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View Poll Results: Does it seem more likely now, that the 2000 FLA Election was Stolen?
Yes, the "tell" is that no Bush admin. justification for firing 8 US Attorneys has seemed credible 3 75.00%
The newly partisan appearance of the DOJ concerns me, but I'll wait for investigation results. 0 0%
No....nothing to see here..... 1 25.00%
Voters: 4. You may not vote on this poll

 
 
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Old 04-26-2007, 11:17 AM   #1 (permalink)
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Can They Really Be Getting Away With This, Right Under Our Noses, All This Time ?

Does anyone else suspect that all of this.....the felon "purge lists" in Florida, the world record incarceration rates in the U.S., the feigned cries of "voting fraud" from republicans and the Bush admin./DOJ "reaction" to it, was all a "lead in", for this?:
Quote:
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/013810.php
<b>We'll be bringing you more on Schlozman presently at TPMmuckraker. </b>
Quote:
http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003101.php#more
Bush Appointee "Led by Power"
By Paul Kiel - April 26, 2007, 2:27 PM

So far, Bradley Schlozman has been a minor character in the U.S. attorneys scandal. He ought to be a major one.

To put the case succinctly: Schlozman was the most aggressively political of the political appointees in the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division. And the administration installed him as the U.S. attorney in a key swing state in an election year. And to clinch it all, as we'll see in our next post, he delivered.......

But before becoming US Attorney he headed up the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division -- where he focused on purging the Division of non-conservatives and generally emasculating voting rights enforcement around the country.

We've been looking closely at the circumstances of Graves' departure. But another reporter on top of this story is Dave Helling of the Kansas City Star. Unfortunately the KC Star's "Buzz" blog is subscription only. (You can at least get a free two week trial. So if you want to follow the situation in this district, I'd suggest signing up.) But in a post that Helling ran yesterday he notes a very suggestive timeline ...


1) Oct. 25, 2005: Schlozman writes Missouri, authorizing lawsuit for failure to maintain voter lists; lawsuit filed later in 2005

2) Jan. 9, 2006: Kyle Sampson writes a memo, listing at least seven U.S. attorneys to be replaced; three of those names are redacted.

3) March 10, 2006: Todd Graves announces departure from U.S. attorney office

4) March 23, 2006: <h3>Schlozman announced as replacement as interim U.S. attorney; first U.S. attorney appointed under broadened Patriot Act that exempts him from Senate confirmation</h3>

5) October 2006: Schlozman prosecutes four workers for ACORN for allegedly filing false voter registration forms; apparently it's the only known federal case against ACORN in the nation. (At a news conference, Schlozman denies any political motive for the prosecutions.)

The suit to force more aggressive voter purges in Missouri is a story in itself -- and the DOJ pushed this in several other key swing states. There's a lot more smoke here. So stay tuned.
I am opening this thread with a special, "thanks" to whomever made the decision to remove all posts/threads from this forum that are older than March, 2006. That is a great "service" to the membership here, and it further reduces a rich, searchable archive of news articles, as well as all of our posted opinions, now no longer available or not now easily located on the internet. With HD storage space available at record low prices, why eliminate one of my primary incentives for posting on this forum?

It's taking more time....but thanks to google, I've recovered a link to the "background" post for the premise of this thread....the flawed history of state of Florida felon "voter purge lists", from Oct., 2004. There is much more info at the link:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...0&postcount=55

....but here are excerpts of two main supporting points from the link, above:
Quote:
Florida is one of six states that permanently strip voting rights to felons for life unless they petition to have them restored. One election-law expert who usually represents Democrats said the release of the list will rekindle the debate over disenfranchising voters. <a href="http://www.sptimes.com/2004/07/02/State/Felon_voters_list_mad.shtml">http://www.sptimes.com/2004/07/02/State/Felon_voters_list_mad.shtml</a>
Quote:
.....More than 50,000 felons were released from Florida prisons last year. About
85 percent must apply to get clemency. A year ago, the court found that about
125,000 inmates who completed their terms between 1992 and 2001 -- out of as
many as 700,000 -- had not been properly notified of their right to clemency.
Gov. Bush can't call the appellate court's ruling judicial activism. The
court didn't make the law; the state did. Here is the wording: "The authorized
agent (of the state) shall assist the offender in completing these forms...
before the offender is discharged from supervision." The court "interpreted"
that to mean the state must "assist the offender." <a href="http://www.freelists.org/archives/lit-ideas/07-2004/msg00472.html">http://www.freelists.org/archives/lit-ideas/07-2004/msg00472.html</a>
....and in 2004, republican Florida "officials" were "at it", again:
Quote:
http://www.wired.com/politics/securi.../2004/07/64071
Florida Told to Open Voter List
Jacob Ogles Email 07.01.04 | 3:23 PM

