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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: American Spirit who wrote (74797)	3/23/2007 4:12:25 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

Don’t Expect The Truth From Karl Rove _____________________________________________________________ Published on Friday, March 23, 2007 by The Los Angeles Times Congress wants to hear from Karl Rove, and members want him sworn in. Rather than accept a politically expedient deal from the White House — a no-oath interview — Senate and House committees have approved subpoenas for Rove and others. Lawmakers hope to figure out whether Rove hatched the plan to fire U.S. attorneys who were not hewing to the Republican Party’s political playbook. Whether Rove chats or testifies, Congress will surely be frustrated. Asking Rove questions is simply not an effective method of ascertaining facts. Reporters who, like me, have dogged the presidential advisor from Texas to Washington quickly learn how skilled he is at dancing around the periphery of issues. Any answers he does deliver can survive a thousand interpretations. Few intellects are as adept at framing, positioning and spinning ideas. That’s a great talent for politics. But it’s dangerous when dealing with the law. Rove has testified under oath before investigative bodies twice, and in neither case was the truth well served. In 1991, he was sworn in before the Texas state Senate as a nominee to East Texas State University’s board of regents. The state Senate’s nominations committee, chaired by Democrat Bob Glasgow, was eager to have Rove explain his relationship with FBI agent Greg Rampton. Rampton was a controversial figure in Texas, and Democrats suspected that he’d been consorting with Rove for years. During the 1986 gubernatorial race, when a listening device was discovered in Rove’s office, it was Rampton who investigated. No one was ever charged — and Democrats suspected that Rove planted the bug himself to distract reporters from the faltering campaign of his client, Bill Clements (who won the election). Then, in 1989, Rampton launched a series of devastating investigations into every statewide Democratic officeholder in Texas, including Agricultural Commissioner Jim Hightower. Rove (at the time running Republican Rick Perry’s campaign for that job) often leaked things to reporters, such as whose names were on subpoenas before they were issued. So when the Texas state Senate committee found nominee Rove before it in 1991, members thought they had the power to get at the truth. “How long have you known an FBI agent by the name of Greg Rampton?” Glasgow asked. Rove paused for a breath. “Ah, senator, it depends — would you define ‘know’ for me?” Rove, who later vilified President Clinton’s request for a definition of “is,” clearly had his own linguistic issues. But Glasgow pressed on: “What is your relationship with him?” Rove said: “Ah, I know, I would not recognize Greg Rampton if he walked in the door. We have talked on the phone a var- — a number of times. Ah, and he has visited in my office once or twice, but we do not have a social or personal relationship whatsoever….” Rove’s famous memory, which recalls precinct results from 100-year-old presidential elections, often seems trained only to serve his political ends. In an interview with me after the 2000 presidential election, Rove said he did not remember meeting with Rampton at all. But in fact, Rove had met with Rampton — and he even disclosed it on a questionnaire after George H.W. Bush nominated him to the Board for International Broadcasting. In sworn documents, Rove stated that he met with Rampton in 1990 during the investigation of Hightower — an encounter that surely fits the definition of “know.” Rove’s memory also made some creative leaps during a pretrial hearing in 1993. Travis County Dist. Atty. Ronnie Earle was preparing to prosecute Rove client Kay Bailey Hutchison, who was the Texas state treasurer. A grand jury had indicted her for allegedly using government phones and computers to raise campaign money. When law enforcement officers raided the treasurer’s building to confiscate evidence, reporters documented the whole thing. Hutchison’s attorneys filed for a change of venue because of a perceived political and media imbalance, which they insisted made a fair trial impossible in Austin. Rove, called to the stand to offer evidence of bias against Republicans, told the court that two reporters had informed him that they were tipped off to the raid by D.A. investigators. Under oath, Rove named David Elliot of the Austin American-Statesman and Wayne Slater from the Dallas Morning News as the reporters. Both men later told me they hadn’t spoken with Rove, nor had they told anyone they had received a tip from the D.A.’s office. They had gotten a call from staffers at the treasurer’s office, which is precisely how all of the other journalists, including myself, learned about the raid. If Rove winds up under oath before Congress, members will get a command performance by a man with masterful communications skills. They can expect to hear artful impressions, bits of information and a few stipulated facts. But they should not expect the truth. -James C. Moore co-wrote “Bush’s Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential” with Wayne Slater. commondreams.org

To: American Spirit who wrote (74797)	3/23/2007 4:17:06 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 89467

