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Banned
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Are Republicans In Unilateral, Constant Preemptive Aggressive Politic War in the US?
Article, after article, disseminated from major American corporate media news outlets, attest to the fact that a small group of republicans, the same ones, over and over, are engaged in a constant, aggressive political "Op", waged against the rest of us.
Is it unilateral? I see only republicans acting in such a constant, extremely organized, and aggressive manner. Democrats seem mostly occupied in reacting to, trying to contain, and defending against the attacks....
Do you observe it happening? Does it magnify and aggravate our political division, why do we tolerate it? Why do so many ignore the reporting about it, and actually defend and support it? Americans, in the overwhelming majority, are not supportive of it, we certainly learned that during the impeachment of President Clinton, in late 1998:
Quote:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpag...51C1A96E958260
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON WITH MICHAEL R. KAGAY
Published: December 19, 1998
As the House of Representatives moved toward a vote on impeaching President Clinton, the Republican Party's standing with the public dropped significantly, matching its lowest rating in the past 14 years, the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll shows.....
....Six of 10 Americans said Republicans in Congress were out of touch with the public's wishes on impeachment. The opposition to impeachment -- 62 percent said they wanted their representative to vote against it -- is reflected in every sector of society: every region, age group and income group, with the exception of those respondents who described themselves as Republicans.
There were signs that public opinion could prove treacherous for Mr. Clinton in the weeks ahead: About 4 in 10 Americans believe it would be better for the country for Mr. Clinton to resign should the House send articles of impeachment to the Senate for trial.
Still, in many ways, the poll found remarkable stability in public opinion across a year of turmoil and scandal. The public continues to distinguish between the man and the President: as in January when the Lewinsky scandal was first disclosed, Americans are critical of Mr. Clinton's personal behavior but give high marks for his job performance.
Mr. Clinton's job-approval rating stands in sharp contrast to that of Richard M. Nixon after the House Judiciary Committee recommended his impeachment in 1974: 65 percent approved of Mr. Clinton's job performance this week, while only 24 percent held that view of Mr. Nixon just before his resignation. .....
.....The survey found that, at least in this snapshot of public opinion, Republicans have paid a price for their aggressive pursuit of the President. The percentage of Americans who held a favorable view of the party -- 40 percent -- was at its lowest level in the 14 years that the New York Times/CBS News Poll has been asking the question, statistically matching the level of 43 percent recorded in early 1996 after a budget impasse resulted in a partial shutdown of the Federal Government.
In October, before the 1998 midterm elections, public opinion of the Republican Party was evenly split, 45 percent favorable and 46 percent unfavorable.
The party's image worsened as this week progressed: 42 percent of respondents had a favorable opinion of the Republicans early in the week; that dropped to 33 percent among people polled on Thursday, as the reality of impeachment set in and Washington grappled with the confluence of crises at home and abroad. The margin of sampling error for the one-night finding was plus or minus 6 percentage points.
By contrast, the number of people holding a favorable view of the Democratic party held steady during the week at 56 percent. ....
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Fast forward, nine years....continuing, relentless, unreasonable republican political agression, conducted by a small group of repeat players, and....for what end? it doesn't seem to even benefit their cause, yet...they do it anyway, perpetuating a poisonous political climate, tying up the courts, planting falsehoods, phony issues in news stories, looking rabid and ridiculous, at least to me:
Quote:
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/A...=1&oref=slogin
January 10, 2008
Anti - Clinton Film Panned As Advertising
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 3:10 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The early reviews are in, and three federal judges appeared in agreement Thursday that a movie lambasting Hillary Rodham Clinton seemed an awful lot like a 90-minute campaign advertisement.
Citizens United, a conservative advocacy group, is challenging the nation's campaign finance laws, which require disclaimers on political advertisements and restrict when they can be broadcast. The group argues ''Hillary: The Movie'' and related television advertisements are not political advertising even though the New York senator is in the presidential race.
Attorney James Bopp argued that they should be considered ''issue-oriented'' speech because viewers aren't urged to vote for or against the Democrat.
''What's the issue?'' asked Judge A. Raymond Randolph, a federal appeals judge sitting on a mixed panel to review the case.
''That Hillary Clinton is a European Socialist,'' Bopp replied. ''That is an issue.''
''Which has nothing to do with her campaign?'' U.S District Judge Royce C. Lamberth interjected.
''Not specifically, no,'' Bopp replied.
''Once you say, 'Hillary Clinton is a European Socialist,' aren't you saying vote against her?''
Bopp disagreed because the movie did not use the word ''vote.''
''Oh, that's ridic. ...'' Lamberth said, trailing off and ending the line of questioning.
Under campaign finance laws, Citizens United would be required to disclose its funding for the ads. It would also have to disclose donors and pay the costs of airing it on cable television from a political fund.
The movie is scheduled for six screenings in theaters, once each in California, Nevada, South Carolina, Arizona, New York and Washington. It is also being sold on DVD. Neither of those methods is regulated under campaign laws. The advertisements, however, are scheduled to run during the peak presidential primary season and would be regulated.
