Religious Right's Hostile Take Over Of Our Freedom
Mood:  incredulous
Now Playing: Kelly Clarkson - Breakaway
Topic: Disturbing Information
Dr. Abele: A Turn to the (Religious) Right
By Dr. Robert Abele
Yubanet

Monday 13 September 2004

If John Kerry has anything going for him that separates him from George W. Bush, it is the fact that he is not involved in the so-called "religious right" of America.

This is the name given by the media to a well-organized band of fanatic biblical fundamentalists who are hell-bent on turning our democracy over to (their concept of) God.

In the highest leadership circles of this movement, there is open talk of the goal of obtaining a theocracy in the U.S. Part of their method in achieving this goal is to attempt to convince Americans,

as they have convinced Mr. Bush,

that the United States was founded to be a Christian nation.

The frightening fact about this movement is not that it is being pushed by an extremist wing of "religious" America,

but that they have in fact to a large degree taken over the Republican Party,

making it and its policies extremist.

When their candidates become our elected officials,

as in fact the current situation stands today,

they have halfway achieved their goal.

An equally frightening and perplexing fact about this movement is that they call themselves "Christian" but will stop at nothing to get their dogmatic ideology adopted as the universal law.

The most bothersome thing about this movement it is that their theocratic end justifies any means necessary to its achievement, including lying and cheating, as we will see below.

This writing aims to make a first contribution to challenging this movement, first by rejecting the revisionist history advocated by this vocal minority to have their form of religious government accepted as the only one allegedly intended by the Founders of this great country.

The focus of the first part of this article, then, will be the attempts of these Christian zealots to have people believe that the United States was founded as a Christian nation.

Second, the main figures of this movement who serve in Congress,

their positions and their proposed legislative agendas will be highlighted.

The preference of ideology to the pursuit of truth of the people who would make theocratic claims concerning the founding of our constitutional democracy is demonstrated in the method that is their favored one:

find "proof quotes" from the Founders to demonstrate their preconceived position.

This method, however, demonstrates the logically fallacious and intellectually dishonest process of violently ripping quotations out of the context of their use.

For example, let us take two quotations often used in this process.

The first one is from George Washington, the second from Thomas Jefferson.

The Washington quotation frequently used to demonstrate the "religious right" point is this:

"It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible."

This quotation is frequently found on fundamentalist Christian web sites, without provision of citation.

I searched forty-eight such sites before I found one that stated that the line allegedly uttered by Washington was from a speech he gave to the Dutch Reformed Synod in 1789.

After extensive research, I was finally able to obtain a copy of this speech.

I found three things in this research:

first, it is not a speech; it is a letter Washington wrote.

Second, it is an obscure letter, not easily found, and not certainly in the usual collections of his works.

Third, it is only three paragraphs in length, and in it Washington never once utters such a line.

In fact, there is nothing even close to this line in his speech, nor in any of the other speeches, letters, or writings of Washington I have read to date.

This is not to argue, of course, that Washington never said such a thing.

It is to argue that it is intellectually dishonest to throw such quotations around when one cannot site the source of it.

Or worse, as in the Christian web site in which I found this speech, to forge the footnote!

The quotation from Jefferson is even more easily dispensed with when one puts it in its context.

The quotation used by fundamentalist Christians is this:

"I am a real Christian."

While Jefferson certainly did pen those words, he was explicitly making reference in that very sentence to the ethics of Jesus, not the overtly religious overtones of the gospel.

Just two sentences earlier in that same letter, he makes a direct reference to his own "version" of the New Testament, in which he cut the ethical sayings of Jesus out of a Bible and placed them on blank pages of a book.

Jefferson saw Jesus as a great ethical philosopher, but certainly did not understand him as in any way divine or even claiming divinity.

On most Christian accounts, this excludes him from the "chosen elect" of "true believers." Thus, Jefferson was claiming that he was "a real Christian," that is, one who follows the ethical teachings of Jesus, rather than those "false Christians" who used their profession of faith in the divinity of Jesus to gain, increase, and consolidate their religious and/or political power.

It takes an incredible twisting and turning of Jefferson's words, as use of this quotation does, to argue for the alleged "Christianity" of this Founder of the country.

At best, this method, then, is superficial; at worst, it is downright dishonest.

Second, this fundamentalist dogma that the United States was founded as a "Christian nation" fails to delineate clearly two important issues:

the activity or goal of founding a democratic form of government, and the fact that many of the Founders were believers in a deity.

The textual evidence nowhere indicates that the purpose of their founding such a government was exclusively or even predominantly religious in nature.

Nowhere is the division between these categories more clear than in Thomas Jefferson's intellectual hero, John Locke.

Locke explicitly states in his Two Treatises of Government - and it is clearly echoed in Jefferson's Declaration of Independence - that the founding of a democratic commonwealth was for the purpose of ensuring our "lives, liberties, and properties."

Nowhere does Locke say that the purpose of a democratic form of government was religious in nature.

In fact, Locke states quite precisely in his "Letter Concerning Toleration [of religion]" that "the whole jurisdiction of the magistrate reaches only to...civil concernments," and that the state "neither can nor ought in any manner to be extended to the salvation of souls."

Moreover, the fact that Jefferson and other Founders appealed to God in their writings does not mean that we are a theocracy!

All one need do is read Article VI, Section 3 of the Constitution to make this point abundantly clear.

This Article reads in part as follows:

"no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States."

When fundamentalists attempt to make the Founders out to be Christian and therefore founders of either a religious or a Christian democracy,

they do terrible damage to the fundamental aim of democracies of the eighteenth century:

freedom of the individual.

Even if this happened to be informed by their faith, it is only that:

to be informed is not to be determined by or subservient to their faith.

Their primary concern was with the "natural law" of human reason and individual liberties.

Divine revelation had nothing to do with their political aims.

On the contrary, to a man they clearly believed that rationality was to be the guiding light of democracy, not appeals to the divine.

Let us examine a statement from Thomas Jefferson in this regard:

"Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage to reason, than that of blindfolded fear..." (Letter to his nephew, Peter Carr)

Third, and more to the point, although some of the Founders were Christian, many more were Deists.

There is a fundamental difference between what Deists believe and the doctrines of mainstream Christianity.

Deists maintain that a Divine Creator of the universe exists, but deny that he is personally interested in human history.

Accepting no revelations, no persons as "God incarnate," the Deists reject the divinity of Jesus as well.

Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin were indubitably Deists;

they admitted to such many times in their writings.

For just one of many examples, I will quote the "real" Thomas Jefferson, far more accurately referred to as a Deist than a Christian.

This should demonstrate the misleading nature of any attribution of Christianity to him:

"The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. But may we hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with this artificial scaffolding..."

There are numerous such passages in the writings of Jefferson, if fundamentalist Christians would but just look before attempting to write their revisionist histories.

Furthermore, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, the former the author of the Declaration of Independence, the latter the author of the Constitution and the First Amendment to our Constitution protecting religious freedom, were both very alarmed at the possibility that some parties would attempt to foist their single-minded Christian religious beliefs on the majority.

