Posted inCivil Liberties, Policy Topics

Marriage equality finally becomes a reality in New York with historic vote

Andrew Villeneuveby Andrew Villeneuve

Moments ago, in an incred­i­bly close vote, the New York State Sen­ate joined the New York State Assem­bly in vot­ing to make mar­riage equal­i­ty the law of the land in the Empire State. The roll call was thir­­ty-three to twen­ty-nine. The final approval of the Mar­riage Equal­i­ty Act of 2011 con­cludes an intense effort by […]

Posted inElections

Jay Inslee confirms he’s running for governor in 2012; kickoff to be on Monday

Andrew Villeneuveby Andrew Villeneuve

As reporters and activists have long expect­ed, Jay Inslee has decid­ed to run for gov­er­nor of our great state of Wash­ing­ton in 2012. Inslee’s cam­paign issued a media advi­so­ry an hour ago invit­ing reporters to next week’s series of kick­off events, which will begin in Seat­tle. Refresh­ing­ly, the release was very straight­for­ward. It did­n’t say, Jay […]

Posted inAnnouncements, Events

Congressman Dennis Kucinich to speak at NWroots 2011 in Seattle on July 9th

by Robert Sargent

Hav­ing already made mul­ti­ple trips to Wash­ing­ton State this year, Ohio Con­gress­man Den­nis Kucinich will return on July 9th for the 2011 NWroots Con­fer­ence in Seat­tle. Kucinich has been mak­ing fre­quent vis­its here, pre­sum­ably in prepa­ra­tion for a redis­trict­ing that may leave him with­out a con­gres­sion­al dis­trict to rep­re­sent. Spec­u­la­tion is that he could settle […]

Posted inEvents, Policy Topics, Public Planning

Greetings from the Empire Builder!

Andrew Villeneuveby Andrew Villeneuve

Good morn­ing from the prairies of North Dako­ta! Though Net­roots Nation 2011 may have end­ed on Sat­ur­day evening, our adven­ture to Min­neapo­lis and back has not. After spend­ing a full day explor­ing greater Min­neapo­lis yes­ter­day, we made our way to Mid­way Sta­tion last night to board Amtrak’s Empire Builder for the trip home to Wash­ing­ton State. Patrick and I opted […]

Posted inAnnouncements, Events

LIVE from Minneapolis: Netroots Nation 2012 to be in Providence, Rhode Island

Andrew Villeneuveby Andrew Villeneuve

Sen­a­tor Shel­don White­house has just tak­en the stage here in Min­neapo­lis to announce that the next Net­roots Nation will be held in Prov­i­dence, Rhode Island, from June 7th to June 10th. We had guessed that the con­ven­tion would be in Prov­i­dence, main­ly because we already knew that orga­niz­ers want­ed to bring NN to Prov­i­dence last year. […]

Posted inElections, Unscheduled Programming

Out of touch

by Ken

Not since for­mer Pres­i­dent George H.W. Bush, who famous­ly could not fig­ure out how to use a price scan­ner at a gro­cery store, have we seen a politi­cian so out of touch with every­day peo­ple, as Mitt Rom­ney was today. Mr. Rom­ney, in a pho­ny, pathet­ic attempt at empa­thy, informed vot­ers today that he, too, […]

Posted inEvents, Media & Culture

LIVE from Minneapolis: That’s a wrap… Day One is officially done!

