Renzi Breaks Silence: Bush Administration Tried To Rig My Election And ‘Needs To Be Investigated’

Late last month, the FBI raided the home of Rep. Rick Renzi (R-AZ) as part of its “two-track investigation” into the congressman “regarding a land deal, as well as a piece of legislation he helped steer that may have improperly benefited a major campaign contributor.” The House Ethics Committee has signaled that it too may now investigate Renzi.

Renzi’s case was opened by former U.S. Attorney Paul Charlton, who was fired as part of the Bush administration’s purge. In Oct. 2006, word leaked to the media about the investigation. Renzi’s top aide, Brian Murray, then called Charlton’s spokesman Wyn Hornbuckle to inquire about the investigation. Such calls are highly improper and potentially illegal.

Yesterday in an interview with Phoenix’s KPNX, Renzi spoke for the first time since the FBI raid and said that he believes he is being smeared by the Justice Department. He refused to take any responsibility for the land deal, instead charging — without any evidence — that the leaks on the investigation were “lies.” He added that “to make that up and put that out means the Department of Justice was engaged in electioneering and that needs to be investigated.”

Renzi also defended Murray’s phone call to Charlton’s office, even though calls from lawmakers and their staffs to U.S. attorneys about ongoing investigations are potentially illegal. “All he’s doing is calling the public relations department and saying what is this? What’s going on here? He left a message on a telephone machine,” he stated. Two other ousted U.S. attorneys — John McKay and David Iglesias — also received phone calls from federal lawmakers pressuring them on investigations.

He added that for “anyone to conjure up that this somehow affected Mr. Charlton being fired, is just political theater.”

Transcript: expand post »

HOST: The congressman admits that this has been a tough time for him, and he says he’s learning who his true friends are. But he’s also alleging that he’s a victim of a smear campaign by the U.S. Department of Justice.

In Washington, DC, where nobody is immune from scrutiny, Arizona’s third-term congressman, Rick Renzi, finds himself the focus of a public corruption investigation. He insists his role in a controversial land deal, was ethical.

RENZI: It was absolutely in the public interest. It was absolutely in the best interest of the state of Arizona.

HOST: Earlier this month, FBI investigators served a warrant at a southern Arizona insurance company owned by Renzi’s family. Investigators are reportedly looking at whether Renzi profited from a piece of land near Sierra Vista, linked to his legislation. The land is owned by former business partner James Sandlin.

RENZI: He’s a good friend, and a very honest man, a very competent man.

HOST: Renzi also went on the offensive, claiming the Department of Justice leaked lies about him and his father when he was up for re-election.

RENZI: And to make that up and put that out means the Department of Justice was engaged in electioneering and that needs to be investigated.

HOST: Renzi also responded to congressional testimony by former U.S. Attorney Paul Charlton. Renzi’s chief of staff contacted Charlton’s office when news of the Renzi investigation first leaked out last fall.

RENZI: All he’s doing is calling the public relations department and saying what is this? What’s going on here? He left a message on a telephone machine. So for anyone to conjure up that this somehow affected Mr. Charlton being fired, is just political theater. « collapse post

Posted by Amanda at 5:14 pm

Watch it at: Permalink

Nigerian vote not credible, say EU observers

By Tom Ashby

Reuters
Monday, April 23, 2007; 8:43 AM

ABUJA (Reuters) - European Union observers said Nigeria's presidential election could not be considered credible on Monday as early results showed ruling party candidate Umaru Yar'Adua set for a landslide win.

Outgoing President Olusegun Obasanjo said elections were not perfect, but appealed to Nigerians not to lose faith in the democratic process.

The ballot for the first handover of power from one civilian leader to another in the vast oil producer was undermined by ballot-stuffing, violence and a shortage of millions of voting papers on Saturday.

"These elections have not lived up to the hopes and expectations of the Nigerian people and the process cannot be considered to have been credible," said Max van den Berg, chief EU observer, in a statement.

A local coalition of civil society observers called for the cancellation of the vote to allow a re-run in Africa's most populous country, scarred by decades of corrupt dictatorship since independence from Britain in 1960.

"The election was a charade. A democratic arrangement founded on such fraud can have no legitimacy," they said.

The EU observers called for urgent action over the election, but did not say if it should be cancelled and held again.

World leaders had expressed hopes that Nigeria, West Africa's economic powerhouse, would emerge as a major force for the spread of democracy across the continent.

Obasanjo appealed to any aggrieved parties to use legal avenues to seek redress, adding that results so far did not deviate from projections.

YAR'ADUA LEAD

Partial results from a third of Nigeria's 36 states showed Yar'Adua of the ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP) with 9.8 million votes versus 1.3 million for his nearest rival, local media said. A definitive result is expected later on Monday.

But the figures also revealed more evidence of fraud. Results from one area of Delta state were cancelled because they showed more votes than registered voters. Residents had reported a near total absence of ballots on voting day.

Obasanjo, whose election in 1999 returned Nigeria to democracy, must step down after failing to rewrite the constitution and stay for a third term.

Former military ruler Muhammadu Buhari, the leading opposition candidate, said he would not accept the result and called on parliament to impeach Obasanjo.

The opposition said it might bring its supporters out on the streets if the PDP claimed victory.

About 65 people have been killed in violence related to both the presidential election and regional polls a week earlier in the world's eighth-largest oil exporter. World oil prices rose on Monday because of the fears of further violence.

The government said unnamed coup plotters were trying to discredit the poll after failing to blow up electoral headquarters on election day with a petrol tanker.

Police arrested protesters at the electoral headquarters in the capital Abuja on Sunday and banned all rallies.

Election commission head Maurice Iwu acknowledged some materials arrived late at polling stations but said the "big picture" was of a free and fair election.

Analysts had predicted Yar'Adua would win due to unrivalled funding and the powers of incumbency, but Buhari had been expected to put up a credible challenge because of widespread disaffection with poverty and crime.

(Additional reporting by Austin Ekeinde in Port Harcourt, Camillus Eboh and Estelle Shirbon in Abuja, Tume Ahemba in Lagos)

