For Dems only.

[BigSqwert]

Obama on Letterman tonight.

[BigSqwert]

Obama on Letterman tonight.

Was a pretty safe interview for the most part. Was a good opportunity for him to get national exposure and show off the charisma and personality.

[Balta1701]

I'm not sure which bit of news I want to highlight today. So #1, on the voter fraud canard the Republicans have been trying to use to steer elections in their direction...

A federal panel responsible for conducting election research played down the findings of experts who concluded last year that there was little voter fraud around the nation, according to a review of the original report obtained by The New York Times.

Yup. They looked into it, found it wasn't a problem, and then the Administration told them to shut up because they needed those voter fraud claims to try to cut down on Dem votes.

 

And second, the coup de gras perhaps:

ABC News has learned that the Pentagon is considering extending the tours of duty for every active duty soldier in Iraq and Afghanistan.

 

Forget small extensions and trickles of National Guard troops. Under the proposal, deployments for active duty soldiers would be extended from the current 12 months to 15 months. Senior Defense Department officials say the idea has already been presented to Defense Secretary Gates. A decision is expected as early as this week.

I almost hope Nuke doesn't read this post, although I'm not sure whether or not that would apply to him.

[southsider2k5]

I'm not sure which bit of news I want to highlight today. So #1, on the voter fraud canard the Republicans have been trying to use to steer elections in their direction...

Yup. They looked into it, found it wasn't a problem, and then the Administration told them to shut up because they needed those voter fraud claims to try to cut down on Dem votes.

 

So does this mean all of the claims of stolen elections are wrong as well?

[Balta1701]

So does this mean all of the claims of stolen elections are wrong as well?

In 2004, I believe so, yes. In 2000...well...that election was decided by a 5-4 vote, so that's at least open to personal interpretation as to whether or not the Supreme's actions were justified.

[FlaSoxxJim]

I think it is important to distinguish here between votor fraud and election fraud.

 

The playing up of the importance of individual votor fraud is purportedly based on the desire to get more stringent voter identification/verification laws in place in all states because that will have the known effect of decreasing minority voter turnout.

 

The accusations of election-rigging, electronic voting missaps, and systemic partisan plots to trick/scare specific voter segments out of showing up to vote are issues distinct from individual cases of voter fraud.

[FlaSoxxJim]

No, really. . . the dog ate my emails. . .

 

White House Claims It Lost RNC Emails

 

“The White House said Wednesday it had mishandled Republican Party-sponsored e-mail accounts used by nearly two dozen presidential aides, resulting in the loss of an undetermined number of e-mails concerning official White House business.”

 

White House spokesman Scott Stanzel “could not say what had been lost, and said the White House is working to recover as many as they can. The White House has now shut off employees’ ability to delete e-mails on the separate accounts, and is briefing staffers on how to better make determinations about when — and when not — to use them, Stanzel said.”

 

UPDATE: The Politico has more details:

 

This is a big problem for the White House, and Waxman said it raised ’serious legal and security concerns’ about the e-mail related activities of Bush administration aides.

 

Waxman’s staff are supposed to meet with RNC officials on Thursday about the “rnchq” and “gwb.43″ e-mail accounts, which some White House officials, like Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, use for authorized political work. Waxman suspects that White House aides were using the accounts to evade presidential record-keeping requirements.

 

The Politico also reports that the White House held a private briefing on the situation for some reporters, who relayed the message, “it’s really bad for the White House.”

[Balta1701]

Another article on voter fraud, the near total lack of any of it in this country, and the continuing obsession with it by certain folks who found claims of it a convenient path to electoral victory.

 

I keep being reminded when I post these of all the people last fall before the election who were saying that we absolutely needed voter-ID laws in every case to make sure that voter fraud didn't happen, and the fact that no one out there could really produce evidence of actual fraud happening anywhere to justify those laws.

Five years after the Bush administration began a crackdown on voter fraud, the Justice Department has turned up virtually no evidence of any organized effort to skew federal elections, according to court records and interviews.

 

Although Republican activists have repeatedly said fraud is so widespread that it has corrupted the political process and, possibly, cost the party election victories, about 120 people have been charged and 86 convicted as of last year.

