Public Campaign asks us to contact our U.S. Senators concerning S.886-- Presidential Records Act Amendments of 2007. Senator Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) is blocking a bill that would return the presidential records, including possibly all previous presidents, their family members and vice presidents, to the American people. Take action now to help bring the bill to the floor for a vote. Thank you. In 2001, President Bush issued an Executive Order that gives current and previous presidents the power to withhold their documents and records INDEFINITELY. What's more, the order extends this extraordinary authority to presidential family members, and even vice presidents. Bush's order was a direct attack on the Presidential Records Act of 1978, a law passed in the wake of Watergate that makes presidential records the property of the American people. The president should not be allowed to permitted to flout open-government laws and lock away his records with a stroke of a pen.
But this is not just about Bush. It's about the records of ALL presidents.
Right now the Presidential Records Act Amendments of 2007, a bipartisan bill to undo the Bush order, is close to becoming a law, but it is being blocked by Senator Jeff Sessions.
Take Action NOW: Contact your senators and ask how they can allow a colleague to block this important bill.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Tell your U.S. Senators to unblock vote of Presidential Records Act Amendments of 2007
Monday, February 18, 2008
Will the Democratic Party's superdelegates vote the will of the people?
The role of the "superdelegate" in the presidential nomination process of the Democratic Party is under scrutiny, as the remaining two candidates-- Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama-- are in a tight race in this primary election season. Superdelegates are party public officials and party activists that individually vote for their nominee any time up to the party convention when the nominee is officially made.
FairVote's blog takes the position that the will of the people who vote in all of the primaries and caucuses that result in "delegates" should dictate the will of the party's "superdelegates". FairVote, along with other democracy-leaning organizations, have purchased an advertisement to appear this week in USA Today (it's in pdf format-- free Adobe Reader required).
