House to convene at 4 P.M.

The House will convene at 4 P.M. on Thursday to approve the extension to the Patriot Act.

More as it becomes available.

Patriot Act Extended

Story from CNN Politics:


Senators voted on Wednesday night to extend some expiring and contentious parts of the Patriot Act for six months after leaders announced minutes earlier that they had reached a bipartisan agreement.

Last week, the House voted 251-174 to renew the 16 provisions after striking a compromise that altered some of them. The provisions were set to expire at year's end if not renewed.

Controversial measures include those allowing the FBI -- with a court order -- to obtain secret warrants for business, library, medical and other records, and to get a wiretap on every phone a suspect uses.

The House approved a bill that would have extended most of them permanently, but a filibuster after the bill reached the Senate stopped the measure from moving forward.

Republican leaders tried to break the filibuster Friday, but could muster only 52 of the necessary 60 votes. Four Republicans crossed party lines to oppose the extension.

That vote came on the same day that The New York Times reported that President Bush authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on U.S. residents, without warrants.

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-New York, cited the newspaper report as the reason he opposed permanently renewing the Patriot Act provisions, and Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pennsylvania, called the newspaper's revelation "devastating" to the renewal effort.

More as it becomes available.

New Shorter URL

Courtesy of ShortURL.com, I now have a shorter web address to shorten the
typing:

http://leftwing.2freedom.com

Feel free to leave a comment concerning this URL, whether you like it or not, etc.

The blogger of Neal 2028

For those of you who don't know, the author of Neal 2028, Neal Osborne, is
quite excited about the idea that the CensureBush.org coalition is holding
over 60 town hall forums on January 7th. And for those of you who don't
know, January 7, 2006 happens to be his 18th birthday. So, wish him a
happy birthday when you get a chance and keep blogging!

--
Justin Fleenor
jf

John Conyers' legislation to censure Bush and Cheney

I received this in an email today and I thought I should share it with everyone who doesn't have access to the Democrats.com email list.

CensureBush.org Campaign Launched in Response to New House Legislation

The AfterDowningStreet.org coalition, an alliance of over 100 grassroots organizations, has launched a new campaign called CensureBush.org in order to support new legislation introduced by Congressman John Conyers that would censure President Bush and Vice President Cheney and create a select committee to investigate the Administration's possible crimes and make recommendations regarding grounds for impeachment.

H.Res.635 would create a select committee - modeled after Sam Ervin's Watergate committee - to investigate the Administration's intent to go to war before congressional authorization, manipulation of pre-war intelligence, encouraging and countenancing torture, and retaliating against critics, and to make recommendations regarding grounds for possible impeachment.

H.Res.636 and H.Res.637 would censure, respectively, Bush and Cheney for failing to respond to requests for information concerning allegations that they and others in the Administration misled Congress and the American people regarding the decision to go to war in Iraq, misstated and manipulated intelligence information regarding the justification for the war, countenanced torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of persons in Iraq, and permitted inappropriate retaliation against critics of the Administration, for failing to adequately account for certain misstatements they made regarding the war, and – in the case of President Bush – for failing to comply with Executive Order 12958.

These two efforts are complementary - H.Res.635 seeks accountability for the Bush administration's monumental crimes, while H.Res.636 and H.Res.637 seek accountability for their coverups.

Ask your Congress Member to support these efforts!http://capwiz.com/pdamerica/issues/alert/?alertid=8329176

More information:http://www.censurebush.org/

-------------
The House Judiciary Committee Democratic staff has just released an extensive report titled "The Constitution in Crisis: The Downing Street Minutes and Deception, Manipulation, Torture, Retribution, and Cover-ups in the Iraq War." It is available at http://www.censurebush.org/





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The After Downing Street / Censure Bush Coalition has organized over 60 town hall forums around the country on January 7th and plans to make these new developments in Congress a focus of many of those events:http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/event

New Features to Virginia Left Wing

I now have better accessibility for my blog and all new features

• Site Navigation (Instead of scrolling for a while, you can click "Skip Navigation" in the header and choose the section you wish to view)
• Technorati search
• Google Web Search and "Virginia Left Wing" blog search
• Site Feeds brought to you by Feedburner
• Comments now open inline instead of in a popup box for those with popup blockers who wish to view comments

And coming later today...

• Brand-new ads that you'll want to see
• Features that you'll have to wait and see

Jackie Stump Leaving

Delegate Jackie Stump, a 15-year veteran of the House of Delegates,
representing Buchanan County, and parts of Russell and Tazewell
Counties, is resigning his seat for health reasons.

More from Neal 2028's Post

He apparently got it from Brian Patton

The Daily Press has also published a story on this breaking news story in the past 4 hours.

Link to story

Blogshares

Ok, here's a little side note to my Blogshares account.

Someone, I'm not sure who the guy is, has decided to do a HTO, or
Hostile Takeover, on Virginia Left Wing blog stock shares. Now,
contrary to what some people think, I am not opposed to this. I see it
as a growing opportunity to build my blog's stock shares in the major
market.

Thanks to those who are trading my blog shares and good luck in the future.

Another day, another test for the Democrats

So, I wonder if you readers have heard about the conflict between the
Democratic Party and Lamar Advertising Co. Apparently, the party wants
to put up billboards that say, "Shame on you, Jean Schmidt..." to make a
public statement about the attack she made on Democrat John Murtha last
week. Point your browser to http://www.democrats.org/lamar for more
infomation.