 

Most of those charged have been Democrats, voting records show. Many of those charged by the Justice Department appear to have mistakenly filled out registration forms or misunderstood eligibility rules, a review of court records and interviews with prosecutors and defense lawyers show.

 

In Miami, an assistant United States attorney said many cases there involved what were apparently mistakes by immigrants, not fraud.

 

In Wisconsin, where prosecutors have lost almost twice as many cases as they won, charges were brought against voters who filled out more than one registration form and felons seemingly unaware that they were barred from voting.

 

One ex-convict was so unfamiliar with the rules that he provided his prison-issued identification card, stamped “Offender,” when he registered just before voting.

 

A handful of convictions involved people who voted twice. More than 30 were linked to small vote-buying schemes in which candidates generally in sheriff’s or judge’s races paid voters for their support.

 

A federal panel, the Election Assistance Commission, reported last year that the pervasiveness of fraud was debatable. That conclusion played down findings of the consultants who said there was little evidence of it across the country, according to a review of the original report by The New York Times that was reported on Wednesday.

 

Mistakes and lapses in enforcing voting and registration rules routinely occur in elections, allowing thousands of ineligible voters to go to the polls. But the federal cases provide little evidence of widespread, organized fraud, prosecutors and election law experts said.

 

“There was nothing that we uncovered that suggested some sort of concerted effort to tilt the election,” Richard G. Frohling, an assistant United States attorney in Milwaukee, said.

 

Richard L. Hasen, an expert in election law at the Loyola Law School, agreed, saying: “If they found a single case of a conspiracy to affect the outcome of a Congressional election or a statewide election, that would be significant. But what we see is isolated, small-scale activities that often have not shown any kind of criminal intent.”

 

For some convicted people, the consequences have been significant. Kimberly Prude, 43, has been jailed in Milwaukee for more than a year after being convicted of voting while on probation, an offense that she attributes to confusion over eligibility.

 

In Pakistan, Usman Ali is trying to rebuild his life after being deported from Florida, his legal home of more than a decade, for improperly filling out a voter-registration card while renewing his driver’s license.

 

In Alaska, Rogelio Mejorada-Lopez, a Mexican who legally lives in the United States, may soon face a similar fate, because he voted even though he was not eligible.

[FlaSoxxJim]

Holy Cr@p, that's a big dog!

 

White House lost 5 million emails.

 

“CREW learned that the Executive Office of the President (EOP) has lost over FIVE MILLION emails generated between March 2003 and October 2005. The White House counsel’s office was advised of these problems in 2005 and CREW has been told that the White House was given a plan of action to recover these emails, but to date nothing has been done to rectify this significant loss of records.” Read the full report HERE.

 

CREW Report

[FlaSoxxJim]

This wanker says if the World Bank board asks him to resign he will, but I'm not buying it. Here he's being caught in the middle of his second big juicy lie in the past couple weeks.

 

Documents Show Wolfowitz Lied About World Bank’s Family Planning Policy

 

wolfowitz200.jpg Yesterday, embattled World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz told NPR that under his presidency, there have been no “changes in the Bank’s policies in reproductive health in family planning.” He stated, “Let me make it very clear. Our policy hasn’t changed. … It is a development issue. The policy of this institution I think was very clear before I got here and it will remain very clear.”

 

But the Government Accountability Project (GAP) has uncovered Bank documents that show Wolfowitz and his appointees have attempted to reverse a long-standing policy of promoting family planning.

 

Juan José Daboub, a managing director (MD) hired by Wolfowitz last year, recently “instructed a team of Bank specialists to delete all references to family planning from the proposed Country Assistance Strategy (CAS) for Madagascar,” even though the country’s government has specifically asked for help in that area:

 

Additionally, a draft of the pending Health, Nutrition, and Population Strategy (HNP), obtained from Daboub’s office, mentions family planning just once — in reference to 2006 reproductive health project in the Caribbean that supported family planning services (p. 120). In contrast, the previous HNP (1997) identified a “lack of access to family planning services as a primary health challenge.”

 

Even though Wolfowitz is no longer a member of the Bush administration, his World Bank policies continue to support the President’s conservative priorities: promoting abstinence-only policies and conservative ideology over solid scientific research.

[kapkomet]

All of these "UN" (and yes, technically I know it's different, but really it's not) are cesspools of corruption and beaurocracy.