© 2007 Reuters

Campaign against alleged voter fraud fuels political tempest

Posted on Thu, Apr. 19, 2007
U.S. ATTORNEYS By Greg Gordon McClatchy Newspapers WASHINGTON - For six years, the Bush administration, aided by Justice Department political appointees, has pursued an aggressive legal effort to restrict voter turnout in key battleground states in ways that favor Republican political candidates. The administration intensified its efforts last year as President Bush's popularity and Republican support eroded heading into a midterm battle for control of Congress, which the Democrats won. Facing nationwide voter registration drives by Democratic-leaning groups, the administration alleged widespread election fraud and endorsed proposals for tougher state and federal voter identification laws. Presidential political adviser Karl Rove alluded to the strategy in April 2006 when he railed about voter fraud in a speech to the Republican National Lawyers Association. Questions about the administration's campaign against alleged voter fraud have helped fuel the political tempest over the firings last year of eight U.S. attorneys, several of whom were ousted in part because they failed to bring voter fraud cases important to Republican politicians. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales could shed more light on the reasons for those firings when he appears Thursday before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Civil rights advocates charge that the administration's policies were intended to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of poor and minority voters who tend to support Democrats, and by filing state and federal lawsuits, civil rights groups have won court rulings blocking some of its actions. Justice Department spokesperson Cynthia Magnuson called any allegation that the department has rolled back minority voting rights "fundamentally flawed." She said the department has "a completely robust record when it comes to enforcing federal voting rights laws," citing its support last year for reauthorization of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and the filing of at least 20 suits to ensure that language services are available to non-English speaking voters. The administration, however, has repeatedly invoked allegations of widespread voter fraud to justify tougher voter ID measures and other steps to restrict access to the ballot, even though research suggests that voter fraud is rare. Since President Bush's first attorney general, John Ashcroft, a former Republican senator from Missouri, launched a "Ballot Access and Voter Integrity Initiative" in 2001, Justice Department political appointees have exhorted U.S. attorneys to prosecute voter fraud cases, and the department's Civil Rights Division has sought to roll back policies to protect minority voting rights. On virtually every significant decision affecting election balloting since 2001, the division's Voting Rights Section has come down on the side of Republicans, notably in Florida, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, Washington and other states where recent elections have been decided by narrow margins. Joseph Rich, who left his job as chief of the section in 2005, said these events formed an unmistakable pattern. "As more information becomes available about the administration's priority on combating alleged, but not well substantiated, voter fraud, the more apparent it is that its actions concerning voter ID laws are part of a partisan strategy to suppress the votes of poor and minority citizens," he said. Former department lawyers, public records and other documents show that since Bush took office, political appointees in the Civil Rights Division have: -Approved Georgia and Arizona laws that tightened voter ID requirements. A federal judge tossed out the Georgia law as an unconstitutional infringement on the rights of poor voters, and a federal appeals court signaled its objections to the Arizona law on similar grounds last fall, but that litigation was delayed by the U.S. Supreme Court until after the election. -Issued advisory opinions that overstated a 2002 federal election law by asserting that it required states to disqualify new voting registrants if their identification didn't match that in computer databases, prompting at least three states to reject tens of thousands of applicants mistakenly. -Done little to enforce a provision of the 1993 National Voter Registration Act that requires state public assistance agencies to register voters. The inaction has contributed to a 50 percent decline in annual registrations at those agencies, to 1 million from 2 million. -Sued at least six states on grounds that they had too many people on their voter rolls. Some eligible voters were removed in the resulting purges. The administration's presence was felt last year in at least one state legislative battle over voter identification. In Missouri, where Republican Sen. Jim Talent was fighting to hang onto his seat and hold the U.S. Senate for the GOP, a Republican-backed photo ID requirement cleared the state House of Representatives by one vote in May 2006 after an intense lobbying effort in which backers alleged voter fraud in heavily Democratic St. Louis and Kansas City. "The White House was heavily involved" in the effort to win passage, state Rep. Bryan Stevenson, the Republican floor leader, said in a telephone interview. Stevenson said he wasn't privy to the details of the White House efforts. In late 2001, Ashcroft also hired three Republican political operatives to work in a secretive new unit in the division's Voting Rights Section. Rich said the unit, headed by unsuccessful Republican congressional candidate Mark Metcalf of Kentucky, bird-dogged the progress of the administration's Help America Vote Act (HAVA) and reviewed voting legislation in the states. One member of the three-person political unit, former Georgia elections official and Republican activist Hans von Spakovsky, eventually took de facto control of the Voting Rights Section and used his position to advocate tougher voter ID laws, said former department lawyers who declined to be identified for fear of reprisals. Those former employees said that Spakovsky helped state officials interpret the Help America Vote Act's confusing new minimum voter identification requirements. He also weighed in when the Voting Rights Act required department approval for any new ID law in 13 states with histories of racial discrimination. In November 2004, Arizona residents passed Proposition 200, the toughest state voter ID law to date, which requires applicants to provide proof of citizenship and voters to produce a photo ID on Election Day. The Voting Rights Act state requires states to show that such laws wouldn't impede minorities from voting and gives the Justice Department 60 days to approve or oppose them. Career voting rights specialists in the Justice Department soon discovered that more than 2,000 elderly Indians in Arizona lacked birth certificates, and they sought their superiors' approval to request more information from the state about other potential impacts on voters' rights. Spakovsky and Sheldon Bradshaw, the division's top deputy and a close friend of top Gonzales aide Kyle Sampson, a former Bush White House lawyer, denied the request, said one of the former department attorneys. Later in 2005, career lawyers wrote a memo recommending that the department oppose a new Georgia law requiring voters to present a $20 photo ID. They argued that the requirement would discriminate against poor blacks, but that was quickly rejected. Toby Moore, one of the five career lawyers who reviewed the memo, said the only dissenter to the recommendation was a new hire, Joshua Rogers, a member of the National Republican Lawyers Association, a partisan organization interested in election issues. Moore said that John Tanner, who'd just been appointed the new section chief, "doctored the memo ... reversing many of our findings," and used the occasion to change procedures so that he alone could make future recommendations. A Georgia state judge, acting on a suit by civil rights groups, struck down the law as unconstitutional. Moore, now the project manager for American University's Commission on Election Reform, said he believes that administration officials felt the Voting Rights Section was populated by "recalcitrant, embedded, liberal Democrats ... and they were determined to plant their DNA, change the institution and bring it to bear on behalf of Republican interests." Spakovsky, who declined to be interviewed, also played a role in an expansive interpretation of the new federal election law. The Help America Vote Act directed states to create central, computerized voter registration lists, to make a "reasonable effort" to remove ineligible names and to match new applicants' driver's licenses and Social Security numbers to those in state databases. A failure to match wasn't grounds for rejection: Tiny variations such as the inclusion of a middle name or misplaced figure could prevent a match. But when confused state officials asked the Justice Department about the requirement, Spakovsky offered a harsh reading of the law. In a letter on Sept. 8, 2003, he advised Judith Arnold, Maryland's counsel for election laws, that the application "must be denied" if an applicant's data failed to match that in driver's license and Social Security databases. He wrote that "the prudent course" would be to let those voters cast provisional ballots that would count only if their registration information were verified later. His guidance was posted on the Voting Rights Section's Web site. Some states, including California, Florida, Maryland, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia and Washington, began to reject applicants whose credentials didn't match. The rejections prompted a lawsuit and protests by civil rights groups, which halted the practice. The practice was "a barrier to voting," said Wendy Weiser, director of the Democracy Program at New York University's Brennan Center for Justice, whose suit in Washington state led to a court injunction. Catherine Blinn, Washington state's assistant elections director, said in a sworn statement last year that her state was merely following guidance from the Justice Department and cited Spakovsky's letter to Maryland. Just before the 2006 election, the California Secretary of State's Office rejected more than 20,000 registration applications, including 43 percent of Los Angeles County's new applicants. Those rejections were reversed before Election Day amid a public clamor. Former Secretary of State Bruce McPherson, a moderate Republican, said in a phone interview that Justice Department officials reviewed his office's regulations and okayed the rejections, but gave no hint that they exceeded federal law. The Bush administration also has shifted enforcement priorities under the National Voter Registration Act, known as the "Motor Voter" law because it provides for registration at state vehicle licensing and public assistance agencies. In the last six years, the number of voters registered at state government agencies that provide services to the poor and disabled has been cut in half, to 1 million. Instead of forcing lax agencies to increase registrations, the Justice Department sued at least six states and sent threatening enforcement letters to others requiring them to scour their election rolls for potentially ineligible voters. Deputy Director Michael Slater of Project Vote, a national voter registration group, called this "selective enforcement. ... They've focused on purging of voters from registration rolls at the expense of enforcing provisions that encourage registration." He said that Kentucky eliminated 4,000 people from its list of voters, but "did it poorly, and took off people who lived there and tried to vote." One of the Justice Department suits was filed against Missouri's Democratic Secretary of State Robin Carnahan. Last week, U.S. District Judge Nanette Laughrey in Jefferson City, the capital, threw out the suit, noting that the motor voter law was intended to increase voter participation and eliminate fraud. The judge wrote that the Justice Department had offered no evidence that anyone had been denied his right to vote as a result of deficiencies in voter rolls, and "nor has the United States shown that any voter fraud has occurred." For more information on the Georgia litigation, as well as other major election law litigation: http://moritzlaw.osu.edu/electionlaw/litigation/common-cause.php

Distract and Disenfranchise: PAUL KRUGMAN - Power Abuses

THE COMPLETE ARTICLE
THE NEW YORK TIMES
OP-ED COLUMNIST

Distract and Disenfranchise

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: April 2, 2007

I have a theory about the Bush administration abuses of power that are now, finally, coming to light. Ultimately, I believe, they were driven by rising income inequality.

Let me explain.

In 1980, when Ronald Reagan won the White House, conservative ideas appealed to many, even most, Americans. At the time, we were truly a middle-class nation. To white voters, at least, the vast inequalities and social injustices of the past, which were what originally gave liberalism its appeal, seemed like ancient history. It was easy, in that nation, to convince many voters that Big Government was their enemy, that they were being taxed to provide social programs for other people.

Since then, however, we have once again become a deeply unequal society. Median income has risen only 17 percent since 1980, while the income of the richest 0.1 percent of the population has quadrupled. The gap between the rich and the middle class is as wide now as it was in the 1920s, when the political coalition that would eventually become the New Deal was taking shape.

And voters realize that society has changed. They may not pore over income distribution tables, but they do know that today’s rich are building themselves mansions bigger than those of the robber barons. They may not read labor statistics, but they know that wages aren’t going anywhere: according to the Pew Research Center, 59 percent of workers believe that it’s harder to earn a decent living today than it was 20 or 30 years ago.

