The First Week

Unique Visitors: 535

Subscribers: 31

Response Rate: 5%

At the end of the first week, 535 unique visitors have found the CongressionalRevolution.com website, and 5% of visitors to the website have become subscribers. At this rate, 20,000,000 people will need to visit the website to for the site to have a chance at successfully building a potential list of 1 million small contributors.

Of course this means that the number of visitors per week to the website will need to grow dramatically, exponentially, in fact.

The good news is that The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell confirms that this kind of effort can start to grow quickly from even this small core of initial support because as Mavens -people who collect high quality information- disseminate knowledge about the site to enough important Connectors -people with wide social circles who bring several worlds together- will eventually spread the information to vital Salesman -society's "soft sellers" and trendsetters- who will eventually help the movement to grow quickly.

Cross-Country Tour

Early this morning the cross-country tour in support of CongressionalRevolution.com concluded in upstate New York. Two vehicles traveled from Los Angeles to New York with CongressionalRevolution.com chalked on their windows. It is impossible to know if that simple inexpensive form of publicity has helped to draw any traffic to the website, or add any supporters to the cause; however, chalking the web address onto the back window of our car is something that most of us can do easily to help spread the word about this effort in our community, so I would encourage everyone to do it.

Thank You, Thom Hartmann

Yesterday several people found their way to our website thanks to a brief mention on the Thom Hartmann radio show on the Air America radio network. Thank you Thom for the mention, and thank you to all of Thom's listeners who have visited the site, but I would like to especially thank everyone who has joined the cause by joining the email list.

Can the Grassroots Change Politics?

174 Unique Visitors Yesterday

16 Subscribers So Far

The slow start over the first 24 hours has gained a little speed, certainly not a lot of speed, and decidedly not enough speed to give the flywheel the momentum it will need to keep spinning on its own, but an encouraging buildup of steam has continued, with the help that this site's supporters have shown during the first two days.

About 70% of the visitors didn't stay long enough for the website to have much of an impact on their thoughts or opinions, about 5 seconds, but about 15% stayed for more than 20 minutes, so the website was clearly making an impression on these people.

For those of you reading this blog posting, who want to help with this effort, I would encourage you to forward an email about the site to your friends and family, and digg some of the articles on this site, or promote it at other social bookmarking sites. I would also encourage you to post a comment about the site on your favorite blog or web discussion board.

Today I am going to be promoting the site by continuing a cross-country trip from Los Angeles to New York that has my car decorated with the name of the website.

Thanks for you support, and keep up the effort. It may take a few months for this small core of supporters to build a movement, but we have time for the flywheel to gain the speed it will need to grow to a million member movement.

For those who need encouragement, I remind you of one important fact, Moveon.org has more than 3 million members, so the goal isn't unattainable.

A Slow Start

The First 24 Hours

Unique Visitors: 129

Subscribers: 10

Report on Our Progress

So in less than 24 hours from the initial launch of the CongressionalRevolution.com website it has gained 129 unique visitors, not a spectacular start, but certainly a fairly good start for a grassroots effort. It has gained 10 subscribers to its email list, which is also not a bad start, not a great start, but for a grassroots effort with no personality at its core to galvanize support, again, not a bad start. From this small core group, maybe a much bigger organization can be built, but it will certainly require additional effort from this core group of supporters, including sending email to friends and family and asking them to help with the effort.

The site recieved a fair amount of traffic from Digg.com, unfortunately the story was buried to obscurity as it made its way towards the front of the popular list, more likely than not it was buried by the current wave of online supporters for Ron Paul, who I suspect will be fairly disappointed following Iowa and New Hampshire, if history has taught me anything.

Of course what happens on day one isn't as important as what happens on day two and day three. So far on the second day, an article from this site that was dugg early this morning has recieved 6 diggs and is slowly climbing the political opinion pages at digg.com, and generating a little bit of traffic.

Unfortunately many of the visitors to the site left almost as quickly as they arrived. That may be because the video was on autoplay yesterday. That has been changed for today to see if it might not help slow people down, so that they will stay a while and learn what this effort is all about.

Tomorrow the cross-country promotional tour begins with two cars caravaning across the United States decorated with the CongressionalRevolution.com domain name, and the two drivers ready to pass out flyers. The trip will take the author of this post and his sister from Los Angeles to New York and will be documented on video tape for the YouTube account.

If you are reading this post, you can help spread the word by digging the featured article or any article on this site. You can also help by telling friends and family about this small, but growing movement with an email or in person.

