[MCM] To nail young anti-Palin hacker, DoJ distorts the law

[Mark Crispin Miller]

DoJ Goes Long for Sarah Palin

http://harpers.org/subjects/NoComment


We will all be able to sleep more soundly tonight knowing that a 
serious criminal has been apprehended. The 
Associated
 
Press reports:

David Kernell, 20, of Knoxville, Tenn. entered the plea in federal 
court in Knoxville, the same day prosecutors unsealed an indictment 
charging him with intentionally accessing Palin's e-mail account 
without authorization. Kernell, an economics student at the 
University of Tennessee, was brought into court wearing handcuffs and 
shackles on his ankles.

He was released without posting bond, but the court forbade him from 
owning a computer and limited his Internet use to checking e-mail and 
doing class work.

The hearing follows a massive deployment of FBI and Secret Service 
agents and prosecutors to identify the culprit who hacked into 
Palin's email account, removed a series of her communications and 
published them on the internet.

As Orin Kerr explains here, 
hacking someone's email account and making use of the information 
gained is a crime; it may either be a felony or a misdemeanor, 
depending upon the hacker's intentions. And here's the rub. In order 
to dramatize the case and get a felony indictment, the prosecutors 
needed to allege that it was "committed in furtherance of a criminal 
or tortuous" act. Here's 
Prof. Kerr, again on the 
case:

Oddly, though, the indictment doesn't exactly state what the crime or 
tort is that the intrusion was designed to further. It just states 
that the intrusion was "in furtherance of the commission of a 
criminal act in violation of the laws of the United States, including 
18 U.S.C. Section 2701 and 18 U.S.C. Section l030(a)(2)" But Section 
2701 and Section 1030 are the intrusion statutes themselves! It makes 
no sense to allow a felony enhancement for a crime committed in 
furtherance of the crime itself; presumably the enhancement is only 
for intrusions committed in furtherance of some other crime. 
Otherwise the felony enhancement is meaningless, as every misdemeanor 
becomes a felony.

Orin considers the indictment and the prosecutor's case to be fatally 
flawed. Orin's obviously right about this. I'd put the likelihood 
that the prosecutors will secure a conviction on a felony charge at 
right about zero-unless, of course, they get a jury that would 
convict a ham sandwich, as can be found often enough. What motivates 
this prosecutorial overreaching?

Cyber crimes are rampant in America today. Frequently they involve 
theft of identity metrics used to tap the victim's credit. As I 
reviewed in a recent piece for the BBC, however, the Department of 
Justice has allocated few resources to investigate these crimes 
except in very large scale and systematic cases-that is crimes in 
which there is a clear criminal purpose and a clear victim, and tens 
of millions at stake. Generally the Department has not acted in cases 
in which the result of the intrusion is merely to embarrass the 
target, for a fairly obvious reason. At best we're only talking about 
a misdemeanor. The Palin email hacking case quite plainly falls into 
this category. So what is going on?

The Justice Department seems to be setting one of its amazing new 
rules. When a Republican political figure is damaged in her 
expectation of being elected to office, it is telling us, that's a 
felony. And why is that the case here? Because the hacker helped 
establish something important: Sarah Palin has been systematically 
violating the Open Records Act. As 
David
 
Corn has noted at Mother Jones, Palin relied heavily on private email 
accounts for improper purposes. As governor of Alaska, she was 
obligated to maintain as public records her communications with 
respect to her discharge of official duties. Palin skirted this 
obligation by turning to private email accounts for government 
related dealings. In fact, the hacker in question helped flush out 
Palin's violations. The hacker also helped establish a motive for the 
illegal conduct: Palin regularly involved her husband in official 
business, and it's easy to understand why she did not want to leave 
behind evidence of her husband's involvement.