You know that perceptions of rising inequality have become a political issue when even President Bush admits, as he did in January, that “some of our citizens worry about the fact that our dynamic economy is leaving working people behind.”

But today’s Republicans can’t respond in any meaningful way to rising inequality, because their activists won’t let them. You could see the dilemma just this past Friday and Saturday, when almost all the G.O.P. presidential hopefuls traveled to Palm Beach to make obeisance to the Club for Growth, a supply-side pressure group dedicated to tax cuts and privatization.

The Republican Party’s adherence to an outdated ideology leaves it with big problems. It can’t offer domestic policies that respond to the public’s real needs. So how can it win elections?

***

The good news is that all the G.O.P.’s abuses of power weren’t enough to win the 2006 elections. And 2008 may be even harder for the Republicans, because the Democrats — who spent most of the Clinton years trying to reassure rich people and corporations that they weren’t really populists — seem to be realizing that times have changed.

--MORE--

Israel and US elections

Countdown, March 27, 2007 - Vol. 8, #11 : Arab American Institute

When voters gave Democrats control of Congress in November, it was generally agreed they were expressing deep disenchantment with the war in Iraq. It was also generally agreed that they were not eager to start a war with Iran. Salon reports that "AIPAC showed its true power-and its continuing ability to steer American Mideast policy in a disastrous direction-when a group of conservative and pro-Israel Democrats succeeded in removing language from a military appropriations bill that would have required Bush to get congressional approval before using military force against Iran."

America's former ambassador to the United Nations boasted to the BBC that he was "'damned proud of what we did' to prevent an early ceasefire" during Israel's assault on Lebanon last summer. In an interview for a BBC radio documentary, "The Summer War in Lebanon," Bolton also described Israel's goal of "defeating their enemy militarily" as "perfectly legitimate...and good politics." America's former ambassador to the United Nations boasted to the BBC that he was "'damned proud of what we did' to prevent an early ceasefire" during Israel's assault on Lebanon last summer. In an interview for a BBC radio documentary, "The Summer War in Lebanon," Bolton also described Israel's goal of "defeating their enemy militarily" as "perfectly legitimate...and good politics."

The Israeli daily Haaretz is weighing in on the 2008 presidential race with an ongoing feature called "The Israel Factor" which rates the candidates' Israel-friendliness. The overwhelming winner (and the only candidate who wins the panel's unanimous praise) is former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Former House Speaker New Gingrich (R), Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson (D) round out the top five. When asked what makes a candidate "good for Israel," the answers are revealing: "He can deal in a realistic way with the conflicts of Middle East; he will not be overly susceptible to world opinion; he is ready to use force when necessary; he knows Israel and its problems; he will make sure not to pressure Israel into making concessions that will leave it with indefensible borders; he will take into account the interests of Israel as he formulates his Middle East policy; he is emotionally attached to Israel and the things it represents, and is pro-Zionist; he is well connected within the American Jewish community."

Israel and US elections

Countdown, March 27, 2007 - Vol. 8, #11 : Arab American Institute

When voters gave Democrats control of Congress in November, it was generally
agreed they were expressing deep disenchantment with the war in Iraq. It was
also generally agreed that they were not eager to start a war with Iran. Salon
reports that "AIPAC showed its true power-and its continuing ability to steer
American Mideast policy in a disastrous direction-when a group of conservative
and pro-Israel Democrats succeeded in removing language from a military
appropriations bill that would have required Bush to get congressional approval
before using military force against Iran."

America's former ambassador to the United Nations boasted to the BBC that he was
"'damned proud of what we did' to prevent an early ceasefire" during Israel's
assault on Lebanon last summer. In an interview for a BBC radio documentary,
"The Summer War in Lebanon," Bolton also described Israel's goal of "defeating
their enemy militarily" as "perfectly legitimate...and good politics."
America's former ambassador to the United Nations boasted to the BBC that he was
"'damned proud of what we did' to prevent an early ceasefire" during Israel's
assault on Lebanon last summer. In an interview for a BBC radio documentary,
"The Summer War in Lebanon," Bolton also described Israel's goal of "defeating
their enemy militarily" as "perfectly legitimate...and good politics."

The Israeli daily Haaretz is weighing in on the 2008 presidential race with an
ongoing feature called "The Israel Factor" which rates the candidates'
Israel-friendliness. The overwhelming winner (and the only candidate who wins
the panel's unanimous praise) is former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Former House
Speaker New Gingrich (R), Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Hillary Clinton (D-NY)
and New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson (D) round out the top five. When asked
what makes a candidate "good for Israel," the answers are revealing: "He can
deal in a realistic way with the conflicts of Middle East; he will not be overly
susceptible to world opinion; he is ready to use force when necessary; he knows
Israel and its problems; he will make sure not to pressure Israel into making
concessions that will leave it with indefensible borders; he will take into
account the interests of Israel as he formulates his Middle East policy; he is
emotionally attached to Israel and the things it represents, and is pro-Zionist;
he is well connected within the American Jewish community."

Dems, It's Time To Go Fox Huntin'

There's more to winning an election than a candidate defeating opponents. The other guy's media machine needs to be overcome.
---
By Paul Begala

March 22, 2007 01:21 PM EST

As a loyal Democrat and paid commentator on CNN, I am hopelessly biased -- but at least I admit it. The folks at Fox News, on the other hand, are just as hopelessly biased -- and they deny it. While I openly admit that I love all things Clinton, think House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is strong and brave, see Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid as Harry Truman reincarnated and don't believe George W. Bush would know the truth if it bit him on the ass, Fox insults our intelligence by feigning fairness.

That's why the Nevada Democrats did the right thing in refusing to allow Fox to pretend it is a neutral host for a Democratic debate. The more Fox is seen as "fair and balanced," the easier it is for the network to swift-boat Democratic candidates and propel misinformation into the mainstream media. Thank God Democrats are finally growing a spine and fighting back. No longer can Fox function as a Republican mouthpiece and expect us to put it on stage as a neutral news source. Like I tell my kids: NHD -- not happenin', dude.

To be clear, this is not a boycott, and it's not about Democrats being afraid to go on Fox. It's about how Fox is presented to the public when it voices its right-wing views. During the fight against Fox in Nevada, MoveOn suggested a co-sponsored Fox/Air America debate. Perfect. An avowedly progressive media outlet paired with the conservative Fox. The spirit of "Crossfire" lives. But MoveOn's compromise was not accepted, and ultimately Fox lost everything.

Looking forward, the victory in Nevada sends a powerful message to Fox: You're not going to be able to use Democratic debates to whitewash your right-wing bias the way Exxon green washes its reputation by buying off academics and PR flacks.

For Democrats, it sends an equally powerful message: Fight back; you can win. From its first days on the air, Fox News has smeared Bill and Hillary Clinton. And when President Clinton finally called Fox on it, the effect was electric. Across America, progressives were galvanized into action.

For those who need reminding of Fox's agenda -- using its "fair and balanced" credibility to smear Democrats and help Republicans -- here's the bill of particulars:

Fox News' founder and guiding genius, Roger Ailes, was the chief media strategist for President George H.W. Bush. When you have a Republican political consultant running a news network, don't be surprised if that network becomes a propaganda tool for the Republican Party.
After the 2006 elections, Fox Senior Vice President John Moody sent a memo to news staff instructing them: "Be on the lookout for any statements from the Iraqi insurgents ... thrilled at the prospect of a Dem-controlled Congress."
Robert Greenwald's film "Outfoxed" exposed 33 similar memos from Moody before the 2004 elections. On Bush: "His political courage and tactical cunning are worth noting in our reporting through the day." On Iraq: "Do not fall into the easy trap of mourning the loss of U.S. lives and asking out loud 'Why are we there?'"
Fox's Iraq coverage was so biased that a university study showed 80 percent of Fox viewers believed one of these three falsehoods: Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11; WMDs were found in Iraq; or most of the world supported Bush's Iraq war. Fox is entitled to its own opinions, but not its own facts.
Fox hired George W. Bush's first cousin, John Ellis, to chair its Election Night desk in 2000. Not surprisingly, Ellis spoke with Bush five times that night, and Fox was the first network to "call" Florida for Bush.
Fox identified alleged pervert and GOP Congressman Mark Foley of Florida as a Democrat.
Fox's headline when Lewis "Scooter" Libby was convicted on four of five felony counts was straight out of Pravda: "Scooter Libby Found Not Guilty of Lying to FBI Investigators."
Fox cited an Insight magazine report that Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) was educated in a Muslim madrassa. CNN sent real journalists to Indonesia, interviewed people, gathered facts and reported the news: Obama's school was public and nondenominational.
More Fox smears and misinformation are captured in the YouTube videos at www.FoxAttacks.com.
When Bill O'Reilly hosted James Carville and me on his program back in September, I urged Bill and Fox to stop living a lie. "Come out of the closet!" I yelled. "You all are conservative!" But O'Reilly was unmoved. "I don't believe it for a second," he said.