Bopp, who successfully led a challenge to one aspect of the campaign finance system last year, compared the film to television news programs ''Frontline,'' ''Nova,'' and ''60 Minutes.'' That prompted Lamberth to laugh out loud from the bench.
''You can't compare this to '60 Minutes,''' the judge said. ''Did you read this transcript?''
The movie features commentary from conservative pundits, some of whom specifically say Clinton is not fit to be the nation's commander in chief.
One ad begins with a narrator saying, ''First, a kind word about Hillary Clinton.'' Conservative commentator Ann Coulter says, ''Looks good in a pant suit,'' to which the narrator adds, ''Now, a movie about everything else.''
Bopp received the greatest skepticism from Randolph and Lamberth, the panel's two conservative judges. U.S. District Judge Richard W. Roberts, a nominee of president Clinton, was more focused on the legal test Bopp was asking the judges to conduct.
The judges did not rule from the bench but said they would try to rule on the matter quickly.
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I covered James Bopp's background, recently:
Quote:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthr...46#post2344346
.....Why? For 30 years, ideological conservatives and politically strategizing conservative evangelical christians, have developed, funded, and executed a plan that brings us to where we find ourselves today.
The key players were the wealthy folks who backed Reagan's political campaigns, founded the Council for National Policy (CNP) and the Federalist Society, now thiry thousand plus conservative lawyers strong.
The same names appear and reappear, no matter who the republican candidates are, Reagan, GHW Bush, GW Bush, Giuliani, or Romney.
Ted olson, <h3>James Bopp,</h3> Pat Roberston. (The latter two are CNP members...) Robertson's protege, Sekulow, is reported in a Chicago Tribune article (below, near bottom..) to have had enough influence to literally "select" Roberts and Alito.
Timothy Flanigan, now advising Romney on "The Constitution And The Courts", received attention from me in prior posts:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&s...ed+politics%22
All of it is related, and the agenda is consolidation of power and control. The goal is to make the government and the courts objects of scorn from the POV of even those who formerly believed they offered solutions and justice......
Quote:
http://www.mittromney.com/News/Press...itution_Courts
Governor Mitt Romney Announces The Advisory Committee On The Constitution And The Courts
Tuesday, Oct 02, 2007
Co-Chairs Of The Advisory Committee On The Constitution And The Courts:
- Douglas W. Kmiec – Caruso Family Chair & Professor of Constitutional Law, Pepperdine University; Former Assistant Attorney General, Office of Legal Counsel, U.S. Department of Justice, for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush
....Members Of The Advisory Committee On The Constitution And The Courts:
...- Bradford A. Berenson – Partner, Sidley Austin LLP; Former Associate White House Counsel to President George W. Bush; Law Clerk to Justice Anthony Kennedy of the Supreme Court of the United States and Judge Laurence H. Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit; <h3>Chairman, The Federalist Society</h3>, Executive Committee of the Criminal Law and Procedure Practice Group
<h3>...- James Bopp, Jr. – Partner, Bopp, Coleson & Bostrom; General Counsel for the James Madison Center for Free Speech; Special Adviser on Life Issues to Governor Mitt Romney</h3>.....
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Note that James Bopp, Jr. is in "Mitt's corner", (see above...)
I posted about James Bopp, just last week:
Quote:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthr...pp#post2337826
Quote:
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/17532.html
Was campaigning against voter fraud a Republican ploy?
By Greg Gordon | McClatchy Newspapers
* Posted on Sunday, July 1, 2007
........Rogers, a former general counsel to the New Mexico Republican Party and a candidate to replace Iglesias, is among a number of well-connected GOP partisans whose work with the legislative fund and a sister group played a significant role in the party's effort to retain control of Congress in the 2006 election.
That strategy, which presidential adviser Karl Rove alluded to in an April 2006 speech to the Republican National Lawyers Association, sought to scrutinize voter registration records, win passage of tougher ID laws and challenge the legitimacy of voters considered likely to vote Democratic.
McClatchy Newspapers has found that this election strategy was active on at least three fronts:
* Tax-exempt groups such as the American Center and <h3>the Lawyers Association</h3> were deployed in battleground states to press for restrictive ID laws and oversee balloting.
* The Justice Department's Civil Rights Division turned traditional voting rights enforcement upside down with legal policies that narrowed rather than protected the rights of minorities.
* The White House and the Justice Department encouraged selected U.S. attorneys to bring voter fraud prosecutions, despite studies showing that election fraud isn't a widespread problem.
Nowhere was the breadth of these actions more obvious than at the American Center for Voting Rights and its legislative fund.
Public records show that the two nonprofits were active in at least nine states. They hired high-priced lawyers to write court briefs, issued news releases declaring key cities "hot spots" for voter fraud and hired lobbyists in Missouri and Pennsylvania to win support for photo ID laws. In each of those states, the center released polls that it claimed found that minorities prefer tougher ID laws.
