In Case You Think it Can't Happen Here

Steven Rosenfeld at AlterNet:

GOP Voter Suppression Comes to Wisconsin

By Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet
Posted on September 13, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/www.alternet.org/98702/

Partisan voter suppression efforts have many faces, but they all have one goal: suppressing your political opponent's voters.

In Wisconsin this past week, the Republican Attorney General, J.B. Van Hollen, filed a politically timed lawsuit that local election officials say will interfere with turnout for the presidential election on Nov. 4 and create a bureaucratic nightmare for election workers seeking to process a record number of new voter registrations before then. The AG's game plan is simple: create a bureaucratic nightmare to tie up the election machinery before Election Day and then create bottlenecks to confound voters on Election Day.

According to a Sept. 12 report by Steven Elbow at Madison.com, the Wisconsin AG filed suit this past Wednesday forcing election officials to use a tactic being employed by Republicans in other states -- notably Michigan, Kansas and Louisiana -- that involves removing people from voter rolls if the addresses on their voter registration forms does not match the address on their state driver's licenses. The rationale to purge would be based on the assumption that if the addresses did not match then the voter registration would be incorrect and therefore invalid.

Never mind that Wisconsin is among a handful of states where voters can register to vote on Election Day and ostensibly clear up or correct any registration information error at that time. The suit's goal is voter suppression, which would be accomplished by causing delays in voting when people show up on Election Day and are told they are not on voter rolls and then would have to go through the registration process, delaying them and holding up other voters in line behind them.

What's especially outrageous about this tactic in Wisconsin is that the very federal election law that makes this voter purging technique illegal in most states -- the National Voter Registration Act -- exempts Wisconsin from the NVRA's voter purging process because the state has Election Day Registration. In other words, because Wisconsin is among a handful of states with the most liberal, voter-friendly laws, its voters do not have the legal protections intended to stop voter suppression in other states.

Elbow's report on Madison.com quotes that city's clerk about the impact of the AG's suit.

"It will disenfranchise voters. That's what we're concerned about," City Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl said. "We're working on plans to make sure we don't have long lines at the polls, make sure that the lines can move smoothly and quickly. If we throw this into the mix, then it is going to slow things down."

The Madison.com report reveals the Wisconsin AG is reading from a long-established GOP playbook, justifying 'ballot security' concerns under the banner of preventing voter fraud.

"Van Hollen spokesman Kevin St. John said Van Hollen wants the GAB to verify voters who registered by mail since Jan. 1, 2006, because they didn't have to show an ID," Madison.com reported.

Imposing stricter voter ID laws has been the Republican legislative response to so-called Democratic voter fraud in recent years. The GOP defines this phenomena as hordes of Democrats posing as other voters and voting more than once to pad the vote count. While there are pre-existing election laws that ban such activity, and handfuls of prosecutions in states when people attempt to vote more then once, the Bush administration Justice Department has only prosecuted two dozen such cases despite devoting significant manpower hours by federal prosecutors to ferret out such abuse -- and even firing U.S. Attorneys who did not pursue such cases. The GOP strategy is based on identifying a handful of errors in filing new registration forms, a retail-level problem, if you will, and imposing a statewide response, a wholesale solution.

Stripped of discussing it in polite terms, it is akin to institutional racism -- since many of likely Democratic voters targeted by such ID laws are people of color, students and other under-represented sectors of the public.

The Madison.com report says the state's election director, Kevin Kennedy, told the AG that "the (state election) board is committed to preventing voter fraud, but (said) Van Hollen's demands are too much, too soon."

"The board believes it would be counter-productive to rush this effort and to create a significant risk, at best of unnecessary hardship and confusion at the polls, and at worst the disenfranchisement of Wisconsin citizens with a clear and legitimate right to vote," Kennedy said, in the Madison.com report.

Thousands of voter registrations will likely be affected if a court approves the suit, the Madison.com report said.

"As the election approaches, the phones at clerks' offices get busier, so people calling back to resolve discrepancies will be less likely to get through," the report said. "The closer we get to the election, the less time we have to clear things up," Witzel-Behl said.

The partisan nature of the AG's lawsuit was best expressed in a comment by Diane Hermann-Brown, Sun Prairie city clerk, who said the court needs to act quickly if it wants counties and municipalities to comply. "I don't think he's wrong on what he's doing," she said of Van Hollen. "It probably needs to get done. It just should have been done sooner."

Hermann-Brown's comment about the suit's timing underscores why this is a partisan action, not an exercise in good government.

Selective enforcement of voting rights laws is all about shaping election rules to one party's benefit. If the Wisconsin AG was so concerned about accurate voter registration rolls dating back to January 2006, one would think he would have acted sooner than 60 days before a presidential election. Something stinks in Wisconsin elections -- and it's not the cheese.

A court hearing is scheduled for later this week.

Steven Rosenfeld is a senior fellow at Alternet.org and co-author of What Happened in Ohio: A Documentary Record of Theft and Fraud in the 2004 Election, with Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman (The New Press, 2006).

© 2008 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/www.alternet.org/98702/

digg story

McCain-Palin: Running on a Lie

Eugene Robinson in the Washington Post, via Digg.com:

What kind of person tells a self-aggrandizing lie, gets called on it, admits publicly that the truth is not at all what she originally claimed -- and then goes out and starts telling the original lie again without changing a word?

Sarah Palin is beginning to seem like quite an unusual woman, and I'm not talking about her love of guns and "snow machines," her faith, her family or any of the presumably non-elite attributes that we in the "elite media" are accused of savaging. Wrongly accused, I should add; reporters are doing nothing more sinister than trying to find out who she is, how she thinks and what she has done in office.

One deeply troubling thing we're learning about Palin is that, as far as she's concerned, unambiguous fact doesn't appear to rise even to the level of inconvenience.

I'm sorry, but to explain my point I have to make another visit -- my last, I hope -- to the never-built, $398 million "Bridge to Nowhere" that was to join the town of Ketchikan, Alaska, with its airport on the other side of the Tongass Narrows.

You'll recall that in her Republican convention speech, Palin burnished her budget-hawk credentials by claiming she had said "thanks but no thanks" to a congressional earmark that would have paid most of the cost. A quick check of the public record showed that Palin supported the bridge when she was running for governor, continued to support it once she took office and dropped her backing only after the project -- by then widely ridiculed as an example of pork-barrel spending -- was effectively dead on Capitol Hill.

In her interview with ABC's Charles Gibson, Palin 'fessed up. It was "not inappropriate" for a mayor or a governor to work with members of Congress to obtain federal money for infrastructure projects, she argued. "What I supported," she said, "was the link between a community and its airport."