So why the massive dedication of law enforcement resources to 
identify and prosecute a hacker whose acts embarrassed a public 
person by exposing her improper conduct, but reveal no intention to 
defraud, steal, or otherwise harm his victim? That's a very good 
question. On the plus side, I am delighted to see, at long last, 
federal prosecutors taking action against a hacker. The prohibitions 
the law provides are important to millions of citizens who rely on 
the internet for 

[MCM] Book launch re: the religious left, in NYC, 10/14

[Mark Crispin Miller]

 From Ig Publishing:

You are cordially invited to the launch of Dispatches from the 
Religious Left: The Future of Faith and Politics in America. Edited 
by Frederick Clarkson, with an introduction by Joan Brown Campbell 
and an afterword by Jeff Sharlet, Dispatches is a groundbreaking and 
visionary collection that offers a progressive counter-voice to the 
Religious Right's dominance over the religious conversation in 
America.

The launch event for the book will be held on Tuesday, October 14, 
2008 at 7:00pm at the historic 
Middle Collegiate Church, 50 
East 7th St., New York City. The event will kick off with the 
church's famous gospel choir, followed by a conversation with 
Dispatches contributors, including former New York Times war 
correspondent and best-selling author 
Chris Hedges; 
Rev. Debra Haffner, 
Director of the Religious Institute on Sexual Morality, Justice and 
Healing; the 
Rev. 
Osagyefo Uhuru Sekou, Associate Minister for Missions, Social Justice 
and Community Action at Middle Collegiate Church, and Dispatches 
editor Frederick Clarkson. The event will be moderated by the 
Rev. Dr. 
Jacqui Lewis, Senior Minister at Middle Collegiate Church.

Please join us for this very special and important event as we 
discuss how a more dynamic religious left can offer a new religious 
and political direction for this country.
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[MCM] 330,000 illegals registered in Texas? Officials there found only THREE...

[Mark Crispin Miller]

Election
 
officials reject report saying thousands of illegal immigrants are 
registered to vote

12:00 AM CDT on Saturday, October 11, 2008

By JOHN RILEY / The Dallas Morning News
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/politics/national/stories/DN-immigvote_10pol.ART.State.Edition1.4a8d69e.html


WASHINGTON - County elections administrators reject the conclusions 
of a report alleging that up to 333,000 noncitizens may be registered 
to vote in Texas, saying there is no evidence of widespread voter 
fraud in the Lone Star State.

The report by David Simcox, the former head of a think tank that 
favors less immigration, said an estimated 1.8 million to 2.7 million 
noncitizen immigrants in the U.S. may be illegally registered to 
vote, thereby potentially influencing the outcome of the upcoming 
presidential and congressional elections.

Using population estimates from the Census Bureau and Texas county 
registration data, Mr. Simcox calculated that Dallas, Harris, Starr 
and Presidio counties, as well as others, had higher numbers of 
registered voters than those who are eligible, which may indicate 
noncitizens are registered to vote.

But elections administrators said this week that there's no proof 
that county officials are registering a significant number of 
noncitizens to vote.

"I don't think we are, and I have no evidence that we have people 
overregistered to vote," said Dallas County Elections Administrator 
Bruce Sherbet.

Steve Raborn, elections administrator for Tarrant County, said a 
two-year investigation by his office of questionable voter 
registrations in 2004 and 2005 found only three noncitizens on the 
county voter rolls, and they were later removed.

He said he couldn't completely discount Mr. Simcox's findings. "We 
probably have some noncitizens on the rolls, just like we probably 
have some dead people or some felons on the rolls, but it's not a big 
problem," Mr. Raborn said. "If they're illegal aliens, they're going 
to stay under the radar."

Mr. Simcox, former executive director of the Washington-based Center 
for Immigration Studies, said voter registration has become an honor 
system that lacks tough enforcement and may be easily manipulated. He 
cited Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Rick Noriega's campaign as a 
possible motivation for noncitizens to attempt to register to vote in 
hopes of influencing the election.

With a hotly contested presidential election, there has been a surge 
in voter registration this year, as well as concerns about fraud and 
voter disenfranchisement. This week, Nevada officials raided an ACORN 
office amid accusations that the group, which registers low-income 
people, had processed fraudulent voter registrations. And The New 
York Times reported that thousands of eligible voters have been 
removed from rolls or blocked from registering in at least six swing 
states in apparent violation of federal law.

