February 8, 2009

Terrorist Watchlist Watch

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TERRORIST WATCHLIST WATCH….This is good news, I think:

The House passed a bill Tuesday aimed at helping people who have been misidentified as terrorists clear their names from government watch lists and databases.

The bill (HR 559), sponsored by Yvette D. Clarke , D-N.Y., passed by a vote of 413-3….“This is a good bill,” said Pete Olson , R-Texas. “This is a bipartisan bill.”

It’s always been sort of Kafkaesque that a gigantic security bureaucracy could stick your name on a terrorist watchlist and basically give you no way to get it off. It’s long past time for Congress to address this.

But here’s what I want to know: if this bill passed 413-3, what took so long? Did Republicans only decide they could afford to support it once George Bush was out of office? Or what?

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

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