MEDIA ROOTS – For the third straight election, an international convenience store chain is now offering coffee cups featuring President Barack Obama and Governor Mitt Romney. The unscientific poll currently claims to hold Obama over Romney, 58 to 42 percent respectively.

The marketing ploy has been labeled “7-Election” and offers cups featuring only the two establishment candidates running for office. However, several additional candidates continue to actively run while still not taken seriously by corporate establishments. Below are grassroots campaigns that voters might also consider to support this November despite them not having their face stamped on cups of joe.

Gary Johnson / Jim Gray – Libertarian Party

    Johnson is the sanest man running for president, according to GQ. He’s on the ballot in 47 states and believes the federal government spends too much because it does too much, such as subsidizing public energy resources and prolonging warfare.

Rocky Anderson / Luis Rodriguez – Justice Party

    The former mayor of Salt Lake City wishes to create a watchdog agency, instead re-enlisting Congress, to oversee the Federal Reserve while raising the federal minimum wage without first halting inflation.

Rosanne Barr / Cindy Sheehan – Peace and Freedom Party

    Barr calls for an end to the prohibition of marijuana, rejects continued war support for Israel, and supported Sheehan’s congressional campaign in 2008. But who will run with Barr now that Sheehan has resigned from the campaign?

Dr. Jill Stein / Cheri Honkala – Green Party

    This team has based their campaign around their Green New Deal and wishes to create millions of green jobs. But Dr. Stein admits a vote for her would “take votes away from Obama who would be better for the 99% than Romney.”

Virgil Goode / Jim Clymer – Constitution Party

    Goode does support an audit of the Federal Reserve but believes that “legal immigration must be reduced not increased.” He rejects Obamacare and continued funding of Planned Parenthood but does support capital punishment, the utilization of nuclear power, and the expansion of domestic oil drilling opportunities.

The campaign of Dr. Ron Paul is now over with the official selection of Mitt Romney for the Republican Party’s ticket.

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Oscar Mosko for Media Roots.

Photo provided by Flickr user sashafatcat.

MEDIA ROOTS – Media Roots is a not-for-profit community news sharing platform that has been keeping followers in the loop since 2009. We follow stories that are often marginalized by mainstream outlets and are always looking for fresh perspectives, particularly from the artist and activist community.

Is there a song about the struggle for justice that you’ve heard recently that you think needs to get out there?

Did you watch a film online that deserves a solid review?

Have you read a poem or story that really captures the spirit of a social movement that’s important to you?

Submit your review (1000 words max.), as well as a hyperlink to the original content, for consideration by September 23 and our editors will select the top two entries for distribution on the site. A grand prize of $50 will be awarded in the form of an online gift card and both will receive a Media Roots T-shirt!

With your submission please include your name, phone number, and your city and state. (Only your name will be published with the article.) Also, please mention your desire to contribute to Media Roots in the future, if applicable. All submissions will become property of Media Roots and can be used for any purpose.

Good luck and we look forward to hearing from you!

Submissions without attachments can be made to [email protected]

MEDIA ROOTS – Support to repeal the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 (NDAA) is growing as the Bush-Obama administrations continue to pursue the ongoing global ‘War on Terror’ of nearly twelve years.

Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Chris Hedges is on the front lines of the battle to nullify section 1021 – the indefinite detention clause of the NDAA – along with professor Noam Chomsky, activist Daniel Ellsberg, and author Naomi Wolf. Less than one month after President Obama signed the bill into law, this astute group sued the federal government for clauses that are, at best, constitutionally vague. Consequentially, Manhattan Federal Court temporarily sided with the plaintiffs by having issued an injunction on the indefinite detention clause which has since been appealed by the Obama administration.

The call to nullify the NDAA continues to surge around the country. Last month, the Clark County Republican Party Central Committee of Nevada unanimously called for its appeal while legislators in Michigan are currently considering a bill that could virtually revoke the federal law in that state.

Additionally, Ben Swann of WXIX recently suggested the president, and some members of Congress, may be in direct violation of the very law that they created by recently supporting Al-Qaeda-affiliated Syrian opposition forces. He explains that “late last year, when Sen. John McCain co-wrote the National Defense Authorization Act, and President Obama signed it into law, they crafted a law that gave the president the authority to use all necessary and appropriate force during the current armed conflict with Al-Qaeda and the Taliban and associated forces, including the power to indefinitely detain anyone caught supporting Al-Qaeda, which in this case is the president and members of Congress.”

Oskar Mosco for Media Roots.

