Roe vs. Wade Anniverary

Well, I forgot to post yesterday, but I will probably just post twice today. Dailykos.com talked about the case of Roe vs. Wade. I did not know this, but apparently it is the thirty fifth anniversary of this case. I am sure we all know about what this case was about, but if not I will give a brief summary of it. It was a United States Supreme Court case that resulted in a final decision regarding abortion. According to the Roe decision, most laws against abortion in the United States violated a constitutional right to privacy under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.This was the most controversal cases in the history of the Supreme court. It was also a big political case. They will allow abortion up until the “point at which the fetus becomes viable”.

The Democrat and Republican candidates both commented casting their vote for a Chief Justice. I will quote Hillary Clinton and Mike Huckabee because they are, in my opinion, the most opposite.

Hilary Clinton: "I have an obligation to my constituents to make sure that I cast my vote for Chief Justice of the United States for someone I am convinced will be steadfast in protecting fundamental women's rights, civil rights, privacy rights, and who will respect the appropriate separation of powers among the three branches."

Mike Huckabee: “Sometimes we talk about why we are importing so many people in our work force. It might be because for the last 35 years we have aborted more than 1 million people who would have been in our workforce had we not had the holocaust of liberalized abortion under a flawed of Supreme Court ruling in 1973."

Hillary Clinton is pro-choice and Huckabee is pro-life. Huckabee always tries to tell the voters hoe much of a Christian he is. Sometimes I think he goes a little bit overboard, but on this issue, I agree completely. I will never vote for a pro-choice candidate. Abortion is the issue that I feel the most strongly about. I just feel that there are always other options other than killing an innocent child. Being Christians, I am sure you guys agree, so I will not try to argue the point.

McCain Gets South Carolina

Dailykos.com is normally the blog with the most up to date political news. So, of course, they commented on the South Carolina primary election. John McCain ended up winning with 33% of the votes while Huckabee was a close second with 30%. In a previous post I did mention that I did not like how this site did not give much information about the Republican Party and if they did mention them it was to say how bad they did or compare the Republican candidate with the Democratic candidate. Of course, they always made the Democratic candidate look a lot better. I continue to prove myself right. Sorry if that sounds arrogant. Seriously, they could have just listed these results, but instead they had to give a quick insult to John McCain, in regards to his speech. “Use this thread to keep yourselves awake during John McCain's victory speech.” Did they really have to say that? I am sure the Democrats have given some boring speeches. The Republicans have as well. Parts of politics are boring. Anyway, again this is a liberal site so I just have to continue to get used to the fact that the people who post here do not like the Republican Party at all.


TechRebublican.com talked about facebook’s new feature. This was something I did not expect to see on this blog site, but it was still interesting to read. So, apparently for all of those people who have a ton of applications on their profile, you can put them on a second page instead of deleting them. This will hopefully get rid of the clutter on your profile. For the facebook user this is great news, but for the person who makes applications it is not that great of news. They want their applications to appear on the facebook user’s profile for everyone to see. I guess this will just make them work harder to create an eye catching and engaging application so that the users will want this on the first page of their profile.

Romney's Homophobia in Question

Wow, I knew I was right about Mitt Romney. Dailykos.com posted an interesting video today. The title of the post itself was “The Mittster responds to allegations of tolerance”. They were referring to the tolerance of homosexuals. Mitt Romney is trying to defend himself against this allegation. Mitt Romney’s campaign apparently took a huge tumble today, because of an interview he gave in 1992. The content of this interview was resurfaced. He was asked the question, “Do you believe gays should have the right to civil unions?” His response was “I would not have a problem with that.” This video did not seem to be completely solid, but if it is true then that would be quite interesting. I remember in the New Hampshire debates, John McCain and Ron Paul were going after Mitt Romney, and said that he was going back on his previous words. Now, since this has surfaced, I am starting to go more against Romney. He has a credibility problem. However, I do have to admit, the guy n the video seemed very judgmental and said some things that I do not agree with. He was asked if there was anything Romney could do to save himself. He said things like Romney could “disown a gay relative, he could call an opponent or anyone a fagot, and things like this”. That is horrible. I am not for gay marriage, but even I would never say anything like this. They even mentioned that Romney could make a racial slur against Mexicans in order to get the “bigot” vote. Are you kidding me? If they are trying to save his campaign, I definitely do not feel this is the right way to go about it.

