Browsing all articles from March, 2007
Immediate and urgent action required to stop the Congressional push for a new federally mandated electoral train wreck. The Democratic majority in Congress is pushing complex, expensive, and unfunded legislation under the flag of election reform, but they are severely misguided in their support of HR 811, also known as the Holt Bill. Contact your Congressional Repsand the members of the House Administration Committee (listed below) TODAY and tell them to stop pushing passage of this bill.
HR 811 contains many dangerous provisions that, if implemented, will subvert our democratic processes and our ability to have citizen oversight over our elections:
- Huge unfunded mandate will send our cities and towns deeply into debt
- Mandates nonexistent, untested and uncertified equipment for use in the 2008 elections
- Centralizes electoral regulation and control, giving unprecedented and undemocratic power to the White House over nation’s elections
The House Administration (full committee) is planning to markup Rep. Holt’s Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2007 (HR. 811) on Thursday, March 29th at 10am.
Address your faxes of opposition to the House Administration and fax them today so they can be inserted in the Record. The fax numbers for the committee are listed below.
Members of the Committee on House Administration
Democrats – Fax Number 202-225-7664
Republicans – Fax Number – 202-225-9957
- Rep. Juanita Millender-McDonald, CA-37,
Chairwoman
- Rep. Vernon Ehlers, MI-3,
Ranking Member
- Rep. Robert A. Brady, PA-1st
- Rep. Dan Lungren, CA-3
- Rep. Zoe Lofgren, CA-16th
- Rep. Kevin McCarthy, CA-22
- Rep. Mike Capuano, MA-8
- Rep. Charles Gonzalez, TX-20
- Rep. Susan Davis, CA-53
Please try to send concise bulleted statements. Focus on:
- The unfunded mandate
- The centralized executive power (“it may not be your party controlling the elections – are you really ready to hand over that control to the opposition?”)
- The matter of mandated equipment that does not yet exist and will not be tested or certified by the bill’s 2008 target date
- Reference the opposition of all state and local election officials to this legislation because it is expensive and unworkable.
REFERENCES:
Wednesday, March 28, 7:30 pm, BOOK PARTY / FORUM Co-sponsor: FAIR
War & the Media: The Battle for Public Perception Robin Andersen & Jeff Cohen
Media critics and analysts Andersen and Cohen will discuss the connections between the media and war and the challenges this presents for the left. They will explore how the selection of which stories are told and which are ignored helps justify past battles and ensure future wars as well as the ways new technologies have helped turn the nightly news and talk show into “infotainment.”
Robin Andersen is director of the Peace and Justice Studies Program at Fordham University and author of A Century of Media, A Century of War. Jeff Cohen is the founder of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) and author of Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media, a memoir of his experiences as a pundit with FOX News, CNN and MSNBC.
Suggested donation: $6/$10/$15
No OneTurned Away
451 West Street, New York, NY 10014 – (212) 242-4201 – email: brechtforum at brechtforum.org
There are three items here, all well worth reading.
MCM
U. S. ATTORNEYSWho is Monica Goodling?By Ron HutchesonMcClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON – Monica Goodling, the Department of Justice official who said Monday that she’ll invoke the Fifth Amendment rather than talk to lawmakers, is a frequent figure in department e-mails released so far as part of the congressional investigation into the firings and hirings of U.S. attorneys.
Goodling, 33, is a 1995 graduate Messiah College in Grantham, Pa., an institution that describes itself as “committed to embracing an evangelical spirit.”
She received her law degree at Regent University in Virginia Beach, Va. Regent, founded by Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson, says its mission is “to produce Christian leaders who will make a difference, who will change the world.”
Read more.
The Strange Hire of Monica Goodling [UPDATE 2.1 - 150 Regent Grads in Administration, FRC Connect]
Tue Mar 27, 2007 at 05:12:27 AM PDT
While everyone’s attention is focused on Monica Goodling’s invocation of the Fifth, emails and Executive subornation of an objective process in how the DOJ selects its targets for prosecution, the larger point – Executive appointments, job qualifications and how failing to meet those qualifications led to mistakes.
Read more.
Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall March 26, 2007 10:59 PM
March 26, 2007 — 10:59 PM EDT)
A couple TPM Readers chime in on DOJ White House liaison Monica Goodling’s plan to plead the 5th before the Senate Judiciary Committee …
Read more.
BLOGGED BY Arlen Parsa ON 3/26/2007 10:35AM
Evidence Suggests U.S. Attorney Firings
May Have Been White House Scheme to
Help Game 2008 Election!
Karl Rove Associate and GOP Operative Tim Griffin’s Appointment in Arkansas — and Others Like it — Are Worth Noting as the Scandal Continues to Unravel…
Guest Blogged by Arlen Parsa
Details continue to drip out from the U.S. Attorney Purge scandal which seem to suggest that electoral politics — and perhaps the 2008 election in particular — may well have been at the heart of the White House/Dept. of Justice scheme to strategically place partisan operatives where they might be most useful prior to the next Presidential Election.
