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Kathleen Louise dePass Press Agent/Publicist .360.288.2652 Triste cosa es no tener amigos, pero ms triste ha de ser no tener enemigos porque quin no tenga enemigos seal es de que no tiene talento que haga sombra, ni carcter que impresione, ni valor temido, ni honra de la que se murmure, ni bienes que se le codicien, ni cosa alguna que se le envidie. A sad thing it is to not have friends, but even sadder must it be not having any enemies; that a man should have no enemies is a sign that he has no talent to outshine others, nor character that inspires, nor valor that is feared, nor honor to be rumored, nor goods to be coveted, nor anything to be envied. -Jose Marti

From the desk of Craig B Hulet? Wilson to Obama: March Forth! Obamas Backers Seek Big Donors to Press Agenda The White House Joins the Cash Grab Different Recipient, but Same Beneficiary Why the threat on Bob Woodward matters

A Word Gone Wrong

Wilson to Obama: March Forth!

David Hume Kennerly/Getty Images Senator Edward M. Kennedy in the Presidents Room in the Capitol, in 2001. As president, Woodrow Wilson used the room regularly. By A. SCOTT BERG Published: March 1, 2013 THERE has been a change of government, declared Woodrow Wilson in his first sentence as president of the United States, one hundred years ago this Monday. Until 1937, when the 20th Amendment moved Inauguration Day to late January, chief executives took their oaths of office on March Fourth, a date that sounds like a command. Nobody heeded this implied imperative more than Wilson: the 28th president enjoyed the most meteoric rise in American history, before or since. In 1910, Wilson was the president of a small mens college in New Jersey his alma mater, Princeton. In 1912, he won the presidency. (He made a brief stop in between as governor of New Jersey.) Over the next eight years, Wilson advanced the most ambitious agenda of progressive legislation the country had ever seen, what became known as The New Freedom. To this day, any president who wants to enact transformative proposals can learn a few lessons from the nations scholar-president. With his first important piece of legislation, Wilson showed that he was offering a sharp change in governance. He began his crusade with a thorough revision of the tariff system, an issue that, for decades, had only been discussed. Powerful legislators had long rigged tariffs to buttress monopolies and to favor their own interests, if not their own fortunes. Wilson, a Democrat, thought an economic overhaul this audacious demanded an equally bold presentation. Not since John Adamss final State of the Union speech, in 1800, had a president addressed a joint session of Congress in person. But Wilson, a former professor of constitutional law (and still the nations only president with a Ph.D.), knew that he was empowered from time to time to give to the Congress information of the state of the union, and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient. And so, on April 8, 1913, five weeks after his inauguration, he appeared before the lawmakers. Even members of Wilsons own party decried the maneuver as an arrogant throne speech. The man many considered an aloof intellectual explained to Congress that the president of the United States is simply a human being trying to cooperate with other human beings in a common service. His presence alone, to say nothing of his eloquent appeal, affixed

overwhelming importance to tariff reform. In less than 10 minutes, Wilson articulated his argument and left the Capitol. The next day, Wilson did something even more stunning: he returned. On the second floor of the Capitol in the North Wing, steps from the Senate chamber is the most ornate room within an already grand edifice. George Washington had suggested this Presidents Room, where he and the Senate could conduct their joint business, but it was not built until the 1850s. Even then, the Italianate salon, with its frescoed ceiling and richly colored tiled floor, was seldom used beyond the third day of March every other year, when Congressional sessions ended and the president arrived to sign 11th-hour legislation. Only during Wilsons tenure has the Presidents Room served the purpose for which it was designed. He frequently worked there three times a week, often with the door open. Almost every visit Wilson made to the Capitol proved productive. (As president, he appeared before joint sessions of Congress more than two dozen times.) During Wilsons first term, when the president was blessed with majorities in both the House and the Senate, the policies of the New Freedom led to the creation of the Federal Reserve, the Federal Trade Commission, the Clayton Antitrust Act, the eight-hour workday, child labor laws and workers compensation. Wilson was also able to appoint the first Jew to the Supreme Court, Louis D. Brandeis. Even when the president became besieged with troubles, both personal and political the death of his first wife; the outbreak of World War I; an increasingly Republican legislative branch; agonizing depression until he married a widow named Edith Bolling Galt Wilson hammered away at his progressive program. In 1916, he won re-election because, as his campaign slogan put it, He kept us out of war! A month after his second inauguration, he appeared yet again before Congress, this time, however, to convince the nation that the world must be made safe for democracy. This credo became the foundation for the next century of American foreign policy: an obligation to assist all peoples in pursuit of freedom and self-determination. Suddenly, the United States needed to transform itself from an isolationist nation into a war machine, and Wilson persuaded Congress that dozens of crucial issues (including repressive espionage and sedition acts) required that politics be adjourned. Wilson returned again and again to the Presidents Room, eventually convincing Congress to pass the 19th Amendment: if women could keep the home fires burning amid wartime privation, the president argued, they should be entitled to vote. The journalist Frank I. Cobb called Wilsons control of Congress the most impressive triumph of mind over matter known to American politics.