ORLANDO -- A Florida Circuit Court judge said Thursday that a list of felons to be purged from Florida's voter rolls must be made available to anybody that wants a copy, handing a victory to media organizations that had sought copies from the state but were refused.

The ruling by Judge Nikki Clark came in a lawsuit filed by CNN in May. The news network said it wanted the list in order to verify its accuracy and to prevent the disenfranchisement of thousands of voters. Critics suspect many legitimate voters were not allowed to vote in the 2000 presidential election because of inaccuracies in these lists.

"The Division of Elections is hereby ordered to immediately open the suspected felons list for public inspection and permit the plaintiff and interveners to copy and photograph the list," Clark wrote in a summary judgment. State officials said they would not appeal the ruling.

Department of State officials previously said anybody in the public could look at the list, but only political entities such as candidates or political parties could obtain a copy, and those who had the list could only use it for campaign purposes. After being denied a list, CNN filed suit and was joined by the First Amendment Foundation, ACLU and numerous Florida media outlets.

The list contains the names of 47,000 felons who are registered to vote, but may not be eligible to have that right. Florida is among seven states where felons released from prison don't automatically have voting rights restored upon completion of sentence. They still must re-register to vote, according to state law.

In the lawsuit, the state cited a 2001 law that protects the state's Central Voter Database from being copied. State lawmakers said the list should not be public because it would violate the state constitution's privacy clause.

But Clark said that law was unconstitutional, and the Florida Legislature illegally passed the 2001 statute without showing any public benefit.

"The court cannot and will not speculate what the public necessity might be, nor can the court construe or imply the public necessity from the language of the statute itself," Clark wrote.

CNN attorney Gregg Thomas said the ruling would make the felon list available to anybody, but was unsure if the rest of the database would be public as well. Secretary of State Glenda Hood said the entire statute, which also protects voter registration information and other election-related materials, may be void because of the ruling.

"We caution all those who view this information that this is a list of potential matches, not a final list," Hood said. "The Department of State has worked closely with the NAACP to develop a redundant and rigorous process to protect the rights of all eligible voters."

Ralph Neas, president of People for the American Way, said it was important the list be made available for verification, especially considering Florida's election history.

"There's a primary election coming up in just two months in Florida, and of course, the general election in November," Neas said. "We want to help every voter in Florida cast a vote that counts this election year."

George Bush won Florida's 25 electoral votes in 2000 by just 537 votes over Democrat Al Gore. That year, then-Secretary of State Katherine Harris hired a private firm to purge felons from voting. Hundreds of voters claimed to have been wrongfully removed from the rolls, possibly altering the outcome of the election.
.....just a few days later, we were given this revelation:
Quote:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/07/12/felons/
Florida scraps list of suspected felons barred from voting

Monday, July 12, 2004 Posted: 3:59 PM EDT (1959 GMT)

(CNN) -- Florida Secretary of State Glenda Hood has decided to scrap a list that was intended to keep more than 47,000 suspected felons from voting in November.

Florida Gov. Jeb Bush agreed with the decision, his spokesman said Monday.

"The list will not be used," said Jacob DiPietre, a spokesman for Bush, whose state proved key to his brother's victory four years ago.

Hood decided over the weekend to dump the list, which was created by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, after <h3>news stories pointed out that the list included only 61 Hispanic names, DiPietre said.

