The annual convention of the MYDFL, the young democrats constituency caucus of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (which is also the state chapter of the Young Democrats of America) will open for registration at 10 AM on Saturday at the Lakes & Plains Regional Council (Carpenter's Union) at 710 Olive Street, St. Paul, MN 55101

According to Tom Elko at Minnesota Monitor, Jim Cohen has dropped out of the U.S. Senate race. Despite a tenacious field campaign by the candidate and a very small coterie of volunteers and underpaid staff, Jim Cohen was unable to develop any traction. Many people commented on his lack of interpersonal skills, an inability to listen to the comments and criticisms of others.  Another downer was his constant public discourse about the fact that he saw that he had no chance of winning, but the blame for this was often misplaced. As evidenced by a straw poll in his own home district, the Fifth Congressional District his support was unmeasurable, yet a large number of DFLers remain undecided in this race:

Q2 - Who is your first choice for the DFL endorsement for US Senate from Minnesota?
Mike Ciresi  17.4%
Jim Cohen  0%
Al Franken  46.8%
Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer  23.9%
Undecided  11.9%

If I can get that 12% of undecideds in the Twin Cities Metro area, and get a more significant percentage outstate where I am from, I think we will have an interesting convention in Rochester in June!

I have come up with a quick guide to the MN DFL Precinct Caucus:

On February 5th, this happens at a caucus site near you, and you are invited! Please caucus and become a delegate for me, Soren C. Sorensen, for peace, and for the conservation of biodiversity.

Use this link to find your caucus site: DFL  Party - find your precinct caucus location!

• 6:30 PM - Registration and Presidential balloting begins
• 7:00 PM - Caucus convenes, elects caucus chair, precinct chairs, and 2 or more tellers to count ballots
• 7:30 PM - Delegates to Senate District/County Unit (and in Minnaepolis a seperate election of delegates to the Minneapolis City DFL Convention
• 8:00 PM - Presidential balloting ends, ballots counted, results announced
• until adjournment - Other business includes collecting $$$ contributions for the DFL party, the election of committee members (arrangements, credentials, resolutions, etc.), and discussing and voting on resolutions submitted by caucus participants

Rumor has it that Kucinich is getting out of the presidential race. It will be worth listening closely to his words and figuring out what our strategy should be without him, but I do know that "UNCOMMITTED" will be on the ballot and that is an opportunity to send delegates to the national convention for peace, maybe this is something that the Richardson supporters out there will consider appealing, too.

We would need to send letters to the editor, generate blog posts and e-mails to our friends, and do pre-caucus parties, GOTV phoning and door knocking for uncommitted as if there was a candidate with that name.

I am seeking the Minnesota Democratic Farmer Labor Party's (DFL) endorsement for U.S. Senate. I have set up a blogspot blog as a placeholder website: Soren for Senate.

It is not fancy, but it has some important links. Expect a lot more in the coming days and weeks!

I realized that I have to get in it, because it is again Iraq Moratorium Day (#5), (so I am a month late in making a formal announcement) and because this morning I read this inside cover quote in praise of an important book, the quote is of Jim Hightower:

Agitation is essential for progressive reform. But agitation without organization equals frustration. In this book, Wellstone Action shows you how to combine the two for success.

The Nevada Democratic caucus includes a non-binding presidential straw poll.  You can caucus and become a delegate for Obama, Hillary or Edwards while casting a ballot for Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich - sending a strong protest signal to the asshats at General Electric/NBC who took their effort to exclude Kucinich to such extreme lengths.

According to TheGreenPapers.com delegates at the Precinct Caucus level are not bound to their declared Presidential preference, on Saturday, February 23rd County Conventions have another non-binding straw poll. Nevada's selection of delegates will occur on Saturday 19 April 2008, at the Nevada Democratic Party State Convention.

On Saturday 19 April 2008, the State Convention chooses 25 of Nevada's 33 delegates to the Democratic National Convention. A mandatory 15 percent threshold is required in order for a presidential contender to be allocated National Convention delegates at either the congressional district or statewide level.

Today, New Hampshire residents have an opportunity to cast a ballot for Dennis Kucinich, and clearly repudiate the destructive domestic and especially dangerous foreign policies of Bush, Cheney and the PNAC Neocons.

A ballot for Kucinich does that most clearly as he is the only candidate now running who has taken any concrete step to hold the current administration accountable for its crimes. He has done that time and time again by exposing the motives and methods of this administration in Iraq, from the fact they withheld from Congress information about N. Korea's admission they had constructed nuclear devices until the day after the 2002 vote on the AUMF for Iraq, to the real significance and danger of Bush's benchmark of requiring the Iraqi government to pass a Hydrocarbon Act that granted Western companies production sharing agreements (a major goal of the Cheney Energy Task Force).

And of course, he has introduced articles of impeachment against the Vice President.

Viggo Mortenson, the actor that played Aragorn (Strider) in the Lord of the Rings movies, campaigned in New Hampshire today with Dennis Kucinich as a personal protest against ABC's exclusion of Kucinich in last night's debate.

When a television network has the power to decide which candidates are 'worthy' of addressing the American people, it robs the American people of their most precious right to the free flow of information and dissenting points of view. I am an actor, but I am also a citizen and a voter who resents the control that big money, big media, and entrenched political interests have in deciding what I should see, what I should hear, and what I should be allowed to think. If my being here provides additional attention to the Congressman's strong beliefs and progressive platform, I'm glad to do it.

