so, I saw this at
Scrutiny Hooligans
http://scrutinyhooligans.blogspot.com/

James Sensenbrenner wants to put you in jail if you watch someone use drugs, and you don't report this activity to the authorities within 24 hours. HR 1528 (Defending America's Most Vulnerable: Safe Access to Drug Treatment and Child Protection Act of 2005) is the punitive right's latest attempt to fight the ill-conceived War on Drugs. Increased mandatory sentences and a vast widening of offenses are contained in the bill. Here are a few samples:

• 10 year minimum sentence for anyone over the age of 21 who sells illegal drugs to someone 18-20 years old.
  
• Mandatory Life Sentence for anyone over the age of 21 who sells illegal drugs to someone under 18 years old.
  
• increasing minimum sentences for manufacturing (or trying to manufacture) drugs near a library, daycare, or game arcade
  
• 5 year minimum sentence for someone over age 21 who employs a minor in drug trafficking, and a mandatory life sentence for second offenders
  
• 5 year minimum sentence for using or distributing illegal drugs in the presence of a minor or incompetent person
  
• 10 year minimum sentence if you're the parent or guardian of the minor or incompetent person
  
• "As used in this section, the term `in or near the presence of a person' means within visual sight of such person, within any dwelling, automobile or other vehicle, or boat, in which such person is present, or within 500 feet of such person."
  
• 2 year minimum sentence for selling drug paraphrenalia to a minor

And here's the humdinger:

- "It shall be unlawful for any person who witnesses or learns of a violation of sections 416(b)(2), 417, 418, 419, 420, 424, or 426 to fail to report the offense to law enforcement officials within 24 hours of witnessing or learning of the violation and thereafter provide full assistance in the investigation, apprehension, and prosecution of the person violating paragraph (a).

`(b) Any person who violates subsection (a) of this section shall be sentenced to not less than two years or more than 10 years. If the person who witnesses or learns of the violation is the parent or guardian, or otherwise responsible for the care or supervision of the person under the age of 18 or the incompetent person, such person shall be sentenced to not less than three years or more than 20 years.'."

To wit, if you see your neighbor smoking a joint on his back porch at 11pm while his kids are safely tucked into their beds 25 feet away, then you must contact law enforcement within 24 hours or be subject to criminal prosecution by the U.S. Government and be sentenced to at least 2 years in prison. Your neighbor will be sentenced to a minimum of 10 years in prison.
Tell Congress to oppose this ridiculously savage piece of legislation. Only in a society where Freedom is on the March could people be so assailed by attacks on civil liberties and privacy rights.

Sensenbrenner is setting out to prove once and for all that drugs ruin your life by ruining the lives of those who use drugs. I'm not going to apologize for those who are predatory, criminal, and antisocial drug users, but neither will I stand by and tacitly support this attack on the millions of Americans who do what they like in the privacy of their own homes. This bill is so wrongheaded that it makes me want to go get stoned. Don't look, or you'll have to report me.

and so I had to send this to the man proposing this bill

HR 1528.
How is that in line with the idea that Republicans are the party of KEEPING THE GOVERNMENT OUT OF OUR PRIVATE AFFAIRS?
I mean, 'conservative', that stands for smaller, less intrusive government policies. right?
I want you to know, as a Democrat? I think this is a great idea. Given the fact that
-most Americans see the economy, medical care, education, the fact that the world hates us
as bigger problems than some guy in a park, smoking marijuana.
-people want to be LESS uncomfortable, have FEWER awkward moments in their lives...and you want them to report strangers for activities that many Americans consider less serious that drinking a six-pack
- this is going to evince memories of Soviet-style, Nazi-era 'neighborhoodlevel political supervision'.
---- I think this is a great thing for the Democratic Party. But, I'll make you a deal. If you reply to this email within a week, if you can defend this bill with logic and facts, I'll contribute one percent of my weekly salary to either the RNC or a PAC of your choice. Given that I'm a teacher, it won't be a huge amount of money, but it will rankle, oh yes it will!