We already have more hits today than we had at this time yesterday, so that is a good sign, but we als need the discussion to expand to blogs you participate in, and discussion boards as well.

Right now there are a few people pushing the flywheel trying to get it to move, so it is hard, but as more people join the flywheel, it will begin to move faster, and that is when this will get interesting.

Thanks for those who helped yesterday, please help again today.

About Us

CongressionalRevolution.com is an effort started by a single American citizen hoping to make an impact on the 2008 election. The goal is considerable, to raise $200 million for Democratic challengers for Congress in 100 US House campaigns and 20 US Senate campaigns. This is a goal that cannot be achieved without your help, so please spend 10 to 15 minutes a day helping us to spread the word about our campaign by telling people you meet, sending out emails, posting comments to the blogs you read about our campaign, and maybe passing out fliers in your community. Our campaign is built upon word of mouth marketing, so please use your mouth to help spread the word.

The premise for the campaign is simple, 1 million people could have a tremendous impact on a single Congressional race by donating $1 each to the campaign, and $5 each to a Senate campaign because $1 million allows a candidate to compete effectively in a US House race, and $5 million will make most candidates competitive in a US Senate race. From there the idea expanded because the Congress is the most powerful branch of our federal government. Unfortunately the corporate interests and the special interests have known this for far too long, so netroots fundraising efforts have primarily focused on Presidential campaigns, while the special interests have kept a stranglehold on our government by funding Congressional campaigns. The goal of this campaign is to reclaim the Congress for the American people by building a large, and dedicated group of small donors to fund a vigorous campaign for each Republican held Senate seat and half of the Republican held House seats.

We hope to provide most of our funding on the Fourth of July because this is the time to celebrate our nation, and what better way to celebrate our 232nd Independence Day than with a $200 million Congressional money bomb that will reshape American politics forever by reclaiming our republic and our democracy from the moneyed interests. Money is the mother's milk of politics and make no mistake about it, this campaign is dedicated to building a network of donors because it is vitally important for the restoration of our civil liberties and the democratic institutions of our great republic, but we hope to build a network of dedicated volunteers as well.

There are other reasons we have chosen the Fourth of July. The Fourth of July is a time for gatherings of friends and family with house parties all over the country. We believe that this presents an opportunity for our supporters to encourage their friends and family to help with our campaign by making an online donation at their parties or at home after the party, even though we hope most people will contribute when they wake up on the morning of the Fourth then enjoy the rest of their day.

CongressionalRevolution.com is not a PAC, though we have set up our fundraising page with the help of a Democratic PAC that provides individuals with online fundraising tools for candidates. We have built our online presence using a lot of free tools that we hope others will use as well to help us with our efforts by organizing in their community. Our goal is to develop a national network of organizers and donors because each Congressional and Senate election is not simply a local campaign, but also a national election.

We hope you will join us in our campaign by becoming a subscriber to our email newsletter where you will regularly be updated with publications from our blog, and we hope you will contribute to our candidates on the Fourth of July, and during our individual seed funding drives that will occur between now and the Fourth of July to support our grassroots candidates with their early funding needs.

Our plan is to use this our blog to begin discussions about the important issues facing the country and to organize voter education efforts around the country. We also hope to use our online resources to help build volunteer networks that will work for various candidates we have endorsed, and we hope to use our existence to encourage more candidates to enter races in districts with entrenched Republican incumbents or out of touch Democratic incumbents.

We will also use this website and in particular our blog to provide our readers with information about the candidates we support. We hope to conduct interviews with each of the candidates we are supporting and provide an article about our interviews with a Candidate of the Day section in our blog. We will likely use these candidate of the day articles to introduce our readers to candidates we will be helping to secure seed money for their campaigns.

We have a large mountain to climb from one man with a laptop and an Internet connection to a million donor network, but with your help it is a mountain that we can climb. Please help us with our efforts. Don't forget to tell your friends about http://www.congressionalrevolution.com/.

How Congressional Revolution Operates

CongressionalRevolution.com is not affiliated with any candidate, candidate committee, political party committee, or polticial action committee. CongressionalRevolution.com is published by an individual citizen, and as such is governed by FEC regulations and policies noted here. While the website is not affiliated with any committee or candidate, CongressionalRevolution.com hopes to organize citizens in favor of a progressive agenda to reform the leadership of the Democratic party because its publisher has been a member of the Democratic party since his eighteenth birthday, and he believes working within the system will allow for more effective change.

