I expected great things when I heard that Elizabeth Edwards would be working on health care issues as a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.

But I am even more excited to learn that she will headline a $40 million ad campaign promoting universal healthcare, which will be unveiled next Tuesday.

Healthcare for America Now coalition includes a who’s who list of liberal organizations such as MoveOn.org, the housing group ACORN, Americans United for Change, the Campaign for America’s Future, the Center for American Progress Action Fund, the National Education Association, Planned Parenthood, the Service Employees International Union, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, United Food and Commercial Workers, and National Women’s Law Center.  Many state organizations are also participants.

Many of these are also participating in John Edwards’ Half in Ten Poverty Initiative.

By the way, today is Elizabeth Edwards’ birthday. Many happy returns to her and her family!

If you’re not going out of town for the holiday weekend, I highly recommend that you march or ride with fellow Democrats in your local Independence Day parade.

These events are fantastic outreach opportunities for campaigns and a great way for you to meet like-minded neighbors.

It’s not too late to volunteer. Just contact your county Democratic Party, or the campaign of a local candidate, or the Obama campaign office if there is one in your city. Ask where and when you should show up if you want to help out during the July 4 parades. (Keep in mind that some communities have parades on the evening of July 3.)

A few more tips to help you enjoy the parade are after the jump.

Barack Obama’s communications director in Iowa for the general election campaign will be Brad Anderson, who was Governor Chet Culver’s spokesman until May.

The Obama campaign hired Tripp Wellde to be Iowa field director. He was one of the early hires in Obama’s Iowa campaign, arriving in Davenport in March 2007 according to Hotline.

Anyone out there planning to volunteer for Obama in Iowa this summer? Do they have anything special going on for the holiday weekend? I assume they will have a presence in July 4 parades all over the state.  

Barack Obama has figured out that he doesn’t need to go along with the media’s feeding frenzy on Wesley Clark.

The TPM Veracifier team put together a tremendous collection of clips on how pundits have distorted what Clark said on Face the Nation this Sunday:

Media Matters points out the obvious: the manufactured outrage over Clark’s so-called attack obscures the fact that Clark praised McCain’s military service, while noting that military service alone does not qualify him to be commander-in-chief.

The Columbia Journalism Review’s Zachary Roth has a must-read commentary about the media distortions as well.

I had to laugh when I read this letter to the editor in Tuesday’s Des Moines Register:

The Register ran an editorial on June 23 with this headline: “Don’t Leave Behind the High Achievers.”

Huh?

The notion that gifted children “suffer” and are “invisible” vis a vis their lower-achieving classmates flies in the face of my impressions as a parent and the spouse of a teacher in the Des Moines school district.

Weep neither for gifted kids nor their parents. The kids, after all, are gifted. Just ask their parents. They get lots of mail printed on the district’s gifted and talented stationery and plenty of bumper stickers trumpeting their prodigies’ ascension to the middle school honor rolls. At least here in Des Moines, the gifted, not to mention the talented, have thrown off the cloak of invisibility.

I do need some help getting my mind around the concept of “languid” performances by “top students.” Guess I’m just another low-brow clamoring for some one-on-one.

– Mike Wellman, Des Moines

Really, Mr. Wellman? You can’t get your mind around the concept that some bright children don’t do well in school?

I recommend that you read the John Templeton Foundation’s report called A Nation Deceived: How Schools Hold Back America’s Brightest Students.

It takes more than a letter from the school district and a bumper sticker for a parent’s car to challenge and engage gifted students day after day. Too many of these kids get bored and tune out.

Mark your calendar for July 9: Moveon.org is organizing events at gas stations around the country in a “National Day of Action for an Oil-Free President.” The main goal is to inform voters that

John McCain’s campaign is run by oil lobbyists,1 it’s funded by oil companies,2 his policies are straight out of Big Oil’s playbook,3 and he won’t solve our energy crisis.