Armed with $1.5 million in combined funding, the two nonprofits attracted some powerful volunteers and a cadre of high-priced lawyers.
Of the 15 individuals affiliated with the two groups, at least seven are members of <h3>the Republican National Lawyers Association</h3>, and half a dozen have worked for either one Bush election campaign or for <h3>the Republican National Committee.</h3>
Alex Vogel, a former RNC lawyer whose consulting firm was paid $75,000 for several months' service as the center’s executive director, said the funding came from private donors, not from the Republican Party.
One target of the American Center was the liberal-leaning voter registration group called Project Vote, a GOP nemesis that registered 1.5 million voters in 2004 and 2006. The center trumpeted allegations that Project Vote's main contractor, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), submitted phony registration forms to boost Democratic voting.
In a controversial move, the interim U.S. attorney in Kansas City announced indictments against four ACORN workers five days before the 2006 election, despite the fact that Justice Department policy discourages such action close to an election. Acorn officials had notified the federal officials when they noticed the doctored forms.
<h3>"Their job was to confuse the public about voter fraud and offer bogus solutions to the problem," said Michael Slater</h3>, the deputy director of Project Vote, "And like the Tobacco Institute, they relied on deception and faulty research to advance the interests of their clients."
Mark "Thor" Hearne, a St. Louis lawyer and former national counsel for President Bush's 2004 reelection campaign, is widely considered the driving force behind the organizations. Vogel described him as "clearly the one in charge."
<h3>Hearne, who also was a vice president and director of election operations for the Republican Lawyers Association</h3>, said he couldn't discuss the organizations because they're former clients.
But in an e-mail exchange, he defended the need for photo IDs. "Requiring a government-issued photo ID in order to vote as a safeguard against vote fraud and as a measure to increase public confidence in the fairness and honesty of our elections is not some Republican voter suppression effort," Hearne said.
Hearne called photo IDs "an important voice in election reform."
Hearne and Rogers appeared at separate hearings before the House Administration Committee last year in Ohio and New Mexico. They cited reports of thousands of dead people on voter registration rolls, fraudulent registrations and other election fraud schemes.
As proof, Hearne, offered a 28-page "investigative report" on Ohio events in the 2004 election, and then publicly sent a copy to the Justice Department, citing "substantial evidence to suggest potential criminal wrongdoing."
So far, no charges have been filed.
Earlier, in August 2005, the Legislative Fund issued a string of press releases naming five cities as the nation's top "hot spots" for voter fraud. Philadelphia was tagged as No. 1, followed by Milwaukee, Seattle, St. Louis and Cleveland.
With a push from the center's lobbyists, legislatures in Missouri and Pennsylvania passed photo ID laws last year. Missouri's law was thrown out by the state Supreme Court, and Democratic Gov. Edward Rendell vetoed the Pennsylvania bill.
In an interview with the federal Election Assistance Commission last year, two Pennsylvania officials said they knew of no instances of voter identity fraud or voter registration fraud in the state.
<h3>Amid the controversy, the American Center for Voting Rights shuttered its Internet site on St. Patrick's Day, and the two nonprofits appear to have vanished.
But their influence could linger.</h3>
One of the directors of the American Center, <h3>Cameron Quinn, who lists her membership in the Republican National Lawyers Association on her resume</h3>, was appointed last year as the voting counsel for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.
The division <h2>is charged with policing elections and guarding against discrimination against minorities.</h2>
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...and here's an example resume:
Quote:
http://www.jamesmadisoncenter.org/Do...BoppResume.pdf
JAMES BOPP, JR., ESQ.
CIVIC ACTIVITIES
March 22, 2007
Page 7
Indiana Coordinator:
Citizen Review Committee, International Women’s Year
Indiana Conference, Indianapolis, Indiana, July 16, 1977
National Conference, Houston, Texas, November 18, 1977
National Pro-family Coalition on the White House Conference on Families, 1980
Member:
National Institute of Family & Life Advocates, National Advisory Board, 1993 - Present
<h2>Council for National Policy</h2>
March 22, 2007
Page 9
Other Positions:
<h3>Republican National Lawyers Association
Board of Governors, 2002 - present</h3>
Advisory Council, 2004 - present
Republican Victory Committee, Chairman, 2000
National Republican Pro-life Committee, Inc.
