Hastert May Face Post-Election Unrest; Foley Scandal Just One of Speaker's Problems

Washington Post
Hastert May Face Post-Election Unrest
Foley Scandal Just One of Speaker's Problems
By Jonathan Weisman

House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert's future is in doubt even if the Republicans retain control of the House because of unease among GOP lawmakers about his handling of the Foley page scandal and what a House ethics committee investigation might conclude about him, according to several Republican aides.

House Chief Deputy Whip Eric I. Cantor (R-Va.) said last week that the House Republican leadership elections scheduled for Nov. 15 should be postponed until the ethics committee delivers its final report. House Majority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) confirmed yesterday on "Fox News Sunday" that he and Hastert have discussed that possibility. "We'll see how Tuesday goes and then we'll make some decisions."

But if Democrats seize control of the House in tomorrow's election, as many political analysts and pollsters are predicting, then Hastert is widely expected to exit the leadership stage and allow a new generation of Republican leaders to try to recapture the majority. Hastert, 64, the longest-serving Republican speaker, remains personally popular with House Republicans, but the discontent with his often lackadaisical, hands-off style is palpable.

"I believe that members have the highest regard for the speaker, his honesty, his integrity and his high ethical standards," said Rep. Patrick T. McHenry (R-N.C.). "But the last two years have been very tough for us as a majority. There's no doubt about that. Certainly we need to have a better direction, vision and drive than we've had during the 109th Congress."

The speaker and his top aides' response to warnings that former representative Mark Foley (R-Fla.) had for years been pursuing teenage male pages is part of an emerging pattern that is troubling Republican lawmakers.

In early 2004, as House Appropriations Committee investigators prepared to launch a sensitive audit of highly classified Capitol Hill security upgrades, Hastert's chief counsel made a surprise visit to the first meeting of the auditors.

His message was clear, according to participants: The speaker's office was not happy about the probe and would keep investigators on a tight leash. In September 2005, despite growing evidence of sweetheart deals, kickbacks, wasteful contracts and shoddy work, the probe was suddenly shut down.

Critics of Hastert say the incident -- reported by Congressional Quarterly last month -- is emblematic of a speaker's office dominated by powerful senior aides that has repeatedly thwarted aggressive policing of the inner workings of Congress. Two of Hastert's top aides -- chief of staff Scott Palmer and chief counsel Ted Van Der Meid -- had been warned about Foley's unimpeded pursuit of male pages long before ABC News broke the story Sept. 28. Hastert and his aides orchestrated a purge of the ethics committee in February 2005, after the committee admonished then-Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) for misconduct. And there have been massive cost overruns at a Capitol visitors center known derisively as "Hastert's Hole." A project once slated to cost $265 million now is expected to cost as much as $596 million.

All of these actions point to serious failures on the part of the speaker's office, critics say.

"All of the mechanisms that should be in place and used to protect the speaker and the House itself have been abridged because they just don't want to look," said Scott Lilly, a former Democratic staff director of the House Appropriations Committee.

Lisa C. Miller, a spokeswoman for the speaker, strenuously objected to the premise that Hastert has been a reluctant self-policeman or that there is growing dissatisfaction with Hastert's leadership within the Republican ranks. "Since Republicans have come into office, this House operates in a highly professional manner," she said. "We have vigorous oversight with annual auditing by an independent inspector general."

And those audits have produced eight consecutive clean bills of health, she said.

The turmoil has been mounting with Hastert largely off the stage. The speaker had expected to maintain a vigorous campaign schedule, but since the Foley scandal erupted, the former high school wrestling coach has kept largely out of sight. Boehner said that while Hastert has not granted many interviews, he made campaign appearances last week in Texas, Arizona and Florida. His Democratic opponent, a little-known challenger named John Laesch, has tried to capitalize on the swirling controversies. On Friday, Laesch posted a Web site, http://www.therealdenny.com, to raise questions about Hastert's leadership.

Meanwhile, some Republican lawmakers, such as Reps. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) and John Shadegg (R-Ariz.) have been quietly putting out calls suggesting they might throw their hats in the ring for leadership posts. On Saturday, House Energy and Commerce Chairman Joe Barton (R-Tex.) announced that he, too, would be seeking a leadership post if a slot is available.

Miller blamed the discontent on ambition.

"It sounds like this is coming from folks who want the speaker's job," she said, "and when we win back the House on Tuesday, the speaker will run again."

The Foley scandal is foremost in members' minds, but what critics see as a lax attitude toward self-policing goes well beyond the Foley incident. The security investigation may be equally serious, Lilly suggested.

Since the Cold War days of the Kennedy administration, a highly secret organization has watched over the security of what is known as the Capitol campus, which includes the Capitol, the House and Senate office buildings and the Supreme Court. That organization got a renewed mission after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, when hundreds of millions of dollars were channeled to it, mostly through the classified "black" budget of the House and Senate defense appropriations subcommittees.

In 2004, the chairmen and ranking Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee and House defense appropriations subcommittees tasked contract investigators to look at contracting on highly classified security upgrades, especially air filtration systems being installed to protect the campus from chemical and biological attack. The scale of the upgrades is unprecedented, and so is the cost, likely to run more than $100 million, according to three different sources close to the project.

Concern had been raised that contracts were being steered to unqualified bidders, who were wooing the secret organization's management with Redskins tickets, expensive lunches, even golf clubs, said Ronald Garant, one of the investigators. But the more pressing issue was sheer waste and incompetence, he said. Another former appropriations committee investigator familiar with the probe said the team was told by a Lockheed Martin contractor that the filtration system being installed in the Ford House Office Building was so shoddy that the children in the building's day-care center would not stand a chance in the event of a chemical or biological attack.

In early 2004, Garant and other investigators went to Arlington to meet with the organization. To their surprise, Van Der Meid, the speaker's chief counsel, made the trip, too. Van Der Meid made it clear from the start that he did not want the probe going forward, according to Garant, a retired, former high-ranking auditor for the Defense Department's comptroller with more than 30 years of experience in government oversight.

Investigators were prevented from talking to key personnel, had access blocked to key facilities and could not inspect the equipment they were supposed to be assessing. After hitting roadblock after roadblock, Robert H. Pearre, the appropriations committee's chief of investigations, delivered the news last September that the investigation had been shut down and its offices in CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., were to be closed.

"We were told, 'Lock the door, change the combination, take your papers, bring them over here. It's all over,' " Garant said.

House Appropriations Committee spokesman John Scofield said some investigators were taken off the probe, but he said the study is ongoing. Republican aides familiar with the issue say Van Der Meid was not concerned about the investigation's findings but the investigators' cavalier attitudes toward a super-secret security effort. Former FBI agents did look at some of the charges of contractor abuse and determined they were inconsequential.

The Republican aides say the problem was with the investigators' attitudes. They said the fact that former investigators are discussing the probe of so secret a matter with reporters is proof that Van Der Meid's concerns about the investigators were warranted.

Read More...

Summary only...

From Malfunctions to a Dirty Trick 'Hoax,' Voters Experienced a Little Bit of Mayhem at the Polls

ABC News
Voting Problems Plague Election Day
From Malfunctions to a Dirty Trick 'Hoax,' Voters Experienced a Little Bit of Mayhem at the Polls
By MARCUS BARAM

Nov. 7, 2006 — - A perfect storm of voting problems, from machine malfunctions and violence at the polls to dirty tricks and hoaxes, cast a pall over Election Day.

In a number of states, including California, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Utah, voters reported that electronic voting machines were not working properly.

Among the errors were voting machines not turning on, failing to scan the ballots, and software that failed to function properly.

Many of these malfunctions were no surprise to election experts who had warned for years that the combination of new technology and high-stakes races would lead to voting fiascos.

"These are problems that anyone who's been paying attention completely predicted," said Tova Andrea Wang, a democracy fellow at the Century Foundation.

"Long lines because there were too few machines -- we saw that in 2004. Improper demands for identification all over the country, instances of voter intimidation -- these are all things that we frankly expected to happen," Wang said.

And some dirty tricks backfired.

A widely circulated voice mail purportedly proving Republican voter intimidation in the bruising Virginia Senate race turned out to be a hoax.

Earlier in the day, after complaints from staffers for Democratic Senate candidate James Webb, the FBI launched a probe into the voice-mail message that informed a voter he would face criminal prosecution if he showed up at the polls.

But Virginia Democratic Party attorney Jay Meyerson contacted Jean Jensen, the executive secretary of the Virginia State Board of Elections, and told her that the voter -- a Clarendon, Va., resident -- "was the victim of a hoax," Jensen told ABC News.

GOP state Chairman Kate Griffin was quick to demand an apology from Webb and fellow Democrats, and accused the party of sinking to "the lowest level" in the campaign.

One state that experienced major problems at the polls this morning was Indiana.

Because of inadequate training of poll workers, about half the precincts in Indianapolis and the rest of Marion County, Ind., had difficulties getting their machines started.

As a result, 175 precincts had to resort to issuing paper ballots, reported The Indianapolis Star.

Because voters in 75 precincts in Delaware County found that the cards to activate the machines had been programmed incorrectly, a judge extended the voting until 8:45 p.m.

Voters who showed up just before noon at a crowded polling place in Denver had to go home because the location ran out of provisional ballots. Two hours later, the ballots still had not appeared.

There were shortages of ballots at other sites in Denver as well, according to Fairvotecolorado.org, a nonpartisan voting education group.

And tiny Daggett County, Utah, had an unusual problem: The county had 947 voters, four times more than its population according to the 2005 Census, according to The Associated Press.

As a result, Attorney General Mark Shurtleff was investigating complaints of vote-stuffing, including claims that the father of a Republican candidate for sheriff had 14 adults registered at his household.