Both of them wrote and lobbied extensively for laws prohibiting this kind of interference from Christians in politics.

For instance, Jefferson wrote in his "Act for Establishing Religious Freedom" in Virginia that "no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever."

Madison, for his part, maintains in his "Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments," his opposition to a Virginia bill to tax people to pay those who taught the doctrines of Christianity, that "the Bill implies either that the Civil Magistrate is a competent Judge of Religious Truth; or that he may employ Religion as an engine of Civil policy.

The first is an arrogant pretension falsified by the contradictory opinions of Rulers in all ages, and throughout the world; the second an unhallowed perversion of the means of salvation."

Even more to the point, says Madison, "A just Government needs [religious clergy] not."

Fifth, the position as stated by those who subscribe to the "Christian nation" dogma fails to make another critical distinction: that between religious belief and Christianity.

There is no doubt that the Founders partook in the former practice; there is considerable doubt that this is the same practice as the latter.

One will read precious few references to Jesus or Christ in most of the writings of the "big name" Founders.

Even where one does find these references, it is not at all in reference to the forming of the new democratic government.

This indicates clearly that the Founders had something else in mind than creating a government based on or imbued with, religion, least of all the Christian version.

Furthermore, assuming that the alleged Christianity of the Founders could be established with certitude, it does nothing at all to "prove" that they therefore wanted to establish a Christian nation.

To reach this conclusion would require a quantum leap in logic.

When all of these issues are considered, one is only left to conclude that the fundamentalist position on this issue is not fundamentally rooted in reason or in history, but rather in a vain desire to proselytize for a distinctively Christian revisionist history.

When any group uses the banner of a political party in order to engage in dogmatic ideological assertions of an allegedly religious nature, that group in effect hijacks the political process only for the purpose of achieving their own narrow ends.

When that happens, it must be challenged by the majority of citizens.

In this case, it is important to challenge the people who espouse such positions, in the name of intellectual honesty, to do more reading and thinking, beyond what their Bible allegedly tells them.

However, we cannot stop our analysis of the "religious right" here, because we must come back to today and examine their current activities.

The "Christian nation" movement that is gaining a very strong foothold in American politics today is not simply the run of the mill version of biblical fundamentalism.

Rather, it is a movement designed specifically to attack the Constitution and the broad view of freedoms guaranteed by the Bill of Rights (see the writings of religious right writers such as Gary North, R.J. Rushdoony, Greg Bahnsen, Gary DeMar, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Tim LaHaye, and others for first-hand statements to this effect).

Their goal, at its most extreme, is a biblical theocracy.

Theocracy in their case means that the principles of one single religion, in this case, Christianity and its notion of divinely ordained rule, are to be the governmentally recognized and supported interpretation of jurisprudential decisions and legislative proposals.

The movement that is gaining strength in the right-wing of the Republican Party and thus in the U.S. Senate and House or Representatives, is every bit as ideologically entrenched, and every bit as dangerous to democracy, as fundamentalist Muslims who argue for a Mid-East Islamic theocracy.

Consider the main players who belong to this movement, and who have the ear, as well as the support and confidence of, President Bush:

Karl Rove, John Ashcroft, Tom DeLay, Bill Frist, Mitch McConnell, Rick Santorum, Bob Bennet, Kay Bailey Hutchison, Jon Kyle, George Allen, Antonin Scalia, and others, mentioned below.

These politicians, and one Supreme Court Justice, are all supported by the movement for theocracy, if not financially, at least ideologically.

The connection of all of these people to the radical Christian right has been documented by investigative journalists such as Rob Boston, Kimberly Blaker, and Frederick Clarkson, among others.

Consider further that the Texas Republican Party Platform now reads:

"The Republican Party of Texas affirms that the United States is a Christian nation."

The movement is generally referred to in the media as "the religious right," but their main movers and organizers specifically include Pat Robertson's "700 Club," the Rutherford Institute, and The National Reform Association, among others.

These headliner organizations state their missions forthrightly:

"Jesus Christ is Lord in all aspects of life, including civil government."

Or, as John Ashcroft has stated it on his swearing in as Attorney General:

"We have no king but Jesus."

The main movers behind this movement include Paul Weyrich, Gary North, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and others.

More specifically, this group of radical right Christians, through their well-funded representatives and senators, has sponsored "The Constitutional Restoration Act of 2004."

It was introduced into both Houses of Congress this past February, and includes "the acknowledgement of God as the sovereign source of law by an official in his capacity of executing his office."

The sponsors of the bill: Rep. Robert Aderholt (Alabama), Rep. Michael Pence (Indiana), Sen. Richard Shelby (Alabama), Sen. Zell Miller (Georgia), Sen. Sam Brownback (Kansas), and Sen. Lindsey Graham (South Carolina).

Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-Alabama) is in the process of garnering support for a bill he hopes to sponsor next year, entitled "The Ten Commandments Defense Act."

He states that the intent of the bill is to acknowledge that "The Supreme Court does not always have the final authority over the interpretation of the Constitution."

Rather, the Bible is to be viewed as the last line of interpretation of the Constitution.

Judge Scalia, in an address to the Chicago Divinity School in 2002, said "government...derives its moral authority from God.

It is the minister of God with powers to 'avenge' to 'execute wrath' including even wrath by the sword."

In an article in the magazine First Things, Scalia wrote:

"Indeed, it seems to me that the more Christian a country is, the less likely it is to regard the death penalty as immoral."

These developments are alarming for many and obvious reasons, but I will limit myself to two of them here.

First of all, the overwhelming preponderance of the evidence indicates quite clearly that these ideas are not included in the structure of the government the Founders established.

Second, whenever one party attempts to have their rigid ideology adopted as the exclusive position of a nation, the freedom of citizens so central to democracy dies.

It is important to conclude with a key qualifier here.

Not all people who consider themselves fundamentalist or evangelical Christians are consciously or by necessity supporting the movement toward theocracy.

I am acquainted with many well-meaning fundamentalist Christians who would not have any part of this movement.

However, they need to know what cause they are supporting when they vote for candidates who espouse "religious right" causes such as those we have seen above.

There are many perils to our democracy today, many of them coming from within it:

paperless voting machines,

invasion of countries without pretext,

and single-minded ideologies posing as monolithic truth,

with the supporters galvanized around the notion that no truth exists apart from theirs, and who will go to any length to force that putative truth through the political process.

Eternal vigilance against their eternal hostility is the responsibility of all who truly respect the democratic process.

Such is the case with the "Christian nation" hypothesis:

it does not stand against the weight of history or reason, and must be rejected by all who can think critically.

(For more information on this subject, including the specifics concerning legislative actions mentioned above, there are two journalists who write extensively on it: Frederick Clarkson and Rob Boston. They each have a number of books and articles tracking the "religious right." For more, see the following sources: Frederick Clarkson, Eternal Hostility; Clarkson, What is Christian Reconstructionism?; Kimberly Blaker, ed., The Fundamentals of Extremism; Katherine Yurica, The Yurica Report; Tom Paine.com; Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore, The Godless Constitution; Leo Pfeffer, Church, State, and Freedom; Rob Boston, Pat Robertson, the Most Dangerous Man in America?; and the web sites for "Americans United for Separation of Church and State" and "People for the American Way.")