I do. Bill Clinton does. So does the Nevada Democratic Party. Sometimes the thing a bully needs most is someone to stand up to him.

Paul Begala is a political analyst for CNN and a research professor at Georgetown University's Public Policy Institute. He was counselor to President Clinton.

TM & © THE POLITICO & POLITICO.COM, a division of Allbritton Communications Company

Corporate Muzzling Of Politics

The Commission on Presidential Debates effectively keeps any real politics out of the debates.
---
George Farah

March 22, 2007

George Farah is the author of No Debate: How the Republican and Democratic Parties Secretly Control the Presidential Debates and the founder of Open Debates (www.OpenDebates.org).

The major parties cannot police themselves. For a decade, the House Ethics Committee, comprised of Republicans and Democrats, has refused to punish blatant acts of corruption so that both parties can continue to rake in corporate contributions. Similarly, since its inception, the bipartisan Federal Election Commission has failed to enforce election laws because the appointed Commissioners rebuff efforts to investigate members of their own parties. And unbeknownst to the public, for the last 20 years, through a private corporation called the Commission on Presidential Debates, the Republican and Democratic parties have worked together to ruin our most sacred political forums in order to protect their candidates from genuine debate.

Despite its purported commitment to "providing the best possible information to viewers and listeners," the Commission on Presidential Debates exists to secretly award control of the presidential debates to the Democratic and Republican candidates.

The commission, which claims to "have no relationship with any political party or candidate," was actually created by the Republican and Democratic parties. In 1986, the two parties' national committees ratified an agreement "to take over the presidential debates." Fifteen months later, then-Republican Party chair Frank Fahrenkopf and then-Democratic Party chair Paul Kirk incorporated the commission, and they have co-chaired the organization ever since.

Every four years, negotiators for the major party nominees meet behind closed doors and jointly draft secret debate contracts called memoranda of understanding. These contracts dictate precisely how the debates will be structured—from who gets to participate, to who will ask the questions, to the temperature in the auditoriums. The commission merely implements and conceals the contracts, shielding the major party candidates from public criticism.

In 1996, for example, Republican nominee Bob Dole and Democratic nominee Bill Clinton spoiled the presidential debates before they started. During debate negotiations, Dole demanded the exclusion of Reform Party nominee Ross Perot, despite the fact that Perot had received $29 million in taxpayers' funds for his campaign and that over three-quarters of eligible voters wanted him included. Clinton, meanwhile, desired the smallest possible audience for the debates—what George Stephanopoulos called a "nonevent"—because he was comfortably leading in the polls.

Dole and Clinton struck a deal; Perot would be excluded, one debate would be canceled, and the remaining two debates would be deliberately scheduled opposite the World Series, producing the smallest audience in presidential debate history.

The American people never knew why a candidate they wanted to see was excluded, or why the debates were held on the same night as the World Series. Dole and Clinton were able to conceal their manipulation of the debates because of the complicity of the Commission on Presidential Debates.

Moreover, under the commission's tenure, debate formats have become stilted and unrevealing. The Republican and Democratic nominees handpick compliant moderators, artificially limit response times, require the screening of town-hall questions, and even prohibit themselves from talking to each other. The final product amounts to little more than a series of glorified bipartisan press conferences.

Walter Cronkite called the commission-sponsored debates an "unconscionable fraud" and accused the candidates of "sabotaging the electoral process."

To top it off, Anheuser-Busch, US Airways, and other corporations foot most of the bill for these candidate-controlled pseudo-debates through tax-deductible contributions to the commission. Debate sites have become corporate carnivals, with Anheuser-Busch girls in skimpy outfits passing out pamphlets denouncing beer taxes. The corporate connection is not surprising; Mr. Fahrenkopf is the nation's leading gambling lobbyist, and Mr. Kirk has lobbied on behalf of pharmaceutical companies.

The presidential debates weren’t always controlled by the major parties and promoted by business interests. For three election cycles, the League of Women Voters nobly served as a nonpartisan debate sponsor that championed the public interest. In 1980, the league invited independent candidate John B. Anderson to participate in a presidential debate, even though President Jimmy Carter adamantly refused to debate him.

Four years later, when the Ronald Reagan and Walter Mondale campaigns vetoed 68 proposed panelists in order to eliminate difficult questions, the league held a press conference and lambasted the candidates for "abusing the process." The ensuing public outcry persuaded the candidates to accept the league's selected panelists.

And in 1988, when the George Bush and Michael Dukakis campaigns drafted the first secret "memorandum of understanding" that dictated who would participate and under what conditions, the league declined to implement it. Instead, the league withdrew its sponsorship and issued a blistering press release, claiming that "the demands of the two campaign organizations would perpetrate a fraud on the American voter."

We need another nonpartisan debate sponsor—a Citizens’ Debate Commission—to retake control of the presidential debates and follow in the League’s footsteps. Just as an independent ethics prosecutor is needed to combat congressional corruption, and just as an apolitical regulatory agency is needed to enforce election laws, a genuinely nonpartisan debate sponsor is needed to ensure that our most important public forums serve the voters' interests.

Election fraud trial finds judge guilty

11:36 PM EDT on Friday, March 16, 2007

LEXINGTON, Ky. (AP) -- A judge-executive serving a rural county on the edge of Kentucky’s Bluegrass region has been convicted of conspiring to buy votes in last year’s primary election.

Bath County Judge-Executive Walter Bascom Shrout was also found guilty of making false statements to a federal agent and obstruction of justice, said U.S. Attorney Amul R. Thapar.

U.S. District Judge Joseph M. Hood ordered Shrout to resign from office no later than noon EDT on Monday.

Shrout, 54, a Democrat from Sharpsburg, was indicted in November after an FBI investigation into vote buying allegations in the primary, which he won.

A federal grand jury indicted 11 others on vote fraud charges uncovered in the investigation.

“Our election process is the very basis of our democracy,” Thapar said in a statement Friday. “When people can not vote freely and independently, it takes away a government by and for the people.”

Shrout, who is free on bond, faces up to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000. He is scheduled for sentencing on July 9 in Lexington.

In February, Bath County Attorney Donald “Champ” Maze pleaded guilty to vote buying and perjury in connection with an alleged scheme to rig the primary election. He entered the plea on the fifth day of his trial, admitting to paying three people between $100 and $200 to vote for him.

Hood also ordered Maze to resign. Maze, who is free on bond, faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. His sentencing was set for May 7.

About 520 Bath County residents voted absentee in the election in question—more than double the number cast in 2002. Of those 520, nearly half filled out a form saying they needed assistance and brought people into the voting booth with them.

Another judge-executive candidate, Michael Swartz, who was Shrout’s main opponent in the primary election, has also pleaded guilty to vote buying.

The web works for the grassroots, but political power still lies with the few

Comment

---

Thousands have been mobilised for the 2008 US elections. But, more than anything, the candidates want money

Gary Younge
Monday March 5, 2007
The Guardian

Whatever happened to Tom Vilsack? Vilsack appeared on the presidential scene without trace and faded with even less commotion. Since, according to a recent survey, Americans have been paying more attention to coverage of Anna Nicole Smith than the 2008 presidential campaign, few have missed him. But on February 23 he bowed out of the Democratic primaries almost a year before the first vote was to be cast.

"I have the boldest plan to get us out of Iraq and a long-term policy for energy security to keep us out of future oil wars," said Vilsack in his concession speech. This is not true. Vilsack was a fairly ordinary candidate with fairly ordinary policies. His plans were not bold. In a free and fair contest of content, charisma and character the voters would probably not go for him. The issue is that they will never get the chance. Before he could get his name on a ballot, money had the final say.

---

---

"This process has become a great deal about money. A lot of money," he said. "So it is money, and only money, that is the reason why we are leaving today."

That is entirely true. The dominant role of money in US politics is widely acknowledged but all too rarely interrogated. The corruption scandals that made the news last year flouted the letter of the law but did not violate its spirit. Money buys access; access begets influence. It is as close to a textbook definition of corruption as you can get - but it's still legal. "We have created a culture in which there's no distinction between what is illegal and what is unethical," says the former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski.