Because there are so many lies flying around. If Dems get in in '08? With a prog Congress? The first thing we'll do is look into:

1. The Downing Street Memo
   
2. Where the Iraqi oil went and who got the $
   
3. How did Jeff Gannon get into the press room?
   

(admittedly a side issue, but it'd just feel good to know, wouldn't it?)

4. California's Enron links to Ahnuld and the GOP
   
5. the list could go on and on.
   

Some background here, if you don't live in Cali. Arnold is trying to gut teacher and nurse pay and pensions; he's said publicly that the nurses union hates him because he keeps "kicking their butts" (who was the nurse who took care of him after his heart attack?)
Anyways, his forces are running and running and running a commercials supporting his ideas. it features three supposedly-legit California teachers who think it's just dandy that our job security be handed over to the friends of Enron.
this is to those three teachers.

I see your commercials every day. I never catch your names; I guess if I did, I'd feel compelled to confront you somehow. So, you'll remain the three teachers who want Arnold's plan for 'merit pay'.
I often sit and imagine what your classrooms must be like. They must be cool and well-lit, filled with art and live plants. Your students - you probably call them 'clients' - probably come to school every day well-scrubbed and motivated, fresh from a good night's sleep away from sirens and booming stereos. Your test scores are probably right up there at the top! You probably sit and bridle under your administration's gaze, waiting for a kind word, a smile, a pat on your loyal flank.
You look very young. Did you know that just a few years ago, this state had a merit pay plan? It was quite popular; if your school made its testing goals, everybody, and I mean EVERYBODY, from the secretaries to the custodians, got twenty-five thousand dollars! Wow! And some schools got it; a school in my principal's old district got the money, yep.
The next year, WE hit our numbers.
Wow. We were...gosh, is 'excited' really the right word? I mean, new cars for every one, or down-payments on houses...a luxury cruise for people who'd never left the state...retirement savings! I was going to use the money to shoot a short film.
Yes.
That would've been fun.
Unfortunately, just as a lot of schools announced that they had also succeeded-- the state mysteriously ran out of money.
No twenty-five.
No cars.
No cruise.
No short film.
(and none of us ever DREAMED of the money before it was promised, but to promise it and then take it away?)
What I want you to do for me is this: next time you see Arnold and he gives you that steady eye-contact and that firm handshake in thanks for a job well done, ask him this:
when are we going to make good on the money we owe?
why are California's testing standards among the toughest in the country when we have the most diverse and newly-arrived population of students?
Who is paying for those commercials?

anyways, I hope we can laugh about this someday over a beer somewhere. My e-mail is my e-mail: I'll buy the first round.

and Larry Klayman, founder of 'Judicial Watch' is asking for a 'stay of execution' for Terri ...he is now talking about the possibility of gunplay if someone goes in to hook Terri up again and 'allegations of abuse that have just been uncovered'
(huh?) and my question is WHERE ARE THE GOOD PEOPLE ON THE SIDE OF TERRI, who want her wishes to be carried out?????
Someone needs to be there and say, hey, Terri didn't  want this, she didn't want to be kept alive this way, and the courts are protecting HER RIGHTS!

I'm very inspired by the group of California workers who follow Arnold around, dogging him at every step. Saw this in SF paper:
Room service: Be it a speech, a rally or one of his big-bucks fund- raisers -- every time Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger makes a move, a small army of nurses, teachers and firefighters is there to greet him.

The other day, at a fund-raiser down at the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles, they even sent a commando unit of a dozen demonstrators behind the governor's beefy security lines to let him know there was no escaping their message.

"We all went into the hotel and then split up, meeting back together up on the second floor at a meeting room that the nurses union had booked earlier, '' said surgical nurse Cynthia Archibald of San Pedro.

