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Today's News and Views

It's The Conservatism, Stupid

Paul Waldman

July 12, 2006

Paul Waldman is a senior fellow at Media Matters for America and the author of the new book, Being Right is Not Enough: What Progressives Can Learn From Conservative Success, just released by John Wiley & Sons. The views expressed here are his own.

Ask a conservative what the biggest problem in America is today, and you’ll get answers like overtaxation, a sexualized culture, lack of respect for authority, insufficient church-going or big government running amok. But if you then asked the conservative what the real source of the problem was—the beating heart pumping blood to each and all of these socio-politico-cultural wounds—you’d get the same answer: liberalism.

On the other hand, you could ask a liberal a hundred questions about the problems facing our country before you’d get to an answer that placed conservatism at the heart of the nation’s ills.

And conservatives learn these messages when still young. What does a “campus liberal” do? Well, it depends what his or her issue is: fighting sweatshop labor, or environmental degradation, or the Iraq war, or any of a dozen other problems about which liberals are concerned. What, on the other hand, does a “campus conservative” do? Fight liberals and liberalism.

You can hear it in the media as well. As any fan of Limbaugh, Hannity or O’Reilly hears every day, whatever the issue is, the problem is liberals. Conservatives write books saying liberals are The Party of Death , who are Trashing Democracy, Waging War Against Christianity , ,Screwing Up America,  Corrupting Our Future—and on top of it all, our whole ideology is A Mental Disorder. Liberals, on the other hand, write books about why George W. Bush is a terrible president. (I plead guilty.)  

What we haven’t yet seen from the left is a sustained critique, not just of a particular politician or a particular policy, but of the entire ideology and worldview of conservatism.

As everyone knows, conservatives have succeeded in making “liberal” an epithet, something they throw at their opponents—who try desperately to dodge the label. The demonization of “liberal” has been successful in part because conservatives have effectively created what social psychologists call a “schema” with decidedly negative features around the term. A schema is a set of ideas that are connected in people’s minds, such that activating one idea—“liberal”—activates a whole set of related ideas, like lights on a Christmas tree. We assemble schemas as a way of storing and categorizing related information in memory. In this case, the related ideas are things like “soft on crime,” “weak on defense,” “sexually permissive,” and so on. The ideas liberals would like to pop right up in people’s heads when they hear the term liberal—“wants prosperity for everyone,” “supports universal health care” or “stands up to powerful interests”—are farther away from the schema’s center.  

This didn’t happen by accident. It is the result of a relentless campaign against liberalism by conservatives. And liberals need to do the same thing to conservatism.  

A good first step would be to never, ever again use the word with a positive connotation. How many times has a Democrat, in order to score a debating point, said, “A true conservative wouldn’t tolerate these Republican deficits?” How many times have solidly liberal Democrats described themselves as “fiscally conservative?” Those formulations accept that true conservatives are principled people with noble goals. They are not, and should not be talked about as though they were. When was the last time you heard a Republican call himself a “social liberal,” even if he is one? They don’t, because they understand that liberalism is an opposing ideology to which they will give no aid or comfort.  

So allow me to offer a few points of attack on conservatism, ones that will resonate with the public and accrue both short-term and long-term gains to the liberals who use them.  

1. Conservatism has failed. The overwhelming majority of the American public now sees the Bush administration as a failure. They failed in Iraq, they failed after Hurricane Katrina, they failed on health care, they failed to deliver rising wages, they failed on the deficit, they failed, they failed, they failed. Why? Liberals need to argue that it wasn’t a product of incompetence, it was a failure of conservative governance. As Alan Wolfe put it in a recent Washington Monthly article, “Conservatives cannot govern well for the same reason that vegetarians cannot prepare a world-class boeuf bourguignon: If you believe that what you are called upon to do is wrong, you are not likely to do it very well.”  

Conservatives had their chance: a Republican president, a Republican Congress, Republican-appointed courts—in short, the perfect environment for enacting their vision with little to stand in their way—and they failed. Should we be surprised at the level of corruption? Of course not; they don’t think government is there to serve the people, so why shouldn’t they raid it for whatever they can grab?  

In short, progressives should start talking about the Bush administration’s failures not as those of a president, but of an ideology.  