I Immigration advocates say Mr. Simcox is just trying to inflame 
people's hostilities toward immigrants and make it more difficult for 
legally eligible immigrant citizens to vote.

The report "proves the old adage that if you 'torture numbers long 
enough you can get them to say anything,' " said Angela Kelley, 
director of the Immigration Policy Center.

"Yes, we need to be vigilant to preserve the integrity of the voting 
system in America, but there is no evidence ... that finds voter 
fraud by noncitizens is a problem or legitimate worry, but rather, 
it's an urban myth."

The county officials said voter fraud was difficult to carry out in 
Texas because each applicant must submit a driver's license number or 
Social Security number, which is entered into a statewide electronic 
database and checked by the secretary of state's office. Applicants 
are sent a voting card and officially added to the rolls only if 
there are no discrepancies and the secretary of state's office 
approves the application.

If there is evidence of voter fraud, local officials are required to 
turn it over to the Texas attorney general for investigation.





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[MCM] Sarah Palin on SNL? Just say NO!

[Mark Crispin Miller]

The New York Post reports that Sarah Palin has been scheduled to host 
NBC's "Saturday
Night Live" on 10/25:

The New York Post is reporting that Palin's appearance on 
Oct. 25 is signed, sealed, and
delivered. Soccer moms and Joe Sixpacks, listen up. Get your 
beer, mooseburgers and
caribou dips ready. Sarah Palin is doing "Saturday Night 
Live." Not Tina Fey doing Sarah
Palin doing "Saturday Night Live." But the Sarah Herself.

She has already OK'd it. She's booked. It's confirmed. Done 
deal. Sketches are being
sketched as we speak. She - eyeglasses, haircomb, designer 
jacket and trunkful of
gosh-darns, golly-gees and gol-dangs - will be on "SNL" 
Saturday night, Oct. 25. Sarah's
rehearsal time has already been penciled in for Friday the 
24th. And it's because she
wants to do it.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/10102008/gossip/cindy/golly__palin_to_play_herself_on_snl_132932.htm

Now, if Joe Biden is guest-hosting on the Saturday before or after, 
then it's fair enough that
Palin get to do it, too. (By rights, Ralph Nader, Cynthia McKinney 
and Bob Barr should also
have their turns.) But if the network has been pressured to have 
Palin on--whether by GE
or by the GOP, or both--to "balance" Tina Fey's satiric thrusts, then 
it is not okay.

SNL should not have any major candidates, or mainstream politicans, 
on as hosts, because
the ties between the media and the political establishment are too 
tight and too many as it is.
But having Palin on is indefensible on several other grounds as well.

First of all, there's her extremism. Can you think of any other 
Rapture-ready theocrat, or
radical anti-environmentalist, or male supremacist, or stealth 
secessonist, who would be
welcome on that show? The fact that most Americans have not yet heard 
that those are her
positions makes it all the worse that she would guest-host SNL, which 
shouldn't be a part
of her campaign's attempt to cast her as your average "hockey mom." 
(Those of you who've
seen Bob Roberts no doubt feel a certain chill right now.)

And then there's Palin's on-the-stump behavior--which most of us have 
heard about.
Stoked by her infuriating lies and homicidal innuendo (the woman's 
very good at that), the
crowds around her whoop it up like lynch mobs, calling for Obama's 
death (the Secret
Service is investigating one such outburst) and otherwise exulting in 
their hatred:


(PHILADELPHIA) As the crowd cheered at a Sarah Palin rally 
this morning in Johnstown,
Pennsylvania, a man in the audience grinned as he held up a 
stuffed monkey doll with a
Barack Obama bumper sticker wrapped across its forehead.


http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2008/10/11/politics/fromtheroad/entry4515246.shtml.
 
(See the
video at http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4515218n.)