Board of Directors, 1983 - 1991
Vice Chairman, 1984 - 1991
1984 National Republican Convention Committee
1980 National Republican Convention Committee
Presenter:
Republican National Lawyers Association, 2004 National Summer Election Law Seminar &
School, Milwaukee, Wisc., July 16-17, 2004
Indiana Republican State Committee, Congress of Counties, Indianapolis, IN, February 27, 2004
Indiana Chapter, Republican National Lawyers Association, Indianapolis, IN, February 19, 2004
Republican National Lawyers Association, National Summer Election School, Irvine, California,
August 8-9, 2003
Republican National Lawyers Association, 2003 National Conference, Washington, D.C., March
21, 2003
Republican National Lawyers Association, 2002 National Election Law School, San Antonio,
Texas, August 16-17, 2002
Republican National Committee, Midwest Leadership Conference, Springfield, Mo., September
11, 1993
Indiana Republican State Committee, Congress of Counties, Indianapolis, Indiana, February 10,
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...and here is James Bopp ranting away in a column at townhall.com:
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/J...ngold-thompson
townhall.com is owned by Salem Comm. The two top officers of Salem Comm. are CNP members
Quote:
Stuart Epperson - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Stuart W. Epperson is co-founder and chairman of Salem Communications, and a member of the conservative Council for National Policy ("CNP"). ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Epperson
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In our example, James Bopp is a CNP member and "Republican National Lawyers Association
Board of Governors, 2002 - present"....he is a Republican national committee official:
Quote:
GOP.com | Republican National Committee :: State Details - IN
Mr. James Bopp Jr. Present. National Committeeman, Indiana Republican State ... Republican National Convention, 2000; RNC Standing Committee on Rules, 1997- ...
www.gop.com/States/LinkRedirect.aspx?state=IN
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James Bopp, until recently was also general counsel of the NRLC:
Quote:
http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t...%3D48509&cid=0
National Right to Life Committee Defends Brownback's Talks With ...
Kaiser network.org, DC - Oct 30, 2007
The letter was sent after James Bopp -- general counsel for NRLC and a prominent legal advocate for conservative antiabortion groups -- criticized Brownback
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The point????? The point is that it is impossible to tell where the christian fundamentalist propaganda machine ends, and the republican party begins.
James Bopp is on the board of governors of the republican lawyers assoc. that McClatchey News reported was behind an elaborate plot to disinform about voter fraud in order to take the DOJ civil rights enforcement division out of the business of protecting minority voting rights.
Bopp is also a member of the secretive CNP, the group that candidate GW Bush gave a secret speech to, in the same series of Oct., 1999 meetings.....
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<h3>As thoroughly exposed as a fraud, and as discredited as Mark Thor Hearne is shown to be in the rest of the supporting material displayed below in this post, here he is at USA TODAY still acting as counsel representing ridiculous, fraudulant claims advanced by republican interest before the US Supreme Court:</h3>
Quote:
http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2008/...ng-view-m.html
Opposing view: Make cheating tough
Photo ID laws increase voters’ confidence and participation.
By Thor Hearne
.....Finally, using photo ID eliminates the older, subjective method of identifying voters by having an election judge recognize a voter or match the voter's signature with one on file in a poll book.
<i>Thor Hearne, an attorney with Lathrop & Gage in St. Louis, is lead counsel for bipartisan elections professionals and Republican members of Congress who filed Supreme Court briefs supporting Indiana's voter ID law.</i>
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Quote:
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=5503
<center>
<div id="Outline">
<p id="BlogTitle">USA Today: America's Voting Rolls are a Disaster, Millions Inappropriately Purged</p>
<p id="BlogSubTitle"><h3>Discredited GOP Operative Thor Hearne, Failed EAC Executive Director Thomas Wilkey, Both Quoted as Legitimate Sources...</h3></p>
<p id="BlogDate">Posted By <u>Brad Friedman</u> On 2nd January 2008 @ 11:58 In <u>Arkansas</u>, <u>Florida</u>, <u>USA Today</u>, <u>Colorado</u>, <u>ACVR</u>, <u>Election 2008</u>, <u>EAC</u>, <u>Voter Registration</u> | <u>1 Comment</u></p>
<div id="BlogContent"><p><span class="pullquote pqRight"><!--As we predicted a couple of weeks ago, the repugnant snake-oil shyster, Hearne, has been granted "credibility" once again by the mainstream corporate media, just in time to mislead America in advance of this year's official voting.--></span>Richard Wolfe of <em>USA Today</em>, needs some new sources in his Rolodex.</p>
<p>In two decenti-ish and important stories today about massive failures and inaccurate voter purges in the new voter registration databases mandated by the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002, Wolfe quotes two discredited operatives:</p>
<ol>
<li>U.S. Elections Assistance Commission executive director, <strong>Thomas Wilkey</strong>, the man who has failed miserably in his job of overseeing e-voting system certification on behalf of the EAC (or, more accurately, on behalf of America's voting machine companies), and</li>
