Even though you didn't vote for him, the DNC decided to, er, award your votes to Obama anyhow!

Leah sends me this link where, amazingly, Mark Benjamin of Alex Koppelman War Room in Salon does -- and to think I thought the art had died out -- some actual reportage. Read as an antidote to whatever else the OFB and our perfumed stenographers write about the RBC protesters:

But if you just walk up to the protesters and ask them why they are there, the people who traveled from across the country that I talked to said they were angry because the Florida/Michigan debacle gives them sinking feeling that that America democracy is broken. Clinton didn't pay their bus fare, or even tell them to show up, they said.

"We are here because we want every vote counted," said Wesley Taylor, who traveled by bus from Coral Springs, Florida to air his bad feelings. Taylor, who voted for John Edwards in the primary, served 14 years in the Army, including service in Bosnia. "I didn’t fight not to have my vote counted," he said.

"It is not democracy," complained Debbie Kubiak, 52, who traveled from Buffalo, N.Y. "It is worse than what they did back in 2000."

The black limousines passing through the protest crowd on the way to the meeting only contributed to the feeling among the people shouting "count our vote" that, like 2000, the votes of individual citizens are being discarded and American power is being divvied out in smoke-filled back rooms.

A professor of politics will explain over a three-hour lecture why these people just don't understand the brilliance of the American electoral system. But they seem honestly angry with the Supreme Court in 2000. They are angry with the Electoral College. They are angry because they think that the each vote should count and the voters should pick the president.

Imagine that.

Superdelegates? All of a sudden we are hearing about them. Who are these people?" asked Sharon Miley, a 66-year old woman who traveled by bus from South Bend Indiana. "I've been voting since I was 22. This is the first time I felt like my vote did not count," she said.

"It is the whole system," added Phyllis Steele, who came along with her. "It is not democracy any more."

The Democrats may have good reason to punish Florida and Michigan for moving up their primaries. Perhaps they think in the long run, it will be better for the primary process and democracy. But they are doing a rotten job of explaining it to people.

"They travel by bus" is today's equivalent of Jesse Jackson's "they work every day."

Road Show in Burlington,WA

UNHC’s sixth in the Sicko-Cure Road Show series is coming to Burlington, WA.

Join us on June 7th, 2 pm, Burlington,WA. Burlington Public Library, 820 E. Washington Ave. with SICKO Special Features and HR 676: The Single Payer Solution.

Jim McDermott, Washington’s only sponsor of HR 676, says that, “affordable health care is an essential human right as well as a global competitive necessity."

Texas authorities collected Warren Jeffs' DNA as part of the State's investigation into four child rapes the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints celebrated as "spiritual marriages" while Jeffs, convicted of conspiracy to commit rape in a separate incident, stayed at the Yearning For Zion ranch near Eldorado . The female children were not born in Texas but were residents of the state when the "spiritual marriages" -- recognized by the church but not legal in Texas -- took place.

According to the CNN story, The criminal investigation moved to the forefront Friday as a Texas judge refused to sign an order returning to their homes more than 300 children seized last month from the polygamist sect's ranch. Judge Barbara Walther said she wanted all the mothers involved to sign the order first.

In the criminal investigation, marital records -- known as bishop's records -- were seized April 3 from the sect's Yearning for Zion ranch, according to an affidavit for a search warrant seeking the DNA samples. The records show that Jeffs married a 14-year-old girl January 18, 2004, in Utah, the affidavit says.

Jeffs "married" three other underage brides -- two 12-year-olds and a 14-year-old -- at the sect's 1,700-acre ranch near Eldorado, Texas, the affidavit says.

The court document refers to photos of Jeffs with his alleged child brides. In one picture, the affidavit states, he is kissing one of the 12-year-olds. In another, he is with a 15-year-old wife at the birth of their child in October 2004, according to the affidavit.

Jeffs is believed to have "committed the felony offense of sexual assault of a child," the affidavit says. One of the 12-year-olds, who was believed to have married Jeffs on July 27, 2006, allegedly was sexually assaulted by him that day, the affidavit states.

San Angelo state district court judge Barbara Walther didn't take the appeals' court and Texas State Supreme Court decisions returning the children lightly, but she is acting to protect the children at risk