Even candidates had problems voting. In Ohio, Republican Rep. Jean Schmidt, who is locked in a tight race for re-election, was one of the first in line to vote at 6:30 a.m. but the machine rejected her paper ballot. Election officials set it aside to be counted later in the day.

In other states, the problems were more due to human error. A poll worker allegedly choked a voter and pushed him out the door this morning in Louisville, Ky. The unnamed staffer was arrested and charged with assault and interfering with an election, officials said.

A police spokesman wouldn't explain what caused the altercation.

A voter was arrested after smashing an electronic voting machine with a paperweight, damaging its screen, at a polling place in Allentown, Pa.

"He came in here very peaceably and showed his ID, then he got on the machine and just snapped," volunteer Gladys Pezoldt told The Morning Call of Allentown.

In Cincinnati, Republican incumbent Rep. Steve Chabot was turned away from the polls because he failed to bring the proper identification with him. Although poll workers recognized him, Chabot had to go home to get a bank statement that confirmed his home address.

In an election season notable for the nasty tone of the campaign advertising and the brutal tactics to scare voters, the Justice Department has sent out 800 election monitors to 65 cities in 20 states looking for irregularities and evidence of fraud.

Several states, including New Hampshire and Pennsylvania, have set up hot lines where voters can report incidents of fraud or voter intimidation.

In some cases, it may be difficult to apprehend those suspected of illegal voting.

In New York and Ohio, officials are investigating so-called "ghost voters," dead people who are still on the voter rolls -- and who sometimes end up voting.

Read More...

Summary only...

Problems Lead 8 States to Extend Some Voting Hours

The New York Times
Problems Lead 8 States to Extend Some Voting Hours
By CHRISTINE HAUSER and JOHN HOLUSHA

From a bomb threat in Wisconsin to glitches with electronic voting machines, polling places across the country tackled a variety of problems during the midterm election today that led at least eight states to extend voting hours in certain areas.

In Illinois, hundreds of precincts were kept open an extra hour and a half because of late openings at polling places related to machine problems. In Indiana, confusion over where to vote as well as voting equipment problems led to extensions of at least 30 minutes, in three counties.

Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Ohio, Georgia and North Carolina also extended some polling hours, according to a summary compiled by The Associated Press.

About four hours into the voting in Madison, Wis., a bomb threat shut down voting for about an hour as law enforcement authorities used dogs to search Madison East High School, where students were also attending classes.

Elections workers scrambled, removing ballots and booths to the sidewalk in front of the building and setting up voting outside.

“They voted outside for a good hour and a half,” said the city clerk, Maribeth Witzel-Behl, in a telephone interview. “Fortunately, it was a beautiful day here.”

A circuit court judge extended voting at the polling station for an hour, according to a spokesman for the Wisconsin elections board, Kyle Richmond.

In Kane County in Illinois, election workers did not boot up the electronic voting machines correctly in some areas, leading to delays of five minutes to four hours in opening polling stations in 223 precincts.

The equipment had worked well in the primaries, after county officials dealt with glitches in paper feeds, said the county clerk, John A. Cunningham, in a telephone interview. But just as a precaution, the county had deployed dozens of technicians in the field to be on hand today.

“We are a work in progress,” Mr. Cunningham said. “We will resolve the problems.”

With control of Congress hanging on a handful of races, many people have viewed the midterm election as a popular referendum on President Bush and the war in Iraq.

With about one-third of the precincts across the country using new electronic voting technology, a range of technical problems began frustrating voters in states like Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania soon after the polls opened.

Poll workers in Pittsburgh and parts of surrounding Allegheny County had trouble starting electronic machines today. Problems with printers and malfunctioning computers also cropped up, preventing at least some people from voting at 13 polling sites.

But no similar cluster of problems was reported elsewhere in Pennsylvania, so Barry Kaufmann, executive director of Common Cause/Pennsylvania, a voting rights group, said, “It sounds like there’s either not adequate training going on, or, in the worst-case scenario, a bad batch of computers.”

Election Data Services, a Washington-based consulting firm, said the chaos of the presidential election of 2000 and the enactment two years later of the Help America Vote Act had led to the biggest shift in voting equipment in United States history, affecting perhaps 55 million voters in today’s election. And changes were most common in smaller jurisdictions, which are often short of resources to correct election-day errors.

Some of the worst problems were reported in Marion County, Ind., which includes Indianapolis. Roughly half of the 914 precincts reported difficulties getting machines started. Insufficient training for poll workers was part of the problem, County Clerk Doris Ann Sadler told The Associated Press. Officials in 175 precincts were forced to turn to paper ballots.

Election officials in Delaware County, Ind., had said they would seek a court order to extend voting hours. Voters in 75 precincts were frustrated because the cards that activate machines apparently had been programmed incorrectly. A Circuit Court judge extended the voting until 8:40 p.m., The Indianapolis Star reported.

In Maryland, where serious machine problems caused chaos during the primary election in September, Montgomery County officials ordered election officials to check Monday night that they had the automated plastic cards needed to start machines. The cards had been omitted in some precincts in September, prompting Gov. Robert Ehrlich, a Republican, to suggest that voters might find absentee voting more reliable.

Senator Charles E. Schumer, the chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said that he and his House counterpart, Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, were encouraged by voter turnout but that they were looking into reports of voting irregularities or misinformation, especially in Maryland, where voters received literature that suggested, incorrectly, that the Republican Senate candidate, Michael Steele, who is African American, had been endorsed by Kweisi Mfume, the former head of the NAACP.

Mr. Schumer said Democrats quickly countered with their own literature, as well as a recorded telephone message from Mr. Mfume saying he endorses the Democrat, Representative Ben Cardin. Mr. Schumer said Democrats were also looking “an occasional report” of problems in the Kansas City area, but “nothing that’s overwhelming.”

In New Jersey, Republican officials said that close to two dozen voters across the state had complained that when they entered the voting booth, the name of Senator Robert Menendez was already lighted, and that it could be de-selected only by pressing it again. A party official, Mark Sheridan, told reporters that this had caused widespread confusion, and led some people to inadvertently vote for Mr. Menendez.

“We’re not sure exactly what the cause of it is,” Mr. Sheridan, the Republican state committee counsel, said in a conference call with reporters, “but it’s become too widespread to believe it’s a coincidence.”

He suggested that the problem was either “a significant computer malfunction or an attempt by someone to manipulate the vote.” Mr. Sheridan said that state authorities had been notified.

In a crucial Senate race in Virginia, some machines displayed, on their summary page, only the first name and middle initial of James H. Webb, the Democrat seeking to unseat Senator George Allen in an extremely close race. Mr. Webb’s full name appeared on the actual voting screen. The problem had been reported earlier but not fixed.

The F.B.I. was investigating claims in Virginia of voter intimidation and polling place misdirection, according to several reports. ABC News said it had obtained an audio file of a phone message left for one registered voter in which a caller, claiming to be from the State Board of Elections, told the voter that he was not registered in Virginia and that he would be criminally prosecuted if he attempted to vote.

The Webb campaign said it believed Republicans were behind the calls; Republican officials denied this.

In other parts of Virginia, voting was said to be running heavy, and going smoothly.

As in Indianapolis, inadequate training appeared likely to have contributed to troubles in some precincts. One machine used in many precincts, the AccuVote TSX, is delivered with a setup guide that includes 42 steps. Problems had been expected.

In Cleveland, voters rolled their eyes as election workers fumbled with new touch-screen machines that they could not start, The Associated Press reported.

“We got five machines — one of them’s got to work,” said Willette Scullank, a troubleshooter for the elections board in Cuyahoga County, Ohio.

In the Columbus area, the Franklin County phone system collapsed amid a crush of calls from voters and poll workers, The Columbus Dispatch reported. A similar collapse in the May 2 primary delayed final returns until 2 a.m.

Some machines in Hartford, Conn., were closed temporarily, and paper ballots issued, after the machines failed to display some candidates’ names, The Hartford Courant reported on its Web site.

Minor troubles were reported in Miami-Dade and Broward Counties in southern Florida, the scene of many of the problems that caused the election debacle in the 2000 presidential elections. Secretary of State Sue Cobb told The A.P. that she did not expect serious problems with the touch-screen machines.

“History has shown that the machines are far more accurate than paper so we’re quite confident in it,” Ms. Cobb said.

Both the Justice Department and private groups are supplying added observers, legal advisers and election-machine companies like Diebold provided hundreds of technicians in case of trouble.

Some states had passed new voter identification requirements, meant to reduce fraud. But some courts have struck down identity requirements as possibly discriminatory.

In Missouri, Secretary of State Robin Carnahan, the state’s top election official, was asked to show identification — three times — while casting an absentee ballot on Friday despite a recent state high court ruling upholding a lower court decision that photo I.D.’s were not necessary to vote.

“I was asked repeatedly for identification,” Ms. Carnahan said. “The law is very clear.”

And in Louisville, Ky., a poll worker was arrested today after being accused of choking a voter and pushing him out the door, Paula McCraney, a spokeswoman for the Jefferson County Clerk, told The A.P. The cause of the dispute was unclear.

“That about tops off the day,” Ms. McCraney said.

Democratic Party officials in Colorado asked a judge to extend voting hours after lines grew to as many as 300 in Denver, The Associated Press said.

Lisa Doran, a spokeswoman for Colorado’s secretary of state, said, “Despite the training, some of the election judges are intimidated by the machines.”

Reporting was contributed by Brian Knowlton, Richard Stevenson and Ian Urbina from Washington, and Jim Orso from St. Louis.

Read More...

Summary only...

We need more safeguards at the ballot box.

Newsweek.com
Alter: Can We Trust the Vote Counting?
We need more safeguards at the ballot box.
By Jonathan Alter
Newsweek

Nov. 7, 2006 - As voters go to the polls today, half of them will be casting ballots that are not secure and not protected against potential fraud. Only 12 states have either older, reliable machines or electronic voting systems with the two necessary safeguards: a paper trail and an auditing program to find out if the paper trail matches what’s been recorded on the computers. The other 38 states will probably manage OK, but they are playing roulette with American democracy.