CongressionalRevolution.com hopes to use online tools freely available to most citizens to organize and promote a substantial online fundraising and volunteer network for various Congressional and Senate campaigns around the United States to help defeat Republicans and out of touch Democratic incumbents during the 2008 and future elections, but its goals are more ambitious than the simple defeat of Republican candidates in 2008. The goal of CongressionalRevolution.com is to build a network of citizen activists who will restore the power of individuals through collective action, by eliminating the power that corporate interests have gained through campaign contributions. This will be accomplised by providing honest candidates a steady source of citizen financing for their campaigns, allowing them to reject corporate and special interest contributions.

CongressionalRevolution.com does not collect any money on behalf candidates or act operate as a political action committee. CongressionalRevolution.com operates an online blog with an email newsletter that allows us to track the growth of our membership. We encourage people to subscribe to our newsletter to assist us with tracking the growth of our membership.

CongressionalRevolution.com also provides some organizing tools for our members as well as tools to help our members promote our campaign through various social networks and content aggregators. In addition to these tools, CongressionalRevolution.com will conduct online polling to help determine the campaign platform of our endorsed candidates and provide links to the websites of candidates we have endorsed. CongressionalRevolution.com will use online polling to help select candidates for endorsement during the upcoming elections.

CongressionalRevolution.com like many blogs hopes to provide its readers with information of concern regarding the topics that will be discussed on this website and about potential candidates. Our goal is to provide organizers useful information about topics of discussion.

Because CongressionalRevolution.com is not a PAC and is not eligible to act as a conduit for Earmarked Contributions it encourages its members to contribute to all endorsed candidate's campaigns through our ActBlue fundraising webpage. ActBlue is a Democratic PAC that allows our contributors to make bundled donations and Earmark their contributions directly to the campaigns. Campaigns pay a 3.9% credit card processing fee for ActBlue services, which is highly competitive with internal merchant account service providers for online contribution processing.

Our plan is to drop a $200 million money bomb on the Congressional race on July 4, 2008, with a few seed bombs to be dropped on fledgling campaigns we support between now and the Fourth of July, so stop back regularly to see if we have any seed bombs in the works.

Why Do This?

Why is this site here? What would cause an ordinary American citizen to take up keyboard and mouse to light a match to a fuse hoping to spark nothing short of electoral revolution?

Freedom! And I do not invoke that sacred word as a humorous ploy, but as a plaintive cry, pleading with my fellow countrymen to once again remember their solemn duty as the home of that first great revolution, and asking them to take up the cause of liberty so that freedom's torch may once again be refueled with by the passions of its rededicated servants in our most recent struggle against tyranny and despotism, here at home.

The same cause that has launched a thousand ships to war, the same cause that has been the herald of countless armies marching off to war, the same cause that lead union organizers, civil rights activists, and peace protestors to take to the streets in defense of our most basic rights has stirred a single American citizen to action. What good can one man do with mere words? Little, unless like many before him, he hopes to stir others to action.

What would cause an ordinary American to believe his fellow countrymen might be stirred to action as radical as replacing a third of the members of our Congress? Our shared history, our shared beliefs, but most especially our shared commitment to the preservation of liberty, justice, and equality. Our history teaches us that whenever freedom faces peril from the forces of tyranny, or what we today might call dictatorship, the American people have answered the call to action and beaten back the forces of darkness with the blinding light of freedom.

History teaches us that a majority isn't necessary for freedom, justice, and equality to win the day. Samuel Adams said, "It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds." As one of our most vocal and radical founding fathers, Sam Adams would be proud that his posterity has time and again proven his words right. First with the abolition of slavery, then with the extension of the right to vote to black men. These irate, tireless minorities, didn't stop there, they continued the fight and won the vote for women, but our promise remained unfulfilled. At the same time women were gaining their equality, American workers grew the labor movement, ended child labor, then gained the right to organize and bargain collectively. From these union actions, many believe the civil rights movement was born. A small group of agitators, including a young black woman working at a department store, who refused to move from her seat on a bus, helped bring about the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voters Rights Act of 1965. For those who don't believe one ordinary American can make a difference, I remind you of Rosa Parks.

Yes, this is all a wonderful history lesson, but what does this have to do with the here and now, we already have the freedoms these people won, don't we? I rarely agree with this man, but on occasion he uttered a word or two of truth, and the following statement, was such an occassion. "Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free," said Ronald Reagan.