IN the 1918 Congressional election held days before the armistice Wilson largely abstained from politics, but he did issue a written plea for a Democratic majority. Those who had followed his earlier advice and adjourned politics felt he was pulling a fast one. Republicans captured both houses. With the war over, Wilson left for Paris to broker a peace treaty, one he hoped would include the formation of a League of Nations, where countries could settle disputes peaceably and preemptively. The treaty required Senate approval, and Wilson, who had been away from Washington for more than six months, returned to discover that Republicans had actively, sometimes secretly, built opposition to it without even knowing what the treaty stipulated. Recognizing insurmountable resistance on Capitol Hill, even after hosting an unprecedented working meeting of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at the White House, Wilson attempted an end run around the Senate: he took his case directly to the people. During a 29-city tour, he slowly captured public support. But then he collapsed on a train between Pueblo, Colo., and Wichita, Kan., and had to be rushed back to the White House. Days later he suffered a stroke, which his wife, his physician and a handful of co-conspirators concealed from the world, leaving Mrs. Wilson to decide, in her words, what was important and what was not. In March 1920, having recovered enough to wage a final battle against the Republicans, Wilson could have garnered support for a League of Nations by surrendering minor concessions. But he refused. The treaty failed the Senate by seven votes, and in 1921, the president hobbled out of the White House as the lamest duck in American history, with his ideals intact but his grandest ambition in tatters. Two months ago, our current president, facing financial cliffs and sequestration and toting an ambitious agenda filled with such incendiary issues as immigration reform and gun control, spoke of the need to break the habit of negotiating through crisis. Wilson knew how to sidestep that problem. He understood that conversation often holds the power to convert, that sustained dialogue is the best means of finding common ground. Today, President Obama and Congress agree that the national debt poses lethal threats to future generations, and so they should declare war on that enemy and adjourn politics, at least until it has been subdued. The two sides should convene in the Presidents Room, at the table beneath the frescoes named Legislation and Executive Authority, each prepared to leave something on it. And then they should return the next day, and maybe the day after that. Perhaps the senior senator from Kentucky could offer a bottle of his states smoothest bourbon, and the president could provide the branch water. All sides should remember Wilson and the single factor that determines the countrys glorious successes or crushing failures: cooperation.

March forth! A. Scott Berg is a biographer and the author of the forthcoming book Wilson. Obamas Backers Seek Big Donors to Press Agenda By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE Published: February 22, 2013 383 Comments President Obamas political team is fanning out across the country in pursuit of an ambitious goal: raising $50 million to convert his re-election campaign into a powerhouse national advocacy network, a sum that would rank the new group as one of Washingtons biggest lobbying operations. But the rebooted campaign, known as Organizing for Action, has plunged the president and his aides into a campaign finance limbo with few clear rules, ample potential for influence-peddling, and no real precedent in national politics. In private meetings and phone calls, Mr. Obamas aides have made clear that the new organization will rely heavily on a small number of deep-pocketed donors, not unlike the super PACs whose influence on political campaigns Mr. Obama once deplored. At least half of the groups budget will come from a select group of donors who will each contribute or raise $500,000 or more, according to donors and strategists involved in the effort. Unlike a presidential campaign, Organizing for Action has been set up as a tax-exempt social welfare group. That means it is not bound by federal contribution limits, laws that bar White House officials from soliciting contributions, or the stringent reporting requirements for campaigns. In their place, the new group will self-regulate. Officials said it would voluntarily disclose the names of large donors every few months and would not ask administration personnel to solicit money, though Obama aides will probably appear at some events. The money will pay for salaries, rent and advertising, and will also be used to maintain the expensive voter database and technological infrastructure that knits together Mr. Obamas 2 million volunteers, 17 million e-mail subscribers and 22 million Twitter followers. The goal is to harness those resources in support of Mr. Obamas second-term policy priorities, including efforts to curb gun violence and climate change and overhaul immigration procedures. Those efforts began Friday, when thousands of Obama supporters were deployed through more than 80 Congressional districts around the country to rally outside lawmakers offices, hold