2. Conservatism is the ideology of the past—a past we don’t want to return to. Liberals need to embrace the culture war, because we’re winning. The story of American history is that of conservative ideas and prejudices falling away as our society grows more progressive and thus more true to our nation’s founding ideals. Conservatives supported slavery, conservatives opposed women’s suffrage, conservatives supported Jim Crow, conservatives opposed the 40-hour work week and the abolishment of child labor, and conservatives supported McCarthyism. In short, all the major advancements of freedom and justice in our history were pushed by liberals and opposed by conservatives, no matter the party they inhabited at the time.   

Conservatism is Bill Bennett lecturing you about self-denial, then rushing off to feed his slot habit at the casino. It’s James Dobson telling you that children need regular beatings to stay in line. It’s a superannuated nun rapping you on the knuckles so you won’t think about your dirty parts. It’s Jerry Falwell watching “Teletubbies” frame by frame to see if Tinky Winky is trying to turn him gay. Conservatism is everyone you never wanted to grow up to be.  

3. Conservatives are cowards, and they hope you are, too. We’re afraid, they shout. We’re so afraid of terrorists, we have to become more like the things we hate. We’re so afraid, we have to let our government sanction torture. We’re so afraid, we have to let the government spy on us. We’re so afraid, we have to give the president dictatorial powers. We’re so afraid, we just want to rush to the arms of politicians who say they’ll protect us.  

Progressives need to frame their rejection of the fear campaign as an act of courage: Al-Qaida does not scare us, and we will not dismantle our democratic system because we are afraid. The America we love does not cower in fear, as the conservatives want it to.  

These are just a few ways progressives can begin to talk about contemporary issues in the context of the larger ideological conflict that shapes our political history. As an added bonus, when we make clear just what it is we are against at its fundamental, philosophical level, we define for the public who we are and what we stand for.  

One of the troubling contradictions in contemporary public opinion is that while on nearly every issue the progressive position is more popular, the number of people willing to tell a pollster they consider themselves “conservative” still far outnumbers the number willing to say they’re “liberal.” It wasn’t always that way, and it doesn’t have to be that way. Winning converts isn’t just about convincing people you’re right on the merits of issues, it’s also about showing them that your side is one they want to join, and the other side is one they want to avoid.  

The key challenge facing progressives right now is how—once George W. Bush decamps for Crawford in January of 2009—to maintain the increased energy motivating the political left in recent years . They will be able to do so if they come to understand that George W. Bush is not what they need to fight. What they need to fight is conservatism

© 2006 TomPaine.com ( A Project of The Institute for America's Future )

Bush sent a new negotiator to the six-party talks in 2004 but prohibited him from meaningful negotiation. Like clockwork, the North Koreans responded with extreme gestures, and Bush has answered that he will not speak to them directly. "By not talking with North Korea," Pritchard wrote last month in the Washington Post, "we are failing to address missiles, human rights, illegal activities, conventional forces, weapons of mass destruction, terrorism and anything else that matters to the American people. Isn't it about time we actually tried to solve the problem rather than let it fester until we blow it up?"

On Israel's reoccupation of Gaza in response to Hamas' terrorism, Bush has regressed to embracing no policy, just as he did when he first entered office. In the light of Bush's failure to give Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas any tangible gains to show his electorate, Hamas' victory was foretold. Now the withdrawal of the United States from any peace process is yielding a predictable downward spiral of mutual recrimination in the region.

Similarly, less than a month after the celebrated Camp David sleepover of senior administration officials, ostensibly to bring new clarity to Iraq policy, Bush has returned to mouthing inane platitudes about "victory." The killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, touted as a turning point, has proved to have had little impact. (Intelligence estimates put foreign fighters at between 4 and 10 percent of the insurgency.) Bush promises a military "defeat" of the enemy while ignoring his generals' admonition that a political solution is critical as Iraq descends into sectarian civil war.

What the president doesn't know and when he didn't know it remain pertinent. In January 2003, on the eve of the invasion of Iraq, Bush met with three prominent Iraqi dissidents, who, in discussing scenarios of post-Saddam Hussein Iraq, "talked about Sunnis and Shiites. It became apparent to them that the president was unfamiliar with these terms." Peter Galbraith, the former U.S. ambassador to Croatia and involved in Iraqi diplomacy as a Senate aide for decades, carefully sources this anecdote in his new book, "The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created a War Without End," in order to illustrate the "culture of arrogance" that imagined Iraq "was a blank slate on which the United States could impose its vision of a pluralistic democratic society."

