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President Obama’s recent remarks encouraging the Federal Communications Commission to adopt clear rules protecting net neutrality on the Internet affirm that free and open access to the Internet is a bedrock right of the 21st century. The Internet cannot belong to the wealthy and well-connected; it must be an open space for innovation, entrepreneurship, and communication – a level playing field where success is founded on the best ideas, not the deepest pockets.

Millions of Americans have made their voices heard in support of net neutrality standards that preserve the freedom and opportunity of the Internet. I applaud President Obama’s forceful leadership on this issue as he joins the courts in outlining a clear path forward for the FCC. The FCC must act swiftly to create clear and enforceable net neutrality standards so the Internet can continue to foster freedom and prosperity here in the United States and around the world.

The FCC must ensure that everyone has transparent access to the Internet without intentional delays in service or paid prioritization schemes. For the sake of our economy and our democracy, we must have strong rules that protect consumers and innovators and will safeguard fair, fast and equal access to the Internet.

To follow Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi on Twitter, please click here.

Let’s Act Now
It has been more than 500 days since the Senate passed comprehensive immigration reform legislation – more than two years since Speaker Boehner said he was confident immigration reform would get done. In that time, House Republicans have refused to allow a vote on the Senate’s bipartisan immigration reform legislation, instead voting on multiple occasions to deport DREAMers.

While there is no substitute for comprehensive legislation, it is clear that our country cannot afford to wait for Republicans to make good on their endless empty promises to act productively on immigration. Every administration since President Dwight D. Eisenhower has used broad authority in existing law to make our immigration system better meet the needs of our country and reflect our shared values. Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush took action to protect the spouses and children of people who received status under the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act – even though Congress explicitly chose not to grant status to them.

Executive action is moral, legal and necessary. It is my hope that President Obama will use his broad and well-established authority generously and swiftly – acting to give immigrant families peace of mind heading into the holidays.

To follow Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi on Twitter, please click here.

Open Enrollment Begins Tomorrow
Covered California open enrollment begins tomorrow, November 15th, 2014 and continues through February 15th, 2015. Current Covered California plans must be renewed by December 15th to avoid coverage gaps.

Once you enroll in or renew your health care plan, help Covered California spread the word. Share the message with your friends and family by sending an email or posting the I’m In! Badge to your Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. Together, we can ensure that every Californian has the chance to experience a bright and healthy future with affordable, quality health care coverage.

Please feel free to forward this information to your family and friends. To learn more about these efforts, to express your views, or to sign up for email updates, please visit my website. I am also on Twitter at http://twitter.com/NancyPelosi.

best regards,

#3 Craig, have to agree, back in the day it was a factory job or the force for HS diploma only men, my father chose the latter.

#5 Henry, must say my father used the term ‘white F’in trash’ just as much as any other derogatory term, he started to grow up nicely in his 40′s and onward …
But, I think his type A personality should’ve left the negativity of that job earlier, it didn’t serve him well personally…
He always taught us to as Jorge H #7 said, treat others with respect and take no shit…

… Or I don’t know, for some reason – yesterday & today I actually miss him a lot so maybe I’m giving the rose glasses to it, I’ve been accused of being a daddy’s girl here before, lol … don’t care, it’s not my job to care what others think of me, if you think I’m protecting him, cops or men, have at that thought.

Luv, Zen Lill

On Wednesday, November 5, 2014, Amnesty International released its latest attack on Israel — a highly biased report that accuses the Jewish state of war crimes in its fighting in Gaza over this past summer. Avoiding the use of the word “terror” in relation to Hamas, and failing to mention the terrorist tunnels Hamas built in order to infiltrate Israel and carry out attacks, also the fact that missiles were fired from Gaza by Hama by the thousands. Amnesty’s report was followed up later in the day with a Tweet from a senior Amnesty official, equating the Jewish state with the terror group ISIS, which has beheaded countless Muslims and Western journalists across Syria and Iraq like animals.

The report is typical of Amnesty’s highly critical bias towards Israel. As Israel responds that Amnesty “serves as a propaganda tool for Hamas and other terror groups” it’s worth asking how such a worthy organization as Amnesty International could have fallen so far, and wound up obsessed with demonizing the Jewish state.

I remember as a child our class writing letters to the USSR, protesting the jailing of Soviet Jews who wanted to immigrate to Israel. We relied on information and names of Jewish prisoners of conscious often provided by Amnesty International. The very term prisoner of conscious was Amnesty’s coinage, and it conveyed the profound injustice facing the ‘refuseniks‘ — Soviet Jews whose petitions to move to Israel had been denied. In those dark days of Soviet repression, it was Amnesty International who detailed the horrendous conditions the prisoners were kept in, and who made sure the world knew their names. Many refuseniks, such as Ida Nudel and Natan Sharansky, today head of Israel’s Jewish Agency, were first identified by Amnesty researchers.

