The bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act that has been presented to the Senate is vastly unpopular with an overwhelming majority of the American People. It threatens the health and welfare of Elderly,Poor,and Middle Class by unfair pricing and vast cuts to Medicaid. I believe that the Senate should kill this bill and instead a Bipartisan Committee should be formed from both the House and Senate and also include input by the President to help create a bill that will help to address the problems of the Affordable Care Act and make necessary changes; perhaps even to look at a transition to a single payer program.

Installation of cell tower is dangerous and will have an impact on home values.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell decided to bring a new dirty energy bill to the Senate floor when Congress gets back from their July 4 vacation. McConnell made a rare move to skip committee hearings for a bill that hasn't even been introduced yet. This new bill would: — speed up approval of exports of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) abroad, increasing fracking here at home; — give FERC (an agency with absolutely no accountability to the people) even more authority over decisions about pipelines for natural gas; — authorize hundreds of millions of dollars for research into recovering methane hydrates, a dangerous new source of methane trapped under the ocean floor; — AND it has no mention of solar or wind in the "renewables" section! This bill is the fossil fuel industry's dream come true — and it would be a disaster for our planet. We can't let Trump and Senate Republicans play dirty tricks with our future. They need 60 votes to pass it in the Senate and oil and gas industry lobbyists are pushing hard to make that happen. But we won't give up without a fight! One thing is for certain — it's going to take senators hearing from the people to get them to do the right thing. Our planet is out of time — we MUST move America off fossil fuels immediately.

When the Supreme Court issued its ruling last week, allowing Trump's Muslim Ban to go into effect, it included an exemption for individuals with "bona fide" ties to U.S. persons or entities, such as having family members here. But this morning, the State Department—headed by Trump appointee Rex Tillerson—issued guidelines that redefine family in the narrowest and cruelest way possible, limiting the exceptions to just immediate family members and sons- and daughters-in-law. This means that persons with other ties to the U.S.—grandparents, aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews—are banned due to the racist and anti-Muslim executive orders. This narrow re-definition of family is unacceptable and is clearly intended to break up Muslim and refugee families. We call on elected officials to demand that the State Department reverse these guidelines immediately and let all of our families in. According to Tillerson's State Department: grandparents, grandchildren, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, cousins, brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law, fiancees, and any other relatives do not fit the definition of family members. Yes, you read that right—the Trump administration doesn't think grandmas and grandpas count as family members, and is banning them from the country based on nothing other than where they come from. The executive orders and these State Department guidelines are clearly built on a foundation of anti-Muslim, anti-Arab, and anti-refugee hate. And it's clear that the administration is still bent on implementing as much of its Muslim Ban as it can get away with. It's up to us to stop them from getting away with it. Tell your elected officials to let Tillerson and the State Department know that it's not up to them to tell us what our families look like—and to call on them to reverse their bizarre and inhumane guidelines.

DJ JewBoy was a young, talented, and some could say provocative mash-up artist, of the chosen faith. In 2006, he first graced us with his talents of mashing music and creating tracks so good, some could call them holy. Such hits as "Do it Big", "I'd Rather Get Some Rosh" and Pancakes More Like Blandcakes" have all gathered a following from fans around the world.  Sadly, since 2010, DJ JewBoy has not released any new albums.

SUCCESS! On Friday, June 30, Governor Kasich announced that he had vetoed the provisiions in the state budget to limit or effectively end the expansion of Medicaid to low-income adults that would have caused 500,000 or more Ohioans to lose healthcare coverage. But the legislature says it has the votes to override the Governor's veto. Now, can you help by signing our petition to tell state lawmakers to let Governor Kasich's veto stand? https://petitions.moveon.org/sign/tell-lawmakers-to-protect

Today's tweets from Trump are an embaressment world wide. The only way he will stop is if we ignore them.

He no longer represents the views of the state of Colorado constituents.

UPDATE: Nury's request for a stay has been DENIED. She was scheduled to leave her 4 children on Thursday, July 20th. This would have meant she could not enter the US for 10 years. Instead, Nury has chosen to take sanctuary in a church in New Haven. We're contininuing to support the children through a GoFundMe page, as Nury Chavarria is now considered a fugitive and cannot financially support her children. But, she can hug them. She's a mom. Nury is not a criminal- she's a law abiding mother whose children need her. She fled the violence of Guatemala in 1993 seeking asylum in the US. She is a working mother who has complied with ICE requests for 24 years. There is NO COMPELLING reason to deport a young mother with dependent US children. Help us stop this inhumane treatment of our neighbors. This petition is sponsored by CT Shoreline Indivisible.

Three prominent CNN journalists resigned on June 26 after CNN was forced to retract and apologize for a story linking a Trump ally to a Russian investment fund under congressional investigation. The CNN story had been based on a single anonymous source. An internal investigation by CNN management found that some standard editorial processes were not followed when the article was published. [1] Buzzfeed reported that CNN has now imposed strict new publishing restrictions for online articles involving Russia. [2] But as Glenn Greenwald noted at The Intercept, the problem is not limited to CNN: "CNN is hardly alone when it comes to embarrassing retractions regarding Russia. Over and over, major U.S. media outlets have published claims about the Russia Threat that turned out to be completely false - always in the direction of exaggerating the threat and/or inventing incriminating links between Moscow and the Trump circle. In virtually all cases, those stories involved evidence-free assertions from anonymous sources that these media outlets uncritically treated as fact, only for it to be revealed that they were entirely false. Several of the most humiliating of these episodes have come from the Washington Post... In sum, anything is fair game when it comes to circulating accusations about official U.S. adversaries, no matter how baseless, and Russia currently occupies that role. (More generally: The less standing and power one has in official Washington, the more acceptable it is in U.S. media circles to publish false claims about them, as this [3] recent, shockingly falsehood-ridden New York Times article about RT host Lee Camp illustrates; it, too, now contains multiple corrections.)" [4] Urge the Washington Post and the New York Times to review the standards of their Russia coverage by signing our petition. References: 1. http://money.cnn.com/2017/06/26/media/cnn-announcement-retracted-article/index.html 2. https://www.buzzfeed.com/passantino/cnn-russia-coverage-publishing-restrictions 3. http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/06/lee-camp-write-propaganda-ny-times-demonstrated-article.html 4. https://theintercept.com/2017/06/27/cnn-journalists-resign-latest-example-of-media-recklessness-on-the-russia-threat/