After the jump you can read the full text of the e-mail I received from Moveon.org. It includes footnotes supporting the assertions in that quote.

Fortunately for Barack Obama, Moveon.org isn’t going to be less involved in this election just because Obama made a gratuitous swipe at the group on Monday.

I was happy to see that Moveon.org also defended Wes Clark, who has been getting slammed by the right-wing noise machine. By the way, the Obama campaign went out of its way to “reject” Clark’s reasonable statements about McCain’s qualifications to be president.

This post by Chris Bowers explains succinctly why disavowing Clark was dumb:

No one in the entire country is more important to Democratic credibility on foreign policy than Wesley Clark. No one. And this isn’t just my opinion, it is the opinion of Democratic congressional candidates who requested him.

There are those who think that Obama is being super secret strategic on this one, and playing both the McCain campaign and the media for a fiddle. However, if you really want to be strategic, you need to see the whole board. Going well beyond this media cycle, and even going beyond this presidential election, Republicans score a huge strategic victory if they are able to permanently damage the credibility of the leading Democratic spokesperson on national security.

Paul Rosenberg had a priceless comment in that thread:

Incompetent is you think tactically instead of strategically.

Idiotic is you think tactically instead of strategically about the strongest surrogate you have on your weakest suit in the game.

Getting back to the main point of this post, Moveon.org is right to hit McCain campaign over energy policy. He is worse than Obama on that issue, and the price of gas is at the forefront of voters’ minds this summer.

If you attend or help organize one of the July 9 events, please put up a diary here to let us know how it went.

Starting a year from today, Windsor Heights will have its own zip code. A majority of the Des Moines suburb’s residents who mailed surveys back to the U.S. Postal Service voted yes to the change.

City officials have been working toward this for more than a decade, but I don’t think they would have succeeded if Ed Fallon had not challenged Leonard Boswell in the Democratic primary to represent Iowa’s third Congressional district.

Boswell had been asked to help with this matter many times, but only introduced a bill to secure a unique zip code for Windsor Heights in January, after Fallon announced his bid for Congress.  

The Iowa Democratic Party posted a press release announcing the Iowa delegation to the Democratic National Convention on its website.

I’ve reposted the release after the jump. It lists not only all of the delegates and alternates, but also members of the various National Convention Standing Committees.

I hadn’t realized that Iowa Utilities Board chairman John Norris was on the Platform Committee. Maybe someone in Denver will be able to persuade him that we have better options on energy policy than building more coal-fired power plants or expanding our use of nuclear power.

Watch Rob Hubler make his case:

Not only does Steve King embarrass all Iowans on a regular basis, he doesn’t even serve his constituents well. The Sioux City Journal researched the question How effective is Steve King?, and couldn’t come up with many accomplishments.

In fact, only three of the 44 bills King has sponsored even made it out of committee. Keep in mind that for the first two of King’s three terms in the House, Republicans controlled the chamber.

King has managed to get one bill through, according to the the Sioux City Journal. That was a resolution on “Recognizing the importance of Christmas in the Christian faith.”

No, that is not a joke from The Colbert Report.

Commenting on the Sioux City Journal’s article about King, Douglas Burns notes that King has focused on expanding Highway 20 but seems little concerned about Highway 30, which has more traffic and economic development potential.

Do Iowans a favor and give some cash to Hubler’s campaign.

According to the Des Moines Register,

A proposal before the state Board of Education would limit how and when teachers can lock up children and would ban risky methods of restraint, including chokeholds.

Teachers also would be trained to use “positive” alternatives, such as talking through disputes with children.

These proposed rules were probably inspired by media coverage of horrendous misuses of timeout rooms in the Waukee Community School District. After news of those incidents emerged last August, I talked with an acquaintance who pulled her son out of a Waukee elementary school because of a similarly inappropriate use of timeout rooms for discipline.

The Register reports that

studies have shown teachers confine students [to timeout rooms] for the wrong reasons.