One such detail revealed itself on Tuesday March 20th when Senator Mark Pryor (D-AR) appeared on MSNBC’s Hardball to discuss the recent purge of several US Attorneys by the Bush Administration. Host Chris Matthews opened the segment by asking Pryor how much he knew about the White House’s decision to replace the US Attorney in his state, Bud Cummins, with one of Karl Rove’s associates, a partisan operative named Tim Griffin.
Pryor criticized the Attorney General for firing Cummins and replacing him with Griffin, who had very little professional experience in Arkansas and had only recently moved there when Cummins was fired in December of 2006. Cummins on the other hand, who George W. Bush himself had appointed in 2001, had been well respected, competent and non-partisan (despite personally being a Republican).
But the real bombshell came near the end of the interview….
Read more.
BOOK SYNOPSIS & REVIEW:
Blackwater Reveals Underpinnings of ‘Private Security’ Industry
Reviewed by Alice Cherbonnier
Questions arise for which there are no known answers at this time, such as: Who else besides Erik Prince has a financial stake in Blackwater?
Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army
by Jeremy Scahill
NY: Avalon Publishing Group, Inc./Nation Books, 2007. 438 pp. $26.95.
Among the many topics covered in his new book, Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army, investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill shows how politically powerful Christian fundamentalists and Neocons are pressing forward with their battle for what they call ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’-whether the U.S. public, or indeed the rest of the world, wants to fight or not.
They envision, as a Baltimore Sun letter to the editor expressed on March 25, “a global war, with the United States serving as the primary defender of Western civilization against our rarely named enemy, Islamist totalitarianism…”
Sounds over the top, doesn’t it? Yet those who believe “Western civilization” (read “Christendom” or perhaps “Judeo-Christendom”) is imperiled by ‘infidels’ are pushing hard to confront and defeat ‘the enemy.’
War that serves the purposes of this ‘belief’ faction also fuels profits for war-related businesses. Scahill demonstrates the added risks that can occur when these two powerful motivations (one might even substitute the word “addictions”) come together.
Blackwater USA is prominent among many companies that provide “contract security” personnel for governments, corporations and wealthy individuals. It began in 1987 by offering advanced military training at its 7,000-acre main training facility in Moyock, North Carolina, near the Great Dismal Swamp, and has rapidly expanded. It is now doing business on a global scale, with its operations horizontally and vertically integrated to cover just about any imaginable security need.
Read more.
Prof. Miller,
The rest of the world gets hard news.
Americans get a big stinking pile of irony, eh?
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/europe/
Please have some fun with this.
_______________________________
Brian Smith
U.S. Attorney Firings Exposes Rough Justice
Tuesday, 27 March 2007, 10:45 am
Opinion: Michael Collins
U.S. Attorney Firings Exposes Rough Justice
“Voter Fraud” Prevention Equals Voter Suppression
There’s a new clue to the motivation behind the recent firing of federal prosecutors. Reporters
Gordon, Talev and Taylor of McClatchy Newspapers established a likely relationship between the post 2000 hard right turn in civil rights policies at the Department of Justice and the promotion of the new cadre of right wing U.S. Attorneys who support restricting voter eligibility. Karl Rove’s own words on the subject indicate a further connection between recent appointments in nine states where very tight Congressional races were anticipated
The Bush Justice Department is imploding after years of consistently undermining the rights and freedoms of those citizens it claims to serve. From the Patriot Act to the unfettered sadism endorsed at White House inspired and sponsored torture centers around the world, the Justice Department stands with the White House. It provides a fig leaf of legal justification for the various adventures which involve war, death a suffering.
Read more.
Friends of RLTE:
Today the Rejected Letters (volume 1, number 1) website is up. It can be viewed at
http://www.rejectedletterstotheeditor.com. There’s still some tweaking necessary, and a few graphics to be inserted, but we’re pleased with it. I hope you are as well.
Given that all materials submitted were the result of emails to individuals, lists, etc., I don’t think it’s too bad for a first issue. The beauty of the whole thing is that as word gets around this will only improve the content and fill holes that are evident in the current issue. For example, this issue has too little on Iraq, on Justice Department, on the VA debacle, on immigration issues, race relations, democratic struggles, etc. I know that this will change as word gets out. As is, there are some good letters and editorial notes filling in details. Also, I hope you’ll look at the inaugural editorial that begins on the home page, and the call for submissions that is brought up when you click the submit button on the masthead.
Please let me hear your thoughts and suggestions. Your interest in this project has been very inspiring to those of us who have worked on bringing Rejected Letters to the Editor into being.
And don’t forget to spread the word. Democracy is coming!
Yours, Stuart
Stuart Ewen, Publisher and Editor-in-Chief
RLTE
P.O. Box 231371
Ansonia Station
New York, NY 10023
Two items:
Voting machine maker says time prevented fix
Touch-screen voting machine maker says time prevented ‘issue’ fix
By JEREMY WALLACE
Even though a voting machine manufacturer told Sarasota County and state officials they were working on a software update to fix an “issue” with touch-screen voting machines for the 2006 general elections, the company never followed through on that promise.
