The Texas Taliban Party, a.k.a. The Texas GOP

Now that some of the Texas Taliban in DC, specifically Rove and Delay, got their slimy butts kicked out of DC, consequently and most unfortunately for Texans, the GOP Taliban are back at home in Texas to raid our Constitutional rights, freedoms and resources. I am telling you folks, these people are a national disease. They are desperados who realize their national gravy train has gone over the cliff and now they are fleeing back to their nesting place in order to find new venues to satisfy their addiction to money, power and greed. There is never enough money to satisfy these vultures’ lust for cash, power and control.

The American voters got it and tossed the GOP majority out of our Congress in 2006. The corrupted and incompetent GOP have racked up close to a trillion bucks in the unnecessary and immoral human calamity called Iraq. Yesterday we learned that W. and Cheney have been lying about and misleading us on Iran’s nuclear weapon program, knowing all along that Iran scrapped its weapons program years ago. And under the Bush Administration’s brilliant leadership our national debt now grows at $1 million per minute. As Dennis Kucinich has recently observed "We're borrowing money from China to finance the war in Iraq."

So much for W.’s Harvard MBA and Wolfie’s Yale Ph.D. I suppose that the best graduate education money can buy doesn’t make a lick of difference when we have greed mongering ideologues running the country who love to fight wars as long as they don’t have to do the fighting themselves.

Fortunately, the American voters got it and threw the bums out. But there are still far too many left in our Congress, including our own Texas lawmakers who have been sucking up to and enabling the worst President in recent U.S. history who is a pathological liar to boot.

We need to purge the Republican Party of Evil Crooks from our states’ offices in 2008. Of course, this will be a real challenge here b/c our state has been gerrymandered to smithereens and the GOP assumes that it owns Texas and can do whatever/whenever it wants anytime. There is little oversight and few questions are ever publicly posed about accountability. And when they are, the party bosses will bully and squelch all who dare to question anything remotely critical of the ruling party of thugs and thieves.

It is time to stand up to the bullies, folks. We know for certain that most of them are corrupt, inept and they have been lying and misleading us for years.

We deserve far, far better than this.

Our state’s newspapers, in many cases, are tacitly complicit and complacent enablers of the Texas GOP Taliban Party. How many letters will our state’s newspapers’ opinion editors publish that are written by readers who are critical of any GOP in office? I myself have written at least a hundred to my local paper, and only one has been published. But the paragraph critical of her royal majesty Senator Kay Rubber Stamping Bailey Hutchison was NOT included in the letter published, supposedly by me. I therefore don’t even bother to take the time to read the paper any more. Why would I waste my time if the paper is merely serving as a propaganda arm for the Texas GOP Taliban? Nope, I’ve fled to the Internet where one can read news from a vast number of resources and can state one’s opinion freely and openly, like I am doing right now.

It is simply amazing what one can learn on the Internet. And what I read each day just reinforces my suspicion that our local papers and media are joined at the hip with the Texas GOP Taliban Party.

If we do not stand up, folks, we will become another little Mexico or other form of banana republic where the wealth is concentrated among very few while the rest of the population has to scratch and claw to earn a living. Part-time jobs at the local Wal-Mart will become the high end and envied positions du jour if we are not careful.

Will Texans become the next generation of despised illegal migrants who must sneak el norte to Canada or back to the countries from which our ancestors immigrated? We won’t be eligible for jobs in all of the other states except for Mississippi because our schools are ranked 2nd to last in the U.S., thanks to the Texas Taliban who care so deeply about our children’s futures.

Think about it before you let yourselves be duped by anything coming from the mouth of a member of the Texas GOP Taliban.

Here are a couple of small snippets of what the Texas GOP Taliban does here and they get away with it thanks to no oversight whatsoever.

A science teacher was canned by a bushie for even mentioning “evolution.”

Teacher in Texas Canned for Mentioning Evolution

This little tidbit about our Dark Ages practices made it to the editorial section of the New York Times yesterday, too. Texans should be so proud.

The New York Times on Fired Texas Teacher

And uh oh, get ready for some real down and dirty criminal activity because the Texas GOP Taliban are apparently scared to the point of needing freighter sized loads of Depends over the prospect of losing elections, even here in the Banana GOP Republic of Texas.

I learned on the Internet (for such would never get published in Texas) that there is a scheme underway by the Texas GOP Taliban to disenfranchise thousands upon thousands of legitimate voters here. Yep, that’s right, folks. They are going to purge and scrub American citizens who are alive and not DEAD from the rolls and guess who these folks might be?

Texas GOP Will Deny Texans the Right to Vote

Do we need Jimmy Carter and the UN to oversee our elections here?

Enough is enough folks. It is time to take a stand and fight back. I wrote letters of outrage to our elected officials yesterday about both of the issues above. We need to hammer them with inconvenient truths and realities until they 1. Either have to act upon our demands or 2. Resign from office. After all, these elected officials supposedly work for us. Perhaps they need a brutal reminder of this little fact.

Finally, when you go to the voting poll, if your name has not been scrubbed, don’t for crying out loud vote for a Texas Taliban. To do so is voting against your own self-interest and preservation. If your name has been scrubbed, contact Voters Rights advocacy groups immediately. Write to our elected officials in Texas and D.C. and scream bloody murder. Call the media and demand an interview. File a lawsuit against the Texas GOP Taliban Party and sue the crap out of them. They hate parting from their loot more than anything else.

Finally, to reinforce the notion that the bushies have been willfully lying to and misleading us for years, below is Seymour Hersch's revelation on how W. and Cheney have known about the NIE findings on Iran's nuclear weapons program for a very long time.

I would say all rubber stamps for W. and Cheney on Iran, no matter their party affiliation, should be fired in 2008. It’s time for a sweeping and deep removal followed by an army of buckets, mops and vats of bacteria killing detergent to purge all of the filth from the halls of law, justice and honor where legislation should be written and passed for the people by the people.

Hersch Reveals Truth about W. and Cheney on Iran

The GOP Vote For Dictatorship, Against Democracy

The entire lot of the Republican Party voted for an American styled dictatorship this week, in complete and total lock step, in our very own U.S. House of Representatives. I saw the episode unfold in real time before my very eyes on CSPAN. The voting tallies that appeared on the TV screen informed me of the ideology that relentlessly drives the neo-conservative movement in the U.S. today. Fact of the matter is the neo-conservative and present day Republican belief system has little in common with
the bare bones of democratic principles.

This week, our esteemed Republican lawmakers voted for principles that are typically intrinsic to a fascist styled dictatorship in which accountability and oversight are conveniently non-existent.

Republican lawmakers who view the world through precisely the same lens as W. and Cheney will fight to the death (ours, not theirs, thank you) to keep the American people terrified, uninformed and stupid through under funded schools. The Republicans, who both voted with W. and against SCHIP, and who also failed to join Democrats in overriding W’s unconscionable and contemptuous veto of the SCHIP bill has revealed its party’s true colors.

The GOP has failed to take the necessary steps in demanding accountability from its party’s propped up Iraqi government in which we have invested far, far too much American blood and treasure.

During the House debates on H. Res 734 this week that raised objections to the Administration’s withholding of information on corruption in Iraq, not one Republican voted for five of the bill’s resolutions.

Below are 4 of the 5 resolutions that every single Republican voted against:

Excerpts from H.Res 734 from The Gavel.com (see link below).

Resolved, That it is the sense of the House of Representatives that–
(1) as Congress considers the President’s request for over $150,000,000,000 more for the war in Iraq, it is essential that Congress and the people of the United States know the extent of corruption in the Iraqi government and whether corruption is fueling the insurgency and endangering members of the United States Armed Forces;
(2) it was wrong to retroactively classify portions of the report titled `Stabilizing and Rebuilding Iraq: U.S. Ministry Capacity Development Efforts Need an Overall Integrated Strategy to Guide Efforts and Manage Risk’, which was released by the Comptroller General of the United States at the hearing of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on October 4, 2007, and other statements that are embarrassing but do not meet the criteria for classification;
(3) it is an abuse of the classification process to withhold from Congress and the people of the United States broad assessments of the extent of corruption in the Iraqi Government; and
(4) the directive that prohibits Federal Government officials from providing Congress and the people of the United States with `broad statements/assessments which judge or characterize the quality of Iraqi governance or the ability/determination of the Iraqi government to deal with corruption, including allegations that investigations were thwarted/stifled for political reasons’ should be rescinded.

According to CSPAN the 5th resolution was proposed to shield journalists from prosecution for failing to reveal their sources, except in rare and extreme cases regarding National Security. Every Republican voted against the shield law too.

Every Democrat voted Yes for all of the above with the exception of one Democrat who voted with Republicans on one resolution and two Democrats who voted with Republicans on another.

The appalling fraud in Iraq in terms of the criminal misuse of our hard earned U.S. taxpayer’s (i.e. you and me) dollars matters not one nano bit to the GOP. Tragically for we-the-suckers-who-foot-the-bill for the losing debacle in Iraq, our GOP lawmakers demonstrated, in no uncertain terms, how they are far more concerned about safeguarding the White House’s dictatorial and protective cover-up for Republican enabled corruption in Iraq.

This week I learned, thanks to CSPAN’s airing of our U.S. House of Representatives in action, how the State Department will retroactively classify information revealing the depths of the scandalous dissipation of our U.S. tax dollars and other heinous crimes committed by those whom the W. party of enablers have propped up in Iraq. As soon as our various Congressional Committees ask for pertinent documents relevant to Iraqi corruption issues, the documents are immediately sealed and classified.