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TRUTHDIG –  [Section 1021] of the NDAA, signed into law by Obama on Dec. 31, 2011, obliterates some of our most important constitutional protections. It authorizes the executive branch to order the military to seize U.S. citizens deemed to be terrorists or associated with terrorists. Those taken into custody by the military, which becomes under the NDAA a domestic law enforcement agency, can be denied due process and habeas corpus and held indefinitely in military facilities. Any activist or dissident, whose rights were once protected under the First Amendment, can be threatened under this law with indefinite incarceration in military prisons, including our offshore penal colonies. The very name of the law itself—the Homeland Battlefield Bill—suggests the totalitarian credo of endless war waged against enemies within “the homeland” as well as those abroad.

In May, Judge Forrest issued a temporary injunction invalidating Section 1021 as a violation of the First and Fifth amendments. It was a courageous decision. Forrest will decide within a couple of weeks whether she will make the injunction permanent.

Barack Obama’s administration has appealed Judge Forrest’s temporary injunction and would certainly appeal a permanent injunction. It is a stunning admission by this president that he will do nothing to protect our constitutional rights. The administration’s added failure to restore habeas corpus, its use of the Espionage Act six times to silence government whistle-blowers, its support of the FISA Amendment Act—which permits warrantless wiretapping, monitoring and eavesdropping on U.S. citizens—and its ordering of the assassination of U.S. citizens under the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force, or AUMF, is a signal that for all his rhetoric, Obama, like his Republican rivals, is determined to remove every impediment to the unchecked power of the security and surveillance state. I and the six other plaintiffs, who include reporters, professors and activists, will most likely have to continue this fight in an appellate court and perhaps the Supreme Court.

Read Chris Hedges’ complete article at Truthdig.

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Photo provided by Flickr user DonkeyHotey.

MEDIA ROOTS – The criminal trial for my alleged resisting arrest was again delayed this morning after prosecutors demanded access to a video that captured the aftermath of the March 25 detainment when I defied an unlawful order by a US Park Police offcier to put away my video camera. The trial showed increased public interest with several additional pedicab operators in attendance in court this morning for the outcome of the trial will heavily influence the future of this green mode of transport on the National Mall.

Citizen journalists, while lawfully protected by the Constitution, continue to be harassed – and occasionally detained – by many officers of the law for recording them during their duties. I was fortunate enough to be invited to the studios of Russia Today yesterday to discuss how citizen journalists’ rights continue to be marginalized yet how affective their work is at holding law enforcement accountable.

Oskar Mosco

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Liz Wahl and Oskar Mosco discuss the plight of citizen journalists.

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MEDIA ROOTS –  When visiting the Republican National Committee’s home page, one will find it stated that the RNC is “not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.”  However, on the party’s Facebook page, a photo of volunteers phone-banking for Mitt Romney was uploaded last week.  There is absolutely no reference to the Ron Paul campaign when the party’s national convention is to be held next month in Tampa to determine the party’s official endorsement.

Last Friday, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow discussed the myth that Mitt Romney is already the official nominee for the Republican National Committee.  Maddow quoted RNC rule 40(b) which explains that “each candidate for nomination … shall demonstrate the support of a plurality of the delegates from each of five (5) or more states ….” Dr. Paul has already received the overwhelming support from Republican delegates in Iowa, Maine, Minnesota, and Louisiana going into next Saturday’s Nebraska State Convention where 23 at-large delegates will be selected to go to Tampa.

Additionally, according to RNC rule 30, the national committee does not recognize a state’s binding of delegates such as the case in Nevada and Massachusetts.  Last February, the Paul campaign was able to secure 22 out of the 28 delegates in Nevada that are currently bound by the state’s committee rules to vote for Mitt Romney.  In an unprecedented move in Mitt Romney’s home state of Massachusetts, the RNC state committee stripped seventeen delegates of their credentials because they refused to sign an affidavit promising they would back Mitt Romney at the RNC.  The former governor has 38 bound delegates during the first round of voting in Tampa but has zero bound delegates should there be a second round of voting.

Litigation is already under way when a group unaffiliated with the Paul campaign–referred to as Lawyers for Ron Paul–filed suit against the Republican National Committee last month in California’s 9^th Circuit Court after reports of electoral fraud and intimidation continue to surface around the country.

Oskar Mosco

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Austin Petersen of Freedom Works and RT’s Abby Martin discuss the intimidation against Ron Paul delegates.

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Lawyers for Ron Paul describe the civil rights lawsuit filed in federal court on behalf of American voters.

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Photo provided by Flickr user DonkeyHotey.