Case closed. Except that on Saturday, days after the interview, Palin said this to a crowd in Nevada: "I told Congress thanks but no thanks to that Bridge to Nowhere -- that if our state wanted to build that bridge, we would build it ourselves."

That's not just a lie, but an acknowledged lie. What she actually told Congress was more like, "Gimme the money for the bridge" -- and then later, after the whole thing had become an embarrassment, she didn't object to using the money for other projects.

I'm not shocked to learn that politicians sometimes lie. To cite an example that comes immediately to mind, John McCain's campaign ads attacking Barack Obama have taken such liberties that even Karl Rove says he wonders if they've gone too far. But it's weird for a politician -- or anyone else, really -- to maintain that an assertion is true after admitting that it isn't true.

Maybe Palin cynically believes she can keep using the "no thanks" line and manage to stay one step ahead of the truth police. Maybe she calculates that audiences would rather believe her than their lying eyes. Or maybe she really believes her own fantasy-based version of events. Maybe the Legend of Sarah Palin has become, on some level, more real to her than actual history.

And quite a legend it's turning out to be. The Post reported Sunday that as mayor of tiny Wasilla, Palin pressured the town librarian to remove controversial books from the shelves, cut funds for the town museum but somehow found the money for a new deputy administrator slot and told city employees not to talk to reporters.

And the New York Times reported Sunday that as governor, Palin appointed a high school classmate, Franci Havemeister, to a $95,000-a-year job as head of the State Division of Agriculture. Havemeister "cited her childhood love of cows as a qualification for running the roughly $2 million agency," the Times reported, noting her as one of at least five schoolmates to whom Palin has given high-paying jobs in state government.

Nothing against cows. Nothing against high-school BFFs and being true to your school. But a different picture of Sarah Palin is beginning to emerge. The McCain campaign would like us to see a straight-talking, gun-toting, moose-eviscerating, lipstick-wearing frontierswoman. Instead, we're beginning to discern an ambitious, opportunistic politician who makes no bones about rewarding friends and punishing those who stand in her way -- and who believes that truth is nothing more, and nothing less, than what she says it is.

The writer will answer questions at 1 p.m. today at http://www.washingtonpost.com. His e-mail address is eugenerobinson@washpost.com.

Read more from Eugene Robinson at washingtonpost.com's new opinion blog, PostPartisan.

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Chris Kelly: Sarah Palin Isn't Not Not Dis-Un-Lying

Everything gets slick in Alaska, I guess. Even the past.

read more | digg story

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: Governor Palin's Reading List

Fascist writer Westbrook Pegler, an avowed racist who Sarah Palin approvingly quoted in her acceptance speech for the moral superiority of small town values, expressed his fervent hope about my father, Robert F. Kennedy, as he contemplated his own run for the presidency in 1965, that "some white patriot of the Southern tier will spatter his spoonful of brains in pubic premises before the snow flies."It might be worth asking Governor Palin for a tally of the other favorites from her reading list.

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Editorial from today's New York Times. Clearly, everything McCain says and does calls his judgment into question...and yet, there is a good chance that he will be elected. Which in turn calls our judgment into question, no?


September 13, 2008

Gov. Palin’s Worldview

As we watched Sarah Palin on TV the last couple of days, we kept wondering what on earth John McCain was thinking.

If he seriously thought this first-term governor — with less than two years in office — was qualified to be president, if necessary, at such a dangerous time, it raises profound questions about his judgment. If the choice was, as we suspect, a tactical move, then it was shockingly irresponsible.

It was bad enough that Ms. Palin’s performance in the first televised interviews she has done since she joined the Republican ticket was so visibly scripted and lacking in awareness.

What made it so much worse is the strategy for which the Republicans have made Ms. Palin the frontwoman: win the White House not on ideas, but by denigrating experience, judgment and qualifications.

The idea that Americans want leaders who have none of those things — who are so blindly certain of what Ms. Palin calls “the mission” that they won’t even pause for reflection — shows a contempt for voters and raises frightening questions about how Mr. McCain and Ms. Palin plan to run this country.

One of the many bizarre moments in the questioning by ABC News’s Charles Gibson was when Ms. Palin, the governor of Alaska, excused her lack of international experience by sneering that Americans don’t want “somebody’s big fat résumé maybe that shows decades and decades in that Washington establishment where, yes, they’ve had opportunities to meet heads of state.”

We know we were all supposed to think of Joe Biden. But it sure sounded like a good description of Mr. McCain. Those decades of experience earned the Arizona senator the admiration of people in both parties. They are why he was our preferred candidate in the Republican primaries.

The interviews made clear why Americans should worry about Ms. Palin’s thin résumé and lack of experience. Consider her befuddlement when Mr. Gibson referred to President Bush’s “doctrine” and her remark about having insight into Russia because she can see it from her state.

But that is not what troubled us most about her remarks — and, remember, if they were scripted, that just means that they reflect Mr. McCain’s views all the more closely. Rather, it was the sense that thoughtfulness, knowledge and experience are handicaps for a president in a world populated by Al Qaeda terrorists, a rising China, epidemics of AIDS, poverty and fratricidal war in the developing world and deep economic distress at home.

Ms. Palin talked repeatedly about never blinking. When Mr. McCain asked her to run for vice president? “You have to be wired in a way of being so committed to the mission,” she said, that “you can’t blink.”

Fighting terrorism? “We must do whatever it takes, and we must not blink, Charlie, in making those tough decisions of where we go and even who we target.”

Her answers about why she had told her church that President Bush’s failed policy in Iraq was “God’s plan” did nothing to dispel our concerns about her confusion between faith and policy. Her claim that she was quoting a completely unrelated comment by Lincoln was absurd.

This nation has suffered through eight years of an ill-prepared and unblinkingly obstinate president. One who didn’t pause to think before he started a disastrous war of choice in Iraq. One who blithely looked the other way as the Taliban and Al Qaeda regrouped in Afghanistan. One who obstinately cut taxes and undercut all efforts at regulation, unleashing today’s profound economic crisis.

In a dangerous world, Americans need a president who knows that real strength requires serious thought and preparation.

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

Not Ready. Or, if You Prefer, Half-Baked.

Another spot-on editorial by Bob Herbert in today's New York Times:

September 13, 2008

Op-Ed Columnist

She’s Not Ready

By BOB HERBERT

While watching the Sarah Palin interview with Charlie Gibson Thursday night, and the coverage of the Palin phenomenon in general, I’ve gotten the scary feeling, for the first time in my life, that dimwittedness is not just on the march in the U.S., but that it might actually prevail.

How is it that this woman could have been selected to be the vice presidential candidate on a major party ticket? How is it that so much of the mainstream media has dropped all pretense of seriousness to hop aboard the bandwagon and go along for the giddy ride?