vigils and bombard Congress with e-mails and phone calls urging members to support stricter background checks for gun buyers. There are wins we can have on guns and immigration, Jon Carson, the groups new executive director, told prospective donors on a conference call on Wednesday, according to people who participated. We have to change the conventional wisdom on those issues. But those contributions will also translate into access, according to donors courted by the presidents aides. Next month, Organizing for Action will hold a founders summit at a hotel near the White House, where donors paying $50,000 each will mingle with Mr. Obamas former campaign manager, Jim Messina, and Mr. Carson, who previously led the White House Office of Public Engagement. Giving or raising $500,000 or more puts donors on a national advisory board for Mr. Obamas group and the privilege of attending quarterly meetings with the president, along with other meetings at the White House. Moreover, the new cash demands on Mr. Obamas top donors and bundlers come as many of them are angling for appointments to administration jobs or ambassadorships. It just smells, said Bob Edgar, the president of Common Cause, which advocates tighter regulation of campaign money. The president is setting a very bad model setting up this organization. Mr. Obamas new organization has drawn rebukes in recent days from watchdog groups, which view it as another step away from the tighter campaign regulation Mr. Obama once championed. Over the past two years, he has reversed course on several campaign finance issues, by blessing a super PAC created by former aides and accepting large corporate contributions for his second inauguration. Many traditional advocacy organizations, including the Sierra Club and the National Rifle Association, are set up as social welfare groups, or 501(c)(4)s in tax parlance. But unlike those groups, Organizing for Action appears to be an extension of the administration, stocked with alumni of Mr. Obamas White House and campaign teams and devoted solely to the presidents second-term agenda. Robert K. Kelner, a Republican election lawyer who works with other outside groups, said the arrangement presents a rather simple loophole in the otherwise incredibly complex web of government ethics regulations that are intended to insulate government officials from outside influence.

The closest precedents for Organizing for Action exist at the state level. In New Jersey, a 501(c)(4) called the Committee for Our Childrens Future, set up by friends of Gov. Chris Christie, has run hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of advertising praising Mr. Christies proposals. In New York, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo encouraged the formation of a nonprofit group, the Committee to Save New York, that is run by business leaders allied with him, and it has raised millions of dollars from corporations, private sector unions, and individuals. The group supported Mr. Cuomos agenda but it also thrust him into controversy when The New York Times revealed that gambling interests poured $2 million into the group as Mr. Cuomo was developing a proposal to expand casino gambling. Organizing for Action said it would accept unlimited personal and corporate contributions, but no money from political action committees, lobbyists or foreign citizens. Officials said they would focus for now on grass-roots organizing, amplified by Internet advertising. Fridays day of action involved half a million dollars worth of targeted Internet ads and events in Florida, Maine, Pennsylvania and California, among other states. O.F.A.s first day of action was about bringing the issue of closing background-check loopholes into communities across the country that feel very strongly about supporting the presidents plan to reduce gun violence, said Katie Hogan, a spokeswoman for the group. Organizing for Action has also promised to steer clear of electoral politics, unlike the politically active nonprofit groups like the right-leaning Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies and Americans for Prosperity. Such groups spent hundreds of millions of dollars on advertising during the recent election campaign season, ostensibly for issue advocacy, spurring a wave of lawsuits, ethics complaints from campaign watchdogs and criticism from Mr. Obama himself. But the distinction between campaigning and issue advocacy may be hard for Organizing for Action to maintain in the prelude to the 2014 elections, especially if it continues its emphasis on pressing lawmakers on delicate issues like immigration and guns. In Wednesdays conference call, Mr. Carson said the group hoped to form partnerships with other 501(c)(4) groups on the left, including America Votes, which was at the center of Democratic efforts to defeat President George W. Bush in 2004 and now serves as a coordinator for progressive advocacy organizations. He also said Organizing for Action wanted to be a counterweight to grass-roots organizations on the right, like the N.R.A., according to people who took part in the call.

There should be as much of a price to pay if you tick off the gun violence people as there is for angering the N.R.A., Mr. Carson said, according to those people. Lets build an organization that means that Republicans are embarrassed to have climate change deniers running for office.

