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Wednesday, November 10, 2004

'Moral Values' Carried Bush, Rove Says

Note: "Moral Values" means different things to different people. The press seems to be ignoring that and continues to perpetrate the Republican point of view on the meaning of this term.

The New York Times
November 10, 2004

'Moral Values' Carried Bush, Rove Says
By ADAM NAGOURNEY

WASHINGTON, Nov. 9 - President Bush's chief political adviser, Karl Rove, said Tuesday that opposition to gay marriage was one of the most powerful forces in American politics today and that politicians ignored it at their peril.

"This is an issue on which there is a broad consensus," Mr. Rove said, discussing a presidential election that took place as voters in 11 states backed constitutional amendments barring same-sex marriages.

"In all 11 states, it won by considerable margins," Mr. Rove said, adding, "People do not like the idea or the concept of marriage as being a union between a man and a woman being uprooted and overturned by a few activist judges or a couple of activist local officials."

He said he was not certain that the votes necessarily helped Mr. Bush to defeat Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts. He noted that Mr. Kerry had won Michigan and Oregon, where the amendments passed by large margins.

"I do think it was part and parcel of a broader fabric where this year moral values ranked higher than they traditionally do," he said, adding: "I think people would be well advised to pay attention to what the American people are saying."

Mr. Rove suggested that the Republican Party's success was even broader than some Democrats had acknowledged, citing increased Republican vote totals in states like Hawaii and Connecticut.

"You're starting to see some growth of the Republican Party in places where you might not think there was a chance for growth," he said.

Mr. Rove appeared to stifle a grin when asked whether he was "indebted" to Mayor Gavin Newsom of San Francisco, who opened his City Hall to gay marriages until he was blocked by a court, and to the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, for ruling that gay couples have a right to marriage.

"If you look at things that intrude into American politics through a nontraditional method - through a judicial vein - they tend to have a huge impact," he said.

On Capitol Hill, Mr. Kerry met with Democratic leaders - Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the House minority leader, and Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the incoming Senate minority leader - as he prepared to return to the Senate.

Ashcroft Quits Top Justice Post; Evans Going, Too

The New York Times
November 10, 2004

Ashcroft Quits Top Justice Post; Evans Going, Too
By ELISABETH BUMILLER

WASHINGTON, Nov. 9 - Attorney General John Ashcroft, one of the most high-profile and polarizing members of the Bush cabinet, said Tuesday that he would resign, after a tumultuous tenure in which he was praised for his aggressive fight against terrorists but assailed by critics who said he sacrificed civil liberties in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Commerce Secretary Donald L. Evans, a close friend of President Bush who spent years promoting the administration's tax cuts across the country, also submitted a letter of resignation on Tuesday.

The two were the first in a series of departures from the administration that are expected before Mr. Bush is inaugurated in January for a second term.

Larry Thompson, who served as deputy attorney general until last year and is a personal favorite of the president, is the leading candidate to replace Mr. Ashcroft, according to a Republican close to the White House. If named, Mr. Thompson, 58, would be the first African-American ever to lead the Justice Department. Others mentioned as possible successors include Marc Racicot, who was chairman of Mr. Bush's re-election campaign, and Alberto R. Gonzales, the White House counsel.

In his letter of resignation, Mr. Ashcroft indicated that he would stay in the job to ensure a smooth transition until his successor was nominated and confirmed.

Mercer Reynolds, a Cincinnati businessman who was Mr. Bush's campaign finance chairman, is a top candidate to replace Mr. Evans, the Republican said.

In a hand-written resignation letter to Mr. Bush, dated Nov. 2, that was released by the White House on Tuesday, Mr. Ashcroft said, "The demands of justice are both rewarding and depleting."

He added: "I take great personal satisfaction in the record which has been developed. The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved. The rule of law has been strengthened and upheld in the courts. Yet, I believe that the Department of Justice would be well served by new leadership and fresh inspiration."

The resignation of Mr. Ashcroft, 62, had been widely expected, even as some Justice Department officials in recent days had suggested that he might want to stay on.

But Mr. Ashcroft had been sidelined for nearly a month last March when he underwent surgery to remove his gall bladder after a severe case of pancreatitis. In addition, he never developed a close relationship with Mr. Bush and annoyed some members of the White House staff who thought he was at times a grandstander who was overtly politicizing the Justice Department. One Republican close to the White House said on Tuesday night that Mr. Ashcroft had gotten a "strong signal" from the administration that his resignation would be accepted.

Mr. Bush, in a three-paragraph statement released by the White House, praised Mr. Ashcroft for his work over the past four years.

"I applaud his efforts to prevent crime, vigorously enforce our civil rights laws, crack down on corporate wrongdoing, protect the rights of victims and those with disabilities, reduce crimes committed with guns and stop human trafficking," the statement said. "I appreciate his work to fight Internet pornography. I am grateful for his advice on judicial nominations and his efforts to ensure that my judicial nominees receive fair hearings and timely votes."

But Mr. Ashcroft's critics were caustic. "We had an attorney general who treated criticism and dissent as treason, ethnic identity as grounds for suspicion and Congressional and judicial oversight as inconvenient obstacles," said David Cole, a law professor at Georgetown University. "He was a disaster from a civil liberties perspective but also from a national security perspective."

Republicans close to the White House said they expected Mr. Ashcroft's successor to be announced on Wednesday. Naming Mr. Thompson, who is widely regarded as a moderate and is respected by both Democrats and Republicans, would be a critical early signal that Mr. Bush is making a move toward the political center.

"You would hopefully see a more modulated approach by the Justice Department on the issues that John Ashcroft was very aggressive on," said Alan Vinegrad, who served as United States attorney in Brooklyn early in the current administration.

Mr. Thompson, the general counsel at Pepsico in Purchase, N.Y., left the Justice Department in August 2003. But he has kept up his ties to the administration, and earlier this year joined Mr. Bush at a ceremony in Buffalo to mark the anniversary of the USA Patriot Act, an antiterrorism law. "Larry, we miss you over there," Mr. Bush said at the ceremony. "Don't get too comfortable."

Mr. Thompson, who has been a visiting professor at the University of Georgia law school and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, came under scrutiny in 2002 when a conservative public interest group, Judicial Watch, filed a lawsuit that accused Mr. Thompson of helping artificially inflate the stock of the Providian Financial Corporation when he was a director there. Mr. Thompson, who made at least $1 million from the sale of his stock, denied any wrongdoing.

The resignation of Mr. Evans had also been widely expected. Mr. Evans, who has known Mr. Bush for more than three decades, had made it clear to associates before the election that he wanted to step down even if the president won a second term. Mr. Evans' family had recently moved back to Texas, and Mr. Evans has been a Republican favorite to run for governor of the state.

In his letter of resignation to the president, dated Nov. 9, Mr. Evans said, "While the promise of your second term shine bright, I have concluded with deep regret that it is time for me to return home." He added, "It is a blessing to have served America with such an extraordinary leader and a true friend."

Mr. Bush, in a statement released by the White House, called Mr. Evans "one of my most trusted friends and advisers" and "a valuable member of my economic team." Mr. Bush added: "To encourage job creation here at home, Don has worked closely with me to reduce taxes, open markets for American goods and services and promote a level playing field abroad."

Mr. Evans' departure is part of a broader reshuffling expected in the administration's economic team, which includes John W. Snow, the treasury secretary. A prominent Republican with close ties to the White House said on Tuesday that while Mr. Snow will remain for now at Treasury, he will probably step down after six months or a year.

Extending Mr. Snow's tenure would reward the treasury secretary, a 65-year-old former railroad executive who aggravated Bush campaign officials when he traveled to Ohio in October and called job losses under the president nothing more than "myths." But Mr. Snow has also been a tireless salesman for Mr. Bush's tax cuts and a cheerleader for his economic policies.

Administration officials are also contemplating a shift for Stephen Friedman, who is currently director of the White House National Economic Council. Mr. Friedman, a former top executive at Goldman Sachs, is under consideration as the United States trade representative and would be in charge of negotiating international trade agreements.

It remains unclear what will happen to Robert B. Zoellick, Mr. Bush's top trade negotiator for the past four years. Mr. Zoellick, who made progress on global trade talks and negotiated free-trade agreements with Chile, Australia and nations in Central America, had been looking for a new post in a second Bush term.

Republicans also said on Tuesday that Roland W. Betts, a close friend of the president and a Democrat, is a leading candidate to become chairman of the inauguration festivities in Washington in January. Mr. Betts, an owner of the Chelsea Piers sports and entertainment complex in Lower Manhattan, has known Mr. Bush since their days together at the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity at Yale University, and spent election night at the White House with Mr. Bush.

Edmund L. Andrews contributed reporting from Washington for this article, andAdam Liptak from New York.

DEM-O-CRACY

I pledge allegiance to:

Tuesday, November 09, 2004

Ralph Nader Challenges Kerry and Edwards on Ohio Election: Fulfill Your Promise to Make Every Vote Count!

votenader.org
November 9, 2004

Ralph Nader Challenges Kerry and Edwards on Ohio Election:
Fulfill Your Promise to Make Every Vote Count!

Washington, DC: Ralph Nader issued a challenge today to John Kerry and John Edwards to follow through on their post-election promise to the American people to make sure every vote counts, starting in Ohio. In his own introductory remarks to John Kerry's concession statement, John Edwards said, "In America it is vital that every vote count, and that every vote be counted."

