http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

Undercover Maryland State Police officers conducted surveillance on war protesters and death penalty opponents, including some in Takoma Park, for more than a year while Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. was governor, documents released yesterday show.

Detailed intelligence reports logged by at least two agents in the police department's Homeland Security and Intelligence Division reveal close monitoring of the movements as the Iraq war and capital punishment were heatedly debated in 2005 and 2006.

Organizational meetings, public forums, prison vigils, rallies outside the State House in Annapolis and e-mail group lists were infiltrated by police posing as peace activists and death penalty opponents, the records show. The surveillance continued even though the logs contained no reports of illegal activity and consistently indicated that the activists were not planning violent protests.

Of course we are all aware of recent abuses of government power in the wake of the Bush Administration's radical right-wing culture of fear and the Patriot Act

http://www.nytimes.com/...

The New York Times is reporting that the government is thinking about temporarily taking over two companies which are vital to our economy.

Alarmed by the growing financial stress at the nation’s two largest mortgage finance companies, senior Bush administration officials are considering a plan to have the government take over one or both of the companies and place them in a conservatorship if their problems worsen, people briefed about the plan said on Thursday.

I was down at the Huffingtonpost when I saw a recent piece that Senator Chris Dodd wrote on the FISA bill currently being considered in the Senate.

After reading that, I immediately thanked Senator Dodd (again) for his tough stance against Telecomm Amnesty.

I'm about to write Senator Feingold, who has also been a fighter on this issue.

We've asked our congressmen and congresswomen to stand up for the rule of law, and while not enough congressmen and women have stood up for what's right, we need to take time to thank the men and women who have been fighting the good fight for us up in D.C.

The President and the right-wing machine has asked us to trust them with warrentless wiretapping and domestic spying.

http://www.politico.com/...

At the Politico we get a nice story on how Obama has "snubbed" the DLC.

Here's a striking mark of the distance between Obama and the centrist/Clintonite Democratic Leadership Council: The DLC kicked off their "National Conversation" over the weekend in Chicago, a block from Obama's campaign headquarters.

Obama, who had time to get a haircut and shoot some hoops on what passes for a down weekend on the campaign trail, didn't make it by.

The DLC has "officially lost its mojo," Taegan Goddard concludes.

(Part of the problem may be that a member of the Clinton-backing branch of the feuding Pritzker family played a major role in the gathering.)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/...

The Swedish study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal, compared the size of the brain's halves in 90 adults.

Gay men and heterosexual women had halves of a similar size, while the right side was bigger in lesbian women and heterosexual men.

A UK scientist said this was evidence sexual preference was set in the womb.

http://www.politico.com/...

Meet Bob Kelleher, the Republican nominee against Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) this year.

He is an 85-year-old attorney with some downright unconventional views. He believes the American system of representative government should be replaced by a parliamentary system. He calls for socialized medicine, advocates nationalizing the country’s oil and gas industries and believes taxes should be raised significantly to eradicate poverty.

It’s not the standard GOP platform, but nevertheless Kelleher defeated four other candidates in the primary to claim the Republican nomination.

Republican congresswoman Jean Schmidt from Ohio praised secularism in Turkey today, hailing it as a tool of progress, but declined to extend that same praise to the United States as well.

http://www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/...

 Musfara Kemal Ataturk's vision became reality on May 19, said Republican congresswoman Jean Schmidt in a speech directed to congressional majority leader Democrat Nancy Pelosi on account of the May 19 Turkish Youth and Sports Day. A leader that can combine vision and decisiveness can lay the foundation for a great future, said Schmidt adding, Turkey's neighbors can learn a lesson from him. The statement, in the congressional record, also praised women being granted suffrage in 1934.

This is a little personal for me.

I'm a homosexual, and when I was younger I was (forced) to go to some Baptist churches.

Now let me give a disclaimer, I haven't ever been to a black church, but what I saw in those (probably 95%) white churches was a plethora of hate.

Hate against people like me.  I'll be honest and say that I struggled with my sexuality when I was a young teen, and eventually I did turn away from the church, now I think of myself as agnostic.  Oh course, I was never really conservative, so now that I look back on it, it was an easy break.

Rep. John Lewis (D) on ENDA
http://youtube.com/...

Now this diary is not about ENDA or John Lewis, but it's about the place of the homosexual within the Progressive community.

Within Left and Center-left movements the push has been about breaking down barriers, or structures, or signs (as John Lewis alludes to in this video) within a community or nation.  

We've been trying to break down age-old structures that are inherently racist, or sexist.  Many have tried to break barriers within the economy, to help the working man.  Fewer have tried to break the economic structure itself, viewing it as inherently oppressive.  

What I mean is when pundits anaylyse who got the white vote, who got the latino vote, who got the male vote, who got the female vote.

I understand that there can be trends within different groups, but I just feel as if it's overanalysing and simplyfying the process.

I don't want my vote to be a pure statistic.  Did I vote that way because I'm caucasian, because I'm a male, because I'm a homosexual, or because I'm a progressive?

I probably am making a bigger deal out of this then it really is, it's just that it's seems so... fake.

I think it is a huge mistake for Democrats to be touting fiscal conservatism.  I know that they are trying to say that the Republicans have failed, which they have, but we do not need to be talking like them.

Does it make me a bad Democrat, if I would vote for a Green if he/she was more Progressive?

I'm a Democrat because I believe that the party can be a vehicle for progressive change in this country, not because of cultural reasons, or because my family's democratic.

I was thinking about our three presidential candidates, and how only one of them is truly progressive.

http://www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/...

The Turkish centre-right AKP, and the Turkish far rightwing party MHP have agreed on ending the headscarf ban.

A defining agreement was reached yesterday between the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) on a package of constitutional amendments to remove the headscarf ban in universities.

The left in America is pitiful.  Progressives and liberals cannot say, proudly, I am a leftist!  Or I am on the centre-left.  This is because of a constant demonization by the right-wing and the Republican party.  The sad thing is, is that this is expected.  And yet for decades we haven't fought back properly.

This is my first diary, so I apologize for any spelling mistakes, or anything glaringly wrong about my writing.