Right now at Firedoglake, we have a chat with Josh Hoyt, a constituent of Rahm Emnanuel's, who heads up the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights.

We're raising money to do some pressure advertising in Rahm's district through our Blue America PAC, working in tandem with local activists.

We could use your help!

Many people in the DailyKos community will vaguely remember when a bunch of grass roots activists got together to buy a copy of Crashing the Gate for every Democrat in Congress last Spring.  That effort took root and took off as part of the Roots Project.  Now, we're working to build a kind of progressive MySpace or Facebook to provide the infrastructure for so much more local action and organizing, allowing simultaneous networking and best practice sharing with like minded groups anywhere in the country.  Sound Interesting?  Read on, because you can help make it happen.

Many of you may know we are close to completion of our Roots Project beta site.  This Drupal site will provide a social networking and organizing infrastructure for progressives all over the country.  Whether people want to create groups based on their local communities, based on issues of interest or even based on lifestyle interests and hobbies, our site will provide the infrastructure for common people to gather together for the common good. 

The Roots Project was begun by http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/, www.Firedoglake.com and www.CrooksandLiars.com and is growing.  Updates are posted by me at Firedoglake.

This week we had an influx of volunteers, and I held a conference call to orient them to the Project, its purpose, goals, organization and history.  Below the fold, I'm posting my notes (typos intact!) from that conference call, as originally sent afterward to our Roots Project members.

To join the Roots Project send me an email at stateproject at gmail dot com.  Include your home state in your subject line, with no other text.  Please include in the body of your email your kos user name and how you learned of the Roots Project.

Answer, the broad, often disengaged American public.

What then do we want them to know?

Republicanism is bad and has betrayed their interests.

First rule of rhetoric:  it's easier to go wide in your rhetorical indictment, then whittle it down with examples, rather than start with the particular and try to build it up.  That's why starting the conversation about "Delay," or about "K Street," or whatever else is short of the whole Republican/conservative movement, represents a lost opportunity.  The generally disengaged American public needs to hear the bottom line first.  Hence:

"The Republican Party is a criminal enterprise that has betrayed the American people and the well intentioned people who voted for it.  It's time to restore sanity and fairness to Washington, to clean up the disastrous mess Republicans have made at home and abroad."

More on the flip.

He was electric.  I loved watching him.

But his life was marred by allegations of violence against women.

Fans don't want to talk about that.  They want to wait to talk about that.  But it should be talked about.  

Right fucking now.  

Why?

(More on the Flip)

The following article, "Ton Ten Reasons People Resist Change," has been very popular among my clients and newsletter subscribers, and has been reprinted in publications around the country.  

I thought it would be useful to local grassroots activists who  seek to inflitrate local and state parties, in order to build a vibrant, aggressive progressive movement, as outlined in CtG.

On the flip, an analysis of reason for resistance to change with tips on how to overcome them.

Good question.

I'm going to take my layman's stab at this, and why it means Rove is in deep shit.

The story says this interview will be an on the record deposition. Since we can probably assume that Viveca is not a hostile witness or a target, it's also probably true that Fitzy has already had a conversation with her, or at least with her attorney, wherein he has determined what her testimony will be. So this deposition is to get it on the record.

More on the flip. . .

It's Time for progressive tax revolt:  Stop the Torture Tax.

Progressives should incite tax revolt: deduct one cent from their taxes due in protest.

It will cost the IRS more to go after protesters than it will cost the protesters.

Or, we should start a web campaign with ads to publicize the No Torture Tax issue:

Our objection is: we do not want our tax dollars funding torture. Period.

Anyone want to take off with this campaign?  Any ideas to refine it?  I think the Torture Tax frame could have legs.

The reporter from the Washington Post (Jim Vandehei I think) just reported on Countdown that Judy Miller appears to be out of legal jeopardy after her grand jury testimony today.

Any speculation about what that means?  My guess:  she was in real jeopardy, in danger of perjury or conspiracy charges, decided to sing every song she ever learned, and got herself out of trouble by screwing every source she ever had related to any question Fitzgerald asked her.

That First Amendment Martyr thing?  Not so much. . .