Right now, House Republicans are preparing to vote on two pieces of legislation that would expand the reach of Donald Trump’s mass-deportation agenda and allow Trump’s Deportation Force to destroy the lives of millions of immigrant families across the country. A bill known as H.R. 3003 would force local governments to carry out Trump’s inhumane deportation policies by threatening to take away funding for local law enforcement agencies, while a bill known as H.R. 3004 would increase the number of families that would be targeted for exile under Trump. Both of these bills are nothing more than attempts by Republicans to supercharge Trump’s cruel and costly deportation machine while doing nothing to fix our nation’s broken immigration system. Democrats must vote NO on both H.R. 3003 and H.R. 3004 if they are serious about protecting community safety and keeping hard-working immigrant families safe from Trump’s mass deportation agenda. They must stand on the right side of history and against Trump’s inhumane deportation force -- or be held accountable! With a dozen crises happening at once, we cannot let House Democrats cave to the already out-of-control Trump Administration by providing it with more unchecked authority to profile, apprehend, detain and deport our immigrant friends and neighbors at great cost to all of our communities.

In recent years, the NYPD has increasingly relied on “Glomar responses”—the CIA tactic of neither confirming nor denying information’s existence—when questioned about its unlawful surveillance of the Muslim community and other activists. Talib Abdur-Rashid and Samir Hashmi have been fighting the NYPD’s responses in a case that is now going to New York’s highest court, the Court of Appeals. Recently published comments about the case by the NYPD Deputy Commissioner for Legal Matters led to a strong letter from Talib and Samir’s lawyer to Mayor de Blasio calling on him to retract the comments and to “follow through on your promises to support FOIL’s policy of open government.” http://otmlaw.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/OTMLAW-Ltr-to-Mayor-de-Blasio-Retraction-of-Statement-by-NYPD-Deputy-C....pdf. Talib and Samir are not alone. The NYPD threatens Glomar responses to slam the door shut in the faces of countless New Yorkers, making it harder than ever to hold NYPD officials accountable. Activists, journalists, and civil libertarians all depend daily on FOIL to investigate police abuses and to act as citizen watchdogs. The NYPD’s efforts are a flagrant attempt to place itself above our laws and to put the police beyond the reach of the people. Winning in court isn’t the only way to stop Glomar abuse. As a public advocate and candidate, Mayor de Blasio committed to reform the NYPD’s long pattern of surveillance abuses, and we ask him to keep his word. Mayor de Blasio is ultimately responsible for overseeing the legal arguments put forth by the NYPD and the New York City Law Department, and we will treat his silence on Glomar responses as a tacit endorsement of the tactic. With a single phone call, Mayor de Blasio could order the NYPD to comply with its FOIL obligations and cease its obstructionist tactics. We implore Mayor de Blasio to make that call. Frequently Asked Questions What is FOIL? The Freedom of Information Law (“FOIL”) empowers the public to request government documents, providing a vital oversight tool for every aspect of government, and casting sunlight into the darkest corners of our bureaucracy. FOIL is used by journalists, civil rights advocates, and everyday New Yorkers to empower citizen watchdogs. Modeled on the federal Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”), the laws were part of a post-Watergate movement to secure greater transparency and accountability. Are there any limitations on FOIL requests? State lawmakers specified several narrow reasons why a FOIL request might be rejected. For example, an agency can withhold documents which would impede a police investigation or compromise confidential employee records. What is a Glomar response? A Glomar response is the familiar phrase we’ve heard in countless spy movies: “we can neither confirm nor deny the existence of the requested information.” In practice, Glomar responses are highly restricted and can only be used by the CIA and other intelligence agencies in the most sensitive cases. Glomar is utterly inconsistent with the FOIL obligations of a municipal police force like the NYPD, which have a much narrower mission and much more limited legal authorities to engage in surveillance and national security investigations. How has the NYPD utilized the Glomar response? Even as the CIA and other intelligence agencies started using Glomar responses in the 1970s, the NYPD never followed suit. For decades, as the NYPD fiercely fought off FOIL requests with every tool available, they never once used Glomar, tacitly acknowledging that New York law didn’t give them that option. In recent years, that changed, as the NYPD made Glomar responses for the first time in FOIL requests relating to information on Imam Abdur-Rashid and Samir Hashmi The NYPD has sought to stonewall these two Muslims because it seems they wanted to avoid embarrassment. The two men are good law-abiding citizens and should not be subjected to surveillance in the first place. The Glomar response does not even give the Court the ability to ascertain the validity of the NYPD’s objection by stating “we cannot confirm or deny” the existence of documents. It does not give the requester the ability to challenge the NYPD when there is an abuse of power. This is in contradiction of the Freedom of Information Law, which requires state and city agencies to search and certify if documents exist or not. The Glomar theory defeats the existence of FOIL and “Open Government” under the New York Constitution, denies people’s procedural rights and prevents the courts from performing their judicial tasks.