Gun Ban Law

Well, it’s the Second Amendment again. This has been argued time and time again. This time TechRepublican.com talks about the 1976 gun ban law being challenged in the Supreme Court. The Bush Administration’s Department of Justice is siding with the District of Columbia. The Department of Justice argument is that since the government bans machine guns, it should also be able to ban handguns. “After all, they reason, people can still own rifles and shotguns for protection, even if they have to be stored locked up.” The Justice Department even seems to accept that trigger locks are not really that much of a burden, and that the locks “can properly be interpreted” as not interfering with using guns for self-protection.” Yet, even if gun locks do interfere with self-defense, DOJ believes the regulations should be allowed, as long as the District of Columbia government thinks it has a good reason.
I am not sure I agree with this. Obviously you should lock up your shotguns, but I believe those should be for things like hunting, not self-defense. Handguns are easier to use for self-defense because you can get to them quickly. If you only could use shotguns, then you would have to go to the case unlock it, then load the gun. I just think that that is too long of a time. If you have someone break into your house, you would need to do things quickly. I just think a handgun is better, when you are trying to protect you and your family. Also, they can be kept in high places so that kids will not come across them.
“Factually, there are many mistakes in the DOJ’s reasoning: As soon as a rifle or shotgun is unlocked, it becomes illegal in D.C., and there has never been a federal ban on machine guns. But these are relatively minor points. Nor does it really matter that the only academic research on the impact of trigger locks on crime finds that states that require guns be locked up and unloaded face a five-percent increase in murder and a 12 percent increase in rape. Criminals are more likely to attack people in their homes, and those attacks are more likely to be successful. Since the potential of armed victims deters criminals, storing a gun locked and unloaded actually encourages crime.”
I completely agree with these statements. It is true that if criminals know that you have to store your gun unloaded and in a locked compartment, it will make them not afraid to come after you. It puts Americans in a lot more danger. Is that really what we want? Now, don’t get me wrong, I do not think that everyone has the right or should own a gun. I believe there should be a thick process in order to own a gun. There should be background checks on everyone, as well as an analysis on what their life is like at the moment. If they are mentally unstable, or if things have happened to them, that would make not in the right mind to own a gun. Things like this should be considered.

Something New

So, I was reading one of the blogs that I am following and I got a little bit confused. They were talking about some award that they give out. Apparently, it is for the best Capital Hill sites. The award is called the “Gold Mouse Awards”. They did mention that unlike the Golden Globes, these awards do not appear to have been affected by the ongoing writers’ strike. If you don’t watch a lot of TV you may not have heard about that. I, on the other hand, will admit that I was upset that so many shows were cancelled by the strike. The writers were mad that they did not make money off the shows that they show over the internet. So, they went on strike. Anyway, back to the Gold Mouse Awards. This is something I have never heard of before. The blogger says, "Despite some bright spots, overall the quality of congressional Web sites continues to be disappointing," CMF says in its new report. "The most common letter grade earned by congressional Web sites in 2007 was a 'D' -- the same as in 2006. A full 41.6% of sites were substandard (D) or failing (F)." Are these websites really that bad? I am probaly not the best judge, but if they are really that bad then why do they even give out this award. Normally, awards are given to something that is the best. The interesting thing was that they did not blame the members for the websites being so bad. They blamed the outdated Congressional Rules which limit their use of the web. The really interesting thing that I read was the fact that it is against the “rules” to post YouTube videos. Is that weird or what? The blogs that I follow now use YouTube videos a lot. YouTube is practically the main source for videos today. Tons of people use YouTube. This just seemed very unusual to me. Of course I really don’t know what an official Congressional Website looks like, but according to the blogger it would be very boring.

New Source of Information

TechRepublican.com talked about something interesting today. They have a new website that could be a useful source for news. It is called Maplight.org. It is aiming to create more transparency than currently exists about the relationship between politicians, donations and how they vote on bills. It is also like a blog or like wikipedia. Viewers can add their own information, such as articles that support a bill by special interest groups, which Maplight will then incorporate. "You create a page on Maplight with your own data and get a unique URL however Maplight does include a disclaimer that not all of the data comes from Maplight. " (Blogger) "Founder Dan Newman set up Maplight as a non-profit because "Politicians tend to be chosen according to how effective they can raise funds, which means many problems — whether healthcare, technology policy, or global warming — aren’t getting solved. When I tried to explain campaign contributions are causing this, I was waving my hands too much,” he said. “We created Maplight to show people specifically how issues they care about are connected with campaign dollars.” (Blogger)

This is very interesting because shouldn't politicians be chosen by how they view certain issues. I do not think it should be based on how much money they raise. That is important, but problems like healthcare and technology should come as a higher priority, don't you think. I think this will be a useful site because it will give us information that is important to us. It will give us information that will help us to make educated decisions and argruments.

