PICK YOUR FAVORITE BLUE AMERICA CANDIDATE

Starting today, DownWithTyranny will be the special Guest Blogger for Air America for a week. Please, let's try to keep talk of last cigarettes and blindfolds for constitutional officers to a bare minimum in the comments section this week. Other than that, everything will be the same. Oh, except one other thing. Air America has very generously offered to pay us for being their guest blogger. Personally, I don't believe in profiting from trying to save the Constitution so I decided to make a little contest out of their check. I'm happy to donate it to any one of the Blue America candidates. And I'll count on you to pick the candidate.

Here's how you vote. Go to the Blue America page and make a donation-- even one dollar is fine-- and then add one penny. The penny is your vote. This is one man, one vote, so it doesn't matter if you donate $100.01 or $5.01; either counts for one vote. Feel free to vote for as many candidates as you like but your name only counts one time for any candidate you vote for. A week from today we'll announce which candidate gets the DownWithTyranny Air America check.

And for Air America readers who haven't been over at DownWithTyranny before, let me tell you something about Blue America. It's a PAC and ActBlue fundraising page that has helped distribute nearly one million dollars to progressive candidates since it was founded by Firedoglake, Crooks and Liars, Digby's Hullabaloo, and DWT. To qualify for a Blue America endorsement, a candidate must be genuinely willing to work towards a speedy end to the occupation of Iraq, must support equality for all Americans regardless of race, gender, country of origin, sexual orientation, etc, must be 100% pro-choice, must be in favor of the kind of campaign finance reform that will put an end to corporate special interests dictating government policy, and... well, aside from that we're always looking for proud progressives and populists and liberals willing to stand up and fight-- and lead. We are happy to support candidates who want to fix pot holes in their districts-- in fact if office holders don't do that, they lose elections-- but that isn't the criteria we use to endorse candidates. Nor is the idea that we just need more Democrats. This year, in fact, our biggest victory was helping to defeat a reactionary and corrupt Democratic insider, Al Wynn (D-MD)-- who was defended by powerful interests and by Rahm Emanuel, Steny Hoyer and Nancy Pelosi-- and replacing him with a true progressive leader and reformer, Donna Edwards.

So... look forward to hearing about these kinds of candidates all week, and help us pick one for the Air America check.