techPresident - transparency - Comments

Obama CTO from Silicon Valley

lewisshepherd — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 13:57:01 -0500

If that report is correct and it is a Silicon Valley PhD, one name that's been rumored and would fit is John Seeley Brown. Few in the tech world would say "who?" although many in the federal government - including a lot of IT professionals - wouldn't have a clue who he is. Of course they should learn, whether he gets it or not.

Bottom Up Rules to Remember:

Paul Currier — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 03:57:04 -0500

What Interested me from the news we are getting within the MyBO groups, with regards to both the Chicago and Harvard Meetings on the future of the Obama Movement is that the grassroots were left out as if to marginalize the true strength of the Obama Campaign.

From the trenches, my sense is that 2 million Obamerican Campaign Volunteers are standing still, with our motors ideling. This current standstill condition will not last. No Countywide or "Local Set of MyBO Groups" need Washington or Chicago to tell us what to do, or who to support. We have corruption throughout all levels of government as well. Chicago does not have a monopoly on operating a grease pit. In San Francisco, our past Mayor Willy Brown stated "it's not what you do, it's whether you get caught!". This Attitude and Mindset is what the grassroots will change from Local Governments, thru to our State Governments, and to Our Federal Government. Change will come from the bottom - and the Community Action Networks will not stand still, waiting, motors running.

Local Communities do not need to be told what to do - rather Government needs to listen. Throughout the last election phase - the grassroots were always out in front. I don't expect Government will change unless pushed - hard!

This will happen. But the "Roar" heard around the world on November 4th 2008 is only an opener! We want change. We will work hard to bring change. All politicians who don't get it, may need an education from the grassroots. It's not a New Deal - Its a New ERA!

Katherine should look to the ranks. We seemed to all lay low since November 4. No longer. If not now - when? If not us - who? The grassroots have a deep sense of urgency. It's the Party's and their Leaderships, which takes the People for granted.

I see and hear thousands of Citizens already stirring - restless - ready in a moments notice to fire it up and move. That old axiom always holds true: You can lead, follow, or get out of the way. We have a deep love and respect of Barack Obama. I believe the media and politicians do not yet understand that We Will Change. Applied to politics: You Can Not Change and Remain The Same.

I don't believe the grassroots will wait to begin to recruit and organize 3,260 Counties, and all 50 States.

Paul Currier
Internet Community Organizer: CAN (Community Action Network)
San Francisco, California

http://My.BarackObama.com/page/community/blog/PaulCurrier

Bottom Up Rules to Remember:

Paul Currier — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 03:56:54 -0500

I don't believe the grassroots will wait to begin to recruit and organize 3,260 Counties, and all 50 States.

Paul Currier
Internet Community Organizer: CAN (Community Action Network)
San Francisco, California

http://My.BarackObama.com/page/community/blog/PaulCurrier

comments on "Report from Chicago"

Katherine Hahn — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 00:14:58 -0500

I'm surprised by how closely this report mirrors my own thoughts and questions following Nov 4.

The "goals" you reported were exactly what I've boiled things down to while planning for the "Change is Coming" meeting this weekend.

By all accounts this has been a stellar campaign (the best ever?)and by my own account a life changing 20 months of work. I'm honored and thankful to have been part of it.

So the following may seem sort of sour... but the only kind of organizing I want to be a part of IS bottom-up. That's why I got involved. And it NEEDS to become a dialog, or the fundamental change we have worked for will not, in the end, be realized.

Under "observations" the most interesting point to me was #5.

I was a Colorado county coordinator in Aug 07, when we had only one paid Obama staff member. As things heated up I focused on my house district, and continued as the hub for our grass roots organization through Nov 4, when I was one of two staging location directors.

Between Dec 07, when all of our staff were (wisely) sent to Iowa, and Nov 08, the campaign began to seem(to me)less bottom up. The sense I had between June and Nov 07 was that the field staff believed they were here to organize volunteers. We were already well-organized.