More News

Well, DailyKos.com discussed the GOP debate that was on Thursday night. They say that if you missed it, you did not miss much because they pretty much just said Reagan a bunch of times and then it was over with. I do agree that they mention Reagan a lot in this debate. However, Reagan was a good president, was he not? There are probably some who do not believe so, but all in all he did a lot for this country. So, if you are going to relate yourself to a certain president, why not Ronald Reagan? Of course, you should have your own views and opinions, but there is nothing wrong with a little comparison of yourself and a former president every now and then. Obviously you should not do it every time, but you have to know when it will help your campaign and when it will hurt it. If you do it too much, people will start to think you are just trying to imitate Ronald Reagan.

TechRepublican.com talked mostly about how people get their campaign news. The two main sources of information are the internet and television. The young people get most of their news from the internet through social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook. “Fully 42% of those ages 18 to 29 say they regularly learn about the campaign from the internet, the highest percentage for any news source.” (Blogger) The TV is still the overall main source of information, but it is starting to slip away. “Television is not as dominant as at once was: 60% say they get most of their news about the presidential election from television (local, cable and network outlets combined), down from 68% at comparable points in the 2004 and 2000 campaigns.” (Blogger)

Election News

TechRebublican.com mostly talked about the impact of the youth vote. I found this rather interesting; however, I was not surprised by what they were saying. Apparently, in Iowa, youth turnout had tripled. The big increase worked out well for the Democrats, not the Republicans. There were 65,230 total young people (ages 17 to 29) who participated in the Iowa caucuses. 52,580 caucused for Democrats and only 12,650 caucused for Republicans. That’s a huge advantage for Democrats with the youth vote. This shows that young people overwhelmingly favor Democrats. 80% of the youth caucused for a Democrat. I think this is because the young people look they are favoring Obama. Obama is the exciting, energetic speaker who appeals to them. In New Hampshire, the youth again favored the Democrats. There was not as big of a gap but the Democrats were still heavily favored. Hopefully, this does not continue. I want a Republican candidate to be president. I am considered part of the youth vote, so hopefully this is not the start of a trend.

Dailykos.com made a certain comment that I completely disagree with. “Michigan Republicans can clearly be counted on to practice the worst of racial politics.” (Blogger) How can they say such a thing? I take that a little bit personal. I do not like being lumped into a category like this. I am a Republican from Michigan, does that mean I am racist. I think not. It is my fault for choosing this site, but I can still disagree with it. However, I did find something interesting on the internet. It is called “The Implicit Association Test”. The tag line is “Test yourself for hidden racial and gender biases with the Implicit Association Test”. Here is the site if you want to check it out, http://www.understandingprejudice.org/iat/. By the way, says I have no preference.

The Democrats are Wrong on Race

TechRebublican.com had an interesting post on Tuesday night. An author by the name of Bruce Bartlett talked about and discussed his new book “Wrong on Race: The Democratic Party’s Buried Past”. “He explained that there are two major misconceptions that black voters have about the GOP regarding race. One is that the South is all racist, therefore since the South now votes Republican, Republicans are all racist. The second is that the GOP is held to a ridiculous double-standard. So that when Trent Lott compliments Strum Thurmond, he’s pilloried in the media, but when Chris Dodd praises Robert Byrd, a former leader in the KKK, no one utters a peep.” (Blogger) Bartlet was then asked about how the nomination of Barack Obama would affect Rebublicans. How would they be able to get the votes of the black community? Bartlett then said that “while Barack would certainly pull a lot of support from the black community, his nomination would still be an enormous advantage for the GOP, because we’ll see new leadership take charge of the black community pushing aside the Jesse Jackson’s and Al Sharpton’s who are extremely liberal.” I agree with him to a certain extent. I do agree that the quote, "Republicans are all racist" is a misconception. I consider myself Republican and I am not racist.

I feel that the race of the candidate is starting to have less of an effect on the voters. There are still those people out there who will not vote for an Africian-American candidate, however I think that number is continuing to shrink. Look at what happened in Iowa. That is a predominately white state, yet Obama still won. The speaker at the January Series today, said something along the same lines.

Obama May Win in the Democratic Party

The most resent blog that Daily Kos had talked about was how Bill Clinton came to Dartmouth College on Monday evening. The crowd was full and packed to its limit. There were also people waiting outside who were not able to get in. He answered questions for about two hours, but something interesting happened. People described as “Obama supporters” left during his appearance. This is not very surprising considering Obama is said to get a lot of the youth votes. Since these are college students, they probably would be Obama supporters. The blogger did state that he/she “left early because, as much as I hated walking out of the most up-close opportunity I will probably ever have to watch the best president of my lifetime (so far), I was exhausted.” I just have to say that, so far, this is the biggest thing I have disagreed with. I know some people thought Bill Clinton was an excellent president, but I just thought I would let it be known that I completely disagree.