The state's large Cuban population tends to vote Republican.......</h3>
Quote:
http://www.pbs.org/now/society/prisons3.html
8.27.04
Society and Community:
Prisons in America
Stats and Facts

Some startling new statistics may bring the issue of America's prison population into the 2004 campaign. The Bureau of Justice Statistics has projected that if current trends continue, one out of every three African American men born in 2001 will go to prison at some point during their lifetime. In addition the Justice Policy Institute has just released a study which shows that prison spending has increased five times as fast as education spending in some battleground states. And, according to the study: <b>"Outside the swing states, states leaning Republican saw their incarceration rates increase at nearly twice the rate of Democrat-leaning states." In addition the Institute estimates, nearly 2 million voters are disenfranchised in swing states because they have felony records.</b> Find out more about Life After Prison on NOW.

Prisons are big in the United States. There are more people behind bars literally, and proportionally, than any time in our history. We have a higher percentage of our population in prison than any other nation. And, we keep building more prisons, in fact many locales lobby for new prisons as a tool of economic recovery. What are the actual numbers that put American prison populations in historical and international perspective?


In 2001, nearly 6.6 million people were on probation, in jail or prison, or on parole at year end. That number represents 3.1% of all U.S. adult residents or one in every 32 adults.

American Prisons: The Debate
Between 1973 and 2000 the rate of incarceration in the United States more than quadrupled. The International Centre for Prison Studies at Kings College, London now calculates the U.S. rate at 700 people per 100,000. (That number encompasses the most recently available federal, state and local prison population statistics.) There are now more than two million Americans behind bars. Add to that another four and a half million on probation or parole and three million ex-convicts......
Quote:
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/16962753.htm
Posted on Fri, Mar. 23, 2007
U.S. ATTORNEYS

New U.S. attorneys seem to have partisan records

By Greg Gordon, Margaret Talev and Marisa Taylor
McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON - Under President Bush, the Justice Department has backed laws that narrow minority voting rights and pressed U.S. attorneys to investigate voter fraud - policies that critics say have been intended to suppress Democratic votes.

Bush, his deputy chief of staff, Karl Rove, and other Republican political advisers have highlighted voting rights issues and what Rove has called the "growing problem" of election fraud by Democrats since Bush took power in the tumultuous election of 2000, a race ultimately decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Since 2005, McClatchy Newspapers has found, Bush has appointed at least three U.S. attorneys who had worked in the Justice Department's civil rights division when it was rolling back longstanding voting-rights policies aimed at protecting predominantly poor, minority voters.

Another newly installed U.S. attorney, Tim Griffin in Little Rock, Ark., was accused of participating in efforts to suppress Democratic votes in Florida during the 2004 presidential election while he was a research director for the Republican National Committee. He's denied any wrongdoing.

Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said the four U.S. attorneys weren't chosen only because of their backgrounds in election issues, but "we would expect any U.S. attorney to prosecute voting fraud."

Taken together, critics say, the replacement of the U.S. attorneys, the voter-fraud campaign and the changes in Justice Department voting rights policies suggest that the Bush administration may have been using its law enforcement powers for partisan political purposes........
Quote:
http://www.gregpalast.com/bushs-new-...ey-a-criminal/

Bush’s New US Attorney a Criminal?
Published March 13th, 2007 in Articles

BBC Television had exposed 2004 voter attack scheme by appointee Griffin, a Rove aide.
Black soldiers and the homeless targeted.
by Greg Palast

There’s only one thing worse than sacking an honest prosecutor. That’s replacing an honest prosecutor with a criminal.

There was one big hoohah in Washington yesterday as House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers pulled down the pants on George Bush’s firing of US Attorneys to expose a scheme to punish prosecutors who wouldn’t bend to political pressure.

But the Committee missed a big one: Timothy Griffin, Karl Rove’s assistant, the President’s pick as US Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas. Griffin, according to BBC Television, was the hidden hand behind a scheme to wipe out the voting rights of 70,000 citizens prior to the 2004 election.

Key voters on Griffin’s hit list: Black soldiers and homeless men and women. Nice guy, eh? Naughty or nice, however, is not the issue. Targeting voters where race is a factor is a felony crime under the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

In October 2004, our investigations team at BBC Newsnight received a series of astonishing emails from Mr. Griffin, then Research Director for the Republican National Committee. He didn’t mean to send them to us. They were highly confidential memos meant only for RNC honchos.