What do the White House and the State Department have to hide from us?

Apparently a hell of a lot.

I suppose the real threat that faces the lovers of a Stalinesque style authoritarian rule in the GOP is the chilling realization that the party itself is as compromised, mired in corruption and as deadly incompetent as their criminal counterparts in Iraq. Are our fearless GOP leaders also willing accomplices in the theft of our dollars? Or are they simply clueless morons who have been fooled by power crazed bullies, murderers and thieves who are far more clever and calloused than their enablers in Washington?

Comments from some of our Democratic leaders, including Henry Waxman, on H. Res 734 can be viewed below on The Gavel.com.

The Gavel

Shame, Shame, Shame on America

Our President has vetoed the SCHIP bill and many GOP lawmakers agree with W.

What a pathetically sad and embarrassing day for all of America. What kind of people have we become?

It is obvious to me that the GOP mantra du jour is "save the fetus, hate the born child" especially the child who is born into an economically disadvantaged or struggling family. Only a bunch of calloused, hypocritical, mean spirited and loathsome lawmakers would have voted against this bill.

Let's not forget whom these cruel monsters are when it is time to go to the voting polls. If they hate poor children, they also hate health care services for impoverished senior citizens, reduced interest college loans for middle and working class families, increased veteran's benefits and any program, for that matter, that would throw a life line to the working poor of this "rich" nation. No, these hypocrites instead support big oil, insurance, pharma and they fully embrace the military/industrial complex, i.e. Halliburton, Black Water, et al.

Shame. Shame. Shame.

Shame on them and shame on us if we fail to exercise our right to vote. We must systematically fire the pitiful and spineless enablers of the worst President in U.S. history. These poor excuses for humans, much less lawmakers, do not deserve to represent us.

Anyone with a half brain knows the GOP stole Florida in 2000, thanks to the Supreme Court and its Daddy Bush appointees. Likewise happened once again in Ohio in 2004, compliments of huge contributions from Diebold and other GOP profiteers. Add to the mix Ohio’s Ken Blackwell’s voter suppression schemes, and voila! Rove’s lust for a permanent Republican majority became a reality.

Almost.

We the people showed meager support for the Worst’s alternatives in 2000 and 2004. Had we the voters showed more support for the party of the people, the powerful combination of the high court, big money and corrupted political hacks could have never in a day gotten away with a double coup d’etat.

We the people let it happen.

We “got it” and stepped up in 2006. But that was not near enough to stop the party of the war mongering profiteers who have shown their unveiled contempt for our nation’s under privileged children as well as their unconscionable lack of commitment to our troops who must serve inexcusably long tours of duty.

Are you ready to fight back?

Too busy? Too politically uninvolved? Well maybe you will find a snippet of time when you read the following articles du jour about our current state of political affairs.

W’s TIES TO BLACKWATER

Salon.com Bush and GOP Ties to Black Water

WAR FOREVER: THE GOP’S HEAVY LIFTING FOR THE WAR PROFITEERS

Tom Paine on Bush, Oil and Moral Bankruptcy

ON THE MORTGAGE MELTDOWN AND THE GOP’S DOMESTIC PROFITEERS

Paul Krugman of the NYT calls it Enron 2. How typical when there is no government regulation of anything.

Paul Krugman on Enron 2

BLACKWATER INVESTIGATES BLACKWATER AT THE GOP’S REQUEST

Josh Marshall on Parody Surge Hits Military Contractors in Iraq

THE GOP IS CAGING AND PURGING THE VOTER ROLLS IN TEXAS. BUT TEXAS LAWMAKERS WILL VOTE MULTIPLE TIMES

Yep, as we Texans know, hypocrisy is the norm among GOP lawmakers in this great state.

Texas Lawmakers Vote Multiple Times

SPREADING THE LOVE. HALLIBURTON’S INTERESTS IN BURMA

Cheney’s Halliburton in Burma

BUSH WHITE HOUSE SAYS WE DO NOT TORTURE TERRORISTS BUT GUESS WHAT? BUSH LIED AGAIN.

TORTURE IS OK ACCORDING TO THE BUSH GOP

The Accomplishments of President George W. Bush 2000-2007

I shattered the record for the biggest annual deficit in history (not easy!).

I set the all-time record for biggest annual budget spending increases, more than any other president in US history (Ronnie was tough to beat, but I did it!!).

I spent more money on polls and focus groups than any president in US history.

I attacked and took over 2 countries.

I cut health care benefits for war veterans.

After taking the entire month of August off for vacation, I presided over the worst security failure in US history.

In my first two years in office over 2 million Americans lost their jobs.

I set the all-time record for most real estate foreclosures in a 12-month period.

I spent the U.S. surplus and bankrupted the US Treasury.

I am the first president in US history to refuse United Nations election inspectors access during the 2002 US elections.

I set an economic record for the most personal bankruptcies filed in any 12 month period.

I set all-time record for the biggest drop in the history of the stock market.

In my first year in office I set the all-time record for most days on vacation by any president in US history (tough to beat my dad's, but I did).

I set the record for most campaign fund raising trips by any president in US history.

I cut unemployment benefits for more out-of-work Americans than any other president in US history.

I set the record for the fewest press conferences of any president, since the advent of TV.

I presided over the biggest energy crises in US history and refused to intervene when corruption was revealed.

I set the all-time record for most people worldwide to simultaneously take to the streets to protest me (15 million people), shattering the record for protest against any person in the history of mankind.

I dissolved more international treaties than any president in US history.

I've made my presidency the most secretive and unaccountable of any in US history.

Members of my cabinet are the richest of any administration in US history. (The poorest multimillionaire, Condoleeza Rice, had a Chevron oil tanker named after her for a while.)

I am the first president in US history to have all 50 states of the Union simultaneously struggle against bankruptcy.

I presided over the biggest corporate stock market fraud in any market in any country in the history of the world.

I am the first president in US history to order a US attack AND military occupation of a sovereign nation, and I did so against the will of the United Nations and the vast majority of the international community.

I have created the largest government department bureaucracy in the history of the United States, called the "Bureau of Homeland Security

I am the first president in US history to compel the United Nations remove the US from the Human Rights Commission.

I am the first president in US history to have the United Nations remove the US from the Elections Monitoring Board.

I removed more checks and balances, and have the least amount of congressional oversight than any presidential administration in US history.

I rendered the entire United Nations irrelevant. I withdrew from the World Court of Law.

I refused to allow inspectors access to US prisoners of war and by default no longer abide by the Geneva Conventions.

I am the all-time US (and world) record holder for most corporate campaign donations.

The biggest lifetime contributor to my campaign, who is also one of my best friends, presided over one of the largest corporate bankruptcy frauds in world history (Kenneth Lay, former CEO of Enron Corporation).

I am the first US president to establish a secret shadow government.

I took the world's sympathy for the US after 9/11, and in less than a year made the US the most resented country in the world (possibly the biggest diplomatic failure in US and world history).

I am the first US president in history to have a majority of the people of Europe (71%) view my presidency as the biggest threat to world peace and stability.

I changed US policy to allow convicted criminals to be awarded government contracts.

I have removed more freedoms and civil liberties for Americans than any other president in US history.

RECORDS AND REFERENCES:
I have at least one conviction for drunk driving in Maine
(Texas driving record has been erased and is not available).

I was AWOL from the National Guard and deserted the military during time of war.

I refuse to take a drug test or even answer any questions about drug use.

All records of my tenure as governor of Texas have been spirited away to my fathers library, sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public view.

All records of any SEC investigations into my insider trading or bankrupt companies are sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public view.

All minutes of meetings of any public corporation for which I served on the board are sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public view.

Any records or minutes from meetings I (or my VP) attended regarding public energy policy are sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public review.

Source: Provided by Ken Deifik

The Legacy of King George W. Bush

For more on Republican corruption see also link to video HERE

Why I Will Never Vote Republican, Part II

I had formatting problems posting this piece as one. (Please see Part I.)

Secondly, there is far too much Perv Gate going on within the GOP, especially with the conservative family values and gay bashing wing of the party. I am afraid to turn my TV on because there’s far too much lewd porn on the nightly news. What are our children to think?

Now we the American people know when a conservative politician starts bleating about family values and gay marriage, men and boys should avoid public men’s rooms, especially those in airports and parks. Brothel Madams should put out a boatload of help wanted ads. Pages and interns in DC need to flee home straightaway and mothers of little ones might want to pack a porta potty in the back of their cars.

Republicans excel at hypocrisy, too. Perv Gate is only a small part of their gifts and talents in this realm. Certain Senators in the Great State of Delay Gerrymandered Texas, for example, will bellow No Border Wall Will EVER Be Built in Texas. But then they will high tail it back inside the beltway and vote for a border wall. Senator John Cornyn did exactly this. And while our great Senators will pontificate about our troops and how we must support them, once again, back inside the beltway, they suck up to W. and vote for legislation that does the exact opposite, especially where funding is involved. One would think both Senators really despise our troops. It sure is tough living in a state where both U.S. Senators are derriere kissing rubber stamp sheep for a chicken hawk called W.

The rule of law does not apply to GOP and its buddies, appointees and hacks, either. That said, the rule book will be thrown at a GOP elected official IF one should fail to tell the party one has been very bad and naughty and hanging out in men’s rooms. If the GOP can't manipulate the message and do boatloads of damage control, it knows it is toast.