So why would SNL help "humanize" this vicious character? What is 
NBC's excuse, and/or
Lorne Michaels', for giving her an opportunity, ten days before 
Election Day, to wink and
grin and say "Doggone it!" and "You betcha!" (and also, winningly, to 
mock herself for
doing so)? And how can all the show's hip regulars, including Tina 
Fey, put up with this?

The fact is that they shouldn't have to: Sarah Palin has no place on 
SNL, and you should let
them know.

NBC: 212-664-

General Electric: 212-575-6000, or 1-800-626-2000

NBC and GE are both headquartered at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, NY, NY, 10112.

NBC's FAQ online: http://www.nbc.com/Footer/Contact_Us/

(Any tips re: how to reach the network or the show itself--and their 
corporate sponsors
--would be much appreciated.)

MCM






>The Christian Science Monitor is reporting that Sarah Palin's 
>appearance on Saturday Night Live is "signed, sealed, and delivered" 
>for October 25.  In the past week Palin has seemed to delight in 
>exciting her crowds until they become angry mobs calling for the 
>death of Barack Obama. An appearance on SNL usually raises a 
>candidate in the polls. If you believe it is wrong to give free 
>public exposure to a  demagogue who with innuendo and blatant lies 
>turns a crowd into a mob rabid against the opponent and shouting, 
>"Kill him!", contact NBC now to protest Palin's appearance on the 
>show. If you google "NBC contact" there will be a drop-down menu of 
>programs---just click onto Saturday Night Live and write your 
>message.

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[MCM] Jesus would throw up

[Mark Crispin Miller]

These are McPalin's followers.

MCM

http://vodpod.com/watch/1074819-divide-and-conquer-by-bruce-gagnon-video
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[MCM] McCain's most racist ad yet!!

[Mark Crispin Miller]

McPalin's campaign should just run this one, and save some money.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cb8h2j7u1Tk

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[MCM] ACORN and the Ohio GOP

[Mark Crispin Miller]

Here is a terrific piece by my friend Vicky 
Lovegren, who has fought doggedly, for years, in 
Cuyahoga County to protect the vote.

This article will tell you what it's like under 
the sway of the Republican Boards of Elections
in Ohio--notwithstanding SoS Jean Brunner's 
efforts at reform--and also helps to
further point up the astonishing bad faith of 
those fierce partisans attacking ACORN.

MCM

Cuyahoga's Witch Hunt
by Victoria Lovegren

On Tuesday, Oct 7th, I attended a Cuyahoga County 
Board of Elections (CCBOE) meeting.  I wanted to 
make sure absentee-vote totals were going to be 
separated from election-day vote totals.  What I 
observed was a witch hunt.

This is what I, and many others, believe:

The GOP is applying pressure to the county board 
of elections to "sniff out" questionable 
voter-registration cards, especially those by 
very effective and successful voter-registration 
projects, and call it "Voter Fraud."  Probably 
like the pressure on 9 fired U.S. Attorneys 
(Google "Iglesias Voter Fraud"). 

ACORN, a highly respected community organizing 
agency, was called in to answer questions about 
"fishy" and duplicate voter-registration cards. 

During the increasingly hostile interrogation, 
ACORN admitted "we don't have the resources to 
catch every fraudulent voter-registration card". 
(Brings back memories of Bob Bennett's "No 
election is perfect!" as he and Vu pushed 
e-voting down our throats!)

The next day's Plain Dealer: "ACORN: Possible 
Fraud"--"ACORN admitted to the BOE they can't 
eliminate fraud from their operation."  

Fox News and the conveyor-belt media ran with it, 
adding to the "ACORN bonfire" being stoked around 
the country. 

Within minutes, blogs and GOP sites were linking 
Obama (e.g. "Obama ACORN Truths Proven") and Ohio 
Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner (e.g. 
"Activist Group Advising Brunner Admits to Ohio 
Election Fraud") to this "shady organization." 

The Truth

ACORN is required, by law, to turn in all 
registration forms, lest they be accused of 
partisan filtering. 