According to a November 5th article by the Associated Press, elections officials admitted that an error with an electronic voting system gave President Bush 3,893 extra votes in a Gahanna precinct. Franklin County reported Bush with 4,258 votes and John Kerry with 260 - a suspicious count since only 638 voters cast ballots in that precinct. Election officials in that county now say a cartridge from a voting machine generated errors after the precinct closed - and only 365 people voted for Bush. Additional machine errors in Ohio reported by VotersUnite.org, include:

* Mahoning County. The glass on top of one electronic screen was too far from the screen, making it difficult for people to use their fingers to cast ballots. A screen went blank on a Youngstown voter while he cast his ballot
* Mahoning County. 20 to 30 machines that needed to be recalibrated during the voting process because some votes for a candidate were being counted for that candidate's opponent
* Mahoning County. About a dozen machines needed to be reset because they essentially froze
* Cincinnati. Problems with punch card voting machines delayed the start of voting for up to an hour Tuesday morning at a suburban precinct. Voters were unable to slide their punch-card ballots all the way into any of the six voting machines that had ALL evidently been damaged in transit.
* Columbus. Overcharged batteries on Danaher Controls ELECTronic 1242 systems kept machines from booting up properly at the beginning of the day

The resulting delays, combined with higher voter turnout, resulted in lines of several hours—in one case, 22 hours!—led to some citizens' voting rights being taken away by administrative default.

The situation in Ohio and other states bears out what Nader warned against before the election. Computers are inherently subject to programming error, equipment malfunction, and malicious tampering. Paperless electronic voting machines make it impossible to safeguard the integrity of our vote thereby threatening the very foundation of our democracy.

However, the Democratic National Committee has remained silent on the issue since Election Day. Neither the DNC web site nor the Ohio Democratic Party site offered any response or any advice to voters on where to turn.

"With the extensive pre-election effort to prevent election fraud, including international observers, activist poll watchers and attempts to enforce paper trail backups, the Democratic Party's silence on Ohio is puzzling," said Ralph Nader.

Regardless of whether it changes the outcome, the Democrats should follow through on their promise to make sure every vote counts in Ohio and other states discovering similar problems with electronic voting machines and other irregularities.

"It is imperative to find out whether changes are needed in the equipment," he said. "At a minimum, the Democrats should put the state on alert to clean up its act."

Other trouble spots exist in Ohio, including rules that allow officials to reject some of the 155,000 provisional ballots being cast in that state. Before Election Day, Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell (a Republican who co-chairs President Bushs statewide campaign) was challenged by voters-rights organizations for denying citizens their voting rights on the basis of a rule (later rescinded) requiring voter registration forms be printed on 80 pound paper stock. Voter registration forms were submitted on newsprint in Cuyahoga County after being printed in the (Cleveland) Plain Dealer. Blackwell is also accused of trying to suppress the registration of poor and minority voters who most often vote Democrat.

Nader says major electoral reforms are needed to ensure that every vote count—that all voters are represented through electoral reforms like instant run-off voting, none-of-the-above options, and proportional representation; that non-major party candidates have a chance to run for office and participate in debates; and that elections are publicly financed.

Ralph Nader calls upon John Edwards and John Kerry to be serious about their post-election promise: "Our offices are being flooded with faxes and e-mails asking for assistance in resolving these irregularities - a lot of them are citizens who voted for you. You must now take action to give our nation the fair accounting it deserves from the 2004 election and to protect democratic processes in future elections. Although your party extended considerable funds and manpower to drive us off the Ohio ballot, in the spirit of good government, I urge you to make this effort now."

When the Personal Shouldn't Be Political

NY Times

When the Personal Shouldn't Be Political
By GARY HART

Kittredge, Colo. — If America has entered one of its periodic eras of religious revival and if that revival is having the profound impact on politics that is now presumed, to participate in a discussion of "faith" one must qualify oneself.

I was raised in the Church of the Nazarene, an evangelical denomination founded a century ago as an offshoot of American Methodism, which, the church founders believed, had become too liberal. I graduated from Bethany Nazarene College, where I met and married my wife, who was also brought up in the church. I then graduated from the Yale Divinity School as preparation for a life of teaching religion and philosophy.

The Nazarene Church abhorred drinking, smoking, dancing, movies and female adornment, believed in salvation through being "born again" and in sanctification as a second act of grace, and resisted most popular culture as the devil's work. In doctrine and practice, it was much more evangelical than fundamentalist.

A neglected thread of church doctrine was the social gospel of John and Charles Wesley, the great reformers of late 18th-century Methodism. The Wesley brothers preached salvation through grace but also preached the duty of Christians, based solidly on Jesus' teachings, to minister to those less fortunate. My political philosophy springs directly from Jesus' teachings and is the reason I became active in the Democratic Party. Finally, in the qualification-to-speak category, I will seek to pre-empt the ad hominem disqualifiers. I am a sinner. I only ask for the same degree of forgiveness from my many critics that they were willing to grant George W. Bush for his transgressions.

As a candidate for public office, I chose not to place my beliefs in the center of my appeal for support because I am also a Jeffersonian; that is to say, I believe that one's religious beliefs - though they will and should affect one's outlook on public policy and life - are personal and that America is a secular, not a theocratic, republic. Because of this, it should concern us that declarations of "faith" are quickly becoming a condition for seeking public office.

Declarations of "faith" are abstractions that permit both voters and candidates to fill in the blanks with their own religious beliefs. There are two dangers here. One is the merging of church and state. The other is rank hypocrisy. Having claimed moral authority to achieve political victory, religious conservatives should be very careful, in their administration of the public trust, to live up to the standards they have claimed for themselves. They should also be called upon to address the teachings of Jesus and the prophets concerning care for the poor, the barriers that wealth presents to entering heaven, the blessings on the peacemakers, and the belief that no person should be left behind.

If we are to insert "faith" into the public dialogue more directly and assertively, let's not be selective. Let's go all the way. Let's not just define "faith" in terms of the law and judgment; let's define it also in terms of love, caring, forgiveness. Compassionate conservatives can believe social ills should be addressed by charity and the private sector; liberals can believe that the government has a role to play in correcting social injustice. But both can agree that human need, poverty, homelessness, illiteracy and sickness must be addressed. Liberals are not against religion. They are against hypocrisy, exclusion and judgmentalism. They resist the notion that one side or the other possesses "the truth" to the exclusion of others. There is a great difference between Cotton Mather and John Wesley.

There is also the disturbing tendency to insert theocratic principles into the vision of America's role in the world. There is evil in the world. Nowhere in our Constitution or founding documents is there support for the proposition that the United States was given a special dispensation to eliminate it. Surely Saddam Hussein was an evil dictator. But there are quite a few of those still around and no one is advocating eliminating them. Neither Washington, Adams, Madison nor Jefferson saw America as the world's avenging angel. Any notion of going abroad seeking demons to destroy concerned them above all else. Mr. Bush's venture into crusaderism frightened not only Muslims, it also frightened a very large number of Americans with a sense of their own history.

The religions of Abraham all teach a sense of personal and collective humility. It was a note briefly struck very early by Mr. Bush and largely abandoned thereafter. It would be well for those in the second Bush term to ponder that attribute. Whether Bush supporters care or not, people around the world now see America as arrogant, self-righteous and superior. These are not qualities of any traditional faith I am aware of.

If faith now drives our politics, at the very least let's make it a faith of inclusion, genuine compassion, humility, justice and accountability. In the words of the prophet Micah: "He hath shown thee, O man, what is good. What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?" And, instead of "O man," let's insert "O America."

Gary Hart, the former Democratic senator from Colorado, is the author, most recently, of "The Fourth Power: A Grand Strategy for the United States in the 21st Century.''

Electronic voting angst

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6210240/
November 9, 2004

Electronic voting angst (Keith Olbermann)

NEW YORK — Bev Harris, the Blackbox lady, was apparently quoted in a number of venues during the day Monday as having written “I was tipped off by a person very high up in TV that the news has been locked down tight, and there will be no TV coverage of the real problems with voting on Nov. 2… My source said they’ve also been forbidden to talk about it even on their own time.”

I didn’t get the memo.

We were able to put together a reasonably solid 15 minutes or so on the voting irregularities in Florida and Ohio on Monday’s Countdown. There was some You-Are-There insight from the Cincinnati Enquirer reporter who had personally encountered the ‘lockdown’ during the vote count in Warren County, Ohio, a week ago, and a good deal of fairly contained comment from Representative John Conyers of Michigan, who now leads a small but growing group of Democratic congressmen who’ve written the General Accountability Office demanding an investigation of what we should gently call the Electronic Voting Angst. Conyers insisted he wasn’t trying to re-cast the election, but seemed mystified that in the 21st Century we could have advanced to a technological state in which voting— fine, flawed, or felonious— should leave no paper trail.

But the show should not have been confused with Edward R. Murrow flattening Joe McCarthy. I mean that both in terms of editorial content and controversy. I swear, and I have never been known to cover-up for any management anywhere, that I got nothing but support from MSNBC both for the Web-work and the television time. We were asked if perhaps we shouldn’t begin the program with the Fallujah offensive and do the voting story later, but nobody flinched when we argued that the Countdown format pretty much allows us to start wherever we please.

It may be different elsewhere, but there was no struggle to get this story on the air, and evidently I should be washing the feet of my bosses this morning in thanks. Because your reaction was a little different than mine. By actual rough count, between the 8 p.m. ET start of the program and 10:30 p.m. ET last night, we received 1,570 e-mails (none of them duplicates or forms, as near as I can tell). 1,508 were positive, 62 negative.

Well the volume is startling to begin with. I know some of the overtly liberal sites encouraged readers to write, but that’s still a hunk of mail, and a decisive margin (hell, 150 to 62 is considered a decisive margin). Writing this, I know I’m inviting negative comment, but so be it. I read a large number of the missives, skimmed all others, appreciate all— and all since— deeply.