It is also quite obvious to we the little people that the GOP is above the law. It can do whatever it wants and get away with it. Scooter the Perjurer Libby got a pardon. Gonzo and Rove will too if they are charged with anything. Rove probably won’t be because Rove purged all of the emails and public records including the White House visitor’s log that likely would have incriminated him.

Speaking of Rove and the missing records in the White House visitor’s log, I wonder if male escort and fake reporter Jeff Gannon will follow him back to Texas. Yuck. I shudder at the very thought. We already have too much of a GOP infestation of sleaze down here as it is. DeLay still hangs here and the Texans in D.C. are fleeing back, one by one, though Gonzo might be held up a bit since the Justice Dept. is investigating his testimony to Congress.

Rove is already wreaking havoc on the lives of some Texans by master minding their firing. This is what the bushies do should anyone dare to disagrees with them or expose them for the crooks and liars that they are. As soon as Rove gets back there will no doubt be massive voter caging and purging going on in Texas before 2008, too.

”Attorney Claims Rove Had Role in Her Firing”

Sadly for us, Republicans hate the rule of law and the U.S. Constitution. Fascism is far more appealing to them.

Why? Rove can rig the firing of anyone he doesn't like in government for no legitimate reason. Same holds true for voter rolls across the nation. The Bushies can turn federal agencies into political operational arms of the GOP using all methods at their disposal, whether legal, illegal, or unethical with absolutely no accountability to the people.

Gonzo can call the rules governing the Geneva Convention “quaint,” blow them off and he did just that. In the short period of time Gonzo held office as U.S.A.G. he did all he could to shred the Constitution which lies in tatters. Now we can wiretap our citizens at home, including political foes. We can torture the daylights out of anyone we see fit, including political foes, too, no doubt. The DOJ has been gutted now that there is so much work for it to do.

Want to stay current on wire tapping? Check out the report below. Some have said our methods put Stalin and the former East German commies to shame.

Conservatives ought to just love this news. Enjoy the read. It’ll take your mind off of Perv Gate, at least for awhile.

FBI's Nationwide Eavesdropping Network

Now, one may also wish to follow up and stay current on W.s increased powers for domestic wiretapping.

Bush’s Increased Powers for Domestic Wiretapping

Finally, we are far less safe now than we have ever been in our recent history thanks to a GOP White House, Senate and Congress. The spin machines and propaganda arms for the GOP in the mainstream media will try to tell us otherwise. Only a blithering idiot would believe them.

America since 2001: Fascism at its Finest.

Why I Will Never Vote Republican Part I

The reasons are numerous but here are just a few. (See Part II above this post.)

Republicans lie.

News about no WMD and no ties to Al-Qaeda in Iraq is old and stale. We had a rubber-stamping do nothing Congress when this grim fact became reality and our elected leaders failed to hold the President and Vice President accountable. And though the majority of Americans now know for certain our great nation was misled into a human calamity and debacle, the Republicans continue to try to put a happy and delusional spin on our “progress” there. They can’t wait to get their hands on General Petraeus’s report and ship it straightaway to the mythmaking and happy talk department for “reinterpretation” and quick delivery to the propaganda arm over at Fox News.

Fortunately there are a few brave souls left in Washington because an anonymous official leaked the GAO draft copy of the Iraq progress report to the Washington Post. The official feared the White House’s report would be too watered down.

Now, I know only a complete moron would believe any report spun out of the White House Department of Dissemble, Language Distortion and Delusion, but sadly there are few morons and/or patho liars around and a majority of them are our elected GOP officials and the party’s propaganda arms in the mainstream media.

To quote my friend Ken Deifik: The nature of 'fair and balanced' news is that when the truth is painful, the republicans just balance it out with lies. "The house is burning down." "Well, but maybe it's not burning down. We'll just have to wait and see."

As the truth becomes merely part of a delusional equation, more loved ones die or are maimed for life, the Quagmire gets worse and worse, costs more and more, is harder and harder to get out of, because even the GOPs that have turned against the war keep hoping that there's a grain or truth in all the bullshit. –Ken Deifik

If you really want to know what is going on in Iraq, check out the “real” report before it gets messed with. Hopefully Cheney hasn’t shipped the anonymous official down to Gitmo for a little ol’ fashioned torture. LS

From The Washington Post, August 30, 2007
By Karen DeYoung and Thomas E. Ricks

” Report Finds Little Progress On Iraq”

Do We Need Jimmy Carter To Ensure Fair Elections in Texas?

I recently attended a meeting held by some of Harris County’s precinct officials and election judges, most of whom are extremely hard working and deeply committed volunteers. A subset of this group has formed a committee to investigate voter suppression and integrity concerns in Harris County (Houston area). They toil away relentlessly in a tireless attempt to guarantee equal and fair access to the county’s elections in this Tom Delay gerrymandered state. This is no small feat given the GOP is in charge of about everything here. The challenges the volunteers face are significant and difficult. Fortunately for voting Democrats in Harris County, we have such committed and patriotic defenders of both our state and national Constitutional rights. We had better hope and pray they never give up because as it stands now, our democracy here is hanging on by mere shreds.

Our mayor in Houston is supposed to be a Democrat and yet he failed to give this group’s selected committee members the respect, time and appreciation they deserve for their well founded research, data and findings. In fact, he was more deferential to the GOP county clerk’s people present and wasted 30 minutes of the mere 60 minutes allocated by spinning irrelevant yarns about this that and everything except voting issues.

For this appalling reason I decided to write to the mayor today and to also post my letter to him as a diary. I think it is high time for Texas Democrats to take the fight to the people who are running and very likely messing with our election outcomes, as well as those officials who chose to do nothing to stop the contemptible and downright illegal shenanigans.

Should Harris County, the most populated in Texas, flip blue, the Texas GOP will be in a big world of hurt. It is for this reason alone that I believe the GOP will do everything it can get away with to purge/scrub/cancel voter rolls, provide inadequate, pre-rigged, and/or mal-functioning voting machines to mostly minority and poor district, and engage in beyond the pale voter intimidation. Indeed in Harris County, the election folks have come up with a “potential felons” list with names that will likely be scrubbed from the rolls. What in heaven’s name is a “potential felon?” That could be anyone now that our Constitutional rights have been flushed down the toilet by the crooked. lying and incompetent Bush Administration.

It is time to hold the elections’ folks feet to the fire, as well as those of their supervisors, and the Secretary of State.

What do they do to ensure fair, honest and transparent elections to all Texans? If they won’t give us a straight answer, or refuse to answer at all, let’s call Mr. Jimmy Carter and the U.N. and let them know that Texas is a third world type banana republic.

The Honorable Bill White

Dear Mayor White,

I had the opportunity to hear you speak just prior to the onslaught of Hurricane Katrina at a Young Democrats meeting at Rice University. Although I am no longer a “young” Democrat I was nonetheless fortunate enough to attend. I was extremely impressed by how you encouraged a group of very gifted students, many of whom will become future leaders in a number of fields, to consider careers in public service. I was also impressed by your highly skillful and deeply compassionate approach in planning for the tens of thousands of Katrina victims who were to come to Houston for refuge. I am, to this day, very proud of our city’s generous and heartfelt support for those who had to flee such deadly and appalling conditions with no help whatsoever from our federal agencies. It did not matter what one’s political party affiliation, religious beliefs or race were at the time. As Houstonians we were stood together as one to help those in dire and hopeless circumstances.

Maybe we can do likewise in achieving an open and honest democratic election process for all eligible Houstonians.

As the national election of 2008 looms near, I hope you summon your outstanding leadership skills and fully engage our party’s democratic principles in making certain that all eligible Houstonians can exercise their constitutional right to vote. I am particularly concerned because, since the national elections of 2000 and 2004, volumes have been written by election experts and non-partisan organizations about numerous voting machine malfunctions and overall irregularities. To cover all of the voting abnormalities would require at the least 100 or so pages and to be as brief as possible, I will mention just a few of the facts. I have provided sources below to support the facts I present.

Professional (with advanced degrees) statisticians, computer scientists and mathematicians have documented data proving that much was amiss in both the 2000 and 2004 in terms of machine reliability, especially in terms of security, exit poll data, pre and post electoral processes. This vast group of professionals is certainly not the “conspiracy theorists” the Republican Party will routinely summon when caught trying to achieve certain outcomes. News reports from various battle ground states, in particular, have documented evidence of voter suppression, intimidation, the willful placement of fewer and/or mal-functioning machines in minority, poor and mostly Democratic precincts and questionable vote counting processes (e.g. Ohio 2004 when the Secretary of State locked down a particular precinct when votes were being tallied due to “homeland security concerns.” Ohio’s Secretary of State, by the way, Ken Blackwell, was also chair of one of Bush’s reelection campaigns in Ohio.)

In Texas where Democrats are supposedly a minority, what safeguards do we have at our disposal to ensure open, fair and transparent elections? What guarantees are in place to convince me as a Houstonian that our elections, controlled by a most unforthcoming and unresponsive GOP County Clerk and Secretary of State, are accurate? These folks also count the votes after all. How do I know provisional and absentee ballots are not being tossed into dumpsters as Black Box Voting.org discovered was the case in certain precincts in Florida in 2000 and in 2004?

Of particular concern are the voter rolls and what is being done to them prior to an election? Are our county officials involved in “caging” whereby specific populations are targeted? Guess who these populations might be? I think you know. Caging consists of sending a targeted group “do not forward” notifications to their homes. The notification is returned to the county clerk’s office if someone has moved including those serving in the military and has been shipped to Iraq or Afghanistan; or if one has had the misfortune to become homeless. The outcome for these people, who should have every right to vote if eligible, and most are, will be one of complete disenfranchisement. Their names will be “cancelled” from the rolls. When they show up to vote, they will be denied the right.