<li>Our old friend, the discredited <a href="http://www.BradBlog.com/ACVR" target="_blank">discredited</a> <sup>[1]</sup> (to all but the corporate mainstream media, apparently) chief GOP voter suppression operative, <strong>Mark F. "Thor" Hearne</strong> of the <a href="http://www.bradblog.com/?p=4576" target="_blank">exposed and defunct</a> <sup>[2]</sup> Republican front group, "American Center for Voting Rights".</li>
</ol>
<p>To the substance of the two stories, both running today...<a href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2008-01-01-voting-rolls_N.htm" target="_blank">The first</a> <sup>[3]</sup>, on legal voters being tossed off voting roles all across the country, Wolfe reports:</p>
<div class="media">From Florida to Washington, voters have been challenged because names or numbers on their registration forms did not exactly match other government databases, such as Social Security and motor vehicle agencies. "We know that eligible people have been thrown off the rolls," says Justin Levitt, a lawyer with the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law.</p>
<p>The databases are only as good as the information fed into them by applicants and election officials. That can lead to human errors as well as variations from state to state. Colorado, for instance, knocked nearly 20% of its voters off the rolls between the 2004 and 2006 elections. Arkansas purged 3%, according to Election Assistance Commission data.<br />
...<br />
Perhaps the worst problems are in Florida, where a Gannett News Service analysis found more than 14,000 people whose voter registrations were disputed by the state because they didn't match other databases; about 75% are minorities.</div>
<p>Wolfe then goes on to close the story with a comment apologizing for the federal government's failure in all of the above, by quoting Wilkey, the federal government's man who oversaw the failures, on behalf of the EAC, on all of the above...</p>
<p><!--more--></p>
<div class="media">Federal officials say the system is evolving — and improving. "Even with the top-notch best database in the world, you're still going to have human error," says Thomas Wilkey, the election commission's executive director.</div>
<p>Meanwhile, as <a href="http://www.bradblog.com/?p=5434" target="_blank">we predicted a couple of weeks ago</a> <sup>[4]</sup>, the repugnant snake-oil shyster, Hearne, has been granted "credibility" once again by the mainstream corporate media, just in time to mislead America in advance of this year's official voting.</p>
<p>In Wolfe's <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2008-01-01-voting-inside_N.htm" target="_blank">other piece today</a> <sup>[5]</sup>, there's no mention of Hearne's <a href="http://www.BradBlog.com/ACVR" target="_blank">well-documented, thoroughally-discredited last several years</a> <sup>[6]</sup>, before he's quoted thusly:</p>
<div class="media">Thor Hearne, national election counsel for the Bush-Cheney campaign in 2004, says database matching stops voters from posing as someone else. "A bad voter roll, a voter roll that has dead people on it, is one that does in fact allow vote fraud to happen," he says.</div>
<p>...And the evidence that such fraud via dead people voting, is actually occurring? Neither Wolfe nor Hearne bother to offer any. But the implication that we need to purge millions of <em>legal</em> voters from the rolls, in order to keep those mythical dead people from committing virtually any known instances of such fraud, is made clear enough.</p>
<p>What isn't made clear, is that Hearne has been behind this very scheme, to remove legal <i>Democratic</i> voters from the rolls, by any means necessary, for years.
</p></div>
<hr class="Divider" align="center" />
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Background on Mark Thor Hearne:
(If Mark Thor Hearne had the intergrity and legitimacy he tried to pull off in the USA Today piece linked, excerpted and described above, then what is all of the following, about?)
Quote:
http://www.slate.com/id/2168350/
Implausible DeniabilityThe Internet foils fudging by three "voter fraud" warriors.
By Richard L. Hasen
Posted Wednesday, June 13, 2007, at 5:31 PM ET
</span><hr><p><div style="clear:both;"></div>What do those who believe voter fraud is a major national problem worthy of onerous voter identification laws have to hide?</p><p>In a recent <a target="_blank" href="http://www.slate.com/id/2166589/"><strong><em>Slate </em></strong>column</a>, I noted the strange demise of the American Center for Voting Rights, an organization that sprouted up in the last few years to push the "voter fraud is a big problem" line at government hearings, conferences, and, most importantly, <a target="_blank" href="http://brennancenter.org/dynamic/subpages/download_file_48888.pdf">in the courts</a> to defend strict new voter-ID laws. The brains behind ACVR is a St. Louis lawyer, <a target="_blank" href="http://www.lathropgage.com/people/detail.aspx?attorney=1584">Mark "Thor" Hearne</a>, who has worked for the Bush-Cheney campaign and other Republican candidates for years. Oddly, the organization suddenly disbanded recently and yanked its Web site. Even more strangely, Hearne's résumé at his law firm, Lathrop and Gage, was scrubbed of references to ACVR. Thanks to the <a target="_blank" href="http://www.archive.org/index.php">Internet Wayback Machine</a> and blogs like the <a target="_blank" href="http://www.bradblog.com/?page_id=4418">Brad Blog</a>, much of ACVR's material still remains available, however. You just can't erase stuff put out in cyberspace very easily.