(For information written by the main organizers of the religious right today, see: Henry A. Wallace, Democracy Reborn; Christian Gallery.com; Chuck Baldwin, Renew America; R.J. Rushdoony, Institutes of Biblical Law; Gary North, Christianity and Civilization; and James Kennedy, Character and Destiny: A Nation in Search of its Soul.)



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Dr. Robert Abele is a professor of philosophy at Illinois Valley Community College, located near Chicago. He has written articles on political philosophy and also on ethics and warfare, and is now in the process of completing a book on ethics and the invasion of Iraq. He also has a new book entitled A User's Guide to the USA PATRIOT Act, published by University Press of America, due out in November. He can be reached by email.

Rolled up papers at fifty places (Keith Olbermann)
Mood:  incredulous
Topic: Voting
SECAUCUS? You know it's bad when the two sides start throwing professors at one another.

Two conflicting scholarly studies on the variance between the national exit polling and the presidential election results, are flying across the Internet, eating up your e-mail storage capacity.

One, from the University of Pennsylvania, reminds us that exit polls are used as 'audits' on the elections in places like Germany and Mexico, and suggests the actual statistical odds that the exit polling was that wrong in the battleground states were 250,000,000 to one.

The other, from a voting project managed by CalTech and MIT, says that while the incorrectness of national exit polling can't be explained by the proverbial 'margin of error,' on a state-by-state basis, it actually was within that margin.

Craig Crawford joins us tonight to try to make political sense of the theory-laden scholarly research.

KOlbermann@MSNBC.com

Recounts and Retractions (Keith Olbermann)
Mood:  irritated
Topic: Voting
NEW YORK? John Kerry or no John Kerry, there could still be recounts in Ohio and New Hampshire? courtesy of the two candidates who got far more grief than votes during the presidential campaign.

David Cobb of the Green Party told a California radio station late yesterday afternoon that he is ?quite likely to be demanding a recount in Ohio,? with a final decision to be reached and announced during the day

The New Hampshire Assistant Attorney General, meanwhile, told us at Countdown that negotiations are ongoing with Ralph Nader, who at a news conference yesterday not only demanded a recount in a minimum of four districts, but also added another bizarre touch to the proceedings by launching into a brief but surprisingly high-quality Richard Nixon impression.

The central issue in both potential recounts appears to be money. Cobb, whose presence on the ballot in all 50 states is probably coming to your attention only as you read this, said in an interview with the Pacifica station in Los Angeles, KPFK, that a recount would cost the Greens around $110,000, on a basis of approximately $10 per precinct. As you?d probably guess, Mr. Cobb?s doesn?t have the money lying around? but as a presidential candidate, he does have the right. Whether or not he can raise the cash is the operative question.

In New Hampshire, Assistant Attorney General Bud Fitch indicated that reports that Nader forfeited his right to request a recount there because he didn?t get a $2,000 filing fee to them before last Friday?s deadline were erroneous. However, Fitch did raise the bar on Nader, saying that he would have to provide a written guarantee that he would cover all costs relating to a recount, and that the state would probably demand a deposit, or the establishment of an escrow account. Complicating matters still further is Fitch?s admission that New Hampshire really can?t give a good estimate on the final costs.

It?s been twenty years since they?ve had a recount there and Fitch said costs in today?s dollars could be $30,000, $50,000, or even $80,000? although he guesses that the middle figure is the ?top end? of what they?re looking at. New Hampshire is a recount-friendly state. Candidates are permitted to base a recount on the results of a particular community, and if they find their doubts resolved, they?re afforded the opportunity to cancel the rest of any statewide investigation.

That Cobb and Nader between them could lead to a resolution of both Democrats? doubts about the legitimacy of the election, and Republicans? resentment that there are doubts, contains a delicious irony. To call them ?fringe? candidates is to demean their efforts, but they?re hardly favorites at any spot on the political spectrum. Nader, in particular, was trashed on a daily basis by the Democrats who feared he could negatively impact Kerry?s vote totals in swing states, as he clearly did to Al Gore in Florida in 2000. For the rancor, Nader has nobody to blame but himself. Not until late in the campaign did he successfully articulate his reasons for ?running anyway?? namely, his conviction that breaking the two-party duopoly at lower echelons of government (particularly in the House) will take decades, and had to start at the top and work down.

In any event, if Nader and Cobb are at the edges, questions about Ohio moved back into the mainstream yesterday with another cogent article in The Cincinnati Enquirer. The rationale for the bizarre ?lockdown? of the vote-counting venue in Warren County on election night suddenly broke down when it was contradicted by spokespersons from the FBI and Ohio?s primary homeland security official.

County Emergency Services Director Frank Young said last week that in a face-to-face meeting with an FBI agent, he was warned that Warren County, outside Cincinnati, faced a ?terrorist threat.? County Commissioners President Pat South amplified, insisting to us at Countdown that her jurisdiction had received a series of memos from Homeland Security about the threat. ?These memos were sent out statewide, not just to Warren County, and they included a lot of planning tools and resources to use for election day security.

?In a face to face meeting between the FBI and our director of Emergency Services,? Ms. South continued, ?we were informed that on a scale from 1 to 10, the tri-state area of Southwest Ohio was ranked at a high 8 to a low 9 in terms of security risk. Warren County in particular, was rated at 10.?

But the Bureau says it issued no such warning.

?The FBI did not notify anyone in Warren County of any specific terrorist threat to Warren County before Election Day,? FBI spokesman Michael Brooks told Enquirer reporters Erica Solvig and Dan Horn.

Through a spokeswoman, Ohio Public Safety Director Ken Morckel told the newspaper that his office knew of no heightened terror warning for election night for Warren County or any other community in Greater Cincinnati.

Despite the contradiction from both security services, Ms. South again amplified, telling the Enquirer ?It wasn?t international terrorism that we were in fear of; it was more domestic terrorism.?

So the media was kept two floors away from the vote counting at the Warren County Administration on election night on the basis of a ?10? FBI terror threat that the FBI says was never issued.

Appearing with us on Countdown last night, Newsweek Senior Editor and columnist Jonathan Alter said the Warren ?terror? story was likely to grab the interest of the mainstream media: ?I think you?ll see in the next few days, other reporters start to get their act together? you?ll hear more about this story in the days and weeks to come.?

It has all even come to the attention of the blithe agitator of the far right, Ann Coulter, who yesterday not only wrote of the election irregularities but, I?m proud to say, slimed and misquoted me. ?In a major report on ?Countdown with Keith Olbermann? last Monday,? my fellow Cornell alum writes, ?Olbermann revealed that Bush?s win in Florida? and thus the election?was ?attributable largely to largely Democratic districts suddenly switching sides and all voting for Mr. Bush at the same time?!?