How, when and who decides whose name to cancel from the rolls? Who precisely is sent notifications? What is the process and what laws govern such a practice?

Should you think the concept of “caging” is a figment of my imagination, an investigative reporter, forensic economist and author, Mr. Greg Palast, has discovered such lists from 2004 whose contents have been turned over to Representative John Conyers, Chair of the House Judiciary Committee.

Caging by the way is a federal felony. Maybe our election officials could use a gentle reminder of this fact.

What assurances do I have as a voter in Harris County that voter caging is not taking place right here and now, as it did in Florida, New Mexico and Ohio in both 2000 and 2004? Indeed, the White House has turned the present U.S. Justice Department into yet another political arm of the GOP. And the firing of 9 U.S. attorneys for purely partisan reasons is further evidence of the GOP’s long term goal to ensure a permanent Republican majority. What “firewall” is in place to protect our electoral process in Texas from such criminal and un-American acts?

What assurances do I have as a voter that there will be sufficient machines in my precinct that are fully functional and with intact and secured seals? There is no paper trail so how am I to know that my vote isn’t flipped to the wrong candidate? How do I know that it is even counted? What oversight and accountability processes are in place before, during and when the votes are being counted to ensure the integrity of our election and democratic process for all eligible residents in Harris County? This is the 21st century after all. It should not be technologically or practically impossible or even difficult to guarantee completely accurate and transparent election processes.

Given the historical difficulty the Harris County Democratic election judges and precinct officials have had in communicating with the County Clerk’s and Secretary of State’s offices, I can only imagine the worst. It seems that our state’s election officials have forgotten that their job is to serve the voting public and not the sole interests of their party and their party’s financial backers. If these officials insist they do serve ALL Texans why do they fail to return Democrats’ phone calls in a timely fashion, if at all?

Surely we won’t have “homeland security” issues in the 3rd or 5th wards in Houston during the election of 2008? Or will we?

Summoning election lawyers after an election is a waste of time. Transparency, oversight and accountability need to be put into place now.

As a Texas Democrat I and many others like me have had it with elected “Democratic” officials who behave as a Republican would. I trust that you, Sir, do not fall into this category. But I must respectfully caution that many of us may think otherwise if our electoral process here is not placed under much, much tighter scrutiny, public transparency and oversight. Those running our elections and managing the voter rolls must be held accountable. They are required to answer voters’ questions and address our concerns. This is what they get paid to do.

We deeply appreciate anything that you can do to expedite such a process immediately.

Surely we will not be forced to call former President Mr. Jimmy Carter and the U.N. in order to achieve open and fair elections in Texas!

Sources on electronic voting data:

KathyDopp.com
Election Mathematics.org
Election Archive.org
Election Archive UCV Analysis
Freedom-to-tinker.com

Background of voting irregularities and suppression since 2004:

Brad Blog

On voter caging:

Mr. Greg Palast, Armed Madhouse

Background info on Florida 2000 election (Palast and the BBC)

BBC Newsnight

Tell Me Our U.S. Texas Lawmakers Do Not Embrace a W. Monarchy

What indeed are our elected “representatives” doing about W.’s obvious abuse of power? Earlier this week I faxed off letters to my fearless Republican leaders, Senators Kay Bailey Hutchison, John Cornyn and U.S. Representative (Houston) John Culberson. I am not holding my breath that my very long letter (that merely scratches the surface of W.’s systematic abuse of power) will end up anywhere except in the official shredders.

Whether it goes to the shredder or not, if our so-called “representatives” don’t get a reality check, i.e. that somewhere in Texas, there are some very outraged voters who demand accountability, good the hell luck next election cycle. Burn babies, burn.

They aren’t going to be able to distract us with “family values” “gay marriage, “abortion,” “terrorists are lurking under every rock,” “a strong economy” when there isn’t one, and other BS this time around.

Nope, especially after Gonzo Gate blew wide open yesterday.

On to my letter of letter of July 23:

I am writing to you about the recent highly disturbing and somewhat appalling behavior on the part of President Bush for what is becoming increasingly clear as his willful and blatant abuse of power. The President has overstepped the bounds of his office and is behaving as if he is above the law, accountable to no one.

I am no lawyer but I do know when something is terribly wrong in our government.

There are a number of recent developments that support my claim of Presidential abuse of power. Within the last two weeks, the President has ordered former members of the White House staff, Ms. Sarah Taylor and Ms. Harriet Miers, to refuse to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Although Ms. Taylor presented herself at the hearing and answered very few questions, she did make it quite clear that her loyalty belonged to the President and not to the United States. Such a belief on the part of a staff member is both shocking and frightening. It is unheard of in the history of the United States. Indeed, even President Richard Nixon did not possess the authoritarian arrogance to prevent White House staff from speaking the truth to the Congress (i.e. we the people) during his term as President. And surely no staff member in our nation’s history has ever taken an oath to a person, even a President during wartime! I do not know where Ms. Taylor went to school, but she surely should have known better. If she does not, Ms. Taylor had no business serving in the White House in the first place.

President Bush has very recently pardoned a White House Chief of Staff, Scooter Libby, for perjury and the obstruction of justice. Mr. Libby lied under oath and obstructed justice to protect Vice President Cheney in the unconscionable outing of an undercover CIA agent, Ms. Valerie Plame Wilson. Americans can now assume the President is definitely covering up criminal acts that were committed in the White House, likely in his very office and that of the Vice President. President Bush’s pardon of Mr. Libby also tells we the people that there is two sets of rules at play in America: one for the President’s people and one for the rest of Americans.

I also find it shocking and frightening how the Bush Administration has deliberately attempted to politicize federal agencies (The Justice Department, the Interior Department, to name just two) in order to turn them into operational arms for the Republican National Party.

The recent firings of the 8 U.S. attorneys for purely political purposes are further evidence of the Administration’s calculated goal to ensure a permanent Republican majority for decades to come. The political imperatives of rule under this “permanent Republican majority” seems to have little in common with the democratic principles that have guided this great nation for well over 200 years. In fact, one party rule has proven to be detrimental and destructive to the very foundations of a democratic society. And for this very reason, the people spoke in November 2006.

It is crystal clear that the Department of Justice, at the urging of the White House, had every intention to replace all U.S. attorneys who did not aggressively pursue voter fraud cases where only Democrats were concerned.

Apparently the DOJ forgot that it is supposed to serve the people and not a President or an Administration. I find it inexcusable and unpatriotic for people in our government who serve, such as Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Ms. Sarah Taylor, to demonstrate such distain and contempt for the Constitution, the people, and the democratic principles that are supposed to guide our Republic. It seems that many Bush appointees seem to believe they are working within the framework of a monarchy in which they are servants for a king.

Concerning the firings of the U.S. attorneys, I find it very interesting indeed that Mr. Tim Griffin, who replaced Mr. Bud Cummings in Arkansas, is a former protégé of Karl Rove. Mr. Griffin is known to have produced illegal voter caging lists in Florida during the 2000 election. Evidence of such has been produced by Mr. Greg Palast, an investigative journalist who has obtained Mr. Griffin’s 2000 caging lists. I understand that the caging lists have been turned over to the House Judiciary Committee.

It seems that the same in the Department of Defense and the Pentagon had preceded the politicization of the Justice Department since 2001. It is now common knowledge that the Bush Administration did not tell the American people the truth when making the case to go to war with Iraq. We all know there were never any ties between Iraq and Al-Qaeda under Saddam Hussein and neither were there WMD. We also know that many members of Congress who supported President Bush in his trumped up case for war did not even bother to read the NIE Intelligence Report that could have changed a few minds and perhaps a deadly, costly and catastrophic failure may have been avoided.

President Bush and Vice President Cheney have routinely used the notion of terrorism and the fear it engenders as an excuse to run roughshod over the laws that bind this nation together as a democratic republic.

Since President Bush’s tenure as President, the heretofore unthinkable has happened, such as warrantless wiretaps and spying on American citizens. President Bush publicly admitted he knew about the domestic spying program. A federal court has ruled that such spying is a felony. And yet the Congress has failed to hold the President accountable for his actions. Is the President above the law? It certainly seems to be the case nowadays.

Our country now embraces torture and has willingly abandoned not only the principles of the Geneva Convention but the very moral and legal underpinnings that have governed our democratic republic and our stature in the world. The Supreme Court has ruled the President and Vice President’s system of detention is unconstitutional. Has the detention system changed yet? Not to my knowledge. Why?

As if the evidence mentioned above on the President’s abuse of power isn’t enough, it is both distressing and tragic to write there is yet more.

President Bush has reversed laws with signing statements. He has deliberately undermined the Congress by making whatever changes he deems fit to laws already passed by the representatives of the people! The President’s statements are posted on the White House website. A recent GAO report found that with 30 percent of Bush's signing statements, in which President Bush announces his right to overrule laws, he has in fact proceeded to overrule those laws.

Yes, it is now obvious. President Bush believes that he is well above the law. Some of our lawmakers in our nation’s Capitol obviously hold the same belief.

What else is a citizen to conclude when the sound of silence coming from our Congress on this issue is simply deafening?

When is enough enough? When are our members of the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate going to hold this President accountable for his blatant disregard and obvious calloused and cynical contempt for the rule of law that has governed this land for well over 200 years? President Bush and Vice President Cheney’s equal scorn for the people has not been lost on the vast majority of Americans, either.

