Progress Now Action

We hope you can join us and other progressives for the second Rocky Mountain RootsCamp on Saturday and Sunday December 1st and 2nd in Denver.

We had our first successful RootsCamp in February and are excited to make the second RootsCamp even better.

For those who weren't able to participate in February, RootsCamp is a self organizing conference with no preset schedule, everyone is a presenter, and you only go to sessions you find interesting. It is for people to share their innovations, failures, and wisdom.

We've added some great things this time around. We'll have a vendor hall so that you can plug in and volunteer for progressive organizations. And on Sunday there will be intensive breakout sessions to learn new skills like how to make a YouTube Video, how to blog, how to organize around community issues, among others. For more information and to sign up visit:

http://www.progressnowaction.org/page/event/detail/wdj

We look forward to seeing you on December 1st and 2nd in Denver.

Now that we've completed the major portion of the site changes, what do you think? Do you like the new design? Do you have any questions about how you can use the site for your issue or work in your community? Any suggestions or ideas for things you'd like to see added or changed?

The Colorado Secretary of State now (finally!) has online voter registration verification.

Just go here:
http://www.sos.state.co.us/Voter

You just type in your info and voila.

If you have moved recently or you haven't voted int he past two general elections you might need to re-register. Take a minute to verify, and encourage your friends and family to do so as well.

We at ProgressNow have followed closely the activities of Colorado's favorite theocratic demagogue as a matter of course. Having one of the leading reactionary culture warriors on your doorstep is pretty significant. One indicator of our attention is over 150 blog entries since 2003. And then there's the time Dobson's spokesman bizarrely likened our boss Mike Huttner to Snoop Dogg.

Needless to say, we're very excited about the national campaign building to hold him accountable. Post and News this morning:

Group targets Focus founder

An advocacy group will launch an advertising campaign today that accuses Focus on the Family founder James Dobson of having ties to high-powered lobbyist Jack Abramoff - a charge that Dobson calls a baseless distortion of his anti-gambling message.
The ads, by Campaign to Defend the Constitution, highlight what it calls hypocrisy over gambling by "religious right leaders," including Dobson, who is founder and head of the Colorado Springs-based conservative evangelical organization.

The campaign will begin with a $200,000 ad in The New York Times, claiming that "These Religious Leaders Have a Serious Gambling Problem."

Television ads will run in Colorado Springs, Washington, D.C., and New York...

See, we don't have $200,000 to throw at New York Times ads. But if we did, a little "Focus on Dobson" would certainly be on the short list. What this scandal points to -- this use of religious figures to deceptively promote one gaming interest against another -- is naive ignorance at the very least with Dobson, and with cohorts like Ralph Reed probably much more.

Of course, Bill Bennett still scores on the lecture circuit. The right's ability to weather scandal is beyond Bill Clinton's faintest hopes. At some point, the crushing weight of hypocrisy has to matter; even to the most hardened religious right doubespeakers...

Incidentally, I discovered while playing with image-morph software that morphing Snoop-Dogg into James Dobson produces an eerily lifelike representation of Ken Salazar somewhere in the middle. But all results from that experiment have been destroyed to protect the innocent.

Alan and Maria have done a great job of pulling together legislative updates each day on the home page. Click on the "Home" link on the top left of the page. Then check out the "Legislative Corner" on the right side of the home page.

The red and green buttons beside the bill references indicate whether or not it's a progressive bill. If there is an action alert on the bill, there also is a link to the action you can take on the site.

The vote on C&D will be extremely close. It's all about getting more YES votes out to the polls than no votes. Please do everything you can to help remind your friends and family to go to the polls today and vote YES on C&D.

Go to ProgressNowAction.org/GetOutTheVote and be part of the largest Internet get-out-the-vote push in our state's history.

The vote on C&D will be extremely close. With just two days left, it's all about getting out the vote. We have to get more YES votes out than no votes. That simple.

Getting out the vote is the responsibility of us all. We each are responsible for doing everything we can Monday and Tuesday to remind everyone we know to vote.

One simple thing that each of us can do is email 10 friends right now. Tomorrow morning we're going to send an email out to the entire network inviting everyone to join our Internet GOTV Email Tree. You can get a jump on that right now by going to:

ProgressNowAction.org/GetOutTheVote

Be part of the largest Internet get out the vote push in our state's history. Click on the link, add your name, and invite 10 others to join you.

Colorado Pols has reported that polling may show Yes on C&D trending upward. We need to have strong word-of-mouth down the stretch to fight the lies being put out by John Caldara and Marc Holtzman.

Make your own virtual C & D billboard and email it to your friends! And check out the billboards others have created:

www.ProgressNowAction.org/C&Dbillboards

Have you sent a "Yes on C&D" billboard to your friends yet?

Join the creative resistance to Grover Norquist's and John Caldara's sink-or-swim, you're-on-your-own vision for Colorado and America. Send a virtual billboard and help spread the word for YES on C&D.

And check out the billboards others have sent!

Dobson explanation fails the sniff test, call for Judiciary Committee to subpoena Dobson

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Wednesday, October 12, 2005
CONTACT: Michael Huttner
(303) 991-1900

Denver: "We believe James Dobson's explanation regarding his conversation with Karl Rove on Harriet Miers fails the sniff test and we call on the US Senate Judiciary Committee to subpoena Dobson to testify under oath on their secret conversation," stated ProgressNow.org Executive Director Michael Huttner.

In his national radio address this morning (transcribed below), Dobson disclosed that the "secret" items were that Rove first spoke to Dobson and told him that Miers was high on the short list and second, that several prominent prospects had taken themselves out of contention.

"We believe Dobson may be lying and he needs to be called to testify under oath," stated Huttner. "That Miers was on the top of the short list or that other prospects withdrew is not the kind of information that would tell Dobson that 'Miers will be a good justice,'" noted Huttner, an adjunct law professor at the University of Denver.

Last week, Dobson stated that "When you know some of the things that I know - that I probably shouldn't know - you will understand why ... I believe Harriet Miers will be a good justice."

ProgressNow has received an overwhelming response to its petition sent to thousands of its members calling on the Senate Judiciary Committee to demand that the White House disclose the information that Rove shared with Dobson.

Link

"The U.S. Senate has the right to know what Dobson knows," noted Huttner.

--- Transcript of Dobson's radio address, "secret" items in bold ---

Full Transcript at: Link

"So, I wouldn't reveal any of the details about the call, although I did say to these pro-family leaders, which has been widely quoted, that Karl had told me something that I probably shouldn't know. And you know, it really wasn't all that tantalizing, but I still couldn't talk about it. And what I was referring to is the fact that on Saturday, the day before the President made his decision, I knew that Harrier Miers was at the top of the short list of names under consideration. And as you know, that information hadn't been released yet, and everyone in Washington and many people around the country wanted to know about it and the fact that he had shared with me is not something I wanted to reveal."


"But we also talked about something else, and I think this is the first time this has been disclosed. Some of the other candidates who had been on that short list, and that many conservatives are now upset about were highly qualified individuals that had been passed over. Well, what Karl told me is that some of those individuals took themselves off that list and they would not allow their names to be considered, because the process has become so vicious and so vitriolic and so bitter, that they didn't want to subject themselves or the members of their families to it."


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ProgressNow.Org is a nonpartisan, national grassroots organization whose mission is to be a strong credible voice in advancing progressive solutions to critical community problems.

For more information, quotes or sources, please call Michael Huttner at 303-991-1900.