[FlaSoxxJim]

She's a bald-faced liar, and not a particularly good one, but dang with the new hairstyle that Dana Perino is a cutie.

 

 

I feel so dirty. . .

 

From her Wiki entry: Ms. Perino is most widely known for having a dulcet voice that makes her lies sound sexy.

Edited April 13, 2007 by FlaSoxxJim

[Balta1701]

Government mandated study on abstinence only programs discovers...Abstinence only programs appear to do exactly nothing.

Students who participated in sexual abstinence programs were just as likely to have sex a few years later as those who did not, according to a long-awaited study mandated by Congress.

 

Also, those who attended one of the four abstinence classes reviewed reported having similar numbers of sexual partners as those who did not attend the classes, and they first had sex at about the same age as their control group counterparts — 14.9 years, according to Mathematica Policy Research Inc.

[Soxy]

Speculation as to where this will lead?

[FlaSoxxJim]

Speculation as to where this will lead?

 

Obviously it is a sign that we've turned another corner in Iraq and that the situation on the ground continues to improve.

 

 

[FlaSoxxJim]

Karl and Clippy.

 

[Balta1701]

F***ing lobbyists . There goes another $100 billion in wasted donations out of tax dollars to the insurance and drug industries.

Democrats signaled that a main post-election agenda item — giving the government the authority to negotiate for lower drug prices in Medicare –appears headed for defeat in the Senate in a procedural vote scheduled for Wednesday.

 

“Based on the power of the insurance industry, the pharmaceutical industry, and the closeness they have to the administration and the Republicans, I don’t have a lot of confidence,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.), when asked about the bill’s prospects.

 

In any case, the White House has threatened to veto the measure.

[Balta1701]

The FBI has raided the Northern Virginia home of Rep. John Doolittle (R-Calif.), according to Congressional sources. No details are publicly available yet about the circumstances of the raid, but Doolittle and his wife, Julie, have been under federal investigation for their ties to the scandal surrounding imprisoned former lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

Supposedly, the search happened last friday, the same day Kevin Ring, an aid to Doolittle, abruptly resigned.

[FlaSoxxJim]

Interesting. . .

 

WASHINGTON — While Congress and the White House remain divided over what to do with the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants living in the USA, a new poll shows the American public appears to have reached a consensus on the question.

 

A USA TODAY/Gallup Poll taken last weekend found that 78% of respondents feel people now in the country illegally should be given a chance at citizenship.

[FlaSoxxJim]

And this just in from the Obvious Department:

 

Edited April 19, 2007 by FlaSoxxJim

[StrangeSox]

Is there any way they can get their hands on the appropriate servers and recover any of those emails, or any legal recourse for such a blatant action? Obstruction of justice?

[Balta1701]

Is there any way they can get their hands on the appropriate servers and recover any of those emails, or any legal recourse for such a blatant action? Obstruction of justice?

It's going to be a long process, I think, even just to get a chance to look at the emails that they didn't send. The White House is going to be claiming executive priveledge at every step, they've already shown this. They've instructed the RNC to hand over nothing in terms of emails, claiming that everything is priveledged. Congressman Waxman and the White House have exchanged a series of publically available letters so far, to no avail yet.

 

What will almost certainly happen is that eventually, there will be subpoenas issued by the Congress for those documents, the Administration will refuse to comply with the subpoenas, and it will wind up before the Supreme Court, possibly just dragging things out until the end of the administration. If it is found that they deliberately deleted emails to cover up possibly illegal acts or removed emails after they had been subpoenaed, then they would certainly be subject to obstruction claims. Without either of those, they have acted in clear violation of the Presidential Records Act, but I'm not sure what, if any, punishment it can mete out.

[StrangeSox]

It's good that we have people who have such blatant disrespect for the law and legal process heading up the Executive Branch.

[FlaSoxxJim]

Dana, I loves ya, but the power orange Nancy Reagan ensemble isn't cutting it. Black is definitely your color.

 

[Soxy]

Government mandated study on abstinence only programs discovers...Abstinence only programs appear to do exactly nothing.

Great Op ed about sex ed in Africa. I thought this was especially interesting in tandem with the recent findings about abstinence only programs efficacy in the US.