It made for fascinating reading, because it made me think for a moment that I had been on television while in a coma. I couldn?t recall making such a broadly ridiculous remark? and it turns out I didn?t. Ms. Coulter, living up to her usual standards which many of us in the Alumni Association nightly pray she didn?t learn at the university, took

a quote from a transcript of the November 8th show
completely out of context, and entirely twisted its meaning.

The actual quote follows, with the key portion discarded by Ms. Coulter indicated in bold face:

?There (Florida), county totals in Tuesday?s election might be attributable largely to largely Democratic districts suddenly switching sides and all voting for Mr. Bush.?

Thus, a comment indicating how President Bush might have legitimately achieved majorities in some Florida counties, is transformed into a contention that the entire election turned on those county margins.

It?s a neat trick? the journalistic equivalent of the dog who learns to balance the biscuit on her nose and then flip it into her mouth on voice command.

Never tried it myself.

What do you think? Email me at KOlbermann@msnbc.com

A bunch of cats across the parking lot (Keith Olbermann)
Mood:  lyrical
Topic: Voting
NEW YORK - The election vote mess is like one of those inflatable clown dolls. You knock it down with your hardest punch, it goes supine, and then bounces back up, in the meantime having moved an inch or two laterally.

The punch, of course, is the explanation that the 29 more-votes-than-voters precincts in greater Cleveland appear to have been caused by the addition of Absentee Ballots. The total difference between registered voters and votes (93,000) might be explained by that process, but it does little for one?s confidence in the whole result from Ohio.

The problem is, the rubber clown immediately bounces back with the report that officials in Youngstown managed to catch a slight glitch in their voting there: a total drawn from all the precincts that initially showed negative 25,000,000 million votes cast. It evokes a Monty Python sketch (?Mr. Kevin Phillips Bong - Sensible Party - 14,352. Mr. Harquin Fim Tim Lim Bim Bus Stop Fatang Fatang Ole Biscuit Barrel - Silly Party -- minus 25,000,0000).

No reason to worry about the integrity of the outcome in Ohio, is there?

The most pleasing thing of the last three days of blogs and newscasts is the reassurance from political professionals that all of you (all of us) who have wondered about what went on a week ago yesterday are not necessarily nuts. We might not necessarily be right, but there are some very stodgy, very by-the-book folks who think we?re damned right to be asking.

?Ohio was rife with allegations,? Jonathan Turley said on last night?s show. He?s not merely a superior expert on the Constitution, teaching it at George Washington University?s law school, but back during my first incarnation at MSNBC, as host of The Big Show and The White House In Crisis, Jonathan was a regular guest who regularly said that the investigation and impeachment of President Clinton was largely being done within the framework of the Constitution, and as bad as much of it looked, it was well within the margin of error.

Professor Turley is no partisan.

?There was litigation over pockets of voters,? he continued, on the subject of Ohio. ?There was far more litigation than was indicated in the news programming.? He should know - he was on the clock and on the set working for CBS News throughout the campaign, and straight through to 6 AM in the hours after the vote. ?So when you look at provisionals and absentees and then those pockets of votes, yeah, there probably is enough of a margin if things broke for Kerry that he could turn the state. Is it likely? No. But it is not impossible.?

Turley noted that a complaint now, without John Kerry?s sponsorship, is also a longshot: ?Without the candidate, judges don?t work as hard? when it comes to overturning a set of returns, or a county?s report, or a state?s. But, he added, ?remember that over 70% of Ohio?s votes were done with punch cards and we know that when you do a challenge to those, they tend to turn over.?

Paging Mr. Gore! Mr. Albert Gore, please report to the blog?

On the show last night there was also confirmation of something I speculated about here 24 hours ago. Craig Crawford, one of our MSNBC political contributors and also a columnist for Congressional Quarterly, admitted that the concession did trigger a kind of ?we can all go home now!? exultation in the media. ?Since John Kerry conceded,? Craig said, ?there wasn?t that great desire to run out to Columbus and try to figure this out. And the concession is the key because we?re often wimps in the media and we wait for other people to make charges, one political party or the other, and then we investigate.?

Bless Craig Crawford for saying that. If you haven?t seen him a lot on the tube you may be misled by his Aw-Shucks delivery and willingness to laugh at the subject matter. The political insight, shorn of the political pomposity that so many of the pros evince, is as refreshing as his laugh. Next to that admission that the Starting Line mentality pervades so much of political journalism, came the message about investigating, prodding, pushing, yelling, shouting, and blogging: ?This is the time to do this. There?s still time before the results are certified. It doesn?t mean it?ll change the outcome - but it?s good.?

Craig also connected a few unpleasant dots. Kerry, he says, is ?definitely interested in running in 2008,? and the image of Gore?s political death after the 2000 re-count may have played as much of a part in his hurried concession as any realistic appraisal of his chances in reversing the election by reversing Ohio.

He didn?t, however, endorse any conspiracy theories. ?My experience with Election Supervisors is that they?re very independent, often real characters, hard people to actually organize into a conspiracy. I think it?d be easier to herd a bunch of cats across a parking lot.?

But ? as I pointed out to him after he crafted that colorful bit of imagery - when one voting machine can add 4,000 votes for one presidential candidate in a 650-vote precinct, and another one in the same state can turn a day?s balloting into a net result of negative 25 million, it may also be true that altering those machines may be easy enough that it could be pulled off not only by conspiratorial Election Supervisors, but also, just by a bunch of cats from across the parking lot.

Thoughts? Email me at KOlbermann@msnbc.com

Do Over [NC] (Keith Olbermann)
Mood:  don't ask
Topic: Voting
NEW YORK? With news this morning that the computerized balloting in North Carolina is so thoroughly messed up that all state-wide voting may be thrown out and a second election day scheduled, the story continues.

Tonight on 'Countdown,' we'll examine the N.C. mess (which would not include a second presidential vote), new fuzzy math in Nevada, allegations against the Democrats in Pennsylvania, Ralph Nader's news conference, and the other voting developments as they occur. A Stanford computer expert will address the vulnerability of the Optical Scanning system (and answer the question: which is easier to hack, electronic voting or exit polls?), and Newsweek's Jonathan Alter will join me to report on the reporting.

Electronic voting angst (Keith Olbermann)
Mood:  incredulous
Topic: Voting
Electronic voting angst (Keith Olbermann)

NEW YORK ? Bev Harris, the Blackbox lady, was apparently quoted in a number of venues during the day Monday as having written ?I was tipped off by a person very high up in TV that the news has been locked down tight, and there will be no TV coverage of the real problems with voting on Nov. 2? My source said they?ve also been forbidden to talk about it even on their own time.?

I didn?t get the memo.

