Finally have the new domain up and have have ported over the download content to it's new home. So www.gore4dean.com is up an running. Soon I hope to transfer the blog to that domain as well and will leave a "we have moved" re-direct script here when that occurs.

In addition, I hope to get a cafepress site up and running shortly, to allow purchase of merchandise based on the designs, which will help fund more Dean grass-roots projects and outreach.

Well there were concerns from the campaign that my "March on DC Anniversary" poster would run them afoul with the King estate since I had a digital illustration that looked photo-realistic. When I explained to them that it was an illustration based on a photo of King, and of the march back in 63, and not an actual photo in and of itself, that calmed some nerves a bit. (I fully understand their concern)

I nor the campaign would or will illegally use any photographs of Dr. King, nor exploit his likeness or legacy for commercial gains.

Anyway, that is all cleared up now and the files and thumbnails are back up on the official site.

On another note, I have finished the first of a new series of posters promoting the "Debate Rallies" for the next 4 Dem. Presidential Nominee Debates. I have only done the first debate poster (the second actual debate among the contenders) but the others will follow when I am past this weekends events and have the time to do the others. The next debate (and first poster finished) is in Albuquerque, NM on Sept. 4th. 4000 Dean supporters turned out in Philadelphia before the Philadelphia Debate in August.

If you can make it there for the New Mexico debate rally sign up for it! If you can attend one of the other dates, be sure to sign-up for it on that page at the official site.

Seems the March on DC posters and handouts are now not up on the official site now. Guess they only have a shelf life of a few hours on the DFA pages.

For those still interested, they are still available for download on the design download pages of Gore4Dean.

Thanks to Zephyr Teachout for passing on to the campaign my posters and handouts commemorating the 40th anniversary of the civil rights March on Washington March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, and Dr. Martin Luther King's historic "I Have A Dream" speech.

You can see them up on the official campaign site. They are also available here in the Design Downloads section along with the on-going "Re-Select Bush Campaign" posters and the "Sleepless Summer Tour Posters"

Hopefully these sorts of ground-up efforts will continue to grow and be strengthened as the campaign moves along. Neither top-down, nor bottom-up approaches to organization are the most productive, but collaborative and vital bi-directional collaboration is.

This is something that fails to register with most "punditry" who pooh-pooh relevance of the breadth and depth to the grass-roots support Dean is harnessing, and is a vital ingredient to bring out the best people have to offer.

Seems our anti-Dean sue-happy gadfly Scott (after all we are on a first name since Mr. Huminski greats me in his email that way) is a little bit upset.

After my line by line refutation of Josh Frank's highly flawed "news" article "reporting" on Dean's "Constitutional Hang-Up," and my posting links to several of the indymedia sites where he was railing against Vermont (a.k.a. Dean's "Police State") I received an email from this busy little litigant intimating he might sue me if he had the time. Actually he suggests that "A law suit against a crazed Dean fanatic might cause quite a stir."

Beyond giving me a good laugh at how misguided our Mr. Huminski is, the only actual point directly addressing anything I have posted is this part:

Aside from the other inaccuracies in your last "frisking" you claimed that I was banished from Vermon courthouse for my obstruction of justice. That statement constitutes defamation in the written form -- libel.

First... I have never used the term "frisking" in reference to anything anyone posts on the web. The only time I talk about "frisking" anyone is when playing "bad girls in prison" in the bedroom with my significant other! (wink)

Matt at the Dean Defense Force however (among others) uses the term "fisking" when refuting erroneous stories, though I myself never use even that term. He actually did use that term (fisking) in his edited post from this blog.

Second, and more directly to the "point" Huminski tries to raise, I do see how it can be read that I implied that he was barred from court for the obstruction of justice charges directly.

My original statement; "He simply could not do so on court grounds, after being barred from court for obstruction of justice charges, which were upheld three times by both state and federal courts." might give the impression that Mr. Huminski was barred because of the obstruction of justice charges stemming from his thrice lost tenant-landlord civil case. He was barred from the courts in another dispute, which grew out of his decade plus battle with the courts stemming from that original proceeding.

He was charged with obstruction of justice in the civil case, but prosecutors agreed to drop that charge if Huminski paid $100 in court costs. Huminski agreed. After that plea agreement was put in place, Huminski's wife sued the Bennington County state's attorney in federal court, and that office sought to reinstate the obstruction-of-justice charge, saying the federal suit violated the terms of the plea agreement. Judge Nancy Corsones granted the motion to reinstate the charge

Mr. Huminski then protested against the court system, parking his van outside the courthouse in Bennington with signs criticizing State's Attorney William Wright and his staff.