However, Griffin made a wee mistake. Instead of sending the emails — potential evidence of a crime — to email addresses ending with the domain name “@GeorgeWBush.com” he sent them to “@GeorgeWBush.ORG.” A website run by prankster John Wooden who owns “GeorgeWBush.org.” When Wooden got the treasure trove of Rove-ian ravings, he sent them to us.

And we dug in, decoding, and mapping the voters on what Griffin called, “Caging” lists, spreadsheets with 70,000 names of voters marked for challenge. Overwhelmingly, these were Black and Hispanic voters from Democratic precincts.

The Griffin scheme was sickly brilliant. We learned that the RNC sent first-class letters to new voters in minority precincts marked, “Do not forward.” Several sheets contained nothing but soldiers, other sheets, homeless shelters. Targets included the Jacksonville Naval Air Station in Florida and that city’s State Street Rescue Mission. Another target, Edward Waters College, a school for African-Americans.

If these voters were not currently at their home voting address, they were tagged as “suspect” and their registration wiped out or their ballot challenged and not counted. Of course, these ‘cages’ captured thousands of students, the homeless and those in the military though they are legitimate voters.
We telephoned those on the hit list, including one Randall Prausa. His wife admitted he wasn’t living at his voting address: Randall was a soldier shipped overseas.....
Quote:
http://www.arktimes.com/Articles/pri...c-7aaa4efa6a3a
Published 12/28/2006

End around

Senators question U.S. attorney appointment.

J. Timothy Griffin was sworn in as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas on Dec. 20, less than a week after his appointment prompted unusual public expressions of outrage from both of the state’s U.S. senators.

The outrage stems from the way Griffin was appointed. Instead of following the normal process, which would involve a presidential nomination and confirmation by the U.S. Senate, the Bush administration utilized a provision in the 2005 reauthorization of the Patriot Act that allows the attorney general to appoint an “interim U.S. attorney” without Senate confirmation. Therefore, Griffin, 38, will serve as interim U.S. attorney until he is formally nominated or replaced by the president.

Interim appointments are usually made to fill vacancies, but Griffin was named to the U.S. attorney post on Dec. 15, while it was still occupied by Bud Cummins.

Cummins resigned on Dec. 20......

..........U.S. Sen. Blanche Lincoln said, “Clearly, the president and his administration are aware of the difficulty it would take to get Tim Griffin confirmed through the normal process, and therefore chose to circumvent it in order to name him as interim U.S. attorney. This decision denied the Senate the opportunity to carefully consider and evaluate Mr. Griffin’s qualifications and denied the American people the transparency the standard nomination process provides.”

“The White House worked very hard to get him this job and keep him from going under oath and answer questions about his political life,” Teague added. “We’re not saying there should not be a process to name an interim position, but it should be done in good faith that a permanent replacement will be named at some point. The White House has indicated to the senator that Tim Griffin is their person, so the question is, if he is their person, why not nominate him? It’s an effort to keep him from going under oath.”.............
<b>The 2004 BBC reporting and the emails accidentally sent to www.georgewbush.org:</b>

Quote:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programme...ht/3956129.stm
Last Updated: Tuesday, 26 October, 2004, 17:06 GMT 18:06 UK
E-mail this to a friend Printable version
New Florida vote scandal feared

By Greg Palast
Reporting for Newsnight

A secret document obtained from inside Bush campaign headquarters in Florida suggests a plan - possibly in violation of US law - to disrupt voting in the state's African-American voting districts, a BBC Newsnight investigation reveals.

Election supervisor Ion Sancho believes some voters are being intimidated
Two e-mails, prepared for the executive director of the Bush campaign in Florida and the campaign's national research director in Washington DC, contain a 15-page so-called "caging list". ....
Quote:
http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pb...30/-1/Help0530
http://www.theledger.com/apps/pbcs.d...YT02/704120590

Article published Apr 12, 2007
<b>In 5-Year Effort, Scant Evidence of Voter Fraud</b>
ERIC LIPTON AND IAN URBINA

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.

Although Republican activists have repeatedly said fraud is so widespread that it has corrupted the political process and, possibly, cost the party election victories, about 120 people have been charged and 86 convicted as of last year.

