The U.S. attorney scandal is not about firings, it's about harassment of minority voters

[marmar]

from TomPaine.com:

Keep Out the Vote
Michael Winship
May 15, 2007


Michael Winship, Writers Guild of America Award winner and former writer with Bill Moyers, writes a weekly column for the Messenger Post Newspapers in upstate New York where this article first appeared.


It’s a John Grisham novel, this whole scandal swirling about the Justice Department. Like “The Pelican Brief” maybe, in which the motive for the murder of two Supreme Court judges of disparate ideologies remains mysterious until a plucky law student turns up an obscure case on appeal that would ravage protected wetlands for oil and gas development. Mayhem ensues.

In other words, nothing is as it first seems and it can take a while before some semblance of truth emerges. Especially in Washington, home of the scheme and the fraud. You have to peel back the layers of the onion, just as that plucky law student did (pluckily played in the movie version by plucky Julia Roberts).

What’s the real motive for knocking off those eight, now nine, maybe more U.S. attorneys—Republican appointees all—apparently replaced for insufficient fealty to the Bushie party line? In part, the truth may be lurking in the upcoming 2008 elections.

The White House, Attorney General Gonzales and the Justice Department have tried to hide their real reasons, citing “performance concerns” as the reason for firing the prosecutors and blaming various underlings for mishandling the dismissals, then throwing them to the wolves, too—the latest being Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, who announced his resignation Monday. McNulty’s the guy who indiscreetly told a Congressional hearing that the person behind the dismissal of Arkansas U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins was Karl Rove, who wanted Cummins replaced with his buddy Tim Griffin. Oops.

Scratch the surface of anything vaguely nefarious at 1600 Pennsylvania and sooner or later you’re likely to hit The Rovester. His most famous bit of dark wizardry is to take a negative about his own guy and turn it into a positive—or, rather, a negative against the other side. In 2004, Rove defused rumors about the president’s blotchy National Guard career by orchestrating attacks on John Kerry’s legitimate Vietnam combat record. The Swift Boat Vets for Truth set sail and the rest is revisionist history. Klassic Karl.

...(snip)...

But the real motive for all this chasing of phantoms in the polling booths may be far more than a diversion. Note, for example, that the aforementioned Tim Griffin, Rove’s choice to take over as U.S. attorney in eastern Arkansas, has been the focus of accusations that in 2004, while research director of the Republican National Committee, he was involved in “caging” minority voters—unfairly, and possibly illegally, making challenge lists of African- and Hispanic-Americans registered in Democratic districts.

All signs point to a continuing, concentrated GOP campaign to curtail voting rights, to intimidate impoverished and elderly citizens, to suppress voter turnout in minority neighborhoods that would lean Democratic, to take control of who gets to vote. Hence the upswing in punitive state voter ID laws, attempts to restrict registration, purge voter rolls and other legislation allegedly aimed at quashing illegal voting. And the U.S. attorney firings.

“We have, as you know, an enormous and growing problem with elections in certain parts of America today,” Rove told the Republican National Lawyers Association last spring. “We are, in some parts of the country, I’m afraid to say, beginning to look like we have elections like those run in countries where the guys in charge are, you know, colonels in mirrored sunglasses.”

Rove and his gang would do well to look at the reflection in those sunglasses to see who the real perpetrators of fraud are. Hey, Karl, is cheating the only way left to achieve your “permanent majority?” .....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2007/05/15/keep_out_the_vote.php

[Old and In the Way]

1. For Republicans, voting is a real big problem.

Just grok on this Rove statement: "We have, as you know, an enormous and growing problem with elections in certain parts of America today,” Rove told the Republican National Lawyers Association last spring. “We are, in some parts of the country, I’m afraid to say, beginning to look like we have elections like those run in countries where the guys in charge are, you know, colonels in mirrored sunglasses.” A statement of pure coded projection.

Yes, Rove is absolutely correct - Republicans do have a growing problem with elections...people are voting for Democrats. That's a real big problem for criminals who thought they'd have a permanent majority. They assumed that they could keep a coalition big enough to steal elections outright. They losses are too big to cover with mere election fraud now...so the plan to actively use the government to criminalize the Democratic Party while subverting investigations into real Republican corruption.

Regardless of whether Gonzales resigns, exposure of Rove's plan to use USA's to criminalize elections and suppress Democrats will be pretty much impossible now. Karl's set-up of a phantom election problem will boomerang back against him and the Republicans in 2008. The indictments are continuing and the tongues within the WH are loosening. What's shaping up is a full scale rout and repudiation of the Rove-Bush-Cheney Republican Crime Syndicate. And there's nothing the genius Rove can do about it now.

[Bolo Boffin]

2. Absolutely - this is about the 2008 elections. n/t

[SharonAnn]

3. Republican vote fraud is for real. Check this out.

Head of Republican Women's group in Tennessee was indicted for fraudulent voting. She voted in a precinct where the vote might be close, though she didn't live there and wasn't registered there.

Ann Coulter charged with voter fraud for voting in a precinct in Florida where she didn't reside.

Staff member of Rep. Patrick Henry (R) charged with voter fraud for voting in two different precincts.

And these are just the ones off the top of my head. All three have come to light within the last 12 months. Who knows how many more there are?

Projection. It's classic. Accuse your opponent of doing the nefarious things that you do.

So when we here this kind of stuff from them, we need to be aware that they know about it because they're doing it.

[Hart2008]

4. The investigations are not yet complete, but it could be far more serious.

One fearless voice has a different perspective:

http://waynemadsenreport.com/
Interview here:
http://virtualmatter.blogspot.com/search/label/Randi%20Rhodes

[Chemical Bill]

5. Well, that too....

Gonzo said that Lam was the problem, and she was indicting repugs (with White House implications?).

That fact that they lost the majority in both houses was bad too, and yes, there is another election next year that they want to steal.

I would settle for hanging them on election fraud for now. Can we get the corruption cleaned up next?

Bill

[xchrom]

6. this is about voting, elections -- and the 08 elections specifically.

florida and ohio have gop tactics written all over them -- and i believe these purges at doj were an attempt or on going attempt to add another layer to the republick party theft machine.