Nowadays you don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to believe there’s something horribly wrong with the way we count votes. Maybe the new Congress will finally move toward fixing the problem. So far, such efforts have been “a travesty” and “a charade.” Those aren’t my words. They belong to the Rev. DeForest Soaries, who resigned last year as chairman of the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission (set up after the 2000 Florida debacle) because he believes neither the White House nor Congress is serious about this problem.

The reports on the vulnerability of Diebold Election Systems and similar companies that make the ballot machines are piling up, from Johns Hopkins, Princeton, Berkeley and computer scientists at other reputable institutions. (Diebold acknowledges that there are occasional glitches but insists that no election involving their equipment has ever been compromised). “We urge election officials to be prepared,” says Michael Waldman, executive director of the Brennan Center for Justice, which has issued stinging critiques of the readiness of many electronic voting systems. The danger is not just the glitches (partly due to inexperienced and poorly trained polling place officials) and other voting irregularities we’ll hear about today and in the weeks ahead. The truly scary part is what we won’t hear about—computer viruses and bugs that cannot be traced. The film “Hacking Democracy” now running on HBO is one-sided, but it shows in eye-popping visual terms how easy it is to hack into the system.

And now we learn that the problem goes even deeper than technical problems on Election Day. A story out of Maryland suggests what happens when the same officials who evaluate the electronic voting systems have a vested interest in the systems they purchased. It’s another example of the lack of accountability we’ve seen so vividly in other realms.

In 2003, Maryland Gov. Robert Ehrlich, a Republican, responded to critiques of electronic voting by commissioning an outside consulting firm to investigate the Diebold system purchased for the state. This week it became clear that more than 80 percent of that so-called “independent” report was censored. The excuse was “security;” the real reason was old-fashioned CYA. Over and over, critical assessments contained in the report were sanitized to make Diebold look better.

Over the weekend, a freelance journalist, Rebecca Abrahams, posted a leak of the original full report at bradblog.com, a site that chronicles news of electronic voting, sometimes feverish and exaggerated and other times terrifyingly true. Abrahams compares the 193-page original 2003 report, prepared by the respected Scientific Applications International Corporation (SAIC), and the 38-page redacted version put out by Maryland officials three years ago. Most of what’s in the original report is now old news about the vulnerabilities of the Diebold system. What’s important is the lengths to which the State Board of Elections in Maryland has gone to keep problems with its system out of public view.

When the state’s secretary of budget and management, Cecelia Januszkiewicz, a Republican appointee, urged that the whole report be released, the elections administrator, Democrat Linda Lamone, refused. Who was she protecting? The answer isn’t hard to figure out. She was protecting her decision to spend millions on Diebold equipment that was vulnerable. Lamone says many safety precautions have now been added, and she denies the system is flawed. But Governor Ehrlich has advised Marylanders to vote by absentee ballot instead of taking a chance on the Diebold machines.

When I confronted Lamone with evidence of the shockingly unwarranted redactions, she tried to duck blame, and she has continued to extol the virtues of Diebold to her counterparts around the country. Lamone told me, “I seriously doubt if they [Diebold] had much say in what was released.” And I seriously doubt Lamone on this point.

The way Maryland state officials have been covering for Diebold rankles the community of computer experts that has grown up around this issue. “It’s disgusting, and I can’t believe they got away with it this long,” says Johns Hopkins computer-science professor Aviel D. Rubin, whose exposure of the vulnerability of the electronic systems in 2002 and 2003 helped kick off the controversy. Rubin, author of “Brave New Ballot: The Battle to Safeguard Democracy in the Age of Electronic Voting,” says that the “security” excuse for not releasing detailed reports about electronic voting to the public is especially lame: “If they thought the system was not secure enough to survive the release of a report identifying vulnerabilities, then they shouldn’t have been using the system at all.”

The basic problem is that elections in the United States are shrouded in corporate secrecy. Vendors like Diebold and Sequoia (whose machines in Oakland, Calif., were found last week to contain a button at the back that, when pushed, simply added votes) have succeeded in selling the idea that their code is proprietary. It shouldn’t be. Congress needs to pass legislation that establishes full transparency in voting equipment. The software of these companies isn’t Coca-Cola’s secret formula and shouldn’t be treated as such. It makes no sense that even election officials are not allowed to know the details of how their systems work.

Will potential problems with Diebold in Maryland affect the closely contested Ben Cardin-Michael Steele race for the U.S. Senate? No way to predict that one. But there was one positive development last week: an American electronic-election-equipment company was found to have ties to the government of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who is loathed in Washington. That means that national Republicans might now have more of a motive to join with Democrats like Rep. Rush Holt to clean up the system before Chavez can start intervening in our elections.

In the meantime, several counties around the United States have recently converted their systems to the only method of voting that takes place slowly enough and with enough transparency to assure an accurate outcome: snail mail. Vote-by-mail in Oregon over the last several elections has sent turnout soaring without incident. It should be tried elsewhere. This system means the end of the civic sacrament of gathering with neighbors at the polls, but how worthwhile is such a ritual if we cannot fully trust the outcome?

Read More...

Summary only...

If you're still not sure how to vote, watch this video

If you're still not sure how to vote, watch this video
and share it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wm2OXQh3duI

Read More...

Summary only...

Why you should vote Democratic today

Huffington Post
Miles Mogulescu
Don't Even Think About Not Voting Democratic!

In looking through the comments to my recent posts, I have been shocked by the number of comments arguing that there's no difference between Democrats and Republicans, that they are both owned by corporate interests, that the Democratic candidate in their district is a centrist Democrat and they can only support progressive Democrats, that there's just no point in voting.

WAKE UP PEOPLE, WAKE UP TODAY

Yes, the Democrats aren't the perfect progressive party, Democrats are made up of a mix or progressives and centrists, and some Democrats are also too beholden to corporations. It will take many years to create a progressive majority in this country--and Democrats winning this election is the most important first step.

DOES ANYONE STILL THINK THAT IT WAS BETTER THAT GEORGE W. BUSH BECAME PRESIDENT INSTEAD OF AL GORE?
Would Al Gore have invaded Iraq?
Would Al Gore have supported tax cuts for the wealthiest while turning a surplus into a multi-trillion dollar debt?
Would Al Gore have spent 6 years doing nothing about global warming?
Would Al Gore have appointed corporate lobbyists to key sub-cabinet posts to subvert laws that protect consumers, labor and the environment?
Would Al Gore have done nothing to raise the minimum wage?
ANYONE WHO STILL THINKS THERE WOULD HAVE BEEN NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN AL GORE AND GEORGE BUSH HAD BETTER WAKE UP RIGHT AWAY.

AND THE SAME GOES FOR ANYONE WHO THINKS THERE'S NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A DEMOCRATIC AND A REPUBLICAN CONGRESS.
A Democratic Congress will immediately raise the minimum wage.
A Democratic Congress will force big pharma to negotiate with the government to lower drug prices.
A Democratic Congress will make college more affordable for the middle class and the poor.
A Democratic Congress, coupled with disgruntled Republicans, will force a change of direction in Iraq.
Congressional Committees will be chaired by Democrats, many of them old line liberals like John Conyers, Henry Waxman and Charlie Rangel. They will take back congressional oversight, holding hearings on subjects like the misuse of pre-war intelligence to get us into Iraq, the war profiteering of treasonous corporations like Haliburton, the general profiteering of the oil companies.
Democrats will be able to get an up and down vote on their bills in Congress.
A Democratic Senate would block the confirmation of far right wing justices.

SO FOR YOU DOUBTERS, EVEN IF YOU HAVE TO HOLD YOUR NOSE, GET YOUR ASS AS FAST AS YOU CAN TO YOUR POLLING BOOTH, VOTE DEMOCRATIC, AND GET EVERYONE YOU KNOW TO DO THE SAME.

Read More...

Summary only...

The U.S. position in Iraq has now been declared hopeless.

Huffington Post
Mark Kleiman
Actions speak louder than words

The U.S. position in Iraq has now been declared hopeless.
By the Defeatocrats? By Ward Churchill and Noam Chomsky? By the Liberal Media?

Nope. By Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, and by the Bechtel Corporation. Khalilzad wouldn't be quitting, and Bechtel wouldn't be pulling out, if they saw any possibility of success.

Khalilzad isn't saying anything, but Bechtel's field boss in Iraq put it clearly: "... to the horror of everyone, it never stabilized. It just went down, down, down, and to this day it continues to go down."

It's over.

Read More...

Summary only...

Murdoch says US death toll in Iraq 'minute'

Times of India
Murdoch says US death toll in Iraq 'minute'

TOKYO: Media mogul Rupert Murdoch said on Monday he had no regrets about supporting the US-led invasion of Iraq and argued that the US death toll in the conflict was "minute" from a historical perspective.

The conservative News Corp chief spoke on the eve of US elections where President George W Bush's Republican Party was expected to lose seats in part due to a backlash over the war.

"The death toll, certainly of Americans there, by the terms of any previous war are quite minute," Murdoch told reporters at a conference in Tokyo.

"Of course no one likes any death toll, but the war now, at the moment, it's certainly trying to prevent a civil war and to prevent Iraqis killing each other."

A total of 2,832 US troops have been killed in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion. Thousands more Iraqis have died.

Murdoch -- whose News Corp empire includes the New York Post and Britain's most widely read newspaper, The Sun tabloid -- said while the United States made mistakes in the war its intentions were good.

"I believe it was right to go in there. I believe that certainly the execution that has followed that has included many mistakes," Murdoch said.

"But that's easy to say after the event. It's much easier to criticize the conduct of the war today in the media than it was in previous wars. I'm sure there were great mistakes made in the past, too."

