CA27), and Anthony Weiner (NY09).
But most of these Democrats oppose impeachment because they are cowering in fear of a counterattack from the White House and FOX News: John Conyers (MI14), Artur Davis (AL07), Bill Delahunt (MA10), Zoe Lofgren (CA16), Jerry Nadler (NY08), Linda Sanchez (CA39), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (FL20), Bobby Scott (VA03), Betty Sutton (OH13), and Mel Watt (NC12).


Only a few Judiciary Democrats understand that the Founding Fathers gave Congress the power of impeachment as the only way to stop a President from defying the Constitution and becoming a dictator, as Bush has done: Robert Wexler (FL19), Tammy Baldwin (WI02), Steve Cohen (TN09), Keith Ellison (MN05), Luis Gutierrez (IL04), Sheila Jackson Lee (TX18), Hank Johnson (GA04), and Maxine Waters (CA35).
If anti-impeachment Democrats get their way, Friday's 2-hour hearing will be the only "impeachment" hearing for this entire Congress - and then Bush will try to pardon himself and everyone else before leaving office next January, just as his father pardoned six Iran-contra criminals.


So it is crucial for all of us - now over 500,000! - to tell our Representatives today to support impeachment by cosponsoring Kucinich's H. Res. 1345.



And if you can do more, please make free calls to every Judiciary Democrat who opposes impeachment through Cause Caller:

http://www.causecaller.com/causes.php?c=House_Judiciary_Democrats_Impeachment



This is cool:

Simply enter your phone number and click the "Start Calling" button. (Click "Call me back if I accidentally hang up" in case you hang up by mistake.) In a few seconds, your phone will "magically" ring and CauseCaller will say the name of the first Representative on the list. Listen carefully for the name of each Member so you can repeat the name to the receptionist - or just say "The Representative." Don't hang up between calls - let the receptionists hang up and CauseCaller will dial the next Representative.


If you want to do even more, call your favorite radio or TV talk shows and tell them how important Friday's hearings will be, and how strongly you support impeachment for whichever reasons are most important to you. Prepare your thoughts in advance so you sound informed and determined.


And if you're near Washington DC, join Veterans for Peace to lobby Congress on Thursday and hold a pro-impeachment rally on Friday!


Lots more details and actions here:

Stop Right-wing "War on Data"

From People for the American Way

The Bush administration's at it again -- denying reality that doesn't fit its political agenda (as it's done with global warming, the war, the economy and so much more).

The press this week reported on an offensive protocol by the Census Bureau for how it intends to handle married same-sex couples during the 2010 Census. The Bureau will NOT count legally married gay couples as married, and will instead EDIT the data submitted by married gay couples to change their status to "unmarried partners."

Please sign on to our petition to the Census Bureau urging them not to do this.

Sadly, supporters of the Census Bureau's actions may hide behind a federal law, the so-called Defense of Marriage Act ("DOMA"), and argue that the federal government doesn't recognize the marriages of same-sex couples. But a number of states and other countries do, and gay and lesbian couples who are legally married are, in fact, just that -- married.

So the policy -- besides being highly offensive -- would lead to the reporting of inaccurate demographic data, completely contrary to the Bureau's mission and goals!

Please sign on to our petition now telling the Census Bureau to do its job and collect and report ACCURATE data about all Americans, including married same-sex couples.

Officials at the Census Bureau seem to be in denial, but here's an inconvenient truth for them: gay families exist. No matter what the Census says, gay couples who are legally married ARE married.

Please join the petition now and then ask your friends to do the same.


-- Your Allies at People For the American Way

P.S. We wanted to share with you the irony of the US Census Bureau's own mission statement:

"Our Mission -- The Census Bureau serves as the leading source of quality data about the nation's people and economy. We honor privacy, protect confidentiality, share our expertise globally, and conduct our work openly. We are guided on this mission by our strong and capable workforce, our readiness to innovate, and our abiding commitment to our customers."

Quality data? Commitment to their customers? Guess that doesn't apply to gay families...

ALERT: Urge Override of Bush SCHIP Veto

George W. Bush's veto of SCHIP – the State Children's Health Insurance Program – prevents the provision of basic health coverage to nearly 4 million uninsured children in the United States.

On Thursday, October 18, the US House of Representatives will vote on overriding the President's veto of the Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act (H.R. 976). The Act would reauthorize SCHIP, while also improving the quality and efficiency of the entire health care system.

Background

SCHIP has significantly improved children's access to health care, and has made great strides in covering racial and ethnic minority children.

After the inception of SCHIP, the uninsured rate for African-American and Asian and Pacific Islander children dropped by half: from 20 to 12 percent and from 17 to 8 percent, respectively.

For Latino children, the uninsured rate dropped by nearly one-third, from a high of 30 percent to 21 percent.

Despite the program’s success, nine million children remain uninsured, more than five million of whom are racial and ethnic minorities. And President Bush’s solution: to veto the reauthorization act that would have added enough funding for approximately 4 million more children. We cannot let Bush's solution stand, a solution that could deny millions of children access to health care if the SCHIP program is not extended.

Call 202-224-3121 TODAY and URGE your representative to continue the bipartisan tradition of support for SCHIP and pass the Children's Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act (H.R. 976). Don't let Bush's veto of SCHIP stand in the way of insuring one of our country's most vulnerable populations: poor children.

ALERT: America Still Tortures!

Long after the scandal at Abu Ghraib and the Administration’s denouncement of all that happened there, the New York Times reported last week that in 2005, the Justice Department issued a secret internal memo that endorsed "the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency."

We’re angry: The America we believe in does not torture people. And in response, we're mounting a national fall campaign to "86" these policies once and for all.

86 days separate two infamous dates: October 17 marks the first year anniversary of the Military Commissions Act and January 11 marks the anniversary of the first detainee transferred to Guantanamo Bay.

Join us on October 17 as we stand and protest the wrong-headed policies these two dates represent: torture, indefinite detention, guilty until proven innocent.

Help us kick-off our "86 it" campaign by:

• Hosting your own protest by downloading our action guide (PDF).
  
  
• Attending an event that’s already happening in your area by contacting us via email at dtorture@aiusa.org. We’ll put you in touch with the right people locally.
  
  
• Taking pictures of your actions to "86" torture and sending them to dtorture@aiusa.org.