Even the negative ones, because in between the repeated “you lost” nonsense and one baffling reference to my toupee (seriously, if I wore a rug, wouldn’t I get one that was all the same color?), there was a solid point raised about some of the incongruous voting noted on the website of Florida’s Secretary of State.

There, 52 counties tallied their votes using paper ballots that were then optically scanned by machines produced by Diebold, Sequoia, or Election Systems and Software. 29 of those Florida counties had large Democratic majorities among registered voters (as high a ratio as Liberty County— Bristol, Florida and environs— where it’s 88 percent Democrats, 8 percent Republicans) but produced landslides for President Bush. On Countdown, we cited the five biggest surprises (Liberty ended Bush: 1,927; Kerry: 1,070), but did not mention the other 24.

Those protesting e-mailers pointed out that four of the five counties we mentioned also went for Bush in 2000, and were in Florida’s panhandle or near the Georgia border. Many of them have long “Dixiecrat” histories and the swing to Bush, while remarkably large, isn’t of itself suggestive of voting fraud.

That the other 24 counties were scattered across the state, and that they had nothing in common except the optical scanning method, I didn’t mention. My bad. I used the most eye-popping numbers, and should have used a better regional mix instead.

Interestingly, none of the complaining emailers took issue with the remarkable results out of Cuyahoga County, Ohio. In 29 precincts there, the County’s website shows, we had the most unexpected results in years: more votes than voters.

I’ll repeat that: more votes than voters. 93,000 more votes than voters.

Oops.

Talk about successful get-out-the-vote campaigns! What a triumph for democracy in Fairview Park, twelve miles west of downtown Cleveland. Only 13,342 registered voters there, but they cast 18,472 votes.

Vote early! Vote often!

And in the continuing saga of the secret vote count in Warren County, Ohio (outside Cincinnati), no protestor offered an explanation or even a reference, excepting one sympathetic writer who noted that there was a “beautiful Mosque” in or near Warren County, and that a warning from Homeland Security might have been predicated on that fact.

To her credit, Pat South, President of the Warren County Commissioners who chose to keep the media from watching the actual vote count, was willing to come on the program— but only by phone. Instead, we asked her to compose a statement about the bizarre events at her County Administration building a week ago, which I can quote at greater length here than I did on the air.

“About three weeks prior to elections,” Ms. South stated, “our emergency services department had been receiving quite a few pieces of correspondence from the office of Homeland Security on the upcoming elections. These memos were sent out statewide, not just to Warren County and they included a lot of planning tools and resources to use for election day security.

“In a face to face meeting between the FBI and our director of Emergency Services, we were informed that on a scale from 1 to 10, the tri-state area of Southwest Ohio was ranked at a high 8 to a low 9 in terms of security risk. Warren County in particular, was rated at 10 (with 10 being the highest risk). Pursuant to the Ohio revised code, we followed the law to the letter that basically says that no one is allowed within a hundred feet of a polling place except for voters and that after the polls close the only people allowed in the board of elections area where votes are being counted are the board of election members, judges, clerks, poll challengers, police, and that no one other than those people can be there while tabulation is taking place.”

Ms. South said she admitted the media to the building’s lobby, and that they were provided with updates on the ballot-counting every half hour. Of course, the ballot-counting was being conducted on the third floor, and the idea that it would have probably looked better if Warren had done what Ohio’s other 87 counties did— at least let reporters look through windows as the tabulations proceeded— apparently didn’t occur to anybody.

Back to those emails, especially the 1,508 positive ones. Apart from the supportive words (my favorites: “Although I did not vote for Kerry, as a former government teacher, I am encouraged by your ‘covering’ the voting issue which is the basis of our government. Thank you.”), the main topics were questions about why ours was apparently the first television or mainstream print coverage of any of the issues in Florida or Ohio. I have a couple of theories.

Firstly, John Kerry conceded. As I pointed out here Sunday, no candidate’s statement is legally binding— what matters is the state election commissions’ reports, and the Electoral College vote next month. But in terms of reportorial momentum, the concession took the wind out of a lot of journalists’ aggressiveness towards the entire issue. Many were prepared for Election Night premature jocularity, and a post-vote stampede to the courts— especially after John Edwards’ late night proclamation from Boston. When Kerry brought that to a halt, a lot of the media saw something of which they had not dared dream: a long weekend off.

Don’t discount this. This has been our longest presidential campaign ever, to say nothing of the one in which the truth was most artfully hidden or manufactured. To consider this mess over was enough to get 54 percent of the respondents to an Associated Press poll released yesterday to say that the “conclusiveness” of last week’s vote had given them renewed confidence in our electoral system (of course, 39 percent said it had given them less confidence). Up for the battle for truth or not, a lot of fulltime political reporters were ready for a rest. Not me— I get to do “Oddball” and “Newsmakers” every night and they always serve to refresh my spirit, and my conviction that man is the silliest of the creator’s creations.

There’s a third element to the reluctance to address all this, I think. It comes from the mainstream’s love-hate relationship with this very thing you’re reading now: The Blog. This medium is so new that print, radio, and television don’t know what to do with it, especially given that a system of internet checks and balances has yet to develop. A good reporter may encounter a tip, or two, or five, in a day’s time. He has to check them all out before publishing or reporting.

What happens when you get 1,000 tips, all at once?

I’m sounding like an apologist for the silence of television and I don’t mean to. Just remember that when radio news arose in the '30s, the response of newspapers and the wire services was to boycott it, then try to limit it to specific hours. There’s a measure of competitiveness, a measure of confusion, and the undeniable fact that in searching for clear, non-partisan truth in this most partisan of times, the I’m-Surprised-This-Name-Never-Caught-On “Information Super Highway” becomes a road with direction signs listing 1,000 destinations each.

Having said all that— for crying out loud, all the data we used tonight on Countdown was on official government websites in Cleveland and Florida. We confirmed all of it— moved it right out of the Reynolds Wrap Hat zone in about ten minutes.

Which offers one way bloggers can help guide the mainstream at times like this: source your stuff like crazy, and the stuffier the source the better.

Enough from the soapbox. We have heard the message on the Voting Angst and will continue to cover it with all prudent speed.

Thanks for your support.

Keep them coming... Email me at KOlbermann@msnbc.com

Ohio Is Set to Reckon With Outstanding Ballots

latimes.com

Ohio Is Set to Reckon With Outstanding Ballots

By Ralph Vartabedian and Henry Weinstein
Times Staff Writers

November 9, 2004

Ohio election officials said Monday that they would begin this week the final count of 155,428 provisional ballots and an unknown number of overseas absentee ballots that were cast in the presidential election.

According to the preliminary tally, which included all domestic absentee ballots, Sen. John F. Kerry lost Ohio by 136,483 votes, Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell said.

Attorneys for the Kerry campaign said Monday that they did not believe the outcome of the Ohio vote — which gave President Bush the electoral votes needed to win — could possibly change; they have discouraged speculation that voting irregularities caused Kerry's loss.

Nonetheless, the Ohio count is attracting scrutiny by groups who say the election was tainted and that voting equipment in Ohio, Florida, South Carolina and elsewhere was defective. On Friday, three congressional Democrats asked for a federal investigation.

Since the election, Internet sites and political blogs have buzzed with speculation that the vote was manipulated. "Evidence mounts that the vote may have been hacked," reads the title of one widely circulated Web offering.

Voting machine failures did occur, and long lines in heavily Democratic precincts discouraged some potential voters. Still, a broad range of experts said that the final vote counts in Ohio and other states could not possibly change the outcome.

Among those was Cleveland attorney Mark Griffin, who played a key role in the Kerry campaign's voter protection efforts in that area.

After meeting Monday with Michael Vu, head of the Board of Elections in Ohio's Cuyahoga County, Griffin said: "This is really not about changing the outcome…. It is about making sure every vote counts, particularly people who waited in line three hours."

The 2004 Ohio vote was not nearly as close as the disputed Florida results in 2000.

If all provisional votes are deemed valid, Kerry would need 88% of them to overcome Bush's margin of victory in Ohio, assuming the remaining overseas absentee ballots were split evenly.

But many provisional ballots will probably be tossed out. In past elections, about 10% were judged as not coming from legitimately registered voters. What's more, Blackwell ruled before the election that provisional ballots had to be cast in the correct precinct, and that any cast at the wrong polling place would not be counted.

If 10% of the provisional ballots were rejected, Kerry would need to get 97.6% of those remaining to overcome Bush's lead.

"There are a lot of conspiracy theory folks out there thinking that — with a machine problem here and a long-line problem there and the provisional ballots — the result is in doubt," said Edward J. Foley, a professor at Ohio State University's Moritz College of Law. "I have seen nothing to indicate that the result is in doubt."

But, Foley said, the election revealed problems that needed to be remedied.

Counting of the provisional ballots is expected to begin Saturday, although state law allows counties to delay the canvass until Nov. 18, said James Lee, Secretary of State spokesman. Ohio, however, faces a Dec. 7 deadline to finish this process so that its electors can cast their electoral college votes Dec. 13.

Under state law, each county will examine its provisional ballots, which are in sealed envelopes. Before opening the envelopes, a team of elections officials — split evenly between declared Democrats and Republicans — will decide whether the voter who cast the ballot was registered by the early October deadline and voted in the correct precinct.

After all provisional ballots have been allowed or rejected, the envelopes will be opened, Lee said. "Our system is designed to be bipartisan in every aspect," he said.

But irregularities and problems have cropped up nonetheless.