Of the tens of thousands (65,000 to 80,000) new 
registrations in Cuyahoga, the occurrence of 
duplications is marginal.

ACORN's quality control process involves calling 
voters, to try to assess the legitimacy of the 
cards.  They evaluate the cards, and group them 
into "verified", "unable to verify", and 
"problematic registrations".  ACORN employs many 
canvassers. They do not have a sophisticated 
voter-registration database that tracks change 
transactions, nor signature-recognition 
technology. 

During the "interrogation", ACORN described the 
response from one man submitting multiple 
voter-registration cards: "I was only trying to 
help the kids!"  (At first I thought he meant the 
Iraq veterans who are fighting an unnecessary 
war, but later concluded that he was probably 
referring to the young canvassers who are 
engaging in a meaningful civic activity.)

I heard ACORN say numerous times that they wanted 
to work WITH the BOE--who HAS the resources, to 
catch questionable registration cards.  CCBOE's 
Diebold DIMS voter-registration is supposed to 
catch those duplicates!

The Irony

The hostile board members (not you, InaJo) 
demanded ACORN eliminate duplicate 
voter-registration cards and turn over suspect 
employees to the county prosecutor, without 
benefit of the board's resources.  Mr. Frost even 
suggested ACORN's attorney was "in contempt." It 
was extremely unsettling, given the "questionable 
things" CCBOE did, or important things they did 
NOT do over the past four years. 

Voter-registration/DIMS problems are documented 
in a slew of reports, by a number of people, 
including myself.  Researchers found "an error 
rate of 6.2%, 5.1% of which was due to apparent 
BOE clerical errors, and 1.1% to apparent voter 
error" and projected "19,000 voter registrations 
Š at low to high or absolute risk of 
disqualification, mostly due to BOE entry 
errors." 
(http://www.clevelandvotes.org/news/reports/Report_to_ElectionComm.pdf) 
I recall DIMS permitted entry of bad addresses, 
e.g. misspelled street name, yet later, kicked 
out the voter as "fatal pending", thus unable to 
vote."

DIMS was implemented TWO MONTHS prior to that 
historic election of Nov 2004. Could that explain 
the hundreds of un-entered, "gone missing", 
erroneously entered registrations?  Or was it the 
people in the data-entry department that were 
RIF'd before that election?

Can anyone remember the bogus "Recount of 2004", 
in which hundreds of people, many coming in from 
other states, THOUGHT they were participating in 
Democracy?  
Does anyone remember the recent primary election, 
March 2008, in which hundreds of Republicans 
"crossed over" to vote against Dennis Kucinich 
and Hillary Clinton?  Apparently, 
Limbaugh-sanctioned tomfoolery is okay.

Does it bother people that Bob Bennett and 
Michael Vu are walking the streets after clearly 
committing fraud, orders of magnitude more 
serious tha

[MCM] MAKE THE CANDIDATES SIGN VR's "SUPER PLEDGE"

[Mark Crispin Miller]

If you are having trouble viewing this email, please 
click 
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October 11th, 2008
Quick, Decisive Action Needed for Election Integrity!


Velvet Revolution's New 'Standing For Voters' Project Making Headway...
Now We Need Your Help!

Green Party presidential nominee Cynthia McKinney and independent 
candidate Ralph Nader have signed VR's Standing For Voters 'Super 
Pledge' for election integrity. But where are Obama and McCain? Help 
us call for them to Stand For Voters!

The Super Pledge reads in part, "I will officially challenge the 
results of the election as provided by law if the combination of 
election conditions , incident reports and announced election results 
calls into question the reliability of the official vote count. I 
will wait until all valid votes are counted and all serious 
challenges resolved before declaring victory or conceding defeat."