The Bush administration did not invent this culture but it has exacerbated it. Registered lobbyists have doubled in George Bush's tenure and they now spend around $25m per politician each year to leverage their agendas. But even as money has cemented its place on the American political landscape, so the internet has enabled a countervailing tendency that could yet allow the green shoots of genuine democratic engagement to break through. The technology by itself does nothing. But when a message or candidate grabs the popular imagination it is the most effective way to fill the vacuum and challenge established hierarchies.

We have no idea yet what role the internet will play in next year's presidential election. First, it is too early in the process. Second, the pace at which the medium is developing means that the campaigning tool of choice probably has not been invented yet. Back in 2003 it took Howard Dean six months to compile an email list of 139,000. But that was before networking sites such as MySpace. In less than two months Barack Obama has gathered more than 310,000 supporters on Facebook.com.

What is certain is that the internet will play a vital, possibly decisive, role; and in all likelihood that role will come into conflict with the established kingmakers. Neither trend is new. But the power of money and the modem are both driven by different and, arguably, contradictory forces. At some stage something will have to give.

Almost two years before polling day we have already seen the pitfalls and the potential. John Edwards let two hired bloggers go after a coordinated Christian conservative attack against them. One had described President Bush's supporters as his "wingnut Christofascist base". Tame stuff, given the adversarial tone of the blogosphere; a disaster, given the all-American nature of an American presidential campaign.

A few weeks earlier Obama attended a 3,000-strong rally at George Mason University organised by Students for Barack Obama, a group set up by Meredith Segal on Facebook. It now has more than 62,000 members and chapters at more than 80 colleges, a field operations director, an internet director, a finance director and a blog team director. Segal met Obama for the first time at the rally.

While these tensions may play out as a battle between left and right, or doves and hawks, they will in essence represent a far more fundamental shift in the relationship of the professional political class with the politically engaged public - a struggle between the popular and the oligarchic, between the bespoke message of the paid consultant and the chaos of freewheeling public opinion. Sadly, it won't change the centrality of money in American politics - the internet is a crucial fundraising tool. But by enabling thousands of small donors to contribute, it has already proved its potential to provide an alternative funding base.

In the past, US political parties have done little more than raise money and get out the vote. They are not forums for debate and persuasion. Beyond polling day they have no organic relationship with the people who vote for them or the communities where their support is based (a trend fast installing itself in the UK). They call for your money and they call for your vote. You write a cheque and pull a lever. No wonder Anna Nicole Smith draws more interest.

The upcoming election is only the second time the web has had a chance to challenge this. Three years ago the internet was instrumental in the Democratic primaries. It explained Howard Dean's stunning ascent from obscurity to insurgency at a time when anti-war views were popular and marginalised. It also explains his equally stunning descent. The web helped make his campaign viable. But with insufficient organisation and an inadequate candidate, it could not make it winnable.

We should have no illusions about who has the upper hand in this battle between big money and burgeoning activism. At a meeting in New York to support Hillary Clinton last week, organised through Meetup.com, the host told us that since Hillary had the votes of New Yorkers sewn up, all she really needed the town for was money.

Over the next 45 minutes there was no political discussion - about Hillary's healthcare, the war or trade. Just how could the assembled pry money from the little people without giving them access to the candidate. Might they host a house party and charge friends $25 to watch Clinton do a webcast? Not an alternative source of funding but an additional one for the candidate who spent $27,000 on valet parking and $13,000 on flowers in November. "She does house parties in Park Avenue," said the host without a blush. "But she's not going to come to our house."

It suits the mythology of meritocracy that remains so central to American identity to have young children walking around in T-shirts saying "Future president of America". But the truth is if your kid really does stand a chance at the top office, he'll already be wearing more expensive attire. America's class system is now more rigid than most in Europe, and that sclerosis is given full expression at the highest levels of politics. Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa, Chicago mayor Richard Daley and Southern Christian Leadership Conference head Martin Luther King all carry the names and job titles of their fathers. Each year the richest quarter per cent make 80% of all political donations. The last time there was not a Clinton or a Bush on the presidential ticket was 1976. This is not democracy, it is dynasty.

g.younge@guardian.co.uk

Nuggets from a Nuthouse: Meaningful Elections and Establishment Relativism

Z Magazine, March 2007

(Part 4)

By Edward S. Herman


The U.S. establishment takes a “pragmatic” view of the merits of elections, with approval or disapproval depending on how well it “works,” as perceived by the dominant interests. Call it “establishment relativism.” We know that the rightwing hates relativism, but there are some relativisms that they can accept, mainly by playing dumb. When the good guys win--and “good” means serviceable to U.S. interests as seen by the corporate/political establishment--there is endless generosity and looking-the-other-way in evaluating that win. In Mexico, for example, when Salinas won by a fraudulent recount in 1988, and Calderon won by probable fraud in 2006, there were no serious complaints here; and when Yeltsin won a true laugher in 1996, helping consolidate the triumph of the looting oligarchs and death of any possible meaningful democracy in Russia, there was positive enthusiasm in this country. But when a Chavez or Hamas wins, pragmatism calls for doubts about the honesty of the election (Chavez) and/or questions about the threat to peace in a victory of “terrorists” (Hamas).

In the Chavez case, the doubts and threats of his electoral legitimacy were so severe that the United States colluded in a coup in 2002, that was quickly reversed but demonstrated the extremely obvious fact that U.S. leaders are not about to respect election results when the wrong party wins. Much fault was found with Chavez’s further electoral victories, but it became very difficult to claim unfairness with his solid majorities, no evidence of tampering, and with the bulk of the Venezuelan media furiously anti-Chavez. (Of course, for the U.S. establishment Chavez is showing his true colors by possibly refusing to renew the license of a TV station that openly supported the 2002 coup--an action for which a station in the United States in an analogous situation would almost surely have been closed down immediately and its top officers prosecuted for treason.)

The Hamas case is equally interesting. Instead of respecting what seems to have been a quite honest vote, with the wrong party winning Israel began a brutal military assault on the Palestinians, arrested Hamas legislators, and cut off funds owed the Palestinians. These and other actions were designed to beat and starve the Palestinians into ousting Hamas, but the Israelis were also using Hamas as an excuse to crush any resistance to ethnic cleansing and to induce a greater “voluntary” exit from the territory. The United States and EU cooperated in this brutal process, the former along with Israel also giving financial support and arms to Fatah in order to strengthen the opposition to Hamas, and possibly encourage a civil war--recall the U.S. and Israeli encouragement and support of the Iraq-Iran war, with occasional explicit mention of the merit of mutual killing between these problematic states.

In this same time frame Israel was committing major war crimes in a genocidal process in Gaza that violated Western “enlightenment values” as well as all kinds of international laws, and steadily advanced their ethnic cleansing on the West Bank and in Jerusalem. Despite this, in a historically unique action the EU actually imposed sanctions on the victims of the occupation for voting the wrong way. Hamas’s terrorist record and refusal to recognize Israel is the rationale here; Israel’s vastly greater state terror and steady law violations produce no negative actions—and Israel’s voting Ariel Sharon in as president in 2001, the butcher of Sabra-Shatila and Qibya, whose terroristic killings exceeded that of Hamas by a wide margin, and were greater than those of Carlos the Jackal by better than 10-1, again elicited no complaints or penalties.

It is also of interest that in Palestine, Hamas opponent and Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas is calling for new elections, which Israel and the United States support as they rush money as well as arms to Abbas. There is no legal basis for such a call, but because the election produced the wrong result a new election is pressed. On the other hand, in Lebanon, where with Hezbollah representatives leaving the government there is solid legal grounds for the calling of a new election, here the United States and its allies demur and oppose the idea. It would very likely give Hezbollah more political power and reduce that of a Western-supported client, so the attitude toward an election to ascertain the people’s will is different from the Palestine case.

Another interesting case of election pragmatics is the way the 2006 mid-term U.S. election is working out. Bush was free to escalate the Iraq war after the 2004 election because he won and thus had an election go-ahead. The Democrats and media put up little opposition. In the 2006 election the Republicans lost heavily, and both direct verbal evidence of voter sentiment and poll results show that a strong majority of the public want the United States out of Iraq in two years or less. But the corporate/political establishment does not want a quick exit. The same lobby that has produced the Western support for Israel’s violent response to the Hamas electoral victory and that gives its imprimatur to Israeli apartheid and ethnic cleansing, wants the United States to stay and even to broaden the war to Iran. The result is that Bush, having just suffered a crushing election loss, and with a popularity rating in the 28-31 percent range, is still able to “decide” and escalate the Iraq war. The last election had a “bad” result from the elite viewpoint, and it will therefore have little effect on policy in the Middle East. After all, this is a democracy constrained to work for the “national interest.”