An interesting statement, but again, what does this have to do with the here and now? Author Naomi Wolf in her recent book The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot explains the Ten Steps that have been observed throughout history during the early days of rising dictatorships as once open democracies become more closed fascist states, but what is troubling were the discoveries she made when she examined the "echoes" of these past events in the present day United States of America. I ask you to consider the ten steps, then beg that you rally to action, so that what Lincoln called, "The last best hope of earth," shall endure as a democratic republic.

What are the Ten Steps?

1. Invoke an External and Internal Threat

• Stalin did this by telling Soviet citizens about "sleeper cells" of "international capitalists" posing as ordinary citizens who would some day rise up to launch terrorist attacks.
• Today, "terrorists" and "evildoers" are reported to operate throughout American society according to the President of the United States and some members of Congress.

2. Establish Secret Prisons

• In 1933, while a democratic parliament, independent judiciary, and attorneys continued to function, 27,000 political opponents, mostly marginalized individuals and groups were detained at Oranienberg by Hitler, and German political cartoons of the era made light of abuses suffered by prisoners in these secret institutions.
• In October of 2006, President George W. Bush acknowledged the use of torture by American officials and the continued use of prison facilities at Guantanomo Bay, Cuba and other black sites by the United States government to detain "terrorists."

3. Develop a Paramilitary Force

• By 1922, Italian men dressed in black, loyal to Mussolini, regularly torched property owned by the opposition, beat workers, and intimidated the Italian people.
• By 1923, these same Italian men stood inside the voting booths in Italy to ensure "responsible voting."
• By June of 2006, Blackwater USA, a "private security company" that has provided services to the American government in Iraq, had earned $73 million from Katrina related work it performed in the American south.
• During the 2000 election in Forida there were reports of young men dressed in the same white shirts and chinos deployed to largely African-American polling stations, who were later identified as Republican political staffers.

4. Surveil Ordinary Citizens

• In the 1920s Mussolini ordered ordinary Italians' phone lines tapped, and even ordered that the Pope be spied on. During the 1930s, Hitler had the SS and Gestapo observing ordinary Germans, including a half-million Berliners.
• In October 2001, the USA PATRIOT Act allowed the US government to obtain information from libraries and booksellers about their patrons. By 2006, it was reported that the NSA had obtained phone records about billions of calls from ordinary Americans.

5. Infiltrate Citizens' Groups

• Intellectual and dissident groups were infiltrated by Stalin's agents. Mussolini's fascists infiltrated trade union organizations. Hitler's men infiltrated communist groups, anti-Nazi student organizations, and labor groups. They did this not simply to spy, but to provoke violence by the groups to help marginalize their actions.
• During the 1960s, the FBI infiltrated groups of Freedom Riders for similar purposes. Since September 11, 2001, there have been reports about groups of "peace activists" being infiltrated by the police. For further information see Farenheit 9/11 and this from the ACLU.

6. Arbitrarily Detain and Release Citizens

• A survey of German citizens who had lived through the Nazi regime showed that 36 percent of people had been arrested, questioned, and released by authorities.
• The US government wrongly jailed an attorney from Portland, Oregon for 2 weeks claiming terrorists connections to a Madrid bombing, despite Spanish authorities assertions of his innocence. In September 2003, Chaplain James Yee was arrested for suspicion of "espionage" and possible treason. He was held in solitary confinement for seventy-six days where he was manacled, blindfolded, and his ears were blocked. He was later charged with adultery, lying to investigators, and two counts of downloading pornography, but never actually charged for the original crimes. Canadian citizen Maher Arar, a software consultant, was taken into custody by the US government while changing planes at JFK airport and flow to Syria where he was imprisoned and beaten for over a year. Following a two year investigation, the Canadian Royal Mounted Police determined Arar had no ties whatsoever to terrorists. For more confirmation that this is becoming commonplace consider this video or this one. Since when is asking a question a crime in America? Since when do you have to sign a confession in America? Since when do you have to sign paperwork stating you have been served? Since when do we as Americans jail people for minor traffic infractions? I ask these questions as not only a citizen, but also as an attorney.