</p><p>But Hearne apparently wasn't satisfied with just cleansing his résumé. Despite the <strong><em>Slate</em> </strong>article and follow-up by <a target="_blank" href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10758134">NPR</a>, <em><a target="_blank" href="http://news.nationaljournal.com/articles/070531nj1.htm">National Journal</a>, </em>and <em><a target="_blank" href="http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/missouristatenews/story/7BBCCF78AAFD12C4862572F2001372AB?OpenDocument">St. Louis Post-Dispatch</a></em> on Hearne, ACVR, and his possible connection to the U.S. attorneys' scandal, someone is working hard to scrub Hearne's paper trail. And now somebody is going into <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_F._"Thor"_Hearne">Hearne's Wikipedia entry</a> and <a target="_blank" href="http://electionlawblog.org/archives/008666.html">trying to cleanse it</a> of references to ACVR. (Just about anyone can edit a Wikipedia entry, though the organizers have <a target="_blank" href="http://www.slate.com/id/2160222/">some methods</a> of quality control.) Moreover, someone's been trying to clean up Wikipedia's <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Center_for_Voting_Rights">entry on ACVR</a> itself. </p><p>Who would do such a thing? Wikipedia keeps records of the user IDs or IP addresses of whoever changes its pages, and it turns out, astonishingly, that this cleansing was done by <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/65.204.234.241">someone at one of the IP addresses of Hearne's law firm</a>. </p><p>It does raise a question: Just what is it about Hearne's work for ACVR that he or someone else at his firm is trying to hide? </p><p>Hearne is not the only "voter fraud" warrior involved in covering up old information. In 2005, as <a target="_blank" href="http://electionlawblog.org/archives/004234.html">noted on the Election Law Blog</a>, I received a copy of a law-review article in the mail, postmarked Washington, with no return address. I had never seen an anonymous law-review article before. Published under the name "Publius," the article argued in favor of voter-identification laws.</p><p>Fast forward to March 2006. <a target="_blank" href="http://truthaboutfraud.org/hans_von_spakovsky.html">Hans von Spakovsky</a>, one of the administration's great pushers of the voter-fraud line, was moved from DoJ—where he had been involved in overruling career attorneys on whether the department should approve Georgia's controversial voter-identification law and the Texas redistricting plan—to the Federal Election Commission for a recess appointment. And on von Spakovksy's new FEC Web site, he suddenly took credit as author of the Publius article. I <a target="_blank" href="http://electionlawblog.org/archives/005295.html">pointed this out on my blog</a>, and von Spakovsky got calls from the <em><u><a target="_blank" href="http://electionlawblog.org/archives/005391.html">Atlanta Journal-Constitution</a></u></em> and the <em><a target="_blank" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/12/AR2006041201950.html">Washington Post</a></em>, at which point he removed his reference to the article, without any explanation (though he did acknowledge authorship of the Publius article through a spokesperson to the <em>Post</em>).</p><p>Today, Sen. Dick Durbin raised the issue with von Spakovsky <a target="_blank" href="http://rules.senate.gov/hearings/2007/061307hrg.htm">at a Senate hearing for his confirmation for a full term at the FEC</a>. Von Spakovsky <a target="_blank" href="http://rules.senate.gov/hearings/2007/archive061307.ram">said</a> he removed the reference to the article because it was a "distraction" from his work at the FEC. What is not clear is why von Spakovsky tried to hide his identity in the article in the first place. Didn't he believe what he wrote? Perhaps he hoped that the article could later be cited in the Georgia litigation to support the voter-ID law. (Hearne <a target="_blank" href="http://www.eac.gov/docs/Hearne-Testimony-EAC-2006-Election.pdf">cited it last year</a> in testimony before the U.S. Election Assistance Commission as evidence that voter-ID laws are not unconstitutional.) </p><p>Finally, there's <a target="_blank" href="http://truthaboutfraud.org/bradley_schlozman.html">Bradley Schlozman</a>, the DoJ official who brought a controversial set of indictments just days before the 2006 election in Missouri claiming voter-registration fraud. Schlozman was criticized because the convictions seemed to go against DoJ policy to avoid bringing election-related indictments just before the election, so as not to interfere with the upcoming vote. In his testimony last week before the Senate judiciary committee, Schlozman said repeatedly that he acted at the "direction" of the Public Integrity Section of the DoJ. </p><p>In pre-Internet days, Schlozman might have been able to get away with that. But the <a target="_blank" href="http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003371.php">blogs</a> and <a target="_blank" href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/bloomberg/20070608/pl_bloomberg/apx0gujx4llc;_ylt=AmwMkllUSJf0O_wg0aZPkGuog9IF">newspapers</a> were promptly all over the story of lawyers from that section objecting to Schlozman's mischaracterization. Thus forcing him to backpedal from the story, yesterday <a target="_blank" href="http://electionlawblog.org/archives/008659.html">issuing a "clarification</a>" that he only "consulted" with the section. But if Schlozman thought the voter-fraud indictments were so strong, why was he trying to hide behind the Public Integrity Section last week? </p><p>Don't these voter-fraud warriors know that in the Internet age they can run, but they can't hide?</p><em><a target="_blank" href="http://www.lls.edu/academics/faculty/hasen.html">Richard L. Hasen</a>, the William H. Hannon distinguished professor at Loyola Law School, writes the <a target="_blank" href="http://electionlawblog.org/">Election Law Blog</a>.</em><br><p><strong>Article URL: <a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2168350/" target="_blank">http://www.slate.com/id/2168350/</a></strong></p>
