KEITH OLBERMANN discusses the GONZALES scandal concerning partisan control of Voting Rights Department
And now even the Pro-Bush Washington Post has had to do a piece on this deepening of The Gonzales Scandal:
U.S. Attorneys Investigation
Voter-Fraud Complaints by GOP Drove Dismissals
By Dan Eggen and Amy Goldstein
Washington Post
Monday, May 14, 2007
" Nearly half the U.S. attorneys slated for removal by the administration last year were targets of Republican complaints that they were lax on voter fraud, including efforts by presidential adviser Karl Rove to encourage more prosecutions of election- law violations, according to new documents and interviews.
Of the 12 U.S. attorneys known to have been dismissed or considered for removal last year, five were identified by Rove or other administration officials as working in districts that were trouble spots for voter fraud -- Kansas City, Mo.; Milwaukee; New Mexico; Nevada; and Washington state. Four of the five prosecutors in those districts were dismissed."
Sounds good so far then they start back-peddling claiming that both major parties have been accused of voter fraud & that the Bush Regime in fact has been trying to reform voter registration ...these guys never fail to disappoint us ... they pimp with the best of them..as the article goes on to claim:
...Democrats counter that such fraud is rare and that GOP efforts are designed to suppress legitimate votes by minorities, the elderly and recent immigrants, who are likely to support Democratic candidates. A draft report last year by the Election Assistance Commission, a bipartisan government panel that conducts election research, said that "there is widespread but not unanimous agreement that there is little polling place fraud."...
Then the article gets to the meat of the matter but again the authors try to muddy the waters.
Rick Hasen, a professor at Loyola Law School who runs an election law blog, said that "there's no question that Karl Rove and other political operatives" urged Justice officials to apply pressure on U.S. attorneys to pursue voter-fraud allegations in parts of the country that were critical to the GOP.
Hasen said it remains unclear, however, "whether they believed there was a lot of fraud and U.S. attorneys would ferret it out, or whether they believed there wasn't a lot of fraud but the allegations would serve political purposes."
According to Lorraine Minnite, a political scientist at Barnard College who co-wrote a recent study of federal prosecution of election fraud, the states in which U.S. attorneys were dismissed, or put on a tentative firing list, include five of nearly a dozen states that Rove and other Republicans last year identified as election battlegrounds.
In some cases, Justice officials have cited conflicts with the chief prosecutors in those places that were unrelated to election fraud.
So its a big deal or not or just business as usual with enough mud to go around for everybody - no this is what the Washington Post & much of the media would have us believe - but I would argue that the extent of the influence goes beyond business as usual & when combined with all the other problems & scandals which seem to have hit almost all the Departments of the US federal government it is evident that this regime is corrupt & its members believe they are beyond the rule of law & can change & interpret laws & the Constitution as they see fit--- or should we just lower such standards & lower our expectations of elected officials & appointees and learn to accept fraud , lying & deceiving the public as just as the norm.
take care,
GORD.
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