For those who haven’t noticed, we’re electing a president and vice president, not selecting a winner on “American Idol.”

Ms. Palin may be a perfectly competent and reasonably intelligent woman (however troubling her views on evolution and global warming may be), but she is not ready to be vice president.

With most candidates for high public office, the question is whether one agrees with them on the major issues of the day. With Ms. Palin, it’s not about agreeing or disagreeing. She doesn’t appear to understand some of the most important issues.

“Do you believe in the Bush doctrine?” Mr. Gibson asked during the interview. Ms. Palin looked like an unprepared student who wanted nothing so much as to escape this encounter with the school principal.

Clueless, she asked, “In what respect, Charlie?”

“Well, what do you interpret it to be?” said Mr. Gibson.

“His worldview?” asked Ms. Palin.

Later, in the spin zones of cable TV, commentators repeatedly made the point that there are probably very few voters — some specifically mentioned “hockey moms” — who could explain the Bush doctrine. But that’s exactly the reason we have such long and intense campaigns. You want to find the individuals who best understand these issues, who will address them in sophisticated and creative ways that enhance the well-being of the nation.

The Bush doctrine, which flung open the doors to the catastrophe in Iraq, was such a fundamental aspect of the administration’s foreign policy that it staggers the imagination that we could have someone no further than a whisper away from the White House who doesn’t even know what it is.

You can’t imagine that John McCain or Barack Obama or Joe Biden or Hillary Clinton or Joe Lieberman would not know what the Bush doctrine is. But Sarah Palin? Absolutely clueless.

Ms. Palin’s problem is not that she was mayor of a small town or has only been in the Alaska governor’s office a short while. Her problem (and now ours) is that she is not well versed on the critical matters confronting the country at one of the most crucial turning points in its history.

The economy is in a tailspin. The financial sector is lurching about on rubbery legs. We’re mired in self-defeating energy policies. We’re at war. And we are still vulnerable to the very real threat of international terrorism.

With all of that and more being the case, how can it be a good idea to set in motion the possibility that Americans might wake up one morning to find that Sarah Palin is president?

I feel for Ms. Palin’s son who has been shipped off to the war in Iraq. But at his deployment ceremony, which was on the same day as the Charlie Gibson interview, Sept. 11, she told the audience of soldiers that they would be fighting “the enemies who planned and carried out and rejoiced in the death of thousands of Americans.”

Was she deliberately falsifying history, or does she still not know that Iraq and Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with the Sept. 11 attacks?

To burnish the foreign policy credentials of a vice presidential candidate who never even had a passport until last year, the Republicans have been touting Alaska’s proximity to Russia. (Imagine the derisive laughter in conservative circles if the Democrats had tried such nonsense.) So Mr. Gibson asked Ms. Palin, “What insight into Russian actions, particularly in the last couple of weeks, does the proximity of the state give you?”

She said, “They’re our next-door neighbors. And you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska. From an island in Alaska.”

Mr. Gibson tried again. “But what insight does that give you,” he asked, “into what they’re doing in Georgia?”

John McCain, who is shameless about promoting himself as America’s ultimate patriot, put the best interests of the nation aside in making his incredibly reckless choice of a running mate. But there is a profound double standard in this country. The likes of John McCain and George W. Bush can do the craziest, most irresponsible things imaginable, and it only seems to help them politically.

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

10 Things We're Looking Forward to Now That the Large Hadron Collider Is Running

From Woot.com:

10 Things We're Looking Forward To Now That The Large Hadron Collider Is Running

by Scott Lydon Wednesday September 10, 2008 4:15 PM

Since the total destruction of the planet is apparently off the table...

1. Suddenly much harder to get particle beams insured
2. Brief, sudden portal to empty dimension where we can dump all those Sansas
3. The return of that battleship we lost in the Philadelphia Experiment
4. Last minute lawsuit from Fox that claims they have rights to make a Hadron Collider and they just now noticed it
5. Crazed Doctor McCoy falls through, meets a woman, has to watch her die to stop the Nazis
6. "Hadron" replaces "Caden" as the hot new name for baby boys
7. All Swiss chocolate now tastes a little strange but no one knows why
8. New particle discovered, named after Tails from Sonic the Hedgehog
9. Fred Phelps opens godhatesbosons.com
10. Buyer’s remorse from the scientists as they realize that the Extra Large Hadron Collider was only thirty nine cents more

John McCain and his Blizzard of LIES

This year, the McCain campaign keeps making assertions that anyone with an Internet connection can disprove in a minute. These stories have two things in common: they’re all claims recently made by the McCain campaign — and they’re all out-and-out lies.

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I Think This Battle Is Lost

From yet another of my surveys:


In case it's too small to read, it says In what ways does Hampton Inn/Suites show it's conservation efforts?

Of course, it should say In what ways does Hampton Inn/Suites show its conservation efforts?It's is a contraction, for it is or it has.

In my various pedagogic undertakings, I have advised students to avoid this silly, third-grade error by mentally--or, if they prefer. physically--rewording the sentence utilizing it is. If the sentence makes sense, then they should use it's. If it doesn't, they should use its.

Apparently, I'm the only one sharing this advice. Or else it's being roundly ignored by the pupils and former pupils of all the others who are sharing similar advice.

It's one thing when a local mom-and-pop operation publishes such a foolish error. It's quite another when a big international market-research firm can't manage grade-school punctuation.

And when that big international market-research firm is part of a gigantic publishing conglomeroid, well, the irony is almost unbearable, no?

The Scream Machine

As long as people are talking about barnyard beauty tips, they're not talking about substance...If you [McCain] scream bloody murder every day, however, people eventually stop taking you seriously...there will be at least four key moments when the McCain-Palin campaign will be unable to avoid the issues.

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Intriguing Fakery

Via YouTube, obviously...

McCain Lies Again: Ad on Sex Education Distorts Obama Policy

A McCain ad that claims Barack Obama favors “comprehensive sex education” for kindergarteners contains serious misrepresentations... or to put it more bluntly, John McCain and his campaign spread more lies.

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Dig THIS, Digg!

A little while ago I sent the following comment to Digg.com. It’s in reference to my post of a few days ago in re Digg’s “bury” function being abused to flag virtually all negative or unflattering article about the McCain-Palin ticket as “possibly inaccurate”:

I have noticed lately that articles critical of McCain-Palin (and in at least one case, an article COMPLAINING about criticism of McCain-Palin) are almost invariably accompanied by "[Reported by Diggers as Possibly Inaccurate]." These are not exclusively blogs or opinion pieces, but news reports from reliable news organizations. (Example:" Palin bills gov't for travel expenses while staying at home" from the Washington Post; "Polls admit to asking a higher number of Republicans" from the Huffington Post; "Sarah Palin's Alaskonomics" from Time; and many more.)