In May 1999, he then took his protesting to Rutland, where Corsones was presiding in the District Court, and posted signs on his van critical of her. Several month before however, Huminski sent several angry letters to the state attorney general's office.

In one, Huminski angrily denounced Vermont's judicial system and said he "must take the law into my own hands and initiate activities that will get national media attention."

In the other, he complained again of the state's treatment of him and wrote, "I believe my future activities will prevent the state from engaging in this behavior ever again."

When several months later he parked his van on court property with signs on it saying "Judge (Nancy) Corsones: Butcher of the Constitution." it prompted an order that he remove the signs or leave the courthouse property. He refused, which in and of itself is a violation of the law. He was then removed from the court property after refusing to obey the court officers. This then led to follow-up orders authorized by the court administrator's office in Montpelier and the state Department of Buildings and General Services being issued that effectively barred Huminski from Vermont courts.

The orders barring him from Vermont courts are on appeal, and Mr. Huminski's request for a preliminary injunction against the ban, which was previously granted, was revoked.

Finally, my original statement is not defamation, nor is it libel. Mr. Huminski's comical opinion that they are, and that he "probably "won't waste his time" bringing a libel suit "filed in U.S District Court filed in the United States District Court (North Carolina) under diversity jurisdiction" immediately caused my mind to leap to the notion of blurting out and replying with that Bush phrase so near and dear to my heart... "Bring 'em on!".

However, given how foolish it was for Bush to say such taunts to foreign terrorists... it should perhaps give me pause. We certainly don't want either situations to turn into a quagmire now do we?

Now I certainly have no truck against anyone for being concerned about civil rights, including free-speech in public spaces (oh the irony that Mr. Huminski wishes to anoint himself poster-boy for free speech, yet threatens me with defamation and libel litigation). Especially when it is their own right to speak out which is being curbed by the state. That said however, I think Mr. Huminski's behavior is the very definition of gadfly and certainly raises questions in my mind as to how many hundreds of thousands of dollars in man-hours and public resources have been wasted with his misguided litigious behavior.

Sorry, Scott... you will have to wait for some other fool to punch your tar baby for you.

Well, did some site clean-up... thanks Moses and Marijane for the heads-up on the typos on the download page. Specific ones were which rally had what copy in the descriptions on the rally poster page (oops). Prone to make typos on my own, but re-working a site at 4 in the morning, while running on about 3 hours of sleep in the previous 48 doesn't help either.

Also added the missing Milwaukee venue poster as well.

Site-wide, I added some more links to fellow "traitors" (as Micah Ian Wright has been described for using his 1st Amendment rights to speak out) and are worth checking out.

I am also working on the next one in the "Re-Select Bush" Campaign. Promises to fit perfectly with Dean's Rural America Restoration policy if I can find/create the perfect image to go with it (anyone have a cute picture of a red barn, be it toy or real?) if so... let me know.

If anyone has had a hard time accessing these pages from Sunday afternoon till now, that is because I was reworking the entire web pages for the design stuff I have been generating as of late.

I think I have a good track on a formate and template for the design download pages.

Anyway, here is the landing page for it.

Well.. this morning was hectic and turned into a collaborative effort with my significant other. I finished making the rally posters for all the various venues on the "Sleepless Summer Tour" for Dean.

They are available for download at my Gore for Dean "media page.

They are in PDF format (you will need Acrobat Reader... free from Adobe) and should print fine on a color printer. Have not yet tested them on a b/w printer. If anyone downloads these and prints them out, let me know how they look (i.e. on a bubble-jet, a b/w laser, a color ink-jet, etc.)

Then my girlfriend surprised me by offering to go to her office to print some up so I could make my first venture into flyering.

By 7 this evening, I was in downtown Portland, hammer-stapler and 500+ flyers in hand. I hit quite a few of the downtown restaurants and bars that would allow me to put flyers in the windows. I didn't hit many poles (most being metal traffic signs or lamp posts) since it is a big no-no to tape them to lampposts downtown.

Will hit a large swath of telephone poles in the Hawthorne and Belmont areas tomorrow (when I can).

Did meet and talk for about 10 mins. with a nice young guy Colin (if I recall correctly) at Powell's. He goes to school up in Olympia WA, but was down for the week to catch the rally and to volunteer.

I told him about the oregonfordean.com website, and suggested he get plugged in there to help out.

Anyway, did manage to get some tools (the stapler and a ream of flyers printed) which will hopefully prove useful all this next week.

Well... finally got around to creating the poster I intended to make to promote Dean's visit here to Portland on the 24th of this month.



