Yes,.. MOTHER

XXOOXXOOXXXOOO,.. for you too.

Dianne Reem on NPR discusses hackable voting machines today---heard promos all through July 4th broadcasts. Is she not to be outdone by Lou Dobbs? Tune in and find out.

Thanks John.

Perhaps it is time for the progressive blogs to formally file a Declaration of Independence from the MSM, from the election war lords, and from spin that has made America politically dizzy.

A free, open, working, and honest election system would be a good start. But American democracy is so dependent on the corrupt election war lords that Independence now is harder than it was in 1776.

Note that the Declaration of Independence of 1776 starts with the words "IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776".

Nothing of that sort begins in congress anymore, these daze all they do is trumpet rubber stamp, siamese twin, and dependence to George.

Keep up the good work nevertheless.

Here is a link to an article of a journalist who has independence in mind, in place of embedded dependence on the regime.

He makes an interesting observation:

In retrospect, the real victims of Fox News weren't the liberals it attacked but the conservatives who believed it
...

We failed in our watchdog role, and we failed our country.

(ibid, bold added).

I can't really argue with the premise that the real victims of propaganda are those who believe the propaganda.

To be free a people must exercise their analytical cognition to discern the politically true from the politically false.

And must join together to "hold these truths". Good for us.

Voting Rights Act Nailed
To Burning Cross
Behind The 'Delay' In Renewing The Law Is A Scheme
For The Theft Of '08. White Sheets
Changed for Spreadsheets
By Greg Palast
For The Guardian - UK
6-23-6

NEW YORK --- Don't kid yourself. The Republican Party's decision yesterday to "delay" the renewal of the Voting Rights Act has not a darn thing to do with objections of the Republican's White Sheets Caucus.

Complaints by a couple of Good Ol' Boys to legislation has never stopped the GOP leadership from rolling over dissenters.

This is a strategic stall - meant to de-criminalize the Republican Party's new game of challenging voters of color by the hundreds of thousands.

In the 2004 Presidential race, the GOP ran a massive multi-state, multi-million-dollar operation to challenge the legitimacy of Black, Hispanic and Native-American voters. The methods used broke the law --- the Voting Rights Act. And while the Bush Administration's Civil Rights Division grinned and looked the other way, civil rights lawyers are circling, preparing to sue to stop the violations of the Act before the 2008 race.

Therefore, Republicans have promised to no longer break the law --- not by going legit but by eliminating the law.

The Act was passed in 1965 after the Ku Klux Klan and other upright citizens found they could use procedural tricks --- "literacy tests," poll taxes and more --- to block citizens of color from casting ballots.

De-criminalizing the "caging" lists

Here's what happened in '04 --- and what's in store for '08.

In the 2004 election, over THREE MILLION voters were challenged at the polls. No one had seen anything like it since the era of Jim Crow and burning crosses. In 2004, voters were told their registrations had been purged or that their addresses were "suspect."

Denied the right to the regular voting booths, these challenged voters were given "provisional" ballots. Over a million of these provisional ballots (1,090,729 of them) were tossed in the electoral dumpster uncounted.

Funny thing about those ballots. About 88% were cast by minority voters.

This isn't a number dropped on me from a black helicopter. They come from the raw data of the US Election Assistance Commission in Washington, DC.

At the heart of the GOP's mass challenge of voters were what the party's top brass called, "caging lists" --- secret files of hundreds of thousands of voters, almost every one from a Black-majority voting precinct.

When our investigations team, working for BBC TV, got our hands on these confidential files in October 2004, the Republicans told us the voters listed were their potential "donors." Really? The sheets included pages of men from homeless shelters in Florida.

Donor lists, my ass. Every expert told us, these were "challenge lists," meant to stop these Black voters from casting ballots.

When these "caged" voters arrived at the polls in November 2004, they found their registrations missing, their right to vote blocked or their absentee ballots rejected because their addresses were supposedly "fraudulent."

Why didn't the GOP honchos 'fess up to challenging these allegedly illegal voters? Because targeting voters of color is AGAINST THE LAW. The law in question is the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The Act says you can't go after groups of voters if you choose your targets based on race. Given that almost all the voters on the GOP hit list are Black, the illegal racial profiling is beyond even Karl Rove's ability to come up with an alibi.

The Republicans target Black folk not because they don't like the color of their skin. They don't like the color of their vote: Democrat. For that reason, the GOP included on its hit list Jewish retirement homes in Florida. Apparently, the GOP was also gunning for the Elderly of Zion.

These so-called "fraudulent" voters, in fact, were not fraudulent at all. Page after page, as we've previously reported, are Black soldiers sent overseas. The Bush campaign used their absence from their US homes to accuse them of voting from false addresses.