7. Target Key Individuals

• In Nazi Germany scientists who did not agree with the government lost funding for their research. Hitler's regime passed a law in 1933 to help conform student groups to Nazi ideals. During the 1930s Goebbels forced entertainers who would not co-operate with the Nazi's out of business. The Nazis purged the German government of civil servants, especially lawyers and judges who weren't supportive of the regime.
• In 2004, 6,000 US scientists issued a statement regarding their concerns over the politicization of funding for scientific research sponsored by the US government. David Horowitz, a member of a right-wing think tank drafted a model law requiring political "balance" in University discourse. Several outspoken professors at various state universities, including tenured professors have been fired for speaking out against US policies, especially those of the Bush Administration. Following comments on his show Politically Incorrect in 2001, Bill Maher was fired by ABC's parent company, The Walt Disney Company. After making a comment that she was "ashamed that the President of United States was from Texas," her home state, singer Natalie Maines of the musical group Dixie Chicks saw a boycott of her music on radio and rallies to destroy the band's CDs. In 2007, filmmaker Michael Moore faced threats of prosecution and threats of confiscation regarding his film Sicko following his reports about the President's actions in his previous film Farenheit 9/11.

8. Restrict the Press

• Mussolini imposed fines and other controls on the Italian press, even requiring all reporters to register as Fascists. Through laws Mussolini exercised great control over Italian radio. In 1931 Carl Ossietzky was arrested and tortured by the Nazis for reporting on acts of the German army that violated the Treaty of Versailles. In 1933, Goebbels fired 13 percent of state radio employees in six months. Radio managers friendly to prior social democratic regimes were arrested and taken to concentration camps. Hitler's regime used false news and propaganda, such as Leni Reifenstahl's film The Triumph of the Wills, following Hitler's own edict from Mein Kampf, "The great masses of people will more easily fall victims of a big lie than a small one." Following the invasion of Belgium and Holland, a German Colonel reported to the press that Germany had invaded to preserve those nation's neutrality. False reports of abuse of ethnic Germans in the Sudetanland were used to justify the invasion of Czechosolvakia by Hitler's regime. Goebbels "embedded" reporters and camera crews with Nazi troops invading Poland and controlled photgraphy of their war dead and their coffins.
• In 2004, the Bush Administration appointed a new chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, his first task was to purge PBS of its "liberal bias." Following a report based on what were later discovered to be false documents, CBS News Anchor Dan Rather was forced to resign. CIA agent Valerie Plame was "outed" by the Administration after her husband authored an opinion piece suggesting that the "weapons of mass destruction" rationale for the Iraq war was based on false information. Reporters in Los Angeles, California were attacked by police while covering a protest by Mexican-Americans regarding immigration reform in early 2007. In 2003, BBC reporter Kate Addie told Irish radio that independent reporters in Iraq were threatened with attack by the US military if they transmitted there stories. Non-embeded journalists in Iraq have been held and interrogated by US military police. On April 8, 2003, 3 journalists were killed by the US military. French footage of one incident shows that the attack by American tankers was not in self-defense as reported by the American press. An English speaking Al-Jazeera cameraman has been held by the United States for 6 years. He has been beaten and tortured, despite the fact that he is not the same man originally sought by US authorities. Pulitzer Prize winning AP photographer Balil Hussein, famous for photographs of women and children suffering from the war has been held without charges by the US since April 2006. A similar situation faced a CBS reporter who was held for 2 years before he was cleared of all charges. Following reports about victims of Hurricane Katrina reporter Greg Palast of Armed Madhouse and The Best Democracy Money Can Buy fame and Matt Pascarella were charged with "unauthorized filming of a 'critical national security structure'" for filming the ExxonMobil refinery bordering the encampment where the victims were staying. YES, THAT GREG PALAST, the outspoken critic of the Bush Administration!

9. Cast Critisim as "Espionage" and Dissent as "Treason"

US Constitution, Article 3, Section 3

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.

No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.

The Congress shall have power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.

Our founding fathers knew a thing or two about treason and being called a traitor, and because of this they made it exceedingly difficult to convict anyone of Treason to protect the right of the people to dissent, and provided further protections for the families of anyone actually convicted of the serious crime of Treason.