But as the North Korea debacle shows, Bush's ruinous approach began before the Iraq invasion, indeed before Sept. 11. His latest policies, or pantomimes of policies, recall Gertrude Stein's description of Oakland, Calif.: "The trouble with Oakland is that when you get there, there is no there there."

-- By Sidney Blumenthal

Copyright ©2006 Salon Media Group, Inc.

Editorial: Undesirable army / Shortfalls allow the entry of hate-filled recruits

Wednesday, July 12, 2006

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Homosexuals in the military have long had to deal with a "don't ask, don't tell" policy. Gays and lesbians are shown the door the second their sexual orientation is known.

The military has been consistently ruthless in this regard, even when it meant thinning the ranks of capable translators and intelligence operators for an inconsequential factor like sexual identity.

But when it comes to the Pentagon's zero-tolerance policy for hate groups, recruiters appear more committed to making monthly quotas than ensuring the values of a racially diverse military. While the Iraq war grows more unpopular, recruiting shortfalls have allowed undesirables to fill the ranks.

Sensing an opportunity for mischief, white supremacists are enlisting and volunteering for battle assignments so they can get training in light infantry tactics they'll need for what they see as the coming race war in America. According to a report by the Southern Poverty Law Center, large numbers of neo-Nazis and white supremacist skinheads, possibly in the thousands, are on active duty in the U.S. military.

When a Defense Department investigator positively identified 320 racist extremists in the past year, only two were discharged, according to The New York Times. This reflects a "see no evil, hear no evil" stance by the military in a time of recruitment shortfalls.

A warm body, even if it has racist tendencies, is still a warm body to anxious recruiters. A volunteer military that tolerates a racially intolerant fifth column in its midst has decided that scraping the bottom of the barrel for recruits makes tactical and military sense. This is shortsighted and will prove disastrous in the long run.

A military that frets over the presence of gays while turning a blind eye to racist malcontents is in no position to win wars with outsiders when it can't defeat evil closer to home. A return to zero-tolerance for hate groups is the only way to guarantee that today's Army won't be training tomorrow's Oklahoma City bomber.

Copyright ©1997-2006 PG Publishing Co., Inc.

posted by Rozius | 10:51 AM

July 14, 2006

Why Democrats Don't Count

Lessons from the Un-Gore of Mexico

A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION
by Greg Palast

Watch "Florida con Salsa," Palast's 15-minute investigative report from Mexico City for Democracy Now!

The Exit polls said he won, but the "official" tally took his victory away. His supporters found they were scrubbed off voter rolls. Violence and intimidation kept even more of his voters away from the polls. Hundreds of thousands of ballots supposedly showed no choice for president -- like ballots with hanging chads.

And the officials in charge of this suspect election refused to re-count those votes in public. Everyone knew full well a fair count would certainly change the outcome.

You've heard this story before: Gore 2000. Kerry 2004.

But Lopez Obrador 2006 is made out of very different stuff than the scarecrow candidates who, oddly, call themselves "Democrats."

For six years now, I've had this crazy fantasy in my head. In it, an election is stolen and the guy who's declared the loser stands up in front of the White House and says three magic words: "Count the votes."

This past Saturday, my dream came true. Unfortunately, it was in Spanish -- but I'll take what I can get. There was Andreas Manuel Lopez Obrador, presidential challenger, standing in the "Zocalo" -- the square in front of Mexico's White House, telling the ruling clique inside, "Count the votes!"

Most important, his simple demand was echoed by half a million pissed-off, activated voters chanting with him, "Vota por vota!" -- vote by vote.

And you know what? I think they are going to have to listen. I suspect that the rulers of Mexico, a vicious, puffed-up, arrogant elite, may well have to count those votes. But, for that to happen, someone had to ask them to do it -- in no uncertain terms.

Traveling the USA, I'm asked again and again 'Why don't Democrats stand up when their elections are stolen?'

The answer: for the same reason jellyfish don't stand up... they're invertebrates.

I'm beginning to find that answer a bit too glib (though darn funny). Because it's not about electoral cojones; it's about a devotion to democracy deep in the bone. Yet weirdly, candidates that call themselves "Democrats" seem kind of, well, indifferent to democracy.

