Wyoming rarely gets any attention from the presidential candidates. As everyone knows, we're pure red, a caucus state, and too small to matter anyway. In the last seven years, we've had several fun opportunities to denounce and reject Dick Cheney on his allegedly home turf but, as for attention from national Democrats, forget it. Even Gary Trauner, who only lost to Barbara Cubin by 1000 votes in 2006, had a hard time getting the national party to pay any attention to him.

But, for today and tomorrow, we are front and center.

Welcome to Wyoming, Barack, Hillary, Bill, and Chelsea!

So I went down to the County Clerk's office today to change my registration from I to D so that I can caucus for Obama on March 8th. And I had an interesting conversation with the clerk who told me that they have been "crazy busy" since last week -- which just happens to coincide with the opening of Obama's headquarters in Laramie (and Casper, Cheyenne, and Rock Springs.)

The Wyoming Democratic Caucuses will be held on Saturday, March 8. But only registered Dems can participate and you must be registered as a Democrat by this Friday, February 22. Unlike our general election laws which allow you to show up at the election site, register, and cast your vote, you must have been registered as a Democrat for 15 days prior to the county caucuses to participate. You cannot show up and register at the caucus site and and then participate.

kainah has graciously offered to post a story tonight after a very long STORYTIME hiatus. Hopefully, many of the great original crowd will find us and some of the nearly 17,000 new kossacks since last June will also join in. For 'newbies,' STORYTIME was born quite by accident in the summer of 2006 and soon developed a Friday night niche at dkos. To encourage other storytellers, I then offered STORYTIME PRESENTS and STORYTIME DUETS, two companion threads on the same subject in which possum and I joined up for some delightful memory romps. Now he is running for congress! See what can happen when you hang out with a Crone on Friday nights! kainah has contributed previous STORYTIME PRESENTS on her civil rights pilgrimages and her experiences after the 1970 Kent State shootings. She has been a warm presence in many STORYTIME diaries and is a dedicated peace activist. We will both be here tonight to chat, to welcome new kossacks and to catch up with oldies but goodies! So come in, put your feet up, let your hair down and, most of all, enjoy. ~Cronesense

When the war in Iraq started, I decided to keep the names of all the Americans who died in this ill-begotten, pre-emptive war on a poster board for our peace group. In the beginning, silly me thought that one-half of a poster board would probably be sufficient. So, on April 4, 2003, as I spoke to the press outside the University of Wyoming Union while Laramie's Stand Up for Peace waged a die-in:

the half-board of names made its first public appearance:

It soon became clear that this was unworkable and, today, I will add panel 14 to the set, a set that has now grown so large I will soon need to put the main sections of it in our storage shed.

A major portion of storytelling is passing on history's facts and lessons.  In that vein, I am very happy to welcome, kainah, again tonight for her perceptive insights into this moment in history.  For those of you too young to remember the impact of Kent State I urge you to take the time to read kainah's essays.  They provide the deep background to understand all of what led up, during and following that day in May that cut a deep scar in our national psyche.

It was just a year ago that reading kainah's series on Kent State made me decide to stop lurking and join dkos so I could tell her how much her finely written essays meant to me.  Tonight she provides an up-close and personal view of the events of that fateful day.  She has carried this day in her life for 37 years and is dedicated to making sure the story is accurately and fully told. Currently, her series from last year is running at Progressive Historians and will be nominated for History Carnival once the series is complete.

(Links to the complete series of diaries can be found at the end of this piece.)

Tonight, STORYTIME PRESENTS is the final installment of kainah's Civil Rights Pilgrimage.  The first two parts were great examples of storytelling while teaching some very important history. If you missed them go here for Part 1 and Part 2

kainah is a wonderful writer of long-time Daily Kos status.  I became aware of her last spring when I read her brilliant and compelling series on Kent State.

Since the story of the deaths of Michael "Mickey" Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman is fairly well known, I considered giving just a brief overview. However, that wouldn’t honor them as they deserve. So I have given a full account of the killings although I have not covered the multiple, and lengthy, legal proceedings that followed. (I give you plenty of links, though, to do more research on your own.) If you know the story and would prefer to just read the account of our pilgrimage, skip down to * * * .

Tonight, STORYTIME PRESENTS continues its journey down the road with kainah, to Selma, Alabama, detailing the events that happened there so many years ago.  Last week's edition was riveting and very educational as well. If you missed it, here is a LINK

Last week, we visited the Alabama sites where Jonathan Daniels and Viola Liuzzo were murdered, ending our journey on the east edge of Selma at the infamous Edmund Pettus Bridge. While history remembers Selma as the focus of the March 1965 Alabama unrest, it was neither the starting nor the ending point of those dramatic days. So, let’s move about ten miles down the road and over the flip for the impetus behind the Selma to Montgomery march. And then please join me in comments to share your own memories of those riveting, tumultuous, inspiring, and so often tragic times.

Good Evening STORYTIME fans!  Tonight I have the great pleasure of introducing a story written by kainah for the second outing of the new series known as STORYTIME PRESENTS.

kainah is a wonderful writer of long-time Daily Kos status.  I became aware of her last spring when I read her brilliant and compelling series on Kent State. Tonight she takes you on another journey of historical significance in Part One of her series.

In honor of Bloody Sunday, let's talk about civil rights. We give it much less notice than Vietnam, usually, but I suspect it profoundly shaped many of us. In September 1957, I started kindergarten, my grandmother bought us our first television and the fight to integrate Little Rock's Central High erupted. Since I loved school, I couldn’t imagine people needing soldiers to gain entry. When my mother couldn’t explain why -- my favorite question, then and now -- I became irrevocably hooked on TV news.