Most of those charged have been Democrats, voting records show. Many of those charged by the Justice Department appear to have mistakenly filled out registration forms or misunderstood eligibility rules, a review of court records and interviews with prosecutors and defense lawyers show.

In Miami, an assistant United States attorney said many cases there involved what were apparently mistakes by immigrants, not fraud.

In Wisconsin, where prosecutors have lost almost twice as many cases as they won, charges were brought against voters who filled out more than one registration form and felons seemingly unaware that they were barred from voting.

One ex-convict was so unfamiliar with the rules that he provided his prison-issued identification card, stamped “Offender,” when he registered just before voting.

A handful of convictions involved people who voted twice. More than 30 were linked to small vote-buying schemes in which candidates generally in sheriff’s or judge’s races paid voters for their support.

A federal panel, the Election Assistance Commission, reported last year that the pervasiveness of fraud was debatable. That conclusion played down findings of the consultants who said there was little evidence of it across the country, according to a review of the original report, according to a review obtained by The New York Times and reported on Wednesday.

Mistakes and lapses in enforcing voting and registration rules routinely occur in elections, allowing thousands of ineligible voters to go to the polls. But the federal cases provide little evidence of widespread, organized fraud, prosecutors and election law experts said.

“There was nothing that we uncovered that suggested some sort of concerted effort to tilt the election,” Richard G. Frohling, an assistant United States attorney in Milwaukee, said.

Richard L. Hasen, an expert in election law at the Loyola Law School, agreed, saying: “If they found a single case of a conspiracy to affect the outcome of a Congressional election or a statewide election, that would be significant. But what we see is isolated, small-scale activities that often have not shown any kind of criminal intent.”

For some convicted people, the consequences have been significant. Kimberly Prude, 43, has been jailed in Milwaukee for more than a year after being convicted of voting while on probation, an offense that she attributes to confusion over eligibility.

In Pakistan, Usman Ali is trying to rebuild his life after being deported from Florida, his legal home of more than a decade, for improperly filling out a voter-registration card while renewing his driver’s license.

In Alaska, Rogelio Mejorada-Lopez, a Mexican who legally lives in the United States, may soon face a similar fate, because he voted even though he was not eligible.

The push to prosecute voter fraud figured in the removals last year of at least two United States attorneys whom Republican politicians or party officials had criticized for failing to pursue cases.

The campaign has roiled the Justice Department in other ways, as career lawyers clashed with a political appointee over protecting voters’ rights, and several specialists in election law were installed as top prosecutors.

Department officials defend their record. “The Department of Justice is not attempting to make a statement about the scale of the problem,” a spokesman, Bryan Sierra, said. “But we are obligated to investigate allegations when they come to our attention and prosecute when appropriate.”

Officials at the department say that the volume of complaints has not increased since 2002, but that it is pursuing them more aggressively.

Previously, charges were generally brought just against conspiracies to corrupt the election process, not against individual offenders, Craig Donsanto, head of the elections crimes branch, told a panel investigating voter fraud last year. For deterrence, Mr. Donsanto said, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales authorized prosecutors to pursue criminal charges against individuals.

Some of those cases have baffled federal judges.

“I find this whole prosecution mysterious,” Judge Diane P. Wood of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, in Chicago, said at a hearing in Ms. Prude’s case. “I don’t know whether the Eastern District of Wisconsin goes after every felon who accidentally votes. It is not like she voted five times. She cast one vote.”

The Justice Department stand is backed by Republican Party and White House officials, including Karl Rove, the president’s chief political adviser. The White House has acknowledged that he relayed Republican complaints to President Bush and the Justice Department that some prosecutors were not attacking voter fraud vigorously. In speeches, Mr. Rove often mentions fraud accusations and
warns of tainted elections.   click to show 


The evidence that some felons knew they that could not vote consisted simply of a form outlining 20 or more rules that they were given when put on probation and signs at local government offices, testimony shows.

The Wisconsin prosecutors lost every case on double voting. Cynthia C. Alicea, 25, was accused of multiple voting in 2004 because officials found two registration cards in her name. She and others were acquitted after explaining that they had filed a second card and voted just once after a clerk said they had filled out the first card incorrectly.

