It is safe to assume the current Democrats and incoming Democrats will not do much to undo Bush's damage to the constitution without some serious poking and prodding. Hopefully the Ron Paul Republicans, our friends on this issue, will help them along a bit.

But I think we need to do everything we can to strategize and keep people informed about abuses to our civil liberties and about attempts to roll back the damage done to them during the last 8 years.

To help this effort along I started a Civil Liberties Google Group. Our brief agenda and link is below. Please join.

Steve Clemons is an excellent reporter and great blogger, whose hunches usually end up being right. So just imagine how nice it was to load up his blog and read:

I won't post sources on this, so any folks are welcome to consider this my fanciful speculation.

But sources close to Obama report to me that after the "surge of concern" on the net about Evan Bayh, he has not been selected as Obama's VP running mate.

Netroots activism wins! Yay!

As you may have heard, members of the online progressive community - including many Kossaks! - have been working together to collectively and democratically craft a Netroots Platform. Now we're rolling out what we've created and asking what you think. Ferris Valyn's diary from earlier today is serving as the 'Mothership' as the planks are individually posted.

Without further ado, here's the Economy plank:

It is our fundamental belief that the American economy should be an economy that is democratically managed for the benefit of all the American people, not for the pursuit of corporate, government, or global power. We have seen in recent years that when government abdicates its responsibility to regulate the economy, chaos ensues and the working class suffers as a result. We believe in free enterprise and we support the entrepreneurial spirit of the American people, but we believe that such enterprise flourishes only when the economy is responsibly managed by government on behalf of the people...

As many of you know, the online progressive community has been working together to collectively and democratically craft a shared vision for the country.  Only three short weeks ago, a small band of netizens gathered in Austin to kick off the process of writing our own political platform.  We set our goals high: to collectively write a shared progressive vision for the country, which we would use to influence the Obama/DNC national platform process.  

After many intense days of writing, remixing, and rating, the final version is complete. Amazingly, what started with just a few people brainstorming ideas at Netroots Nation has since grown to an impressive 29-page policy document, involving 246 registered participants, 167 planks and 925 ratings, and ultimately coauthored by 164 people across the country!

And we just received word that some parts of the Netroots platform were included in the National Platform.  (We're just not sure which...)  

Follow us below the fold for more...

Over the past few weeks, various members of the online liberal/progressive community, that included quite a few Kossaks, worked together in a democratic fashion to create the Netroots Platform  

For those of you who have just joined us, check out DemocracyLover in NYC mothership diary http://www.dailykos.com/... , to get the whole picture.  For the Civil and Human Rights Plank, we had a whopping 67 Contributors.  Join me over the fold to read the final version

Over the past few weeks, various members of teh online liberal/progressive community, that included quite a few Kossaks, worked together in a democratic fashion to create the Netroots Platform  

For those of you who have just joined us, check out Democracylover in NYC's mothership diary entry, to get the whole picture.  For the Netroots Science & Technology Plank, we had 19 Contributors, and 11 different versions.  Join me over the fold to read the final version

As many of you know, the netroots have been busy for the last 3 weeks collectively crafting their own political platform.  We’re presenting each of the planks, one-by-one, to give a chance for feedback & discussion.  Democracylover in NYC's diary from earlier todayis serving as the 'Mothership' as the planks are individually diaried – so please recommend it!  

So here's the Education plank intro – the rest is over the fold:

Our commitment to education is among our greatest obligations to our children, and it is a challenge we take seriously. It is our goal to provide children with an education that will broaden their horizons, expand their minds, and help them grow as individuals.

As you may have heard, members of the online progressive community - including many Kossaks! - have been working together to collectively and democratically craft a Netroots Platform. Now we're rolling out what we've created and asking what you think. Democracylover in NYC's diary from earlier today is serving as the 'Mothership' as the planks are individually diaried.

Without further ado, here's the Electoral Reform plank:

We believe that the basis for any democracy must be free and fair elections. We therefore endorse the following reform proposals to ensure the fairness of our elections and to make participation in our democratic system more accessible to Americans.

As Democracylover in NYC explained today in Netroots Platform Unveiled: The Mothership, members of the online progressive community  - including many Kossaks! - worked together to collectively and democratically craft a Netroots Platform. (Democracylover in NYC's dairy is serving as the 'Mothership' as the planks are individually rolled out today, so please recommend that diary.)

Below the fold is the General Principles plank, which was created by 31 people using the collaborative writing tools at MixedInk.com.  The plank below emerged from 19 original and remixed versions of the plank, which received 134 ratings

As many of you know, the online progressive community has been working together to collectively and democratically craft a shared vision for the country.  Only three short weeks ago, a small band of netizens gathered in Austin to kick off the process of writing our own political platform.  We set our goals high: to collectively write a shared progressive vision for the country, which we would use to influence the Obama/DNC national platform process.  

After many intense days of writing, remixing, and rating, the final version is complete. Amazingly, what started with just a few people brainstorming ideas at Netroots Nation has since grown to an impressive 29-page policy document, involving 246 registered participants, 167 planks and 925 ratings, and ultimately coauthored by 164 people across the country!

And we just received word that some parts of the Netroots platform were included in the National Platform.  (We're just not sure which...)  

Follow us below the fold for more...

Although the deadline has passed to offer up additions for what the netroots platform should contain, many excellent proposals have been made, and there is still time to help find the gems that exists, and let the DNC know what the Netroots community stands for.  