A spokesman for Election Systems & Software said they couldn’t get the work done fast enough to get the system fixed, so the patch was never submitted to the state for approval and the issue was never raised again in correspondence between the company, the county and the state.
Company spokesman David Fields downplayed the “issue” ES&S had identified in earlier memos, saying the delayed response times voters may have experienced in selecting a choice in each race on the ballot was not responsible for the undervote problems that arose in Sarasota County.
Read more.
*** *** ***
BREAKING FL-13: NEW UNDISCLOSED LETTER OF AGREEMENT FROM ES&S TO STATE UNEARTHED!
Terms of ‘Independent’ State Run Audit, Source Code Review Dictated by Voting Machine Company to Florida State Election Director Prior to Tests of Failed Touch-Screen Voting Systems from Contested Jennings/Buchanan Election!
The private voting machine company which manufactured the touch-screen hardware and software used during Sarasota, Florida’s contested District 13 Congressional election between Christine Jennings (D) and Vern Buchanan (R) sent a letter in December of 2006 to David Drury, the chief of the state’s Bureau of Voting Systems Certification, dictating the terms of the state-run audit convened to investigate the causes for massive undervote rate which seems to have tipped the election.
The extraordinary 3-page letter (posted in full at the end of this article) from Electronic Systems & Software, Inc. (ES&S), Vice President, Steven Pearson, is described as an “agreement” and instructs Drury on what may and may not be disclosed in the state’s final audit report regarding the investigation.The letter includes a long, bullet-pointed and very narrow litany of specific dictates concerning what may and may not be done and/or discussed by the state-convened panel of investigators in their final report…
FULL REPORT, COMPLETE LETTER &
NEW QUESTIONS NOW RAISED IN ITS WAKE:
Breaking News and Commentary from Citizens for Legitimate Government
22 March 2007
All links to articles as summarized below are available here:
Thus the BushCo has mooted the whole question–suddenly explosive–of how
Gonzales et al. purposely sabotaged the case!
MCM
Dems: GOP Phone Jamming
Case Stalled, Mishandled
By Paul Kiel – March 21, 2007, 4:59 PM
We reported earlier that people were asking questions about the Justice Department’s handling of the Jack Abramoff investigation. Now New Hampshire Democrats are raising questions about another DoJ investigation into Republican wrongdoing — the New Hampshire phone jamming case.
In a detailed, 10-page letter to Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) signed by Kathleen Sullivan, chair of the New Hampshire Democratic Party, and Paul Twomey, a lawyer for the Democrats, they argue that the investigation, which targeted prominent operatives in the Republican Party, was stalled and mishandled.
On Election Day in 2002, Republicans schemed to jam the phone banks for Democratic get out the vote efforts. Two Republicans involved in the plan pled guilty, and James Tobin, formerly the New England Regional Political Director for the Republican National Committee, was convicted for his role. The case took years to play out; the first guilty pleas in the case were not until the summer of 2004, and Tobin was not indicted until after the 2004 election.
One of the reasons the investigation was stalled, Democrats argue, is that “all decisions had to be reviewed by the Attorney General himself” — first John Ashcroft and then Alberto Gonzales. To back up that claim, the Democrats say that lawyers working on the case were told by prosecutors that delays in the case were due to the extreme difficulty in obtaining authorization from higher levels at DOJ for any and all actions in the case.
A lawyer for one of the Republicans in the case backs up that claim. John Durken, the lawyer for Allen Raymond, a Republican whose consulting firm managed the jamming, says that the lead prosecutor in the case told him during one meeting that Ashcroft was involved in every decision. “He said, ‘Every decision in this case goes all the way up to Ashcroft’s desk.’” Durken told me that such a fact didn’t “surprise” him, given the political nature of the case.
Melanie Sloan, the Executive Director of the watchdog organization Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and a former federal prosecutor, concurred. “It’s not unusual that Ashcroft was informed, given that this was a high profile, political case –’political’ is the key here.”
Todd Hinnen, who was the lead prosecutor on the case until 2005, when he departed to be a counterrorism advisor at the White House, declined to comment on internal Justice Department deliberations (Hinnen left the White House earlier this year to become the chief counsel for Sen. Joseph R. Biden (D-DE)). A Justice Department spokesperson also declined to comment.
But whether Ashcroft’s, and later Gonzales’, involvement was unusual or not, Democrats say that the need to check decisions with DoJ higher-ups routinely resulted in “inordinate delays” in the investigation. They also say that both AGs failed to recuse themselves, despite a conflict of interest: Ashcroft as a former senator, since Tobin was a high ranking official in the committee that helped Ashcroft get elected; and Gonzales as legal counsel for the White House, since the Democrats alleged White House involvement in the jamming scheme.
The Democrats’ other grievances, which they lay out in the letter, are 1) that the Justice Department bogged the investigation down by assigning only one FBI agent to the case — and that agent was part-time 2) that the DoJ’s refusal to prosecute the organziations responsible for the jamming, the New Hampshire Republican Party and the Republican National Committee, violated Justice Department guidelines, and 3) the DoJ failed to follow leads that led to higher-level Republican involvement.
You can read the entire letter laying out the case here.