In other states, some of those charged blamed confusion for their actions. Registration forms almost always require a statement affirming citizenship.

Mr. Ali, 68, who had owned a jewelry store in Tallahassee, got into trouble after a clerk at the motor vehicles office had him complete a registration form that he quickly filled out in line, unaware that it was reserved just for United States citizens.

Even though he never voted, he was deported after living legally in this country for more than 10 years because of his misdemeanor federal criminal conviction.

“We’re foreigners here,” Mr. Ali said in a telephone interview from Lahore, Pakistan, where he lives with his daughter and wife, both United States citizens.

In Alaska, Rogelio Mejorada-Lopez, who manages a gasoline station, had received a voter registration form in the mail. Because he had applied for citizenship, he thought it was permissible to vote, his lawyer said. Now, he may be deported to Mexico after 16 years in the United States. “What I want is for them to leave me alone,” he said in an interview.

Federal prosecutors in Kansas and Missouri successfully prosecuted four people for multiple voting. Several claimed residency in each state and voted twice.

United States attorney’s offices in four other states did turn up instances of fraudulent voting in mostly rural areas. They were in the hard-to-extinguish tradition of vote buying, where local politicians offered $5 to $100 for individuals’ support.

Unease Over New Guidelines

Aside from those cases, nearly all the remaining 26 convictions from 2002 to and 2005 — the Justice Department will not release details about 2006 cases except to say they had 30 more convictions— were won against individuals acting independently, voter records and court documents show.

Previous guidelines had barred federal prosecutions of “isolated acts of individual wrongdoing” that were not part of schemes to corrupt elections. In most cases, prosecutors also had to prove an intent to commit fraud, not just an improper action.

That standard made some federal prosecutors uneasy about proceeding with charges, including David C. Iglesias, who was the United States attorney in New Mexico, and John McKay, the United States attorney in Seattle.

Although both found instances of improper registration or voting, they declined to bring charges, drawing criticism from prominent Republicans in their states. In Mr. Iglesias’s case, the complaints went to Mr. Bush. Both prosecutors were among those removed in December.

<h3>In the last year, the Justice Department has installed top prosecutors who may not be so reticent. In four states, the department has named interim or permanent prosecutors who have worked on election cases at Justice Department headquarters or for the Republican Party.

Bradley J. Schlozman has finished a year as interim United States attorney in Missouri, where he filed charges against four people accused of creating fake registration forms for nonexistent people. The forms could likely never be used in voting. The four worked for a left-leaning group, Acorn, and reportedly faked registration cards to justify their wages. The cases were similar to one that Mr. Iglesias had declined to prosecute, saying he saw no intent to influence the outcome of an election.</h3>

“The decision to file those indictments was reviewed by Washington,” a spokesman for Mr. Schlozman, Don Ledford, said. “They gave us the go-ahead.”
Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...801077_pf.html
Justice Dept. Recognized Prosecutor's Work on Election Fraud Before His Firing

By Amy Goldstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, March 19, 2007; A04

........David C. Iglesias, who was dismissed as U.S. attorney for New Mexico in December, <b>was one of two chief federal prosecutors invited to teach at a "voting integrity symposium" in October 2005.</b> The symposium was sponsored by Justice's public integrity and civil rights sections and was attended by more than 100 prosecutors from around the country, according to an account by Iglesias that a department spokesman confirmed.

<b>Iglesias, a Republican, said in an interview that he and the U.S. attorney from Milwaukee, Steven M. Biskupic, were chosen as trainers because they were the only ones identified as having created task forces to examine allegations of voter fraud in the 2004 elections.</h3> An agenda lists them as the panelists for a session on such task forces at the two-day seminar, which featured a luncheon speech by Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales...........
....and of the only two US Attorneys who the preceding article quotes Iglesias as saying <b>"created task forces to examine allegations of voter fraud in the 2004 elections"</b>, only the most partisan one....the one who pushed these frivolous and harassing, intimidating and partisan prosecutions, Steven M. Biskupic....got to keep his job:
Quote:
http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/002988.php
Did Rove Want Wisconsin U.S.A. on Purge List?
By Paul Kiel - April 11, 2007, 4:18 PM

Here's what the evidence shows. Karl Rove wanted evidence that there had been a Democratic criminal conspiracy to stuff the ballot box in Milwaukee and New Mexico in 2004. But the U.S. attorneys there didn't deliver. In the case of New Mexico's David Iglesias, that likely cost him his job. Wisconsin's Steve Biskupic only avoided being fired by the skin of his teeth.

