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Politics : Sioux Nation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ThirdEye who wrote (64682)	4/19/2006 1:59:40 PM
From: Skywatcher	Respond to of 361700

An old scandal has grown some new legs April 19. 2006 8:00AM L earning the truth about the Republican Party's attempt to suppress Democratic turnout in the 2002 senatorial race between Gov. Jeanne Shaheen and Sen. John Sununu won't change the election's outcome. It's over. Shaheen lost. Nor would she be a senator today if the GOP hadn't jammed the phone lines at Democratic get-out-the-vote centers in New Hampshire for a few hours. Shaheen lost by 20,000 votes. Yes, 2002 is, by political standards, ancient history. And yes, Democrats enjoy watching top Republicans deny that they were involved in or had knowledge of a crime. But what learning the truth will do is help convince a skeptical public that election law violations are taken seriously. It will warn powerful interests that subpoenas can't always be blocked or evidence suppressed if you spend enough money. And it could erase suspicions that White House officials had a hand in illegal efforts to influence the election. Or it could confirm that at least some were willing to go to any lengths to control Congress. Last week, Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean wrote to Ken Mehlman, his Republican counterpart, and asked a series of questions. Mehlman, who was White House political affairs director in 2002, is among those who New Hampshire's Democratic Party, in a civil suit it has filed, wish to have testify under oath. He should be ordered to do so. Dean's letter and Mehlman's response - he denied any knowledge of the scheme by himself or his staff - reawakened a scandal sedated by time. The New York Times, in what it called an "editorial observation," said that bloggers were speculating that the affair could be a second Watergate, the small crime that led to revelations of corruption at the top. ---ADVERTISEMENT--- The Senate Majority Project, a Washington-based research group affiliated with Democrats, has continued to investigate. So has this state's Democratic Party. Two Republican officials, including former state party head Chuck McGee, pleaded guilty in the case before a federal court convicted James Tobin on a charge of telephone harassment. Tobin, the Republican Party's national director for New England in 2002, has appealed. So far, the party has spent a reported $2.8 million on his defense. Earlier this month the Democratic research group published a log of the phone calls Tobin made right before election day and on that day itself. The log includes two dozen calls he made to the White House while the phone-jamming was taking place and in its aftermath. Mehlman and others say such a high volume of calls is the norm on election day during a hotly-contested Senate race. Probably, but six of Tobin's calls to the White House were placed after Sununu had been declared the winner. What were those about? The contribution of $15,000 to the state Republican Party - roughly what it cost to hire telemarketers to jam the lines - by the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians is curious. Both tribes were clients of lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Does that mean anything? The state Republican committee has resisted discovery in a civil case in Hillsborough County Superior Court for more than two years. In it, state Democrats are seeking the right to ask for the phone messages and emails of the people in the Office of Political Affairs in the White House, which received Tobin's calls. Republicans at the state and federal level are fighting that request in court. The Democrats may be beating a dead horse by investigating a 2002 election that wasn't even close. But the beating will almost certainly continue until the questions they've raised are answered.