The White House Joins the Cash Grab Published: March 2, 2013 It is tempting to applaud the nonprofit group now spending nearly $100,000 on ads to pressure Republican lawmakers to accept gun-control measures. The group is fighting a well-financed and powerful corporate gun lobby that has never hesitated to spend millions to get its way in Congress. But a closer look at this group shows how disturbing its work really is. Its name is Organizing for Action, and if its initials seem familiar, thats because the group is the direct descendant of Obama for America, the presidents campaign organization in 2008 and 2012. That organization is now defunct, but its new incarnation has its extremely valuable voter database and many of the same strategists. What it does not have are the campaigns old limits on who can donate money and how much they can give. In fact, there are no limits, because the group has reorganized as a 501(c)(4), a so-called social welfare group unbound by campaign restrictions. Corporations and billionaires can write checks of any size, aware that they are giving to a group with close ties to the White House, one that is busily promoting President Obamas agenda. And now that this White House has torn down the last wall between its needs and those of special interests, others in the future will undoubtedly do the same. The organization plans to raise $50 million, Nicholas Confessore of The Times recently reported, at least half of which will come from donors pressured to bring in $500,000 or more. Give or raise that much and you get to be on the groups national advisory board, which will hold quarterly meetings with the president. That is nothing more than a fancy way of setting a price for access to Mr. Obama. For a $50,000 check, donors can attend a founders summit later this month at a Washington hotel, where they can mingle with Jim Messina, Organizing for Actions chairman and the presidents former campaign manager, and Jon Carson, the groups executive director and

formerly the director of the White House Office of Public Engagement. Another longtime presidential adviser, David Plouffe, is also involved with the group. It is understandable that the White House might want to make use of its campaign voter list, mobilizing supporters when it needs help getting bills through Congress. The groups leaders sa y they will be holding rallies on important topics ranging from immigration to climate change, and note that this kind of organizing is expensive. But the frantic pursuit of big money makes it impossible to call this a grass-roots effort. Any corporation with a matter pending before the administration can give lavishly to Organizing for Action as a way of currying favor, knowing that the West Wing will take note. (The group does not have to disclose its donors but says it will, and also plans to reject money from registered lobbyists and PACs.) It is also a way for donors to bypass the limits on giving to the Democratic Party: the new group does similar work, but without the restrictions on donations. When conservative groups first began using social welfare groups as vehicles for fund-raising and advocacy, Mr. Obama denounced the practice. You cant stand by and let the special interests drown out the voices of the American people, he said in 2010. A year later, though, he allowed his supporters to set up a super PAC called Priorities USA Action, and the new group is built on the same defeatist philosophy of if you cant beat them, join them. If Organizing for Action wants to restore the bracing political spirit that carried Mr. Obama into office in 2008, it can refuse all corporate contributions and limit donations to a few hundred dollars. Otherwise, it will be playing the same sleazy game that its opponents do, made even worse by the assent of the president. This article has been revised to reflect the following correction: Correction: March 2, 2013 An earlier version of this editorial incorrectly stated that David Axelrod, a former adviser to President Obama, is involved with Organizing for Action. Different Recipient, but Same Beneficiary By ROSS RAMSEY Published: March 2, 2013 It is legal during legislative sessions for state officeholders to raise money for their favorite charities from the same people who are prohibited from donating to their political campaigns in that same time period.

The charities are perfectly worthwhile causes that range from heartwarming to life-changing. And prominent people lend their names to such causes all the time. There is, of course, nothing wrong with raising money for the charities, and no campaign laws are being broken. But the juxtaposition is thorny. During a legislative session, state officeholders are prohibited from raising money for their state political accounts unless they are involved in an election. The reasoning is simple. The authors of that particular law wanted to separate the donations of political supplicants from the deeds of political actors. They wanted to protect everybody involved in those transactions from even the appearance that money from contributors was connected to actions by lawmakers. There were famous cases, like the time the chicken magnate Lonnie Pilgrim, known as Bo, passed out campaign donations on the Texas Senate floor during a break in the debate on workers compensation laws, which were of interest to his business. That was legal when he did it in 1989, but not anymore. The campaign laws include an intentional loophole for lawmakers like Representative Carol Alvarado, Democrat of Houston, who is in a special election for an open Senate seat. Like the other candidates in that race, she was allowed to raise money for the campaign in spite of the Legislatures calendar. The candidates in the District 6 Senate race are not the only people dialing for dollars while lawmakers are in town. Monday is Gov. Rick Perrys birthday, which will be celebrated with a dinner at the Governors Mansion benefiting Carry the Load, a group formed to honor military veterans. Suggested donations go as high as $100,000, which buy the donor V.I.P. seating for eight and priority seating for another eight guests at the governors birthday dinner, along with a private tour of the restored mansion. Last month, the Texas Senate Hispanic Research Council held a gala for the Luna scholars program, which gives students civic experience by allowing them to work as legislative staff members during the session. Diamond sponsorships for the gala at the downtown Austin Hilton went for $20,000, and individual tickets were $1,000; Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst gave the keynote address. A similar group, the Texas Legislative Internship Program, has a fund-raising gala in April at Austins Four Seasons Hotel, with the top sponsors donating $25,000. That one is affiliated with