Principle of Non-Intervention

U.S. intervention in elections in Palestine, Venezuela, Russia, Yugoslavia, the Ukraine, Nicaragua (etc.) has been massive, and so has intervention in the forms of military and economic aid and direct military attack. There are almost no holds barred, and almost nothing in the way of subversion and military attack that the mainstream media won’t normalize. After all we are WE, the good and necessary policeman in service to global interests. It’s revealing that although the invasion-occupation of Iraq was not only based on lies but was a classic case of aggression in violation of the UN Charter, this is unmentionable in the media--WE have aggression rights, by patriotic premise.

Of course we still believe in the principle of non-intervention, but as in the case of elections, with that special pragmatic-relativistic touch. Thus the United States joined with seven Middle Eastern states (Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, and the U.A.E.) in January to issue a statement which affirmed, among other things, that "disputes among states should be settled peacefully and in accordance with international norms, and that relations among all countries should be based on mutual respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all states, and on the principle of noninterference in the internal affairs of other nations." ("Gulf Cooperation Council - Plus Two's Ministerial Statement," U.S. Department of State, January 16, 2007). It is obvious that this accolade to the principles of sovereignty and noninterference was directed not against the March 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq or a possible U.S.-Israeli military attack on Iran, but rather against Iran and Syria, which have faced the U.S. charge that they are interfering in the internal affairs of the newly liberated Iraq. Their interventions in a struggle in a next door neighbor destabilized by an aggression from across the ocean are illicit—the big and ongoing one from a distant power is not only licit, it isn’t even intervention.

Bush and his associates are now warning Iran on a daily basis against intervening in Iraq. They ignore that Iraq is now supposedly a sovereign state whose leaders are supposedly in charge of deciding who can and who cannot intervene and do business in Iraq territory.

This is not hypocrisy: it reflects that internalized belief that the Global Godfather has an inherent right to straighten out the world’s unruly children. His interventions are in a separate class. When Paul Wolfowitz stated that “I think all foreigners should stop interfering in the internal affairs of Iraq” (NYT, July 22, 2003), he just took for granted the Global Godfather’s right to be at home anywhere within his domains.

Rule of Law

The same point holds for the rule of law. We believe in the rule of law, and our leaders refer to it regularly as something that we want to provide, along with “stability.” But as with non-intervention, the rule of law doesn’t apply to us, by our self-designated rights as the most powerful, implicitly good, and self-appointed global policeman. It might interfere with our bringing peace and stability everywhere. The new classic is of course the invasion-occupation of Iraq, 2003-2007, where we ran roughshod over the UN charter and hence over U.S. law as well, given that the Charter is an international agreement that becomes part of U.S. law. The same is true of the violations of the international conventions against torture. The Military Commissions Act tries to exempt U.S. officials from the reach of the international laws on torture, but it remains a constitutional issue as to whether this can be done even in its application at home.

Of course, if you are strong enough and your elite supports you, the rule of law can be ignored simply by virtue of superior force. Thus when the International Court found against the United States in a case brought by Nicaragua in 1986, and called for reparations for the “unlawful use of force,” the United States paid no attention to the court ruling. And, importantly, the U.S. establishment didn’t complain, but implicitly or explicitly sanctioned this brazen refusal to abide by the rule of law. In a dramatic illustration, the New York Times supported this refusal editorially, declaring the International Court a “hostile forum” ("America's Guilt - or Default," July 1, 1986) --a lie, and its editorial larded with errors of fact and silly chauvinistic bias, but demonstrating the paper’s own integration into the imperial enterprise and resultant willingness to disregard mere matters of law (repeated in 2002-2003 when the editors never mentioned the problem of UN Charter prohibitions against aggression).

The international community--that is, governments and international institutions, as opposed to the world’s people--also accepts and even supports the U.S. refusal to abide by the rule of law. Not only did it do nothing to stop the Iraq aggression in 2003, or to punish the aggressors, the Security Council soon gave its sanction to the U.S. occupation in a classic case of rewarding the villain. The Security Council also cooperates with the United States in supporting Israel’s illegal occupation and massive ethnic cleansing. And now it is helping prepare the ground for an Israeli-U.S. attack on Iran by imposing sanctions and Chapter VII demands on Iran (see "Hegemony and Appeasement: Setting Up the Next U.S.-Israeli Target (Iran) For Another 'Supreme International Crime'," Edward S. Herman and David Peterson, ZNet, January 27, 2007 ). The rule of law internationally is dead in the water.

It is also highly relevant that the Bush administration has been replacing the rule of law at home with the superior rights of the executive, attacking a string of constitutional protections of individual rights as well as the rights of legislatures and courts. This is not a case of blowback from the disregard of international law abroad; instead, the enhanced disregard abroad goes hand-in-hand with the shrinking adherence to law at home. They are mutually supportive and reinforcing. But the United States remains committed to the rule of law--when protesters at home violate local statutes, or black ghetto residents are caught using marijuana, or Iran does not abide by some intrusive ruling of the pathetic Security Council caving in to the U.S. program setting Iran up for a fresh U.S. aggression (see “Hegemony and Appeasement,” supra).

China’s Flexing Its Muscles

In the nuthouse, any action by the United States in the way of enhancing its military superiority is treated by the mainstream media with great objectivity. There might be a hint that it may cost a lot of money and doubts may be raised about its urgency and even whether it will work (if it is a new weapon). But it will not be treated as a possible serious threat to other countries, destabilizing and promising a renewed arms race, making war more likely, unaffordable in a world with much poverty and major problems that call for large resources--in short, insane. No. The media are objective, which means deeply irresponsible and contributing to lunacy. (Years ago the New York Times had an almost regular annual column by Seymour Melman in which he would list the foregone civil functions that were sacrificed by a comparable list of weapons, with price tags noted. This apparently was too painful--and enlightening--for the establishment to bear, and was terminated some years back.)

Even when the Bush administration announced an intent to make nuclear weapons part of the regular war arsenal and improve them, and an intent to prevent any challenges to U.S. military superiority by the possible use of force, and even naming countries, including China, as potential threats to U.S. dominance, the media barely reported these lunatic plans. They certainly never portray them as they should--as in a class with Mein Kampf and suffering from comparable lunacy.

On the other hand, as China has substantially increased its military budget in recent years, although from a very low initial level, this has aroused concern in the U.S. military and political establishment. China’s military budget has risen to one-seventh of that of the United States (in 2006, 66 versus 441 billion), so obviously this is a worrisome matter given that, as Donald Rumsfeld pointed out back in June 2005, “Since no nation threatens China, one must wonder: ‘Why this growing investment…these continuing robust deployments?’” Rumsfeld also mentioned that China seemed to be preparing to “project power” in its neighborhood.



Of course, China has no bases in North America, no fleets of warships around the North American coasts, and no military alliances with any country in North or South America. The United States has bases all around China, fleets of warships off the Chinese coast, has regular military exercises in that area, and has military alliances with many countries in Asia. In February 2005 it formalized new security ties with Japan that even announced a joint U.S.-Japanese call for a solution to issues in the Taiwan straits.

We are reaching here the limits of hypocrisy and the double standard. China is a threat because it is getting armed to the point where it might project power in its neighborhood, and maybe even defend itself sufficiently from some Global Godfather projecting power everywhere, allowing it to constrain the Godfather a bit. China is a threat to the Godfather only because of those possibilities--it cannot threaten the Godfather directly. On the other hand, the Godfather openly threatens China, has even listed it as a potential challenger who will not be permitted to rise to an effective challenging level, by implication through the use of force. The Godfather also threatens China by its military deployments and alliances. This is only a non-threat on the ludicrous ultra-chauvinist assumption that the Godfather is good, generous, peace-loving and without any seriously conflicting interests that might cause it to exercise force against China.

It is well-known to even casual observers that the rapid growth of China has forced it to look aggressively for independent oil supplies to meet its escalating needs, and it is clear that it will be competing with the United States in obtaining such supplies. In that competition the possession of overwhelming force on one side and serious weakness on the other could be costly to the weak. And in that competition the use of force might be helpful in obtaining privileged access to limited oil resources.

