I am sure this diary wil be lost in the plethora of VP Biden (?) diaries in the next few hours and days but I feel very strongly that all states, no matter how 'small' or a 'given EC votes' must make their voice heard.  

Be it by a surrogate candidate or 'spokesperson', a voice is very important in that the loudest 'public' voice in the most 'public' forum is the one most heard.  Experience locally and nationally does matter.  

I was way too young to really understand what happened in the early 1970's but I was old enough to 'get it' in the larger picture.

I've been doing this newsletter for over 5 years.  It started with DC for Clark and only recently has it become the "DC for Obama" newsletter although I've been on the local Obama grassroots team for a long time.  After the election it will go back to being about progressive events in the DC region.  Anyway, I had stopped posting it to Daily Kos but several people at Netroots Nation asked me to post it here.  

Activist.

Most of us here have a cause that puts us into action in our communities.

And I'm willing to bet that your cause, on some level, puts you at odds with policies of your local, state, or federal government.  As a nation conceived through an act of dissent, I view this constructive activism as a true expression of patriotism.

While we continually strive toward that more perfect union, the inertial forces of the status quo stand as a barrier to our goals.  But sometimes the entrenched interests of the status quo take on an activism of their own.  Disturbingly, this often is expressed through instruments of the state.

On July 17, 2008, the ACLU of Maryland made public documents it received through a Maryland Public Information Act lawsuit.  These documents revealed that the Maryland State Police conducted 288 hours of covert and undercover surveillance of groups dedicated to peace and ending the death penalty over a fourteen month period beginning in March 2005.

While other disclosures of surveillance of peace groups have occurred over the past 3 years, these documents show for the first time the detail and persistence of these surveillance programs.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

Undercover Maryland State Police officers conducted surveillance on war protesters and death penalty opponents, including some in Takoma Park, for more than a year while Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. was governor, documents released yesterday show.

Detailed intelligence reports logged by at least two agents in the police department's Homeland Security and Intelligence Division reveal close monitoring of the movements as the Iraq war and capital punishment were heatedly debated in 2005 and 2006.

Organizational meetings, public forums, prison vigils, rallies outside the State House in Annapolis and e-mail group lists were infiltrated by police posing as peace activists and death penalty opponents, the records show. The surveillance continued even though the logs contained no reports of illegal activity and consistently indicated that the activists were not planning violent protests.

Of course we are all aware of recent abuses of government power in the wake of the Bush Administration's radical right-wing culture of fear and the Patriot Act

Maryland 3rd district Congressman John Sarbanes is working hard to build the party and put a democrat in the white house!

Since Sarbanes is in a safe district, he has decided to build the democratic party and help ensure our success in November. The congressman is putting together a volunteer coalition to help the democratic party not just at the presidential level, but at the senate and house level as well.

Sarbanes' operation involves calls to Virginia for Obama and Warner, and canvasing and calls to the eastern shore for Kratovil in this red to blue house race. Sarbanes helps win these races for us with events every week, and an office full of activity, with the goal of building a democratic wave in November.

Kratovil and Harris close in MD-1. Harris gets caught lying to public about funds

This, the 2008 election year one marked on the premise of change, new ideas, etc.  Maryland Eighth District Congressman Chris Van Hollen seems unwilling to debate.  

This is really just directed towards the Marylanders out there.

We saw the FISA vote go down, and Ben Cardin voted for American values, and Barbara Mikulski voted against him.

My second thought (my first was that if they had something personal on her, we all know what it is), is that she would be the senior Senator from Maryland in 2011.

She voted against the basic principals upon which the nation was founded, and she has been an enthusiastic supporter of doing so from the start.

Therefore, it is necessary to gear up for the mother of all primary challenges, either to defeat her, or to convince her that running for another term is not in her best interest and so she should retire.

With 35 Senate seats being contested this year (33 plus 2 special elections), Democrats have only 4 female candidates: Jeanne Shaheen (NH), Kay Hagan (NC), Vivian Figures (AL) and incumbent Sen. Mary Landrieu (LA). That's a shamefully low number. The Republicans only have 2 incumbents, Elizabeth Dole (NC) and Susan Collins (ME), and one sole challenger, Christine O'Donnell (DE).