As we celebrated our victories on Election Day, a few races remained undecided. High on that list was WY-AL where Gary Trauner trailed Barbara "I'd-slap-you-across-the-face" Cubin by about 1%. Throughout that first week, people braced for a recount but, when the official results were certified, Cubin had a 1,014 vote edge out of 193,369 cast, about 100 votes over the trigger for an automatic recount. Under Wyoming law, an automatic recount occurs when the difference is less that 1% of the winner's total.

Trauner, saying "it is time to put this election to rest and look to the future," conceded despite his concerns about "statistical anomalies" in Sheridan County. That may have officially been the end of the race but now, a group of Wyoming citizens is determined to check the ballots and they're going to get their chance.

Details on the flip.

An amazing exchange just occurred on the floor of the House of Representatives as Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA), outgoing chair of the appropriations committee, laid the entire fault of not having a budget at "squarely" at the feet of Bill Frist.

After Lewis finished, Rep. David Obey (D-WI), incoming chair of the Approps committee and a personal favorite, took over the lashing to add his own admonishments to his "friends in the majority."

I've been transcribing now for 20 minutes so jump over for C-SPAN's best moments of the day. Coming up:  Barney Frank.

I've been busy making calls for Gary Trauner for two days but a search has failed to turn up any evidence that dkos has gotten a diary about the wonderful protest against Dick Cheney yesterday in Laramie.

If it has been posted, I'll delete this diary but the people who did this definitely deserve to have their efforts recorded here.

My apologies that I cannot post some great photos of this event but I haven't bothered to register with any of kos's approved image hosts yet and don't have the energy to deal with that at this point.

More on the flip...

The Jackson-Hole News & Guide has an excellent piece, titled "Dem's Effort Gaining Steam," on the status of the Trauner campaign. Everyone, by now, has heard about Rep. Barbara Cubin's outrageous post-debate comment Sunday night to her MS-disabled, Libertarian opponent, Thomas Rankin: "If you weren't sitting in that chair, I'd slap you across the face."  

But how will that, and Freudenthal's apparently pending endorsement, affect the race? Some insights across the fold.

Back in June, Drake Hill, chairman of the Wyoming GOP, decided something fishy must be up with Gov. Freudenthal's running of state government. After all, too many people liked Freudenthal and the GOP couldn't figure out a decent way to oppose his re-election bid. So, clearly, there had to be something wrong.

Hill's solution? Request "all documents and materials of any kind whatsoever" related to the building of a new state prison in Torrington, the hiring of any outside consultants, and all sole-source contracts Freudenthal has approved.  

That would certainly turn up something, right?

In late April, I wrote a seven part series on the 1970 Kent State shootings. Having researched those events for thirty plus years, I'm addicted to the facts. The past few Mays, I've spent too many hours correcting well-meaning articles on Kent State that mangled important facts. So, this year, I decided to spend my time telling the story rather than correcting others. I expected interesting responses but never the emotional outpouring that followed. The comments in the shootings and the immediate aftermath diaries moved me beyond words. People told their own incredible tales and taught me that many, many others share my lingering anguish over the events of that May. Sharing memories eased our emotional burdens and, in the course of our journey, younger participants not only learned about the shootings but gained perspective on some of the forces that drove those oft-scorned hippies from their original dreams. I can never, ever, fully express my appreciation to this community for this healing process.

Join me on the flip for the story of my journey of reconciliation back to Kent State, 29 years after I left.  

Kos wonders whether the Wyoming at-large seat should be included in the possible pick-up category in his thread on Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball. I posted this comment late there so decided to share it.

I've been in Wyoming for about 30 years and I've never seen the political climate quite so favorable for Dems. The environmental issue -- will national Dems ever really discover the environment as an issue? -- is creating some very strange tensions. Both ranchers and sportsman suddenly see the energy boom threatening their lifestyles. The "Sagebrush Rebellion" is so far over that the phrase is no longer uttered. Deeply held Wyoming cultural values are being threatened and everyone seems to feel it. People aren't happy here.

Follow me over for more.

At 12:24 PM on Monday, May 4, 1970, twenty-eight Ohio National Guardsmen pivoted 135 degrees and began shooting into a crowd of student protesters at Kent State University. By the time the shooting ended thirteen seconds later, the guardsmen had fired sixty-seven rounds and four students lay dead or dying with at least another nine having been shot.

In Part I of this series, we looked at Nixon's curiously timed announcement of the Cambodian invasion and the May Day rally at Yale University. Part II examined the events of that weekend at Kent. Part III explored the events of Monday, May 4. Part IV dealt with the immediate aftermath of the shootings. Part V looked at the various investigations following the shootings. Part VI examined the federal grand jury and criminal trial of eight guardsmen. This, Part VII, concludes the series by examining the civil proceedings.  

In memory of Jeffrey Miller, Allison Krause, Bill Schroeder, and Sandy Scheuer, join me in exploring the Kent State civil trials.

At 12:24 PM on Monday, May 4, 1970, twenty-eight Ohio National Guardsmen pivoted 135 degrees and began shooting into a crowd of student protesters at Kent State University. By the time the shooting ended thirteen seconds later, the guardsmen had fired sixty-seven rounds and four students lay dead or dying with at least another nine having been shot.

In Part I, we look at Nixon's curiously timed announcement of the Cambodian invasion and the May Day rally at Yale University. Part II examines the events of that weekend at Kent. Part III explores the events of Monday, May 4. Part IV deals with the immediate aftermath of the shootings. Part V looks at the various investigations following the shootings. Part VI examines the federal grand jury and criminal trial of eight guardsmen. Part VII concludes the series by examining the years of civil proceedings.

In memory of Jeffrey Miller, Allison Krause, Bill Schroeder, and Sandy Scheuer, join me in exploring the federal grand jury investigation into the events of May 4.