The China threat is an on-and-off-again phenomenon that has been on the upswing in recent years, clearly not based on any real security threat, but consistent with the imperial project of absolute domination. It is also a windfall for the military-industrial complex, and may be cultivated in substantial measure to provide it with growing and profitable markets and a raison-d’etre for its continued massive absorption of budget resources. Actual violence is constrained by the huge mutual dependence of the two economies, but who knows what the future holds if China keeps growing and arming itself, and if the rulers of the nuthouse need a diversion to mobilize the population and give them continued power to rule and loot?

Of course this all depends on whether the New York Times, its media associates, the intellectual class, and the Democrats, will go along with this Kafkasque pretence that the Chinese threaten us rather than that we threaten them, and allow the MIC and Pentagon to continue to absorb vast resources to kill on false pretenses—that is, to continue to make the United States a genuine global menace and nuthouse. It also depends on whether the U.S. public can finally arouse itself to fight for its own and global interests--and sanity. Given the ready mobilization against that not very dire Iran threat that we see moving forward today it is not easy to be optimistic.

Fl. Gov Proposes $32 Million Program For Statewide Voting Paper Trails

February 1, 2007
Governor Seeks Overhaul of Voting System in Florida
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

DELRAY BEACH, Fla. — Gov. Charlie Crist said Thursday he wants to spend about $32 million to convert all voting machines in Florida to produce paper trails.

''What we're talking about here is Democracy and it is precious,'' Crist told a crowd of several hundred people at a gathering of the nonpartisan Voters Coalition of Palm Beach County.

''You should, when you go vote, be able to have a record of it,'' Crist said, calling it ''common sense.''

The proposal will be part of Crist's budget he presents to the Legislature on Friday.

Fifteen of Florida's 67 counties use paperless touch-screen voting machines. The remaining counties use optical scan machines where a voter marks a paper ballot with a pencil and it is electronically scanned.

Critics of the paperless machines say voters are disenfranchised because there is no record for a manual recount should questions arise about an election.

--MORE--

Justices defend Florida recount decision

By MARK SHERMAN, Associated Press WriterWed Jan 24, 5:28 PM ET

Three of the five Supreme Court justices who handed the presidency to George W. Bush in 2000 say they had no choice but to intervene in the Florida recount.

Comments from Justice Anthony Kennedy and retired Justice Sandra Day O'Connor are in a new book that was published this week. Justice Antonin Scalia made his remarks Tuesday at Iona College in New York.

Scalia, answering questions after a speech, also said that critics of the 5-4 ruling in Bush v. Gore need to move on six years after the electoral drama of December 2000, when it seemed the whole nation hung by a chad awaiting the outcome of the presidential election.

"It's water over the deck — get over it," Scalia said, drawing laughs from his audience. His remarks were reported in the Gannett Co.'s Journal-News.

The court's decision to halt the recount of Florida's disputed election results, thus giving Bush the state's electoral votes, has been heavily criticized as an example of the court overstepping its bounds and, worse, being driven by politics.

Rather than let the recount take place and leave state officials and possibly Congress to determine the outcome of the election, the court's five conservative justices decided to intervene.

They eventually overturned a ruling of the Florida Supreme Court and halted the recount of the state's disputed election results 36 days after the voting. The decision effectively gave Bush Florida's electoral votes — and the presidency — by 537 votes.

"A no-brainer! A state court deciding a federal constitutional issue about the presidential election? Of course you take the case," Kennedy told ABC News correspondent Jan Crawford Greenburg in her new book, "Supreme Conflict."

Kennedy said the justices didn't ask for the case to come their way. Then-Vice President Al Gore's legal team involved the courts in the election by asking a state court to order a recount, Kennedy said.

Legal scholars and the four dissenting justices have said the Supreme Court should have declined to jump into the case in the first place.

In a decision made public on the evening of Dec. 12, 2000, the court said the recount violated the Constitution's Equal Protection Clause because Florida counties were allowed to set their own standard for determining whether to count a vote.

"Counting somebody else's dimpled chad and not counting my dimpled chad is not giving equal protection of the law," Scalia said at Iona. Justice Clarence Thomas and the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who died in 2005, also were part of the majority.

O'Connor said the Florida court was "off on a trip of its own."

She acknowledged, however, that the justices probably could have done a better job with the opinion if they hadn't been rushed.

Still, O'Connor said the outcome of the election would have been the same even if the court had not intervened.

She was referring to studies that suggest Bush would have won a recount limited to counties that Gore initially contested, although other studies said Gore might have prevailed in a statewide recount.

DIEBOLD VOTING MACHINE KEY COPIED FROM PHOTO AT COMPANY'S OWN ONLINE STORE!

BLOGGED BY Brad ON 1/24/2007 6:05AM

Princeton University Computer Scientists Confirm 'Secret' Key For Every Diebold Voting Machine 'Revealed' on Company Website!

Good lord in heaven. How dumb are these guys at Diebold?! Can you believe the United States has actually entrusted them to build a security system for the original U.S. Constitution, the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights?!

After everything else. Now comes this.

It was revealed in the course of last summer's landmark virus hack of a Diebold touch-screen voting system at Princeton University that, incredibly, the company uses the same key to open every machine. It's also an easy key to buy at any office supply store since it's used for filing cabinets and hotel mini-bars! That is, if you're not a poll worker who already has one from the last time you worked on an election (anybody listening down there in San Diego?)

The Princeton Diebold Virus Hack, if you've been living in a cave, found that a single person with 60 seconds of unsupervised access to the system who either picked the lock (easy in 10 seconds) or had a key, could slip a vote-swapping virus onto a single machine which could then undetectably affect every other machine in the county to steal an entire election.

But the folks at Princeton who discovered the hack (after our own organization, VelvetRevolution.us, gave them the Diebold touch-screen machine on which to perform their tests) had resisted showing exactly what the key looked like in order to hold on to some semblance of security for Diebold's Disposable Touch-Screen Voting Systems.

But guess what? Diebold didn't bother to even have that much common sense.

This idiotic company has had a photograph of the stupid key sitting on their own website's online store! (Screenshot at end of this article.)

Of course, they'll only sell such keys to "Diebold account holders" apparently --- or so they claim --- but that's hardly a problem. J. Alex Halderman, one of the folks who worked on the Princeton Hack, but who had tried to keep the design of the key a secret for obvious reasons, revealed Tuesday that a friend of his had found the photo of the key on Diebold's website and discovered that it was all he needed to create a working copy!

Halderman writes:

The shape of a key is like a password — it only provides security if you keep it secret from the bad guys.
...
Could an attacker create a working key from the [Diebold website] photograph? Ross [Kinard of SploitCast] decided to find out. Here’s what he did:

I bought three blank keys from Ace. Then a drill vise and three cabinet locks that used a different type of key from Lowes. I hoped that the spacing and depths on the cabinet locks’ keys would be similar to those on the voting machine key. With some files I had I then made three keys to look like the key in the picture.

Ross sent me his three homemade keys, and, amazingly, two of them can open the locks on the Diebold machine we used in our study!

Kinard's homemade key --- created only from the photo at Diebold's online store --- is seen opening the machine at Princeton in the video on the left. Unbelievable.

This is the once-great American security company that helped kick off this entire disaster after it was discovered they left their "secure" source code for their unsecure voting machines sitting out on the net for anyone to download from a public FTP site in 2003. And if you couldn't figure out how to hack one of their systems from that alone, now they've given you the model to build your own key at home! Have fun, kids!

Anybody seen the U.S. Constitution lately? We know Bush hasn't. But other than that, seriously, maybe someone oughta check the National Archives just to be sure...

A screenshot of the page from Diebold's online store, featuring a photo of the keys to the kingdom, follows below...

[[Who's linking] [Permalink]

[Categories for this item: Diebold, Election Fraud, Princeton University]

Resignation Of Lawyers At FEC Raises Concern

By Matthew Mosk

Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 18, 2007; A21

The announcement yesterday that the top two lawyers for the Federal Election Commission had resigned helped spread an undercurrent of concern about the diminishing role of a once-prominent public voice on the intersection of money and politics.

The stated reasons for the departures of FEC General Counsel Lawrence H. Norton and Deputy General Counsel James A. Kahl was that the two men had landed private-sector jobs at a large firm with offices in six states. Norton and Kahl, reached yesterday, said their resignations were not intended to send any broader message.