It is clear, then, that the "bury" function in Digg.com is being abused by McCain partisans, and possibly even operatives, who are attempting to cast doubt on anything that may be construed as negative or unflattering about their candidate.

In this, Digg.com is complicit. The "bury" function simply means I DON'T LIKE SOMETHING, not that it is inaccurate. But Digg's policy is to record "bury" clicks and then, at some magic tipping point, announce that the article in question is "possibly inaccurate."

"I don't like this" does NOT equal "This is inaccurate."

Someone could post an article that says Monday follows Sunday, and if I organized enough Diggers (as evidently the McCain camp has done) and instructed them to "bury" the article, that article would eventually turn up as "possibly inaccurate"...even though Monday DOES follow Sunday!

Clearly, Digg needs to reconsider the "bury" function. It seems to serve no real purpose, and in this election season is obviously being abused. I strongly encourage you to stop this abuse by terminating the "bury" function, at least until after the presidential election.

Failing that, I strongly encourage you to do away with the "possibly inaccurate" assertion, and go with the much more accurate disclaimer "Buried by XX Diggers," since "inaccurate" is, well, inaccurate.

I’ll keep you posted on what sort of a response I might get.

Wow. It's Been Ages Since My Last Cross-Burning!

Palin Billed State for Nights Spent at Home

From the Washington Post -- ANCHORAGE, Sept. 8 -- Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has billed taxpayers for 312 nights spent in her own home during her first 19 months in office, charging a 'per diem' allowance intended to cover meals and incidental expenses while traveling on state business.

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McCain ally moves to curb probe of Palin

This at Newsweek.com:

Team McCain and the Trooper

Nominee's ally moves to curb probe of Palin

Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball

Newsweek Web Exclusive

Updated: 9:36 PM ET Sep 5, 2008

Key Alaska allies of John McCain are trying to derail a politically charged investigation into Gov. Sarah Palin's firing of her public safety commissioner in order to prevent a so-called "October surprise" that would produce embarrassing information about the vice presidential candidate on the eve of the election.

In a move endorsed by the McCain campaign Friday, John Coghill, the GOP chairman of the state House Rules Committee, wrote a letter seeking a meeting of Alaska's bipartisan Legislative Council in order to remove the Democratic state senator in charge of the so-called "troopergate" investigation.

Coghill charged that the senator, Hollis French, had "politicized" the probe by making a number of public comments in recent days, including telling ABC News that Palin had a "credibility problem" and that the investigation into the firing of public safety commissioner Walter Monegan was "likely to be damaging to the administration" and could be an "October surprise." Wrote Coghill: "The investigation appears to be lacking in fairness, neutrality and due process."

The investigation, authorized by the Legislative Council last July, revolves around charges that Palin abused her power by embroiling the governor's office in a bitter family feud involving her ex-brother in law, a state trooper named Mike Wooten. Specifically, the council is investigating whether Palin fired Monegan when he refused to dismiss Wooten (who at the time was involved in an ugly custody battle with Palin's sister) after getting repeated complaints about him from the governor and her husband, Todd Palin. (Among the allegations that were raised against Wooten by Palin's sister: he had Tasered his ten-year-old stepson and shot a moose without a permit.) Palin has denied wrongdoing; Monegan has said he believes his firing was connected to his refusal to fire Wooten.

French, the Democrat overseeing the probe, has hired a special counsel to determine, in effect, whether Palin "used her public office to settle a private score," he recently said. He has also suggested that the probe may turn up evidence that state laws were violated by Palin's aides because they pulled confidential personnel files on the trooper.

But Coghill, who told NEWSWEEK that he has the backing of Republican Speaker of the House John Harris in his effort to remove French, suggested Friday that the investigation into Palin's firing of Monegan should be shut down entirely. "If this has been botched up the way it has, there's a question as to whether it should continue," Coghill told NEWSWEEK.

The move underscored the huge political stakes in the outcome of a legislative investigation that is being closely monitored by both the McCain and Obama campaigns because of its potential impact on the fall election. "How can this possibly be read as anything but a partisan attempt to shut down a legitimate investigation that was approved and funded with bipartisan support?" said one state Democratic legislative aide, who asked not to be identified because of the political sensitivities. Coghill told NEWSWEEK that he decided to write his letter to strip French of his position on his own-without any coaxing by McCain campaign officials.

But a top McCain campaign official acknowledged that the GOP lawyer had given the campaign a "heads up" about his letter and that the McCain campaign approved of the effort to remove French.

"An investigation that was supposed to be non-partisan has become a political circus and has gotten out of control," said Taylor Griffin, a top communications aide dispatched from McCain campaign headquarters to Alaska this week to monitor the investigation and related matters. (Griffin also said that Palin has "nothing to hide" about the Wooten matter.)

As a further sign of the sensitivity of the probe, a lawyer for Palin told NEWSWEEK Friday that Todd Palin, the governor's husband, was in the process of hiring his own separate counsel to represent him in the legislature's probe. Thomas Van Flein, Governor Palin's lawyer, would not identify who is now representing the governor's husband. But he sought to deflect charges that Todd Palin, a commercial fisherman and oil company worker, had improperly intervened in state business by inviting Monegan to the governor's office and asking him to look into Wooten's status on the state police force. (For his part, Wooten has acknowledged that he "made mistakes," but that he was "punished appropriately" when he was suspended from the police force for five days in 2006.)

In an interview on Friday, Van Flein sought to deflect charges that Todd Palin may have acted improperly by talking to the state public safety commissioner about Wooten. Todd was "the governor's husband and a citizen of the state and he has every right to an opinion as [does] everyone else," Van Flein said.

One major reason the probe is so sensitive is that it raises the prospect that Governor Palin's credibility could be called into a question in a major state probe on the eve of the election. When the "troopergate" story broke over the summer, Palin adamantly denied that anybody in her administration exerted any pressure on Monegan to fire Wooten. But only weeks later, a tape recording surfaced in which another one of her top aides, Frank Bailey, was heard telling a police lieutenant, "Todd and Sarah are scratching their heads, 'Why on earth hasn't this, why is this guy [Wooten] still representing the department?'"

French today acknowledged that some of his public comments about the ongoing probe may have been out of bounds. "I said some things I shouldn't have said," he told NEWSWEEK. But he insisted he had no intention of stepping down because the investigation was really being conducted by Steve Branchflower, a retired state prosecutor who was hired as the special counsel in the probe. French also said today he had moved up the deadline for Branchflower to produce his report. Although it was originally due Oct. 31, the Friday before the election, it will now be completed Oct. 10-in order to be "as far away from the election" as possible.