"I think that one forgets that American foreign policy for the whole of the (20th) century saved the world from terrible things three times," he said, "for which they certainly got no thanks and for which they never had imperial ambitions at all."

Read More...

Summary only...

Bush campaigns for Florida candidate who snubbed him

Reuters
Bush campaigns for absent Florida candidate
By Steve Holland and Tabassum Zakaria

DALLAS (Reuters) - President George W. Bush's final sprint to help Republicans in Tuesday's congressional elections hit a snag on Monday when a Florida candidate snubbed him, irritating the White House.

But Bush plowed on with speeches lashing Democrats as tax raisers who would abandon Iraq to terrorists and calling the conviction of Saddam Hussein on Sunday a sign of progress.

"We have a plan. Stick with us and the country will be better off," Bush told thousands of foot-stomping, cheering Republican faithful at a sports arena in Dallas.

Bush stumped for candidates for governor in Florida, Arkansas and his home state of Texas to complete a five-day swing through Republican areas of 10 states trying to whip up a big turnout from the party's base.

Some Republicans have distanced themselves from Bush out of concern over the Iraq war and his below-40 percent popularity.

But the most glaring example was that of Charlie Crist, who is running to replace outgoing Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, the president's brother.

After the White House announced Crist would introduce Bush at a rally in Pensacola, Crist's staff said he would be elsewhere campaigning in more competitive areas of the state than Republican-rich northwest Florida.

While Bush didn't refer to the absence at the rally, White House political adviser Karl Rove was clearly irritated.

"All I know is that yesterday morning they apparently made a decision that, rather than being with the governor and the president and 10,000 people in Pensacola, they made it a last-minute decision to go to Palm Beach," Rove told reporters.

"Let's see how many people show up in Palm Beach on 24 hours notice versus eight or nine thousand people in Pensacola," he said.

Bush praised Crist as experienced and compassionate.

"Tomorrow you get to vote for a new governor, and I strongly suggest you vote for Charlie Crist to be governor of the state of Florida," he said.

Crist campaigned instead with Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain, a 2008 Republican presidential hopeful.

Analysts said Democrats appeared poised to take control of the House of Representatives from Bush's Republicans and possibly the Senate as well.

It was a prospect that Bush did not want to consider, and he saw glimmers of hope from some polls suggesting a tightening of races. "We're closing strong because we're right on the issues," Bush said in Dallas.

Without mentioning her by name, Bush referred to California Democratic Rep. Nancy Pelosi, who would become House speaker if her party wins, as "the lady who thinks she's going to be the speaker -- but she's not."

Bush planned to return to Washington on Tuesday to wait out the results after voting at a firehouse near his ranch in Crawford, Texas.

(Additional reporting by Michael Christie in Miami)

Read More...

Summary only...

Glitches in state databases could turn away voters

Computerworld
Glitches in state databases could turn away voters
Marc Songini

November 06, 2006 (Computerworld) Eligible voters in Florida may arrive at the polls tomorrow and find that they are ineligible to cast ballots because of the strict requirements for inclusion in the state's new database of registered voters.

Tomorrow marks the first time that Florida, along with many other states, will use a centralized voter database in a general election. Voter advocates said low turnout in earlier primary elections didn’t provide a strong test of the new databases.

States are required to have a repository of statewide voters under the 2002 federal Help America Vote Act. In the past, these lists of eligible voters were compiled mostly by local governments. The new centralized databases are governed by rules created by state elections officials following HAVA guidelines.

Ben Wilcox, executive director of Common Cause Florida, a nonprofit advocacy group in Tallahassee, said officials in many states are anxious about how the relatively untested databases will function in a full-scale election.

“I think the cause for concern now is that it’s new,” said Wilcox. “The primary election back in September had a very low turnout. We were hoping for a higher one to put the database to a good test. Going into the general election, there is still concern that people may show up to vote and not find themselves on the rolls.”

Adding to the challenge in Florida is a strict policy requiring that new-voter information exactly match that person’s information in other state databases, such as that used by the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, said Dianne Wheatley-Giliotti, president of the Tallahassee-based League of Women Voters of Florida.

If a Florida resident is identified as “Bill Smith” in one database and “William Smith” in the other, the voter won’t be allowed to cast a ballot, she said. Voters who haven’t been validated won’t necessarily know until they arrive to cast their ballots.

Some, but not all, ineligible voters have been sent warnings, but those notes don’t specify which information on their registration forms is incomplete, Wheatley-Giliotti said.

Ion Sancho, head of elections in Leon County, Fla., said the problem could be compounded in some counties where IT personnel are unfamiliar with the statewide database technology.

The voter database previously used in Leon County was based on the same technology in the new statewide data­base, so IT personnel there can fix glitches, Sancho said. “Other counties don’t know all the ins and outs,” he noted.

Justin Levitt, associate counsel with the democracy program at New York University School of Law’s Brennan Center for Justice, predicted that database problems are likely in a number of states, such as Florida, North Carolina and South Dakota, which require that new-voter information exactly match data in other state repositories.

Levitt also noted that a study of HAVA’s voter registration requirements by the Brennan Center found that the databases were quickly created in many states, leaving IT workers little time for training.

“We worry that people will only find out on [Election Day] that they are ineligible to vote,” Levitt said.

Bob Fitrakis, an independent candidate for governor of Ohio, fears that a sizable number of voters have been unknowingly purged from the statewide database there, according to his campaign manager, Paddy Shaffer. The fears were prompted by the use of outdated registration forms in several counties, Shaffer said.

A spokesman for Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell did not respond to requests for comment.

In Ohio, said Levitt, eligibility practices are unclear. “Where systems are less transparent, there’s greater reason for concern,” he said.

A spokeswoman for Florida Secretary of State Sue Cobb downplayed concerns about the new voter database, noting that no one will be turned away from Florida polling places. “If you are not on the registration rolls, you are able to vote [using] a provisional ballot,” she said. “The voter has three days to bring in documentation that confirms that they are a registered voter.”

The Florida database was created under HAVA guidelines, the spokeswoman said. Following the Sept. 5 primary election, supervisors were “very pleased” with the new Florida Voter Registration System, she said.

Wheatley-Giliotti called the provisional ballot another stumbling block for an ever-diminishing pool of voters to overcome.

Read More...

Summary only...

The American Conservative: GOP Must Go

The American Conservative
(Yes, that's right, "The American Conservative" Magazine!!)
GOP Must Go

Next week Americans will vote for candidates who have spent much of their campaigns addressing state and local issues. But no future historian will linger over the ideas put forth for improving schools or directing funds to highway projects.

The meaning of this election will be interpreted in one of two ways: the American people endorsed the Bush presidency or they did what they could to repudiate it. Such an interpretation will be simplistic, even unfairly so. Nevertheless, the fact that will matter is the raw number of Republicans and Democrats elected to the House and Senate.

It should surprise few readers that we think a vote that is seen—in America and the world at large—as a decisive “No” vote on the Bush presidency is the best outcome. We need not dwell on George W. Bush’s failed effort to jam a poorly disguised amnesty for illegal aliens through Congress or the assaults on the Constitution carried out under the pretext of fighting terrorism or his administration’s endorsement of torture. Faced on Sept. 11, 2001 with a great challenge, President Bush made little effort to understand who had attacked us and why—thus ignoring the prerequisite for crafting an effective response. He seemingly did not want to find out, and he had staffed his national-security team with people who either did not want to know or were committed to a prefabricated answer.

As a consequence, he rushed America into a war against Iraq, a war we are now losing and cannot win, one that has done far more to strengthen Islamist terrorists than anything they could possibly have done for themselves. Bush’s decision to seize Iraq will almost surely leave behind a broken state divided into warring ethnic enclaves, with hundreds of thousands killed and maimed and thousands more thirsting for revenge against the country that crossed the ocean to attack them. The invasion failed at every level: if securing Israel was part of the administration’s calculation—as the record suggests it was for several of his top aides—the result is also clear: the strengthening of Iran’s hand in the Persian Gulf, with a reach up to Israel’s northern border, and the elimination of the most powerful Arab state that might stem Iranian regional hegemony.

The war will continue as long as Bush is in office, for no other reason than the feckless president can’t face the embarrassment of admitting defeat. The chain of events is not complete: Bush, having learned little from his mistakes, may yet seek to embroil America in new wars against Iran and Syria.

Meanwhile, America’s image in the world, its capacity to persuade others that its interests are common interests, is lower than it has been in memory. All over the world people look at Bush and yearn for this country—which once symbolized hope and justice—to be humbled. The professionals in the Bush administration (and there are some) realize the damage his presidency has done to American prestige and diplomacy. But there is not much they can do.

There may be little Americans can do to atone for this presidency, which will stain our country’s reputation for a long time. But the process of recovering our good name must begin somewhere, and the logical place is in the voting booth this Nov. 7.

If we are fortunate, we can produce a result that is seen—in Washington, in Peoria, and in world capitals from Prague to Kuala Lumpur—as a repudiation of George W. Bush and the war of aggression he launched against Iraq.

We have no illusions that a Democratic majority would be able to reverse Bush’s policies, even if they had a plan to. We are aware that on a host of issues the Democrats are further from TAC’s positions than the Republicans are. The House members who blocked the Bush amnesty initiative are overwhelmingly Republican. But immigration has not played out in an entirely partisan manner this electoral season: in many races the Democrat has been more conservative than the open-borders, Big Business Republican. A Democratic House and Senate is, in our view, a risk immigration reformers should be willing to take. We can’t conceive of a newly elected Democrat in a swing district who would immediately alienate his constituency by voting for amnesty. We simply don’t believe a Democratic majority would give the Republicans such an easy route to return to power. Indeed, we anticipate that Democratic office holders will follow the polls on immigration just as Republicans have, and all the popular momentum is towards greater border enforcement.

