RON McGUIRE
“What we’re seeing in Philadelphia is a First Amendment crisis that could become a First Amendment catastrophe,” said McGuire, an attorney working with the R2K legal collective. “The authorities in Philadelphia have set bail for demonstrators facing misdemeanor charges as high as $30,000. It’s unprecedented. We have $1 million bail set for demonstrators facing felonies. The police commissioner has called on the federal government to use the anti-racketeering and conspiracy laws to prosecute demonstrators.”
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LOUIS DUBOSE
Editor of the Texas Observer and co-author (with Molly Ivins) of Shrub: The Short But Happy Political Life of George W. Bush, Dubose said this morning: “Bush is speaking in code to the religious right… This is the politics of money and of message and of personality and Bush is ideally suited for all three.”
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BARBARA RENAUD GONZALEZ
Columnist for the San Antonio Express-News, Gonzalez said: “If we didn’t know him, we’d be pleased with the speech — it sounded positive and loving. The problem I have with Gov. Bush is that it takes government to create social change, it’s not enough to have the private sector and the religious community to take care of the most disadvantaged among us. Gov. Bush speaks without any real knowledge of the debilitating experience of poverty, injustice, prison, a poor education.”

KEVIN GRAY
Author of the forthcoming Pearls Before Swine, a book on the national significance of the Confederate flag struggle, Gray said: “Both Bush and McCain hitched their wagon to the most racist elements here in South Carolina. Both major political parties use blacks as props. Cheney voted against releasing Mandela, he says that was because the ANC was a ‘terrorist’ group, but people of color are never allowed to say ‘give me liberty or give me death.'”

JEFF GATES
Author of Democracy at Risk: Rescuing Main Street from Wall Street — A Populist Vision for the 21st Century, Gates was former counsel to the Senate Finance Committee from 1980 to 1987. He said today: “A real conservative would want to protect what we have for posterity. Instead today’s ‘conservatives’ undermine posterity with a policy mix that results in the top 1 percent of households now exceeding the combined wealth of the bottom 95 percent. The Democrats are barely better; the gap between the have-nots and the have-everythings has continued to widen at an accelerating pace during the Clinton-Gore administration.”
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For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy: Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020