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Meet the Candidates: The Victors of Tuesday's Congressional Primaries

Seven states held congressional primaries for a total of six Senate and 70 House seats this Tuesday. We've got the results of the congressional primaries in Alabama, Iowa, Montana, New Mexico, New Jersey and South Dakota, thanks to the citizen journalists posting information to the candidate profiles in Congresspedia's Wiki the Vote project.

New Mexico definitely had the most interesting race as two current Republican representatives and one Democratic representative vie for the seat of retiring Sen. Pete Domenici, but this is an especially turbulent election and nearly every seat is being contested, so they're all worth a look.

You can find full listings of all the candidates and profiles at the Wiki the Vote project homepage or through the listings below. We need your help to find out more about these candidates, so if you know something about them please add it to their profile. (You can always contact one of the staff editors for help.)

Meet the Candidates: Seventy-six congressional primaries today

By Congresspedia assistant editor Avelino Maestas

As the presidential primary season draws to an expected close tonight, attention is beginning to shift toward congressional races across the country. Seven states are holding nominating contests for House and Senate seats today: Alabama, California, Iowa, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico and South Dakota. Our citizen-journalists have kept Congresspedia’s Wiki-the-Vote project humming with updates to candidate profiles and portal pages for every state, but we welcome your knowledge if you’ve got information that can be added. Here’s a quick guide to getting started.

On to the races: Sen. Barack Obama is favored in both South Dakota and Montana, and Sen. Hillary Clinton's next move remains unknown. Elsewhere, six Senate seats are up for grabs, and 70 House seats as well, and while many are competitive we thought we would highlight some of the most interesting or important races. Click through for our state-by-state breakdown.

Corporate-Sponsored "Slacktivism": Bigger and More Dangerous than the Urban Dictionary Realizes

Recently while browsing the Web I came across UrbanDictionary.com, which is sort of a wiki of contemporary slang. I found some of the newer words listed there amusing, like "hobosexual" (the opposite of metrosexual; someone who cares little about their looks), "consumerican," ("a particularly American brand of consumerism"), and "wikidemia" ("an academic work passed off as scholarly yet researched entirely on Wikipedia").

Congresspedia Preview: This Week in Congress (May 30 - June 5, 2008)

The major action on Capitol Hill this week will be centered around around climate change legislation: the Senate should spend most of the week debating one of the competing proposals, America’s Climate Security Act. The House, meanwhile, will likely vote on an Iraq War supplemental, and both chambers still have to approve a 2009 fical year budget resolution that establishes the framework for next year's spending bills. In election news, the final Democratic presidential primaries happen tomorrow, as well as congressional primaries in seven states.

The America's Climate Security Act is bipartisan legislation that aims to reduce the amount of carbon emissions in the country by 70 percent by 2050. It would establish a “cap-and-trade” program: emissions would be "capped" at a certain level (with the ceiling dropping further every few years) through a permit system for polluters, with the holders of those permits allowed to reduce their emissions and then "trade" (read: sell) the permits for the remainder. This creates a financial incentive for polluters to reduce emissions that will increase over time as the lowering cap makes the permits more precious.

It's unlikely the bill will become law this year, however: it faces an uphill battle in the Senate and a likely veto from President Bush. Still, the the battle lines formed in the debate this weak will auger the the fate of the inevitable resurfacing of the issue in next year's Congress.

More on this week's legislation, committee schedules and an update on superdelegates after the break.

Superdelegates to Decide the Fate of Michigan and Florida Votes

On Saturday the Democratic National Committee Rules and Bylaws Committee will meet to decide the fate of Florida and Michigan's delegates to the Democratic National Convention. As DNC members, the 30 rules committee members are all superdelegates and also have a vote at the convention. Between them, 13 have endorsed Hillary Clinton, eight have endorsed Barack Obama and nine are uncommitted. They also include one DNC member from Michigan (uncommitted) and one from Florida (endorsing Hillary), who are unable to cast a vote concerning their home states. (See the full membership here.) The committee will hear challenges to its earlier ruling that Michigan and Florida's delegates would not be seated at the national convention, with their votes thus not counting towards the presidential nomination. Bringing the challenges are Florida superdelegate and DNC member Jon Ausman (undeclared for either Clinton or Obama) and a representative from Michigan's state democratic party. Other representatives from the two state parties and the presidential campaigns will also make their case to the committee. The committee will hear three specific challenges:

