Patriot Watch has made a list of The Freedom Five:

Please check out our new page devoted to raising money for those candidates that have supported our individual freedoms and rights since 9-11 or oppose those candidates that have not done the right thing by supporting legislation and other measures that erode our civil liberties and the Constitution.

Lawyer swat teams will be on site at Colorado polling places and elsewhere November 2 to help those turned away from the polls. If you live in a swing state, check out Colorado's massive effort and compare it with what's going on in your state. Make sure your state is up to snuff:

Democrats are deploying "armies of lawyers," while Republicans have recruited volunteer lawyers in the "hundreds" to man polling places throughout Colorado. The battalions of barristers are poised to cry foul if poll workers break the state's ever-developing election policies, as the parties interpret them....The party lawyers are expected to stand at polling places and gather contact information for voters who, for whatever reason, have problems casting ballots.

....Meantime, a nonpartisan election watchdog group is organizing a team of lawyers at a call center and in as many as 16 counties on Election Day. Fair Vote Colorado will have prewritten pleadings to be filed in court immediately so Coloradans turned away on Election Day can seek remedies before the polls close, said group spokesman Mark Eddy.

Why all the fuss? Colorado is a key swing state. And it has Amendment 36 on the ballot which, if it passes, will divide Colorado's 9 electoral votes according to the popular vote. No more winner takes all. Had this been the rule in 2000, Al Gore would have been President.

The New York Times endorses John Kerry for President. This is no tepid endorsement. It praises Kerry and exhaustively lists the reasons Bush has been an utter failure as our President. In fact, it's brutal. Let's just hope it proves lethal to his candidacy:

There is no denying that this race is mainly about Mr. Bush's disastrous tenure. Nearly four years ago, after the Supreme Court awarded him the presidency, Mr. Bush came into office amid popular expectation that he would acknowledge his lack of a mandate by sticking close to the center. Instead, he turned the government over to the radical right.

Mr. Bush installed John Ashcroft, a favorite of the far right with a history of insensitivity to civil liberties, as attorney general. He sent the Senate one ideological, activist judicial nominee after another. He moved quickly to implement a far-reaching anti-choice agenda including censorship of government Web sites and a clampdown on embryonic stem cell research. He threw the government's weight against efforts by the University of Michigan to give minority students an edge in admission, as it did for students from rural areas or the offspring of alumni.

Bump: This is in the Sunday Times, so we're moving it up to Sunday's posts.

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If this doesn't make you wake up and smell the coffee, I don't know what will. The thought that Bush is ruling our government by his own personal messianic brand of religious zealotry makes me absolutely ill. If John Kerry does not win this election, we are all in trouble.

Tristero quotes Ron Suskind's astonishing New York Times Magazine article about Bush and his messianic faith. His belief that G-d is speaking through him and guiding him in his Presidency. His decision-making that comes from his instincts or gut, as he would put it, rather than from facts. Tristero has the quotes from Suskind on Bush's recent meeting with top long-term Republican donors called the RNC Regents in which he set out his beliefs and his plans for the next four years. The quotes are chilling. In addition to the critical sections quoted by Tristero, you must read all of Suskinds' article. Here are some more choice portions:

First, how some in the Republican party are coming to view Bush:

Karl Rove is aiming for victory by the skin of his teeth. When Bush came into office in 2000, the Washington Post reports, he set out an election plan for 2004 that included Republicans winning over minorities, and all those it failed to sway in 2000. But it didn't turn out that way.

...He laid out what amounted to his early game plan for reelecting President Bush in 2004: improving the party's performance among blacks, Hispanics, Catholics, union households and "wired workers" of the technology world. Bush won about 8 percent of the African American vote in 2000, and Rove insisted that number needed to be pushed higher.

Back then, Rove did not strive simply to produce a convincing victory but to create a permanent Republican majority. Now, a little more than two weeks before the election, the Bush-Cheney campaign would be happy to eke out the barest, skin-of-the-teeth GOP majority, and aims to cobble it together by turning out every last evangelical Christian, gun owner, rancher and home schooler -- reliable Republicans all. It looks like the opposite of Rove's original dream.

This election well may be Karl Rove's nightmare:

On the campaign trail today....

Bush sought to counter suggestions that there will be a military draft if he's re-elected, but the president almost blew his line.

He said that, after a debate with Kerry, "I made it very plain. We will not have an all-volunteer army." The crowd fell silent. "WE WILL have an all-volunteer army," Bush said, quickly catching himself. "Let me restate that. We will not have a draft."

[Link via Atrios.]

by TChris

The executive director of the Log Cabin Republicans -- the largest organization dedicated to the interests of gay and lesbian Republicans -- has asked President Bush to "stop attacking gay families on the campaign trail." He also asked Republicans to stop "feigning outrage" over Senator Kerry's reference to Dick Cheney's lesbian daughter during the last presidential debate.

"The reality is the type of outrage that is being expressed by some Republicans should be expressed at themselves. They've decided to use gay families as wedge issues across America in swing states -- that is truly outrageous," he told CNN's "American Morning."