While Barack Obama and the DNC have remained ominously silent about 
vote suppression and the dangers of secret vote counting under the 
control of GOP-controlled corporations, John McCain has, ironically, 
launched a webpage calling for "a fair, honest, and transparent 
opportunity to vote." Whatever that means! This week in a 
stump speech McCain said, 
"No one should corrupt the most precious right we have, and that is 
the right to vote." We're challenging McCain to put his money where 
his mouth is and Obama to put his money where his own mouth should 
be. We're calling on both of them, along with candidates around the 
nation, to sign our Standing For 
Voters pledge. 
StandingForVoters.org is the 
newest project of the 
Velvet Revolution 
Election Protection Strike Force.

Will you help us bring more candidates on board?
See the end of this letter to:

Send a letter or email to remaining presidential candidates McCain, 
Obama, Baldwin, and Barr requesting that they sign the pledge. See 
contact info below.
Reach out to candidates in your area.
Volunteer with StandingForVoters.org.
Have your group endorse Standing For Voters.
A growing number of candidates for offices ranging from president to 
local commissioner have already signed the pledge, representing 
communities from New Mexico to Maine and Florida to Washington state. 
Check out StandingForVoters.org 
for a list of 
candidates who 
have pledged and 
organizations that 
have endorsed the campaign. We need your help to grow both lists.

Candidates: Read and sign the Standing For Voters basic pledge or 
Super Pledge! You ask voters to stand for you by volunteering their 
time, their dollars, and their votes. Now it's time for you to show 
that you Stand For Voters!
Voters and Nonvoters: We've made it easy and exciting for you to seek 
pledges from candidates. Check out our 
For 
Voters page. Helping bring candidates on board is a great way a 
little of your time could make a big difference. Even if you only 
have a few minutes once or twice, you can help. We're currently 
forming a task force of core volunteers for the project. 
Find 
out more.
Groups:  You can endorse Standing For Voters: 
Email 
us with your group's name, website if you've got one, and contact 
information. We'll list you on our site.
Contact your candidate today, and urge them to take the Standing For 
Voters Pledge!

Chuck Baldwin: (866) 992-2539 or email 
 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Bob Barr: (800) Bob-Barr, 
http://www.bobbarr2008.com/contact/form/?type=4
Barack Obama: (866) 675-2008 
http://my.barackobama.com/page/s/contact2
John McCain  (703) 418-2008  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Together, we can again have a government that is accountable.

StandingForVoters.org
a project of the 
Velvet Revolution 
Election Protection Strike Force




VR CO-FOUNDER RELEASES "GET OUT THE VOTE" DVD!

Justice Through Music Project (www.jtmp.org), 
co-founder of Velvet Revolution, which has been a leader of youth 
voter registration, has released its third "Rock Your Rights" DVD. 
This DVD features more than 25 famous bands and musicians to urge 
young people to register, vote, talk about issues, and get involved.

WATCH T

[MCM] To protest Sarah Palin's SNL appearance

[Mark Crispin Miller]

Here's the contact info for Lorne Michaels' SNL production company (thanks
to Gwynne MacDonald):

>212) 265-7600
>Broadway Video Entertainment
>Christina McGinnis is Senior VP (if you can't get through to Lorne 
>Michaels' office).
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[MCM] "The False Narrative of 'Voter Fraud'"

[Mark Crispin Miller]

"This is a disgrace beyond measure, and it must be stopped."

Amen, amen. And what it makes entirely clear is that we need not just 
election reform
(and campaign finance reform), but also sweeping media reform.

MCM

The False Narrative of "Voter Fraud"
by Kenneth Anderson
October 12, 2008   

http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-False-Narrative-of-Vo-by-Kenneth-Anderson-081011-303.html

A false election narrative of "voter fraud" is currently under 
construction in various swing states and being built by the 
Republican party and their media organ, Fox News.  The narrative, 
that the Democratic party and, more specifically, Barack Obama, will 
steal the election through fraudulent voter registration, is being 
fleshed out by various state Republican party organisations, 
Republican Attorneys General and the McCain campaign.  A false 
equivalence is being made between fraudulent voter registration and 
voter fraud.