Should you think that I am some left wing liberal who is exaggerating the President’s evident abuse of power, several former officials who served under President Reagan believe President Bush has assumed powers well beyond the legal jurisdiction of a President. Two of them call for the immediate impeachment of Vice President Cheney. Mr. Ron Paul, A U.S. Texas Representative and candidate for President in 2008, shares similar views with his colleagues in the former Reagan Administration. (Two of the three Republicans have also predicted that war with Iran is imminent and Congress will not be consulted about it.)

In a recent online newspaper (July 19, Raw Story.com) a former appointee of Ronald Reagan, Mr. Paul Craig Roberts, commented on the new Executive Order that allows the government to seize the assets of anyone who interferes with its Iraq policies. According to Mr. Roberts, "Unless Congress immediately impeaches Bush and Cheney, a year from now the US could be a dictatorial police state at war with Iran.”

He goes on to argue, “When Bush exercises this authority [under the new Executive Order] ... there's no check to it. It doesn't have to be ratified by Congress. The people who bear the brunt of these dictatorial police state actions have no recourse to the judiciary. So it really is a form of total, absolute, one-man rule. ... The American people don't really understand the danger that they face."

The article about Mr. Roberts’s views on President Bush can be found here

Mr. Bruce Fein, who served as Deputy Assistant Attorney under former President Reagan and wrote the first article of impeachment against former President Clinton, also calls for the impeachment of Vice President Cheney.

Mr. Fein recently was featured on the PBS Bill Moyers’ Journal on July 13, 2007. The journal can be viewed: Bill Moyers Journal

Following are excerpts from Mr. Fein’s interview.

Recently, Fein has been in the national spotlight after his editorial in the online newsmagazine SLATE called for the impeachment of Vice President Dick Cheney, in which he outlines the various cases against the Vice President. Fein also testified in front of the House Judiciary Committee on June 27, 2007 about President Bush's use of "signing statement."
According to Fein, Cheney has:
• Asserted Presidential power to create military commissions, which combine the functions of judge, jury, and prosecutor in the trial of war crimes.
• Claimed authority to detain American citizens as enemy combatants indefinitely at Guantanamo Bay on the President's say-so alone.
• Initiated kidnappings, secret detentions, and torture in Eastern European prisons of suspected international terrorists.
• Championed a Presidential power to torture in contravention of federal statutes and treaties.
• Engineered the National Security Agency's warrantless domestic surveillance program targeting American citizens on American soil in contravention of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978.
• Orchestrated the invocation of executive privilege to conceal from Congress secret spying programs to gather foreign intelligence, and their legal justifications.
• Summoned the privilege to refuse to disclose his consulting of business executives in conjunction with his Energy Task Force.
• Retaliated against Ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife Valerie Plame, through chief of staff Scooter Libby, for questioning the administration's evidence of weapons of mass destruction as justification for invading Iraq. (Read Fein's SLATE article)

End of excerpt.

Representative Ron Paul (Texas) has stated, “All evidence suggests that the NeoCon war on Iran is about to be sprung.”

According to him: “we're sending the oldest aircraft carrier into the Persian Gulf to replace a newer one --- making another trumped up 'Gulf of Tonkin incident' less costly. That is, stage an attack on the Nimitz, and say it was caused by Iran. This would happen in August, with congress on break.”

The bare suggestion that we would go to war with a nation without Congressional oversight tells me that we are no longer living in a democracy.

The silence from our Congress tells me that our elected officials embrace the Bush monarchy.


Sincerely yours,

Cheney’s Secret Energy Task Force List: The Dudes Who Paid to Play

A friend of mine from California sent me a link to an article written in today’s Washington Post which reveals at least a partial list of Cheney’s secret and very special invitees to his former energy task force meetings. Of course, as we would have expected, environmental and renewable energy groups were granted token participation. The fix was already in for Cheney’s energy policy and so the environmental folks and Democrats were invited just for the photo ops and news reports.

The Republican will to power and lust for greed dominated the entire process as it always does (remember this happened during the Tom Delay and Jack Abramoff heydays) and so the party’s pay to play decree drove the process. Those in big oil, gas and trade groups that were among the first to participate in Cheney's task force had all been major donors to the Bush/Cheney campaigns.

Gosh, maybe this is why we have so few options available to us in terms of alternative choices for fuel. Are we therefore doomed forever to life long addiction to the pusher men in the Middle East? Does this mean we are damned to life long wars to fight over the pollution producing evil crap that should have been rendered at least partially irrelevant to us at least thirty years ago?

Who are the winners in our national addiction to oil? Guess. It’s a no brainer…..It would be none other than Cheney’s best buds the Saudis, of course, and Dictator Greedy Dick too. The Dictator is obviously addicted to money. For himself. Hmmmm… is this why we attacked Iraq and forgot about Osama boy? Is this why Cheney would stop at nothing to hide his evil little list?

Cheney fought tooth and nail to keep his filthy little list a secret and everyone probably remembers how this issue went to the Supreme Court. Naturally, with a politicized judicial system comprised of embedded party hacks and rubber stamps, Cheney won as he always does. What Cheney wants, Cheney gets. This is why I have nicknamed him Dictator Dick. No one or branch of our government seems able, willing or courageous enough to stop him. When an individual or a federal institution should dare to rear a brave head in protest, Cheney will simply chop it off and replace the head with one of his clones. Hmmm… maybe I should call Cheney Dick the Butcher instead or Dick the Terrible. Or perhaps Dr. Evil Dick, or Dick the Tyrant.

Excerpts from The Washington Post

Papers Detail Industry's Role in Cheney's Energy Report
By Michael Abramowitz and Steven Mufson
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, July 18, 2007; Page A01

Cheney was not there, but so many environmentalists were in the room that introductions took up "about half the meeting," recalled Erich Pica of Friends of the Earth. Anna Aurilio of the U.S. Public Interest Group said, "It was clear to us that they were just being nice to us."

A confidential list prepared by the Bush administration shows that Cheney and his aides had already held at least 40 meetings with interest groups, most of them from energy-producing industries. By the time of the meeting with environmental groups, according to a former White House official who provided the list to The Washington Post, the initial draft of the task force was substantially complete and President Bush had been briefed on its progress.

One of the first visitors, on Feb. 14, was James J. Rouse, then vice president of Exxon Mobil and a major donor to the Bush inauguration; a week later, longtime Bush supporter Kenneth L. Lay, then head of Enron Corp., came by for the first of two meetings. On March 5, some of the country's biggest electric utilities, including Duke Energy and Constellation Energy Group, had an audience with the task force staff.

The list of participants' names and when they met with administration officials provides a clearer picture of the task force's priorities and bolsters previous reports that the review leaned heavily on oil and gas companies and on trade groups -- many of them big contributors to the Bush campaign and the Republican Party. But while it clears up much of the lingering uncertainty about who was granted access to present energy policy views to Cheney's staff, it does not entirely explain why the Bush administration fought so hard to keep it and other as-yet-unreleased internal memos secret.

If the time has not come to impeach this monster, when will it?

It’s time for the Dick to do some time.

Cheney Shows His Love for America

While Dictator Dick thumbs his nose at the U.S. Constitution, our individual rights and the basic tenets of Democracy, he is busy at work safeguarding the personal fortunes he has amassed.

Alas, it seems that Dictator Dick has very little faith in the future of the American economy.

According to Mr. Mike Whitney of the Information Clearing House.com. (see link below), Dictator Dick is investing millions in European markets as well as in inflation linked short term municipal bonds, and inflation protected securities funds. As Mr. Whitney suggests, Cheney will watch his fortunes grow in Old Europe while we the suckers – i.e. the average American will have to struggle with increasing energy prices and inflation. Our savings and assets could very well dwindle while those of Dictator Dick grow by leaps and bounds.

Thank God for tax cuts for the mega wealthy. There isn’t even a morsel of cake left for we the little irrelevant people who don’t factor in the Bush/Cheney world, except to fight in and pay taxes for their wars with the rest of the world.

I do not have a background in economics or finance, but I know full well when I smell huge stinking rats gnawing and devouring our political, geo-political and economic well-being. Not to mention our national ethos as a people.

Excerpts:

This should put to rest once and for all the foolish notion that the “Bush Economic Plan” is anything more than a scam aimed at looting the public till. The whole deal is intended to shift the nation's wealth from one class to another. It’s also clear that Bush-Cheney couldn’t have carried this off without the tacit approval of the thieves at the Federal Reserve who engineered the low-interest rate boondoggle to put the American people to sleep while they picked their pockets.

Reasonable people can dispute that Bush is “intentionally” skewering the dollar with his lavish tax cuts, but how does that explain Cheney’s portfolio?

It doesn’t. And, one thing we can say with metaphysical certainty is that the miserly Cheney would never plunk his money into an investment that wasn’t a sure thing. If Cheney is counting on the dollar tanking and interest rates going up, then, by Gawd, that’s what’ll happen.

The Bush-Cheney team has racked up another $3 trillion in debt in just 6 years. The US national debt now stands at $8.4 trillion dollars while the trade deficit has ballooned to $800 billion nearly 7% of GDP.

This is lunacy. No country, however powerful, can maintain these staggering numbers. The country is in hock up to its neck and has to borrow $2.5 billion per day just to stay above water. Presently, the Fed is expanding the money supply and buying back its own treasuries to hide the hemorrhaging from the public. Its utter madness.

Do the math! They're not investing in America anymore. They are decreasing their stockpiles of dollars. We’re sinking fast and Cheney and his pals are manning the lifeboats while the public is diverted with gay marriage amendments and “American Celebrity”.