In the interview with NEWSWEEK, Van Flein, Governor Palin's lawyer, raised other objections to the troopergate probe. He said the legislative investigation ran counter to the Alaska Constitution because it was being conducted in secret and without strict procedural rules. He said that in the "post-McCarthy era", he would have expected more due process guarantees.

Van Flein also told NEWSWEEK that as part of defense preparations for the investigation, he had taken his own depositions from potential witnesses—including one this week who refused to give testimony to the Legislature's special counsel. That was Frank Bailey, the former senior Palin aide who was recorded mentioning the concerns of Palin and her husband that Wooten was still on the police force.

In the deposition taken by Van Flein, which Palin's lawyer made available to NEWSWEEK, Bailey acknowledged he had "overstepped my boundaries... I should not have spoken for the governor, or Todd, for that matter. I went out on my own on this discussion."

But Bailey also confirmed in the deposition that Palin had herself raised Wooten's name with the state police during her first security briefing after she won election as governor in November 2006. Bailey said he sat in on the briefing with Gary Wheeler, then head of the governor's security detail. Wheeler asked Palin and her husband whether they were aware of any threats against her that the new bodyguards should be concerned about. "They specifically brought up only one person, and that was Mike Wooten," Bailey testified. "There was a serious genuine concern about not only their safety but the safety of their family, their kids, their nieces, nephews, her father, regarding Trooper Wooten." Bailey testified that Sarah Palin never asked him to do anything about Trooper Wooten, but that Todd Palin did talk to him about "issues about Trooper Wooten," and expressed "frustration" that the state police were doing nothing to respond to the Palins' concerns.

URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/157439

© 2008

Digg's Inaccurate "Inaccurates"

A few minutes ago, I shared this observation with my chum Jerry, and thought it worth posting here as well. I wrote:

I have noted, in browsing on Digg.com, that a fair number of articles that are not entirely adulatory toward McCain and Palin are flagged "Reported by Diggers as Possibly Inaccurate." Interestingly, these articles--at least the ones I've noted--are not from blogs or YouTube or fringe publications with dubious standards or motives. Rather, they are from Newsweek, the New York Daily News, CNN, and the like. Obviously, this is no guarantee against inaccuracy, but having read several of the articles in question I began to wonder why and how they had been so flagged. And so I browsed through Digg's FAQ and found this:

What does it mean when a story has a message saying it may be inaccurate?
If a story has been repeatedly buried by the Dugg community, with the reason being that it is inaccurate, we display a message next to the story indicating that it may be inaccurate.

In other words, if I don't like something that someone has Dugg, I merely have to hit the "bury" button...and encourage you to do so, too, and eleventy other friends and so on, and then at some magic tipping point Digg announces that the article has been "Reported by Diggers as Possibly Inaccurate." Which is itself inaccurate: All that's happened is that a certain number of people have hit the "bury" button...they have offered no evidence to indicate the "inaccuracy" of a given article. Indeed, they have not even made an unsubstantiated claim that the story is inaccurate. All they've done is said they don't like it, and then Digg transmutes that into "inaccurate." Hmm.

As I expressed to my friend, I always make a point of Digging those articles when I see them, just to flip the bird at those who, it seems pretty obvious, are using the "bury" button--and Digg's lax definition of "inaccurate"--to cast doubt upon anything that points out something negative about their darlings.

Frankly, I think the "bury" button is a bad idea. The very concept is wide open to abuse, as is being illustrated.

And for the record, Diggers: "Don't like" or "don't agree with" is not the same thing as "inaccurate."

The phrasing is very odd, too: "Reported by Diggers as Possibly Inaccurate." Just about everything is possibly inaccurate, no?

Here are some recent articles from Digg's US Elections 2008 category flagged as "possibly inaccurate." Please note that I have limited myself only to articles from the so-called mainstream media, omitting even the higher-quality left-leaning sites such as the Huffington Post or DailyKos. Judge for yourself the "inaccuracy" of these pieces:

Sarah Palin may have women flocking - to Barack Obama

[Reported by Diggers as Possibly Inaccurate]

nydailynews.com — If John McCain wanted to poach the women's vote from Barack Obama, he shouldn't have tapped a running mate who dubbed herself a "pit bull with lipstick."More… (US Elections 2008)

McCain's Lies

[Reported by Diggers as Possibly Inaccurate]

cnn.com — Lies McCain made during his convention speech.More… (US Elections 2008)

Palin's Speech Didn't Move Undecided or Democratic Women

[Reported by Diggers as Possibly Inaccurate]

news.yahoo.com — McCain's pandering to women improved her standing to women in focus groups in Nevada, but polling data suggests that there is no movement in national polling data, showing women are not stupid like John McCain and Karl Rove think they are. More… (US Elections 2008)

McCain Operatives Trying to Derail Palin Investigation

[Reported by Diggers as Possibly Inaccurate]

newsweek.com — Key Alaska allies of John McCain are trying to derail a politically charged investigation into Gov. Sarah Palin's firing of her public safety commissioner in order to prevent a so-called "October surprise" that would produce embarrassing information about the vice presidential candidate on the eve of the election. More… (US Elections 2008)

Palin's Speech Raises $1M for Republicans; $8M for Democrats

[Reported by Diggers as Possibly Inaccurate]

blogs.wsj.com — Sarah Palin’s speech to the convention Wednesday night energized conservatives and inspired excited Republicans to donate a cool $1 million to the RNC's effort to elect John McCain. Bloomberg reported that Palin’s speech was even better for Democrats who got over $8 million in donations since Wednesday!More… (US Elections 2008)

The Answer Is Obvious!

This from Booster Shots in the Los Angeles Times:

Booster Shots

Oddities, musings and some news from the world of health.

Thinking too hard might make you fat

12:01 PM, September 4, 2008

Sitting around doing nothing doesn't burn many calories. Sitting around working on a computer doesn't either. But we apparently eat as if it does.

Researchers at Universite Laval in Canada gave three 45-minute tasks to 14 women. The first task: to relax in a sitting position. The second task: to read a document and write a summary of it. The third task: to complete a variety of memory and attention tests on the computer.

Then the participants were invited to pig out at a buffet.

The researchers had already established that the mental work required only three more calories than simply sitting. But the women ate 203 more calories after the reading-writing task -- and 253 more calories after the memory and attention task -- than they did after hanging out. One doesn't need to compute the day's number of hours at the computer to know this doesn't bode well for the waistline.

The mental tasks were linked to greater fluctuations in glucose and insulin levels, pointed out the researchers, who also took blood samples of the women during the study. (No free buffet and all that...)

"Caloric overcompensation following intellectual work, combined with the fact that we are less physically active when doing intellectual tasks, could contribute to the obesity epidemic currently observed in industrialized countries," the study's main author, Jean-Philippe Chaput, said in a news release.