Now, having heard nothing from field staff since Nov 4, my hunch is that either 1.)my corner of CO is now off the radar (understandably), or 2.) at least from the point of view of field staff, both information and directives flow DOWN from Chicago, through them (the field staff), to us (the volunteers), if they think it's important to keep us in the loop.

It doesn't need to be said, but I'm going to say it anyway: we volunteers worked our butts off over a very long period of time for no pay.

To be fair, I've been complicit in this; I make a point of not "bugging" higher-ups unless something truly urgent comes up, and since Nov 4 I've been laying VERY low. I have not sought any contact. But maybe it's time for folks like me to raise our voices.

KHahn

10% response rate?

marclaitin — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 10:30:12 -0500

Micah, this is some good intel and a fascinating addition to what we know about what might happen with OFA2, but i'm not quite sure where you get the estimate that a 10% response rate is a reasonable target for an online survey. If I recall correctly, the obama online survey required a fairly heavy lift (it was four dense pages) and in my experience, albeit none with lists of that size or attentiveness, a 10% participation rate is about the max rate that one can hope to get for a great petition, much less a survey. In my consulting days I would typically advise clients to expect a 1-3% response rate to a survey, which this number is well within.

On a broader note, which you acknowledge, having 500,000 people fill out an online survey about the direction of an organization is simply astounding and is probably close to an order of magnitude larger than any other organization could get for a survey of that level of detail.

Problematizing Technology

starbuck — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 22:40:28 -0500

Hey folks, great blog.

While I appreciate the democratization of the media, I wonder sometimes if we aren't a bit too "in the tank" for the internet. I want to put it out there that the internet exist on a different plane from all of the open mines in the US, Africa and China. The minerals have to come from somewhere, somehow.

See my post on Technology Fetishism for a bit more elaboration.
http://stayingsick.wordpress.com/2008/12/04/technology-fetishism/

Starbuck,

stayingsick.wordpress.com

Bloggers troubled, film at 11!

JonPincus — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 14:27:34 -0500

Excellent post, Peter -- very thought-provoking. A couple of comments:

Image making and message crafting, enduring political arts once the back-room purview of a select few, are now in the public domain.

Indeed. The good news is that broad and democratic involvement in message crafting can lead to messages that have substantially broader and more visceral appeal (Scott Page's excellent The Difference provides the theoretical underpinning for why). However, this is incredibly threatening for many of the people doing the image making and message crafting today: it lessens their power position, opens them up to questions and feedback, and often reveals that others' insights are as good as or better than theirs. It's much more comfortable for many people to shy away from a real commitment to inclusive and democratic participation ... and while there still are benefits in this case, they become incremental, not transformational.

Bloggers - the heart and soul of the online commentariat - continue to be troubled ....

First of all I think it's important to recognize that bloggers are a heart and soul of the online community, but especially with the 28-and-under "Millennial crowd", they're not where the action is -- it's on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc. A clear lesson both from Obama's success and the more recent Join the Impact protests is that youth is a key component of successful online activism ... people who grew up with these tools and use them far more naturally than those of us who came to them later in life. So, unless bloggers are willing to leave their "we are the gods" comfort zone and participate in these other more democratized environments, their influence will continue to be limited -- especially with the social network-oriented Obama movement.

Also, as I discussed in Petitions are sooooo 20th century, to the extent that bloggers rely on old-fashioned tactics, they're likely to continue to lose influence. Two of the most successful blogger-inspired campaigns over the summer were Get FISA Right and 100,000 Strong against Evan Bayh -- both of which had a strong social network component. Since then, however, with rare exceptions like Twitter Vote Report, nobody else is following up on this path. Join the Impact went from an idea to 150,000 people in the streets in ten days with a wiki/social network organizations.

jon -- http://talesfromthe.net/jon

Democratization of [fill in the blank]

Ari Melber — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 12:07:41 -0500

Interesting big picture thoughts, Peter. I found the democratization of commentary mattered more in areas where pundits drop the ball -- like calling out dog whistles or subtle lies -- and less when bloggers and citizens talk like pundits (eg who can really claim that more people debating polls within the margin of error is good for democracy).