Now that the GOP has been caught breaking the Voting Rights law, they have found a way to keep using their expensively obtained "caging" lists: let the law expire next year. If the Voting Rights Act dies in 2007, the 2008 race will be open season on dark-skinned voters. Only the renewal of the Voting Rights Act can prevent the planned racial wrecking of democracy.

"Pre-clearance" and the Great Blackout of 2000

Before the 2000 presidential balloting, then Jeb Bush's Secretary of State purged thousands of Black citizens' registrations on the grounds that they were "felons" not entitled to vote. Our review of the files determined that the crimes of most on the list was nothing more than VWB --- Voting While Black.

That "felon scrub," as the state called it, had to be "pre-cleared" under the Voting Rights Act. That is, "scrubs" and other changes in procedures must first be approved by the US Justice Department.

The Florida felon scrub slipped through this "pre-clearance" provision because Katherine Harris' assistant assured the government the scrub was just a clerical matter. Civil rights lawyers are now on the alert for such mendacity.

The Burning Cross Caucus of the Republican Party is bitching that "pre-clearance" of voting changes applies only to Southern states. I have to agree that singling out the Old Confederacy is a bit unfair. But the solution is not to smother the Voting Rights law but to spread its safeguards to all fifty of these United States.

White Sheets to Spread Sheets

Republicans argue that the racial voting games and the threats of the white-hooded Klansmen that kept African-Americans from the ballot box before the 1965 passage of the Voting Rights Act no longer threaten Black voters.

That's true. When I look over the "caging lists" and the "scrub sheets," it's clear to me that the GOP has traded in white sheets for spreadsheets.

Big Dan #5

Congress is not so secretive on some of their screw America campaigns.

Two of them Kyl, and Graham, were caught lying to the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals.

They got caught (link here).

DREDD - (C) # 6

Sen. Kyl and Sen. Graham,.. what dirt-bags.

Amicus Brief detainee habeas corpus issues

Court of Appeals and Supreme Court

================

Wow - deceptive/nasty thing these United States Senators did.

These types of people are dead or walking zombies,..
they have no conscience,.. guilt,.. or remorse. Life to them is a constant grab fest,.. the hell with honesty,.. the hell with fairness,..the hell with telling the truth,... so what if your actions are beyond the perimeter's of the law.

DREDD,..
THX for sharing that facet of the Hamdan V. Rumsfeld case,.. I was not aware of that aspect.

Big Dan - (C) # 5

Your post said :

"The Republicans target Black folk not because they don't like the color of their skin. They don't like the color of their vote: Democrat. For that reason, the GOP included on its hit list Jewish retirement homes in Florida. Apparently, the GOP was also gunning for the Elderly of Zion."

===============

Not only is the Christian-Fascist right-wing party
planning to scrub/disenfranchise select groups from the ability to vote because there maybe an indication
that they may vote for the Democratic Party candidates.

These Christian Fundamentalists are not satisfied to just chase non-born again,.. Jesus worshipers away from the voting booth. They would like to chase them from their homes and neighborhoods.

Look what these Jesus freaks did to a
Jewish family in Delaware. How you worship,.. who
you pray to,..and what "good book" you rely upon has
become an acceptable measure as to how much freedom you are entitled to,.. not to be subject to "Christian" harassment.
Link

==============

KKKarl Rove intends to maximize and exploit the social divide between now and the November election. He will play this issue like we have never seen before. One can only hope that his ruthlessness and cunning to
divide and conquer the electorate,.. does not bring damage and/or cause irreparable harm to the social fabric which binds us all together.

Dredd #6

So this is on John Dean's (Nixon's lawyer) site huh? I heard about this months ago and didn't beleive it.

Senators Kyl and Graham, I know the word shame has no meaning to you, so I won't use it. There's really nothing to say!

Larry Bergen #9

John Dean writes for FindLaw, and the piece linked was excellent. John Dean may have been Nixon's lawyer, but he would not lie to Congress, would not cut his country's throat to save his own, or Nixon's, ass. He paid his debt to society, and has been nothing but a boon to it since. I CALL THAT A MAN! All would do well to read that piece Dredd linked, and catch a load of what slinking traitors we sometimes have to call "senators" did.

I have plenty to say to Kyl and Graham! Let me at 'em!

Agent99:

One of the most pathetic moments on television was when Lindsey, (but he's such a nice man) Graham started crying over poor Paula (Troopergate) Jones's civil liberties! Right up there with Jimmy (I have sinned/it's none of your damn business) Swaggart.

Both of these "men" are still on my television set. CRAP!