We were able to put together a reasonably solid 15 minutes or so on the voting irregularities in Florida and Ohio on Monday?s Countdown. There was some You-Are-There insight from the Cincinnati Enquirer reporter who had personally encountered the ?lockdown? during the vote count in Warren County, Ohio, a week ago, and a good deal of fairly contained comment from Representative John Conyers of Michigan, who now leads a small but growing group of Democratic congressmen who?ve written the General Accountability Office demanding an investigation of what we should gently call the Electronic Voting Angst. Conyers insisted he wasn?t trying to re-cast the election, but seemed mystified that in the 21st Century we could have advanced to a technological state in which voting? fine, flawed, or felonious? should leave no paper trail.

But the show should not have been confused with Edward R. Murrow flattening Joe McCarthy. I mean that both in terms of editorial content and controversy. I swear, and I have never been known to cover-up for any management anywhere, that I got nothing but support from MSNBC both for the Web-work and the television time. We were asked if perhaps we shouldn?t begin the program with the Fallujah offensive and do the voting story later, but nobody flinched when we argued that the Countdown format pretty much allows us to start wherever we please.

It may be different elsewhere, but there was no struggle to get this story on the air, and evidently I should be washing the feet of my bosses this morning in thanks. Because your reaction was a little different than mine. By actual rough count, between the 8 p.m. ET start of the program and 10:30 p.m. ET last night, we received 1,570 e-mails (none of them duplicates or forms, as near as I can tell). 1,508 were positive, 62 negative.

Well the volume is startling to begin with. I know some of the overtly liberal sites encouraged readers to write, but that?s still a hunk of mail, and a decisive margin (hell, 150 to 62 is considered a decisive margin). Writing this, I know I?m inviting negative comment, but so be it. I read a large number of the missives, skimmed all others, appreciate all? and all since? deeply.

Even the negative ones, because in between the repeated ?you lost? nonsense and one baffling reference to my toupee (seriously, if I wore a rug, wouldn?t I get one that was all the same color?), there was a solid point raised about some of the incongruous voting noted on the website of Florida?s Secretary of State.

There, 52 counties tallied their votes using paper ballots that were then optically scanned by machines produced by Diebold, Sequoia, or Election Systems and Software. 29 of those Florida counties had large Democratic majorities among registered voters (as high a ratio as Liberty County? Bristol, Florida and environs? where it?s 88 percent Democrats, 8 percent Republicans) but produced landslides for President Bush. On Countdown, we cited the five biggest surprises (Liberty ended Bush: 1,927; Kerry: 1,070), but did not mention the other 24.

Those protesting e-mailers pointed out that four of the five counties we mentioned also went for Bush in 2000, and were in Florida?s panhandle or near the Georgia border. Many of them have long ?Dixiecrat? histories and the swing to Bush, while remarkably large, isn?t of itself suggestive of voting fraud.

That the other 24 counties were scattered across the state, and that they had nothing in common except the optical scanning method, I didn?t mention. My bad. I used the most eye-popping numbers, and should have used a better regional mix instead.

Interestingly, none of the complaining emailers took issue with the remarkable results out of Cuyahoga County, Ohio. In 29 precincts there, the County?s Website shows, we had the most unexpected results in years: more votes than voters.

I?ll repeat that: more votes than voters. 93,000 more votes than voters.

Oops.

Talk about successful get-out-the-vote campaigns! What a triumph for democracy in Fairview Park, twelve miles west of downtown Cleveland. Only 13,342 registered voters there, but they cast 18,472 votes.

Vote early! Vote often!

And in the continuing saga of the secret vote count in Warren County, Ohio (outside Cincinnati), no protestor offered an explanation or even a reference, excepting one sympathetic writer who noted that there was a ?beautiful Mosque? in or near Warren County, and that a warning from Homeland Security might have been predicated on that fact.

To her credit, Pat South, President of the Warren County Commissioners who chose to keep the media from watching the actual vote count, was willing to come on the program? but only by phone. Instead, we asked her to compose a statement about the bizarre events at her County Administration building a week ago, which I can quote at greater length here than I did on the air.

?About three weeks prior to elections,? Ms. South stated, ?our emergency services department had been receiving quite a few pieces of correspondence from the office of Homeland Security on the upcoming elections. These memos were sent out statewide, not just to Warren County and they included a lot of planning tools and resources to use for election day security.

?In a face to face meeting between the FBI and our director of Emergency Services, we were informed that on a scale from 1 to 10, the tri-state area of Southwest Ohio was ranked at a high 8 to a low 9 in terms of security risk. Warren County in particular, was rated at 10 (with 10 being the highest risk). Pursuant to the Ohio revised code, we followed the law to the letter that basically says that no one is allowed within a hundred feet of a polling place except for voters and that after the polls close the only people allowed in the board of elections area where votes are being counted are the board of election members, judges, clerks, poll challengers, police, and that no one other than those people can be there while tabulation is taking place.?

Ms. South said she admitted the media to the building?s lobby, and that they were provided with updates on the ballot-counting every half hour. Of course, the ballot-counting was being conducted on the third floor, and the idea that it would have probably looked better if Warren had done what Ohio?s other 87 counties did? at least let reporters look through windows as the tabulations proceeded? apparently didn?t occur to anybody.

Back to those emails, especially the 1,508 positive ones. Apart from the supportive words (my favorites: ?Although I did not vote for Kerry, as a former government teacher, I am encouraged by your ?covering? the voting issue which is the basis of our government. Thank you.?), the main topics were questions about why ours was apparently the first television or mainstream print coverage of any of the issues in Florida or Ohio. I have a couple of theories.

Firstly, John Kerry conceded. As I pointed out here Sunday, no candidate?s statement is legally binding? what matters is the state election commissions? reports, and the Electoral College vote next month. But in terms of reportorial momentum, the concession took the wind out of a lot of journalists? aggressiveness towards the entire issue. Many were prepared for Election Night premature jocularity, and a post-vote stampede to the courts? especially after John Edwards? late night proclamation from Boston. When Kerry brought that to a halt, a lot of the media saw something of which they had not dared dream: a long weekend off.

Don?t discount this. This has been our longest presidential campaign ever, to say nothing of the one in which the truth was most artfully hidden or manufactured. To consider this mess over was enough to get 54 percent of the respondents to an Associated Press poll released yesterday to say that the ?conclusiveness? of last week?s vote had given them renewed confidence in our electoral system (of course, 39 percent said it had given them less confidence). Up for the battle for truth or not, a lot of fulltime political reporters were ready for a rest. Not me? I get to do ?Oddball? and ?Newsmakers? every night and they always serve to refresh my spirit, and my conviction that man is the silliest of the creator?s creations.

There?s a third element to the reluctance to address all this, I think. It comes from the mainstream?s love-hate relationship with this very thing you?re reading now: The Blog. This medium is so new that print, radio, and television don?t know what to do with it, especially given that a system of internet checks and balances has yet to develop. A good reporter may encounter a tip, or two, or five, in a day?s time. He has to check them all out before publishing or reporting.

What happens when you get 1,000 tips, all at once?