Public but buried documents.

johannabartley — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 12:45:08 -0500

Public but buried documents. Very well said. This reminds me of the ex-communist countries. In those times, there was a record for every party member with all their activity, legal or not. Now that most of those countries are democratic, they open the records when the owner tries to get into politics.
___________
Payroll Outsourcing Company

Obama has anti-FISA dissent trapped........

Freedomfighter — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 14:47:51 -0400

Patrick, you bring up some serious points, but Obama has trapped the dissent on his site. Unless they break off and unite with some other group, they are still coming back to Obama for their dissent. Jarvis is absolutely right and echoes what I have said: candidates are not an effective way to push an issue, unless the candidate is the leader of the issue.

Obama also has the ability to "kill" the dissent after the election by wiping the site clean. As President, by doing so, he would have shut down the dissent. This is the only real benefit for having the network open to dissent. You find out who are your loyal followers and who is not. So, keep your eyes open to see where the anti-FISA advocates go.

"Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer."
Sun-tzu
Chinese general & military strategist (~400 BC)

Me thinks the gentelman doth protest too much...

justin@justinhamilton.org — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 09:48:43 -0400

First you reply to all of the things I said by calling me a "thoughtful", "worthy" and "courteous opponent" and challenging me to a debate.

Then, when I suggest you expand your debate offer to your opponent, Michael Skelly, as well as taking questions from the general public, you duck the question and call me rude, malicious and insulting.

Do not duck the question, Congressman.

Will you, or will you not debate your opponent in an open forum with input from the public?

Tom Delay, the man you call "your leader", and a "courageous conservative" was one of the most corrupt members of Congress in the history of our Republic.

You ought to show more care in who you decide to so loyally follow.

To all readers of this

johnculberson — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 02:20:30 -0400

To all readers of this dialogue:

This is it for me.

I will shift this discussion to my federal webpage, but it should be instructive as an example of the immense value and truly transparent nature of the Internet when used as a communications tool between an elected official and a constituent.

This dialogue also illustrates that elected officials like me who are simply trying to do our best and bring honor and dignity back to public service don’t have to sit back and take it anymore when we are called “corrupt” or “unethical,” as has happened for 232 years in this country when all of us had to rely solely on those ancient and rapidly diminishing institutions called newspapers and television and radio.

By the way, all my blogs, posts, Tweeters, Qiks etc will be written by me without pre-clearance from my wonderful staff, even though this makes them very nervous. I handle townhall meetings the same way. You won’t read a post from my staff, unless I have no time or no choice, and then the post will say it was written by staff. I have written all these posts by myself at night well after my wife and daughter have gone to bed, and I have not submitted them to my staff or anyone else for editing, feedback etc.

I look forward to having a civil discourse with you on the Internet one day!

John Culberson

Dear Jason:

I do not see where you have any ground left to support any of the terrible things you have said about me in your public posts here. It is deliberately insulting and false to claim that I follow "errand lists from Tom DeLay and Jack Abramoff," or that I did not listen to my constituents or help property owners on the Katy Freeway, and that I only listened to "construction companies who would benefit from the lucrative federal contracts [and who gave me] close to $43,500 in campaign contributions between 2002 and 2006."

You also said that Micah and techPresident are being “rooked by an ethically challenged member of Congress, who is in a serious re-election fight and is looking to distance himself from an image of Washington corruption he helped nurture."

These are outrageous, idiotic and insultingly false claims. The only contractor I know that has given money to me and is working on the freeway is Williams Brothers Construction, the prime contractor. According to my records, the Pres and CEO, an honorable and good man I admire immensely, hasn't contributed to me since my first campaign in 2000. I had to call him the other day and ask for his help for the first time in years because a self funding millionaire is running against me, and I am not a wealthy person. Like all my donors, the CEO of Williams Brothers supports me because he is a conservative who agrees with me and likes my work. I try not to ask my donors for help until I need it.

I hope they continue to contribute, just as so many other good people do individually or through their PAC at work. My good name and my good judgment cannot be bought.

