What does that mean that Congress voted to condemned them?

Is moveon.org now condemned to pay full retail price for their ads? Is there a national registry for condemned organizations that warns you if they're in your area? Maybe I'm just not using the right search terms but I've found nothing that describes what this actually means as far as... well, anything. It seems like a vote to officially wag a collective finger at a publicity stunt. Please tell me that my tax dollars are not being spent on this nonsense.

At this point your children's and grandchildren's tax dollars are being spent on this nonsense. Ours was spent a long time ago.

I don't have kids. Can I get their money back?

I have no idea about the Congress voting issue - hasnt made the news here in Australia for obvious reasons.

But, as Moveon is an activist organization, of which one of the primary aims would be to put issues into people's attention, they do that by being noticed .. so if Congress has publicly made some pointless big deal about them, they have actually helped rather than hindered moveon's cause.

It means absolutely nothing and accomplishes nothing.

So why bother? Does it set some kind of precedent or influence how the media is likely to deal with groups like this in the future? I will be the first to accuse the government of flagrant misuses of time and money, but even I don't think they'd entertain this if it didn't have some kind of effect.

What it does is give them a chance to make speeches and talk into a camera and be quoted when they should be legislating.

Congress passes resolutions that don't actually change law all the time.

For instance, they recently passed a resolution expressing their condolences to Greece over the whole forest fires thing. The bill in question didn't devote funding to help Greece rebuild or anything, it was just 'Resolved, that Greece burning did suck most terribly. We're sorry it happened.' It's a fairly normal part of the legislative process to pass resolutions like that.

Seems to me there's a difference between expressing condolences and shouting an opinion as a Sense of the Senate about a newspaper advertisement. The former is uncontroversial. The latter may conflict with freedom of speech and may piss off half of their constituents. Seems to me when in doubt don't make symbolic gestures, if there isn't substantial accord.

When it comes to the actual effects in real life and real law outside DC, the difference between a resolution that says that the Congress prefers wool socks in winter (ie, uncontroversial) and one that says they think humans should be abolished (ie, controversial, probably piss off all their constituents) is negligible.

As Rasczak said, it's a way for politicians to make noise and be heard when they should legislate.

They've been making quite enough noise lately. Time for them to get back to work! Wait... maybe that's not such a good thing...