I?m sounding like an apologist for the silence of television and I don?t mean to. Just remember that when radio news arose in the '30s, the response of newspapers and the wire services was to boycott it, then try to limit it to specific hours. There?s a measure of competitiveness, a measure of confusion, and the undeniable fact that in searching for clear, non-partisan truth in this most partisan of times, the I?m-Surprised-This-Name-Never-Caught-On ?Information Super Highway? becomes a road with direction signs listing 1,000 destinations each.

Having said all that? for crying out loud, all the data we used tonight on Countdown was on official government websites in Cleveland and Florida. We confirmed all of it? moved it right out of the Reynolds Wrap Hat zone in about ten minutes.

Which offers one way bloggers can help guide the mainstream at times like this: source your stuff like crazy, and the stuffier the source the better.

Enough from the soapbox. We have heard the message on the Voting Angst and will continue to cover it with all prudent speed.

Thanks for your support.

Keep them coming... Email me at KOlbermann@msnbc.com

Naked Promotional Announcement (Keith Olbermann)
Mood:  hungry
Topic: Voting
SECAUCUS -- A quick and haplessly generic answer now to the 6,000 emails and the hundreds of phone calls.

Firstly, thank you.

Secondly, we will indeed be resuming our coverage of the voting irregularities in Ohio and Florida -- and elsewhere -- on this evening's edition of Countdown {8:00 p.m. ET}. The two scheduled guests are Jonathan Turley, an excellent professor of law at George Washington University, and MSNBC analyst and Congressional Quarterly senior columnist Craig Crawford.

For Jonathan, the questions are obvious: the process and implications of voting reviews, especially after a candidate has conceded, even after a President has been re-elected. For Craig, the questions are equally obvious: did John Kerry's concession indeed neuter mainstream media attention to the questions about voting and especially electronic voting, and what is the political state of play on the investigations and the protests.

Phase Two, in which Doris gets her oats...

Keep them coming. Email me at KOlbermann@msnbc.com

George, John, and Warren - MSNBC's Keith Olbermann
Mood:  loud
Now Playing: Papa Roach - Blanket of Fear
Topic: Voting
George, John, and Warren (Keith Olbermann)

NEW YORK? Here?s an interesting little sidebar of our system of government confirmed recently by the crack Countdown research staff: no Presidential candidate?s concession speech is legally binding. The only determinants of the outcome of election are the reports of the state returns boards and the vote of the Electoral College.

That?s right. Richard Nixon may have phoned John Kennedy in November, 1960, and congratulated him through clenched teeth. But if the FBI had burst into Kennedy headquarters in Chicago a week later and walked out with all the file cabinets and a bunch of employees with their raincoats drawn up over their heads, nothing Nixon had said would?ve prevented him, and not JFK, from taking the oath of office the following January.

This is mentioned because there is a small but blood-curdling set of news stories that right now exists somewhere between the world of investigative journalism, and the world of the Reynolds Wrap Hat. And while the group?s ultimate home remains unclear - so might our election of just a week ago.

Stories like these have filled the web since the tide turned against John Kerry late Tuesday night. But not until Friday did they begin to spill into the more conventional news media. That?s when the Cincinnati Enquirer reported that officials in Warren County, Ohio, had ?locked down? its administration building to prevent anybody from observing the vote count there.

Suspicious enough on the face of it, the decision got more dubious still when County Commissioners confirmed that they were acting on the advice of their Emergency Services Director, Frank Young. Mr. Young had explained that he had been advised by the federal government to implement the measures for the sake of Homeland Security.

Gotcha. Tom Ridge thought Osama Bin Laden was planning to hit Caesar Creek State Park in Waynesville. During the vote count in Lebanon. Or maybe it was Kings Island Amusement Park that had gone Code-Orange without telling anybody. Al-Qaeda had selected Turtlecreek Township for its first foray into a Red State.

The State of Ohio confirms that of all of its 88 Counties, Warren alone decided such Homeland Security measures were necessary. Even in Butler County, reports the Enquirer, the media and others were permitted to watch through a window as ballot-checkers performed their duties. In Warren, the media was finally admitted to the lobby of the administration building, which may have been slightly less incommodious for the reporters, but which still managed to keep them two floors away from the venue of the actual count.

Nobody in Warren County seems to think they?ve done anything wrong. The newspaper quotes County Prosecutor Rachel Hurtzel as saying the Commissioners ?were within their rights? to lock the building down, because having photographers or reporters present could have interfered with the count.

You bet, Rachel.

As I suggested, this is the first time one of the Fix stories has moved fully into the mainstream media. In so saying, I?m not dismissing the blogosphere. Hell, I?m in the blogosphere now, and there have been nights when I?ve gotten far more web hits than television viewers (thank you, Debate Scorecard readers). Even the overt partisanship of blogs don?t bother me - Tom Paine was a pretty partisan guy, and ultimately that served truth a lot better than a ship full of neutral reporters would have. I was just reading last night of the struggles Edward R. Murrow and William L. Shirer had during their early reporting from Europe in ?38 and ?39, because CBS thought them too anti-Nazi.

The only reason I differentiate between the blogs and the newspapers is that in the latter, a certain bar of ascertainable, reasonably neutral, fact has to be passed, and has to be approved by a consensus of reporters and editors. The process isn?t flawless (ask Dan Rather) but the next time you read a blog where bald-faced lies are accepted as fact, ask yourself whether we here in cyberspace have yet achieved the reliability of even the mainstream media. In short, a lot gets left out of newspapers, radio, and tv - but what?s left in tends to be, in the words of my old CNN Sports colleague NickCharles, a lead-pipe cinch.

Thus the majority of the media has yet to touch the other stories of Ohio (the amazing Bush Times Ten voting machine in Gahanna) or the sagas of Ohio South: huge margins for Bush in Florida counties in which registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans 2-1, places where the optical scanning of precinct totals seems to have turned results from perfect matches for the pro-Kerry exit poll data, to Bush sweeps.

We will be endeavoring to pull those stories, along with the Warren County farce, into the mainstream Monday and/or Tuesday nights on Countdown. That is, if we can wedge them in there among the news media?s main concerns since last Tuesday:

Who fixed the Exit Polls? Yes - you could deliberately skew a national series of post-vote questionnaires in favor of Kerry to discourage people from voting out west, where everything but New Mexico had been ceded to Kerry anyway, but you couldn?t alter key precinct votes in Ohio and/or Florida; and,
What will Bush do with his Mandate and his Political Capital? He got the highest vote total for a presidential candidate, you know. Did anybody notice who?s second on the list? A Mr. Kerry. Since when was the term ?mandate? applied when 56 million people voted against a guy? And by the way, how about that Karl Rove and his Freudian slip on ?Fox News Sunday?? Rove was asked if the electoral triumph would be as impactful on the balance of power between the parties as William McKinley?s in 1896 and he forgot his own talking points. The victories were ?similarly narrow,? Rove began, and then, seemingly aghast at his forthrightness, corrected himself. ?Not narrow; similarly structured.?
Gotta dash now. Some of us have to get to work on the Warren and Florida stories.

In the interim, Senator Kerry, kindly don?t leave the country.