On Friday, officials in Franklin County — which includes state capital Columbus — acknowledged that they may have improperly counted votes for Bush because of a touch-screen voting system malfunction. A precinct in the county reported that a 4,000-vote margin won by Bush appeared to exceed the number of registered voters.

The touch-screen system in Franklin County is among the oldest and least reliable electronic voting machines in use, said David Dill, a Stanford University computer expert.

Asked how an electronic voting machine could run up nearly 4,000 extra votes, Dill said a variety of factors, including an internal misalignment or static electricity, could cause such an error.

"The point is that these machines are nowhere near reliable enough to depend on," Dill said.

Based on reports that Dill's organization — Verified Voting.org — has received, one precinct in Youngstown, Ohio, recorded a negative 25 million votes, which was discarded from official results. And it was widely reported after Nov. 2 that a North Carolina precinct lost 4,000 votes when a recording device used up all its memory but voters continued to cast ballots on the machine.

Recircling the Democrats' Wagons

The New York Times
November 9, 2004

Recircling the Democrats' Wagons

The Democrats' last redoubt in Washington - their minority outpost in the Senate - became considerably shakier last Tuesday with the fall of their leader, Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota, and the loss of a total of four seats. But it remains the party's best chance of exercising some form of political relevance in the second Bush administration, by using its minority power selectively to filibuster objectionable legislation and unacceptable presidential nominees, and by continuing to make alliances with the dwindling band of Republican moderates.

Whether or not President Bush intends to make good on his promise to reach out to Democrats in his second term, victorious Republicans are already shaping a fresh agenda in Congress. In the House, the Democrats' impotence can only deepen as their bare-knuckled nemesis, Tom DeLay, the majority leader, returns more powerful than ever after his gerrymander of Texas delivered the four-seat increase in the G.O.P. majority. If Mr. Bush plans to follow through on his sketchy talk of compromise, that would oblige him to rein in the runaway partisanship of Mr. DeLay.

With the Democrats clinging to 45 seats in the Senate, the party is turning to a new Senate leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, who is short on charisma and silver-tongued oratory but, perhaps more usefully, is a conservative with a reputation for steeliness and attention to detail and a knack for floor skirmishing. Mr. Reid, a boxer and Capitol corridor guard in his student years, will need that battler's wiliness to deal with the Republican agenda - from Supreme Court appointees to tax-code overhaul.

Senate Democrats will have the obligation of nay-saying through the filibuster, but with 45 seats, the party is vulnerable to having a few conservatives picked off here and there to defeat that tactic. They will therefore have to seize the occasional chance for compromise as Senator Reid musters an opposition that includes their defeated standard-bearer, Senator John Kerry. Considering the rebuff from heartland voters, Senate Democrats like Dianne Feinstein of California find comfort in Senator Reid's roots, but not some of his positions, like his opposition to abortion. "I like the fact that he is a Westerner, frankly," Senator Feinstein said.

Mr. Reid has built credit as a negotiator with moderates across the aisle, who now return more endangered than ever. The Democrats should look for alliances with those Republicans, like Olympia Snowe of Maine and John McCain of Arizona, who were fighting for pay-as-you-go budgeting and rational intelligence reform before the election and may now be joined by a few more true conservatives who never liked Mr. Bush's fiscal recklessness but held their fire during the campaign.

The Democrats may find only marginal hope in the caution from Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, a G.O.P. moderate who survived the conservatives' purge attempt, that the Senate remains unlikely to approve antiabortion ideologues for court nominations. Mr. Specter, whose comments immediately provoked an assault from the right on his claim to the chairmanship of the Senate Judiciary Committee, is already back-pedaling. His ability to hang on to the post will be an early sign of the price the Republican right wants for the election results, and Mr. Bush's willingness to pay it.

Moderation seems an endangered word amid Republicans' exultation, but it may be the most to be wished for as Senator Reid rallies Democrats from their Election Day drubbing.

Stickers Put in Evolution Text Are the Subject of a Federal Trial

The New York Times
November 9, 2004

Stickers Put in Evolution Text Are the Subject of a Federal Trial
By ARIEL HART

ATLANTA, Nov. 8 - A federal judge began hearing testimony on Monday about whether the Cobb County School District should be allowed to leave stickers in biology textbooks saying that evolution was "a theory, not a fact" and should be "approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered."

In a lawsuit against the district, the American Civil Liberties Union is arguing on behalf of five parents that the stickers violate the constitutional separation of church and state.

The school board says the stickers, which do not mention creationism or religion, are nothing more than a neutral gesture to parents who have lost their battle against teaching evolution in the public schools.

The stickers were placed in the textbooks in 2002. The books include a thorough treatment of evolution, and the stickers were intended only to "acknowledge that it may hurt some people's feelings," said E. Linwood Gunn, a lawyer for the board.

In 2002, Mr. Gunn said, the board dropped a policy prohibiting the teaching of human evolution in classes that were required for graduation. "For years we had an unconstitutional policy and nothing was ever said about it until we tried to correct it," he said. "It's a little bit ironic."

Kenneth Miller, a Brown University professor who is a co-author of the biology textbook, testified that he feared that singling out evolution told students "we are certain of everything in this book except evolution."

"What bothers me," Professor Miller said, "is it plays on the popular understanding of the word 'theory,' which is like a hunch, not the scientific understanding."

Marjorie Rogers, a parent and self-described "six-day literal creationist" who led a drive that prompted the stickers, said she was not advocating the teaching of religion, but just more theories besides evolution, which she said was disputed science. "I just want an even footing, if there's any kind of science to support it," she testified.

Judge Clarence Cooper of Federal District Court will rule after the bench trial, which is expected to end this week.

Judge Halts War-Crime Trial at Guantánamo

The New York Times
November 9, 2004

Judge Halts War-Crime Trial at Guantánamo
By NEIL A. LEWIS

GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba, Nov. 8 - A federal judge ruled Monday that President Bush had both overstepped his constitutional bounds and improperly brushed aside the Geneva Conventions in establishing military commissions to try detainees at the United States naval base here as war criminals.

The ruling by Judge James Robertson of United States District Court in Washington brought an abrupt halt to the trial here of one detainee, one of hundreds being held at Guantánamo as enemy combatants. It threw into doubt the future of the first set of United States military commission trials since the end of World War II as well as other legal proceedings devised by the administration to deal with suspected terrorists.

The administration reacted quickly, saying it would seek an emergency stay and a quick appeal.

Judge Robertson ruled against the government in the case of Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a former driver for Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan who is facing terrorism charges. Mr. Hamdan's lawyers had asked the court to declare the military commission process fatally flawed.

The ruling and its timing had a theatrical effect on the courtroom here where pretrial proceedings were under way with Mr. Hamdan, a 34-year-old Yemeni in a flowing white robe, seated next to his lawyers.

About 30 minutes into the afternoon proceedings, the presiding officer, Col. Peter S. Brownback III, was handed a note from a Marine sergeant. Colonel Brownback immediately called a recess and rushed from the room with the commission's two other officers. When he returned, he announced that the proceeding was in recess indefinitely and he departed quickly.

Neal K. Katyal, a Georgetown Law School professor who is one of Mr. Hamdan's lawyers and who supervised the federal lawsuit, told the puzzled courtroom audience, "We won."

Mark Corallo, a Justice Department spokesman, said in a statement, "The process struck down by the district court today was carefully crafted to protect America from terrorists while affording those charged with violations of the laws of war with fair process, and the department will make every effort to have this process restored through appeal."

Mr. Corallo said, "By conferring protected legal status under the Geneva Conventions on members of Al Qaeda, the judge has put terrorism on the same legal footing as legitimate methods of waging war."

Judge Robertson ruled that the administration could not under current circumstances try Mr. Hamdan before the military commissions set up shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks but could only bring him before a court-martial, where different rules of evidence apply.

In the 45-page ruling, the judge said the administration had ignored a basic provision of the Geneva Conventions, the international treaties signed by the United States that form the basic elements of the laws governing the conduct of war.

The conventions oblige the United States to treat Mr. Hamdan as a prisoner of war, the judge said , unless he goes before a special tribunal described in Article 5 of the Third Geneva Convention that determines he is not. A P.O.W. is entitled to a court-martial if there are accusations of war crimes but may not be tried before a military commission.

The United States military did not conduct Article 5 tribunals at the end of the Afghanistan war, saying they were unnecessary. Government lawyers argued that the president had already used his authority to deem members of Al Qaeda unlawful combatants who would be deprived of P.O.W. status.

But Judge Robertson, who was nominated to be on the court by President Bill Clinton, said that that was not enough. "The president is not a panel," he wrote. "The law of war includes the Third Geneva Convention, which requires trial by court-martial as long as Hamdan's P.O.W. status is in doubt."

The government is in the midst of conducting a separate set of tribunals here at Guantánamo, similar to those required by the Geneva Conventions, to determine whether detainees were properly deemed unlawful enemy combatants. Those proceedings, called combatant status review tribunals, were quickly put into place by the Bush administration after the Supreme Court's ruling in June that the Guantánamo prisoners were entitled to challenge their detentions in federal court. Judge Robertson said, however, that those tribunals were not designed to satisfy the Geneva Convention requirement and were insufficient.

The ruling on Monday may also make those tribunals obsolete, but Scott L. Silliman, professor of military law at Duke University, said the military might modify them to fit the Geneva Convention requirements.

The judge also said that in asserting that the Guantánamo prisoners are unlawful combatants and outside the reach of the Geneva Conventions, "the government has asserted a position starkly different from the positions and behavior of the United States in previous conflicts, one that can only weaken the United States' own ability to demand application of the Geneva applications to Americans captured during armed conflicts abroad."