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Imagine the National Rifle Association's <a target="_blank" href="http://nra.org/">Web site</a> suddenly disappeared, along with all the data and reports the group had ever posted on gun issues. Imagine <a target="_blank" href="http://plannedparenthood.org/">Planned Parenthood</a> inexplicably closed its doors one day, without comment from its former leaders. The scenarios are unthinkable, given how established these organizations have become. But even if something did happen to the NRA or Planned Parenthood, no doubt other gun or abortion groups would quickly fill the vacuum and push the ideas they'd pushed for years.</p><p>Not so for the American Center for Voting Rights, a group that has literally just disappeared as an organization, and for which it seems no replacement group will rise up. With no notice and little comment, ACVR—the only prominent nongovernmental organization claiming that voter fraud is a major problem, a problem warranting strict rules such as voter-ID laws—simply stopped appearing at government panels and conferences. Its <a target="_blank" href="http://electionlawblog.org/archives/008186.html">Web domain name has suddenly expired</a>, its reports are all gone (except where they have been <a target="_blank" href="http://truthaboutfraud.org/analysis_reports/">preserved by its opponents</a>), and its general counsel, <a target="_blank" href="http://lathropgage.com/people/detail.aspx?attorney=1584">Mark "Thor" Hearne</a>, has <a target="_blank" href="http://www.bradblog.com/?p=4556">cleansed his résumé</a> of affiliation with the group. Hearne <a target="_blank" href="http://electionlawblog.org/archives/008383.html">won't speak to the press </a>about ACVR's demise. No other group has taken up the "voter fraud" mantra.</p><p>The death of ACVR says a lot about the Republican strategy of raising voter fraud as a crisis in American elections. Presidential adviser Karl Rove and his allies, who have been ghostbusting illusory dead and fictional voters since the contested 2000 election, apparently mounted a two-pronged attack. One part of that attack, at the heart of the current Justice Department scandals, involved getting the DoJ and various U.S. attorneys in battleground states <a target="_blank" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/13/AR2007051301106.html">to vigorously prosecute cases of voter fraud</a>. That prong has failed. After exhaustive effort, the Department of Justice discovered <a target="_blank" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/washington/12fraud.html?ei=5088&en=277feccfa099c7d0&ex=1334030400&pagewanted=all">virtually no polling-place voter fraud</a>, and its efforts to fire the U.S. attorneys in battleground states who did not push the voter-fraud line enough has backfired. Even if Attorney General Gonzales <a target="_blank" href="http://www.slate.com/id/2166557/">declines to resign his position</a>, his reputation has been irreparably damaged.</p><p>But the second prong of this attack may have proven more successful. This involved using ACVR to give "think tank" academic cachet to the unproven idea that voter fraud is a major problem in elections. That cachet would be used to support the passage of onerous voter-identification laws that depress turnout among the poor, minorities, and the elderly—groups more likely to vote Democratic. Where the Bush administration may have failed to nail illegal voters, the effort to suppress minority voting has <a target="_blank" href="http://moritzlaw.osu.edu/electionlaw/comments/articles.php?ID=147">borne more fruit</a>, as more states pass these laws, and courts begin to uphold them in the name of beating back waves of largely imaginary voter fraud. </p><p>Perhaps even with the demise of ACVR, the hard work—of giving credibility to a nonproblem—is done. The short organizational history of ACVR, <a target="_blank" href="http://www.bradblog.com/?page_id=4418">chronicled indefatigably</a> by Brad Friedman of the Brad Blog, shows that the group was founded just days before its representatives testified before a congressional committee hearing on election-administration issues chaired by then-Rep. (and now federal inmate) Bob Ney. The group was headed by Hearne, national election counsel to Bush-Cheney '04, and <a target="_blank" href="http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=21015">staffed with other Republican operatives</a>, including Jim Dyke, a former RNC communications director. </p><p>Consisting of <a target="_blank" href="http://www.bradblog.com/?p=1283">little more than a post-office box</a> and some staffers who wrote reports and gave helpful quotes about the pervasive problems of voter fraud to the press, the group <a target="_blank" href="http://web.archive.org/web/20060210111249/www.ac4vr.com/reports/072005/letterofintroduction.html">identified Democratic cities as hot spots for voter fraud</a>, then pushed the line that "election integrity" required making it harder for people to vote. The group <a target="_blank" href="http://web.archive.org/web/20060209215847/http:/www.ac4vr.com/reports/032405/OhioElectionReport.pdf">issued reports</a> (PDF) on areas in the country of special concern, areas that coincidentally tended to be presidential battleground states. In many of these places, it now appears the White House was pressuring U.S. attorneys to bring more voter-fraud prosecutions.</p><p>ACVR's method of argument followed a familiar line, first set out by <em>Wall Street Journal </em>columnist John Fund in his book, <em>Stealing Elections</em>....
