Al Gore has just made his second major contribution to our national political dialog. 

His first, "An Inconvenient Truth," has helped make the perils of global warming real to the American mainstream.

Now his "Assault on Reason" is excerpted in Time Magazine.  With it he paints a compelling portrait of a democracy being obliterated by money and television. 

The content is very much on point.  But the former Vice-President must finally face the huge personal responsibility he bears for much of the problem.

First, he was an important party to the complex but catastrophic Telecommunications Act of 1996.  This Clinton-era corporate goodie bag enabled a huge spike in the monopolization of the electronic media Gore now decries. 

To fight the problem, Gore should now become an active agent in reversing that horrific  pro-monopoly give-away.  He could fight to re-establish meaningful pluralistic media ownership and public access, and for reviving both the Fairness Doctrine and Equal Time Provision, which once guaranteed balance in media content.

Detroit City Council approved 7-0 Wednesday a resolution sponsored by the wife of U.S. Rep. John Conyers to impeach President George Bush and Vice President Richard Cheney.

Congressman Conyers is the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, where any impeachment effort would commence, and a bitter opponent of the Bush administration and the war in Iraq. But he has said he does not intend to move forward with any impeachment effort -- following the lead of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Councilwoman Monica Conyers was unable to vote for her own resolution because she is in Hawaii for a national pension conference. Neither the congressman nor his wife, a first term councilwoman, could be reached Wednesday evening for comment.

The resolution says Bush and Cheney conspired to defraud the United States by "intentionally misleading Congress and the public regarding the threat from Iraq in order to justify the war."

Congressional Intent to Eliminate We the People from Our Own Elections   ---  Congressional Failure to Secure and Guarantee Basic Rights to All Americans

Americans Must Act Within Two Weeks to Restore Their Inalienable Right to Kick the Bums Out of Office

"The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them . . ." —Patrick Henry

"Give me Liberty, or Give me Death."   ---Patrick Henry

WARNING: a bipartisan Congress will, in the next few days, attempt to violate your #1 Inalienable Right.  Having talked to many folks, I've not yet found an American who says this warning is not well taken.  Although each person I've talked to understands   they're being cheated by this;  they just tend to think that other Americans won't listen, or think Americans too busy to preserve their own most basic rights.   

"My report on Being a Poll Worker in Ohio in the May 8, 2007 Election

First I want to say that poll workers are not the problem in our Ohio elections. Of course there may be an incompetent, or sloppy, or even dishonest one here and there. Or one undertrained. But by and large, poll workers are volunteers for Democracy, paid about $100 for 15 or more hours of work, either boring, tedious work or chaotic work, depending upon how popular the particular election is at one's polling location. The poll workers I have seen are dedicated to making sure every registered voter gets to vote and working hard to ensure that everyone's vote will count.

And we've been right. The first of the five "benchmarks" in the war funding bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives on May 10 requires Iraq to pass an oil law.

The law has long been drafted, and it opens up two-thirds of Iraq's oil to ownership by foreign corporations (widely expected to be dominated by U.S. corporations). Congress Members who voted against the bill, including Rep. Dennis Kucinich and Rep. Lynn Woolsey are speaking out against this as theft of Iraq's oil:

If that sounds familiar, it's because the peace movement has been saying it for five years. First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they attack you, then you win.

Oil workers in Iraq are threatening to strike over this proposed law. And the Iraqi government is listening.

We have a chance to listen too, because from June 4 to June 29, Iraqi labor leaders will be touring the United States to talk about this issue.

The labor movement in the United States is supporting our brothers and sisters in Iraq. Here's an explanation of how the draft oil law privatizes the oil: PDF.  This summary was prepared by U.S. Labor Against the War.