Apologies for the quietness on this blog as of late, but I’ve been extremely busy at work and at home. Hopefully I’ll resume a more consistent posting schedule in 2012.

But some news I heard this morning got me upset enough to actually take action and write my Senators. That news was that President Obama someone I voted for signed into law Senate Bill 1867 (or the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012). The bill is a horrendous assault on all U.S. citizens’ civil liberties. I’m not going to go into detail of how awful it is, but if you’d like to read about it yourself you can do so here.

Below you’ll find my letter to my Senators Sherrod Brown and Rob Portman who both voted yes on the bill. Feel free to copy, modify, edit the text below if you’d like to send it to your Senators and Congressmen — something I strongly suggest you do.

To: Sherrod Brown

First off: I’m not typically the type of person to write a letter to their Senator. It’s not something I’m proud of, and I really should take a more vocal role in standing up for what I believe.

With that out of the way, I wanted to contact you to ask your opinions and reasoning behind supporting Senate Bill 1867 (or the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012).

As you know, SB1867 mandates “all accused Terrorists be indefinitely imprisoned by the military rather than in the civilian court system” and permits even U.S. citizens accused of Terrorism be held by the military rather than the civilian court system. It also renews and widens the power of military detention to extend to those who “substantially support” Terrorism, including U.S. citizens.

And while I hope your heart and your colleagues’ minds are in the right place of keeping our country safe, I think the implications of this bill’s passage are a direct threat to our Constitution and every U.S. citizen’s civil liberties.

For example: if someone from the Occupy Wall Street movement were to call in a bomb threat to a government body, this legislation allows anyone associated with OWS to be imprisoned indefinitely without due process. You would think there would be a media outcry if something like this happened, but as the Country and media landscape become more and more divisive, these sorts of things are easily swept under the rug.

My greater fear is what happens if a President one day gets elected who espouses a McCarthyist bent on Terrorism and begins to exercise his or her powers granted in this bill. Would that mean we’re all in danger, is this a repeat of the 1950s all over again? Can any group be defined a Terrorist group and their members locked up indefinitely? If a group contradicts who the U.S. is at war with, does this mean anyone in the said group can be locked up? We’ve always been at war with Eastasia, right?

My question to you is why did you choose to vote “Yes” on this bill? As a Senator I voted for and someone who is from my home county and city of Lorain I’m from Amherst, but close enough can you please justify your reasoning for supporting this horrendous piece of legislation?

I look forward to and eagerly await your reply.

Sunday morning fuel. (Taken with instagram)

So… someone says there’s Beggin Strips around here… know anything bout that? (Taken with instagram)

At Tyler Davidson waiting for my babe. (Taken with instagram)

Wall Street’s Masters of the Universe realize, deep down, how morally indefensible their position is. They’re not John Galt; they’re not even Steve Jobs. They’re people who got rich by peddling complex financial schemes that, far from delivering clear benefits to the American people, helped push us into a crisis whose aftereffects continue to blight the lives of tens of millions of their fellow citizens.

I know a lot of these Occupy Wall Street protestors have their heads in the sand when it comes to what they’re fighting for, but I hope this is the start of something big.

I hope the Democrats can turn their momentum into something useful and bring the fight to Republicans rather than lying down and accepting whatever scraps the GOP throws their way.

Stay hungry, stay foolish.

On the heels of Barack Obama’s Labor Day speech, Matt Taibbi writes why he just doesn’t believe the guy anymore:

I remember following Obama on the campaign trail and hearing all sorts of promises before union-heavy crowds. He said he would raise the minimum wage every year; he said he would fight free-trade agreements. He also talked about repealing the Bush tax cuts and ending tax breaks for companies that move jobs overseas.

It’s not just that he hasn’t done those things. The more important thing is that the people he’s surrounded himself with are not labor people, but stooges from Wall Street. Barack Obama has as his chief of staff a former top-ranking executive from one of the most grossly corrupt mega-companies on earth, JP Morgan Chase. He sees Bill Daley in his own office every day, yet when it comes time to talk abut labor issues, he has to go out and make selected visits twice a year or whatever to the Richard Trumkas of the world.

Listening to Obama talk about jobs and shared prosperity yesterday reminded me that we are back in campaign mode and Barack Obama has started doing again what he does best – play the part of a progressive. He’s good at it. It sounds like he has a natural affinity for union workers and ordinary people when he makes these speeches. But his policies are crafted by representatives of corporate/financial America, who happen to entirely make up his inner circle.

Since I live in Ohio and because it plays such a key state to winning the presidency, I’m almost obligated as a sane person to vote for Obama. Letting those nut jobs in the GOP race win is unthinkable and very scary. But if I were in a left-leaning state that was guaranteed to swing toward Obama, I would never vote for this guy again. He broke my heart.