It's unlikely he's suggesting we should be lazier. But take from this what you will.

The study was published online recently in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine.

-- Tami Dennis

Photo credit: Fabrice Coffrini / AFT / Getty Images

Tough CNN Interview, McCain Cancels Larry King Appearance

Today at Thinkprogress.org-- Yesterday, Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) campaign spokesman Tucker Bounds appeared on CNN for an interview with Campbell Brown. Brown was tough on Bounds, refusing to let him spout typical campaign talking points. She repeatedly pressed him on Palin’s foreign policy experience and qualifications, asking him to name one decision that she made as commander-in-chief of the Alaskan National Guard. Bounds was unable to do so.Today, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer revealed that because of that tough interview, the McCain campaign has canceled the senator’s appearance on Larry King Live tonight: The McCain campaign said it believed that exchange was over the line and as a result the interview scheduled for Larry King Live with Sen. McCain was pulled. CNN does not believe that Campbell’s interview was over the line. We are committed to fair coverage of both sides of this historic election.CNN also replayed the interview between Brown and Bounds. Watch Blitzer’s announcement and the interview.The McCain campaign has repeatedly tried to intimidate the press. It is now angry about media coverage of Bristol Palin’s pregnancy, calling NBC’s reporting on it “irresponsible journalism.” Campaign staffers “even considered pulling out of one of the three presidential debates because it would be moderated by Tom Brokaw, a former NBC News anchorman.” When Newsweek wrote a cover story in May examining the hardball tactics conservatives might use in the general election, the McCain campaign “threatened to throw the magazine’s reporters off the campaign bus and airplane.”

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The Real Issue: Governor Palin and the Survival of the Republic

Robert Mackey at the Huffington Post, via Digg.com -- This is the nail in the GOP coffin. With Sarah Palin, "the United States is facing a situation where for the first time since 1860, we could end up with an elected official who is in favor of breaking up the Federal Union.'

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Stop the Arrests of Journalists. Sign the Letter.

Police in St. Paul arrested several journalists yesterday, including Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman and an AP photographer as they were covering protests of the Republican National Convention. And earlier this weekend, police raided a meeting of the video journalists' group I-Witness.

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McCain’s McGovern Moment

Garry Wills in today's New York Times:

The lesson from George McGovern’s campaign was that a vice-presidential candidate should be thoroughly vetted — a lesson apparently neglected by Senator John McCain.

read more | digg story

I Have Heard it Said

Some quotations. All of them, I think, are from A Word a Day, whose included quotations are usually just as interesting--and sometimes more interesting--than the proffered definition du jour itself.

It was our own moral failure and not any accident of chance, that while preserving the appearance of the Republic we lost its reality. -Marcus Tullius Cicero, statesman, orator, writer (106-43 BCE)

History is a vast early warning system. -Norman Cousins, editor and author (1915-1990)

The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them. -Patrick Henry, revolutionary (1736-1799)

Do not think of knocking out another person's brains because he differs in opinion from you. It would be as rational to knock yourself on the head because you differ from yourself ten years ago. -Horace Mann, educational reformer (1796-1859)

The perfection of a clock is not to go fast, but to be accurate. -Luc de Clapiers, marquis de Vauvenargues, moralist and essayist (1715-1747)

It is an ironic habit of human beings to run faster when we have lost our way. -Rollo May, psychologist (1909-1994)

People like to imagine that because all our mechanical equipment moves so much faster, that we are thinking faster, too. -Christopher Morley, writer (1890-1957)

Too often I would hear men boast of the miles covered that day, rarely of what they had seen. -Louis L'Amour, novelist (1908-1988)

There are many causes that I am prepared to die for but no causes that I am prepared to kill for. -Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948)

Tears are the safety valve of the heart when too much pressure is laid on it. -Albert Richard Smith, author and entertainer (1816-1860)

It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do a little. -Sydney Smith, writer and clergyman (1771-1845)

Only enemies speak the truth; friends and lovers lie endlessly, caught in the web of duty. -Stephen King, novelist (b. 1947)

Profits, like sausages... are esteemed most by those who know least about what goes into them. -Alvin Toffler, futurist and author (b. 1928)

To read fast is as bad as to eat in a hurry. -Vilhelm Ekelund, poet (1880-1949)

Roads endure longer than pyramids. -Karol Bunsch, novelist (1898-1987)

To delight in war is a merit in the soldier, a dangerous quality in the captain, and a positive crime in the statesman. -George Santayana, philosopher (1863-1952)

You can tell the ideals of a nation by its advertisements. -Norman Douglas, novelist (1868-1952)

The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards. -Anatole France, novelist, essayist, Nobel laureate (1844-1924)

Lots of times you have to pretend to join a parade in which you're not really interested in order to get where you're going. -Christopher Morley, writer (1890-1957)

The only thing one can give an artist is leisure in which to work. To give an artist leisure is actually to take part in his creation. -Ezra Pound, poet (1885-1972)

What's the Subject?

So this is at The Moderate Voice today:

September 2nd, 2008 by CAGLE CARTOONS

Daryl Cagle, MSNBC.com

A glance at the comments posted there illustrate to my satisfaction that those who left comments didn't get the cartoon. The comments are largely on two points:

A. She's a girl who made a mistake.

Granted.

B. Everyone should just leave her alone.

Um, the cartoon isn't about her. It's about her mother. Specifically, it's about her mother's blind obedience to the We Know What's Best for You wing of the GOP, that noisy and noisome branch of the party that seems to feel it is its God-given right--nay, duty--to prescribe and proscribe for everybody else, and yet feels no need to be held to its own philosophies. Its members preach what should be done about public education while sending their kids to private schools. Its members are opposed to universal health care for the poor while enjoying broad healthcare coverage for themselves. Its members insist that "abstinence only" is an appropriate program--the only appropriate program--for other people's kids while their own are obviously not practicing it.

It's not about the Palin girl. It's about the Palin girl's mother and the deep hypocrisy that guides her and endears her to the GOP base.

Wisdom from Bill O'Reilly

One thing about Bill O'Reilly and Faux News: They never cease to entertain. Here's this from Daily Kos:

Bill O'Reilly on teen pregnancies
by kos

Tue Sep 02, 2008 at 01:50:28 PM PDT

He was for blaming the parents before he was against it.

On the pinhead front, 16-year-old Jamie Lynn Spears is pregnant. The sister of Britney says she is shocked. I bet.

Now most teens are pinheads in some ways. But here the blame falls primarily on the parents of the girl, who obviously have little control over her or even over Britney Spears. Look at the way she behaves.

Last night, O'Reilly was beside himself that anyone would publicly discuss Bristol Palin's pregnancy.