But as the years passed, Amnesty’s focus became not only exposing prisoners of conscience, but advocating specific policies, too. As its ambitions expanded, Israel increasingly found itself the focus of Amnesty International’s condemnations. The recent, outrageously biased report accusing Israel of war crimes in Gaza is the culmination of a decades-long trend of demonization of the Jewish state.
An early change in Amnesty’s activities came in 2002, at the infamous UN World Conference Against Racism, in Durban, South Africa. Amnesty International officials participated by targeting the Jewish state. Officials distributed material detailing examples of racism and human rights abuses around the world, mentioned only one nation — Israel — by name. Irene Kahn, Amnesty International’s Secretary General, later admitted her organization should have named other countries, too, but the damage was done. The Durban conference, encouraged by the non-governmental organizations like Amnesty in attendance, produced a highly biased anti-Israel final report that still is influencing policy discussions today. Lending its prestige to the hate-fest at Durban, Amnesty helped single out the Jewish state as somehow uniquely evil, unparalleled in human affairs.

War Crimes
Amnesty’s criticism of Israel has increased after Durban; one powerful strategy has been to accuse Israel of war crimes.

2006 was a turning point. That year, after Israel fought a four-week war against the terror group Hezbollah in Lebanon, Amnesty formally accused Israel of war crimes for attacking civilian infrastructure in Lebanon during the fighting. Despite the fact that during the four-week period, Hezbollah fired 3,900 rockets at Israeli towns and cities, killing 44 Israeli civilians and wounding 1,400, Amnesty refused to condemn Hezbollah. Even when Hezbollah cynically used human shields in Lebanon (in violation of international law) by embedding their fighters in civilian population centers, Amnesty’s criticism remained one-sided, directed at the Jewish state.

Prominent legal scholars at the time criticized Amnesty International’s sloppy use of legal terms. Accusing Amnesty of being in a “race to the bottom” in criticizing Israel, Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz called Amnesty’s definition of war crimes “idiosyncratic” — a peculiar way of thinking and not reflective of international law. Amnesty’s main criteria of calling something a war crime seems to be anything Israel does. David Bernstein, a Law Professor at George Mason University, observed that Amnesty’s criticisms of Israel’s use of force “has nothing to do with human rights or war crimes, and a lot to do with a pacifist attitude that seeks to make war, regardless of the justification for it or the restraint in prosecuting it — an international ‘crime’.”

After Israel responded to mortar attacks on Israeli civilians in 2009, Amnesty issued a report accusing Israel of war crimes: the 127-page report minimized Hamas’ violations of international law, and accused ignored eyewitness accounts that Hamas had used human shields.

That year, Amnesty sent its internal documents to the International Criminal Court, for use in case that body brought charges against the Jewish state. Amnesty also started calling for an international arms embargo against Israel, citing Israel’s supposed status as “a grave violator of human rights”.

Anti-Israel Intensification
Despite defending its impartiality, Amnesty’s anti-Israel obsession has intensified. Director of Amnesty International Finland, Frank Johansson, called Israel a “scum state” on his blog in August 2010. Amnesty International Australia has had to repeatedly apologize after highly anti-Semitic posts (some praising Hitler, calling Jews cancer, and calling for death to Jews) have been allowed onto its Facebook page. In 2013 Amnesty awarded its Ambassador of Conscience award to Roger Waters, the Pink Floyd musician who tirelessly calls for boycotting the Jewish state and features a giant inflatable pig wearing a Star of David in his shows.

When Amnesty Campaign Manager Krystian Benedict was asked in 2010 if he would support an event drawing attention to kidnapped Israeli private Gilad Shalit, he responded only if “thousands of Palestinian prisoners” were included as well. Mr. Benedict later told a journalist “Israel is now included in the list of stupid dictatorial regimes who abuse people’s basic human rights – along with Burma, North Korea, Iran and Sudan, it’s government has the same wanton attitude to human beings.” Mr. Benedict was temporarily suspended from Amnesty for posting a joke about Jewish members of Britain’s parliament on Twitter, but was soon reinstated. On Wednesday, November 5, 2014, after Israeli objections to Amnesty’s latest biased report, he Tweeted that Israel is equivalent to the vicious terror group ISIS.

This obsession with Israel and Jews – and sympathy with those who wish to harm them – is reflected in staffing choices at Amnesty International. One Middle East Researcher, Saleh Hijazi, was previously the contact for a political organization called “Another Voice,” whose slogan was “Resist! Boycott! We Are Intifada!” British-based Amnesty researcher Deborah Hyams volunteered as a “human shield” near Bethlehem, preventing Israeli military responses to gunfire and rockets aimed at civilians in nearby Jerusalem. Amnesty’s American-based Israel researcher, Edith Garwood, used to be a member of the anti-Israel International Solidarity Movement. Rasha Abdul-Rahim, a fourth member of Amnesty’s research unit, describes herself as “a ranty Palestinian activist” on Twitter.

In 2010, Gita Saghal, the head of Amnesty International’s Gender Unit was fired after she criticized Amnesty’s close links with Cageprisoners, a British Muslim extremist group whose leader defends violent jihad and the Taliban; she accused Amnesty of “ideological bankruptcy” and said an “atmosphere of terror” prevails inside Amnesty International, where staff cannot question leaders’ ideological views.

Amnesty’s latest report – and its offensive jokes and Tweets about the Jewish state – betray an unhealthy obsession and hatred of Israel. It’s time the world woke up to the sad fact that this once-praiseworthy organization no longer has any moral standing. They have lost my respect and hopefully much of the world’s because they certainly deserve being disrespected and ignored and thought of as the evil group which they are and the damage they are doing.

HOWIE