Thoughts? Let me know at KOlbermann@msnbc.com

Oooh ooh... Pick ME!
Mood:  irritated
Now Playing: MTV - Choose or Lose 2004
Topic: Politics
Hello. My name is George Bush and I'm running for President. Please consider my accomplishments as set forth in the following resume.
---------------------------------------------------------------
EARLY RECORD
Please See Attached Page
POLITICAL RECORD (DOMESTIC)


I ran for President in 2000. My campaign was destined to be a miserable failure until I used a whispering campaign of lies in the South Carolina Presidential Primary organized by my chief political strategist, Karl Rove, to destroy genuine war hero and fellow Republican John McCain, claiming he had fathered an illegitimate negro child was emotionally unstable due to his torture as a POW in Vietnam and a possible brainwashed Manchurian Candidate.

In July 2001 I appointed Harvey Pitt to be the chairman of a "kinder, gentler SEC" to ease regulation of foreign businesses. The results have been the largest and most miserable failures of corporate accountability in modern corporate history: Enron, Worldcom, and now Fannie Mae.

I am the first President to unconstitutionally restrict my opponents' First Amendment rights by allowing my supporters to remain at the venue while restricting my detractors to "free speech zones," fenced-off areas up to half mile away from the media, the audience, and especially myself.

I've communicated less with the American people than any other president in the history of televised news, holding only one White House press conference every 3.25 months, compared to my father's 1.6 per month.

To prevent activist judges from rewriting the constitution to serve an agenda that Congress would never approve, I attempted to rewrite the constitution to serve an agenda they never came close to approving. My campaign for the Federal Marriage Amendment was a miserable failure: it failed to pass either house of congress. In the Senate the cloture call to end debate yielded only 48 votes, not the 67 required to pass the Senate, not the 60 votes required for cloture, not even the 50 votes of a simple majority.

My 2004 budget set the record for the largest deficit in history: either $477 billion or $521 billion (CBO and OMB numbers, respectively).

The value of the dollar has collapsed 30% during my term.

Nearly every major economic indicator has deteriorated since I took office in January 2001. Real GDP growth during my term is the lowest of any presidential term in recent memory. Total non-farm employment has contracted and the unemployment rate has increased. Bankruptcies are up sharply, as is our dependence on foreign capital to finance an exploding current account deficit. All three major stock indexes are lower now than at the time of my inauguration. The percentage of Americans in poverty has increased, real median income has declined, and income inequality has grown.

POLITICAL EXPERIENCE (FOREIGN)

As president I ignored Clinton's warnings about Al Qaeda, mentioning that organization only once in public statements on national security between January 20, 2001 and September 10, 2001. In the same time period I mentioned Saddam Hussein 104 times and missile defense 101 times.

On August 6, 2001 I received a briefing titled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States" which warned that "the FBI indicates patterns of suspicious activity in the United States consistent with preparations for hijacking." For one month I dealt with numerous other issues until the unfolding of the most successful terrorist attack in US history on September 11, 2001.

With broad international approval I temporarily disrupted the Taliban government, which has now re-emerged to control much of southern Afghanistan after I abandoned this campaign for Iraq.

I campaigned strongly for war in Iraq. I claimed that:

Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction (none have been found).


Iraq had ties to Al Qaeda (Iraq opposed Al Qaeda and successfully kept their operatives out of the country before September 2001. The strongest claim to support a connection came from Czech intelligence services and is now retracted. The 9/11 commission "did not believe that such a meeting occurred".)


Iraq would give their weapons of mass destruction to terrorists (A secular Saddam would never give his "ace card" to religious elements he opposed throughout his life and could not control)


The war would be "self-financing" through oil sales ($200 billion total has been allocated, and $138 billion has already been spent with more to follow).


The war would end quickly, with troop deployments down to 30,000 troops by Autumn 2003 (March 2004 troop deployment: 114,000 US plus 23,000 Coalition troops in Iraq; 26,000 US and Coalition logistical support troops in Kuwait).


Americans would be greeted as liberators (Public perception of Americans as liberators dropped from 43% at the time of invasion to 2% after Abu Ghraib).

By invading I would make it more difficult for terrorists to obtain Weapons of Mass Destruction (The only WMD 'discovered' in Iraq was successfully obtained by terrorists and used against Americans. As a result of the invasion, nuclear equipment and materials in Iraq formerly monitored by the IAEA has disappeared and may have fallen into the hands of terrorists or rogue countries. The results have been overwhelmingly negative for U.S. interests.)

I punished those who spoke unwelcome truth:

I sent Joseph Wilson to Africa in February 2002 to investigate claims that Iraq had attempted to purchase uranium, where Wilson determined that those claims were based on forged documents. Despite his report I continued to make public Iraq/Nigeria statements as late as January 2003. When Wilson publicly contradicted me, one of my senior officials exposed the CIA cover of Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, in an article written by Robert Novak and printed in the New York Times on July 14 2003. No one is sure which senior White House official leaked the order or who was aware, but the fact that I hired James Sharp in June 2004 to represent me as a personal criminal defense attorney is significant when you consider that there is no attorney-client privilege between a president and a White House counsel that allows the counsel to withhold information from a Federal grand jury.

I fired Lawrence Lindsey as my economics advisor in early December 2002 for claiming that the Iraq War would cost between $100 and $200 billion. ($138 billion has been spent and $200 billion has been budgeted... so far)


I fired Jay Garner as US Administrator of Iraq in March 2004 for calling for immediate elections instead of allowing American companies to privatize government-owned assets. (American privatization and lack of a legitimate Iraqi government is one of the major reasons for unrest in Iraq.)


I made US Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki a lame duck in June 2003, defying precedent and announcing his successor 14 months in advance of his retirement after he announced that "several hundred thousand troops would be needed in postwar Iraq".

I threatened to have Medicare analyst Richard Foster fired if he replied to Congressional requests and reported that the Medicare Prescription Drug Bill would cost $551 billion, $156 billion over the White House's favored estimate of $395 billion.


After the Iraq Health Ministry released figures showing that US and Coalition forces killed twice as many Iraqis as the Insurgents the Iraqis are supposedly being protected from, I acted decisively by ordering the Iraq Health Ministry to not release any more figures.

I rewarded those who spoke welcome lies, paying Ahmed Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress $340,000 per month for their false intelligence gathered about Iraq. Although Chalabi and the INC had been dropped from the CIA payroll in 1996 for being an unreliable source and also dismissed by the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) for the same reason, I continued to use Chalabi and the INC to support claims of WMDs in Iraq. Even after their information proved false and no weapons were found I remained so close to Chalabi that he sat with Laura Bush as my "Special Guest" during my September 2003 State of the Union address. I continued to pay the INC regularly until May 2004, when allegations surfaced that Chalabi had passed classified American intelligence to Iran.

I put tremendous pressure on the CIA to come up with information to support policies that have already been adopted (as determined by the Senate Report of Pre-war Intelligence on Iraq). When the CIA and DIA refused to verify intelligence items I wanted to believe, Donald Rumsfeld and I created the Office of Special Plans. This independent department within the Pentagon was designed to bypass the CIA and feed the discredited and unreliable information I wanted to believe was true back into the intelligence stream in order to support conclusions that the CIA and DIA could not. The OSP took much of the discredited information from Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress.