Congress Orders Investigation into Pentagon Pundit Scandal

By a voice vote, the U.S. Congress passed an amendment last week to the Defense Authorization Act for FY2009, forbidding the U.S. Department of Defense to engage in "propaganda purposes within the United States not otherwise specifically authorized by law." Probably more important is that the amendment requires an investigation by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) to study and report back to Congress on "the extent to which the Department of Defense has violated the prohibition on propaganda" already established in previous laws passed by Congress. The amendment was prompted by an April 20 report in the New York Times exposing the Pentagon military analyst program through which the Pentagon lobbied for war by cultivating former military officers who became regulars on Fox News, CNN and the broadcast networks. As Diane Farsetta and Sheldon Rampton have argued previously, the Pentagon pundit program broke existing laws which forbid government officials from engaging in "publicity or propaganda purposes within the United States not heretofore authorized by the Congress."

Rep. Vito Fossella Makes 30 Republicans Retiring or Resigned from the House

When Rep. Vito Fossella (R-N.Y.) allegedly ran a stoplight in Virginia earlier this month, he hit the brakes on his career in the U.S. House of Representatives, which has now ended with his retirement. While he resisted calls for his resignation for a while, his drunk driving arrest and the ensuing scandal proved to be too much for his Republican colleagues, who kept up the pressure on Fossella to vacate his Staten Island seat in the hopes of fielding a candidate not under investigation.

Product Placements vs. VNRs

We recently received an email from someone who asked, "What is the difference between a 'product placement' and a 'video news release' (VNR)? Is a VNR a type of product placement?" Since other people might have the same question, I thought I'd post my answer here. On SourceWatch, we have articles about both topics. As our article about video news releases explains, a VNR is a piece of video that is created (typically by a public relations firm on behalf of a paying client) and designed to look like a news segment for broadcast by TV news programs. It deceives audiences by creating the impression that the "news" they see on TV was produced by independent reporters, when in fact VNRs are promotional pieces designed to sell something for a client whose identity is not always disclosed. TV news shows often deny that they use VNRs, but Diane Farsetta, our senior researcher, has done extensive research in which she found numerous examples of the practice. "Product placement" is a separate but similarly sneaky practice of getting television programs and movies to display a company's product within their program.

Meet the Candidates: The Victors of the Kentucky and Oregon Congressional Primaries

Kentucky, Oregon and Arkansas had their congressional primaries on Tuesday and, as usual, Congresspedia's Wiki the Vote project is on the case with which candidates made the cut for the November ballot.

Well, Arkansas sort of had congressional primaries - as best we can tell, every member of its incumbent congressional delegation faced no challenge from within their own party or from the other major party, so each will face only Green and Libertarian challengers in the fall. Oregon and Kentucky, which both have a Republican senator up for reelection and at least one House member retiring, had vigorous primaries.

Each candidate and incumbent has a profile within Congresspedia's Wiki the Vote project, which you can find at the Oregon, Arkansas and Kentucky portals, or through the full listing of the primary victors below. We need your help to find out more about these candidates, so if you know something about them please add it to their profile. (You can always contact one of the staff editors for help.)

Congresspedia Preview: This Week in Congress (May 16 - 23, 2008)

Legislation to fund the Iraq War through early 2009 will head to the Senate this week, and both chambers will try to iron out differences on a 2009 budget resolution. In addition, Congress may have to vote on a veto override of the 2007 Farm bill. In elections news, Arkansas, Kentucky and Oregon hold congressional primary elections this week, while a controversial nominee to the Federal Election Commission withdraws his name from consideration.

The Senate will take up the 2008 Iraq war supplemental this week, following the House’s vote on the measure last Thursday. The Senate will serve to temper the bill produced by the House, by reinserting $162 billion for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars while likely stripping out some of the most controversial provisions.

One potential victim could be the new G.I. bill, which – along with extended unemployment benefits and other domestic spending – was part of the package approved by the house last week.

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