No job is safe. American elites and corporate tycoons are loading the boats and heading for foreign shores. The only thing they’re leaving behind is the insurmountable debt that will be shackled to our children into perpetuity and the carefully arranged levers of a modern police-surveillance state.

End of excerpt.

This chilling piece can be read in its grim entirety here

If this isn’t enough to get the impeachment ball rolling, I do not know what is. It is time to press criminal charges. The short list: the Bush/Cheney Administration has misled this nation into an unnecessary, catastrophic and horrific war. It has seriously compromised both our national security and economic well being. It has flipped the bird at the rule of law, as demonstrated in the Scooter Libby trial and the outing of an undercover CIA agent for political revenge. It has given generous tax cuts to the extraordinarily wealthy at the expense of the rest of us. The middle class is clearly dying a slow death with sure-fire membership in the under class club. Our military troops are required to serve 3-4 if not 5 tours of duty in hot combat with little reprieve. When our brave, determined and courageous troops do return home it is a national disgrace that they must face yet more battles to get proper medical attention for posttraumatic stress disorder, catastrophic wounds such as severe brain injuries and the loss of limbs. What about the families of the fallen soldiers who are left to grieve alone, after an American flag is summarily handed to them at their loved one’s funeral? That’s it? A flag in exchange for a life? For?

Please.

How much is too much? What kind of people have we become?

To recap, in case anyone should be asleep and doesn’t get it, the Bush/Cheney Administration has willfully and knowingly used propaganda to sell a war and a political agenda that is downright destructive of our national security, our military, our geo-political standing and our economic underpinnings. Worse, it has turned us into a people that we are not. Our future in a Bush/Cheney Land promises a whole third world of hurt, pain, suffering and death.

For? So Bush, Cheney and their best buds can amass personal fortunes? They have distracted us for far too long with emotional and unproductive issues like gay marriage, abortion and heaven knows what else. They have scared the living crap out of us with terror threats that were non-existent. Their motto: keep the people scared, dumb and angry. And the Bushies did the devil’s work while we allowed ourselves to become dumb, scared and angry.

Stand up for impeachment, folks, or go broke and learn how to cope in third world living. The choices aren’t easy but at least we still have a few choices left to us. LS

The Fox Howls about the Fox in the Henhouse

I am not writing about Fox Fake News though they deserve to be written about now that Fox has revealed its true racist colors in confusing Congressman Jefferson with Congressman Conyers.

Nope, this is about the party Fox shills and spins for – the GOP - and its systematic and criminal voter disenfranchisement program.

U.S. citizens right here in the U.S. and some of those serving abroad have been denied their inalienable right to vote thanks to the GOP’s purging and scrubbing of voter roles.

The sick and twisted irony of this voter fraud issue is that while the Republicans have been screaming about fake incidences of voter fraud in particular states (as exposed in the U.S. Attorney/Alberto Gonzales scandals) GOP henchmen have been willfully and systematically engaged in real voter fraud for years.

The GOP does this by denying the right to vote to a vast number of minority and poor voters who are more likely to vote for Democrats.

Chapter One in Rove’s How to Rig an Election Book: (Source: Mr. Greg Palast “Armed Madhouse.”)

Rove summoned one of his whores - Interim and Now Resigned from Office and hopefully soon to be charged U.S. Attorney for Arkansas – Griffin - to put in the fix for 2008. Griffin sent out registered letters to homeless people, soldiers who had been shipped to Iraq and Afghanistan and to students who tend to move around a lot. If these people did not respond to the registered note or if the note was returned in the mail, legitimate voters were purged from the voting list, likity split. Yes, they were scrubbed of their democratic right to vote, even those who are fighting to defend us overseas. It is called “voter caging” and it is illegal. Not to mention immoral and unconscionable.

This practice is alive and well in Harris County, Texas (Houston its and outlying areas, including Tom DeLay land) in a less blatantly criminal form. I spoke to a friend of mine who has been an election judge in Houston for 9 years. I asked my friend if officials purged voter roles in Harris County. The answer: a resounding yes.

This is how it works in Harris County.

The purge occurs when the county clerk sends a voter registration card (they do this every 2 years since voter registration card expires at that time).
If the voter registration card is returned as undeliverable (they assume one has moved and are now out of the district which would require one to re-register) and/or a person has not voted in a specified number of elections, supposedly they purge this person automatically. But... wait - interestingly enough, my friend’s husband's aunt (who is Mexican, but whose last name is Asian because she married an Asian), hasn't voted in 25+ years and miraculously was STILL on the roles after all that time and registered to vote.

During the 2006 primary, both my friend and her husband voted in the primary election, making them eligible to attend the Democratic conventions as delegates.
My friend’s surname is Mexican, although she is Caucasian. Interestingly enough, when she and her husband were elected as delegates at their Senate District convention, the next step is for the SD chair to verify that my friends had met the requirements (verify that they voted in the primary election - this is what's known as checking credentials). Their SD chair called to let my friend know that she and her husband did not appear on the list of primary voters. Neither of them. My friend said: “What's THAT all about, I'll never know.’ ‘Who knows if our votes even counted or not? Another well known Democrat had physically witnessed us going to the polls and ‘vouched’ for us. I was SHOCKED and AWED.”

There is no forgiveness or mercy here in this Republican run state. The GOP needs fewer voters to win elections. I mean, what intelligent and informed person would actually vote for a Republican? And the Rovian wing knows that many of us are distracted, overly committed and we tend to ignore snail mail. When we move we are overwhelmed by “stuff” and sometimes forget to give a forwarding address.

And this is how the Party of Corruption achieves victory time and time again. It does not have to be a high tech laptop theft to throw an election.

Another Rove whore, Ken Blackwell of Ohio, denied the right to vote to poor people and minorities by providing fewer voting machines to their precincts. Meanwhile there was an abundance of machines in mostly conservative, white and well-off suburbs. The poor and minorities in Blackwell’s district were required to wait 8-10 hours in freezing rain. Naturally many gave up and left. Blackwell’s dream for Bush 2004 was realized.

The latest attempt by our Republican leadership here in Texas to require proof of citizenship in order to vote would essentially deny the right to a huge group of poor, elderly and minorities. If one thinks that a driver’s license or social security card is proof of U.S. citizenship, one is wrong. U.S. permanent residents and foreign nationals with specific visas who work here legally can have both driver’s licenses and social security cards. They are obviously not eligible to vote.

Proof of U.S. citizenship requires one of three documents: an official birth certificate, a U.S. passport or U.S. Naturalization papers. A passport costs close to $100.00 and takes 6-8 weeks to obtain. Many elderly, who were born at home, may not have “official” birth certificates. Victims of floods or hurricanes may have lost official birth certificates, passports and/or naturalization papers. Homeless people likely don’t roam from shelter to shelter with their birth certificates or passports. Soldiers serving overseas cannot check their mail at home for their voter registration status. The poor are overwhelmed trying to make ends meet to think much about where their official birth certificates might be. To send away for a copy of a birth certificates requires time and some money.

Fortunately, we have more Democrats than the Party of Liars and Cheats in Washington now and so there is a modicum of accountability, at least in our nation’s Capitol.

Representative John Conyers is investigating the Rove/Griffin voter caging shenanigans as I write.

Maybe every Republican election official in Texas will be dragged to court along with Griffin and Rove, as he or she well should.

For more information on voter caging, please see the URL below.

Slate.com: The Raging Caging

For ongoing and daily updates about voter fraud, its key players and GOP evil doing, check out Brad’s Blog on a daily basis.

The Brad Blog

Get involved, my Dem soul mates. Get involved.

I just returned from a vacation in Europe and had time to catch up on reading while traveling on trains, planes and in automobiles. I learned how others in Europe view our foreign policy and stand on Iraq. I won’t go there right now but trust me – its’ really bad. A Frenchman told me Bush had ruined the U.S. for 50 years to come. This made him sad. The French and Americans may have had a roller coaster political relationship over the years, but all of Europe has always looked to America as a beacon of light and ray hope and optimism for the world. The dollar is doing so miserably that Americans are the poor tourists in Europe. Thanks, W.

I finished the book written by Greg Palast “Armed Madhouse” and learned much more than I admittedly want to know about the Republican Party and voter fraud. Like, please make it not be so. Make it go away. But it won’t and we have to deal or we will be sleeping in the nightmare forever.

Finally, every Democrat should be required to read “Armed Madhouse” for the complete and thorough scoop on Republican voter shenanigans. You won’t be able to put it down, but you’ll need to go on high blood pressure and anti-stroke meds while reading.

Deleting Democracy?

I take no credit for today’s post. My friend Ken in California is responsible for the hard work and extensive research, the outcome of which reveals a history of the Bush Administration’s willful and systematic attempts to undermine the democratic process in this country.

Oh, by the way, down here in Texas our Legislature is hard at work trying to figure out how to suppress the voting rights of the poor, minorities and the elderly. LS

From Ken:

First:

Two University of Minnesota professors have compiled a database of investigations and/or indictments of candidates and elected officials by U.S. attorneys since the Bush administration came to power. Of the 375 cases they identified, 10 involved independents, 67 involved Republicans, and 298 involved Democrats

American Progress Action

Second:

Bush's US Attorney Steven Biskupic just got a conviction of a Wisconsin state employee named Georgia Thompson. The same publication as above notes that.

Last week, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Thompson was wrongly convicted of making sure a state travel contract went to a firm linked to Gov. Jim Doyle's re-election campaign and freed her from an Illinois prison. The federal judges, acting with "unusual speed," "assailed the government's case" and said that Biskupic's evidence was "beyond thin."