Iglesias and Biskupic were the only U.S. attorneys in the country to have launched task forces to investigate voter fraud in the 2004 elections. There's arguably not another U.S. attorney in the country to have so thoroughly investigated such allegations. A review of Biskupic's manifold efforts demonstrates that without a doubt.

Despite that fact, Karl Rove and President Bush himself passed along complaints to Alberto Gonzales in October 2006 about Biskupic's and Iglesias' performance on voter fraud. Iglesias was fired. Biskupic, for some reason, wasn't. But it looks like it was a very close call.

Here's a look at Biskupic's long-running investigation into voter fraud in the 2004 election, Karl Rove's longstanding preoccupation with it, and Biskupic's near escape from being fired.

In the 2004 election, John Kerry took Wisconsin by a scant 11,813 votes. The Democratic stronghold of Milwaukee (72% for Kerry) was key to that effort. But there were problems with the records in Milwaukee -- large discrepancies between the numbers of voters and votes. Republicans screamed bloody murder, saying that the faulty records provided a prime opportunity for fraud.

So in response, Biskupic formed his Joint Election Fraud Task Force in January of 2005. The U.S. attorney's office, the FBI, the District Attorney, and the metropolitan police department teamed up to investigate. Over the following two years, they'd identify individual cases for prosecution and determine whether there had indeed been a broad-based conspiracy by Democrats to stuff the ballot.

Even as Biskupic was investigating, Republicans kept the pressure on. In August of 2005, the Executive Director of the Wisconsin Republicans Rick Wiley sent a letter to Biskupic outlining nine voter fraud cases that demanded prosecution. Biskupic replied with a letter (pdf) knocking down all nine of Wiley's pet cases.

At about the same time, in the middle of 2005, Wiley had one of his staff members prepare a lengthy memo (see page 10) called "Fraud in Wisconsin 2004: A Timeline/Summary." According to Daniel Bice of The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, the report was prepared for Karl Rove.

But Rove was already interested. We know this because one of the documents released by the Justice Department last month appears to be a printout from his computer of a February 2, 2005 Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel article about the city's voter records. A study by the paper had found sizeable discrepancies between the number of votes and voters in the records for more than a dozen wards.

How can we tell that this was printed off of Rove's computer? Well, though the letters are cut off, you can see "ROVE_K" among the file information at the bottom (click to see the whole page):

Rove was clearly interested, circling words (like Milwaukee) in the piece and scribbling in the margin "Discuss w/ Harriet" (see image on the right) -- Harriet presumably referring to White House counsel Harriet Miers.

So as early as February of 2005, Rove was paying close attention to Milwaukee.

But Biskupic would disappoint him. In December of 2005, Biskupic announced in a press conference that his investigation had yielded no evidence of a broad conspiracy. He said that his office would pursue isolated cases of suspected fraud (see the note below for those results) -- ultimately, eighteen cases.

All that didn't stop Rove from harping on voter fraud in Milwaukee. In April of 2006, during a speech before the Republican National Lawyers Association, Rove touched on voter fraud, and the case of Milwaukee in particular. When an audience member, saying that the Democratic Party "rests on the base of election fraud," asked about the issue, Rove said, "yes, this is a real problem. What is it -- five wards in the city of Milwaukee have more voters than adults?" (Actually the article he'd printed out showed that seventeen wards had had more votes than voters.)

Come October, the issue was still burning in Rove's mind. And so that month, both President Bush and Karl Rove passed along complaints about Biskupic's pursuit of voter fraud. Those complaints might very well have put Biskupic on the list of U.S. attorneys to be fired.