Professor Katyal told reporters that while the ruling on Monday applied only to the Hamdan case, "the spirit of the ruling extends more broadly, perhaps to everything that is going on here in Guantánamo Bay."

Mr. Hamdan is one of about 63 Guantánamo detainees on whose behalf lawsuits have been filed in federal court. The lawsuits consist of habeas corpus petitions, in which people may demand that the government provide some explanation as to why they are imprisoned.

Critics have said that the military commissions fall short of the rights that defendants have in courts-martial in two respects. But Judge Robertson said that one of those reasons, the inability to appeal to the federal judiciary, was not a serious problem. The principal problem, he said, was that defendants before commissions did not have a fair opportunity to respond to charges because some of the evidence was classified and would be withheld. He said that no American court could approve of any proceeding that had such a glaring lack of the right to confront one's accusers and the evidence.

Stephen Saltzburg, a professor at the George Washington University Law School, said it was inevitable that a federal judge somewhere would find fault with the administration's approach "that you can keep people locked up for two and three years and you still don't really know who they are and why we're keeping them."

Professor Saltzburg also said the ruling could set up a sharp confrontation between the judiciary and the executive branch. "No president, Democrat or Republican, is going to welcome the idea that judges who sit in Washington are going to supervise who is detained on the battlefield," he said.

Capt. Brian Thompson of the Air Force, who is defending one of the other three detainees who have been charged with war crimes before a military commission, said he was confident that Judge Robertson's ruling would apply to his client as well. "Not in a strict legal sense," he said, "but certainly in a practical sense."

Commission officials said they were considering whether to halt action on the other cases as well.

U.S. Remains Unprepared

U.S. Remains Unprepared

Despite progress, many U.S. officials express unease about biodefenses.
(Washington Post)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A32738-2004Nov7.html

Terror Financing Fines Fall After 9/11

Terror Financing Fines Fall After 9/11

Despite the Bush administration's pledge to battle terrorist financing, the government's average penalty against companies doing business with countries listed as terrorist-sponsoring states fell sharply after the Sept. 11 attacks, an Associated Press analysis of federal records shows.
(AP)
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20041107/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/terror_financing_3

Mandate

Comes the Revolution

Monday, November 08, 2004

Evidence Mounts that the Vote Was Hacked

Evidence Mounts that the Vote Was Hacked
By Thom Hartmann
CommonDreams.org

Saturday 06 November 2004

When I spoke with Jeff Fisher this morning (Saturday, November 06, 2004), the Democratic candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives from Florida's 16th District said he was waiting for the FBI to show up. Fisher has evidence, he says, not only that the Florida election was hacked, but of who hacked it and how. And not just this year, he said, but that these same people had previously hacked the Democratic primary race in 2002 so that Jeb Bush would not have to run against Janet Reno, who presented a real threat to Jeb, but instead against Bill McBride, who Jeb beat.

"It was practice for a national effort," Fisher told me.

And some believe evidence is accumulating that the national effort happened on November 2, 2004.

The State of Florida, for example, publishes a county-by-county record of votes cast and people registered to vote by party affiliation. Net denizen Kathy Dopp compiled the official state information into a table, available at http://ustogether.org/Florida_Election.htm, and noticed something startling.

While the heavily scrutinized touch-screen voting machines seemed to produce results in which the registered Democrat/Republican ratios largely matched the Kerry/Bush vote, in Florida's counties using results from optically scanned paper ballots - fed into a central tabulator PC and thus vulnerable to hacking - the results seem to contain substantial anomalies.

In Baker County, for example, with 12,887 registered voters, 69.3% of them Democrats and 24.3% of them Republicans, the vote was only 2,180 for Kerry and 7,738 for Bush, the opposite of what is seen everywhere else in the country where registered Democrats largely voted for Kerry.

In Dixie County, with 4,988 registered voters, 77.5% of them Democrats and a mere 15% registered as Republicans, only 1,959 people voted for Kerry, but 4,433 voted for Bush.

The pattern repeats over and over again - but only in the counties where optical scanners were used. Franklin County, 77.3% registered Democrats, went 58.5% for Bush. Holmes County, 72.7% registered Democrats, went 77.25% for Bush.

Yet in the touch-screen counties, where investigators may have been more vigorously looking for such anomalies, high percentages of registered Democrats generally equaled high percentages of votes for Kerry. (I had earlier reported that county size was a variable - this turns out not to be the case. Just the use of touch-screens versus optical scanners.)

More visual analysis of the results can be seen at http://us together.org/election04/FloridaDataStats.htm, and www.rubberbug.com/temp/Florida2004chart.htm. Note the trend line - the only variable that determines a swing toward Bush was the use of optical scan machines.

One possible explanation for this is the "Dixiecrat" theory, that in Florida white voters (particularly the rural ones) have been registered as Democrats for years, but voting Republican since Reagan. Looking at the 2000 statistics, also available on Dopp's site, there are similar anomalies, although the trends are not as strong as in 2004. But some suggest the 2000 election may have been questionable in Florida, too.

One of the people involved in Dopp's analysis noted that it may be possible to determine the validity of the "rural Democrat" theory by comparing Florida's white rural counties to those of Pennsylvania, another swing state but one that went for Kerry, as the exit polls there predicted. Interestingly, the Pennsylvania analysis, available at http://ustogether.org/election04/PA_vote_patt.htm, doesn't show the same kind of swings as does Florida, lending credence to the possibility of problems in Florida.

Even more significantly, Dopp had first run the analysis while filtering out smaller (rural) counties, and still found that the only variable that accounted for a swing toward Republican voting was the use of optical-scan machines, whereas counties with touch-screen machines generally didn't swing - regardless of size.

Others offer similar insights, based on other data. A professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, noted that in Florida the vote to raise the minimum wage was approved by 72%, although Kerry got 48%. "The correlation between voting for the minimum wage increase and voting for Kerry isn't likely to be perfect," he noted, "but one would normally expect that the gap - of 1.5 million votes - to be far smaller than it was."

While all of this may or may not be evidence of vote tampering, it again brings the nation back to the question of why several states using electronic voting machines or scanners programmed by private, for-profit corporations and often connected to modems produced votes inconsistent with exit poll numbers.

Those exit poll results have been a problem for reporters ever since Election Day.

Election night, I'd been doing live election coverage for WDEV, one of the radio stations that carries my syndicated show, and, just after midnight, during the 12:20 a.m. Associated Press Radio News feed, I was startled to hear the reporter detail how Karen Hughes had earlier sat George W. Bush down to inform him that he'd lost the election. The exit polls were clear: Kerry was winning in a landslide. "Bush took the news stoically," noted the AP report.

But then the computers reported something different. In several pivotal states.

Conservatives see a conspiracy here: They think the exit polls were rigged.

Dick Morris, the infamous political consultant to the first Clinton campaign who became a Republican consultant and Fox News regular, wrote an article for The Hill, the publication read by every political junkie in Washington, DC, in which he made a couple of brilliant points.

"Exit Polls are almost never wrong," Morris wrote. "They eliminate the two major potential fallacies in survey research by correctly separating actual voters from those who pretend they will cast ballots but never do and by substituting actual observation for guesswork in judging the relative turnout of different parts of the state."

He added: "So, according to ABC-TVs exit polls, for example, Kerry was slated to carry Florida, Ohio, New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada, and Iowa, all of which Bush carried. The only swing state the network had going to Bush was West Virginia, which the president won by 10 points."

Yet a few hours after the exit polls were showing a clear Kerry sweep, as the computerized vote numbers began to come in from the various states the election was called for Bush.

How could this happen?

On the CNBC TV show "Topic A With Tina Brown," several months ago, Howard Dean had filled in for Tina Brown as guest host. His guest was Bev Harris, the Seattle grandmother who started www.blackboxvoting.org from her living room. Bev pointed out that regardless of how votes were tabulated (other than hand counts, only done in odd places like small towns in Vermont), the real "counting" is done by computers. Be they Diebold Opti-Scan machines, which read paper ballots filled in by pencil or ink in the voter's hand, or the scanners that read punch cards, or the machines that simply record a touch of the screen, in all cases the final tally is sent to a "central tabulator" machine.

That central tabulator computer is a Windows-based PC.

"In a voting system," Harris explained to Dean on national television, "you have all the different voting machines at all the different polling places, sometimes, as in a county like mine, there's a thousand polling places in a single county. All those machines feed into the one machine so it can add up all the votes. So, of course, if you were going to do something you shouldn't to a voting machine, would it be more convenient to do it to each of the 4000 machines, or just come in here and deal with all of them at once?"

Dean nodded in rhetorical agreement, and Harris continued. "What surprises people is that the central tabulator is just a PC, like what you and I use. It's just a regular computer."

"So," Dean said, "anybody who can hack into a PC can hack into a central tabulator?"

Harris nodded affirmation, and pointed out how Diebold uses a program called GEMS, which fills the screen of the PC and effectively turns it into the central tabulator system. "This is the official program that the County Supervisor sees," she said, pointing to a PC that was sitting between them loaded with Diebold's software.

Bev then had Dean open the GEMS program to see the results of a test election. They went to the screen titled "Election Summary Report" and waited a moment while the PC "adds up all the votes from all the various precincts," and then saw that in this faux election Howard Dean had 1000 votes, Lex Luthor had 500, and Tiger Woods had none. Dean was winning.

"Of course, you can't tamper with this software," Harris noted. Diebold wrote a pretty good program.

But, it's running on a Windows PC.