Explosive New Vote Fraud Developments Continue To Rock Ohio and Florida by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman Published on Friday, March 23, 2007 by CommonDreams.org Breaking news in vote fraud cases in both Ohio and Florida are feeding a firestorm of controversy that is likely to continue escalating, with major implications for the 2008 election and the future of e-voting machines. In Ohio, Jennifer Brunner, the newly elected Secretary of State, has received two of the four resignations she requested from the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections (BOE). The two Democrats on the Board, Edward Coaxum, Jr. and Loree Soggs, have complied with her call for their departures from Cleveland’s scandal-ridden election authority. However, Robert Bennett, who chairs both the Cuyahoga BOE and the Ohio Republican Party, has thus far refused Brunner’s request. So has Sally Florkiewicz, Bennett’s fellow Republican on the BOE. Should they continue with their refusal to resign, Brunner has threatened to hold public hearings, in the wake of which she could force the resignations. Meanwhile, the Associated Press reports that a criminal investigation is underway which centers on the Cuyahoga BOE’s conduct of the November 2006 election. Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Bill Mason has turned again to Erie County Prosecutor Kevin Baxter who recently won felony convictions of two BOE workers for rigging the 2004 presidential recount for another criminal investigation. Baxter will be investigating “possible criminal wrongdoings” related to ballot security and the scanning of absentee ballots. A Cleveland State University Center for Election Integrity study has exposed various election irregularities in Cuyahoga County in the 2006 election. Among the most egregious were the BOE’s failure to secure the dual keys (one for the Dems and one for the Republicans) required for the vote counting rooms; that they allowed shared computer passwords; and that they allowed an unexplained cable connection to the county’s vote counting computer. The Free Press also has viewed a video shot by Jeff Kirkby showing Cuyahoga County election workers downloading the county’s election data onto portable laptops that were allegedly allowed to go home with BOE employees. These practices raise serious concerns over election data security. Massive computer failures during the May 2006 primary led in February 2007 to the resignation of Michael Vu, who was the executive director of the Cuyahoga BOE at the time. Both Bennett and Vu pushed for the $20 million purchase of Diebold voting machines over strenuous objections from election protection activists, whose concerns were cablecast in the HBO documentary “Hacking Democracy” shown nationwide just prior to the November 2006 election. On March 21, the Dayton Daily News reported that “After two days of tests, the results are in: About 2,500 people cast ballots in November on 56 malfunctioning electronic touch-screen voting machines in Montgomery County, said Steve Harsman, county board of elections director.” The Free Press has previously reported that there were nearly 30,000 undervotes in Montgomery County during the 2006 gubernatorial race, meaning an abnormally high 13.67% of all voters reportedly recorded no vote for the state’s highest office. (See chart posted with this article at the Freepress.org web site courtesy of Pete Johnson and CASE-Ohio) Similar undervote problems exist in Adams, Darke, Highland, Mercer and Perry counties. Meanwhile, Jonathon Simon has informed the Free Press that the Election Defense Alliance (EDA) is analyzing data from Adams County as part of a project to compare exit polls to actual votes. In the 2004 election, the exit polls showed John Kerry winning, while the actual machine and computer tabulated results gave the state to Bush by 118,000 votes. Meanwhile, in Florida, internal memos from the ES&S voting machine company indicate an e-voting machine created an undervote problem, according to Wired News. In Sarasota County, 18,000 ballots recorded no votes in a hotly contested congressional race. “But the memo, which the company sent to Florida election officials before the state’s September primary, revealed that the iVotronic machines had a flaw that sometimes caused machines to respond slowly to a voter’s touch ‘beyond the normal time a voter would expect to have their selection highlighted.’ The memo stated that a software upgrade was required but couldn’t be certified before the September election. In its absence, ES&S sent election officials a warning sign to post at polls advising voters that they might need to press the screen for several seconds before their votes would register,” wrote Wired News. Reginald Mitchell, lawyer for People for the American Way, told Wired News that “this memo is the smoking gun….” The six counties under investigation in Ohio all used Diebold machines suggesting that both major suppliers of e-voting machines have similar flaws that create undervotes. These waves of breaking news about serious problems in the conduct of the 2004 and 2006 elections, and in the performance of electronic voting machines in the two states that have decided the last two presidential elections, make it a virtual certainty that we have barely begun to see the full extent of what has really been done to the American democratic system.