James Dobson has been given "confidential" inside information he does not feel at liberty to share.  Certainly not with Senators, who, you know, have a consititional responsibility to provide advice and consent on Meirs nomination.

So what might Mullah Dobson be hearing?

An overheard cell phone conversation in a DC cab might provide some insight.

More on the flip.

Rumors of up to 22 indictments in the offing?  How convEEEEEEnient.  Nothing like a pending indictment to focus the mind.

At the Huffington Post, Lawrence O'Donnell, who first fingered Rove as Matt Cooper's source on Plame, has some informed speculation. Talk Left offers further insight.

UPDATE: The AP reports Rove is cooperating. And please don't forget, now that Fitzy is turning the screws, Rove is the only one we currently know about who wants to sing sweet melodies to the prosecutor. Who else is creeping out from under the rocks to croon? The legal and strategic analysis in the sources I quote is worth a thorough reading, to get a sense of what's going on. This could conceivably tie in to the Abramoff investigation, too - see the comment way downthread.

More on the flip.

But my friends, we sit here together at the dawn of a new opportunity.  Movement conservatives of both varieties (corporatist profiteers and wingnut theocrats) are wailing and gnashing their teeth over this SCOTUS nomination.  We Democrats need to learn - fast - how to do something we have never been good at.

More on the flip.

1.  The New Deal laid the social and economic foundations for the rise of the American Middle Class.

2.  Following World War II, butressed by favorable national and tax policies to support G. I. education and home ownership, the Middle Class began to take off and to fuel the engines of consumerism and economic prosperity.

3.  At the same time, more disposable income in families created greater opportunities for financial independence among women, leading to a realignment of the power relationship between the sexes.

4.  Similarly, greater family disposable income allowed Middle Class teens to spend their parents' money on entertainment items.  The creation of American youth culture, ushered in by Elvis, changed family structures further.  Kids had money to spend and no longer listened to Lawrence Welk with their parents.  

This piece has been edited and co-written by ePuribus Media staff, and I don't know who all they are!  Special thanks to Aaron Barlow. Find the original article here .

If the world's second oldest profession is prostitution, I thought as I sat through the infamous "Guckert panel" ("Who is a Journalist?") at the National Press Club on April 8, 2005, then I know what the second oldest profession is.

That's right:  journalism.  

After someone "did the deed," someone had to report it.  

Now, let me be fair: I did find that most of the journalists on the panel were intelligent, articulate, thoughtful, and principled in their desire to defend their profession from the likes and practices of people like Jim Guckert/Jeff Gannon, the "sore thumb" among them.

Form your mouth around the word.

Treason.

We should not - and will not - use it glibly, the way the anorectic queen of fascism does.

But let's revisit the newly minted conventional wisdom here and here.

The Republican Party commits TREASON by placing the accumulation of unchecked power ahead of national interests, national security and American lives..

That's the frame we have to repeat over and over, ad nauseaum, at least through the summer.  The rest is distraction.

This is a purposely short diary, but please recommend it up.

The term was tailor made for straight, white, working class men who grew tired of all the new sensitivities they were supposed to employ toward women and minorities.  

The widespread use of the term fractured our working class base and struck right at the heart of what kos points out about the Dem party in his post today:  the Party had become bloated by special interests with an agenda other than party building.  Rush Limbaugh made a fortune on that "PC" idea, and it helped him pay for drugs.

But now "PC" is stale.  What we now face is "religious correctness," and for precisely the same reasons, in mirror image.  So start using the terms "religious correctness" and "RC" today.  Work it into your every diary, and your conversations:  let's see how powerul we are in shaping the lexicon and defining the terms of the debate.  Let's take down the insufferable theocratic facsists and hypoctics with just a couple of words.

Take a look at The National Review for the fun and lamentations over the scorching beating dealt by Galloway yesterday to their astroturf pseudo-issue of the UN Oil For Food scandal.  They may want to dial back on that one now that the U. S. has been shown to be the chief culprit in the scandal.

Anyway, there's lots of sturm und drang over there about Galloway yesterday.  Some quotes below the fold.