"They even had a table set up outside with food on it so it would look like there was a seminar going on,'' Archibald said.

Once inside, they waited for their cue, staying in touch with outside organizers by cell phone.

At the right moment -- and with Arnold's security busy watching demonstrators outside -- the commando crew slipped down a service elevator, through the kitchen, into the basement and through another door into the ballroom, where the salads were just about ready.

"We went in acting like invited guests,'' Archibald said. "I sat at the $89,500 table."

Within minutes, security came over and asked what they were doing.

"Waiting to talk to the governor,'' was the reply.

Needless to say, they soon were being ushered out the door and past the real invited guests.

Mission accomplished?

"Think of it,'' said nurses union spokesman Shum Preston, "a dozen teachers, nurses and firefighters being hustled out -- chanting all the way. It's something no donor likes to see.''

The repugs are screwing up. They were doing okay for a while. they were able to hide their greed behind this continuous cry of "9/11, 9/11, the troops, gays, protect the Bible". yeah, right. Now, though, their ridiculous and craven self-interest is so impossible to hide! I mean, the gutting of Social Security isn't going to work, so they go with a bankruptcy law that's going to throw old people into the street? That won't work; it'll poison the well for years. what they started by insulting AARP with that ad cripes! that ad! what were they thinking? Can you picture crotchety old guys looking at that ad and deciding how to vote????? HA!

I took the `sample constituent letter' in support of Privatizing Social Security, as it is found in the GOP handbook, and I had some fun with it. Feel free to distribute this.