Mere weeks before the crucial presidential election, the Republican 
party and their various agencies have uncorked a wide spread effort 
to save the failing campaign of John McCain.  Critical swing states 
that are now seen drifting toward Obama have been targeted with 
outright and likely illegal voter roll purges, or, in states where 
the GOP is not completely in command of the election apparatus, 
specious lawsuits have been filed that demand voter registration 
verification against unreliable databases in order to exact 
large-scale purges of voter rolls.  Despite federal law prohibiting 
voter roll purges within 90 days of election day, tens of thousands 
of voters in swing states have been recently stricken from voter 
rolls.

This now happening in Ohio, where a Reagan-appointed US District 
Court judge declared that Secretary of State Brunner is violating 
federal law by refusing to purge registration forms when mismatches 
occur between the state Motor Vehicles Administration database or the 
federal Social Security database, databases known to be fraught with 
errors.  Ohio's Greene County sheriff, Republican Gene Fischer, has 
demanded the voter registration files of all voters who took 
advantage of an early voting window.  Greene county is heavily 
populated by college students.  Prior to this move, the state GOP 
filed a lawsuit to prevent early voting from happening at all.

In Michigan, the state GOP there proudly announced their intention to 
challenge voters in heavily Democratic precincts based on recent home 
foreclosures by claiming future discrepancies with voter registration 
addresses.  It was a clear if nuanced signal that the GOP still 
believes only property owners ought to be able to vote.

In Wisconsin, Republican state Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen filed 
a similar lawsuit as that in Ohio, demanding verification of all 
voter registrations completed since January, 2006.  He lied through 
his teeth and claimed he had no communication with the state GOP in 
the matter.  Van Hollen is the co-chair of the Wisconsin McCain 
campaign.

In Missouri, Republican election director Charlene Davis made the 
extraordinary claim that her board is "bogged down" in Kansas City by 
new registrations, and implied that these mountains of new voter 
registrations were coming in from ACORN. The process was being 
swamped, ACORN was surely up to no good.  And what this vast problem 
supposedly being cause by ACORN?  Three weeks ago, Missouri's 
election board found 135 "questionable cards."  This led to the local 
FBI office promising to investigate the matter, as "officials in 
Missouri" were dispatched to seize documents from the ACORN office 
there.  The problem: ACORN has done no registrations in Kansas City 
since August.

On it goes.  El Paso county's Republican county clerk, Robert Blanik, 
spread misinformation in an effort todisenfranchise student voters in 
Colorado, where almost 20% of voters have been disappeared from voter 
rolls.  Threatening "vote-scam" fliers were distributed in black 
neighborhoods in Philadelphia. Illegal voter challenges were planned 
by the GOP in Missouri.  Ballots with "Barack Osama" as the 
Democratic candidate were sent to voters in New York.

The statistical target of these multi-state purges and the various 
other shenanigans is the heavily Democratic "new voters."  Democrats 
now have 11 million more voters than the GOP, as that party has only 
watched its own number of registered voters decline every year since 
2005.

The GOP are in trouble and they know it.  With the McCain campaign 
looking in tatters and poll numbers darkening for them everyday, 
prospects for Senator McCain in an honest election grow dimmer by the 
day.  Desperation has now set in.  The strategy is set: purge voters, 
sew confusion, and stomp up and down about "voter fraud" emanating 
from a grass roots community organization most Americans have never 
heard of.  Until now.

Purposing the False Narrative of 'Voter Fraud'

  GOP-led vilification of the grass roots com

[MCM] Would Bush do this? (Why not?)

[Mark Crispin Miller]

Fair warning from a true conservative.

MCM

N More Years!

by Gordon Prather
October 11, 2008

http://www.antiwar.com/prather/?articleid=13579

Four-score years ago our forefathers overwhelmingly elected Herbert 
Hoover to serve as President of the United States. He was inaugurated 
March 4, 1929, just in time to take the rap for not preventing the 
Wall Street crash of October 29, 1929, which according to the 
conventional wisdom, triggered the Great Depression.

