ROB RICHIE Richie is executive director of FairVote and co-author of Every Vote Equal and Whose Votes Count. He outlined eight points toward better elections: 1) “Non-partisan election officials: It hardly matters whether the method of voting is with paper and pen or open-source computerized equipment if election administrators are not trustworthy. In 2004, the…

Foreign Policy Journal states: “The U.S. House of Representatives will vote on Tuesday on a resolution calling on President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ‘to oppose unequivocally any endorsement or further consideration of the “Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict”‘… “Headed by Justice Richard Goldstone, a…

ELLEN SHAFFER Shaffer is co-director of the California-based Center for Policy Analysis, focusing on health policy. She recently wrote the backgrounder “Kucinich Amendment Grants ERISA Waiver for Single Payer States.” DANIEL HODGES Chair of Healthcare for All – California, Hodges said today: “I called the offices of Nancy Pelosi, Henry Waxman and George Miller on…

ANDRES CONTERIS Conteris is in the Brazilian embassy in Honduras, where Honduran President Manuel Zelaya has taken refuge. Conteris is the director of the Program on the Americas for Nonviolence International. He worked as a human rights advocate in Honduras from 1994 to 1999 and is a co-producer of “Hidden in Plain Sight,” a documentary…

CLARK NEWHALL Executive director of Health Justice, Newhall is a doctor and a lawyer. He said today: “Thursday the House Democrats released their version of healthcare reform. While we have been pushing for a debate on the House floor for single payer, and been calling for the representatives to keep the Kucinich [Amendment]. … It…

Matthew Hoh, the first U.S. official known to resign in protest over the Afghan war, stated in a Washington Post forum Wednesday: “I found that the majority of those who were fighting us and the Afghan central government were fighting us because they felt occupied. … We cannot justify the deaths of our young men…

A top U.S. official in Afghanistan has resigned in protest of the war, the Washington Post reports. “I have lost understanding of and confidence in the strategic purposes of the United States’ presence in Afghanistan,” Matthew Hoh, the senior U.S. official in Zabul province, said in his letter of resignation. Many Afghans, he wrote, are…

Beginning Wednesday, protests are expected in 19 cities at offices of insurance companies. The Mobilization for Health Care for All said in a statement that it “has seen almost 900 people sign up to risk arrest at a health insurance office in the past four weeks. … Participants in the sit-ins will walk into the…

MALALAI JOYA, via Sonali Kolhatkar Joya is author of the new book A Woman Among Warlords: The Extraordinary Story of an Afghan Woman Who Dared to Speak Out. Now 31, Joya was the youngest ever woman elected to the Afghan parliament in 2005. She has just begun a tour of North America. She recently wrote:…

ELIZABETH GOULD and PAUL FITZGERALD In Washington D.C., until Saturday, Gould and Fitzgerald recently wrote the book Invisible History: Afghanistan’s Untold Story. They began covering Afghanistan in 1981 for CBS and produced the documentary “Afghanistan Between Three Worlds” for PBS. They said today: “Opinion here indicates that the administration is behind the runoff, expects Karzai…