Greg is a bad attorney and is trying a stunt in voter id lawsuit

[Gothmog]

Greg was a toxic tort defense litigator who took joy in cheating widows and orphans out of money due to them. This line of the law does not take a great deal of intelligence. Since becoming Attorney General, Greg has been losing cases right and left. Greg lost both the redistricting and the voter id case but was bailed out when Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act was gutted by the SCOTUS. Right now Greg is defending two major cases involving the redistricting of Texas and the Texas voter id law. Both of these cases seek to bail in Texas and make Texas subject to preclearance under Section 3 of the Voting Rights Act.

The voter id case is not going well for Greg and so he is doing a typical insurance defense trick of trying to change the subject to point fingers someplace else. When you can win on the facts, the next best thing to do is to confuse the issue with red herrings. Greg is seeking to obtain each and every form of electronic communication (whether or not stored or in form to be searched) from every branch of the executive branch to try to prove that there is voter fraud in Texas. http://txredistricting.org/post/79922055563/state-of-texas-seeks-records-relating-to-voter-fraud As the DOJ pointed out in its motion for protective order, Greg's fishing expedition would require all forms of electronic communications whether or not under the control of the DOJ from every branch of the Executive and from all 535 members of congress. https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BxeOfQQnUr_gc2VORzFfejhxMk0/edit?pli=1

Greg is sort of backing down on members of congress and is now only seeking data from the following people:

In addition, to current and former members of the Texas Democratic congressional delegation,** the state told the court that it was entitled to discovery from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, as well as Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania and Senator Kay Hagan of North Carolina who “both opposed voter ID laws in their respective states.”

** The current and former Texas members of Congress from whom the state is discovery are:

Al Green (CD-9)
Ruben Hinojosa (CD-15)
Silvestre Reyes (CD-16)
Beto O’Rourke (CD-16)
Chet Edwards (CD-17)
Sheila Jackson Lee (CD-18)
Charlie Gonzalez (CD-20)
Joaquin Castro (CD-20)
Nick Lampson (CD-22)
Ciro Rodriguez (CD-23)
Pete Gallego (CD-23)
Lloyd Doggett (CD-25 and CD-35)
Solomon Ortiz (CD-27)
Henry Cuellar (CD-28)
Gene Green (CD-29)
Eddie Bernice Johnson (CD-30)
Marc Veasey (CD-33)
Filemon Vela (CD-34)

This is a silly fishing expedition by Greg and is a clear attempt to change the subject. Remember that the Bush DOJ spent years looking for examples of voter fraud and could not find sufficient examples to justify voter id laws http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/washington/12fraud.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

WASHINGTON, April 11 — 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.

The bush DOJ did its best to manufacture examples of voter fraud and could not find such examples. Now Greg is expecting to find the missing cases in the DOJ files. This is really sad.

Again, I stand by my opinion that Greg is a bad attorney and this latest stunt shows that Greg is getting scared. If the DOJ wins this trial, then Texas will be bailed in under Section 3 of the VRA and could no longer cheat voters.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

1. Yep, in a wheelchair and against the Americans with Disabilities Act.

In favor of tort reform, but it was OK for HIM to sue the homeowner when their tree fell on him and left him paralyzed. I used to see him rolling around the old civil building when I worked there.

Absolutely a complete hypocrite.

Wish I lived in a district where the Congresscritter represented my views just a little bit. Unfortunately, my congresscretin (no offense meant to actual cretins, I have a dead thyroid myself) is a whore for the oil companies.

[TexasTowelie]

2. You almost got it perfect.

Greg is absolutely a complete fucking hypocrite.

I use the F-word very sparingly!

[Manifestor_of_Light]

3. Thanks, Towelie!!!

I should have been channeling Lewis Black, the (adorable) master of the innumerable F-bombs!!

[TexasTowelie]

4. If Asscat is so go-hung on hanging things up in the discovery process,

then Greg should pay for the FOI request out of his own pocket. Charge him $100 per hour to have a paralegal review the documents and either a $1 per page or $1 per email to provide him copies. If he had to pay those expenses from his own pocket then I'm certain that he withdraw the motion for discovery.