Andrew Villeneuveby Andrew Villeneuve

The first day of Net­roots Nation 2011 has come to a close. It was a long day, but a good day. We’ve met up with many old friends from con­ven­tions past, and made new ones. We attend­ed sev­er­al thought-pro­­vok­ing pan­els, explored the exhib­it hall, and became experts at nav­i­gat­ing Min­neapo­lis’ Sky­way sys­tem. And, of course, we […]

Posted inEvents, Media & Culture, World Commmunity

LIVE from Minneapolis: Building a stronger netroots community abroad

by Patrick Stickney

Here in the Unit­ed States, we don’t always hear about efforts abroad to uti­lize social media and devel­op new ways of orga­niz­ing online, because we don’t give our neigh­bors in the world com­mu­ni­ty much atten­tion. But we ought to, because pro­gres­sives in oth­er coun­tries are try­ing to make use of the Inter­net to bring about […]

Posted inEvents

LIVE from Minneapolis: Drew Westen, Tate Linden discuss keys to effective messaging

Andrew Villeneuveby Andrew Villeneuve

Good morn­ing from Min­neapo­lis! Today is the first day of Net­roots Nation, and the NPI team’s first full day in the Twin Cities. I’m at a break­out ses­sion called Get the Mes­sage?, orga­nized by Dar­cy Burn­er and fea­tur­ing Drew West­en and Tate Lin­den. The ses­sion was adver­tised as a pan­el, but it’s real­ly been more […]

Posted inElections, Events

Jay Inslee to speak at NWroots 2011 in Pioneer Square on July 9th — be there!

by Robert Sargent

As many NPI read­ers may know, pos­si­ble Demo­c­ra­t­ic guber­na­to­r­i­al can­di­date Jay Inslee will be join­ing Con­gress­man Jim McDer­mott, for­mer Cana­di­an Health Min­is­ter Ujjal Dosan­jh, and Wash­ing­ton State Labor Coun­cil Pres­i­dent Jeff John­son at NWroots 2011 on July 9th. NWroots is a region­al con­fer­ence for lib­er­al blog­gers, activists, and cit­i­zens inter­est­ed in pro­gres­sive pub­lic pol­i­cy. The event […]

Posted inElections

President Obama releases statement on Gregoire’s decision not to run in 2012

Andrew Villeneuveby Andrew Villeneuve

Fol­low­ing Gov­er­nor Chris Gre­goire’s announce­ment this morn­ing that she would not be seek­ing a third term as Wash­ing­ton’s chief exec­u­tive, Pres­i­dent Oba­ma released a state­ment thank­ing her for her ser­vice and wish­ing her well in her future endeav­ors… which might include an impor­tant posi­tion in his admin­is­tra­tion. I applaud Gov­er­nor Gre­goire for her decades of […]

Posted inElections

As expected, Gregoire announces that her second term as governor will be her last

Andrew Villeneuveby Andrew Villeneuve

Less than one hun­dred and twen­ty hours after Rob McKen­na announced that he would be run­ning for gov­er­nor as a Repub­li­can, Chris Gre­goire has revealed her own plans, say­ing that she will not be seek­ing a third term. At a press con­fer­ence at the exec­u­tive man­sion on the Capi­tol Cam­pus, Gre­goire reviewed some of her accomplishments […]

Posted inOpen Government, Policy Topics, Public Planning

Tim Eyman reveals that his old buddy Kemper Freeman Jr. is bankrolling I‑1125

Andrew Villeneuveby Andrew Villeneuve

When Tim Eyman announced a few weeks ago that he would be attempt­ing to qual­i­fy a mea­sure for this year’s bal­lot, we were imme­di­ate­ly sure that he had con­vinced some­body to put up a lot of cash to hire mer­ce­nary peti­tion­ers (because Tim does­n’t do vol­un­teer sig­na­ture dri­ves). On May 1st, I wrote the following: […]

Posted inMedia & Culture, Open Government, Policy Topics

Alaska begins releasing Sarah Palin emails

by Wes Murry

Today, many emails from Sarah Palin’s par­­tial­­ly-com­­plet­ed term as Alas­ka gov­er­nor were released.  So far, noth­ing too embar­rass­ing has come out, though the State of Alas­ka is still hold­ing back many doc­u­ments. Accord­ing to The Guardian, approx­i­mate­ly 2,358 pages are being with­held out of the 26,553 pages of emails that were iden­ti­fied in Decem­ber. The […]