Josh Marshall's video narrative of this nasty tale can be found at:
Talking Points Memo

Finally, Ken also found this extraordinary piece on Salon.com written by Mr. Glenn Greenwald. Mr. Greenwald documents the Bush Administration’s historic trail of losing, destroying and deleting official documents since 2000. LS

Such a sad thing. Every time the GOP and the Bush administration could exonerate themselves from all that criminality we've come to expect from them, the documentation that would prove their innocence --- vanishes like magic!! –K

Source: Salon.com 4/12/07. Mr. Glenn Greenwald “The Bush administration's terrible luck with finding documents”

Excerpts:

I feel -- in this vaguely intuitive sort of way -- as though there is some kind of a pattern buried within this set of facts, but as much as I search, I just can't quite figure out what it might be:

New York Times.,

Political advisers to President Bush may have improperly used their Republican National Committee e-mail accounts to conduct official government business, and some communications that are required to be preserved under federal law may be lost as a result, White House officials said Wednesday. . .
As a result, Mr. Stanzel said, "some official e-mails have potentially been lost." He said Mr. Bush had told the White House counsel's office "to do everything practical to retrieve potentially lost messages."

The Politico, March 24, 2007:

In DOJ documents that were publicly posted by the House Judiciary Committee, there is a gap from mid-November to early December in e-mails and other memos, which was a critical period as the White House and Justice Department reviewed, then approved, which U.S. attorneys would be fired while also developing a political and communications strategy for countering any fallout from the firings.

Newsweek, February 28, 2007:

A federal judge ruled today that suspected Al Qaeda operative Jose Padilla is mentally competent. . . . But the ruling by U.S. Judge Marcia Cooke in Miami leaves open what may be more intriguing questions than those surrounding the defendant's mental health: what happened to a crucial video recording of Padilla being interrogated in a U.S. military brig that has mysteriously disappeared?

The disclosure that the Pentagon had lost a potentially important piece of evidence in one of the U.S. government's highest-profile terrorism cases was met with claims of incredulity by some defense lawyers and human-rights groups monitoring the case. "This is the kind of thing you hear when you're litigating cases in Egypt or Morocco or Karachi," said John Sifton, a lawyer with Human Rights Watch, one of a number of groups that has criticized the U.S. government's treatment of Padilla. "It is simply not credible that they would have lost this tape. The administration has shown repeatedly they are more interested in covering up abuses than getting to the bottom of whether people were abused."

Alicia Valle, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Miami, said in an e-mail to NEWSWEEK that the missing DVD was "of the last interrogation of Padilla while in military custody." She further added that a lawyer for DIA had advised the court "that an exhaustive search was conducted but the [DVD] could not be located."

NPR, June 24, 2004:

Key documents are missing from the batch of newly declassified documents the White House released this week on its policies on torture and the treatment of prisoners, critics say. Absent are any memos to and from the FBI and CIA and any documents dated after April 2003. No documents address the State Department's concern over the Bush administration's interpretation of the Geneva Conventions.

USA Today, May 24, 2004:

The Pentagon sought Sunday to explain why some 2,000 pages were missing from a congressional copy of a classified report detailing the alleged acts of abuse by soldiers against Iraqi inmates at Abu Ghraib prison. . . . .
[Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita] was responding to a Time magazine report Sunday that about 2,000 of the report's 6,000 pages submitted to the Senate Armed Services Committee were missing. The report by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba consists of a declassified summary and about 6,000 pages of classified annexes, including statements from witnesses, prison guards and military intelligence officials.

Associated Press, September 5, 2004:

Documents that should have been written to explain gaps in President Bush's Texas Air National Guard service are missing from the military records released about his service in 1972 and 1973, according to regulations and outside experts.
For example, Air National Guard regulations at the time required commanders to write an investigative report for the Air Force when Bush missed his annual medical exam in 1972. The regulations also required commanders to confirm in writing that Bush received counseling after missing five months of drills.

No such records have been made public and the government told The Associated Press in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit that it has released all records it can find.

And that is to say nothing of all of the extraordinary and unprecedented steps taken by the administration to justify the concealment of documents and other information -- efforts which, when successful, have made it unnecessary to claim that the documents were lost. But don't worry; it's all to protect us, all for our own good. There is simply no reason for us to know what our Leaders are doing.

UPDATE: Newsweek, March 1, 2006:

[Federal Emergency Management Agency Michael] Brown's comments about the president surfaced in a transcript of an Aug. 29, 2005, videoconference call produced by Bush administration officials today after they initially told Congress that no such document existed. . . .

Administration and congressional officials said that the administration provided congressional investigators earlier this year with official transcripts of the daily noon FEMA conference calls conducted before, during and after Katrina. But the administration initially told Congress that the transcript for the Aug. 29 call -- the call congressional investigators were most curious about, given that it occurred as the hurricane was actually battering the Gulf Coast—did not exist, with officials initially telling Capitol Hill that someone at FEMA or Homeland Security forgot to push the button on a tape recorder.
"Everybody has been looking for that transcript," former FEMA chief Michael Brown said Wednesday.

A White House official unexpectedly e-mailed the transcript to NEWSWEEK earlier today Wednesday morning -- initially without explaining that it was the missing transcript. Two officials familiar with congressional investigations said that the document was turned over to Capitol Hill investigators Tuesday night. Administration officials told both Congress and NEWSWEEK that FEMA officials in Atlanta had taped the Aug. 29 conference call by aiming a video camera at a TV screen rather than following the usual recording procedure. The videotape was subsequently discovered and transcribed.

While the newly discovered transcript does provide new evidence of initial presidential engagement in the Katrina crisis and of conflicting information about the state of New Orleans levees on Aug. 29, it also exposes some contradictions in previous administration explanations about the role of the White House and top officials in handling the crisis.

I suppose the defense for Bush followers who want to claim that all of this is completely innocent is "extreme ineptitude."

The entire article can be read on the

Salon.com

The Pimps and Their Whores

Thoughts on the relationship between corporate America and the U.S. mainstream media.

I began to suspect the media in 2000, after W. was installed as President by a bare majority of the Supreme Court, some of which justices were appointed by Bush the father.

But it was after the fiasco in Ohio’s Presidential election of 2004 that I completely gave up on the mainstream media as a credible source for information. Something terrible had happened in Ohio in November 2004. Like, blatant voter fraud and illegal shenanigans. But the media didn’t get it or it refused to get it.

A group of my friends and acquaintances throughout the U.S. felt as I did and we began to look for alternative sources for news.

We discovered a whole new world of on line information and we would email one another articles or clips from various sources we located here in the U.S. and in the U.K.

It got to the point that we discovered so much information to share that we didn't know how to manage it. A friend suggested I start a blog to create a permanent record and archive.

And so I set up Libby Shaw (after my son told me what a blog is) for the explicit purpose of sharing news that is not normally seen or heard within the U.S. mainstream media.

Almost three years later, and after having worked as a volunteer for a Texas candidate for U.S. Senate in 2006, I now merely glance at the front pages of the New York Times and Houston Chronicle every morning. I subscribe to both but read little of the Chronicle. Why don’t I read the Chronicle? Well, for starters, it most unfortunately endorsed the incumbent Texas candidate for U.S. Senate in 2006, Kay Bailey Hutchison. Hutchison is an exemplary rubber stamp for the worst Presidency in U.S. history.

For me, reading a newspaper that endorsed the nation’s worst of elected officials is pretty much the same as reading tabloids at the check out stands in the grocery story.

I’d cancel the Chronicle entirely were it not for my husband who reads the sports sections.

Regarding TV news, if I hear the slightest echo from the right wing scream machine when listening to CNN or MSNBC news in the morning, I immediately switch to CSPAN's Washington Journal. At least I might learn something from the Washington Journal. As far as I can tell, the corporate media has not corrupted CSPAN as it has the other media stations.

I do really enjoy the nerdy Washington Journal for a number of reasons. The information is solid. Invited guests are credentialed experts in particular areas. Some are elected officials. Normally if a member of one political party is an invited guest, a representative from the other party will follow soon afterwards. Discussions are reasoned and dispassionate. No one screams, there are no loud and vacuous commercial breaks about sexual performance medications, miracle diets, or baby boomer’s dreams. Nor is a guest rudely cut off by an anchor who is fixated like a dog on a bone on a specific message or agenda.

The Washington Journal invites listeners to call in to question the invited guests. There are specific phone lines for Democrats, Independents and Republicans. I especially love to listen to Americans call in from all over the country. It is amazing (but not really) how much anger there is out there. We Americans are far from stupid. We know something is terribly, terribly wrong with the Bush Administration. We are keenly aware that we've been had and the mainstream media and press have all too willingly allowed it to happen. Of course there are a handful of callers with lizard brains, which vent, rant and squawk and will support W. to their graves.

I call this group the unfortunate and misinformed Neanderthal wing of the GOP. Thankfully there are not too many of them.

I think the mainstream media is beginning to understand that it has been caught with its collective pants down since Bush took power. And yet the manner in which the MSM has all too readily jumped on the "let's beat up on Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Syria" band wagon tells me the MSM has a long way to go before I will consider it remotely fair, balanced and unbiased.

The recent and well deserved toasting and roasting of Imus for his reprehensible remarks about female minorities and women in general may have given the mainstream media the kick in the derriere it has needed for years. And yet, at the same time, it seems both hypocritical and disingenuous for Imus to be singled out when there are so very many other spewers of blatant racism and misogyny who occupy radio and TV's bully pulpits. What about Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, Mike Savage and a host of others?

