To Whom It May Concern:

Repealing bad laws and preventing bad Constitutional Amendments:

Thank goodness that Ohioans have the right to vote down harmful proposed amendments to the Ohio Constitution, currently Issue 3. The U. S. Supreme will trump Issue 3, but it would immediately invalidate necessary Federal and Ohio laws and regulations passed since March 19, 2010 and prevent future ones.

Equally important are referenda which repeal harmful laws. Issue 2 would allow SB 5 to remain law. It unfairly harms public employees. All Ohioans would suffer because the economy would be damaged by loss of jobs. The shift of $ 4 billion in State taxes to schools and municipalities etc. would also increase the local tax burden.

The Issue to repeal HB 194, the voter suppression law, will be on the 2012 Ballot, so that law will not be in effect for the important 2012 election. Secretary of State Jon Husted has not certified that referendum. It would have some effect on the current election.

“Mr. Obama and his senior national security advisers have sought to reassure allies and answer critics, including many Republicans, that the United States will not abandon its commitments in the Persian Gulf even as it winds down the war in Iraq and looks ahead to doing the same in Afghanistan by the end of 2014.”

I pluck a paragraph from the New York Times and for an instant I’m possessed by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, aquiver with puzzlement down to my deepest sensibilities. I hold you here, root and all, little paragraph. But if I could understand what you are, root and all, and all in all, I should know what empire is, and hubris . . . and maybe even, by its striking absence, democracy.

The paragraph contains the careful verbiage of exclusion, which is the only language in which the geopolitical powers that be are able to communicate.

The topic was the CIA's "enhanced interrogation techniques" and detainee treatment, when John Yoo, former Department of Justice official and author of the "Torture Memos" debated Chip Pitts, Stanford University law professor and former Chairman of Amnesty International, at the Meadows Museum at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

It was not widely publicized ~ at least, we didn't get the complete info until less than 24 hours beforehand. It was free, but required registration. When we called to register, we were told it was full. So, we planned to just go protest outside...but then at the last minute decided to see if we could get in anyway, without registration. There were some no-shows, so, to our surprise, they let us in after all...and we sat at the table right next to Yoo in a very fancy room lined with gilt-framed oil paintings and had a very lovely lunch. We decided not to disrupt because we didn't want to distract from Chip, and we knew Chip would blow Yoo away. (He did.) It was filmed, so I'm hoping it will be made public soon, because it was terrific ~ Chip is always terrific.

As the mobilization to defend Ohio’s attack on public worker’s rights, SB 5/Issue 2, a Quinnipiac poll was made public, with the widest gap yet on the issue. 57% stated their opposition to Issue 2 in the poll, with only 32% backing it.

There is no sign of overconfidence on the part of Issue 2 opponents, however. In Ohio’s Capital City & across the state organized labor & their coalition partners were mobilizing, preparing to bring the predicted victory home.

Jeanette Mauk, of We Are Ohio, the coalition leading the fight against Issue 2, stated; “We cannot sit on our laurels. We’ve done a great job so far bringing the message to Ohio families on how Issue 2 will hurt our communities if it passes. We aren’t going to let up now!”

This past week in Ohio’s major cities, Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati & Dayton, thousands of opponents of Issue 2 participated in public marches to local Boards of Election, voting in mass against the Issue.

This won’t be Vietnam, exactly. No helicopter whisking the last remaining Americans off the roof of the embassy. A contingent of 16,000 State Department contract employees — over 5,000 of them armed mercenaries — will be staying on, running what’s left of the American operation in Iraq.

But there’s little doubt we lost this war — by every rational measure. Everyone lost, except those who profited from (and continue to profit from) the trillions we bled into the invasion and occupation; and those who planned it, most of whom remain in positions to plan or at least promote the wars we’re still fighting and the wars to come.

But in a certain profound sense, the war in Iraq, as we have come to know it over the last almost nine years, is shutting down. The Obama team couldn’t get “Iraq’s inspiring but fragile democracy” (in the immortal words of Joe Lieberman, waxing absurd in a USA Today opinion piece) to approve immunity from local prosecution for American troops. Our noble cause trembled, collapsed, and for a moment we became a democracy. The will of the sick-of-war public prevailed.