I would never suggest that your good name and your good judgment is for sale, especially since I don’t know you. Why be so unnecessarily rude, malicious and insulting? Your name calling is exactly why so many people can’t stand politics, which is a terrible disservice to the country because you will discourage good people from running for public office. It would be grim indeed if only millionaires ran for Congress.

I bet a lot of people reading this are thinking they would never do this job because they would never put up with name calling and abuse like this.

I held more Katy Freeway townhall meetings and roundtable meetings than I can count before and during construction. Here is a good truth test for you. Ask former Spring Valley Mayor Louise Richman (now a senior VP at Metro) if I did my best to meet with Spring Valley residents and the City Council before and during construction to try and understand their concerns and help ameliorate their property loss. For example, did I help with sound walls? Even though we may have disagreed on the need for the freeway expansion at the time, how does she feel about it now, and the way I have handled myself? All in all, does she think I have fulfilled my job description as representative?

By the way, Jason, do you live and work inside or outside Loop 610? If you live and work inside, as a practical matter, you would not need to use the Katy Freeway regularly. My family and I all live outside the Loop in west and northwest Houston. We have suffered on that miserable freeway for years and no one had solved it until I was elected and took it on myself to lead the way to fix it. Expanding that horribly congested freeway was like giving west Houston quadruple bypass surgery.

Also ask Louise if I have kept my word as I promised in 2003 and supported funding for every Metro rail line the voters approved (with the obvious exception of Richmond which was not on the ballot - Westpark was). I will not call her first. You call her and tell her why you are calling and then please report her response. I will call her in a week or two if I haven’t seen or heard from you and report what she tells me.

It is also deliberately offensive and false for you to attempt to portray my appropriate support for the Republican Leader of the House who also happened to represent the Congressional district right next door to mine as anything other than support for my leader and my neighbor and my friend and for a fellow courageous conservative.

Disagree agreeably with the substance of my positions on the issues, and do not malign me personally just as I would never malign you personally. We should have a civil and polite discussion just as if we were speaking in person over dinner.

I am a normal, middle class, native Houstonian and fourth generation Texan who loves Texas and Houston and history and science who happens to be a Congressman. Most of all, I am a committed father and husband first and foremost. I am very passionate about restoring the American Republic designed by the Founders, and following the core principles of my hero Thomas Jefferson.

By the way, any constituent has always been able to debate me anytime they want using any one of the many ways I communicate with the people I work for: in a personal meeting; in a neighborhood meeting; in a specialized roundtable meeting; in a townhall meeting in person or by telephone conference call or by internet video/chat or phone; or by Twitter, or by Qik video and chat, or by blog, or by email, or by snail mail or by any one of several new Internet techniques I am working on now.

I have always tried my best to be one of the most accessible, responsive and accountable Congressmen in Washington.

I am truly trying to become a real time representative.

Please keep it polite and civil and non personal and we can help make government more transparent and accountable.

John Culberson

Micah - I will end this here so that Jason (and anyone else) can debate me on my blog on my federal website (more politely I hope).

I also want to tell you, Micah, that I will start posting my weekly calendar of meetings and events and I will put any aspect of my public life on the web that would help people better understand the job of a United States Congressman. Next to being a father and a husband, it is the best job I have ever had, and I am very proud of every aspect of my work on behalf of Texas and Houston.

I am especially proud of adhering to Jeffersonian Republican principles, which will withstand all sunlight and, if we would only follow them faithfully, would truly lead to the "end of history" as Francis Fukuyama once predicted democracy had done.

I welcome suggestions from you and your readers on how I can better shine sunlight on every detail of my work, and on every detail of the Congress' work, especially the black hole that is the House floor. I am very excited about these new communications tools and will continue to do my best to blaze new technological trails as I did with my Mac Lisa and the White Knight Bulletin Board program in 1987.

I did not intend for this to become so long and drawn out but when someone I never met and who doesn't know the slightest thing about me personally calls me corrupt and ethically challenged along with other blatant falsehoods, publicly, I couldn't sit still for it.