The downloadable PDF for printing is available here.

In yesterday's letter to the editor at the Washington Post, Grover Norquist offered up a stunningly idiotic and panicked new definition of fiscal conservatism.

An Aug. 3 front-page story regarding Howard Dean's fiscal record during his tenure as governor of Vermont called Mr. Dean a "fiscal conservative."

According to Americans for Tax Reform's Cost of Government Day report, the average Vermonter worked 60 days to pay for Vermont spending in 1992. By 2001, the average resident needed to work an additional two weeks -- 75 days -- because state spending rose so much faster than family income.

State employment soared under Mr. Dean as well. From 1997 to 2002, Vermont's workforce grew from 7,196 (6,939 employees plus 257 vacancies) to 8,239 (7,791 employees plus 448 vacancies). That's a 14.5 percent increase in just the last half of the Dean administration.

Being a fiscal conservative means more than balancing a budget or allowing a scheduled tax sunset to proceed. Being a fiscal conservative means resisting the growth of government and cutting taxes.

Those looking for a fiscally conservative Democrat for president must look beyond the Dean campaign.

That is from the same nit-wit who is the standard bearer of the far-rights strategy of destroying the governemnt, who once quiped:

"I don't want to abolish government, I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub."

--Grover Norquist, May 25,2001

Ask him what is the increase in state spending over that period in Texas under GWB?

Give you a hint... during the 90s (when Bush was Gov.) Texas along with six other states had its total spending mushroom by more than 30% according to the Cato institute (hardly a liberal bastion of tax data).

In fact between 1990 and 1997, Texas' spending increased by 52.9%!

So please Mr. Norquist... attack the Cato institutes findings and see how well that goes over with fiscal conservatives. (smirk)

Furthermore, Mr. Norquist's sudden and novel notions of what fiscal conservatism is, is nothing but his own twisted myopic contortion to smear Dean. Fiscal conservatism does NOT automatically mean "resisting growth" of government. It means being fiscally responsible. If you increase the size of your population, you must increase the size of government to provide the same level of services. Being fiscally conservative does NOT automatically mean you must ALWAYS cut taxes.

Fiscal conservatism means not running deficits, and being fiscally responsible while growing the economy. Dean has done that, while increasing the number of people covered by health insurance (lowering the actual public outlaw for healthcare costs). But somehow I suppose reducing the cost for healthcare, while balancing the budget, growing the economy, and controlling the growth of government spending (to less than the national average, and far less that states like Texas under the Twig) somehow translates to not being fiscally "conservative" in Mr. Norquist's through-the-looking-glass view of the world.

Remember, Mr. Norquist is the man who wants to eliminate public service en masse and drown government. He is a radical faux-libertarian extremist. By his own criterion, GWB as governor is left of Lenin when compared to Dean. I also find it amusing that he fails utterly to note the historic deficits Bush is running (a key indicator of fiscal irresponsibility, not true conservatism).. but then that fits well with his desires to eliminate public services all together and "drown the government" in the "bathtub" after shrinking it to the point he could manage such a feat.

Someone needs to hand these nitwits (Grover and Bush) their asses on a plate.

Howard Dean's Constitutional Hang-Up...?

More idiotic attacks from the far-left at Counterpunch, that Dean is akin to Ashcroft by Josh Frank (with the aid of Scott Huminski, an anti-Dean nut with an axe to grind):

Howard Dean's Constitutional Hang-Up

First, Dean has no "hang-up" regarding the Constitution. The overblown headline above is wholly off the mark as will be shown below.

Dean Would Rather Execute an Innocent Man, Than Let a Guilty One Walk Free

Wild hyperbolic nonsense, wholly unsupported by the facts and a clear example of the unvarnished bias of the piece that follows.

By JOSH FRANK

It is worth noting that Josh Frank previously put out the wildly off the mark piece on Dean being "regressive" because he is convinced that Dean is a pro-Zionist zealot and abject supporter of Ariel Sharon. This of course is pure bunk, and certainly introduces a not-unreasonable speculation that Josh Frank is not only 0-2 about Dean but also has an axe to grind with Dean's ascendancy to Democratic front-runner.

As Governor of Vermont, Howard Dean openly claimed that the legal system unfairly benefited criminal defendants over prosecutors.

A google search yields no results which back up this unsubstantiated assertion or even hit on anything resembling this singular claim, aside from one editorial which is also at the bottom of Josh Frank's re-hashing of Scott Huminski's personal crusade against Dean (more about him below). Of course this runs counter to the facts that Dean publicly supported former Illinois Gov. George Ryan, who imposed a moratorium on the death penalty because of failings of the legal system. It also directly refutes the absurd allegation in the sub-head of the piece.