On Nov. 7, the world will be watching as we go to the polls, seeking to ascertain whether the American people have the wisdom to try to correct a disastrous course. Posterity will note too if their collective decision is one that captured the attention of historians—that of a people voting, again and again, to endorse a leader taking a country in a catastrophic direction. The choice is in our hands.

Read More...

Summary only...

We Will Be Greeted As Liberators ...

Read More...

Summary only...

Attack Ad Kit

Read More...

Summary only...

Supreme Court to return to abortion

USA TODAY
Supreme Court to return to abortion
By Mark Sherman, Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Americans still will be chewing over election results Wednesday morning when the nine Supreme Court justices file into their courtroom for two of the biggest cases of the young term.

Voters in some states will be deciding whether to impose restrictions on abortions; one proposal would outlaw almost all abortions in South Dakota.

In the marble courthouse across the Capitol, this most politically charged of issues also will be under consideration.

The court will be discussing whether to uphold the first nationwide restrictions on an abortion procedure since the justices' landmark ruling in Roe v. Wade in 1973 that established a woman's constitutional right to an abortion.

Almost everything about a procedure opponents call partial-birth abortion is disputed, including how many take place each year and even its name.

Abortion rights advocates call the term an oxymoron that incongruously links abortion and birth as part of a political strategy to chip away at the Roe ruling.

"It's intended to obfuscate and in that, it's been successful," said David Grimes, a doctor and the former chief of the government's abortion surveillance program. He now is affiliated with Planned Parenthood of America.

Abortion opponents argue that the name aptly describes "a rarely used and gruesome late-term abortion procedure that resembles infanticide," as the Bush administration said in its legal filings. Most of the procedures, medically known as dilation and extraction abortions, appear to take place in the middle third of pregnancy.

There were 1.3 million abortions in the United States in 2002; all but about 130,000 came in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. The early abortions are not at issue.

Estimates of the late-term abortions at issue range from 2,200 a year to upward of 5,000, although the data is far from precise.

What makes the method "gruesome" for some — a federal judge who struck down the law also described it that way — is that it involves partially extracting a fetus from the uterus, then cutting or crushing its skull.

But the dispute is not over whether a woman may end a pregnancy, but how the abortion should be performed.

The administration, for instance, argues that law does not restrict a more common dilation and evacuation method in which the fetus is dismembered in the uterus and then removed in pieces.

Lawyers for Planned Parenthood and doctors who challenged the ban say medical decisions, including which abortion method is safest for a patient, must be left to doctors. They also worry the law could apply to almost all second-trimester abortions, threatening doctors who perform them with up to two years in prison.

They are attempting to keep the focus on women such as Carrie Elliott, who was overjoyed to learn she was pregnant last fall at age 40. But by mid-January, when Elliott was nearly 20 weeks pregnant, genetic testing had confirmed that her fetus had a severe form of a rare disorder, cat eye syndrome, including failing kidneys.

"We wanted her so badly," Elliott said in a halting voice in a recent telephone interview from her home in the southwestern United States, "but we made the decision to let her go."

Elliott and her husband, Corey, said they simply did not have information early enough to decide on an abortion in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.

"More so now than ever, I really feel these kinds of decisions are best left to the woman, the partner and the doctor. Period," she said.

The administration, backed by the anti-abortion movement, is equally determined to highlight the procedure.

"A physician partially delivers the fetus intact, and then intentionally kills it, typically by puncturing its skull and vacuuming out its brains," Solicitor General Paul Clement, the administration's Supreme Court lawyer, wrote in his brief.

"Babies killed during such partial-birth abortions are alive until the end of the procedure" and experience pain, Clement said, using the same words Congress wrote into the law that is at issue before the court.

If there is a sense that the court has been here before, it has. Six years ago, the Supreme Court struck down a similar ban in Nebraska by a 5-4 vote.

That law was held invalid because the court found it encompassed other abortion methods. The law also did not contain an exception that would allow the procedure to preserve a woman's health, an underpinning of Supreme Court abortion rulings.

Three years later, however, Congress passed the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act. Lawmakers said the procedure was never medically necessary, eliminating the need for a health exception, and attempted to define the type of abortion more precisely to avoid overreaching. President Clinton twice vetoed earlier versions of the law; President Bush signed this one in November 2003.

Yet six federal courts on both coasts and in the Midwest struck down the law, based on lengthy trial testimony, because they found it had the same defects that doomed the Nebraska statute.

Why, then, are abortion opponents and even some on other side convinced that the Supreme Court will reach a different conclusion?

To put it simply, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor has retired, depriving abortion rights supporters of a likely fifth and decisive vote against the ban.

Little in the past experience of the two new members of the court appointed by Bush, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, signals an inclination to side with abortion rights supporters, although both men testified at their confirmation hearings of the importance of respecting high court precedent.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, the court's swing voter following O'Connor's retirement, has been the object of much attention in the mountain of legal filings in these cases.

Kennedy was a forceful dissenter in the Nebraska case. "The state chose to forbid a procedure many decent and civilized people find so abhorrent as to be among the most serious of crimes against human life, while the state still protected the woman's autonomous right of choice," he wrote. "The Court closes its eyes to these profound concerns."

Priscilla Smith, who will argue the case on behalf of doctors who challenged the federal law, said she believes Kennedy can be swayed this time around by substantial evidence, including the testimony of 13 medical experts, that the procedure can be the safest choice.

Jay Sekulow, a prominent abortion opponent who is chief counsel for the conservative American Center for Law and Justice, said he is increasingly optimistic the court will uphold the abortion ban.

"There is not a lot of wriggle room in what Kennedy wrote," Sekulow said. "It was such a powerful dissent. I don't see him moving away from that."

The cases are Gonzales v. Carhart, 05-380, and Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood, 05-1382.

Read More...

Summary only...

December Surprise: Bush Plans Post-Election Call Up Of National Guard And Reserves

Huffington Post
Brent Budowsky
December Surprise: Bush Plans Post-Election Call Up Of National Guard And Reserves

American commanders in Iraq have privately told the President that additional troops will be needed in Iraq to maintain the current policy.

Plans are secretly underway for a suprise new call up of National Guard and Reserves to be announced sometime after the election.

The Washington Post has now reported that planning that is now classified, being kept
secret from voters and military families until the election is over, could well include what the Post calls a policy change forcing a new wave of involuntary call ups.

With violence and chaos escalating in Iraq, with Iraqi police infiltrated by murderous pro-Iranian militia, with more than 20% of the Iraqi army on leave at any given time, the fact is: American troops are doing even more of the work that Iraqis should do and more will be sent to Iraq unless the policy changes.

The American people should demand full and complete disclosure, prior to the election, of any plans for new recalls of our Guard and Reserve units.

The American people should demand full and complete disclosure, prior to the election, of any plans for policy changes that will include new waves of involuntary recalls, of our Guard and National Reserve units.

The American people should demand, prior to the election, plans for stop loss policies or any other form of involuntary or surprise troop rotation hardships, about to be imposed on those who serve in the United States Army and Marine Corps.

The American people should demand, prior to the election, the full budget cost of the Iraq war for the coming year, which is being kept secret until after the vote.

The American people should demand, prior to the election, public disclosure of a summary of the pending National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq. This estimate undoubtedly descibes the major deterioration into chaos, which is driving the coming wave of involuntary calls ups being kept secret from the American people.

On Monday the Military Times will call for the firing of Defense Secretary Rumsfeld in a couragous act that demonstrates the failure of the policy and the urgent need for change.

The Army Times, Marine Corps Times, Navy Times and Air Force Times are the most informed sources of information and truth about what our commanders and troops believe, in fact.

The truth is, to implement the current failed policy, without change, there will be a clear need for more Americans in uniform to serve in Iraq almost immediately. As a pure military judgment, if the policy continues unchanged, more troops will be urgently needed and more rotation abuses and involuntary call ups will be force fed to those who serve and their families.

As the Military Times publicly suggests and our commanders privately believe, there is an urgent need for a new policy that will be more successful and will not require such unacceptable abuses.

Military families and all Americans should consider this:

If the Democrats were in control of Congress, there would be public hearings and an informed discussion about upcoming policy changes regarding involuntary recalls and rotation abuses.

If Democrats were in control of Congress, national intelligence officials would be called to public hearings, and Americans would have a clear and honest understanding of the failures of the policy, and the destructive implications for those who serve.

If the Democrats were in control of Congress, the President, Congress and both parties would sit down and the policy would change.

It is shameful and wrong to have these abuses of troop rotations and these endless policy changes of involuntary recalls which are kept secret from the people, and forced by the failures of the policy.

It is time for the practices of secrecy and deceit to end. They violate the basic notion of American democracy, they violate the most basic rules of common sense, they violate the trust of our troops, their families and the American people.

We should demand full and immediate public disclosure.

We should demand full accounting of what force structures and budgets our military will need and work on a bipartisan basis to meet those needs of the Army, Marine Corps, Guard and Reserves with no further abuses of rotations and recalls.

We should end permanently these constant abuses that have done so much damage to the mission and to those who serve with such bravery and honor, and deserve better from our government.

The truth should be disclosed before the election. The coverup of coming recalls must end.

A Nation of informed voters would then have the chance to elect a Congress in the election, to bring about change after the election.

Read More...

Summary only...

In a Democratic Year, Why are the Republicans Still Favored to Maintain Control of the Senate?

Huffington Post
David Wallechinsky
In a Democratic Year, Why are the Republicans Still Favored to Maintain Control of the Senate?

Polls have consistently shown that two-thirds of the American people think the United States is going in the wrong direction. Because the Republicans, controlling as they do the Presidency and both houses of Congress, have completely determined this direction, it is not surprising that a significant majority would like to kick the Republicans out of office.

Yet the battle for the Senate could go either way, and the Democrats will have to win almost every toss-up state to take control. As world democracies go, this is not normal.