• In Stalin's Russia, criticism of the regime was initially defined as Slander and then defined as Treason and in both instances treated as a crime. In Hitler's Germany, political "libel and slander" were criminalized. Nikolai Bukharin, the editor of Izvestia was convicted in a Moscow show trial by Stalin's regime of "espionage" and "treason" as the result of his publication and eventually executed by the regime.
• Right-wing pundit Ann Coulter accused liberal politicians of criminal behavior in her book Slander and has since published a newer book Treason accusing dissenters essentially of crimes against the Constitution for their words, despite a legal education that should provide knowledge of the Constitutional safeguards for speech and the real definition of Treason under our Constitution. If it stopped there that would be troublesome, unfortunately, there have been calls from right-wing pundits for prosecutions of New York Times reporters for "espionage" and "treason" for their publication of information about warrantless searches of banking records purportedly related to terrorist investigations. While still rhetorical arguments at the time, the Justice Department has since prosecuted people under the 1917 Espionage Act for possessing knowledge of "information related to national defense" that they were not supposed to know, which had been leaked to them. This was not a prosecution of the person who leaked the information, but rather the recipient. This could have a terrible effect on the press if a whistleblower stepped forward to expose government atrocities for example that were officially "classified." Adam Gadahan, a southern Californian became the first American in more than half a century to be charged with Treason. His crime? He has been accused of making videotapes for al-Qaeda urging violence against the United States. Distasteful, morally reprehensible, and wrong, without having seen the material, quite probably, yes, of course, there may be "facts not in evidence," but a crime, quite probably not because Supreme Court precedent provides protection for speech under the First Amendment urging violence, provided it does not immediately incite violence, without more, it would appear to me that the political speech of America's adversaries, al-Qaeda, is equally worthy of First Amendment protection, so unless these materials are part of specific plans to attack specific targets our Constitutional protections for speech would preclude prosecution under the very narrow Constitutional definition of Treason.

10. Subvert the Rule of Law

• On April 7, 1933 Goebbels purged the state attorneys offices and the German judiciary of officials who were not loyal to the Nazi party. As Mussolini and Hitler gained ever greater power, the legislatures in those two countries continued to function, right up until the moment they claimed the ultimate power. In 1936 Hitler asserted, "I am not a dictator, I have only simplified democracy."
• In March of 2007, the Bush Administration fired 9 US Attorneys in various swing states. The Bush Administration has repeatedly shown disregard for the Constitution of the United States and for international law through its foreign policy actions and its actions at home, including invasions of privacy on a grand scale, in violation of the fourth amendment, and the use of substantial pressures to limit first amendment rights, while defying the fifth and sixth amendments guarantees of due process, including especially failure to give notice of the crimes alleged, and providing an opportunity to be heard by a jury of ones peers in the district wherein the crime was alleged to have been commited.

Despite all of these "echoes" Naomi Wolf is optimistic "that the United States is not vulnerable to the violent, total closing down of the system that followed Mussolini's March on Rome or Hitler's roundup of political prisoners. Our press, military, and judiciary are too independent for a scenario like that." She is in part optimistic because she understands that the response to these measures that has beaten back the march towards dictatorship in the past is a response held sacred by the American people. A response ingrained in our very beings! And she is optimistic in part because our foe is not ideological, but rather the most basic of opponents, greed. Greed in the form of corporations seeking to extend lucrative government defense and security contracts, and greed in the form of wealthy individuals seeking to consolidate the gains they have made in the cause of laissez-faire capitalism.

Fortunately for we Americans, our response to laissez-faire capitalism and aristocracy has won battles against these opponents in the past and we can win this pending battle as well. That response is democracy and freedom, sponsored by good old fashioned civic activism and political engagement at its very best.

The time for passive citizenship has ended. We must remember that Benjamin Franklin's words to a young woman inquiring about the form of government created at the constitutional convention, "a republic madam, if you can keep it," remain true today, despite a 230 year history of sustained republican democracy. Our nation faces perhaps the greatest threat to its survival since the horrors of the civil war, not from external threats, but from an insidious loss of our ideals and idealism, foisted upon us in the name of an unattainable sense of security, and in the support of greed and avarice by a fortunate few.

America has been special and remains special today, not because we have been blessed with fertile land filled with an exceptional supply of natural resources -we have- and not because our people are hardworking and particularly industrious or clever -we are- but because unlike all nations that came before us, America was built upon an idea and ideal that always placed our goals just over the horizon, so that each new generation had something to achieve.

Our national creed is simple, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Hapiness." In America there are no guarantees beyond the right to pursue your own hapiness, but if we do not act now to defend that creed, we may forever lose our way.

Our national promise is likewise incomplete, "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." Our forefathers only offered us hope of "a more perfect Union," because they knew perfection was our unattainable goal, but a goal they hoped we would strive to achieve with each successive generation.

Now is the time for this most recent generation of Americans to repay the debt of honor owed to our ancestors by reclaiming our democracy for the benefit of our people, but more importantly, now is the time to remember our solemn duty to continue the legacy of freedom, justice, and equality that makes us uniquely American, so that our posterity may enjoy the same fruits of those who came before us, that we have been blessed to recieve.

While I share Ms. Wolf's optimism, the "echoes" of past despotism observed in my America have caused me to ask the question, "how could it happen here?"