[Patrick] Guerriero said members of his group are "insulted by a campaign that has attempted to amend the Constitution, and in too many states we've seen discriminatory amendments that would deny hospital visitation and domestic partnership legislation." He also pointed to fliers that the Republican National Committee sent to voters in Arkansas and Virginia, which say "banned" over a picture of the Bible and "allowed" over a picture of a man apparently proposing marriage to another man.

Karl Rove's decision to bash gay and lesbian Americans in order to drum up votes for Bush in swing states is, according to Guerriero, a significant but unreported story in this election. Perhaps this election will convince the Log Cabin Republicans that they'd be better served by supporting a party that embraces diversity.

John Kerry said today that Bush's policies in Iraq could lead to a return of the draft if Bush is re-elected.

Kerry told The Des Moines Register, "With George Bush, the plan for Iraq is more of the same and the great potential of a draft." The interview was published Friday as Kerry was leaving for Wisconsin and a speech on the economy.

GW's denials don't mean much because his credibility is so low. Remember his father's electioneering statment made during his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, "No New Taxes, Read my Lips"?

The Congress will push me to raise taxes and I'll say no. And they'll push, and I'll say no, and they'll push again. And I'll say to them: 'Read my lips -- No. New. Taxes.'"

After Bush won the election, of course he raised taxes. He always knew he was going to have to do it -- it was inevitable. In fact, Bush signed the largest tax increase in history. Nevertheless, millions of Republican voters felt they had been doublecrossed. But he had only told them what he knew they wanted to hear. He assumed they knew that. And it was that duplicity which ultimately cost him the re-election.

Don't trust GW's promises on the draft. There will be no holding him accountable. More here.

Stan Matsunaka has closed on Marilyn Musgrave in Colorado and is now within reach. His polls show him within 5, and her internals show him down by only four points. Her unfavorables are at 52, and her re-elect is now at 45. Stan can win this, but he needs cash. The RCCC is pumping money in, and he needs to get the word out. Check out Adam Mordecai’s post on Change for America.

Give to Stan today.

Update: Who is Marilyn Musgrave and why is she so dangerous? Check out today's news, headlined, "Musgrave Asks For Help Against 'Radical Homosexual Agenda'"

This disturbing news is in Friday's New York Times:

Mr. Nader will be on the ballots in more than 30 states. Polls show that he could influence the outcomes in nine by drawing support from Mr. Kerry. They are Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico and Wisconsin.

Moreover, six - Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Mexico and Wisconsin - were among the top 20 where Mr. Nader drew his strongest support in 2000. If the vote for Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry is as evenly divided as the polls suggest, the electoral votes in any one of those states could determine who becomes president.

Hey, Mr. Nader, please, get off of our cloud. Don't let your ego cost the rest of us a sane four years of governance.

In a 430 page opinion, the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court kicked Ralph Nader off the ballot. Here's why:

"In conclusion the President Judge must state that he has served longer on the Commonwealth Court than any other Judge in the Court's history and as a result thereof has reviewed more nomination petitions than any other Judge in the Court's history. I am compelled to emphasize that this signature gathering process was the most deceitful and fraudulent exercise ever perpetrated upon this Court. The conduct of the Candidates, through their representatives (not their attorneys), shocks the conscience of the Court. In reviewing signatures, it became apparent that in addition to signing names such as "Mickey Mouse", "Fred Flintstone", "John Kerry", and the ubiquitous "Ralph Nader", there were thousands of names that were created at random and then randomly assigned either existent or non-existent addresses by the circulators.

A detailed line-by-line breakdown of the pages and lines reviewed and the reasons for disqualification has been prepared by each judge and follows [on the remaining 430 pages of the opinion] ....The secretary of the Commonweath is directed not to certify the names of Ralph Nader and Peter Miguel Camejo as candidates for President and Vice-President of the United States in the November 2, 2004 general election."

[hat tip to Peter G.]

Update: Dave's Salon article on the Lynne/Mary Cheney issue just went live here. He's right on the money. He begins:

First, let's dispense with the comic aspects of the parental indignation:

Mary Cheney has been happily out of the closet for at least a decade, so John Kerry was hardly dragging her out against her will. She spent the late '90s working as a veritable professional lesbian, as gay and lesbian corporate relations manager for Coors Brewing Co. Dick Cheney himself has been using her sexuality on the campaign trail. Click here to watch a Human Rights Campaign ad with him on the stump on Aug. 24, 2004: "Lynne and I have a gay daughter ... " The Bush-Cheney administration has shamelessly used homosexuality as a wedge issue, never hesitating to play the sodomite card when it serves their political ends. John Edwards brought up Mary Cheney in response to a similar gay-rights question just eight days earlier in the veep debate. Dick Cheney responded by thanking him for his kind remarks.

Go read the rest.

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Dave Cullen of Conclusive Evidence, who live-blogged the debate with us Wednesday night, speaks out on his blog about Lynne Cheney's and the mainstream media's castigation of John Kerry for mentioning Mary Cheney's sexual orientation during the debate.