By international standards, the composition of the U.S. Senate is inherently undemocratic because each state has two senators regardless of size. Wyoming, population 500,000--two senators; California, population 36,000,000--two senators. Because one-third of the senators are elected every two years, the extent to which any given Senate represents fairly the U.S. population can be determined by adding the votes for three successive elections. For example, the 100 members of the current Senate were all elected in 2000, 2002 or 2004. The Democratic candidates for the current Senate tallied more than 100 million votes, whereas the Republican candidates gained only 97 million votes. Yet it is the Republicans who have an eleven-seat advantage. In 2004 alone, the Democratic Senatorial candidates outpolled their Republican counterparts by 4.8 million votes, yet the Republicans won 19 seats to only 15 for the Democrats.

Although it is the Republicans who are currently taking advantage of our distorted system for choosing the Senate, there have been periods when they were the victims. Once again using the results of the elections for each Senate seat, after both the 1950 and 1954 elections, the Democrats controlled the Senate despite the fact that more Americans had voted for Republican candidates. For the next 42 years, Democratic Senatorial candidates outpolled their Republican opponents. However, during the 1980s, the Republicans seized control of the Senate anyway. After the elections of 1980, 1982 and 1984, the Democratic candidates for the 100 Senate seats outpolled the Republicans by 6-8%. Yet throughout this period it was the Republicans who held Senate majorities of 6 to 8 seats.

Remember the 1994 election when the Republican Party swept into power? It did so despite earning less votes for the 100 Senate seats than did the Democrats. The Republicans inched ahead in the cumulative vote totals after the 1996 and 1998 elections, but in 2000, the Republicans retained control of the Senate despite being outvoted.

This year, if the Republicans are able to hold on to 50 seats and maintain control of the Senate, we will once again be in a position where a party exercises power despite being rejected by the majority of American voters.

NOTE: In preparing the statistical charts that formed the background for this piece, I examined the composition of each Senate going back to 1946. In doing so, I stumbled upon an unexpected fact. Again using the combined totals for all 100 seats, I discovered that not once has the Republican Party earned the votes of a majority of American voters, whereas the Democrats have managed to earn a majority of votes more than half the time. Yet the Republicans have controlled the Senate for 22 of the last 60 years anyway. One of the reasons for this anomaly is that 4-5% of voters choose third-party or independent candidates. However, it does illustrate the ongoing strategic challenge the Republicans face in keeping power even though they are never able to gain the sustained support of a majority of the American population.

Read More...

Summary only...

One War Criminal Down, Three to Go

Huffington Post
Walter C. Uhler
Saddam's Conviction: One War Criminal Down, Three to Go

Regardless of whether the "fix" was in - both in its predetermined outcome or its timing (just two days before Americans go to the polls) -- justice prevailed today in, of all places, Iraq, when a court convicted Saddam Hussein of crimes against humanity for the revenge killings of 148 people in the Shiite city of Dujail in 1982.

As reported by Hamza Hendawi of the Associated Press, "The trial brought Saddam and his co-defendants before their accusers in what was one of the most highly publicized and heavily reported trials of its kind since the Nuremberg tribunals for members of Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime and its slaughter of 6 million Jews in the World War II Holocaust."

Yet, few Americas probably know that Article 6 of the Nuremberg Tribunal's Charter listed "Crimes against Peace; namely, planning, preparation, initiation or waging war of aggression" as its first and foremost crime. Count Two indicted the Nazis for actual crimes against peace. Count Three indicted them for "War Crimes," including the ill treatment of civilians and the mistreatment of prisoners of war (such as have occurred at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo in our recent past). "Crimes Against Humanity" was relegated to Count Four.

Thus, notwithstanding the justice meted out to Saddam today, Americans have at least two reasons to reflect while celebrating the outcome: (1) Saddam now has been convicted for crimes that occurred in 1982, just a year before Donald Rumsfeld, acting as an envoy for President Reagan, met and shook hands with him on December 20, 1983. Thus, Americans might ponder how it was that the Reagan administration found it suitable to offer military assistance to such an "evil" criminal.

(2) Much available evidence suggests that the Bush administration planned and prepared the initiation and waging of a war of aggression - the first and foremost crime spelled out in Article 6 of the Nuremberg Charter - while "fixing" the intelligence about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction and ties to al Qaeda's terrorists, in order to deceive both the American people and the U.S. Congress into supporting its illegal, immoral war.

Thus, if justice can be done in war-torn Iraq, it certainly must be done in the great United States of America (and perhaps in lapdog Tony Blair's Great Britain as well). But justice certainly won't be done, so long as Republicans remain in control of Congress.

Read More...

Summary only...

Watch The Simpsons Iraq War Satire: "Operation Enduring Occupation"..."We Had To Invade, They Were Working On Weapons Of Mass Disintegration"

Watch The Simpsons Iraq War Satire: "Operation Enduring Occupation"..."We Had To Invade, They Were Working On Weapons Of Mass Disintegration"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2006/11/05/watch-the-simpsons_n_33346.html

Read More...

Summary only...

Feds Refusing FBI Terror Cases; Justice Dept. Increasingly Refusing to Prosecute FBI Cases Targeting Terror Suspects

ABC News
Report: Feds Refusing FBI Terror Cases
Report: Justice Dept. Increasingly Refusing to Prosecute FBI Cases Targeting Terror Suspects
By LARA JAKES
The Associated Press

WASHINGTON - The Justice Department increasingly has refused to prosecute FBI cases targeting suspected terrorists over the past five years, according to private researchers who reviewed department records.

The government says the findings are inaccurate and "intellectually dishonest."

The report being released Monday by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University raises questions about the quality of the FBI's investigations.

Prosecutors declined to bring charges in 131 of 150, or 87 percent, of international terrorist case referrals from the FBI between October 2005 and June 2006, according to the report. The study was based on the most recent data available from the Justice Department's executive office for U.S. attorneys.

That number marks the peak of generally steady increases from the 2001 budget year, when prosecutors rejected 33 percent of such cases from the FBI, according to the report.

The data "raise troubling questions about the bureau's investigation of criminal matters involving individuals the government has identified as international terrorists," the report said.

It noted that prosecutions in traditional FBI investigations since 2001 including drug cases, white collar crimes and organized crimes have decreased while the number of agents and other employees has risen.

"So with more special agents, many more intelligence analysts, and many fewer prosecutions the question must be asked: What is the FBI doing?" the report said.

A Justice Department spokesman disputed the data highlighted by the Syracuse researchers, noting that terrorist hoax cases that were quickly dismissed may have been included in the government data.

Additionally, some cases are referred to prosecutors to obtain subpoenas or other legal orders in investigations that ultimately never result in criminal charges, spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said. He said prosecutors rejected 67 percent of FBI international terrorist cases in the nine-month period not 87 percent.

The FBI's assistant director, John Miller, said the low number of cases prosecuted reflects changes in how investigations have been conducted since the Sept. 11 attacks. He said about half of the FBI's resources go to detection and information gathering of terrorist networks in cases that do not always result in arrests.

"It's not about the numbers and for TRAC to suggest as much is to be intellectually dishonest," Miller said.

He added: "The FBI has been very clear about how we have changed the way we do business since 9/11."

TRAC co-director Susan Long said researchers merely relied on the Justice Department's own numbers to come up with the conclusions.

On the Net:

Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse: http://www.trac.syr.edu/

Justice Department: http://www.usdoj.gov/

Federal Bureau of Investigation: http://www.fbi.gov/

Read More...

Summary only...

Should They Win Control of Congress, the Democrats Have a Plan

The New York Times
Should They Win Control of Congress, the Democrats Have a Plan
By CARL HULSE

WASHINGTON, Nov. 3 — Republicans like to say that Democrats have no ready agenda should they seize power in Congress, save for one particular piece of business.

“If they get control of the House and the Senate, they’re going to run up your taxes,” President Bush warned a crowd in Nevada on Thursday.

But Democrats say Republicans have it wrong on both counts. They say they are prepared to move on a package of legislation and rules changes in the first 100 hours Congress is in session next year, should they take control of the House or Senate. And they promise to pursue a broader long-term program that touches on national security, health care, employment, energy and education.

They say it is Mr. Bush and Congressional Republicans who are enacting a back-door tax increase by failing to fix the alternative minimum tax, which is hitting more middle-income families.

“Democrats are offering a new direction for America that will provide real tax relief to middle-income families, spur economic growth that will produce good-paying American jobs, and we will do it in a fiscally responsible way,” Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the minority leader who would become speaker in a Democratic-controlled House, said on Friday. “And Democrats will ensure that strong economic growth benefits all Americans, not just the privileged few.”

Republicans say the Democratic approach would force tax increases, since the party is proposing to increase spending while also imposing so-called “pay-go” budget rules that would require most new spending to be offset by a new source of revenue, not added to the federal deficit.

“You have their social agenda, which involves a lot of new money,” said Representative John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio and the current majority leader. “Secondly, they want to institute pay-go rules. If you put the pay-go rules in and you increase spending, the only answer is raise taxes.”

Democrats, many of whom opposed Mr. Bush’s push to lower tax rates on investment income, say they can find other ways to pay for their programs, like a greater effort to collect billions of dollars in unpaid taxes. They also say they intend to produce savings by initiating negotiations with drug companies to lower Medicare prescription costs and by eliminating some subsidies for the oil and gas industry.

“Despite the president and the Republicans saying we will raise taxes, that is not what we will do,” said Brendan Daly, a spokesman for Ms. Pelosi.

Ms. Pelosi has outlined a plan to move quickly on pet Democratic initiatives as soon as Congress convenes in January if her party holds the majority. They include legislation to enact all the antiterrorism initiatives recommended by the Sept. 11 commission, increase the minimum wage to $7.25 per hour, allow the government to negotiate Medicare prescription drug prices, eliminate some corporate subsidies for the oil industry, cut in half the interest rate on federally subsidized college loans and impose new restrictions on dealing with lobbyists.