This morning, Barack Obama had a rally in the same space. This crowd was full to capacity as well. Some students left when classes started, however, one student in particular, left in a more dramatic way. She lost consciousness and had to be carried out on a stretcher. They talked about how Obama was able to react well on his feet. The blogger described by saying, “He noticed the movement in the crowd and asked if someone had grown faint, signaling to staff to come help. As first aid providers made their way to her, he reassuringly told the crowd that it was nothing to worry about, that it happens frequently and people are usually fine with some water and rest, though often embarrassed.” After this he could not go back to the same emotional tone that he started his speech with. He kept the same material, but delivered it in a more sedate tone. Even thought I am more of a Republican, I thought this showed us how well Obama does with public speaking. He was able to give a speech well, but also had the ability to change the emotional tone and still deliver it well.

Presidential Races: What a Wonderful Time

Well, TechRepublician.com finally updated. They put up two interesting youtube videos. One was of Hilary Clinton acting like "Big Brother" from 1984, where she is having a one-way conversation with the voters. The video ends and says “On January 14th the Democratic primary will begin. And you’ll see why 2008 won’t be like 1984.”, also with them directing us to the website of Clinton's biggest threat, Barack Obama.

May I remind you once again that this is the conservative site. However, they at least have the decency of mentioning the candidates of the other party. That is one of the reasons I like this site better. They do say things against the Democratic Party, but it is only to a certain extent. This says something about the maturity of the parties, or at least the maturity of the supporters of the parties. The liberal site seems to make it a point to bash the opposing party.

The second video tended to go against Mitt Romney, which is understandable considering the blogger happens to be a John McCain fan. I happen to be in agreement with this particular blog. Based on what I have seen, I am leaning towards either John McCain or Ron Paul. I will admit that I am not an expert on this, but I know for a fact that I will not vote for Romney. I feel that he has flipped and changed his mind on many issues. I also feel that he and I have very different opinions on things. I am new at this, but why would I vote for someone who I do not agree with. I did like how this blogger mentions the fact that Romney has probably outspent most of the other GOP candidates on advertising. He probably still won't win.

New Hampshire Debates

Well, I thought that I should watch the presidential debates because I knew my blogs would discuss them. I thought that the debates were interesting and informative. Since this will be the first year I vote I also thought it would be a good idea to know what their plans and thoughts on key issues were.

I’ll start and discuss what Daily Kos said. This post was by DHinMi. He/She began by saying that the democrats had won the debate. “All four of our candidates were very strong. They all came across as likable. They are extremely sharp, incredibly well-informed and thoughtful. They have visions for how and where they would lead the country, and the role of America in the world.” This blogger also says that the Democrates acted like adults, unlike the Republicans who were mean and nasty towards each other. I did think that Romney was getting beat up a little bit, but I also felt like he was digging his own hole. It is a debate and I feel that you are supposed to argue and have different views. As a voter that is what I want to see. I want to see someone who is as passionate about their views as I am about my own. I also feel that in campaigns, mudsliding is going to happen and it is considered fair game. It is politics, that is the way it is. You are trying to win. I agree that you should be respectful to the fellow candidates, but I thought that the Republicans did so in a fair manner. I did notice in the Democratic debate how much the candidates were trying to focus on their experience. I am guessing it is because they are a little bit afraid of Obama, because of his big win in Iowa. They know that he has less experience. He/She went in depth about how each Democrat did. The only time they mentioned the Republican party was to campare them to the Democrates and said how much better the Democrates perfomed. I would like this site more if they at least mentioned the Rebublicans views. I know it is a liberal site, but they can at least mention where everyone stands.

TechRepublican has not updated after the debate, but I will post again when they do.

My Blogs

After a lot of frustration and searching on the internet I have finally come across the two blogs in which I will follow over the next several weeks. The first one is the “Daily Kos: State of the Nation” blog, which takes more of a liberal viewpoint. This blog seems to be updated at least twice a day, which will provide me with a lot of information. Tonight it talked mostly about the election. Obama ended up winning Iowa. I have to say this is the blog I am going to disagree with the most. Quoting the blogger, “I loved all the speeches tonight -- from Edwards', to Clintons', to Obama's. I'm proud of my party. I'm hopeful for the future.” This is a liberal site so I assumed things like this would be said.

My second blog comes from “TechRepublican.com”, which takes more of a conservative viewpoint. This blog also seems to be updated frequently. This blog will also provide me with adequete and useful infromation. The last time this blog was updated was around 2:00 in the afternoon on Thursday. Therefore, it dicussed what was going on in Iowa. They titled the blog entry, “Fred Thompson's Final Push: Too Little, Too Late?”. They were reporting that if Thompson did not come in third place tonight in Iowa, then he would be out. I am not sure if this is by Thompson’s choice.