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Miller to Speak in New York City on the Next Presidential Election and More

Mark Crispin Miller is a professor of media studies at New York University,
He is the author of several books, including Boxed In: The Culture of TV, The Bush Dyslexicon, Cruel and Unusual: Bush/Cheney’s New World Order and, from Basic Books, Fooled Again: How the Right Stole the 2004 Election & Why They’ll Steal the Next One Too (Unless We Stop Them). His essays and articles have appeared in many journals, magazines and newspapers throughout the nation and the world.

Wednesday, August 30, 8:00 p.m.
Think Coffee House
248 Mercer Street, West Village, New York City
212-228-6226

From a reader:

Looks like Armitage is being volunteered to climb up on the alter for Plamegate. It’s a no-fault version, however, since the memo he learned about it from didn’t indicate that she had undercover status.

I guess this is supposed to defuse the law suit.

Read more.

Poll worker fired over touch-screen voting comment

By RAY WEISS
Staff Writer

A New Smyrna Beach voting equipment inspector picked the wrong place to express her views about controversial new touch-screen voting machines being used for the first time in Volusia County.

Volusia County Supervisor of Elections Ann McFall has fired 76-year-old Drusilla Synal, a poll worker for more than a decade, for opposing the use of the touch-screen machines as she cast her ballot during an early voting session Aug. 23 at the city’s library.

Critics say the machines are prone to tampering because they leave no paper record of the vote.

Read more.

NYT: Ohio officials prepare to destroy paper ballots from 2004
presidential election

RAW STORY
Published: Tuesday August 29, 2006

Ohio officials will soon begin destroying the paper ballots from the
2004 presidential election despite objections from voter rights
groups, according to a story slated for Wednesday’s edition of The
New York Times.

“Soon after the 2004 presidential election, questions emerged about
how votes were tallied in Ohio, a battleground state that delivered
the presidency to George W. Bush,” Ian Urbina writes for the Times.

“Now, following a routine procedure, state officials are preparing to
destroy the paper ballots from the election,” writes Urbina.

Read more.

August 29, 2006
‘Coming to a City Near You’

Vickie White is worried. “They are doing away with public education as we know it,” she says. White helped organize a trip to New Orleans this summer for the People’s Organization for Progress (POP) Central Jersey. After seeing how public education is being drastically altered there, she said she feared that very system would spread. “The theme I came back with was, ‘Coming to a city near you,’” she says.

As children line up for school buses on first days of school throughout the country, the management of New Orleans’ schools post-Katrina is causing anxiety amongst public education advocates. Others, including the nonpartisan Urban Institute, and former Housing and Urban Development secretary Henry Cisneros (now chair of City-View, a private venture dedicated to urban housing development) are looking to the Crescent City as a model for the future of American education.

In June, POP Central Jersey and Newark’s House of Prayer Episcopal Church sponsored the 21st-Century Freedom Ride: New Jersey to New Orleans. The trip flew twenty-five people, a dozen of them high school students, to New Orleans to find out what was really happening there and to volunteer with Common Ground Collective, a grassroots relief organization founded by New Orleans residents shortly after Katrina. Besides helping with the cleanup effort in the Ninth Ward, the group saw what Katrina and government neglect did to the city and its residents — and what was being done to bring the city back.

While in New Orleans, the group attended an education summit hosted by the National Coalition for Quality Schools in New Orleans and the People’s Organizing Committee, a group working to help residents return to the city.

Read more.

DEMOCRACY DENIED: SAN DIEGO JUDGE DISMISSES BUSBY/BILBRAY ELECTION CONTEST ON JURISDICTIONAL GROUNDS!
Finds Rushed Swearing in of Presumed Winner Bilbray by U.S. House – Just 7 Days After Election and 16 Days Before Certification – Transferred Power to Decide Election Outcome to Congress
California Voters, Courts Left Powerless to Challenge Illegally Administered Election According to Ruling

A judge in the San Diego challenge to the Francine Busby/Brian Bilbray U.S. House Special Election in California’s 50th Congressional District has found in favor of the defendents motion to dismiss the case based on jurisdictional grounds, The BRAD BLOG has learned.

We have covered the defendants argument, that the swearing in of Bilbray just seven days after the election, and a full 16 days prior to certification by San Diego County, transferred power to decide any election challenges from the California courts to the U.S. House of Representatives. Those arguments are discussed in detail in several previous BRAD BLOG articles (here, here, here and here.)

We will have extended comments from Lehto here shortly…

The defendants attempts to force plaintiffs to cover the cost of attorneys fees (a so-called “SLAPP back” motion) was denied by Judge Yuri Hofmann based on the same jurisdicational arguments used to dismiss the case, according to the plaintiff’s attorney, Paul Lehto. Since the California court has no jurisdication to adjudicate an election contest for a California U.S. House election, it also has no jurisidiction to find against plaintiffs in the “SLAPP back” motion, says Lehto.

VelvetRevolution.us is now collecting donations to help defray the cost of an appeal of this ruling.

Hofmann’s tentative ruling, which is now the final ruling as of this afternoon, is posted in full at the URL belowÅ 

…DEVELOPING…

FULL STORY: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=3353

Terrorists lie, Rumsfeld says
Defense chief says they use U.S. media
Associated Press
August 29, 2006

FALLON NAVAL AIR STATION, Nev. — Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said yesterday that he is deeply troubled by the success of terrorist groups in “manipulating the media” to influence Westerners.

“That’s the thing that keeps me up at night,” he said during a question-and-answer session with about 200 naval aviators and other Navy personnel at this training base for Navy and Marine Corps pilots.

Rumsfeld was asked whether the criticism he draws as Pentagon chief and a leading advocate of the war in Iraq is an impediment to performing his job. He said it is not and that he knows from history that wars are unpopular with many Americans. “I expect that,” he said. “I understand that.

Read more.

Note that this UPI item ran on the Website DailyIndia.com. Given the timeliness and the importance of this story, and the fact that it first broke on ABC, you’d think that Brownie’s revelation would be major news in the United States.

But no, not in the United States under Bush/Cheney and its media cartel.

(For a strong editorial on this immense non-story, check out today’s BuzzFlash.)

MCM

Brown says White House wanted him to lie

WASHINGTON, Aug. 27 (UPI) — The ousted head of the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency says the White House wanted him to lie about the response to Hurricane Katrina.

Former Director Michael Brown told ABC News’ “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” Sunday he stood by comments in a Playboy interview, and President Bush wanted him to take the heat for the bungling.

“The lie was that we were ready and that everything was working as a team. Behind the scenes, it wasn’t working at all,” Brown said. “There were political considerations going into all the discussions. There was the fact that New Orleans did not evacuate and the mayor (Ray Nagin) had no plan.”

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