-Caveat Lector-
Begin forwarded message:
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: May 3, 2007 10:06:21 AM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: OF the Party, BY the Party, FOR the Party -- Who Do Our
"Public Servants" Serve?
Embattled Interior official resigns post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/02/
AR2007050202353.html
An Interior Department official accused of pressuring government
scientists to make their research fit [Bush] policy goals has
resigned. Julie MacDonald, deputy assistant secretary for fish,
wildlife and parks, submitted her resignation letter to Interior
Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, a department spokesman said Tuesday.
MacDonald resigned a week before a House congressional oversight
committee was to hold a hearing on accusations that she violated
the Endangered Species Act, censored science and mistreated staff
of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Tester Calls on Montana U.S. Attorney to Resign
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/02/
AR2007050202353.html
Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) called yesterday on a top Justice
Department official to resign his U.S. attorney's post after
revelations that he worked to alter federal law so that he and a
handful of other senior aides could escape residency requirements
that governed their assignments as federal prosecutors.
2006 Missouri election was ground zero for GOP
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/02/
AR2007050202353.html
http://proctoringcongress.blogspot.com/
New disclosures in the wake of the firings of eight U.S. attorneys
show that that Republican campaign to protect the balloting was not
as it appeared. No significant voter fraud was ever proved. The
preoccupation with ballot fraud in Missouri was part of a wider
national effort that critics charge was aimed at protecting the
Republican majority in Congress by dampening Democratic turnout.
That effort included stiffer voter-identification requirements,
wholesale purges of names from lists of registered voters and tight
policing of liberal get-out-the-vote drives.
Connecting the Dots in Election Fraud
by Lynne Glasner
http://www.opednews.com/articles/
opedne_lynne_gl_070417_connecting_the_dots_.htm
... The issue is clouded by the motive behind the purge. Either out
of a desire to be politically correct or an unwillingness to apply
a criminal mindset to the Bush Administration, Congressional
committees are not acting as if they are investigating a crime.
Though Bush has yet to mimic “I-am-not-a-crook” Nixon, without
looking at the motives, it’s hard to come up with probable cause.
It’s important to apply facts to the truthiness of the Republican
Talking Points. The issue isn’t the replacement of US Attorneys by
a new administration -- the issue is the dismissal of US Attorneys
without cause in the middle of their tenure.
The Congressional Research Service filed a report on the historical
record of the hiring and terms of US Attorneys over the last 25
years. In the period between 1981 and 2006, there were only three
U.S. Attorneys who were dismissed without apparent cause in the
first four years of their terms. During this time frame, at the end
of every administration, most of the US Attorneys left, as was the
expected practice. But there were only 10 who left involuntarily,
and all but two of these left under at minimum, a cloud of
“improper” behavior. So, yes, it is a big deal.
Again, we must apply fact to the spin and Republican Talking Points
because there’s a gap not only in the emails that went missing, but
in the facts that are being tossed around as truths. The spin-
meisters want the public to retain the sound bite “voter fraud.”
Drip, drip, as they squeeze out the talking points, the timing of
each response carefully calibrated from a general “dismissed for
poor performance” to “dismissed for not prosecuting voter fraud.”
The public is a bit skittish about voter issues given the last two
election cycles, so how could anyone oppose going after voter
fraud. Of course that should be an issue. How silly of us dumb
citizens. Here we not only get conflicting stories, but the smoke
and mirrors act is adding to the putrid hot air.
Here’s the problem, one that shouldn’t get lost in the new
obfuscation about emails and the technicalities thereof. The
general public doesn’t distinguish between voter fraud and election
fraud and the media, if they do understand the difference, have
been strangely silent about making sure their audience is informed.
But we should not underestimate its importance. It’s not just about
words — it’s a mirror we should be reflecting to shine a light on
reality.
Voter fraud is fraud committed by individual voters, for example,
improper registration, voting twice, the kinds of things that the
Bushies like to claim the Democrats are very guilty of; or claims
of falsely registering felons who are not entitled to vote. After
thousands of hours and millions of dollars of investigation, there
is minimal evidence of that this kind of fraud has legs to it,
though the Republican apologists have been working judiciously to
make us think otherwise.
[http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/11/washington/11voters.html?