Then again, hypocrite extraordinaire O'Reilly never met a glass house he didn't shatter.

Indeed. One of the great joys of the McCain camp's bizarre selection of Sarah Palin as their VP candidate is watching right-wingnuts trip over themselves to explain away all of the hypocrisy that the selection brings with it. O'Reilly's backpedaling above, for instance. Or various local and national GOP politicians trying to explain that now "experience" doesn't really matter at all...never mind what they've been saying about Barack Obama all these months.

Amazingly, they seem capable of doing all of this with a straight face, which makes me think they've been at it so long that they really don't know what lies, dissembling, hypocrisy, and smears are anymore!

Look Long & Hard At This Photograph, America.

I'm still not wild about the way things post here via Digg.com. But most of the time I'm on the run and need something quick and slick to get the job done, get something fixed that I may or may not return to later for further pithy comment.

But it's a little frustrating when the post in question hinges on a photo, and the photo doesn't post.

Well, anyway...

A post from earlier today: Shaun Mullen in The Moderate Voice, via Digg.com:

Look long and hard at this photograph, America. I mean really long and hard. Because when all is said and done, this is what selecting a vice presidential running mate is all about.

Look long and hard at this photograph, America. I mean really long and hard. Now, squint a little and picture Joe Biden raising his right hand to take the oath of office as a stunned Michelle Obama stands at his left side and Jill Biden at his right. A disturbing thought, but at the same time comforting. Because Biden would be ready to lead.

Look long and hard at this photograph, America. I mean really long and hard. Now, squint a little and picture Sarah Palin raising her right hand to take the oath of office as a stunned Cindy McCain stands at her left side and Todd Palin at her right. Not just a disturbing thought, but a nightmarish one because the Republican nominee-to-be rang up an obscure wingnut with a walk-in closet full of skeletons in a fit of pique.

Long long and hard at this photograph, America. I mean really long and hard. Because this is what selecting a vice presidential running mate is all about. This is not what John McCain is all about. What John McCain is all about is being a worn-out pol who is addled at best, pickled at worst and nothing if impetuous beyond his many years. Unfit to select, let alone lead.


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Experience? Never Mind

Michael Kinsey in the Washington Post, via Digg.com:

It seems like only yesterday that the Republican Party was complaining about Barack Obama's lack of foreign policy "experience." (As a matter of fact, when I started writing this, it actually was yesterday.) Even now, the Republican National Committee's main anti-Obama Web site has the witty address http://www.notready08.com. The contrast in experience, especially foreign policy experience, between John McCain and Obama was supposed to be the central focus of McCain's campaign.

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What McCain's Advisors Tried to Accomplish

Robert Creamer at Huffingtonpost.com, via Digg.com:Of course the final question the Palin appointment raises is McCain's own judgment and administrative ability. McCain had only talked to his new running made twice before he asked her to join the ticket. What was he thinking?

read more | digg story

Paul Krugman: Feeling No Pain

Paul Krugman in today's New York Times, via Digg.com:My first reaction to Bill Clinton’s convention speech was sheer professional jealousy: nobody, but nobody, has his ability to translate economic wonkery into plain, forceful English. In effect, Mr. Clinton provided an executive summary of the new Census report on income, poverty and health insurance — but he did it so eloquently, so seamlessly, that there was no sense that he was giving his audience a lecture.My second reaction was that in Mr. Clinton’s speech — as in the speeches by Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden (this column was filed before Barack Obama spoke on Thursday night) — one heard the fundamental difference between the two parties. Democrats say and, as far as I can tell, really believe that working Americans are getting a raw deal; Republicans, despite occasional attempts to sound sympathetic, basically believe that people have nothing to complain about.As it happens, the numbers support the Democrats. That Census report gives a snapshot of the economic status of American families in 2007 — that is, before the financial crisis started dragging the economy down and the unemployment rate up. It’s a given that 2008 will look much worse, so last year was as good as it will get in the Bush years. Yet working-age Americans had significantly lower median income in 2007 than they did in 2000. (The elderly, whose income is supported by Social Security — the program the Bush administration tried to kill — saw modest gains.) Meanwhile, poverty was up, and health insurance — especially the employment-based insurance on which most middle-class Americans depend — was down.But Republicans, very much including John McCain and his advisers, don’t believe there’s a problem.Former Senator Phil Gramm made headlines, and stepped down as co-chairman of the McCain campaign, after he described America as a “nation of whiners.” But how different was that remark, really, from Mr. McCain’s own declaration that “there’s been great progress economically” — progress that’s mysteriously invisible in the actual data — during the Bush years? And Mr. Gramm, by all accounts, remains a key economic adviser to Mr. McCain.Last week John Goodman, an influential figure in Republican health care circles, explained that we shouldn’t worry about the growing number of Americans without health insurance, because there’s no such thing as being uninsured. After all, you can always get treatment at an emergency room. And Mr. Goodman — he’s the president of the National Center for Policy Analysis, an important conservative think tank, and is often described as the “father of health savings accounts,” a central feature of the Bush administration’s health policy — wants the next president to issue an executive order prohibiting the Census Bureau from classifying anyone as uninsured. “Voilà!” he says. “Problem solved.”The truth, of course, is that visiting the emergency room in a medical crisis is no substitute for regular care. Furthermore, while a hospital will treat you whether or not you can pay, it will also bill you — and the bill won’t be waived unless you’re destitute. As a result, uninsured working Americans avoid visiting emergency rooms if at all possible, because they’re terrified by the potential cost: medical expenses are one of the prime causes of personal bankruptcy.Mr. Goodman has in the past, including in an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, described himself as an adviser to the McCain campaign on health policy. The campaign now claims that he is not, in fact, an adviser. But it’s a good bet that Mr. McCain’s inner circle shares Mr. Goodman’s views.You see, Mr. Goodman’s assertion that lack of health insurance is no problem precisely echoed what President Bush said a year ago: “I mean, people have access to health care in America. After all, you just go to an emergency room.” That’s because both men — like Mr. Gramm — were just saying in public what modern Republicans say when they talk to each other. Despite attempts to feign sympathy, the leaders of today’s G.O.P. fundamentally feel that Americans complaining about their economic and health care difficulties are, well, just a bunch of whiners.And that, ultimately, even more than their policy proposals, is what defines the difference between the parties.It’s true that elected Democrats are often too cautious — and too beholden to major donors — to be as progressive as the party’s activists would like. But even in the face of a Republican Congress, Mr. Clinton succeeded in pushing forward policies, like the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, that did a lot to help working families.And what one sees on the other side is a total lack of empathy for and understanding of the problems working Americans face. Mr. Clinton, famously, felt our pain. Republicans, manifestly, don’t. And it’s hard to fix a problem if you don’t even think it exists.