So Harris had Dean close the Diebold GEMS software, go back to the normal Windows PC desktop, click on the "My Computer" icon, choose "Local Disk C:," open the folder titled GEMS, and open the sub-folder "LocalDB" which, Harris noted, "stands for local database, that's where they keep the votes." Harris then had Dean double-click on a file in that folder titled "Central Tabulator Votes," which caused the PC to open the vote count in a database program like Excel.

In the "Sum of the Candidates" row of numbers, she found that in one precinct Dean had received 800 votes and Lex Luthor had gotten 400.

"Let's just flip those," Harris said, as Dean cut and pasted the numbers from one cell into the other. "And," she added magnanimously, "let's give 100 votes to Tiger."

They closed the database, went back into the official GEMS software "the legitimate way, you're the county supervisor and you're checking on the progress of your election."

As the screen displayed the official voter tabulation, Harris said, "And you can see now that Howard Dean has only 500 votes, Lex Luthor has 900, and Tiger Woods has 100." Dean, the winner, was now the loser.

Harris sat up a bit straighter, smiled, and said, "We just edited an election, and it took us 90 seconds."

On live national television. (You can see the clip on www.votergate.tv.) And they had left no tracks whatsoever, Harris said, noting that it would be nearly impossible for the election software - or a County election official - to know that the vote database had been altered.

Which brings us back to Morris and those pesky exit polls that had Karen Hughes telling George W. Bush that he'd lost the election in a landslide.

Morris's conspiracy theory is that the exit polls "were sabotage" to cause people in the western states to not bother voting for Bush, since the networks would call the election based on the exit polls for Kerry. But the networks didn't do that, and had never intended to.

According to congressional candidate Fisher, it makes far more sense that the exit polls were right - they weren't done on Diebold PCs - and that the vote itself was hacked.

And not only for the presidential candidate - Jeff Fisher thinks this hit him and pretty much every other Democratic candidate for national office in the most-hacked swing states.

So far, the only national "mainstream" media to come close to this story was Keith Olbermann on his show Friday night, November 5th, when he noted that it was curious that all the voting machine irregularities so far uncovered seem to favor Bush. In the meantime, the Washington Post and other media are now going through single-bullet-theory-like contortions to explain how the exit polls had failed.

But I agree with Fox's Dick Morris on this one, at least in large part. Wrapping up his story for The Hill, Morris wrote in his final paragraph, "This was no mere mistake. Exit polls cannot be as wrong across the board as they were on election night. I suspect foul play."

-------

Thom Hartmann (thom at thomhartmann.com) is a Project Censored Award-winning best-selling author and host of a nationally syndicated daily progressive talk show. www.thomhartmann.com. His most recent books are "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight," "We The People: A Call To Take Back America," and "What Would Jefferson Do?: A Return To Democracy."

Worse Than 2000: Tuesday's Electoral Disaster

truthout.org

Worse Than 2000: Tuesday's Electoral Disaster
By William Rivers Pitt

Monday 08 November 2004

Everyone remembers Florida's 2000 election debacle, and all of the new terms it introduced to our political lexicon: Hanging chads, dimpled chads, pregnant chads, overvotes, undervotes, Sore Losermans, Jews for Buchanan and so forth. It took several weeks, battalions of lawyers and a questionable decision from the U.S. Supreme Court to show the nation and the world how messy democracy can be. By any standard, what happened in Florida during the 2000 Presidential election was a disaster.

What happened during the Presidential election of 2004, in Florida, in Ohio, and in a number of other states as well, was worse.

Some of the problems with this past Tuesday's election will sound all too familiar. Despite having four years to look into and deal with the problems that cropped up in Florida in 2000, the 'spoiled vote' chad issue reared its ugly head again. Investigative journalist Greg Palast, the man almost singularly responsible for exposing the more egregious examples of illegitimate deletions of voters from the rolls, described the continued problems in an article published just before the election, and again in an article published just after the election.

Four years later, and none of the Florida problems were fixed. In fact, by all appearances, they spread from Florida to Ohio, New Mexico, Michigan and elsewhere. Worse, these problems only scratch the surface of what appears to have happened in Tuesday's election. The fix that was put in place to solve these problems - the Help America Vote Act passed in 2002 after the Florida debacle - appears to have gone a long way towards making things worse by orders of magnitude, for it was the Help America Vote Act which introduced paperless electronic touch-screen voting machines to millions of voters across the country.

At first blush, it seems like a good idea. Forget the chads, the punch cards, the archaic booths like pianos standing on end with the handles and the curtains. This is the 21st century, so let's do it with computers. A simple screen presents straightforward choices, and you touch the spot on the screen to vote for your candidate. Your vote is recorded by the machine, and then sent via modem to a central computer which tallies the votes. Simple, right?

Not quite.

A Diebold voting machine.

Is there any evidence that these machines went haywire on Tuesday? Nationally, there were more than 1,100 reports of electronic voting machine malfunctions. A few examples:

* In Broward County, Florida, election workers were shocked to discover that their shiny new machines were counting backwards. "Tallies should go up as more votes are counted," according to this report. "That's simple math. But in some races, the numbers had gone down. Officials found the software used in Broward can handle only 32,000 votes per precinct. After that, the system starts counting backward."

* In Franklin County, Ohio, electronic voting machines gave Bush 3,893 extra votes in one precinct alone. "Franklin County's unofficial results gave Bush 4,258 votes to Democratic challenger John Kerry's 260 votes in Precinct 1B," according to this report. "Records show only 638 voters cast ballots in that precinct. Matthew Damschroder, director of the Franklin County Board of Elections, said Bush received 365 votes there. The other 13 voters who cast ballots either voted for other candidates or did not vote for president."

* In Craven County, North Carolina, a software error on the electronic voting machines awarded Bush 11,283 extra votes. "The Elections Systems and Software equipment," according to this report, "had downloaded voting information from nine of the county's 26 precincts and as the absentee ballots were added, the precinct totals were added a second time. An override, like those occurring when one attempts to save a computer file that already exists, is supposed to prevent double counting, but did not function correctly."

* In Carteret County, North Carolina, "More than 4,500 votes may be lost in one North Carolina county because officials believed a computer that stored ballots electronically could hold more data than it did. Local officials said UniLect Corp., the maker of the county's electronic voting system, told them that each storage unit could handle 10,500 votes, but the limit was actually 3,005 votes. Officials said 3,005 early votes were stored, but 4,530 were lost."

* In LaPorte County, Indiana, a Democratic stronghold, the electronic voting machines decided that each precinct only had 300 voters. "At about 7 p.m. Tuesday," according to this report, "it was noticed that the first two or three printouts from individual precinct reports all listed an identical number of voters. Each precinct was listed as having 300 registered voters. That means the total number of voters for the county would be 22,200, although there are actually more than 79,000 registered voters."

* In Sarpy County, Nebraska, the electronic touch screen machines got generous. "As many as 10,000 extra votes," according to this report, "have been tallied and candidates are still waiting for corrected totals. Johnny Boykin lost his bid to be on the Papillion City Council. The difference between victory and defeat in the race was 127 votes. Boykin says, 'When I went in to work the next day and saw that 3,342 people had shown up to vote in our ward, I thought something's not right.' He's right. There are not even 3,000 people registered to vote in his ward. For some reason, some votes were counted twice."

Stories like this have been popping up in many of the states that put these touch-screen voting machines to use. Beyond these reports are the folks who attempted to vote for one candidate and saw the machine give their vote to the other candidate. Sometimes, the flawed machines were taken off-line, and sometimes they were not. As for the reports above, the mistakes described were caught and corrected. How many mistakes made by these machines were not caught, were not corrected, and have now become part of the record?

The flaws within these machines are well documented. Professors and researchers from Johns Hopkins performed a detailed analysis of these electronic voting machines in May of 2004. In their results, the Johns Hopkins researchers stated, "This voting system is far below even the most minimal security standards applicable in other contexts. We identify several problems including unauthorized privilege escalation, incorrect use of cryptography, vulnerabilities to network threats, and poor software development processes. We show that voters, without any insider privileges, can cast unlimited votes without being detected by any mechanisms within the voting terminal software."

"Furthermore," they continued, "we show that even the most serious of our outsider attacks could have been discovered and executed without access to the source code. In the face of such attacks, the usual worries about insider threats are not the only concerns; outsiders can do the damage. That said, we demonstrate that the insider threat is also quite considerable, showing that not only can an insider, such as a poll worker, modify the votes, but that insiders can also violate voter privacy and match votes with the voters who cast them. We conclude that this voting system is unsuitable for use in a general election."

Many of these machines do not provide the voter with a paper ballot that verifies their vote. So if an error - or purposefully inserted malicious code - in the untested machine causes their vote to go for the other guy, they have no way to verify that it happened. The lack of a paper ballot also means the end of recounts as we have known them; now, on these new machines, a recount amounts to pushing a button on the machine and getting a number in return, but without those paper ballots to do a comparison, there is no way to verify the validity of that count.

Worst of all is the fact that all the votes collected by these machines are sent via modem to a central tabulating computer which counts the votes on Windows software. This means, essentially, that any gomer with access to the central tabulation machine who knows how to work an Excel spreadsheet can go into this central computer and make wholesale changes to election totals without anyone being the wiser.

Bev Harris, who has been working tirelessly since the passage of the Help America Vote Act to inform people of the dangers present in this new process, got a chance to demonstrate how easy it is to steal an election on that central tabulation computer while a guest on the CNBC program 'Topic A With Tina Brown.' Ms. Brown was off that night, and the guest host was none other than Governor Howard Dean. Thanks to Governor Dean and Ms. Harris, anyone watching CNBC that night got to see just how easy it is to steal an election because of these new machines and the flawed processes they use.