Overall, this is not a great year for women in the U.S. Senate. The overall outcome will be somewhere between minus 2 and plus 4 female Senators. The most likely outcome is somewhere between minus 1 and plus 1.

So, let's look ahead to 2010. Specifically, to which Democratic female politicians might or should run for the U.S. Senate in 2010.

This afternoon, Donna Edwards was sworn in as the Congresswoman from Maryland's 4th District.  She is the first African-American woman to be elected from Maryland.  She was fantastic!

When we got there around 1:00, Chris Van Hollen (MD-08) was speaking to only a handful of people about a bill having something to do with benefits for federal employees.  Then the debate went on for a little while between Darrell Issa (R) of California and Carolyn Maloney of New York.  Then in came Donna, with Steny Hoyer, who is both House Majority Leader and Congressman from the 5th District in Maryland.  Donna's entrance coincided with the arrival of many House members to vote on the bill about benefits.

A terrific way to close out the evening:

LANHAM, Md. (AP) — Democratic lawyer and nonprofit executive Donna Edwards won a special election Tuesday to become Maryland's first black woman elected to Congress.

Edwards beat Republican Peter James in the race to serve the remainder of former U.S. Rep. Albert Wynn's term in Maryland's 4th District. Wynn left office May 31 to take a lobbying job after losing to Edwards in February's Democratic primary by 22 percentage points.

Edwards, 49, will hold the seat for the rest of the year. James also won his party's primary in February, meaning he and Edwards will face each other again in November's general election.

After falling asleep during Olbermann (I was tired, apparently...who was worst person today?), I decided to check the election results for the MD-04 special election.  While not all the precincts have reported, its still clear that Donna Edwards shall be the new Congresswoman from Maryland's 4th district, the first African American woman to serve in Congress in Maryland's history.

Follow me to the flip for the details.....

The Bush Administration's war on the Constitution, er, I mean, war on terror continues.  The Baltimore Sun reported Friday about more anti-terrorism spying against peace activists.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland is suing the Maryland State Police to get records it believes may show local authorities aided the federal government in spying on peace activists during several annual protests outside the National Security Agency.

It seems that the government has finally figured out how to coordinate its investigations with local authorities.  Upholding the fine tradition of J. Edgar Hoover's FBI, the Maryland State Police's initial response to the ACLU's Public Information Act request suggests the potential infiltration of the peace groups involved in the lawsuit.

And who is this fringe, radical threat to national security?

It is the Nobel Peace Prize winning American Friends Service Committee.

... more below the fold about the eroding of our Constitution...

Every State. Every race. Right here.

This is number twelve in a planned series of 50 entries between now and November, looking at each of the 50 states in terms of every race on that state's ticket--Presidential, Gubernatorial, Senate, House, State legislatures--the whole soft-shell crab kettle.  Special attention paid to identifying and promoting the most important contests per state.

Today, we will explore the wonderfully blue state of MARYLAND!

This is hot off the presses. A new poll of the MD-01 race shows Democrat Frank Kratovil is withing strking distance of his Republican opponent, Andy Harris, who beat Wayne Gilchrest in a primary back in February.

In the comments of Rachel Maddow's "Dem's Have 10 days to avoid defeat! by buckeyemike, I decided to make a list of Maryland's remaining uncommitted superdelegates, just to see if I could discern a pattern to suggest what might be holding them back. My research and a poll are refined and reposted, after the fold...

For all of you have been following these polls, I just wanted to let you know why there's no runoff for Sec. of Health and Human Services today. The problem is that thus far all polls were won by white men. It is as unrealistic as can be that we'd actually have a cabinet in which all the top positions were held by white men. It's not the 60s anymore. So the Obama Cabinet polls will have to change a little.

What I will do from now on:

I will still poll all positions and the initial polls for all positions are reopened. So you can still vote for State, AG, etc. In the end, I will look at all poll results and will compile five different cabinets including your favorite candidates from each poll (plus a wildcard where necessary). The diversity of the US population will be reflected in each cabinet. And you then get to vote on each cabinet as a whole.

Today's poll and the links to the other polls are below the fold.

With the Obama Veepstakes poll now concluded and Gov. Bill Richardson as your chosen running mate (which was covered by the Santa Fe Reporter) it's time to take this a step further:

Who would you like to see in an Obama cabinet?

Today you can vote on the next Secretary of Health and Human Services.