cynthia mckinney wins green party nomination

The Green Party has chosen their presidential nominee, and no, it's not Ralph Nader.

Instead, it's former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, whose claim to fame we reported on back in 2006:

In March, McKinney had a scuffle with U.S. Capitol security when she wasn't wearing a pin that signified her as a congresswoman and the officer refused to let her enter the building. She cited racism, but the officer claimed not to recognize her.

McKinney won the Green Party's nomination over the weekend, with Rosa Clemente on the ticket as the vice presidential candidate.

For those voters who think Ralph Nader and Bob Barr are too conventional, the Green Party this weekend named former Rep. Cynthia McKinney, D-Georgia, its 2008 presidential nominee.

At the Green Party's nominating convention Saturday in at the Chicago Symphony Center, McKinney received 313 out of 532 votes cast in the first round of balloting.

"I am asking you to vote your conscience, vote your dreams, vote your future, vote Green," McKinney told the convention's 800 or so attendees. "A vote for the Green Party is a vote for the movement that will turn this country right-side-up again."

In her acceptance speech, McKinney said that the Green Party only needs five percent of the national popular vote to be considered a major party rather than a minor one, "pulling up another chair to the table of public policy" with an official third party in the U.S.

"Nothing for us is impossible," she said. "We are in this to build a movement."