A James Madison University survey of teachers at one Minnesota school found that teachers were more likely to lock up children for minor misbehavior.

“Without any guidance and policies, they make very poor choices, and kids suffer the consequences of it,” said Joseph Ryan, a Clemson University professor who worked on the 2004 survey.

The rules to be considered by the State Board of Education would force teachers to keep records of how timeout rooms are used, and would also stipulate that educators

– Can’t hold a child face down or otherwise use force that hampers a child’s ability to breathe.

– Must provide “continuous” supervision of children in timeout rooms.

– Must get permission from an administrator to confine a child for longer than an hour.

– Can’t lock up or restrain children for “minor infractions.”

– Can lock the door of a timeout room only if they hold the lock in position, or the lock automatically releases when school alarms go off or power is cut off.

– Must use timeout rooms that are safe and suitable for children of varying sizes, ages and conditions.

I am not an expert on appropriate discipline for special-needs children, but those guidelines sound much more reasonable than what I have read about the way some schools have used the timeout rooms in the past.

Members of the public can submit comments on the proposed rules until 4:30 pm on July 8. The address to which those comments should be sent is after the jump.

There will also be public hearings on July 8 to discuss the rules, and details about where and when they’ll be held are after the jump.

Senator Grassley discussed the pending FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveilance Act) legislation today at a town meeting I attended.  He either does not understand the issue or he purposely misleads his constituents.  I don't know which explanation is more alarming.

 When one woman asked about FISA, the Senator said it had passed the Congress and was going on to the President now.  He then rambled on about how FDR intercepted postal mail during WWII and how Obama supports the new bill and how there are Al Qaeda cells in the US.  He said the government has to listen to all foreign calls without a search warrant  because “by the time you got a warrant the call would be over with.”  

 Doesn't he know that warrants are typically granted after the fact for calls that were intercepted without warrants?  Doesn't he know that calls are not targeted one at a time?  If he doesn't know that stuff, he is less informed that many internet readers.  If he does know, he has just misled his audience.

He went on to say there had been many terrorist plots uncovered since the warrantless wiretapping began, citing the preposterous plots to bomb the Holland Tunnel and  to attack Fort Dix, and reminding us of the “dirty bomber” arrested at O'Hare Airport.  Does he know that none of these episodes had anything to do  with warrantless wiretaps?

 I immediately followed up the woman's question by telling the Senator that the FISA bill was indeed coming before the Senate again next week.  I argued against retroactive immunity for wiretapping crimes that had not even been investigated yet and reminded him that the wiretaps had begun before 9/11.

 Grassley said that if the President told the phone company to do it then they should not be punished.  He said the lawsuits would be more than the entire value of the phone companies.  Apparently he thinks they are guilty and face a big penalty.

 Luckily he did not say that, “If the President orders someone buried alive, it would be OK to do it.”  That question was raised in a Congressional hearing last week and the witness dodged it.  It should be put to Grassley.

Our senior senator does not seem to doubt the unlimited power of the President.  If the current President wants to secretly violate laws instead of getting them changed by a famously compliant Congress, Grassley has no problem with that.

 So why do we even need Senators? 

Until I read this article in the Des Moines Register, I had never heard about the

Innocence Project of Iowa, a non-profit created by some attorneys last year.

Experts say people who are wrongfully convicted are uniformly poor and disproportionately a minority. One recent study by the Innocence Project in New York, the nation’s first program founded in 1992, showed at least 156 of 216 people exonerated through DNA testing were African-American, Latino or Asian American.

Many of the cases also fall apart when scrutinized for unreliable or limited science, faulty eyewitness accounts, false confessions, poor defense work and unreliable testimony from informants, experts say.

The nonprofit Innocence Project of Iowa began last year out of a discussion among lawyers at Drake University who wanted to start their own program. Years ago, the University of Iowa’s law school provided legal assistance to Iowa prison inmates, but it never had a program focused exclusively on exonerating people believed to be wrongfully convicted.