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Cenk Uygur: Hillary's Best Line: Were You In It For Me?

By Cenk Uygur in the Huffington Post, via Digg.com:This was a night with a lot of great lines. Even Bob Casey, Jr. who is not known as a rhetorical wiz had a couple of zingers. The four more months chant was terrific. And his line that McCain isn't a maverick, he's Bush sidekick was also really well done.I was expecting to be annoyed at how little Mark Warner went after Republicans, but instead I thought he laid out a good case for how Democrats offer every person a real shot at the American Dream. He showed that the Democratic Party wants you to succeed, wants you to be rich -- which is important and a message you hardly hear from Democrats (you often hear that they want you to do better, but aspiring for real wealth has not been a Democratic staple and it is in fact the real American Dream).Deval Patrick borrowed from Barney Frank effectively when he talked about government being an extension of the American people and how that is what we choose to do together. His line about having a stake in one another was great. It gave a sense of a community sticking together, which is what lies at the core of the Democratic Party.But despite all of this, Hillary Clinton stole the night. I have been a vocal critic of Hillary Clinton throughout the primaries and a skeptic of her intentions to unconditionally support the Democratic candidate. But she put all those doubts to rest tonight. She delivered. It was an A+ speech.The Twin Cities line about McCain and Bush being like twins was genuinely funny. And now every time they mention the Twin Cities during the Republican convention I'm going to think of Bush and McCain as twins.I am embarrassed to admit that the Harriet Tubman story actually gave me a chill down my spine (at least it wasn't up my leg). I loved it. I think everyone in the building loved it.But the best line in the speech was buried in the middle. Addressing her supporters, she said, "Were you in it for me?"What a great and poignant question. Did you really think this was all about me and not about the issues? Don't you remember that this was all about getting the people who need help the assistance that they desperately need? Did you forget that we started down this road because we wanted to provide Americans with a hope for a better future? That we wanted to make sure the rules weren't stacked against them? Did you think this was all about me?That is the winning line. That's the one that showed me that she genuinely did her best to actually convince her followers that they had to support Barack Obama. That's not a half-hearted effort. That's a line designed to win people over to her argument not over to her personally. Ironically, that's exactly what it did for me though. At the end of this long, contentious battle, Senator Clinton won me over when she was finally not trying to win me over.

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The News is Broken

From Newsweek.com via Digg.com:Broken NewsJust once during this convention, could the TV pundits get out of the way of the show?Time after time last evening, I flipped from the wall-to-wall coverage on C-Span—which is viewed, I imagine, largely by shut-ins and political completists—to see how CNN or MSNBC or Fox News broadcast a speech or performance. Time and again, they weren't broadcasting it at all. Instead, talking heads were talking to other talking heads about Hillary's dead-enders, or some other overblown story, at self-parodying length. The resulting coverage had about as much connection to what happened onstage last night as NBC's Olympics coverage would have had if Bob Costas had spent two full weeks asking other sportscasters how they feel about the shot put.

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McCain’s Tax Cuts Benefit the Rich Even More Than Bush

From Think Progress, via Digg.com:Examining McCain’s shifts on taxes today, the Wall Street Journal’s Martin Vaughan writes that “an apt description” for McCain’s tax proposals would be to say “that the wealthy would benefit most.” In fact, as the Cato Institute’s Chris Edwards points out, McCain’s proposals are aimed at the wealthy “even more so than Bush’s” ...

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Joe Biden To Show He's Not Afraid To Go After The GOP

From the Huffington Post, via DIgg:With the vice presidential nomination speech tonight by Joe Biden, Democrats will meet Barack Obama's bad cop -- an attacker who will not hesitate to go hard after the Republicans.

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English, or Something, as Official Language

This is hilarious! It's a compilation of images pulled together by kyledeb at Citizen Orange.

---

5 English Lessons From the Anti-Immigrant Movement

By kyledeb on August 8, 2008 8:21 AM

Any nativist will tell you that polls show 1,000% of 'Mericans support speaking only English in the United States of America. It doesn't matter if the U.S. can't even understand the languages of the countries it goes to war with (you don't need to understand people to shoot at them). If people can't speak English like they're supposed to, they're not real 'Mericans.

Using this iron-clad logic, I thought I'd compile a list of five English lessons for those that want to learn to how to be a real 'Merican and speak English.

1. Make English America's Offical Language



2. This is America and Our Only Lanaguage is English.



3. No Mas[!] Illegal Alliens 'R' Fugitives From Justice[!] Go Home[!]



4. We're Not Ra$cists, Your Are Illegal.



5. Get a Brain Morans[!]...Go USA[!]



In conclusion, English is America's Offical Lanaguage! Your 'R' Ra$cist Allien Morans!

Does Psystar have a legit argument in Apple countersuit?

A ZDNET Blog

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The crime that created Superman

On the night of June 2, 1932, the world's first superhero was born — not on the mythical planet of Krypton but from a little-known tragedy on the streets of Cleveland.

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Is this Question Somewhat Stupid, Stupid, Very Stupid...

From one of the online surveys with which I occasionally amuse myself:



Adding to the all-round dumbness of the question ("What is your favorite color, Green or Other?") is the annoying fact that (a) Hispanic and Latino are not universally regarded as the same thing*, and (b) neither Hispanic nor Latino is a race!

Other than that, though, a fine example of the art of the survey.
________________________

* This quoted at Wikipedia ("Hispanic and Latino Americans"):

Some authorities of American English maintain a distinction between the terms Hispanic and Latino:

"Though often used interchangeably in American English, Hispanic and Latino are not identical terms, and in certain contexts the choice between them can be significant. Hispanic, from the Latin word for "Spain," has the broader reference, potentially encompassing all Spanish-speaking peoples in both hemispheres and emphasizing the common denominator of language among communities that sometimes have little else in common. Latino—which in Spanish means "Latin" but which as an English word is probably a shortening of the Spanish word latinoamericano—refers more exclusively to persons or communities of Latin American origin. Of the two, only Hispanic can be used in referring to Spain and its history and culture; a native of Spain residing in the United States is a Hispanic, not a Latino, and one cannot substitute Latino in the phrase the Hispanic influence on native Mexican cultures without garbling the meaning. In practice, however, this distinction is of little significance when referring to residents of the United States, most of whom are of Latin American origin and can theoretically be called by either word."^[17]

17 "American Heritage Dictionary". Retrieved on 2007-03-18.

Is the Earth Quarantined???

Why haven't we met aliens yet? And why aren't we sending rockets all over the solar system? There is only one plausible explanation. Earth is being quarantined! A combination of higher alien civilizations and our own Earth-based military forces are working together to keep the Earth contained and neutralized.

read more | digg story