Why? Elections are the radical tool of the working class -- the great leveler of the powerless against the too-powerful. But the candidates themselves, both Republican and Democrat, tend to come from the privileged and pampered class. Votes are just the surfboards on which their ambitions ride.

Right now in Mexico's capitol, nearly a million ballots sit in tied bundles uncounted. That's four times the "official" margin of victory of the ruling party over Lopez Obrador. Supposedly, they're "votos nulos" -- null votes, unreadable. But, not surprisingly, when a few packets were opened, the majority of these supposedly unreadable votes were Lopez Obrador's.

If you think that's a Mexican game, think again. Because that's exactly what happened in Florida and Ohio.

In Florida, 179,855 ballots supposedly showed no vote for President. A closer look by the US Civil Rights Commission statisticians showed that 54% of those Florida "votos nulos" were cast by African-Americans. Did Black folk forget to vote for President, couldn't make up their minds or, as one TV network implied, were too dumb to figure out the ballot? Not at all. Machines can't count some ballots. But people can. For example, several voters wrote in, "Al Gore," which the machines rejected as his name was already printed on the ballot. The write-in could fool a machine but a human has no problem figuring out that voter's intent.

The National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago reviewed all 179,855 "uncountable" votes and found the majority attempted to choose Gore. And they would have been counted -- but Florida's Secretary of State, Katherine Harris, ordered a halt.

So Bush was elected not by counting the votes but by preventing their count. And he was reelected the same way in 2004 when a quarter million votes were nullified in Ohio.

But why fixate on Florida and Ohio? Here's a nasty little fact about voting in the Land of the Free not reported in your newspapers: 3,600,380 ballots were cast in the November 2004 presidential election that were never counted. In 2000, the uncounted ballots totaled just under two million.

And where were the Democrats? In 2004, behind the huge jump in uncounted votes was a mass challenge campaign aimed at poor, Black and Hispanic voters by the Republican Party -- pushing these voters, mostly Democrats, to "provisional ballots." They could have been counted, if someone had fought for it. Hundreds of lawyers were on stand-by but the head of the biggest legal team told me in confidence -- and in frustration -- that the Kerry campaign told them to stand down.

Recently, Al Gore was asked if the election of 2000 was stolen. "There may come a time when I speak on that, but it's not now," said the beta dog. (I suspect that if Al Gore were found bleeding in an alley, he'd answer the question, Who shot you? with "There may come a time when I speak on that...").

Lopez Obrador is of a different breed. At the rally last Saturday in Mexico City, he played video and audio tapes of the evidence of fraud on a screen eighty feet tall. Imagine if Gore had projected the "scrub sheets" of purged Black voters on a ten-story-high screen in front of the White House.

Lopez Obrador put political force behind his legal demands by calling on voters from every state in Mexico to march to the capital. Two million are expected to arrive this Sunday. The result: the word among the political classes is that the election may be annulled. Even the conservative Financial Times has warned Mexico's elite not to "fool itself" by ignoring the demand for a full vote count.

North-of-the-Border Democrats just don't get it. The Republican Party is pushing "provisional" ballots, pushing voter ID requirements, compiling secret challenge lists, scrubbing voter registries and selling us vote-nullifying ballot boxes: they get it completely. The GOP knows the key to their electoral domination is not in winning over their opponents' votes, but in not counting them.

The un-Gore of Mexico City has a lesson for the Blue-party gringos. Either the Democrats demand that all votes count, or the Democrats will count for nothing.

A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION

Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestseller, "ARMED MADHOUSE: Who's Afraid of Osama Wolf?, China Floats Bush Sinks, the Scheme to Steal '08, No Child's Behind Left and other Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Class War." Get your copy from the BuzzFlash Progressive Marketplace.

Palast's report, "Florida con Salsa? Vote Fraud in Mexico" was filmed and produced by Rick Rowley and Jacquie Soohen (Big Noise Films). Matt Pascarella, in Mexico, contributed to this investigation.

© BuzzFlash.