Texas Southern University, and the attraction is a roast of Representative Sylvester Turner, Democrat of Houston. The legislative luncheon for the Governors Commission for Women the first lady of Texas, Anita Perry, is the headline speaker is on the March calendar. The top-level sponsorship for that one is $10,000, with the money going to the commissions work. Worthy causes, across the board. It is hard to fault the officeholders for using their prominence to raise money for such programs, the donors for contributing or the charities for accepting the money. But the timing of the events is wince-inducing. Ethics laws and practices have a lot to do with intent and with appearances. Leave intent to the lawyers, but appearances belong to politics. The political fund-raising prohibition is aimed at the appearance that lawmakers are taking money from donors while casting votes that benefit those donors. So if donors cannot show their love for officeholders by giving money directly, indirect giving becomes the next best thing. A donor at a charity event sponsored by a politician for purely charitable purposes appears to be doing the same thing as a donor who is there purely to curry favor with the politician at the head table. An officeholder raising money for a good cause looks the same as a lawmaker using a powerful position to make donors do something they might not otherwise do. If voters are willing to believe in the pure motives of everyone involved, they neednt worry about influence peddling. But it is awkward. As Joe Straus, the House speaker, said last week at a dinner honoring him and benefiting the Annette Strauss Institute, People say the nicest things about you when the budgets being written.

Why the threat on Bob Woodward matters By Kathleen Parker, Mar 02, 2013 To the world beyond the Beltway, it might not mean much that Bob Woodward of the famed Watergate duo went public with his recent White House run-in. This would be an oversight.

Th Washington Post's Bob Woodward explains his public back-and-forth with the White House over a story he wrote about the sequester. It also may not mean much that the White House press corps got teed off when they werent allowed access to President Obama as he played golf with Tiger Woods. This, too, would be an oversight. Though not comparable one appeared to be a veiled threat aimed at one of the nations most respected journalists and the other a minor blip in the scheme of things both are part of a pattern of behavior by the Obama administration that suggests not just thin skin but a disregard for the role of the press and a gradual slide toward a state media. This is where oversight can become dangerous. Understandably, everyday Americans may find this discussion too inside baseball to pay much mind. Why cant the president play a little golf without a press gaggle watching? As for Woodward, its not as though the White House was threatening to bust his kneecaps. Add to these likely sentiments the fact that Americans increasingly dislike the so-called mainstream media, sometimes for good reason. Distrust of media, encouraged by alternative media seeking to enhance their own standing, has become a tool useful to the very powers the Fourth Estate was constitutionally endowed to monitor. When the president can bypass reporters

to reach the public, it is not far-fetched to imagine a time perhaps now? when the state controls the message. To recap: Woodward recently wrote a commentary for The Post that placed the sequester debacle on Obamas desk and accused the president of moving the goal posts by asking for more tax increases. Before his piece was published, Woodward called the White House to tell officials it was coming. A shouting match ensued between Woodward and Gene Sperling, Obamas economic adviser, followed by an e-mail in which Sperling said that Woodward will regret staking out that claim. Though the tone was conciliatory and Sperling apologized for raising his voice, the message nonetheless caused Woodward to bristle. Again, Woodwards kneecaps are probably safe, but the challenge to his facts, and therefore to his character, was unusual, given Woodwards stature. And, how, by the way, might Woodward come to regret it? Sperlings words, though measured, could be read as: Youll never set foot in this White House again. When reporters lose access to the White House, it isnt about being invited to the annual holiday party. Its about having access to the most powerful people on the planet as they execute the nations business. Inarguably, Woodward has had greater access to the White House than any other journalist in town. Also inarguably, he would survive without it. He has filled a library shelf with books about the inner workings of this and other administrations, the fact of which makes current events so remarkable. Woodward, almost 70, is Washingtons Reporter Emeritus. His facts stand up to scrutiny. His motivations withstand the test of objectivity. Sperling obviously assumed that Woodward wouldnt take offense at the suggestion that he not only was wrong but was also endangering his valuable proximity to power. He assumed, in other words, that Woodward would not do his job. This was an oversight. This is no tempest in a teapot but rather the leak in the dike. Drip by drip, the Obama administration has demonstrated its intolerance for dissent and its contempt for any who stray from the White House script. Yes, all administrations are sensitive to criticism, and all push back when such criticism is deemed unfair or inaccurate. But no president since Richard Nixon has demonstrated such overt contempt for the messenger. And, thanks to technological advances in social media, Obama has been able to bypass traditional watchdogs as no other president has. More to the point, the Obama White House is, to put it politely, fudging as it tries to place the onus of the sequester on Congress. And, as has become customary, officials are using the