But those who monitor campaign finance law with some dedication said the departures coincided with a perceived shift in the way the commissioners have worked with the general counsel.

Paul S. Ryan, a lawyer who monitors the FEC for the Campaign Legal Center, said the general counsel was once free to opine publicly about pressing policy matters but that has not been the preference of the commissioners as of late.

"The influence of the general counsel has clearly been diminishing," Ryan said. The commissioners "no longer seek the general counsel's opinion publicly with respect to answering difficult questions of law."

Lawrence M. Noble, who served as general counsel for 13 years before leaving the FEC in 2001, said he has noticed the same trend, though he did not know if it contributed in any way to his successor's departure.

"It's fair to say the commissioners are looking less to the general counsel for policy advice than they may have previously," Noble said. "What we've seen, in certain areas, is that the general counsel's office is not coming up with recommendations as it once had, at least not publicly."

That shift, if it in fact is occurring, comes at a time when the agency will handle some vexing policy matters, including the continuing implementation of the 2002 campaign finance reforms, a persistent debate over the activities of independent groups and oversight of a presidential election that is expected to test the outer bounds of fundraising limits.

FEC Chairman Robert D. Lenhard said the commissioners, and the general counsel, will approach all of those matters in the same way they always have. He has not seen "much of a pattern or trend or evolution in the role there."

Some of those who put the FEC under a microscope "are reading too much into a couple of different cases," Lenhard said. "The general counsel is free to speak his mind in open session and in executive session."

One case under that microscope, Ryan said, examined whether political parties could raise and spend unlimited amounts of campaign money on recount drives.

When the parties asked the FEC in 2002 and 2004 to allow them to spend money that way, Ryan said, Norton's public comments opposing the idea persuaded the parties to withdraw their requests. In 2006, though, Norton made no recommendation, and the parties persevered, brokering a deal with the FEC on the issue, Ryan said.

"To me, it was an obvious sign that the general counsel was no longer being allowed to recommend a course of action," Ryan said.

Norton and Kahl dispute this analysis of why they resigned.

"I'm not shocked people would read that into our decision, but it has nothing to do with it," Kahl said.

He and Norton said they are leaving together to give the firm Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice a sizeable footprint in the fast-changing area of campaign finance law.

"I've had as free a hand as ever to give the commission unvarnished advice," Norton said. "I have had ample authority, all the authority I need."

Ohio Elections Workers on Trial

Thursday January 18, 2007 6:31 PM

By M.R. KROPKO

Associated Press Writer

CLEVELAND (AP) - Three county elections workers conspired to avoid a more thorough recount of ballots in the 2004 presidential election, a prosecutor told jurors during opening statements Thursday.

``The evidence will show that this recount was rigged, maybe not for political reasons, but rigged nonetheless,'' Prosecutor Kevin Baxter said. ``They did this so they could spend a day rather than weeks or months'' on the recount, he said.

Jacqueline Maiden, the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections' coordinator, faces six counts of misconduct over how the ballots were reviewed. Rosie Grier, manager of the board's ballot department, and Kathleen Dreamer, an assistant manager, face the same charges.

Defense attorneys said in their opening statements that the workers in Ohio's most populous county did nothing out of the ordinary and hid nothing from the public.

``They just were doing it the way they were always doing it,'' said defense attorney Roger Synenberg, representing Dreamer.

The workers are not accused of voter fraud but of purposely breaking the law to avoid a time-consuming and expensive hand count.

Prosecutors do not allege that the defendants affected the outcome of the presidential election, which President Bush would not have won without Ohio. The recount, requested by third-party candidates, showed the Republican incumbent beat Democratic Sen. John Kerry by about 118,000 votes of 5.5 million cast.

Ohio law states that during a recount each county is supposed to randomly choose 3 percent of its ballots and tally them by hand and by machine. If there are no discrepancies in those counts, the rest of the votes can be recounted by machine.

If there is a difference, the county must randomly recount 3 percent of the ballots a second time. All the county's ballots must be recounted by hand if there is a second discrepancy, but if there isn't, all the ballots can be recounted by machine.

Baxter said testimony in the case will show that instead of conducting a random count, the workers chose sample precincts for the Dec. 16, 2004, recount that did not have questionable results to ensure that no discrepancies would emerge.

^---

On the Net:

Cuyahoga County elections board: http://www.boe.cuyahogacounty.us/

PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas is facing the foibles of his foiled coup

Some of the conclusions of the writer are 'Uncle Tom' - like in nature. Some good background info here.
---
Palestinian Affairs: Shooting in the dark

Khaled Abu Toameh, THE JERUSALEM POST Dec. 22, 2006

If anything, the bloody Fatah-Hamas clashes over the past week prove that Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas's security forces continue to have a strong presence on the streets of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. These events have also shown that Abbas's Fatah party has thousands of loyal gunmen who are not reluctant to take on Hamas.

Ever since he came to power in January 2005, Abbas has been complaining that his security forces are too weak to fight Hamas or other terror groups. These forces, he argued, are unable to carry out their duties because Israel had "destroyed" them and their headquarters during the past six years of the intifada.

This was the excuse he gave for failing to take action against Hamas and Islamic Jihad members who were firing rockets at Israel. And Abbas used the same excuse to justify his failure to restore law and order and disarm all the militias that are running wild in the Palestinian territories.

Like his predecessor, Yasser Arafat, Abbas proved this week that he will use his powers as commander-in-chief only when his rivals challenge him and his regime. Arafat often used to imprison Hamas leaders only when they criticized him in public or said something bad about his top aides.

Indeed, every now and then he did order his Fatah-controlled security forces to crack down on Hamas and Islamic Jihad following terror attacks on Israel, but that was largely due to his fear that the terrorists were "harming" the national interests of the Palestinians. Then, Arafat mostly acted when the US and European governments threatened to cut off funds to the PA.

ABBAS'S MAIN problem with Hamas is that the Islamic movement's presence in government has resulted in financial sanctions by the international community. Ever since Hamas came to power nine months ago, Abbas and Fatah have been waging a stubborn campaign designed to bring down the government of Ismail Haniyeh.

After failing to persuade Hamas to cede control over most of the key ministries in a proposed unity government, Abbas, whose options are limited thanks to the PA constitution, finally decided to resort to a threat to call early presidential and legislative elections. His chief argument: The Palestinians are in urgent need of money from the international community.

Although this argument sounds rational and convincing, there is no denying the fact that Abbas's undeclared goal is to topple the Hamas-led government and reinstate his Fatah party. To achieve this goal, he has recruited a large team of political advisers and spokesmen, whose main mission is to undermine the credibility of Hamas in the eyes of the Palestinian public. Tens of millions of dollars, badly needed to pay salaries of PA civil servants, are being poured into this campaign.

Finally, Abbas decided to exploit Hamas's refusal to relinquish control over important cabinet portfolios as an excuse to take the fight to the streets. In fact, the latest Hamas-Fatah clashes began 24 hours before Abbas delivered his controversial speech last Saturday in Ramallah, in which he declared his intention to hold early elections.

Following Friday prayers at the local Gamal Abdel Nasser Mosque, hundreds of PA policemen and Fatah gunmen attacked Hamas supporters who tried to march peacefully toward Manara Square in downtown Ramallah. The forces had clear and firm orders to block the Hamas demonstrators at any price. The ensuing confrontation, condemned by Hamas as a "massacre" against worshipers, left more than 30 people wounded, three of them seriously.

"How come we never see these forces when the Israeli army invades Ramallah?" asked Hamas operative Muhammad Jamil. "We've already seen Abbas's policemen surrender in their underwear to Israeli soldiers in Jericho and other Palestinian cities."

Now that the street fighting has also failed to bring down the Hamas government, Abbas is beginning to realize the magnitude of the gamble he embarked upon when he announced his intention to send the Palestinians to the ballot boxes.

Public opinion polls suggest that the Palestinian public still hasn't lost faith in Hamas, and that there is a growing sense that Abbas is part of a wider scheme aimed at overthrowing a democratically elected government.

Hamas, on the other hand, has demonstrated that it is prepared to fight to the last man to stay in power. The mere fact that tens of thousands of PA policemen and Fatah gunmen in the Gaza Strip were not able to crush Hamas's tiny militia is seen as victory for Haniyeh and his colleagues.

"This was a coup attempt that failed," remarked a senior Haniyeh aide. "We hope that Abbas and Fatah have learned the lesson and will now stop their conspiring against the government. If they insist on their current strategy, they will again discover that it's not easy to mess around with Hamas."