Minimum security: Truth is terror

© 2006 Working Assets

Statements from Valerie Plame Wilson and Joseph Wilson on their Lawsuit against Rove, Cheney and Libby

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ALERT

Valerie Plame Wilson - Press Statement, 14 July 2006

I am proud to have served my country by working at the Central Intelligence Agency. I and my former CIA colleagues trusted our government to protect us as we did our jobs. That a few reckless individuals within the current administration betrayed that trust has been a grave disappointment to every patriotic American. Joe and I have filed this action with heavy hearts but with a renewed sense of purpose. I would much rather be continuing my career as a public servant than be a plaintiff in a lawsuit, but I feel strongly and justice demands that those who acted so harmfully against our national security must answer for their shameful conduct in a court of law.

Joe Wilson - Press Statement, 14 July 2006

My name is Joe Wilson. I proudly served my country as a Foreign Service officer for twenty-three years. I was deeply honored to be appointed Ambassador to two African countries by President George Herbert Walker Bush, for whom I also served as acting ambassador to Iraq during the first Gulf War. In that capacity, I was the last American diplomat to confront Saddam Hussein before the launching of Desert Storm. In the Clinton Administration I was Senior Director of African Affairs at the National Security Council.

After my retirement from the Foreign Service in 1998, I undertook two discreet missions at the request of my government to the Republic of Niger to look into uranium related matters. In each case, I reported back my conclusions faithfully and truthfully.

One mission was to look into assertions that Iraq had purchased or was in the process of purchasing uranium yellowcake from Niger. I found no evidence that there was any truth to the allegation. The US Ambassador to Niger, and a four star Marine Corps general also looked into the allegation and came to the same conclusion that the claim was bogus.

Weeks before President Bush uttered his now infamous sixteen words in the 2003 State of the Union address, the National Intelligence officer, representing the intelligence community as a whole reported to the administration that the allegation was “baseless” and should not be used. Regrettably, that counsel was not heeded.

In the months that followed I privately urged the administration correct the public record on the falsehood in the State of the Union. When the administration refused to do so, I exercised my civic duty to hold my government to account for what it had said and done in the name of the American people. I wrote an article in the New York Times entitled “What I didn’t find in Africa.” The day following the appearance of the article the administration spokesman finally admitted that the sixteen words “did not rise to the level of inclusion in the State of the Union”. Subsequently, the Director of Central Intelligence confirmed that the statement should never have been made. Within weeks, the Deputy National Security Adviser offered his resignation, acknowledging that he had been told on several occasions that the intelligence community did not want the President to be a “witness of fact” about an unsubstantiated allegation.

Even as the administration was belatedly coming clean, some officials and their allies launched what the special prosecutor has called a concerted effort to use classified information to quote discredit, punish, or seek revenge unquote against my wife, Valerie, and myself. This attack was based on lies and disinformation, and included the compromise of Valerie’s identity as a classified officer of the Central Intelligence Agency. These officials’ abuse of power for personal revenge broke faith with their obligations as public servants to uphold and defend the constitution.

But this remains a nation of laws. No administration official however powerful is above the law and I have confidence in the American system of justice. This suit is about the pursuit of justice.

To assist us in defraying the costs of this suit the Joseph and Valerie Wilson Support Trust has been established with a web site at www.wilsonsupport.org. We are under no illusions about how tough this fight will be but we believe the time has come to hold those who use their official positions to exact personal revenge responsible for their actions.

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ALERT

© BuzzFlash.

House: Dems Extend ‘Red to Blue’ Program to 13 More Seats

By Greg Giroux   |   6:08 PM; Jul. 13, 2006 |

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) on Thursday expanded its program to focus attention on Democratic House contenders who are seeking to take over Republican-held seats.

The committee newly identified 13 House candidates as waging competitive campaigns and deserving of additional political and financial support from the party leading up to the November elections.

These additions were the latest installment of the 2006 “Red to Blue” program established in February by the DCCC, which is trying to orchestrate the net gain of at least 15 seats needed to erase the Republicans’ current House majority. The program takes its name from the now-familiar color-coded partisan maps, as the DCCC is trying to turn Republican-held “red” districts to Democratic-controlled “blue” districts.

Eight of the 13 newly named Democrats are challenging Republican incumbents. They are:

• Chris Carney, a political scientist and counterterrorism expert who is challenging four-term Rep. Don Sherwood — the subject of a recent personal scandal — in Pennsylvania’s 10th District.

• Joe Donnelly, a lawyer who is waging a rematch campaign against two-term Rep. Chris Chocola in Indiana’s 2nd.