Let's look at Bush's complaints. Both White House counselor Dan Bartlett and White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said last month that the White House's legislative affairs, political affairs and chief of staff's office had received complaints "from a variety of sources about the lack of vigorous prosecution of election fraud cases in various locations, including Philadelphia, Milwaukee and New Mexico." The complaints, she said, were passed on to the Justice Department or White House counsel Harriet Miers. And the president himself, she said, had a conversation with attorney general Alberto Gonzales about it in
October of 2006.   click to show 
Quote:
http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003102.php
Court Reverses Wisconsin Voter Fraud Case
By Paul Kiel - April 25, 2007, 4:01 PM

<b>Yet another questionable prosecution brought by U.S. Attorney for Milwaukee Steve Biskupic</b> has been reversed by an appeals court.

This time, it was one of the voter fraud prosecutions Biskupic's office pushed, as part of a joint task force his office created with local prosecutors to investigate whether Democrats had conspired to steal the 2004 election.

From the AP:
http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t...cid=1115736228
....and I posted about this partisan, Steven Biskupic prosecution, the other day:
Quote:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...09&postcount=1
By DAVID JOHNSTON
Published: April 11, 2007

.......In a separate development, Senate Democrats asked Mr. Gonzales to turn over documents related to a prosecution of a state contracting official in Wisconsin. <b>In a case involving corruption charges brought by Steven Biskupic, the United States attorney in Milwaukee, the official, Georgia Thompson, was convicted.

But last week, after an appeals court heard oral arguments, a federal appeals court took the unusual step of ordering Ms. Thompson’s immediate release from prison.</b> The senators sought all documents at the Justice Department in connection with the case, which was the subject of intense political advertising last fall against Gov. James E. Doyle, a Democrat......
.....and this.....from the <b>In 5-Year Effort, Scant Evidence of Voter Fraud</b>, article above.....
Quote:
.......Of the hundreds of people initially suspected of violations in Milwaukee, 14 — most black, poor, Democratic and first-time voters — ever faced federal charges. United States Attorney Steven M. Biskupic would say only that there was insufficient evidence to bring other cases.

No residents of the house where Mr. Graber made his assertion were charged. Even the 14 proved frustrating for the Justice Department. It won five cases in court.....

.......The Wisconsin prosecutors lost every case on double voting......
<b>What I'm suspecting that we have here is an entire, national political party exposed at doing what it does best.....Jailing, harassing, intimidating, disqualifying, and discouraging in any other way that it can, potential voters who might vote against it's political candidates, using any means necessary....including the wholesale corruption of the US DOJ, and other violations of the US Constitution, to achieve their obsession of suppressing the opposition vote.....</b>

Since Mr. Bush, himself, appears to have been installed into office in 2000, and possibly again, in 2004, via this criminal apparatus, the current investigation of Alberto Gonzales and the DOJ, as well as how the "exemption" of US senate approval of US attorneys was "slipped" unnoticed, into "Patriot Act II", may be the most important congressional inquiry in decades.

The question is....what to do about this political party and it's leaders and functionaries. If they have been doing what I suspect, many are in prison or have served unnecessary prison sentences....indeed, the excessive incarceration rates are a consequence of the party's voter suppression, "grand plan".....how is this party's activities different from what the US communist party was accused of doing, in the 1950's. Aren't these illegal activities equally subversive and un-American? How will we know, without thorough investigations by congress, and prosecutions of elected officials, in the senate, and in the courts?

<b>When did anyone in the Bush admin. or in the DOJ, have any time, or interest, in conducting "the people's business".....all of the people's?</b>
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Old 04-28-2007, 04:46 AM   #2 (permalink)
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host, i don't think the loss of material was conscious choice, but rather the result of a mini-crash that killed some of db and the search utilities. you can usually find them in the archives if google search your topic + tfproject...at least that's how i've done it before.
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Old 04-28-2007, 05:21 AM   #3 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by pigglet
host, i don't think the loss of material was conscious choice, but rather the result of a mini-crash that killed some of db and the search utilities. you can usually find them in the archives if google search your topic + tfproject...at least that's how i've done it before.
Close.

In June, 2006 the site was upgraded and, as a side effect, the search database was lost. There was an attempt to restore the database, which is why some older threads do show up on searches, but it was abandoned when it became apparent the restoration would literally take weeks (and requires TFP to be down during that time).
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