It is not a question I find comfort in answering, but it is a question I have pondered with some trepidation, and I share my worst nightmare with you now, so that it may never come to pass. In 1994, HBO aired a made for TV movie called The Enemy Within starring Forest Whitaker and Jason Robards. In that film a military backed coup de tat was the backdrop, and an important point was made, in America, unlike other nations, the ordinary citizen, and the ordinary soldier would never stand for an outright military coup. The appearance of legality would be required for the American people to accept the overthrow of their government.

While a work of fiction, this sentiment somehow rings true, perhaps because respect for the rule of law is of paramount importance to Americans, and with that in mind I asked myself what would cause the American people to concede that the usurpation of our normal democratic process was legal? At the end of the day, there is nothing that will obfuscate the American people's basic understanding of democracy, so it was clear to me that a regular election must be held for any American coup de tat to succeed. With that in mind, I thought to myself how could the Constitution be subverted while giving the appearance of legality? How could a sitting President remain in office beyond the eight year limit of their term, yet appear to do so legally?

Only an unimaginable national crisis, and in particular a crisis that left the United States without a Congress and without a President-Elect, or a Vice-President-Elect, or in other words, a crisis that left our country without a natural line of succession under our Constitution, could ever provide a plausible legal argument for the continuation of a Presidency beyond its legal term. I leave each of you with that word of caution, and ask that we all stand guard against such a fate. As our forefathers have warned, "eternal vigilence is the price of liberty."

How You Can Help Us

You are vital to the success of CongressionalRevolution.com and our campaign to build a million member list of small citizen donors to reclaim the US House of Representatives and the US Senate from the corporate interests for the American people.

Join our cause by signing up for our newsletter, then help us promote this site by telling your friends and family about it, but don't stop there, we need more help. You can help us promote our campaign by helping us promote our site online.

We need your help to get the word out to the blogosphere about our cause and this website. Write letters to the editors of your favorite blogs encouraging them to write about our website and our campaign to reclaim Congress for the American people. Leave comments about our campaign and this website on relevant blog entries. Go to your favorite web based discussion boards and start a conversation about our campaign and mention this website. Write letters to the editor of your local newspaper to help promote the campaing and this website, and write to your favorite political columnists encouraging them to discuss our campaign and website in their upcoming articles. Write to the major television news stations and programs and encourage them to cover the growth of our campaign and our website.

You can help us to grow our organization by starting a meetup group in your area for CongressionalRevolution.com and holding gatherings where you and other organizers in your area can send letters to fellow voters in your community informing them about our campaign and this website. You can also use these meetings to plan door-to-door canvassing drives where you can hand out fliers and tell people about the website and our campaign to reclaim Congress for the American people. You should contact your local news media when you hold these events to help generate more publlicty for our cause. If door-to-door canvassing doesn't appeal to you, we have a flier that you can download and print out to post in your community, or pass out on street corners to help spread the word about our campaign and website. You should use all of these activities as media events to help publicize our cause.

If you do choose to create a meetup group in your community, please email us to let us know about your organizing events so that we can help publicize them on this website with an article and links from our site. We will also try to help publicize your events with bloggers we know in your area, but of course encourage you to spread the word with popular bloggers in your area who you may know as well.

You can help us to grow our organization and cause in more subtle ways as well. You may have noticed that we have included links at the end of each of our articles that allow you to bookmark our articles to various social bookmarking websites, please help us spread the word about this website by bookmarking your favorite articles. We have also provided tools to allow you to digg, reddit, and bookmark this website, please create accounts at each social bookmarking site if you don't already have one and bookmark this site with each of the services. These bookmarking tools act as information aggregators and can help drive many viewers to our website. We encourage everyone to help us grow our membership with these simple tools.

You can also email articles of interest to your friends and family from this website and we encourage you to email your friends and family copies of our articles to help spread the word about our campaign so that we can grow our cause.

There are other simple things that you can do online to help us generate viewers who we will hopefully convert to new members. You can add us to your friend's list on Myspace and put us in your Top 8 to help us spread the word on that vital social networking site. You can subscribe to our YouTube channel to help us join the most subscribed list. You can digg or reddit our videos on YouTube. You can and should rate our videos. Five star ratings will help us get onto the best rated lists and this will hopefully help drive traffic to our website. You can and should comment on all of our videos, this may help us get onto the most discussed list, which will also help get us onto the most viewed list and drive traffic to our website. You can and should share our videos with your friends. We encourage you to "embed" our videos and provide a "URL" link to our videos in an ordinary email to your friends because this tends to work more effectively than YouTube's email service. By sending our videos to friends and family you can help us to get onto the most viewed list and again drive traffic to our website.