Some of those proposals are also elements of the Democratic “Six for ’06,” the shorthand for the party’s longer-term agenda.

Under that plan, Democrats would push for new policies in Iraq, including beginning the withdrawal of troops for deployment elsewhere. They would also seek to double special forces devoted to pursuing Osama bin Laden and others in terrorism networks, institute screening of all cargo containers entering the country and increase spending on the National Guard and emergency workers.

Democrats say they would also prohibit any increase in Congressional pay until the minimum wage was raised and eliminate tax breaks that encourage companies to move jobs out of the country. They would make permanent an expired tax deduction for college tuition costs; encourage alternative energy production; renew the push for expanded stem cell research and enact new incentives for personal saving.

Republicans say that such initiatives do not come cheap and that Democrats will have to resort to tax increases to find the money. And Mr. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Congressional Republican leaders have repeatedly pointed out that Democrats can increase taxes simply by allowing some of the tax cuts enacted in 2001 and extended over some Democratic objections to expire.

Those assertions set off a row this week with Representative Charles B. Rangel of New York, who would become the new chairman of the Ways and Means Committee in a Democratic-led House. Mr. Rangel and his advisers say that given the likelihood of small margins between the two parties in the House and Senate, any tax legislation would have to be done in concert with the White House and Republicans.

“Regardless of who is in control next year,” Mr. Rangel said Tuesday, “Democrats and Republicans are going to have to come together. Congress will have to work with the administration to provide real tax relief for middle-income families and find solutions to issues like Social Security and tax reform.”

Democrats also say that most of the tax cuts do not expire until 2010 and that any action will depend on the economic climate and the federal budget situation. And they say Democrats strongly support many of the most popular tax breaks, including a higher child tax credit and elimination of the so-called marriage penalty.

As for the lower rates on stock dividends and capital gains, John Buckley, tax counsel for Mr. Rangel, said, “If the budget is good, who knows what happens in 2010. If the budget is not, then all sides are going to have to look at this.”

Mr. Buckley said Democrats wanted a permanent fix in the alternative minimum tax, which was initially established to make certain that affluent Americans with significant deductions did not escape taxes altogether, but which is now reaching a growing number of upper middle-income earners. He said the creeping alternative tax is reducing the benefits of the Bush tax cuts for Americans who fall under it.

“The president has accused us of increasing taxes without lifting a finger,” Mr. Buckley said. “But his budget does not include any A.M.T. relief, so he is increasing taxes without lifting a finger.”

Read More...

Summary only...

"Rumsfeld must go" say Army Times, Air Force Times, Navy Times, and Marine Corps Times

MSNBC.com
Military papers: ‘Rumsfeld must go’
Editorial comes days after Bush affirms defense secretary’s job security
MSNBC staff and news service reports

Just days after President Bush publicly affirmed Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's job security through the end of his term, a family of publications catering to the military will publish an editorial calling for the defense secretary's removal.

The editorial, released to NBC News on Friday ahead of its Monday publication date, stated, "It is one thing for the majority of Americans to think Rumsfeld has failed. But when the nation's current military leaders start to break publicly with their defense secretary, then it is clear that he is losing control of the institution he ostensibly leads."

The editorial will appear just one day before the midterm election, in which GOP candidates have been losing ground, according to recent polls.

"This is not about the midterm elections," continued the editorial, which will appear in the Army Times, Air Force Times, Navy Times, and Marine Corps Times on Monday. "Regardless of which party wins Nov. 7, the time has come, Mr. President, to face the hard bruising truth: Donald Rumsfeld must go."

The newspapers are part of the Military Times Media Group, a subsidiary of the Gannett Co., Inc. The publications are sold to service members and their families.

On Wednesday, Bush had said he wants Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney to remain in his administration until the end of his presidency, extending a vote of confidence to two of the most-criticized members of his team.

In the same interview, Bush said he did not foresee a change in the immediate future in the number of U.S. troops in Iraq. He said that U.S. generals have assured him that "they've got what they can live with."

Democrats and Republicans alike have called for Rumsfeld's resignation, arguing he has mishandled the war in Iraq, where more than 2,800 members of the U.S. military have died since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003. Cheney has faced sharp criticism for his hard-line views and is viewed favorably by only about a third of Americans in polls. Bush said that "both those men are doing fantastic jobs and I strongly support them."

Bush credited Rumsfeld with overseeing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan while overhauling the military. "I'm pleased with the progress we're making," the president said. He replied in the affirmative when asked if he wanted Rumsfeld and Cheney to stay with him until the end.

The military publications' editorial also painted a grim view of the situation in Iraq, saying, "despite the best efforts of American trainers, the problem of molding a viciously sectarian population into anything resembling a force for national unity has become a losing proposition. For two years, American sergeants, captains and majors training the Iraqis have told their bosses that Iraqi troops have no sense of national identity, are only in it for the money, don't show up for duty and cannot sustain themselves. … And all along, Rumsfeld has assured us that things are well in hand."

War supporters reconsider
Also Friday, several conservatives who pushed for the invasion of Iraq said they would not have supported a war if they knew how poorly the Bush administration would handle it, according to Vanity Fair magazine.

"I think now I probably would have said, 'No, let's consider other strategies for dealing with the thing that concerns us most, which is Saddam (Hussein) supplying weapons of mass destruction to terrorists,"' said Richard Perle, who sat on the Pentagon's Defense Policy Advisory Committee until 2004.

Kenneth Adelman, who served on the Defense Policy Board with Perle, said Bush, Defense Rumsfeld and others in the administration "turned out to be among the most incompetent teams in the postwar era. Not only did each of them, individually, have enormous flaws, but together they were deadly, dysfunctional."

Violence in Iraq has continued to climb, with dozens of bodies reportedly found around Baghdad on Friday. Shiites and Sunnis alike fear a reprisal in violent crime when Saddam's trial verdict is announced, which could be as soon as Sunday.

In the editorial, the military papers quote Army Gen. John Abizaid, chief of U.S. Central Command, as saying to a Senate Armed Services Committee in September, "I believe that the sectarian violence is probably as bad as I've seen it ... and that if not stopped, it is possible that Iraq could move towards a civil war."

Read More...

Summary only...

Contractors Rarely Held Responsible for Misdeeds in Iraq

washingtonpost.com
Contractors Rarely Held Responsible for Misdeeds in Iraq
By Griff Witte
Washington Post Staff Writer

The list of alleged contractor misdeeds in Iraq has grown long in the past 3 1/2 years. Yet when it comes to holding companies accountable, the charges seldom stick.

Critics say that because of legal loopholes, flaws in the contracting process, a lack of interest from Congress and uneven oversight by investigative agencies, errant contractors have faced few sanctions for their work in Iraq.

And the inspector general's office credited with doing the most to root out waste and fraud is scheduled to go out of business by next October.

Senators from both parties said yesterday they would push to extend the work of the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, which has uncovered such problems as shoddy construction and bribery schemes.

Some also say more needs to be done to follow up on that office's work.

"Contractors know they can push prices up. They know they can be late," said Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla). "They know they don't have to perform."

Contractors have done more work in the Iraq war than in any other conflict in American history, performing tasks as varied as serving meals and interrogating prisoners.

Stan Z. Soloway, president of the Professional Services Council, a trade organization of government contractors, said they have done their best to do their work under extraordinarily dangerous conditions. "Many of the cases where performance was not what was expected, or even looked shoddy, were due to factors that were external, outside the contractors' control," he said.

The rules for holding contractors in a war zone accountable remain uncertain, with few precedents to go by.

"From a command-and-control point of view, I think we've got a problem. And it's going to be very difficult to solve," said Scott L. Silliman, executive director of the Center for Law, Ethics and National Security at Duke University.

For military contractors, Silliman said, it is unclear which laws apply. For example, they are not subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which governs soldiers' behavior. A law passed in 2000 that is supposed to hold contractors responsible if they commit crimes in war zones has never been tested.

Several civil cases have been tossed out of court for lack of jurisdiction. In September, for example, a judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by former Halliburton Co. truck drivers and their families who argued that the company knowingly sent a convoy into a raging battle without proper protection. A federal judge in Texas ruled that the Army, not Halliburton, was ultimately in charge and that the court could not "try a case set on a battlefield during wartime without an impermissible intrusion into powers expressly granted to the executive by the Constitution."

A similar case against the private military firm Blackwater USA has been allowed to proceed in North Carolina. But Blackwater has fought the case to the Supreme Court, enlisting high-caliber legal talent along the way -- including former Pentagon inspector general Joseph E. Schmitz and Whitewater prosecutor Kenneth W. Starr.

One contractor that had its day in court was Custer Battles LLC. Whistle-blowers claimed the firm used an elaborate string of shell companies to drive up profits, and last year a jury returned a $10 million verdict against the firm. But in August, a federal judge in Virginia overturned the ruling, saying the court did not have jurisdiction.

Critics think that many cases are never raised because of spotty oversight. The Pentagon has spent about $250 billion in Iraq, yet the Defense Department's inspector general's office has only two investigators and a half-dozen auditors working there. As recently as last year, it had none.

"There's never been a time in our country's history when we've shoved so much money out the door with so little oversight," said Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.), who blames Republican indifference for the lack of accountability.

The special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, Stuart W. Bowen Jr., has nearly 60 auditors and investigators based in Baghdad and has won bipartisan praise for his work. But the office, which was set up to be temporary, has an October 1, 2007, deadline for completing its mission. A group of Democratic and Republican senators have said they think the office should remain open beyond then, and they say they intend to push legislation after Tuesday's elections that would make that happen.