"In a voting system," Harris said on the show, "you have all the different voting machines at all the different polling places, sometimes, as in a county like mine, there's a thousand polling places in a single county. All those machines feed into the one machine so it can add up all the votes. So, of course, if you were going to do something you shouldn't to a voting machine, would it be more convenient to do it to each of the 4000 machines, or just come in here and deal with all of them at once? What surprises people is that the central tabulator is just a PC, like what you and I use. It's just a regular computer."

Harris then proceeded to open a laptop computer that had on it the software used to tabulate the votes by one of the aforementioned central processors. Journalist Thom Hartman describes what happened next: "So Harris had Dean close the Diebold GEMS tabulation software, go back to the normal Windows PC desktop, click on the 'My Computer' icon, choose 'Local Disk C:,' open the folder titled GEMS, and open the sub-folder 'LocalDB' which, Harris noted, 'stands for local database, that's where they keep the votes.' Harris then had Dean double-click on a file in that folder titled Central Tabulator Votes,' which caused the PC to open the vote count in a database program like Excel. 'Let's just flip those,' Harris said, as Dean cut and pasted the numbers from one cell into the other. Harris sat up a bit straighter, smiled, and said, 'We just edited an election, and it took us 90 seconds.'"

Any system that makes it this easy to steal or corrupt an election has no business being anywhere near the voters on election day.

The counter-argument to this states that people with nefarious intent, people with a partisan stake in the outcome of an election, would have to have access to the central tabulation computers in order to do harm to the process. Keep the partisans away from the process, and everything will work out fine. Surely no partisan political types were near these machines on Tuesday night when the votes were counted, right?

One of the main manufacturers of these electronic touch-screen voting machines is Diebold, Inc. More than 35 counties in Ohio alone used the Diebold machines on Tuesday, and millions of voters across the country did the same. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Diebold gave $100,000 to the Republican National Committee in 2000, along with additional contributions between 2001 and 2002 which totaled $95,000. Of the four companies competing for the contracts to manufacture these voting machines, only Diebold contributed large sums to any political party. The CEO of Diebold is a man named Walden O'Dell. O'Dell was very much on board with the Bush campaign, having said publicly in 2003 that he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."

So much for keeping the partisans at arm's length.

Is there any evidence that vote totals were deliberately tampered with by people who had a stake in the outcome? Nothing specific has been documented to date. Jeff Fisher, the Democratic candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives from Florida's 16th District, claims to have evidence that the Florida election was hacked, and says further that he knows who hacked it and how it was done. Such evidence is not yet forthcoming.

There are, however, some disturbing and compelling trends that indicate things are not as they should be. This chart displays a breakdown of counties in Florida. It lists the voters in each county by party affiliation, and compares expected vote totals to the reported results. It also separates the results into two sections, one for 'touch-screen' counties and the other for optical scan counties.

Over and over in these counties, the results, based upon party registration, did not come close to matching expectations. It can be argued, and has been argued, that such results indicate nothing more or less than a President getting cross-over voters, as well as late-breaking undecided voters, to come over to his side. These are Southern Democrats, and the numbers from previous elections show that many have often voted Republican. Yet the news wires have been inundated for well over a year with stories about how stridently united Democratic voters were behind the idea of removing Bush from office. It is worth wondering why that unity did not permeate these Democratic voting districts. If that unity was there, it is worth asking why the election results in these counties do not reflect this.

Most disturbing of all is the reality that these questionable Diebold voting machines are not isolated to Florida. This list documents, as of March 2003, all of the counties in all of the 37 states where Diebold machines were used to count votes. The document is 28 pages long. That is a lot of counties, and a lot of votes, left in the hands of machines that have a questionable track record, that send their vote totals to central computers which make it far too easy to change election results, that were manufactured by a company with a personal, financial, and publicly stated stake in George W. Bush holding on to the White House.

A poster named 'TruthIsAll' on the DemocraticUnderground.com forums laid out the questionable results of Tuesday's election in succinct fashion: "To believe that Bush won the election, you must also believe: That the exit polls were wrong; that Zogby's 5pm election day calls for Kerry winning Ohio and Florida were wrong (he was exactly right in his 2000 final poll); that Harris' last-minute polling for Kerry was wrong (he was exactly right in his 2000 final poll); that incumbent rule #1 - undecideds break for the challenger - was wrong; That the 50% rule - an incumbent doesn't do better than his final polling - was wrong; That the approval rating rule - an incumbent with less than 50% approval will most likely lose the election - was wrong; that it was just a coincidence that the exit polls were correct where there was a paper trail and incorrect (+5% for Bush) where there was no paper trail; that the surge in new young voters had no positive effect for Kerry; that Kerry did worse than Gore against an opponent who lost the support of scores of Republican newspapers who were for Bush in 2000; that voting machines made by Republicans with no paper trail and with no software publication, which have been proven by thousands of computer scientists to be vulnerable in scores of ways, were not tampered with in this election."

In short, we have old-style vote spoilage in minority communities. We have electronic voting machines losing votes and adding votes all across the country. We have electronic voting machines whose efficiency and safety have not been tested. We have electronic voting machines that offer no paper trail to ensure a fair outcome. We have central tabulators for these machines running on Windows software, compiling results that can be demonstrably tampered with. We have the makers of these machines publicly professing their preference for George W. Bush. We have voter trends that stray from the expected results. We have these machines counting millions of votes all across the country.

Perhaps this can all be dismissed. Perhaps rants like the one posted by 'TruthIsAll' are nothing more than sour grapes from the side that lost. Perhaps all of the glitches, wrecked votes, unprecedented voting trends and partisan voting-machine connections can be explained away. If so, this reporter would very much like to see those explanations. At a bare minimum, the fact that these questions exist at all represents a grievous undermining of the basic confidence in the process required to make this democracy work. Democracy should not ever require leaps of faith, and we have put the fate of our nation into the hands of machines that require such a leap. It is unacceptable across the board, and calls into serious question not only the election we just had, but any future election involving these machines.

Representatives John Conyers, Jerrold Nadler and Robert Wexler, all members of the House Judiciary Committee, posted a letter on November 5th to David Walker, Comptroller General of the United States. In the letter, they asked for an investigation into the efficacy of these electronic voting machines. The letter reads as follows:

November 5, 2004

The Honorable David M. Walker
Comptroller General of the United States
U.S. General Accountability Office
441 G Street, NW
Washington, DC 20548

Dear Mr. Walker:

We write with an urgent request that the Government Accountability Office immediately undertake an investigation of the efficacy of voting machines and new technologies used in the 2004 election, how election officials responded to difficulties they encountered and what we can do in the future to improve our election systems and administration.

In particular, we are extremely troubled by the following reports, which we would also request that you review and evaluate for us:

In Columbus, Ohio, an electronic voting system gave President Bush nearly 4,000 extra votes. ("Machine Error Gives Bush Extra Ohio Votes," Associated Press, November 5)

An electronic tally of a South Florida gambling ballot initiative failed to record thousands of votes. "South Florida OKs Slot Machines Proposal," (Id.)

In one North Carolina county, more than 4,500 votes were lost because officials mistakenly believed a computer that stored ballots could hold more data that it did. "Machine Error Gives Bush Extra Ohio Votes," (Id.)

In San Francisco, a glitch occurred with voting machines software that resulted in some votes being left uncounted. (Id.)

In Florida, there was a substantial drop off in Democratic votes in proportion to voter registration in counties utilizing optical scan machines that was apparently not present in counties using other mechanisms.

The House Judiciary Committee Democratic staff has received numerous reports from Youngstown, Ohio that voters who attempted to cast a vote for John Kerry on electronic voting machines saw that their votes were instead recorded as votes for George W. Bush. In South Florida, Congressman Wexler's staff received numerous reports from voters in Palm Beach, Broward and Dade Counties that they attempted to select John Kerry but George Bush appeared on the screen. CNN has reported that a dozen voters in six states, particularly Democrats in Florida, reported similar problems. This was among over one thousand such problems reported. ("Touchscreen Voting Problems Reported," Associated Press, November 5)

Excessively long lines were a frequent problem throughout the nation in Democratic precincts, particularly in Florida and Ohio. In one Ohio voting precinct serving students from Kenyon College, some voters were required to wait more than eight hours to vote. ("All Eyes on Ohio," Dan Lothian, CNN, November 3)

We are literally receiving additional reports every minute and will transmit additional information as it comes available. The essence of democracy is the confidence of the electorate in the accuracy of voting methods and the fairness of voting procedures. In 2000, that confidence suffered terribly, and we fear that such a blow to our democracy may have occurred in 2004.

Thank you for your prompt attention to this inquiry.

Sincerely,

John Conyers, Jr., Jerrold Nadler, Robert Wexler

Ranking Member, Ranking Member, Member of Congress
House Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on the Constitution

cc: Hon. F. James Sensenbrenner, Chairman

"The essence of democracy," wrote the Congressmen, "is the confidence of the electorate in the accuracy of voting methods and the fairness of voting procedures. In 2000, that confidence suffered terribly, and we fear that such a blow to our democracy may have occurred in 2004." Those fears appear to be valid.

John Kerry and John Edwards promised on Tuesday night that every vote would count, and that every vote would be counted. By Wednesday morning, Kerry had conceded the race to Bush, eliciting outraged howls from activists who were watching the reports of voting irregularities come piling in. Kerry had said that 10,000 lawyers were ready to fight any wrongdoing in this election. One hopes that he still has those lawyers on retainer.