Of course the most vital step you can take in helping us to grow our campaign is to subscribe to our email newsletter which is how we track the growth of our campaign and movement, and to contribute to our endorsed candidates through our ActBlue fundraising page on July 4, 2008 and during our seed bomb campaigns. You should encourage friends and family to do the same and to encourage their friends and family to pay it forward.

How to Become Our Candidate

If you are interested in becoming one of the 100 candidates for the United States House of Representatives or the 10 candidates for the United States Senate that CongressionalRevolution.com will endorse and assist with fundraising and volunteer recruitment during the 2008 election, there are a few qualifications that you must meet before you may be considered for our endorsement and assistance.

What Does it Take to be Our Candidate?

1. You must reside in a state or district where a Republican incumbent or out of touch Democratic incumbent, i.e. those who want to continue Bush's folly in Iraq, holds office, or in a state or district that will hold an election for a seat where a member of Congress is retiring, or has otherwise left the seat vacant in 2008.

2. You must meet the constitutional requirements of assuming office. For House candidates this means you must be 25 years of age or older, must have been a citizen of the United States for at least 7 years, and must be an inhabitant of the district wherein you are seeking election. For Senate candidates you must be 30 years of age or older, must have been a citizen of the United States for at least 9 years, and must be an inhabitant of the state wherein you are seeking election.

3. You must either pledge to support the platform created by CongressionalRevolution.com and its members that will be posted on this site at a future date, or have positions consistent with our progressive platform.

4. You must be an articulate, thoughtful, and dedicated progressive with the integrity to hold true to the ideals of the progressive movement. You must demonstrate that you are articulate in telephone conversations held with the individual who created CongressionalRevolution.com, and with videotaped evidence of your public speaking ability. You must provide evidence of your thoughtfulness and integrity by providing at least three personal references from individuals who can attest to specific instances that demonstrate your thoughtfulness and personal integrity, and each such person should provide at least three personal references able to provide similar evidence of their thoughtfulness and integrity. We may also endorse candidates already running for office who hold positions consistent with our platform, or personal backgrounds consistent with our values.

What is Not Required?

1. You are not required to hold any political office, or to have ever held any political office.

2. You are not required to possess any specific level of education or any specific life experience; however, through your ability to speak, and other evidence, you must demonstrate an ability to make reasonable decisions about the appropriateness of any legislation as is required of each member of Congress.

3. You are not required to have a certain look or appearance, or be certain age, except that you must be at least the age required to hold office.

How to Start the Process?

You may begin the process of becoming one of the candidates endorsed by CongressionalRevolution.com by introducing yourself to our principal organizer via email. You should tell us your name, provide a brief biography, provide your telephone number, tell us which Congressional district or Senate seat you seek to run for in 2008, and tell us who the name of the incumbent office holder, as well as provide some information about actions they have taken in office that give you pause. We reserve the right to endorse candidates consistent with our values who are already campaigning online.

What Should You Have in Place?

Before contacting CongressionalRevolution.com about possible endorsement, you should have contacted and gained the support of at least one "old hand" in local party politics within your Congressional district or State for Senate races, who can provide you with some of the know how needed to get on the ballot for any primary or caucus, as well as provide a little guidance about complying with Federal Campaign Finance and other election laws. While this would be very beneficial to any campaign, and is something that any serious candidate should try to put in place early in their campaign, CongressionalRevolution.com will assist candidates in finding these people when necessary for appropriate candidates.

You should have at least a volunteer treasurer and/or campaign manager living in your district or state who has agreed to work on your campaign and assist you with the early growing pains of launching your campaign. This could be that same "old hand" or it could be another person familiar with Federal Campaign Finance laws and Federal Election law. Realistically, your initial core campaign team should include at least one attorney and one accountant for legal compliance to help you build a solid foundation for your campaign; however, our goal is to help build these teams when necessary to support appropriate candidates.

You should have at least one tech savy volunteer who can build and maintain your campaign website and blog, as well as build a suitable Myspace and/or Facebook and YouTube presence for your campaign. You should also have a tech savy volunteer familiar with video production and post production who can build video of speeches and events for use in conjunction with your website and/or the YouTube account that will be attached to your campaign.

For candidates who already have websites up and running in support of their campaign, we encourage them to list their site and their candidacy with ActBlue where we have already begun research to endorse candidates. Candidates will need an ActBlue presence to join our fundraising page.