After all, I never had the technological capability to fight back until now.

In all my years in public service, on the regular occasions when our local liberal biased newspaper or a local station would print or publish false, misleading or outrageous distortions about me, they would either never print or publish my rebuttal, or refuse to correct the error, or if they did, they would put it on page 8 in tiny print days later where no one would ever see it.

This transparent new medium does indeed cut both ways.

Finally, I am sure you have noticed that Jason, with his obviously detailed "inside knowledge" of Congress as he admits, has proven my statement that the deepest darkest hole in Washington is the House floor.

Note that he never denies that Speaker Pelosi regularly drops huge, expensive and immensely important legislation directly onto the House floor without any committee hearing, with very little notice or time to read it, and with either no or very few and narrow amendments permitted. This is exactly the way the old Soviet Union operated, and it is a disgrace for the U. S. House to be operated this way. Not only does he admit it by his refusal to deny it, he doesn't even defend it. It is indefensible.

Especially when it was done on a monumentally important bill that could affect the survival of our nation - the War Supplemental Appropriations Bill.

So I rest my case on this as well, and I hope we can use the Internet to shame Pelosi et al into restoring democracy and fairness and transparency to the House floor, as she promised in her campaign and on opening day of the Congress.

Thanks.

John Culberson

here comes everybody...

justin@justinhamilton.org — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 09:53:36 -0400

Thank you, again, for your response, Congressman.

I had hoped you would address your close relationship, commitment, and support for Tom DeLay and his agenda. But I fully appreciate that there may be a better venue to continue this discussion.

I think your offer to debate is a great idea. Is this an offer you will also extend to your opponent, Michael Skelly?

You and Skelly ought to have a Lincoln-Douglas style exchange online that exists on both your of your sites, and/or a 3rd party neutral site. It should run from September till the election in November, with each of you responding to two questions a week: one from each other, and one that the public, collectively, would like to ask you.

Since you seem to have an inclination towards video, that could be the medium.

The video questions from the public could be collected and voted on using a platform called "community counts", which both I and the TechPresident folks have used with great success.

I think this would be of great benefit to the voters, and a good opportunity for both of you. I would even venture to guess that my friend Micah, and the folks at Personal Democracy Forum , may even help you organize it.

Are you up for the challenge?

Well done homework but very selective w glaring omissions

johnculberson — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 00:47:53 -0400

Justin

I sincerely appreciate your thoughtful and carefully researched rebuttal. This news story is not the place for a full blown bit by bit response, but since you are clearly a worthy and courteous opponent, I would like to cut and paste this dialogue onto my federal webpage (or campaign depending on how focused you want to get on defeating me in the next election).

I think you should be given the opportunity to make your best case in detail where it is directly relevant on all points. Then we can carry on a debate on my blog - we could start a new trend -I will invite opponents to debate me on my blog - I am very proud of my work and absolutely confident of the wisdom of the Jeffersonian Republican principles I follow.

We will clearly not agree on core issues. You appear to be a committed liberal just as I am a committed conservative.

Remember the core issue at stake here in this column and in what I am doing with technology - our Congress desperately needs sunlight and open full fair debate and amendments on all bills.

You do not and cannot refute that the deepest darkest hole in Washington is the House floor, or that the $165 billion WAR funding bill was written in secret by a handful of people and dropped on the floor with very little time to read it, little debate and no amendments. That is unprecendented and outrageous and I am sorry you are not offended or upset at being shut out of seeing or debating the funding of our troops and the war.

The point about the obscenely expensive Farm Bill is that it was handled essentially the same way - dropped on the floor so fast and with so little time to be thoughtful and careful that they left out 34 pages (I am working from personal memory and thought it was 57). This is an offensive and frankly incompetent way to run the United States Congress, especially since it belongs to you and me and not the House leadership.

The point of Micah Sifry's article is to describe a new way of shining sunlight on this process.