Woodward spat to distract attention. As Woodward put it: This is the old trick ... of making the press ... the issue, rather than what the White House has done here. Killing the messenger is a time-honored method of controlling the message, but we have already spilled that blood. And the First Amendments protection of a free press, the purpose of which is to check power and constrain governments ability to dictate the lives of private citizens, was no accident. A Word Gone Wrong

Jordan Awan By LAWRENCE DOWNES Published: March 2, 2013 This Wednesday is the fifth annual day of awareness in a national campaign to stop the use of the word retarded and its variants. As a medical label for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, the R-word used to be neutral, clinical, incapable of giving offense. But words are mere vessels for meaning, and this one has long since been put to other uses.

Retarded and retard today are variations on a slur. Young people especially like it: as a weapon of derision, it does the job. Its sharp, with an assaultive potency that words like moron and idiot lost sometime in the days of black-and-white TV. The campaign against it, called Spread the Word to End the Word, is heartfelt and earnest in a way that makes it vulnerable to ridicule. I know people who care about language who do not see themselves as heartless and who do not see retardation as anything to get worked up about. To them, banishing the R-word for another clinical-sounding term is like linguistic Febreze: masking unpleasantries with cloying euphemisms. In this, as in other cases of discrimination, its probably best to let those affected speak for themselves. Here is John Franklin Stephens, a man from Virginia with Down syndrome who serves as a global messenger for the Special Olympics. He has written op-ed articles giving lucid voice to thoughts you may never have heard before: The hardest thing about having an intellectual disability is the loneliness, he once wrote in The Denver Post. We are aware when all the rest of you stop and just look at us. We are aware when you look at us and just say, unh huh, and then move on, talking to each other. You mean no harm, but you have no idea how alone we feel even when we are with you. So, whats wrong with retard?, he asked. I can only tell you what it means to me and people like me when we hear it. It means that the rest of you are excluding us from your group. We are something that is not like you and something that none of you would ever want to be. We are something outside the in group. We are someone that is not your kind. Last year, after the right-wing personality Ann Coulter sent a Twitter message about Mitt Romney and President Obama I highly approve of Romneys decision to be kind and gentle to the retard Mr. Stephens wrote her a letter. No one overcomes more than we do and still loves life so much, he said, with such persuasive graciousness as to put other writers to shame. As Mr. Stephens makes clear, people can be thoughtless and cruel, or well-meaning, and never know the damage their words can do. The campaign is about inclusion. History is full of stories of people from outside who fought their way in. To those with intellectual disabilities, it sometimes seems the battle is just at the beginning, when little victories like an end to insults are hugely important.

Craig B Hulet was both speech writer and Special Assistant for Special Projects to Congressman Jack Metcalf (Retired); he has been a consultant to federal law enforcement DEA, ATF&E of Justice/Homeland Security for over 25 years; he has written four books on international relations and philosophy, his latest is The Hydra of Carnage: Bushs Imperial War-making and the Rule of Law - An Analysis of the Objectives and Delusions of Empire. He has appeared on over 12,000 hours of TV and Radio: The History Channel De-Coded; He is a regular on Coast to Coast AM w/ George Noory and Coffee Talk KBKW; CNN, C-Span ; European Television "American Dream" and The Arsenio Hall Show; he has written for Soldier of Fortune Magazine, International Combat Arms, Financial Security Digest, etc.; Hulet served in Vietnam 1969-70, 101st Airborne, C Troop 2/17th Air Cav and graduated 3rd in his class at Aberdeen Proving Grounds Ordnance School MOS 45J20 Weapons. He remains a paid analyst and consultant in various areas of geopolitical, business and security issues: terrorism and military affairs. Hulet lives in the ancient old growth Quinault Rain Forest.