.....The DoJ devoted unprecedented resources to ferreting out polling-place fraud over five years and appears to have found <em>not a single prosecutable case</em> across the country. The <a target="_blank" href="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/national/20070411voters_draft_report.pdf">major bipartisan draft fraud report</a> (PDF) (recently <a target="_blank" href="http://www.slate.com/id/2166287/entry/0/">posted </a>by <strong><em>Slate</em></strong> and <a target="_blank" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/11/washington/11voters.html">suppressed</a> by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission [TimesSelect subscription required]) concluded that there is very <em>little</em> polling-place fraud in the United States. Of the many experts the commission consulted, <a target="_blank" href="http://www.slate.com/id/2166287/entry/0/">the only dissenter</a> from that position was a representative of the now-evaporated ACVR.</p><p>Perhaps it is not surprising that ACVR has collapsed as an organization. In what appears to be one of Hearne's last public appearances (where he <a target="_blank" href="http://www.eac.gov/docs/Hearne-Testimony-EAC-2006-Election.pdf">identifies himself</a> [PDF] as having <em>served</em>—note past tense—as counsel to ACVR) before the EAC in December of 2006, Hearne offered the usual arguments. In support of his position that voter-ID laws did not unconstitutionally suppress the votes of poor and minority voters, Hearne cited the decision of the DoJ to approve the pre-clearance of Georgia's voter-ID law, and a law review article supporting such laws, written under the pseudonym Publius. Hearne didn't reveal that the decision on Georgia <a target="_blank" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/16/AR2005111602504.html">was made by political appointees of the DoJ over the strong objections of career attorneys</a> there who believed the law was indeed discriminatory. Nor did he explain that (<a target="_blank" href="http://electionlawblog.org/archives/005295.html">as I discovered and blogged about </a>a few years earlier) <a target="_blank" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/12/AR2006041201950.html">Publius was none other than Hans von Spakovsky</a>, then serving as one of the political DoJ officials who approved the Georgia voter-ID law. (President Bush later gave <a target="_blank" href="http://www.fec.gov/members/von_Spakovsky/von_Spakovsky.shtml">von Spakovsky</a> a recess appointment to the Federal Election Commission.) </p><p>The arguments against vote fraud were built on a house of cards, a house that is collapsing as quickly as the U.S. attorney investigation moves forward. </p><p>So Hearne let the organization collapse, and in a bit of irony, a Washington lawyer who bought the <a target="_blank" href="http://americancenterforvotingrights.com/">ACVR domain name</a> has set it <a target="_blank" href="http://electionlawblog.org/archives/008380.html">to redirect</a> to the Brennan Center's <a target="_blank" href="http://truthaboutfraud.org/analysis_reports/">Truth About Fraud</a> Web site, which debunks ACVR's claims of polling-place voter fraud. But despite the collapse of ACVR, the idea that there is massive polling-place voter fraud has, perhaps irrevocably, entered the public consciousness. It has <a target="_blank" href="http://www.slate.com/id/2152116/">infected even the Supreme Court's thinking about voter-ID laws</a>. And it has provided intellectual cover <a target="_blank" href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=976701">for the continued partisan pursuit</a> of voter-ID laws that may suppress minority votes. Just this week, Republican members of the Texas state Senate are trying to push through a voter-ID law over a threatened Democratic filibuster. Their political machinations have already required a Democratic state senator <a target="_blank" href="http://electionlawblog.org/archives/008406.html">recovering from a liver transplant</a> to show up to vote—and they almost passed the bill when another Democratic senator <a target="_blank" href="http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/4806873.html">came down with the stomach flu</a>. </p><p>Texas legislators should be ashamed. All of this effort to enact a law that would stop a nonexistent problem. If only there were a way to ensure that <a target="_blank" href="http://www.slate.com/id/2136776/">spurious claims of polling-place voter fraud</a> could have disappeared with ACVR.</p><p><em><strong><a name="Correction">Correction</a>, May 22, 2007: </strong>The original version erroneously stated that Minnite was employed at Columbia University. (<a target="_blank" href="#Return">Return</a> to the corrected sentence.)</em></p><em><a target="_blank" href="http://www.lls.edu/academics/faculty/hasen.html">Richard L. Hasen</a>, the William H. Hannon distinguished professor at Loyola Law School, writes the <a target="_blank" href="http://electionlawblog.org/">Election Law Blog</a>.</em><br><p><strong>Article URL: <a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2166589/" target="_blank">http://www.slate.com/id/2166589/</a></strong></p></div><script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript" src="http://www.slate.com/js/s_code.js"></script><script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript"><!--
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So, what do you make of it? Is it a "both parties" politics problem, or is one party clearly at constant war with some of it's own constituency and almost all of the rest of the country? |
01-11-2008, 09:16 PM