Of course, it was a bum rap; under then current law, the President 
was essentially powerless to affect what did or did not happen on 
Wall Street.

But the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act was pending before Congress in late 
1929 and was signed into law by Hoover in early 1930. Other scribes 
(most notably the late Jude Wanniski) have concluded that 
Congressional Act - whose protective tariffs not only could, but did, 
affect what happened on Wall Street and Main Street - was the real 
"cause" of the Great Depression.

So what has all that got to do with the ongoing wars in Iraq and 
Afghanistan, the upcoming presidential election and the impending 
wars in Iran and Pakistan?

Well, scroll back to 1933. By then the Great Depression was worldwide 
and getting worse. On January 30, Adolf Hitler was named Chancellor 
of Germany and on March 4, Franklin Roosevelt was inaugurated as our 
32nd president, both promising to do whatever it took to effect 
economic recovery in their countries.

FDR was reelected in 1936, but some scribes do not consider economic 
recovery to have really began in this country until 1938. And why 
then?

Well, in early 1938, Hitler made himself Supreme Commander of all 
German armed forces, and ordered them to enter and occupy Austria. 
Hitler threatened to do the same to the Sudentenland, so Brit Prime 
Minister Chamberlain went to Munich and "appeased" Hitler, gaining 
"peace with honor."

Whereupon FDR began to lobby Congress to repeal certain provisions of 
the Neutrality Act, to make it legal to produce and sell zillions of 
dollars worth of armaments to Great Britain and France. By 1940, with 
FDR seeking an unprecedented third term, with our construction of a 
powerful two-ocean navy underway and with Great Britain and France at 
war with Germany, our Great Depression had begun to come to an end.

Of course, the Great Depression had come to an end in Germany - under 
Hitler - much earlier. Hence, the argument could easily be made that 
Hitler's successes also inadvertently enabled FDR to seek - and 
obtain - unprecedented "emergency" third and fourth terms.

But now, return to the present, with ongoing wars in Iraq and 
Afghanistan, the stock market crash of 2008, the upcoming 
presidential election and the impending wars in Iran and Pakistan, 
with Bush the Younger constitutionally limited to two terms.

Scott Ritter, former U.S. Marine Intelligence Officer in the First 
Gulf War, and Chief UN Inspector in its aftermath, an outspoken 
opponent of the Second Gulf War and the impending wars against Iran 
and Pakistan, recently wrote at Truthdig:

"The war in Iraq has morally crippled the Republican Party, if not 
all of America. The fact that a conflict which has taken the lives of 
more than 4,150 Americans to date, wounded tens of thousands more, 
and slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians serves as 
the centerpiece of the Republican Party platform boggles the mind."

But:

"The more I listened to Obama, the more I realized that on the major 
issues of war and peace, there was in fact very little that separated 
him from the Republicans he opposes. Both have sold out American 
sovereignty in the name of Israeli security (or more important, 
Likud-inspired, AIPAC-driven policies falsely sold as being in the 
best interest of the Israeli people). Both assume Iranian nefarious 
intent, and point an accusatory finger at "Russian aggression" 
without reflecting on the cause-and-effect reality of irresponsible 
American foreign policy (the expansion of NATO, the invasion and 
occupation of Iraq, withdrawal from the ABM Treaty, and the 
installation on Polish and Czech soil of a ballistic missile defense 
shield claimed to be for the Iranian threat, but optimized for 
missiles launched from within Russia)."

Ritter's Conclusion?

"The two-party system is failing America. There isn't time between 
now and Election Day to create a viable third-party candidate, and so 
the sad reality is one of two deeply flawed men, the byproduct of a 
deeply flawed political system, will serve as president for the next 
four or eight years."

But, Ritter to the contrary, there could be an alternative to McCain 
or Obama serving as president for the next four or eight years.

After all, on August 28, 2008, President Bush extended for another 
year the National Emergency he first declared on September 14, 2001, 
"along with the powers and authorities adopted to deal with that 
emergency."

Congress has also given the Commander-in-Chie