Dear John Q. Public,
Thank you for contacting me regarding the Social Security program. I appreciate hearing from you on this issue. I know I misled you on the need for a war on Iraq, and that the `No Child Left Behind' education policies I supported have actually weakened public education, and that the number of abortions has gone up instead of down since GW took office, and that even now, you still can't be sure the last election was fair and legal...but forget about all that. This time, we mean it.
The Social Security program is sound for today's seniors and for those nearing retirement, but it needs to be fixed for our children and grandchildren.
That's right, my children and grandchildren. With the fall of Enron and Worldcom, how am I supposed to pay for my son's years of aimlessly ditching college classes? And as far as earning a scholarship - is that realistic? Put it this way: an army is only as good as its leader. The Republican Party is such an army. Now, look at our leader: what do you think his GPA was?
Social Security is mainly supported by payroll taxes collected from workers that are used to pay benefits to those seniors collecting from Social Security. Although the Social Security Trust Fund is now running surpluses of income over benefits paid to beneficiaries, the Social Security Trustees project that the Trust Funds will be depleted in 2042. That's right...and since the Social Security Trust Funds are composed of U.S. Treasury Bonds, that means the U.S. government itself will be bankrupt. Wow! Never thought of that. Hello, Canada!
The Trustee project that in 2018 Social Security will begin to pay out more in benefits than it takes in revenue. In 1950, there were 16 workers paying into Social Security for every one beneficiary. Today, there are about three, and when younger workers retire, there will only be two. This is proven by the fact that because we have ninety percent fewer people working in farming, we raise ninety percent less food, which explains why ninety percent of the people in the United States are dead of famine. It's obvious.
The impending financial problems of the Social Security program are why the Congress must work together now to strengthen Social Security for our children and grandchildren. The longer we wait, the more difficult and costly it will be to fix the problem and the less chance we have at some of that towering moolah. As a "senior administration official" revealed before Bush's last `State Of The Union' address, most or all of the earnings from new "personal" or privatized accounts will be paid not to the holder of the account, but to the government. The senior official called this a "benefit offset." In other words, if your account does well, we keep a big slice; if you lose everything, it's no skin off our nose. It's like Russia when Communism fell: keep the assets, pass on the debts. Who says Europe is useless?
I believe that investing money in personal accounts and allowing younger workers to decide how their money is invested is an idea that deserves serious consideration. Almost as much consideration as this question: when the president explained how so many African-American males don't live long enough to reach retirement age, why didn't the African-American Republicans ask him why that is, why they continue to die so young? Is it because it's cheaper and easier to ignore the question? Or is it because there aren't many African-American Republicans? I haven't met any- but I don't get out much.
Many workers today have opportunities to invest a portion of their own salary in IRAs and 401(k)s for a greater return than what the Social Security system offers. Personal accounts invested in safe, low-cost, broad-based investment funds will earn higher rates of return than the traditional system and help workers enhance their personal savings and their freedom to retire by creating a nest egg that they can call their own and the government cannot take away and they can pass on to their children. As a matter of fact, most Americans with an ounce of sense are already putting away money for retirement in these accounts. They know that Social Security was designed to avoid the type of abject poverty America saw among the elderly during the Great Depression, or as the Liberals like to call it, `the last time we put all of our eggs in one basket and then went ass-over-tea-kettle'. They know that Social Security wasn't designed or meant to make anybody rich at retirement. Hence the name: `Social Security', not `New Way For Gramps To Buy A Mansion'. It's the foundation of retirement planning, not the rumpus room.
It is important that we debate and begin on serious dialogue today on the future of Social Security and how to strengthen the program by starving it to death. To wait until the program faces an imminent financial crisis would be a disservice to future and near retirees. Doing nothing to fix the Social Security system will cost us, as well as our children and grandchildren an estimated $10.4 trillion, according to the Social Security Trustees. If we get our hands on it now, it'll cost an estimated $2 trillion in transition costs, and most of the possible gains will be eaten-up by transaction fees and market corrections...but you'll feel good about thinking you're doing something, and for this administration, that's what it's all about. Just trust us, the Republican Party, guided by a desire for smaller, less-intrusive government, to...create a new government program and throw your comfortable retirement to the whims of Wall Street. The longer we wait to take action, the more difficult and expensive the changes will be. Rest assured, I intend to be a vocal proponent of the need to reform Social Security in a way that respects the needs of seniors who depend on the Social Security program for their benefits while at the same time shoring up the program for our children and grandchildren. In other words, I won't be like the Republican members of Congress listed below, who have publicly stated they will NOT support the President's plan to privatize Social Security:
Rep. Sherwood Boehlert (R-New York) (CUP?)
Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (R-West Virginia)
Rep. Mike Castle (R-Delaware)
Rep. Geoff Davis (R-Kentucky) (L&P!)
Rep. Jo Ann Emerson (R-Missouri)
Rep. Virgil Goode (R-Virginia) (L&P!)
Rep. Katherine Harris (R-Florida)
Rep. Dennis Rehberg (R-Montana)
Rep. Dave Reichert (R-Washington)
Rep. Rob Simmons (R-Connecticut) (L&P!)
Rep. Bill Young (R-Florida) ()
Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) (L&P) ()
Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R-Rhode Island)
Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine)(L&P!)
Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Oregon)(FIW)
Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pennsylvania)(L&P!)

Further, I won't draw attention to how this same type of plan failed in Britain after it was implemented by the Thatcher administration, or how Peru, of all places, tried it and is now facing a catastrophe as senior citizens are either unable to retire or forced to rely on their children.
You see, it's all coming back to the way things were in the good old days, just as `The Gipper' said it would. He saw that the traditional family was being torn apart and he wanted to do something about it. Now, if Grandma and Grandpa are forced to live with their children, they can offer free daycare service for the grand-babies, thereby negating the need for another government program! The man was a genius!

Member, United States Congress

then let them stand the man up in front of us - not a hand-picked legion of loonies - so we can ask him questions. Pointed, probing, questions, with no Jeff Gannon to cut away to for comfort.
Seriously. If they could convince me that their plan is going to be better than the existing system, heck, I'd vote for it! BUT STAND THE MAN UP.
If they're going to continue this campaign of anonymous whispers, then I can't respect them as upright and honest men and women and they can