Why Imus?

Well, it seems that major corporations such as Proctor and Gamble, Dietech, and the Ford Motor Company, among others, have pulled the plug on their advertising for the Imus Show.

Such spelled the death knell for Imus for is no longer a cash cow for his corporate owners.

After 30 years of Imus and his routine and thinly veiled racist and misogynist comments, suddenly the corporations “care” about content?

Why now?

If it truly cares about content, when will corporate America pull their advertising from ALL of the shows of the purveyors of racism, sexism, political propaganda, hate and disinformation?

Who is asking what is in it for Rush types and FOX to kiss up to the Bushies?

When will corporate America pretend to care about truth, democracy, and forget about its bottom line for one mere nano second to do what is right and ethical? What are corporate America’s true intentions with regard to the media?

And what about the “fair, balanced and unbiased” mainstream media, owned by none other than huge corporate America?

Where is the media’s fair and unbiased coverage of the blatant corruption and lies engendered by the Bush Administration?

Where was the outrage when it became clear that W. lied us into a war based on fake intelligence? How come the Downing Street Memos on the intelligence on Iraq were summarily shoved through the journalistic buzz saw instead of having been splashed across our nation’s front pages and screamed from every talking head’s mouth on TV?

Where was the outrage when the Bush Administration fired U.S. attorneys for purely partisan reasons?

Where was the outrage when Attorney General Gonzales lied about his knowledge of the firings?

The media and press seems to care not a flip that the Bush Administration had attempted to politicize our judicial system to protect Republicans during future contested close elections.

How come? Where is the wall-to-wall coverage of Bush's lies 24/7 since we went to war with Iraq?

It all comes down to IMUS because some of corporate America pulled its advertising?

If we want to save our fleeting Democracy, we the people need to pull the plug on corporations and the media. Stop buying for awhile. Stop watching the idiot box (as my beloved late father would call the TV) for "news." Cancel newspapers if you can live without sports sections. For our own rational well being, sanity and safety we should read more, both from print and on line sources, rely more on CSPAN and on our own instincts and brain power to determine what is true and what is false.

Moving on to news not covered by the corporate owned right wing mainstream media. LS

A hideous, deplorable, reprehensible and heart breaking story one won’t find anywhere in the U.S. mainstream news on Iraq.

Excerpt:

"Once I was called to an explosion site," Saad, a humanitarian worker, is quoted as saying in the report.

"There I saw a four-year-old boy sitting beside his mother's body, which had been decapitated by the explosion. He was talking to her, asking her what had happened. He had been taken out shopping by his mum."

The report also highlights the following problems:

• Iraq's healthcare facilities face critical shortages of staff and supplies. Many doctors, nurses and patients no longer dare to go to hospitals and clinics because they are targeted or threatened

• much of Iraq's vital water, sewage and electricity infrastructure is in a critical condition

• food shortages have been reported in some areas and malnutrition is said to have increased

From the BBC News.com

Iraqis face 'immense' suffering.

West Point Grades Opt Out of Their Commissions

From Boston.com News via The Randi Rhodes Show:

West Point Grads Opt Out

White House Uses Alternative Email Addresses to Avoid Public Scrutiny and Accountability.

From the Huffington Post

White House Staff Use GOP Political Email Addresses When Conducting U.S. Business

But UH OH! Seems that the White House has "lost" thousands of U.S. government emails sent from RNC computers.

U.S. Government Emails Deleted from RNC Server? Guess. S

Iraq War Spawned New Terror

Found on truthout.org

Iraq War Spawned New Terror

Gross Mismanagement of Iraq Funds

Also from truthout.org

Gross Mismanagement of Iraq Funds

GOP Playbook On Stealing Elections

Before exposing what I have learned on the GOP’s playbook on rigging elections, I would like to point out a few observations I had when catching a few clips of CSPAN’s broadcast on Friday on the recent House vote on the tortured and endless nightmare in Iraq.

It is well about time that a few souls in Congress discovered they possessed a shred of spine and tad of courage to stand up to Daddy’s Supreme Court appointed and product of rigged elections, the current “President” of the United States. Maybe our installed and fake “President” is really a mere puppet whose puppet masters are none other than the obvious. Like, Cheney the Enabler-in-Chief for corporate interests. Next is Rove as the W-Political-Whore-in-Chief to ensure Bushie types prevail for decades to come. Rove is also Cheney’s bitch in ensuring that the VP’s darkest side becomes organic on all levels. Their ultimate goal is to dismantle our Democracy and deliver it to the Bush/Cheney highest masters, corporate interests.

Bush, Cheney and Rove knew full well that we Americans were asleep at the wheel and they took full advantage of our complacency. After 9/11 the puppet and his puppet masters seized upon a national catastrophe to use it as a political target of opportunity. It subsequently and quite successfully played us all for fools. It also quite successfully wreaked havoc on and destabilized the Middle East.

It is time to wake up America because if we do not, we will be no better off than serfs.

On Friday, in the House, true to its nature, the sorry remnants of the do-nothing and rubber stamping Congress used its usual tedious, tired and defeated bullying tactics when pontificating and grand standing about our troops. These low life bullies and chicken hawks, except for a few who actually did serve (there are a few in the GOP) used the usual empty rhetoric and catch phrases fresh from the party’s talking point propaganda factory. I heard the usual “cowards,” “when did blue become yellow?” “cut ‘n run,” “surrender” and on and on and on and on.

The real cowards are the GOP who sent our troops to battle with fake intelligence and on the cheap. Repeat, the real cowards are the GOP who sent our troops to war based on fabricated intelligence and without sufficient troop numbers, equipment and resources to ensure the success of the mission. Worse, the reprehensible Bush Administration is sending wounded troops back into active duty before they have time to fully recover.

From Salon.com:

“Army Deployed Seriously Wounded Troops”

The Bush enablers are also spineless ninnies because they allowed our “President” to over spend his budget over and over and over again and never thought to ask him to account for a dime of our taxpayers' dollars.

John Murtha made this fact abundantly clear during his interview on CNN with Wolf Blitzer:

Murtha’s Interview on CNN’s Wolf Blitzer

What pathetic and inept jokes for representatives. Or maybe our Congress people are as corrupt and cynical as W. and Cheney. Inept or corrupt? Or both? Pick your poison, America, if you want our democracy to keep on dying. If you want it to live and thrive as it should, get rid of the poison.

Speaking of ineptitude and corruption, according to Senator Chuck Hagel yesterday on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos, we have spent one-half trillion of our tax payer dollars on Iraq, $40. billion in investments and there are billions of untouched dollars sitting in Iraq’s bank account.

Excerpt:

You know, we had the Inspector General testifying, our Inspector General, Mr. Bowen, he was testifying before the Congress this week. I met with him alone for an hour and a half. He reminded all of us that we have now spent almost a half a trillion dollars in Iraq. We have put at least 40 billion in economic development there. Which we don't know what we got out of it. There's still no oil law. Billions of dollars have been ripped off, unaccounted for, and one more point on this -- over $12 billion of Iraqi money still sits in the accounts of the Iraqi government that they haven't spent. So something has to give here, George.

This Week with George Stephanopoulos

Transcripts of with Hagel’s Interview on ABC

Forget about funding for education and universal healthcare for we-the-people-who-do-not-matter here at home. Send our dollars instead to Iraq to be squandered and stolen.

Because these dudes are fixated solely on greed and power and since they are also shamefully incompetent, the only way they can get elected is to steal the elections.

Here is how they do it.

A generous corporate donor's firm happens to manufacture electronic voting machines. Diebold’s CEO, for example, said that he would deliver the election to W. in 2004. In Ohio, he did just that. Corporations tend to adore the GOP because of their distain for big business regulation and oversight. The GOP is also more likely to work for lobbyists and corporate interests than they are for we the little people.

CEO Of Diebold Promises to Deliver 2004 Election to Bush

Next we have low level partisan hacks serving as Secretary of State such as Katharine Harris of Florida (2000) and Ken Blackwell of Ohio (2004). These political sluts excel at voter suppression. They are low level grunts that desperately and despicably hope, that by doing their master’s bidding, they will be rewarded later. But, if a lot of controversy surrounds their deeds on blatant voter suppression, these lap dogs are usually dropped like hot potatoes. Suddenly no one in the RNC knows who they are. Ken who?

Rep. John Conyers Report on What Went Wrong in Ohio

The most blatant, destructive, chilling and insidious methodology in ensuring voter suppression is to install U.S. attorneys who are partisan hacks. These so called “attorneys” are more loyal to their political masters than they are to the law of the land. As in the case of Iraq and how the intelligence was fixed to support Bush’s policy, likewise is happening within our judicial system.

From the McClatchy Paper’s “New U.S. attorneys seem to have partisan records”

Excerpts:

Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said the four U.S. attorneys weren't chosen only because of their backgrounds in election issues, but "we would expect any U.S. attorney to prosecute voting fraud."

Taken together, critics say, the replacement of the U.S. attorneys, the voter-fraud campaign and the changes in Justice Department voting rights policies suggest that the Bush administration may have been using its law enforcement powers for partisan political purposes.

The Bush administration's emphasis on voter fraud is drawing scrutiny from the Democratic Congress, which has begun investigating the firings of eight U.S. attorneys - two of whom say that their ousters may have been prompted by the Bush administration's dissatisfaction with their investigations of alleged Democratic voter fraud.

New U.S. Attorneys Who Will Support Political Ideology over the Law of the Land