The 215 to 213 vote WAS stolen and the Congressional record was altered - the Speaker controls everything that happens on the floor whether she is present or not and the buck stops w her - this is one of many utterly indefensible outrages where democratic procedures enshrined in our House rules since the early days of the British Parliament have been routinely ignored and violated. Hastert did it rarely, and when I was here with him I fought against it and objected at every opportunity in our Repub Caucus meetings. There is no excuse for the autocratic secretive way Speaker Pelosi runs the House and I intend to use this technology to expose this terrible abuse of our democratic process. Pelosi's House is indeed run like the Supreme Soviet.

Dana Rohrabacher is a very good friend and a fellow Repub rebel so his quote is probably a complaint about how he was treated at some previous time for being a rebel - Ask him if House floor procedures today are fair and open and honest

Ask LaHood the same question - specifically about the procedure for the War supplemental and how reflective it is of Pelosi procedures

Finally I will always oppose casino gambling and I signed that letter because it was against a casino and it was being built in an illegal location since Texas prohibits casino gambling. My colleague and friend Cong. Pete Sessions asked me to sign it, and he is the only one I knew to be behind it, and he was right to circulate the letter. Texas wanted the casino closed.

You cannot rebut the fact that I don't know and have never had any connection with Abramoff.

Also please read my website www.culberson.house.gov and don't rely on a liberal hatchet job website for your facts on Metro. Look under Approps and you will see that I have submitted and won funding repeatedly for Metro's light rail lines that were on the ballot in Nov 2003. I have helped on every line on the ballot just as I promised.

Metro had an election where the voters approved brand new specific rail lines on specific routes. The Katy Freeway has been there since 1969 and it had never been expanded - everyone knew and agreed it was necessary. The people who live along it knew what to expect one day -

I promised in 2000 to get the stalled and unfunded Katy Freeway rebuilt as fast as humanly possible. I held many townhall meetings and almost everyone agreed it was better to build it fast and big with toll dollars. I won approval for it to be the first Interstate highway in the nation funded with local toll dollars, and it will be finished in record time five years and two months.

Even though it is the biggest most expensive freeway in Texas history, and is entirely in my district, and I am on the Appropriations Committee, I have not had to earmark one dime for it while I have been on the committee. I am walking the walk as a fiscal conservative and leading by example where other States have no money to build or expand freeways.

I always keep my word. That's why I have kept my job.

Anyone who Twitters me or responds on live Qik video or my new internet Townhall meetings will always hear from me personally and not my staff. Thanks for the thoughtful debate.

John Culberson

With all due respect, sir, here is my homework...

justin@justinhamilton.org — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 15:54:29 -0400

Mr. Culberson,

As a constituent of yours, I have followed your career in Congress and do feel that I know you and what you stand for. I appreciate your quick reply. But I must take issue with a couple of your points. So in the "Show Me" spirit, here is the "homework" you requested that I submit:

You worked with Tom DeLay to pressure the Bush administration into shutting down an Indian-owned casino that lobbyist Jack Abramoff wanted closed. Subsequently, Abramoff and his Indian gaming clients showered 250 Republican members of Congress with over $4.4 million dollars in campaign contributions.

In fact, If I remember correctly, you defended Tom Delay's corrupt behavior till the bitter end, contributing $5,000 to his legal defense fund and proclaiming him to be a "Stonewall Jackson" who was "willing to take shots on behalf of GOP troops".

Those shots, as you call them, severely undermined our democracy and public confidence in the Republican party. But evidently they did not undermine your confidence, and your commitment to Tom DeLay and what he stood for.

You were, and continue to be an ardent opponent of light rail in Houston. Fighting for years to block federal funding, and working to this day to block light rail's expansion.

Though you say you supported funding for rail only after the passage of ballot initiatives, you did not ask for any ballot initiatives that I'm aware of when you oversaw the condemnation of more than 480 properties through eminent domain to expand the Katy Freeway with federal funds you earmarked.

Sadly those 480 property owners did not have a political action committee with a seat at the table. But the construction companies who would benefit from the lucrative federal contracts did, giving you close to $43,500 in campaign contributions between 2002 and 2006.