Bowen, a Republican, has overseen investigations resulting in the convictions of several people in connection with a bribery scheme. His office estimates that its audits have saved the government more than $400 million.

For example, auditors reviewed 14 projects by one contractor, Parsons Corp., and found that 13 had serious defects. Among the problem contracts was one to build 142 health clinics. Only six have opened.

Yet Parsons will not have to return any of its profit, nor is it likely to face any kind of formal punishment. Its contracts were what are called "cost-plus" deals, widespread in Iraq, in which the government bears much of the risk.

Bowen said the government should have been willing to fire contractors when it realized that projects were going awry. "I started pushing for terminations for default, which is how you hold underperforming contractors responsible, in the summer of 2005," Bowen said.

But his calls were rarely heeded. The reason? "Litigation fear," he said. "It was viewed as too much trouble."

Frederick F. Shaheen, an attorney with the firm Greenberg Traurig LLP who represents contractors, said firing a contractor is difficult because the military is so dependent on them.

If an official were to try to cancel a meal-service contract, for example, "some colonel is going to be on the phone to you ripping your lips off saying, 'Why aren't my troops being fed?' " Shaheen said.

The threat of canceling a contract "is normally the sharpest quiver in the bag of the contracting officer. But there's no arrowhead on it any more," Shaheen said. "So the checks and balances are gone. The system is broken."

Read More...

Summary only...

White House Stalls Hunger Report

USA TODAY
Democrats accuse White House of stalling hunger report

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrats are blaming politics for the Bush administration's decision to wait until after the election to issue a report on hunger in the United States.

The Agriculture Department report has generally been released in October, a month after annual poverty figures are released by the Census Bureau. The report has shown steady increases in the number of people struggling with hunger, from 31 million in 1999 to 38 million in 2004.

Democrats on Wednesday accused the White House of a politically motivated delay. Competitive elections across the country will decide next week whether President Bush's party keeps control of Congress.

USDA officials said the report has long been set for a mid-November release and that the delay is not political.

Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y., compared the delay to a recent IRS decision to hold off collections of back taxes from last year's hurricane victims.

"It seems like a pattern is emerging where the administration simply tries to bury bad information the closer they get to the election," Weiner said. "The professionals in these agencies who want to do their work in this administration are being thwarted, because it's all politics, all the time."

Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., said the administration "continues to put politics ahead of hunger in America." She is the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee's farm spending subcommittee.

Weiner sent a letter about the delay Wednesday to Karl Rove, the president's chief political strategist.

A department spokeswoman, Terri Teuber, said officials decided some time ago to issue the report in mid-November because analysts haven't always been able to finish it by October.

"There has been absolutely no political pressure to hold this report," Teuber said.

Done by the department's Economic Research Service, the report details the number of people with food insecurity, meaning they don't have enough money or resources to get food.

It is possible the report will show the number of hungry people has stopped climbing. That is what the Census Bureau reported on this year's poverty figures. Last year there were 37 million people still living below the poverty line, about the same as 2004.

Regardless of the reason for the delay, anti-hunger advocates just want to see the numbers.

"Our real concern is that so few people are talking about the problem and proposing ways to address that struggle with hunger that 38 million people constantly face," said Jim Weill, president of the Food Research and Action Center.

That goes for the administration, for both parties in Congress and for the private sector, Weill said.

"If we ought to be able to do anything as a country, it's that we ought to be able to get enough adequate, decent food to everybody," Weill said.

Read More...

Summary only...

Scientists say White House muzzled them

USA TODAY
Scientists say White House muzzled them
By John Heilprin, The Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Two federal agencies are investigating whether the Bush administration tried to block government scientists from speaking freely about global warming and censor their research, a senator said Wednesday.

Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., said he was informed that the inspectors general for the Commerce Department and NASA had begun "coordinated, sweeping investigations of the Bush administration's censorship and suppression" of federal research into global warming.

"These investigations are critical because the Republicans in Congress have ignored this serious problem," Lautenberg said.

He said the investigations "will uncover internal documents and agency correspondence that may expose widespread misconduct." He added, "Taxpayers do not fund scientific research so the Bush White House can alter it."

Messages left Wednesday at the offices of the inspectors general, which serve as the agencies' internal watchdogs, were not immediately returned.

Kristen Hellmer, a spokeswoman for the White House Council for Environmental Quality, said Wednesday night that the administration has supported the scientific process in its approach to studying climate change.

"We have in place the most transparent system of science reporting, and claims that the administration interfered with scientists are false," Hellmer said. "Our focus is on taking action and making real progress in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The nearly $2 billion worth of climate science we publish annually leads the world and speaks for itself."

Carbon dioxide and other gases primarily from fossil fuel-burning that scientists say trap heat in the atmosphere have warmed the Earth's surface an average 1 degree over the past century. The White House has committed to reducing the "intensity" of U.S. carbon pollution, a measure of the amount of carbon dioxide emitted per unit of economic growth.

But the total U.S. emissions, now more than 7 billion tons a year, are projected to rise 14% from 2002 to 2012.

In February, House Science Chairman Sherwood Boehlert, R-N.Y., and other congressional leaders asked NASA to guarantee scientific openness. They complained that a public affairs officer changed or filtered information on global warming and the Big Bang.

The officer, George Deutsch, a political appointee, had resigned after being accused of trying to limit reporters' access to James Hansen, a prominent NASA climate scientist, and insisting that a Web designer insert the word "theory" with any mention of the Big Bang.

A report last month in the scientific journal Nature claimed administrators at the Commerce Department's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration blocked the release of a report that linked hurricane strength and frequency to global warming. Hansen had said in February that NOAA has tried to prevent researchers working on global climate change from speaking freely about their work.

NOAA has denied the allegations, saying its work is not politically motivated.

Read More...

Summary only...

GOP Plans to Block Voters

washingtonpost.com
Md. Democrats Say GOP Plans to Block Voters
By Matthew Mosk
Washington Post Staff Writer

A recently distributed guide for Republican poll watchers in Maryland spells out how to aggressively challenge the credentials of voters and urges these volunteers to tell election judges they could face jail time if a challenge is ignored.

Democrats said yesterday they consider the handbook, obtained by The Washington Post, evidence of a Republican effort to block people from voting Tuesday.

"The tenor of the material is that they are asking folks, if not directing them, to challenge voters," said Bruce L. Marcus, an attorney for the state Democratic Party. "It's really tantamount to a suppression effort."

Advocacy groups including the National Campaign for Fair Elections, Common Cause and the NAACP, as well as a George Washington University professor who is an expert on voter suppression, agreed with that assessment.

Barbara Burt of Common Cause said the technique, last seen in Ohio in the 2004 presidential election, is an "insidious voter intimidation tactic."

Republicans rebutted that charge, saying they merely are guarding against fraud. "I don't think that's borderline suppression," said state Republican Party Chairman John Kane. "It's making sure that people who have earned the right to vote are voting. We've had people die in wars to protect those rights."

No one disputes the legality of having poll watchers set up folding chairs and monitor the election on behalf of their party. Typically, though, poll watchers are present to help ensure that their party's supporters get to vote, not the other way around.

Democrats, for instance, have distributed advice to their poll watchers to "make sure that voters are not being turned away."

"The key is the perspective each party brings to the process," Marcus said. "Our philosophy is, if we have a qualified voter, we're going to turn things inside out and upside down to get them to be able to vote."

The GOP poll-watcher program, outlined in a 13-page document, states: "Your most important duty as a poll worker is to challenge people who present themselves to vote but who are not authorized to vote."

It cautions, "Undoubtedly, the challenge process will be awkward and may cause consternation on the part of the challenged voter as well as the judges." It advises, "If there is cause to make a challenge, you should not hesitate to do so merely because it upsets the challenged voter or the election judges."

It adds, "If the election judge should try to ignore your challenge, point out that they would be committing a criminal offense punishable by not less than 30 days in jail."

Jonah H. Goldman, director of the National Campaign for Fair Elections, said the program "raises serious concerns."

"When you have a political party telling people their Number 1 responsibility is to challenge voters, our ears certainly perk up," Goldman said. "This could either be intended to challenge voters in a discriminatory way or in a disruptive way. A lot of times, they just try to cause chaos and long lines."

The manual provides a range of scenarios in which the volunteer should phone complaints to the party's legal headquarters or fill out "incident reports." The scenarios include voters who can't readily supply their full name, address or date of birth -- or who are assisted by election judges.

"People raising questions about the poll-watcher program may be looking at it from the wrong perspective," said Dirk Haire, the legal counsel for the state GOP. "I wonder if they are concerned that efforts we take could uncover fraud."

Democratic National Committee counsel Joseph E. Sandler said he believes one goal is to create a record for the GOP to use to challenge a close election's outcome in court.

Kane disputed this: "I think what we're doing is protecting ourselves. The Democrats are going to have 500 roving lawyers out there looking for every possible legal challenge."

Sandler said the legal team organized by his party will "be there to help deter the Republicans from effectively carrying this out. So people's votes are safe and secure."

The poll-watcher programs also underscore how tense both parties are about turnout -- particularly among black voters -- in the final days of the contests for Maryland governor and a U.S. Senate seat.

Various polls have shown that the outcome changes dramatically depending on how many black voters cast ballots.

A recent Washington Post poll that measured black turnout at 25 percent showed Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley (D) with a lead of 10 percentage points over Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R). A poll published yesterday by the Baltimore Sun that assumed black turnout at 19 percent showed the race as a statistical dead heat.

Spencer A. Overton, the GWU professor, said a program designed to encourage Election Day challenges has the potential to disenfranchise black voters. "Parties target particular communities, and they don't apply the rules uniformly to all voters in all areas," Overton said.

Kane, however, said the program is in no way intended to bar black voters. Ehrlich said he would not tolerate such an effort, adding that his plan has been to woo black voters, not turn them away. "I think our message has really struck a chord."

Read More...

Summary only...