He even took measures to cut federal grant money aimed at helping mentally disabled defendants

Did he turn down the federal grant request because, as is often the case, the state would have to match it with state funds?

The only source I can find for this is the assertions of Robert Appel, the former Vermont Defender General which Dean appointed to the post for eight years, but then did not renew his appointment. This allegation came an interview amid his carping that Dean did not give his office the budgets he requested, and after he had been let go.

--as well as appointing state judges who were willing to undermine the Bill of Rights.

Wholesale bunk, and completely unsubstantiated assertion. Note there is zero evidence supporting this wild accusation.

In a 1997 interview with the Vermont News Bureau, Howard Dean admitted his desire to expedite the judicial process by using such justices to "quickly convict guilty criminals."

As opposed to slowly convicting guilty criminals?

He wanted individuals that would deem "common sense more important than legal technicalities." Constitutional protections (legal technicalities) apparently undermine Dean's yearning for speedy trials.

Apparently hyperbole undermines Franks yearning to paint Dean as a fascist.

A right to a speedy trial is in fact a vital portion (i.e. the very first sentence of the sixth amendment) of the very Constitution that Franks screams the sky is falling upon under Gov. Dean's tenure as Governor.

Perhaps he was looking to make Vermont more like George Bush's Texas, where defense lawyers are renowned for lacking the resources necessary to provide their clients a fair representation.

Let's see... Dean supports narrowing the types of crimes in which the death penalty can be persuade, applauded Ill Gov. Ryan's moratorium on the death penalty, and even the Rutland Herald editorial at the root of this nonsense noted:

"Vermont is not Texas, where the public defender's program is notorious for signing up incompetent, inebriated, or sleep-deprived lawyers for indigent clients."

Yet Mr. Frank, like Bush's administration sifting WMD data to fit the results it wants, seems to ignore what is inconvenient to what his already arrived at position will be.

Several of Dean's judicial appointments are now awaiting hearings before the United States Second Circuit Court in New York City. The Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Freedom of Expression (www.tjcenter.org) and two other law firms have filed briefs against these justices. They are being accused of violating a number of federal rights including; the First Amendment, Right to Counsel, Double Jeopardy, and Due Process.

It should be noted that the source which Mr. Frank is relying on, is himself the litigant in those cases. In other words, he (Scott Huminski whom Franks is relying on as a legitimate source) is the one suing those judges (he lost three times on appeal) because of his losing his cases.

His appeals were thrown out of federal court.

Regarding one case where citizen reporter Scott Huminski was barred from Vermont courts, a DC lawyer stated

A google search on the quote below reveals the source of this "DC lawyer" mentioned above is non-other than Robert Corn-Revere, Huminski's attorney for the lost appeals.

in an interview with Eugenia Harris from the First Amendment Center that, "the real heart of the issue is whether local government officials can unilaterally silence speech and exert arbitrary power over their citizens."

It should be noted that nobody was preventing Mr. Huminski from speaking his mind. He simply could not do so on court grounds, after being barred from court for obstruction of justice charges, which were upheld three times by both state and federal courts.

Seems Howard Dean stuck by his word and appointed judges that care little about real "justice." And he thinks he's qualified to appoint justices at the federal level?

Mr. Corn-Revere's defense lawyer spin, nothing more.

These are not the only examples of Howard Dean's intentions to subdue the Bill of Rights. Shortly after the September 11th attacks Dean was quoted in the Rutland Herald claiming that the United States needs a "re-evaluation of the importance of some of our specific civil liberties."

It should be noted that it was actually less than 48 hours after the attacks of September 11th when Dean posed those questions during a radio interview on September 13th, and it was not in fact a call to repeal our civil rights, but correctly pointing out that we should have to debate such issues. This is confirmed by the very next sentence Dean made, but which Frank and others who attempt to make hay of this invariably fail to include:

"Again, I think that's a debate that we will have."

Even Benson Scotch, the head of the Vermont chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union at the time said that while it was "too soon" after the attacks to enter that sort of debate, noted that "we're at a moment now of extreme tragedy and sorrow and anger. And tragedy and sorrow and anger are not good qualities to inform a debate about civil liberties."