As far as your comments on the Democratic Congress, I would submit the following:

Your statement:

"Farm Bill conference report was handled in such shoddy secrecy and dropped so fast on the House floor Pelosi et al did not even notice it was missing 57 pages! The Bill President Bush vetoed was 57 pages shorter than the one passed by the House."

The facts:

First, the House passed the entire bill - it was a printing error where 34 pages weren't printed so the President didn't veto the bill in its entirety - it had nothing to do with the actual bill that was passed. Second, the printing error was made by a person who apparently worked for the Clerk under Hastert who was kept on under Democratic leadership. Third, the House scratched the whole thing, re-voted it and passed it with a veto proof margin of 306-110 including 90 Republican yeas.

Maybe you didn't read Congressional Scholar Norm Ornstein's column who said this on the subject:

"Consider the incident I mentioned in last week's column, wherein Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) introduced a resolution calling for an ethics investigation of the embarrassing enrollment glitch in which a title of the agriculture bill that President Bush vetoed was inadvertently missing, requiring some fancy footwork on the part of the majority to make up for the error. This was clearly a gaffe by an enrolling clerk, something that neither House leaders nor the White House caught when the president issued his veto. There was no reason for anyone to gain some advantage somehow by removing this title; it was simply a major blunder by an employee."

But Boehner not only called for an ethics investigation, he also "admonished" Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and the majority leadership for their actions and asserted that the vote to override the veto might be unconstitutional. Which raises an interesting question: If the vote to override is unconstitutional, what does that make the veto?

This brouhaha was just silly and makes the minority look foolish, petty and petulant. But it is only a small example of the larger point. Another is the Leader Boehner's manipulation to block an independent ethics investigative arm--there was no reason other than to deny the majority a bipartisan victory. The most significant examples are in the motions to recommit with instructions.

Sources:
http://www.aei.org/publications/filter.all,pubID.28091/pub_detail.asp
http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2008/roll353.xml
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5go6xxZuX_0xQECFQHeOzX1SimK8AD90QVFAG0
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0608/10782.html

Your statement:

"Speaker Pelosi even changed a vote Republicans had won, 215 to 213, AFTER the vote total was announced as final by the clerk, to 213 to 213 so we would lose, and then altered House records to cover up the theft."

The facts:

First, Speaker Pelosi doesn't have the power to do that - Rep. McNulty was the person who closed the vote as the person acting as the Speaker in the Chair and he explained it was a mistake. Second, per Republican request, there is a House Committee that was set up to investigate the vote with public hearings which cost the taxpayers half a million dollars. They are apparently still working on their report but the news reports from the hearing make it sound like the Republicans just won’t take “I’m sorry” for an answer.

Third, it didn't change the outcome of the vote and there as was no cover up – I have no idea what you mean by “altered House records” that sounds like a total fabrication. Also makes me wonder where you were in 2003 when the Medicare prescription drug bill was held open for three hours so the GOP could twist arms and get their votes.

Sources:
http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?docid=news-000002838883
http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/gop-stolen-vote-investigators-say-de...

For readers who want some "transparency" in their facts on how the House is run which you described as the “Supreme Soviet” and the new transparency measures democrats brought to Congress, here are a couple of pieces from news sources and Republican Members of the House:

Craig Holman of Public Citizen who said of the Democratic Congress:

"It is not “business as usual” on Capitol Hill. The business of Congress is now surprisingly transparent for the public to scrutinize, criticize and sometimes even praise."

Republican Representative Dana Rohrabacher of California who was described as “one of the most conservative members of the House”:

“I think that I have been treated more fairly, and a number of my Republican colleagues have been treated more fairly, since the Democrats have become the majority than I was treated by my own leadership.”

On fulfilling the promise to restore dignity to the House, Republican Representative Ray LaHood of Illinois:

“They can send their members home crowing about their accomplishments. And they’ve done it in a bipartisan way, which is exactly what they promised to do.”

As your constituent, I hope that you will endeavor in the future to ensure your public statements are more in line with the facts.

Thank you again for your time, and for your comments.