I opposed the creation of the Department of Homeland Security for nine months, before turning around to take credit for its creation.

I opposed the creation of an independent 9/11 panel. After being forced to accept the commission, I gave it only $12 million in funding to do its work (compared to $50 million combined for Whitewater and the Monica Lewinsky investigation) before turning around to take credit for its creation.

My war against Al Qaeda has been a miserable failure:

The International Institute for Strategic Studies' most conservative estimate (May 25, 2004) is that the occupation of Iraq has helped Al Qaeda recruit 18,000 operatives in more than 60 countries.

The Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University has found that The war in Iraq did not damage international terror groups, but instead distracted the United States from confronting other hotbeds of Islamic militancy and actually "created momentum" for many terrorists. On a strategic level as well as an operational level, the war in Iraq is hurting the war on international terrorism.

By my State Department's own estimates, world terror attacks are now at their highest level in 20 years, up 36% since 2001.

I have held 660 prisoners in Guantanamo, Cuba for over two years without trial or formal charge. My prisoners, several of whom were between the ages of 13 and 16, have never been formally charged. They are kept in steel cages, subjected to ongoing torture, and denied access to legal counsel in opposition to Supreme Court rulings (Rasul v. Bush). These prisoners are "the worst of the worst", "hard core, well trained terrorists" and their guilt is beyond doubt, which is why I've set 87 of them free without explanation or apology.

In the past year I claim to have trained 100,000 Iraqi police forces, but only 8,169 of those have passed the required 8-week training course. Another 46,176 are listed as "untrained".

My Secretary of Defense is the first in US history to have acknowledged ordering an intentional violation of the Geneva Conventions, in which Abu Ghraib prisoners were held "off the books" and hidden from the Red Cross. When this order was made public I refused to discipline him in any way, instead complimenting him on his job performance.

After being informed of abuses at Abu Ghraib on January 16 (first reported on January 13) which included "Threatening male detainees with rape" and "Sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick" I made "freedom from torture chambers and rape rooms" a centerpiece in my speeches until April 29 when the story finally broke on 60 Minutes II.

My administration is the first since the Civil War to imprison US Citizens (Jose Padilla) as "enemy combatants" without charges, trial, or access to legal counsel. In a 5-4 decision (Rumsfeld v. Padilla) the Supreme Court dodged the opportunity to rule on the legality, ruling that the case had been improperly filed.

My administration broke new legal ground by using material witness warrants to give effective life sentences to US citizens without charge, trial, access to legal counsel, or even plans to prosecute.

My justice department was the first in US history to attempt to enforce federal regulations while refusing to disclose what those regulations are.

My legal war against terror has been a miserable failure: I have detained more than 5,000 people on suspicion of terrorist ties, some of whom have been held without charge or without access to a lawyer. I have successfully convicted zero.

-----------------------------------------------------
bushresume@monkeydyne.com

The Disconnect in US Democracy
Mood:  loud
Topic: Voting
by Noam Chomsky
Khaleej Times, October 29, 2004


Americans may be encouraged to vote, but not to participate more meaningfully in the political arena. Essentially the election is a method of marginalising the population. A huge propaganda campaign is mounted to get people to focus on these personalised quadrennial extravaganzas and to think, "That?s politics." But it isn?t. It?s only a small part of politics.


The population has been carefully excluded from political activity, and not by accident. An enormous amount of work has gone into that disenfranchisement. During the 1960s the outburst of popular participation in democracy terrified the forces of convention, which mounted a fierce counter-campaign. Manifestations show up today on the left as well as the right in the effort to drive democracy back into the hole where it belongs.


Bush and Kerry can run because they?re funded by basically the same concentrations of private power. Both candidates understand that the election is supposed to stay away from issues. They are creatures of the public relations industry, which keeps the public out of the election process. The concentration is on what they call a candidate?s "qualities," not policies. Is he a leader? A nice guy? Voters end up endorsing an image, not a platform.


Last month a Gallup poll asked Americans why they?re voting for either Bush or Kerry. From a multiple-choice list, a mere 6 percent of Bush voters and 13 percent of Kerry voters picked the candidates? "agendas/ideas/ platforms/goals." That?s how the political system prefers it. Often the issues that are most on people?s minds don?t enter at all clearly into the debate.


A new report by the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations, which regularly monitors American attitudes on international issues, illustrates the disconnect.


A considerable majority of Americans favour "working within the United Nations, even when it adopts policies that the United States does not like." Most Americans also believe that "countries should have the right to go to war on their own only if they (have) strong evidence that they are in imminent danger of being attacked," thus rejecting the bipartisan consensus on "pre-emptive war."


On Iraq, polls by the Program on International Policy Attitudes show that a majority of Americans favour letting the UN take the lead in issues of security, reconstruction and political transition in that country. Last March, Spanish voters actually could vote on these matters.


It is notable that Americans hold these and similar views (say, on the International Criminal Court or the Kyoto Protocol) in virtual isolation: They rarely hear them in campaign speeches, and probably regard them as idiosyncratic. At the same time the level of activism for social change may be higher than ever in the US. But it?s disorganised. Nobody knows what?s happening on the other side of town.


By contrast, consider the fundamentalist Christians. Earlier this month in Jerusalem, Pat Robertson said that he would start a third party if Bush and the Republicans waver in support for Israel. That?s a serious threat because he might be able to mobilise tens of millions of evangelical Christians who already form a significant political force, thanks to extensive work over decades on numerous issues, and with candidates at levels from school board to president.


The presidential race isn?t devoid of issue-oriented activism. During the primaries, before the main event fully gears up, candidates can raise issues and help organise popular support for them, thereby influencing campaigns to some extent. After the primaries, mere statements make a minimal impact without a significant organisation behind them.


The urgency is for popular progressive groups to grow and become strong enough so that centres of power can?t ignore them. Forces for change that have come up from the grass roots and shaken the society to its core include the labour movement, the civil rights movement, the peace movement, the women?s movement and others, cultivated by steady, dedicated work at all levels, every day, not just once every four years.


But you can?t ignore the elections. You should recognise that one of the two groups now contending for power happens to be extremist and dangerous, and has already caused plenty of trouble and could cause plenty more.


As for myself, I?ve taken the same position as in 2000. If you are in a swing state, you should vote to keep the worst guys out. If it?s another state, do what you feel is best. There are many considerations. Bush and his administration are publicly committed to dismantling and destroying whatever progressive legislation and social welfare has been won by popular struggles over the past century.


Internationally, they are calling for dominating the world by military force, including even the "ownership of space" to expand monitoring and first strike capabilities.


So in the election, sensible choices have to be made. But they are secondary to serious political action. The main task is to create a genuinely responsive democratic culture, and that effort goes on before and after electoral extravaganzas, whatever their outcome.

Chomsky article