After the 2000 Florida election debacle, Congress established a body called the Election Assistance Commission to improve voting and democracy in this country. Two years ago, the commission approached me about doing a project that would take a preliminary look at voter fraud and intimidation and make recommendations for further research on the issues.
Because my approach to election issues tends to be more closely aligned with Democrats, I was paired with a Republican co-author. To further remove any taint of partisanship, my co-author and I convened a bipartisan working group to help us. We spent a year doing research and consulting with leaders in the field to produce a draft report. What happened next seems inexplicable. After submitting the draft in July 2006, we were barred by the commission’s staff from having anything more to do with it.
We said that our preliminary research found widespread agreement among administrators, academics and election experts from all points on the political spectrum that allegations of fraud through voter impersonation at polling places were greatly exaggerated. We noted that this position was supported by existing research and an analysis of several years of news articles. The commission chose instead to state that the issue was a matter of considerable debate. And while we found that problems of voter intimidation were still prevalent in a variety of forms, the commission excluded much of the discussion of voter intimidation.
We also raised questions about the way the Justice Department was handling complaints of fraud and intimidation. The commission excised all references to the department that might be construed as critical – or that Justice officials later took issue with. And all of the suggestions we received from political scientists and other scholars regarding methodologies for a more scientifically rigorous look at these problems were omitted.
We have learned that several Republican officials, including a state official, a former political appointee at the Justice Department and current Federal Election Commission member (Hans Von Spakovsky), and a Capitol Hill staffer complained about our project, particularly about my role in it. Officials at Justice were actively involved in the report throughout the process and even exerted some degree of editorial control over the new report. And it is evident from the commission’s “document dump” that its Republican general counsel assumed primary control over the rewriting of the report.
The Justice Department is investigating whether departing Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales gave false or misleading testimony to Congress on a broad range of issues, including the Bush administration’s warrantless surveillance program and the removal of nine U.S. attorneys last year, the lead investigator said today.
The disclosure by Inspector General Glenn A. Fine shows that internal investigations that began with the prosecutor firings have widened substantially to include a focus on Gonzales’s actions and statements.
Previously, Fine had confirmed only that the part of his inquiry concerning Gonzales involved whether the attorney general had sought to influence the testimony of a witness, aide Monica M. Goodling, before she testified to Congress.
Obviously not nearly as important as Friday’s anniversary of some woman dying in a car accident ten years ago…
After all, it’s not like the dept. formerly referred to as “justice” is gonna get better anytime soon…
Iraq has failed to meet all but three of 18 congressionally mandated benchmarks for political and military progress, according to a draft of a Government Accountability Office report. The document questions whether some aspects of a more positive assessment by the White House last month adequately reflected the range of views the GAO found within the administration.
“While the Baghdad security plan was intended to reduce sectarian violence, U.S. agencies differ on whether such violence has been reduced,” it states. While there have been fewer attacks against U.S. forces, it notes, the number of attacks against Iraqi civilians remains unchanged. It also finds that “the capabilities of Iraqi security forces have not improved.”
“Overall,” the report concludes, “key legislation has not been passed, violence remains high, and it is unclear whether the Iraqi government will spend $10 billion in reconstruction funds,” as promised.
Future administration assessments “would be more useful” if they backed up their judgments with more details and “provided data on broader measures of violence from all relevant U.S. agencies.”
But what’s really important is a dog getting 12 million…
When historians look back upon the disastrous tenure of Alberto R. Gonzales as Attorney General of the United States they will ask not only why he merited the job in the first place but why he lasted in it as long as he did. By any reasonable standard, the Gonzales Era at the Justice Department is void of almost all redemptive qualities. He brought shame and disgrace to the Department because of his lack of independent judgment on some of the most vital legal issues of our time…
WASHINGTON — The Bush administration has confirmed for the first time that American telecommunications companies played a crucial role in the National Security Agency’s domestic eavesdropping program after asserting for more than a year that any role played by the companies was a state secret
The acknowledgement was made in an unusual interview that Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, conducted with The El Paso Times last week in which he disclosed details on classified intelligence issues that the administration has long insisted would harm national security if discussed publicly.
“Under the president’s program, the terrorist surveillance program, the private sector had assisted us, because if you’re going to get access, you’ve got to have a partner,” McConnell said in the interview, a transcript of which The El Paso Times posted online Wednesday
AT&T and several major carriers are being sued over their role in the program — which permitted eavesdropping without warrants on the international communications of Americans suspected of terrorist ties — but the administration had sought to shut down the lawsuits by invoking the state secrets privilege, refusing to confirm whether the firms helped conduct the wiretaps.
It’s such a shame that all those screaming head wing-nuts have realized the error of their ways and no longer worry about these public disclosure of “state secrets” since Kommander Slappy McSilly became Prez-nit. Since release of this info will “cost American lives” maybe we should arrest McConnell for “material aid to our enemies”?
Democratic activists involved in a teleconference Friday said a preliminary deal was reached to hold a closed primary in mid-January, and Republican Party leaders said the GOP intends to follow suit. But legislative leaders have since said the date has not been finalized.
“Republicans are concerned about getting a date between Jan. 15 and Feb. 5,” said Matt Marsden, spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop, R-Rochester. “It’s in everybody’s interest to get this resolved so Michigan can be a player in the presidential campaign. The sooner the better.”
Marsden said Tuesday the specific date would be decided in a closed GOP caucus this morning.
A Jan. 15 election would put Michigan third in the pecking order, behind traditional early-birds Iowa and New Hampshire. In a closed primary, voters must choose a Democratic or Republican ballot.
Should the Senate pass the primary bills today, a vote could come up in the House as early as next week. Gov. Jennifer Granholm has said she would sign a bill setting up an early primary.
Anything that annoys Iowa and reduces the stupidity of corn ethanol subsidies gets my vote. Turn food into smog and don’t save any gas doing it, what a fine idea!