Brian Farrell, a Cedar Rapids attorney who specializes in appeals and post-conviction cases, said the group could not find a home or funding at the state’s two big law schools at the U of I or Drake, but both schools nonetheless liked the idea of getting students involved.

[…]

Mark Gruwell, program coordinator for the paralegal-legal studies program at Iowa Lakes Community College, said about a dozen of his students have been reviewing correspondence from inmates, which the organization has been soliciting since last fall.

Those students submit analyses and reports, which are forwarded to a committee in Des Moines. That committee decides whether to reject a case or look into it more. From there, law and journalism students at the U of I will assist pro-bono defense lawyers with cases worth pursuing.

The project has identified two cases to pursue thus far.

Drake law students also are expected to get involved in the future.

[…]

Farrell said the project’s only financial support is from the Iowa Public Defender’s Association, but it hopes to develop other sources of funding.

The article mentions David Flores, but it’s not clear whether that case is one of the two that the Innocence Project will be focusing on. Flores has served 12 years in prison for first-degree murder. He will have a hearing next month to determine whether his sentence can be vacated. Des Moines police withheld evidence naming a different suspect in that murder case from Flores’ attorneys.

The blog Talk Left, which often covers crime-related issues, has posted on Flores’ case here and here.

Although John McCain hasn’t raised nearly as much money as Barack Obama has, the Republican National Committee has far outpaced the Democratic National Committee in fundraising.

The DNC is trying to narrow that gap, but it will need a lot more donations from individuals, because like Obama’s campaign, the DNC is not accepting donations from Washington lobbyists or political action committees.

They’ve designed a t-shirt that says “Democratic Party–Not Paid For by Special Interest PACs or Washington Lobbyists.” If you click this link and donate at least $30, you can get one:

https://donate.barackobama.com…

I am not currently donating to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee or the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, because I am dissatisfied with the House and Senate leadership and prefer to give to individual candidates.

However, I encourage everyone to support the DNC, because I believe Howard Dean’s investment in the 50-state strategy will pay huge dividends to our party. Two or three years ago, some skeptics thought it was a waste of time for Dean to invest in the state Democratic parties, but we have won three special Congressional elections in a row this year in Republican-leaning districts.

After the jump I’ve put the full text of the DNC’s fundraising e-mail that went out today.

If you haven’t donated to any Democratic candidates yet in the second quarter, what are you waiting for?

The various major blogs are raising money for some of their favorite candidates for the U.S. House and Senate, and many deserve your support. For instance, Larry Kissell (NC-08) lost to Republican incumbent Robin Hayes by only a few hundred votes in 2006.

If David Mizner, veteran of a hundred blog flamewars between supporters of Barack Obama and John Edwards, can give money to Obama, you can dig into your wallet and give money to some good Democrats today.

I’ve already donated to Rob Hubler and Becky Greenwald, who are running for Congress against Steve King and Tom Latham.

Here is Greenwald’s page at ActBlue, and here is Hubler’s page.

Most Democratic candidates for the Iowa legislature have pages at ActBlue as well. Go to www.actblue.com and search for the candidate’s name.

Or, google the candidate’s name to find a campaign website, where a mailing address will be provided in case you prefer sending checks in the mail.

Just be sure to write the check today. It has to be dated June 30 to count for the second quarter.

Look, I understand that many Iowans are upset about the smoking ban that will go into effect tomorrow.

I agree with the Des Moines Register editorial board, which argued on Sunday that legislators should have delayed the starting date for the ban so that businesses wouldn’t have to implement it just a few days after the Iowa Department of Public Health completed the rulemaking process.

But critics lose all credibility when they rant about the “fascist state Department of Health” and claim that the “monstrous” smoking ban is “all about cruelty,” “all about viciousness,” and so on.

Not surprisingly, that post I linked to denies that secondhand smoke is a serious health problem, despite mounting research to the contrary.