They don't have to do with the behavior of former Democratic senators. Or Paris Hilton & Britney Spears.

No, the important questions are about the policies that we stand behind and work toward - questions we're grappling with in the Netroots Platform.

Should we strive to produce 100% of our electricity from renewable energy sources within 10 years?

Should we use mandates to achieve universal healthcare?

Is the disenfranchisement of Puerto Rico one of the critical human rights issues of our time?

Does the Federal Reserve need to be abolished?

Where we come down on these issues in the Netroots Platform is still up in the air - but only for the next few hours! Rate the planks we've developed over the past several weeks to make sure the final platform captures our collective views.

Today I was listening to a segment on the newshour on PBS bemoaning the partisan nature of politics. Among the guests in the segment was, that beacon of moderation and politics on a higher plane, Deborah Pryce. She complained that the partisanship was attribuatable to groups like Club for Growth on the Right and moveon.org on the Left, but you could have substituted the netroots on the Left. Yes the problem on the left is we are too involved; there is nothing worse than an informed and involved electorate. And this of course is treated by the program as if it were brilliant analysis. There are two problems here. First there is no equivalence between what is done on the Right and our conduct. Second our involvement isn't a problem, it's the solution. We helped force Pryce into retirement. That's why she doesn't like us.

We are the Netroots. We are powerful. We can lead the charge, and lead the change. Yes, we can!
You know that slogan everybody is chanting? "Yes, we can"?  Say it louder! That's "Yes, WE can!"  Or maybe even louder: "YES. WE. CAN"

That's the Obama I decided to support. Someone who wants transparency. Someone who wants all of us to actively participate in changing the direction of this country. So I was delighted to find, at my first Netroots Nation conference, that there was a group organizing an online "meeting" to allow all of us to have input into the Democratic Party Platform.

We, representing the netroots, have been invited to collectively use the tools of the net to define the direction of the Obama campaign, the Democratic Party, and ultimately the direction of our nation. Cool. (or Cooool, or Kewl - whatever)

We are down to the closing hours to refine the planks of this Netroots defined platform; and a few additional hours to rate up or down the various planks (we DO know about rating up or down around here, don't we???)

Flop over the flip to see an e-mail I got this evening from a lead member of the Netroots Platform Committee.

After enduring almost eight long years of Bush’s failed policies in everything from economics to the environment to civil liberties to education, we’ve all had plenty of time to think about what we would do differently if we were in charge.

Well we finally have a chance to put our heads together and write our own progressive platform. There’s a lot of issues and ideas out there – so we’re tapping the community’s wisdom to express our collective ideals.  Check it out and speak your mind!

http://netrootsplatform.org

If you’re thinking that you just don’t have time to write a political platform during your lunch break, don’t worry – you can still get involved! If you have a couple of minutes, you can look at what’s out there and rate the planks that best represent your point of view.  If you have ideas but don’t want to start from scratch, you can edit and remix what others have written to make them even better.  If you’ve already thought about your ideal policies, you can submit a new plank.  This is a democratic system that’s completely people-powered, so if the community agrees with you, your language will be used in the final platform.

More and Better Democrats.  We in the netroots are the most vigorous champions of candidates who truly represent their districts, candidates who challenge the status quo and demand tangible changes in our government.  If we had the power to create the quintessential strong Democrat, we'd be hard put to make up someone more authentic, intelligent, and schooled in the needs of his community than Manuel Perez.  

Crossposted at Calitics.  Flip it.

It's a starred review, which is extremely coveted since it means "Highly Recommended":

Taking on the System: Rules for Radical Change in a Digital Era Markos Moulitsas Zúniga. Penguin/Celebra, $23.95 (256p) ISBN 978-0-451-22519-1

In this primer for activists in the digital age, Zúniga, founder of the influential lefty blog DailyKos, argues that if activists harness new technology such as blogs, podcasting and YouTube, they can "bypass the old-world gatekeepers to communicate to the masses" in order to bring about political change. Tidily organized into pithy directives, including mobilizing, reinventing the street protest and feeding the backlash, this informative and entertaining book—inspired by Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals—moves easily among the current campaign cycle, pop culture phenomena such as Stephen Colbert and the successes and failures of the progressive movement in America. Zúniga's pragmatic, inclusive tone takes the edge off his sometimes didactic insistence that "there's no reason anyone should whine or complain that they are being shut out of the system." It should be noted, however, that the book is targeted directly to other liberals and wastes no time with conciliatory measures toward the right. Anyone in his camp, however, will be rewarded by the read. (Sept.)

I didn't want this book to be boring. Anything but that. So I can think of no higher praise than for someone to say it was an "entertaining" read. And on that front, so far, so good.

The book is out August 20, just a little over two weeks. You can pre-order from Amazon here, and it's obviously available for pre-order in lots of other places.

(Cross-posted in part from Obamaism.org--although the restrictions on excerpting articles here mean that the version at O.o is longer and more complete, so remember to go look at it)

    Just what Obama believes, or may come to believe, could fill many volumes; but as a start, let's discuss one recent look from the Washington Post's Dan Balz; and, at that, one which uses the term "Obama[-]ism". My fellow DB (besides Darcy Burner, cf. our post of yesterday) opines in his 7/10/08 Obama's Ideology Proving Difficult to Pinpoint: Democrats Decry a Move Toward Middle, but Republicans Still See a Liberal,

    (look out below)