_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin]
The New York Times reported (4-11-07) “that voter experts have
found ‘widespread but not unanimous agreement that there is little
polling place fraud.’ However, the Election Assistance Commission,
a federal panel charged with election research, skewed the findings
of the voter experts.” So the report was actually hijacked to make
it seem like there is a problem with voter fraud when the reality
is the opposite.
The Bush administration has been hyping “voter fraud” since the
last election. It’s part of their attempt to add to the pollution
surrounding election issues and hide their own malfeasance and
complicity. Karl Rove, in a meeting with Republican lawyers last
year, called voter fraud an "enormous and growing" problem, linking
voter fraud with election integrity. The two issues are not the
same and conflating them is a deliberate attempt to change
perception and confuse the public.
Election fraud is more global and the stakes are bigger. Election
fraud includes things like throwing an election, rigging voting
machines, not counting all the votes. And it is these issues that
are of concern to those who advocate for election integrity. These
issues are the ones that make a difference in deciding an election
and they make a difference in who is in power. Election fraud cases
are still ongoing. In Sarasota, FL, where the Democratic candidate
for the House in 2006 lost by 369 votes but 18,000 votes were
“undercounted” by touch screen voting machines, Congress has just
begun an investigation.
There were several very thin margins in the last elections and
several are suspect. Although the spin meisters would like us to
believe that this phenomena is because of the current political
divide, it is more likely a result of rigged voting machines and
election fraud, which is not only a felony but it is something the
Republicans have been creative about since the beginning of the
Bush Administration. Since Bush was not elected by popular vote in
2000, the Republicans had to make sure that they could count on the
next election being a “slam dunk.” After 911 and for quite a while
thereafter, the President enjoyed great popular support, so it
feels rather Nixonian that the Republicans would start quietly
taking over elections to insure their stay in office. Yet the
groundwork was being laid at the onset.
Take the phone jamming in New Hampshire in the 2004 election.
Though James Tobin was convicted and sentenced to prison, his
sentence was overturned on a technicality (jury instructions
apparently weren’t clear enough); in addition, the case moved very
slowly under the auspices of a Republican appointed US Attorney,
who was not among those dismissed.
On April 11, without much fanfare, San Diego County hired Michael
Vu as assistant registrar of voters. And just who is Michael Vu and
why is it of note? Vu was the election director of Cuyahoga County,
Ohio, the disputed Ohio county that gave the election to Bush in
2004. He resigned from his position under a cloud: two employees
who worked directly under him were convicted of election fraud.
Their crime: during the election recount process, they were caught
trying to cherry pick the precincts that would be recounted in the
audit. And what a coincidence! San Diego County is where US
Attorney Carol Lam was fired, allegedly for not prosecuting voter
fraud.
Two of the fired US Attorneys, David Iglesias (Albuquerque, NM) and
John McKay (Seattle, WA) were dismissed because they refused to
file voter fraud charges after being warned to do so by well-placed
Republicans. Others seem to have been fired for pursuing
investigations of Republicans. The Bush Administration has sued the
state of Missouri for not going after voter fraud in that state. US
District Judge Nanette Laughrey said in her decision: "It is also
telling that the United States [Department of Justice, which
brought the suit] has not shown that any Missouri resident was
denied his or her right to vote as a result of deficiencies alleged
by the United States; nor has the United States shown that any
voter fraud has occurred." [For the original DoJ complaint, see:
http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/voting/nvra/mo_nvra_comp.htm]
The attempt by Republicans at conflating the issues of voter fraud
with election fraud is a big one and we need to connect all the
dots. The larger picture of Republican efforts to suborn the
justice system in an attempt to ensure maintenance of their
majority power is just starting to unravel.
It’s so ubiquitous that once you notice it, the hubris is
breathtaking, which makes it all the more difficult to grasp. Who
wants to believe that our own government would be plotting such
anti-democratic, authoritarian schemes? One’s first instinct is to
dismiss it; it’s so outrageous that the label of paranoid seems
reasonable until one actually examines the facts.
It will take some time to sort it all out, and it may very well be
one of those political issues that never gets entirely rooted out.
Some of the players in this plot are actors from Watergate and its
successor Iran-Contra, once again coming back for their final
curtsy on the stage of corruption. When the curtain comes down this
time, we have to be careful that the applause is for their exit not
just from the stage but from public life and in some cases, for
their life behind bars.
Anything less, and those 30-something assistants who have been
insidiously implanted throughout the fertile land of civil service
will be back in spades.
See what's free at AOL.com.
www.ctrl.org
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