You can read up on what fascism is here. You may disagree with the smoking ban, but don’t compare it to fascism.

We went to a party last night, and one of our friends told us that their next-door neighbors frequently go out on their porch to smoke. The smoke drifts onto my friends’ deck and into their house if they have the window open. She said there’s nothing she can do about it, because her neighbors are on their own property.

So take heart, angry smokers. Even after you are barred from smoking in most public places, you will still be free to pollute the air at your own home. Maybe your neighbors will get to experience your freedom as well.

Today is the last day of the second quarter, and it’s important for candidates to show strong fundraising.

I encourage you to give to a few good Democrats today, either online or by writing a check (the check must be dated June 30).

I received this appeal from Rob Hubler, who is trying to do all Iowans a favor by retiring Congressman Steve King:

June 29, 2008

Dear [desmoinesdem],

I am trying to bring back Real Representation to Iowa’s fifth district, and I need your help.

The second quarter FEC deadline is only a day away – Monday, June 30th. Will you help show our strength in the upcoming filing by contributing what you can today?

The political analysts love to base their idea of a campaign on the size of its pocketbook over the issues of the candidate. While you and I know that ideas and organization are what really matters to the people of the fifth district, we also need to show financial strength. National organizations face a decision of which races to help, and look at this quarter to base their decision. We need to show that western Iowa is working hard to defeat Steve King. If you have been waiting to donate to my campaign, this is the perfect time when it will help us out the most.

In the last few weeks I have spoken to democrats, independents and republicans at events across the district and the state; and everywhere I go people are telling me the same thing: give Steve King the pink slip!

Even the press is taking notice. Check out this article from the Sioux City Journal with the headline: How effective is Steve King?

I hope you’ll be able to help us show them that what Iowa really wants in its congressman is a servant – not a king.  

Thank you,

Rob

p.s. – you can contribute online by visiting our ActBlue page. If you are sending a check, it is important that it is written on or before June 30th. If you are donating online, it’s important that it is done by midnight June 30th.

Can you imagine how frustrated Mitt Romney must be right now?

I submit to you that if Romney’s opposition research team had discovered that John McCain didn’t pay property taxes on one of his seven homes for more than four years, or that McCain didn’t know the price of gasoline and didn’t think that it was important for him to know it, Romney would be the Republican presidential nominee.

He didn’t lose to McCain in Florida and California by much, and Mike Huckabee didn’t lose to McCain in South Carolina by much either. With most GOP primaries being winner-take-all, McCain would probably have been out of the running if primary voters had known about his tax problems.

I so wanted Romney to win the nomination. I think either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton would have beaten him in a crushing landslide. Whatever the pundits thought about his telegenic nature, he came across as incredibly phony to me. A lot of evangelical Christians would have stayed home or voted for third-party candidates rather than vote for him because his change of heart on abortion didn’t seem authentic.

I’m surprised his well-funded campaign didn’t figure out that McCain defaulted on California property taxes.  

The wonderful Frankenoid is hosting an open house for bloggers coming to Denver for the Democratic National Convention.

Read this diary to find out where and when the party will be held. You might want to RSVP by commenting in one of Frankenoid’s diaries. She has a regular Saturday morning gardening series at Daily Kos.

Did Barack Obama sell us out by endorsing the new version of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and not showing up to support a filibuster of that bad bill last week?

Are too many Obama supporters in the netroots making up excuses to cover for him?

Or are the bloggers criticizing Obama being way too tough on a guy whose overriding concern has to be to get elected?

Is it right for some activists to say they no longer plan to volunteer for Obama’s campaign because he has failed to stand up for us on FISA?

Here are some links to good diaries exploring those questions.

Nathaniel Ament Stone is sure that Obama’s actions on FISA are better than they appear at first glance: Obama’s Outsmarted Us Again.

Big Tent Democrat argues that Obama is just like any politician and contrasts Obama’s previous statements on retroactive immunity for telecoms with his recent actions.