[Viggo Mortensen, as quoted by American Chronicle]

Media reports of the surprisingly large margin of the Obama victory in Iowa will be good for Kucinich.

On Tuesday, January 1st, the Kucinich campaign pledged its support for Obama on the second Iowa ballot, ensuring an Obama victory and penalizing Edwards for a faithless deal in 2004, for conspiring with Clinton to exclude Kucinich from debates, and for his 2002 vote for and co-sponsorship of the Authorization for the Use of Military Forces against Iraq.

WexlerwantsHearings.com has registered over 175,000 supporters of Rep. Robert Wexler's call for hearings on the impeachment of Vice President Cheney. This is three times the number of supporters he initially hoped for. Still, it would be nice to have that number reach other significant milestones before Bush's State of the Union address that will mark the return of Congress to D.C.

Diarists and commenters on DailyKos have shown great patience and concern in not jumping into respond to or to hype the charges made against John Edwards and/or his former staffer Andrew Young on the internet and the print edition of the National Enquirer today. I think this is largely do to shock, and hopefully not any thinking that if it is ignored, it will go away.

Not enough is known about the scandal to either lend credibility or issue strong denials.  We will have to find a way to frame this, and respond to it, as Democrats, and waiting too long is an opportunity lost.

Rielle Hunter and associated terms have been the top search queries on Google for about 24 hours.

On my personal blog, I could not pass up the opportunity to attract traffic that was at least in part, political.

One way to help fund the effort to spread the word about the opportunity for impeachment and the efforts by some in Congress to pass articles of impeachment, is to contribute to the Dennis Kucinich for President campaign. There is an effort to generate a newsworthy sum total of donations to Kucinich on December 15, 2007:

So far, the run up to the 2008 presidential election has shown that the power still lies with the people, as individuals have donated more in this election than ever before.

The first amendment gave the people the right to free speech and political donations are an integral form of free speech.

Let's show that our voice is louder than the PACs and $2,300 maxed-out, bundled donations of corporations.

Our goal is to get 100,000 people to commit to donate $100 each to Dennis Kucinich on December 15, 2007, for a total one-day contribution of $10 million.

This looks like the blog that tracks December 15th organizing and provides a few promotional tools/fliers to get the word out.

I just want to make a quick post to:

1. bring a little more attention to a diary that deserves a few more recs, tips and comments. Those 'Dear Colleague' letters can be effective - if your Rep supports impeachment but doesn't want to go on record as a co-sponsor of Kucinich's articles just yet, have them send Conyers another 'Dear Colleague' letter urging action on the current articles, or recommending additional articles, if they believe that is required.

2. Highlight the fact that the measure to Impeach the Vice President (H. Res 333/H. Res 799) Rep. Grijalva has become 23rd co-sponsor of measure to Impeach Cheney (please digg this!)

3. Start a conversation about how to move forward.

The Iowa Independent has an article on the NPR/IPR radio-only debate, with a somewhat screwed up thesis:

While front-running candidates exchanged a few swipes on the three issues discussed, and have had their words broadly publicized since the debate, the event provided a stage for the lesser-known and lesser-financed candidates: Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich and former Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel. To say that they played the day for all it was worth would be an understatement.

From the Rolling Stone National Affairs piece by Tim Dickinson

It’s remarkable how badly the new NIE has wrongfooted senator Clinton, who has bet hard that hawkishness toward Tehran would serve her best in the general election should she make it to that promised land.

Signing on the Kyl Lieberman amendment, however, could prove fatal to her campaign.

Senator Biden hit Clinton hard for her tepid commitment only to slow a "rush to war" with Iran:

   BIDEN: Terminology matters. I’m a great admirer of Senator Clinton. It’s not about not advocating ‘a rush to war.’ I’m advocating no war. A rush to war means that war, taken slowly, going slowly, is possible. I’m advocating no war, no justification for war.

"A month ago, a Channel 3 News poll found Vermonters favor the impeachment of the president and vice president by a margin of nearly two to one."

This is the lead into the following story from WCAX-TV 3 - Vermont's Own:

We have one purpose as contributors and commentators to this site - to elect more and better Democrats. Secondarily, it is to demonize those Democrats that cooperate with the enemy, like Joeseph Lieberman has cooperated with Bush, and it is hinted that Dennis Kucinich would consider cooperating with Libertarian isolationist and Congressional Colleague Ron Paul (Dr. No).

We have to apply this same standard to a few former Democratic heroes, who are guilty of crossing this same line, creating a terrible precedent, and causing me now to relegate them to permanent joke status:

While I think the popularity of the pushback diary against the STFU Kucinich diary shows that we reject authoritarian messaging, I think railing against the censorious types on Daily Kos is not particularly useful, apart from blowing off steam.

When this site gets frustrating like that, I think it is time to write something encouraging about Dennis Kucinich for the general public to read. Something short, simple, useful (e.g. caucus date, website URL, House switchboard number) and encouraging. Something that fits on a quarter page handbill. I print a few up and I go find a crowd. Of real people.

More in a minute - I'll update, but I need to try to find a poem by Rumi to really make my point - that DEMOCRACY is a great feast, which unfortunately is bound to attract some flies... back in a bit!