There will be pivotal votes on the Iraq war in September, following General Petraeus’ progress report. We must be relentless in our pressure on politicians and let them know that the American people will accept nothing less than a timelined withdrawal of US troops from Iraq.

Rep. Jim Matheson has never voted for a timeline to end the war in Iraq, and he voted in favor of funding the war with virtually no restrictions. We want to send a message to him before the next votes that his constituents support him in taking a stand against the disastrous war.
Click here to sign the pledge today and send a copy of the message to your senators and representative.

Find out more about Peace Action West here.

I will be in Salt Lake City later this month to meet with Rep. Matheson’s staff and deliver the pledges. If you are interested in collaborating with us on this and other efforts, send me an e-mail.

Thank you for your dedication to ending the war!

-Rebecca

I was recently made aware of a problem with the Drinking Liberally SLC blog: we’ve been telling people they could register on our site and post, but somehow a setting was changed that kept people from actually being able to post.

I believe it may have happened during an upgrade; my apologies.  If you’re registered with this website you should now be able to post, and all new users should get the same ability.

Post freely and liberally!

Heather and I had the opportunity to attend the Plan-B theatre company’s ‘And the Banned Played On’ tonight, which is the annual fundraiser for Plan B. This was the second year we had attended, and it will definitely be something we’ll attend every year.

If you couldn’t guess, the theme is banned music - and this year they incorporated many banned books as well. The first half featured Utah legislators, all of which have been out to Drinking Liberally at one point or another - David Litvack, Christine Johnson, Ralph Becker, Jackie Biskupski, and Catalyst editor Greta DeJong; as well as co-host Scott McCoy (co-host Doug Fabrizio, Nancy Tessman, and Peter Corroon, sadly, have not been out).

The theme this year seemed to be issues of sexuality for the most part. The fact that three of our legislators are gay seemed to hit me all of a sudden as they were reading the exerpts from the books. Of course I’ve known; but to see all three of them in one place talking about sexuality issues - in Utah - was amazing to me. This is Utah! One of the most conservative states in the union! Another one of our legistators beat all odds with sheer tenacity and got a hate crimes bill passed. Rocky is the flag bearer for many liberals in the state, but there are many more people in the government that really make Utah a pretty great state.

If you haven’t been to ‘And the Banned Played On’, you should make it a yearly ritual right next to Salt Lake Acting Company’s ‘Saturday’s Voyeur’. Even though they’re two totally different things, they each have their own thing to offer, and they help those of us of the liberal persuasion to remember that we’re not alone in this red sea.

Last week, Atlanta Falcon quarterback Michael Vick was indicted on federal charges for “sponsoring a dog fighting operation so grisly the losers either died in the pit or sometimes were electrocuted, drowned, hanged or shot.” (ESPN Sports). Vick also happens to be a spokesperson for Nike. Although Nike has suspended the release of his new shoe, they have not terminated his contract or stopped selling any other Vick product already released. In fact, it is rumored Nike is still selling the “Vick Hero” t-shirt. I hope public outcry might have persuaded them to remove it from online sales because I could not find it in their internet catalog. Either way, he is not hero and he should not be idolized as such.