JedReport thinks the activists vowing not to lift a finger to help Obama (beyond voting for him) are making a big mistake: President McCain Just Got Elected, But That’s Okay.

Mike Lux seems to think the criticism of Obama over FISA is a waste of time, since “there is literally no acceptable way of holding a Democratic Presidential candidate accountable in the last few months before a general election.”

Chris Bowers counters, I Thought I Was Helping Obama. His point is:

First, we lefties are repeatedly told that it is necessary for Democrats to distance themselves from us in order to win elections. However, we are then we are told that we should be quiet in our criticism of Democrats, even though such criticism overtly distances Democrats from us.

I don’t get it. Aren’t we helping Democrats out by distancing them from us? Won’t Obama be helped by news stories about how he has angered the left? Won’t it make him look like he has Sista Soulhaj-ed us, or something? Why is our criticism a negative? Either Obama will be helped by distancing himself from the left, or he won’t. And, if he will be helped by distancing himself from the left, then our criticism should actually help him, especially when it starts to appear in news stories like these:

–National Journal: The Netroots Push Back

–Newsweek: Netroots Angry At Obama

–CBS: Netroots Feel Jilted By Obama Over FISA

Through our criticism of Obama, aren’t the netroots providing exactly the distance from lefties that we have always been told Democrats need to win? And, as such, aren’t we really helping Obama?

Attorney NCrissieB, who has experience with legal arguments surrounding the Fourth Amendment, offers A pragmatist’s view on FISA.

Wmtriallawyer, a vocal supporter of Obama this past year, has a warning: Barack, Take Note: FISA Demonstrates What’s Wrong with Washington. Key excerpt:

Sen. Obama, are you getting to see the problem now? As much as you talk about the partisan rancor that usually stalemates Washington (and I agree with you believe me), you’ve got to watch out for the so-called bipartisan compromises that actually serve noone but a few entrenched interests.

THIS has been the problem in Washington for years now.  The partisan fights occur over issues that actually matter and can benefit the people, and the bipartisan stuff compromises are over insidious stuff that benefits noone but the entrenched few.

Chris Bowers makes a strong case for taking Obama at his word instead of constructing theories about how he secretly agrees with FISA opponents, even as he fails to help stop the bill.

David Sirota notes that Obama has explicitly said, “You should always assume that when I cast a vote or make a statement it is because it is what I believe in.”

The exchange between Salon’s Glenn Greenwald and MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann is worth your time. Here is Greenwald’s original post, which contrasted Olbermann’s scathing commentary about President Bush’s support for FISA a few months ago with Olbermann’s cheering as Barack Obama goes along with the same bill.

Olbermann posted a response that shot to the top of the Daily Kos recommended list, even though he admitted not to have read Greenwald’s entire post.

Greenwald’s next shot was wonderful: Keith Olbermann’s reply and Obama’s secret plan to protect the rule of law.

Then Olbermann changes the subject with a crowd-pleasing diary about Grover Norquist saying Obama is “John Kerry with a tan.” Nice try!

The final vote on FISA will take place after the Senate’s July 4 recess, but efforts to remove the provision granting retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies appear unlikely to succeed.  

cross-posted around the blogosphere

Two days before the June 3 Democratic primary in Iowa, I received an automated push-poll, followed the next day by a second robocall containing “important information” for me. Both calls were hit jobs on Jerry Sullivan, the leading Democratic candidate in Iowa House district 59.

Many of us will receive similar calls between now and November. We need to be prepared to help the Democrats who will be targeted in this way.

My number one piece of advice is do not hang up the phone.

Do not hang up the moment you hear an automated voice on the other end.

Do not hang up the moment you are asked to participate in a brief survey.

Do not hang up the moment you realize that this is not a legitimate opinion poll.

Stay on the line and grab a pen and paper for taking notes.

Follow me after the jump for further instructions.