Democrats.com News

In honor of Sunday's EMMY Awards, I'd like to give out DEMMY Awards to the best Democrats on TV.

Below are three categories: Pundits, Elected Officials, and Frauds.

We'll open the voting this weekend on Democrats.com, but I'd like to complete the nominations first. So which "TV Democrats" did I leave out?

Pundits

Our campaign for a Special Prosecutor is starting to get noticed even by the Corporate Media. Here's CNN's report on Eric Holder's appearance yesterday:

Representatives of liberal organizations including MoveOn.org, Democrats.com and the American Civil Liberties Union were in the hearing room seeking to cajole Holder and other administration officials to appoint a special prosecutor to press charges against Bush administration officials.

"The Justice Department is obligated to appoint an independent prosecutor to investigate these crimes," said Mandy Simon of the ACLU.

She said representatives of the groups had provided to Assistant Attorney General Lee Loftus a disk containing the signatures of about 260,000 individuals demanding the outside prosecutor be appointed.

Democrats.com provided 90,000 of those signatures, thanks to the help of our friends like the great people at Docudharma.

A week ago, our Obama Escrow Pledge campaign made the Wall St. Journal. Today we made the NY Times:

Bob Fertik, president of Democrats.com, a progressive Web site, started asking his readers last month to pledge money to an escrow fund for Mr. Obama, as opposed to contributing to him outright. The idea was to make Mr. Obama rethink his decision to support the Bush administration’s wiretapping measure.

Over at Salon.com, Glenn Greenwald is mobilizing blogs to block House "Democratic" leader Steny Hoyer's corrupt deal with George Bush and the Telecoms for warrantless wiretapping immunity. Democrats.com is proud to join the effort, which is called TheStrangeBedfellows because it includes progressive blogs like ours and Ron Paul-supporting libertarian blogs. The money raised will be used for hard-hitting ads against Hoyer and two key Bush Democrats, Chris Carney (PA-10) and John Barrow (GA-12). What makes the anti-Barrow campaign especially potent is that he faces a strong primary challenge from progressive State Sen. Regina Thomas, who also happens to be black - in a district where 70% of primary voters are black.

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then I am most sincerely flattered that Moveon unveiled VotePoke.org as a clone of the voter registration verification system we created before the 2006 election at MyDem.com.

Our system was a big success and nearly 20,000 voters used it despite little publicity.

If you read carefully enough, you'll discover Moveon even plagiarized our exact language: "Are you registered to vote? Are you sure?"

Of course Moveon raises million$$ each year and we raise ... ten$$. But who's counting?

Still it would have been nice if Moveon had credited us with showing them how to do it, or sent a personal note of thanks. Just sayin'.

Petition: Tell your Representatives to Stop Bush's Warrantless Wiretapping! 

By a 73%-22% margin, Americans overwhelmingly oppose George Bush's efforts to wiretap Americans' phone calls and emails without a search warrant, according to a Democrats.com telephone poll of 1,006 adults conducted from August 8-12, 2007 by ICR.

Wiretapping	All	Dem	Ind	Rep
Approve	22%	11%	17%	42%
-strongly	10%	3%	8%	23%
-somewhat	12%	8%	9%	19%
Disapprove	73%	87%	80%	51%
-somewhat	12%	10%	14%	15%
-strongly	60%	77%	66%	36%

Note: This poll inaugurates Impeach.TV, a new blog on impeachment strategy edited by Bob Fertik. For recent impeachment analysis, click here.

The commutation of Scooter Libby's prison sentence backfired politically on Bush and Cheney and greatly increased support for impeachment, according to a Democrats.com telephone poll of 1,014 adults conducted by ICR.

Before the commutation on July 2, Americans 34% of Americans supported impeachment hearings for Bush, while 55% opposed. After the commutation, support increased to 43% and opposition dropped to 50% - a net increase in 14% for impeachment hearings.

John Amato of CrooksAndLiars has the video of Keith Olbermann's Special Comment in which he fact-checks Bush's bogus SOTU claims about thwarted terrorists plots. And guess whose work Olbermann found most persuasive? Our very own David Swanson! Here is David's article - you go, David!!!

I am indebted to David Swanson, press secretary for Dennis Kucinich's 2004 Presidential campaign, who has blogged about the dubious 96 words in Mr. Bush's address this year and who has concluded that of the four counter-terror claims the President made, he went 0 for 4.