According to black-letter election law, Bush does not officially get a second term until the electors from the Electoral College go to Washington D.C on December 12th. Perhaps Kerry's 10,000 lawyers, along with a real investigation per the request of Conyers, Nadler and Wexler, could give those electors something to think about in the interim.

In the meantime, soon-to-be-unemployed DNC chairman Terry McAuliffe sent out an email on Saturday night titled 'Help determine the Democratic Party's next steps.' In the email, McAuliffe states, "If you were involved in these grassroots activities, we want to hear from you about your experience. What did you do? Did you feel the action you took was effective? Was it a good experience for you? How would you make it better? Tell us your thoughts." He provided a feedback form where such thoughts can be sent: http://www.democrats.org/feedback/

Use the form. Give Terry your thoughts on the matter. Ask him if those 10,000 lawyers are still available. It seems the validity of Tuesday's election remains a wide-open question.

William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and international bestseller of two books - 'War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know' and 'The Greatest Sedition is Silence.'

Sunday, November 07, 2004

Voting Problems in Ohio Set Off an Alarm

The New York Times
November 7, 2004
Voting Problems in Ohio Set Off an Alarm
By ADAM LIPTAK

Voters in Ohio delivered a second term to President Bush by a decisive margin. But the way the vote was conducted there, election law specialists say, exposed a number of weak spots in the nation's election system.

"We dodged a bullet this time, but the problems remain," said Heather K. Gerken, who teaches election law at Harvard. "We have problems with the machines, problems with the patchwork of regulations covering everything from recounts to provisional ballots, and problems with self-interested party officials deciding which votes count."

Had the electoral math been only a little different, lawyers would be examining even closer finishes in other states.

"If it was Iowa or New Mexico that held the balance," said Richard L. Hasen, who teaches election law at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, "we would be in litigation now." Mr. Bush won those states by one percentage point; he won Ohio by two.

As it turned out, though, Ohio was the crucible.

The state relies heavily on punch-card balloting machines of the hanging-chad variety. Voting machines in Ohio failed to register votes for president in 92,000 cases over all this year, a number that includes failure to cast a vote, disallowed double votes and possible counting errors. An electronic voting machine added 3,893 votes to President Bush's tally in a suburban Columbus precinct that has only 800 voters.

Officials in Ohio will be able to reject some of the approximately 155,000 provisional ballots cast there, offered to potential voters whose names could not be located on local election rolls, because of the ambiguity of the standards.

There were also long lines at the polls, and it is unclear how many people grew too dispirited to keep waiting and ended up not voting.

"In Ohio," said Edward B. Foley, who teaches election law at Ohio State University, "there is a cloud over the process, even though there is not a cloud over the result."

Democratic lawyers concluded that challenges based on these problems could not bridge the 135,000-vote deficit Senator John Kerry faced on Wednesday morning. A recount of the punch cards would have yielded no more than 20,000 votes, election law specialists said, and there was no reason to think that those votes or the provisional ballots would uniformly favor Mr. Kerry.

Based on the Ohio experience, election law scholars advocate two types of broad reform: more uniformity within states - in registration lists, voting technologies and the distribution of voting machines - and replacing partisans with professionals in election administration.

"Congress has got to try again," Professor Foley said. "We need more money for machines. We need uniform allocation of machines. And Congress has to develop a clearer picture of the process for evaluating provisional ballots."

All these issues might have been before the courts if the vote in Ohio had been a little tighter.

"We had cases ready to be filed," said Daniel J. Hoffheimer, state counsel to the Kerry campaign in Ohio. "If Senator Kerry had decided to really go to the mat on provisional ballots, the Kerry-Edwards legal team would have looked at all the issues out there."

Most scholars and lawyers agree the main problems in Ohio resulted from technical failures and inadequate resources rather than partisan bickering in polling places or intentional disenfranchisement. But they said poor and minority voters may have suffered disproportionately.

"There is a feeling here that the long-line problem was a problem of disparity that fell along socioeconomic lines," Professor Foley said. "There were isolated instances of long lines here in the seven- to nine-hour range, and the common lines were two to three hours. When your line gets to two or three hours, it's system failure."

Even if the waits were comparable in poorer and richer precincts, legal scholars said, they might have had a disproportionate impact. If time is money, a long wait is a sort of poll tax, and the rich may be more able to pay it.

The lines were in any case baffling, Mr. Hoffheimer said.

"Although the turnout was not as large as the secretary of state had predicted," he said, "in quite a widespread number of precincts around the state, lines were horrendously long. At one time, one of them was estimated to be 22 hours."

On Oct. 29, the Ohio secretary of state, J. Kenneth Blackwell, said he expected 72 percent turnout. His office reported that the actual turnout on Nov. 2 was about 70 percent.

Election law scholars say too many decisions about the election process are now made by people who are partisan. Professor Gerken of Harvard took exception to the actions of Mr. Blackwell, a Republican.

"He was making judgment calls that were simply implausible," she said, citing a decision, later rescinded, that registration forms on anything less than 80-pound paper stock should be rejected.

Legal scholars agreed that changes to the system must be made behind what philosophers call the veil of ignorance - without knowing how the change will affect particular outcomes.

For this reason, it is unclear whether the Colorado initiative that would have allocated the state's electoral votes proportionately was defeated on its merits or because it could have immediately changed the outcome of the election. Bush voters confident of victory in the state may have voted against the measure to ensure that their candidate received all nine of the state's electoral votes.

For similar reasons, scholars say that if litigation is needed to clarify election procedures, it should be brought before an election.

The election left many questions unanswered about its most significant innovation: provisional ballots, required by a 2002 federal law intended to restore public confidence after the grueling Florida recount. County election officials in Ohio are now determining whether those ballots should be counted.

That will take some time, and the process has critics. In Ohio, for instance, four-member county election boards, each with two Republicans and two Democrats, will decide, with the approval of three members needed to count the votes. "Party officials should not be deciding who can vote," Professor Gerken said.

Rove's Revenge

The New York Times
November 7, 2004

Rove's Revenge
By MAUREEN DOWD

WASHINGTON — Just how much did Karl Rove hate not being one of the cool guys in high school in the 60's? Enough to hatch schemes to marshal the forces of darkness to take over the country?

Oh, yeah.

A supporter of Nixon against Kennedy at 9, the teenage Karl was, in his description, "a big nerd," a small guy with a pocket protector, briefcase, and glasses almost as big as his head.

Even as a high school debater in Salt Lake City, "Rove didn't just want to win; he wanted the opponents destroyed," write James Moore and Wayne Slater in "Bush's Brain." "He would defeat them, slaughter them and humiliate them."

The Boy Genius, as W. calls him, the "architect" who helped him get the second term he dearly wanted to surpass his father, is happy to crush the liberal elites inspired by Kennedy's New Frontier under the steamroller of 19th-century family values.

Like the president, vice president and defense secretary, General Karl wanted to wipe out the gray, if-it-feels-good-do-it, blame-America-first, doused-in-Vietnam-guilt 60's and turn the clock back to the black-and-white Manichaean values of the 50's.

W. and Karl played up western movie stereotypes. After 9/11, the rugged frontier myth, the hunter/Indian-fighter hero in a war of civilization against savagery worked better than ever. But this White House's frontier is not a place of infinite progress and expansion, stretching society's boundaries. It doesn't battle primitivism; it courts primitivism.

Instead of the New Frontier, Karl and W. offer the New Backtier.

Even as a child, I could feel the rush of J.F.K.'s presidency racing forward, opening up a thrilling world of possibilities and modernity. We were going to the moon. We were confronting racial intolerance. We were paying any price and bearing any burden for freedom. We were respecting faith but keeping it out of politics. Our president was inspiring much of the world. Our first lady was setting the pace in style and culture.

W.'s presidency rushes backward, stifling possibilities, stirring intolerance, confusing church with state, blowing off the world, replacing science with religion, and facts with faith. We're entering another dark age, more creationist than cutting edge, more premodern than postmodern. Instead of leading America to an exciting new reality, the Bushies cocoon in a scary, paranoid, regressive reality. Their new health care plan will probably be a return to leeches.

America has always had strains of isolationism, nativism, chauvinism, puritanism and religious fanaticism. But most of our leaders, even our devout presidents, have tried to keep these impulses under control. Not this crew. They don't call to our better angels; they summon our nasty devils.

Jimmy Carter won the evangelical vote in 1976, and he won it in Ohio. He combined his evangelical appeal with a call for social justice, integrating his church and laboring for world peace. But W. appealed to that vote's most crabbed insecurities - the disparaging of the other, the fear of those godless hedonists in the blue states out to get them and their families. And the fear of scientific progress, as with stem cell research.

When William Jennings Bryan took up combating the theory of evolution, he did it because he despised the social Darwinists who used the theory to justify the "survival of the fittest" in capitalism. Bryan hated anything that justified an economic system that crushed poor workers and farmers, and he hated that the elites would claim there was scientific basis for keeping society divided and unequal.

The new evangelicals challenge science because they've been stirred up to object to social engineering on behalf of society's most vulnerable: the poor, the sick, the sexually different.

Yet the Bush conservatives do their own social engineering. They thought they could toughen up the American character with the invasion of Iraq. Now they want to reshape the country on "moral" issues - though their morality seems to allow them to run a campaign full of blatant distortions and character assassination, and to mislead the public about the war.

Back in 1994, Newt Gingrich said he wanted the government to mold the moral character of Americans and wipe out remnants of the "counterculture McGoverniks." He got derailed, but now he and his pious friends are back in full cry, messing with our psyches and excluding themselves from the rules they demand others follow. They'll eventually do themselves in, but will they do us in first?

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