If Asscat tries to bilk the taxpayers for this wild goose chase, then it would show that he would fail as a good financial steward if he ever became governor.

My apologies to feline-lovers, but I'm still loving the kitty pictures that pop up on my screen since I downloaded the Stop Tony Meow app.

[Gothmog]

5. The DOJ has responded to Greg's silly request

The brief from the DOJ has to explain to Greg why discovery from members of the US Congress is not relevant to this case but the discovery from the members of the republican Texas legislators who passed this voter suppression law is relevant. http://txredistricting.org/post/80276380877/doj-responds-to-texas-request-in-voter-id-case-to-get

The legislators whose documents the United States seeks actively and directly participated in adopting SB 14 or considering predecessor photographic voter identification bills. Plumbing the motivations of these Texas legislators goes to the very heart of this litigation. By contrast, the Members of Congress had no role in Texas’s adoption of that state legislation, and were, at most, interested bystanders to SB 14 as the legislative process unfolded in Austin … Information obtained from the targeted Members of Congress would shed no light on whether Texas enacted its voter identification law, either in whole or in part, with a discriminatory purpose.

You get the feeling that the DOJ was wondering why it had to explain the obvious to Greg. Reading between the lines, it is clear to me that the DOJ is wondering if Greg is really that stupid and from my personal experience the answer is yes

[Gothmog]

6. Greg's case is falling apart

The reason that Greg is trying to find examples of voter fraud from the DOJ is because Greg has no examples in Texas to support his case. Voter fraud in Texas that Greg wants simply does not exist http://blog.chron.com/kuffsworld/2014/03/vote-fraud-by-impersonation-just-doesnt-exist/

I mean, if Greg Abbott can’t find it, who possibly could?

Since taking office in 2001, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott has called voter fraud an “epidemic,” and made cracking down on it a top priority. Now, as he runs for governor, he’s touting his ongoing battle to implement the state’s strict voter ID law, arguing that the measure is crucial to combat fraud.

But over the 13 years of Abbott’s tenure, his office can only cite two fraudulent votes that might have been stopped by the ID law.

To put that another way, such votes accounted for one out of every 18.7 million votes cast in Texas during that period—and that’s counting only the general elections for statewide races. Meanwhile, 796,000 Texans, by the state’s own numbers, lack an ID.

The glaring difference between rhetoric and reality in Abbott’s treatment of the issue underscores the comically weak case for voter ID measures, and highlights the lengths that their backers have gone to—still without success—to find evidence of large-scale fraud. It also raises questions about Abbott’s basic intellectual honesty as he works to persuade Texas voters to make him one of the most important Republican office-holders in the country.

[...]

No one disputes that there’s been illegal voting in Texas lately. In the FBI investigation into vote-buying in south Texas that Abbott refers to, three women working for school board candidates in the Rio Grande Valley have been accused of paying voters in cash, drugs, beer and cigarettes. Days after they were arrested, the school board president committed suicide, and the probe is continuing.

There’s just one problem with Abbott’s use of the case: The allegations involve absentee ballots, not in-person voting. That means the voter ID law that Abbott is championing would have done nothing to stop the alleged scheme.

Indeed, election experts say absentee ballot fraud is the most common form of organized voter fraud, since, because of the secret ballot, there’s no way to ensure that an in-person voter is voting for the candidate he promised to. That’s why voter ID laws are an ineffective tool for catching the small amount of fraud that exists.

We’ve been over this many times before, so I’ll spare us both the usual trawl through my archives. The bottom line remains that in person vote fraud remains the stupidest and least efficient way possible to try to steal an election. There’s a reason no one has ever uncovered anything but an isolated vote here and there. Meanwhile, the one place where vote fraud is known to occur – absentee ballots – remains largely unexamined, while Texas’ voter ID law is ludicrously strict. There’s just no justification for it.

Greg's case is falling apart and he has to ask the DOJ for examples of voter fraud.