Unfortunately a substantive debate was not really forth-coming on these issues since there was no real debate on the Patriot Act which sprung out of the 9/11 attacks. More importantly however, is that Dean himself came out against the draconian Patriot Act for the very reasons Mr. Frank tries to insinuate Dean is complicit in, that civil liberties should take a back seat to "homeland security". Read Dean's statement about the Patriot Act:

"Too many in my party voted for the Patriot Act. They believed that it was more important to show bipartisan support for President Bush during a moment of crisis than to stand up for the basic values of our constitution. They trusted this President, knowing full well that John Ashcroft was the Attorney General. Only one senator had the courage to vote against the Patriot Act--- Senator Russ Feingold, and he deserves credit for doing so. We need more Democrats like Senator Feingold-Democrats who are willing to stand up for what is right, and stand against this President's reckless disregard for our civil liberties. We don't need John Ashcroft-or any other Attorney General-rifling through our library records. As Americans, we need to stand up-all of us-and ensure that our laws reflect our values. As President, I will repeal those parts of the Patriot Act that undermine our constitutional rights, and will stand against any further attempts to expand the government's reach at the expense of our civil liberties."

The above directly refutes the assertion with which Mr. Huminski via Mr. Frank's misguided piece tries to paint Dean as an Ashcroft of the left (as he tried to do in his other misguided excursions into the polemic, on Dean) and renders it basically a non-issue.

Later when asked if he thought the Bill of Rights needed to be altered he said, "I think it is unlikely, but I frankly haven't gotten that far I think our freedom is what they find so threatening, our freedom and the power that I think results from that freedom."

That is not what Dean said. Mr. Frank is conflating Deans words "I haven't gotten that far yet. I think that's unlikely, but I frankly haven't gotten that far" with Vermont Law School Professor Michael Mello's later statement... "It's why they attacked us, I think our freedom is what they find so threatening, our freedom and the power that I think results directly from that freedom."

The way Mr. Frank has mangled the actual quotes makes it possible to read Howard Dean's words that he think our freedoms are why we were attacked, hence the problem is our freedoms... and right on cue Frank makes that very idiotic leap:

So according to Dean since terrorists are after our sought after freedoms, we might consider scathing back certain liberties in order to decrease the threat of future strikes. John Ashcroft must be pleased.

As previously noted, the quote Mr. Frank is railing against is his own mangled invention by editing of what was really said. I will leave it to the reader to decide to what end.

There is more. On Meet the Press last June, when asked about his support for the death penalty by Tim Russert, Dean replied,

"So I just-life without parole, which we have which I actually got passed when I was lieutenant governor- the problem with life without parole is that people get out for reasons that have nothing to do with justice. We had a case where a guy who was a rapist, a serial sex offender, was convicted, then was let out on what I would think and believe was a technicality, a new trial was ordered and the victim wouldn't come back and go through the second trial."

A "technicality" to Dean must be synonymous with "Constitutional hang-up." In the case Dean presented to Russert, a man walked free, but should have been put to death instead of challenging his unconstitutional conviction.

The logical fallacy of inventing arguments not made in which to rail against them aside, the problem is not that the convicted rapist should have been put to death, but that he was let out on parole because of a technicality and is now free within the community. Nowhere in Dean's statements or in his position is rape a crime even eligible for the death penalty.

Of course glossing over the fact that Dean supports very narrow application of the death penalty as opposed to the exuberance with which the current occupant of the White House pursued it as Governor, goes completely uncommented upon.

Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen commented on Dean's statement saying that, "I have never heard a politician admit that he would countenance the death of an innocent person in order to ensure that the guilty die."

Which again is not what Dean's statement or position says or even implies.

Dean's attempts to weaken the Bill of Rights began in the 1990s with his appointments of justices now awaiting hearings in New York for egregious infringements on civil liberties.

A reference to the same court cases his "research source" was a litigant in, and lost.

He then took it a step further after September 11th and indicated the "re-evaluation" of constitutional rights was in order. And now, as Dean steams ahead in his bid for the White House, he's claiming on national television that he would rather have an innocent criminal die than have them released on a "technicality."

More fabricated re-iteration of the same spin.

If elected will Dean attempt to make the United State's a country in which citizens have access to neither a fair trial, nor adequate counsel?

No.

A country where constitutional rights are viewed as "technicalities," worthy of death?

No.

To quote two venerable old sayings: first, "when one finds oneself in a hole, stop digging" and second, "check your sources."

If Mr. Frank wants to have any shred of credibility (not that he has earned any thus far) he would take to heart those bits of advice when he deciding who and what to use as source material and avoid using any desperate person with an axe to grind. He might also wish to stop trying to build a case to fit his obviously preconceived notions that Howard Dean is just short of John Ashcroft on the fascist scale, and join the rest of us back on planet earth.