• Phil Kellam, a local revenue commissioner who is opposing freshman Rep. Thelma Drake in Virginia’s 2nd.

• Patrick Murphy, a lawyer and Iraq war veteran who is taking on freshman Rep. Michael G. Fitzpatrick in Pennsylvania’s 8th.

• Joe Sestak, a retired Navy vice admiral who is challenging 10-term Rep. Curt Weldon in Pennsylvania’s 7th.

• Zack Space, an elected municipal attorney who is challenging ethically embroiled six-term Rep. Bob Ney in Ohio’s 18th.

• State Rep. Linda Stender, the Democratic nominee against three-term Rep. Mike Ferguson in New Jersey’s 7th.

• State Rep. Mike Weaver, who is challenging six-term Rep. Ron Lewis in Kentucky’s 2nd.

Most of these Democratic challengers need an extra boost because they are fighting stiff partisan odds. Of the eight, only Pennsylvania's 7th and 8th districts favored Democratic challenger John Kerry over President Bush in 2004.

Four other newly identified “Red to Blue” beneficiaries are seeking seats left open by outgoing GOP incumbents:

• Mike Arcuri, a county prosecutor who is vying to succeed retiring Rep. Sherwood L. Boehlert in New York’s 24th District. He likely will face Republican state Sen. Ray Meier

• Bruce Braley, a lawyer who is seeking to succeed Rep. Jim Nussle, a candidate for governor, in Iowa’s 1st. His Republican opponent is businessman Mike Whalen.

• Christine Jennings, a retired banking executive who is vying to succeed Rep. Katherine Harris, a candidate for Senate, in Florida’s 13th. Jennings faces a Sept. 5 primary with lawyer Jan Schneider, Harris’ challenger in 2002 and 2004; Republicans have a crowded primary field.

• Patty Wetterling, a child safety advocate who is running to succeed Rep. Mark Kennedy, a candidate for Senate, in Minnesota’s 6th. Wetterling, who ran a competitive challenge to Kennedy in 2004, faces Republican state Sen. Michele Bachmann.

Among that quartet of contests, the Democrats probably have their best chance in Iowa’s 1st, which backed Kerry in 2004. The other three districts favored Bush.

A fifth candidate for an open seat actually varies from the color scheme, as he is trying to keep a Democratic seat “blue.” In Ohio’s 6th District, state Sen. Charlie Wilson is the Democratic nominee for the seat that Democratic Rep. Ted Strickland is giving up to run for governor.

Wilson and Democratic officials were embarrassed earlier this year when the candidate failed to meet a minimal signature requirement to qualify for the Democratic primary ballot. But Wilson rebounded with an impressive write-in campaign that netted him more than twice as many votes in the primary than the winner of the Republican nomination, state Rep. Chuck Blasdel.

“These candidates are proven leaders, and the Red to Blue program will give them the necessary strategic and financial advantages they will need to win in November,” DCCC Chairman Rahm Emanuel, an Illinois congressman, said in a statement.

The DCCC noted that it already had raised about $3.8 million to assist the 22 candidates who previously were inducted into the Red to Blue program back in April. Some of those candidates are staying even with — or even outpacing — the incumbents in fundraising.

They include Lois Murphy, a lawyer who is challenging two-term Rep. Jim Gerlach in a rematch of their very close 2004 race in Pennsylvania’s 6th District, and state Sen. Ron Klein, who is taking on 13-term Rep. E. Clay Shaw Jr. in Florida’s 22nd District.

The DCCC’s announcement is the latest manifestation of its effort to expand the number of House districts in play, after failing in recent campaigns with a strategy focused overwhelmingly on a limited number of highly competitive districts. Some of the districts the DCCC identified in Thursday’s Red to Blue announcement have not been contested by the party in many years.

A case in point is Kentucky’s 2nd, a deeply conservative but ancestrally Democratic area in the west-central part of the state. Lewis was elected in a 1994 special election a few months before the GOP surge to control of Congress that November, and he has dominated the district’s elections since. But Democrats are touting Weaver, a conservative-leaning Democrat and a retired Army colonel.

Other districts the DCCC highlighted Thursday are takeover targets mainly because of specific vulnerabilities of the incumbents. In Ohio’s 18th, Ney’s professional associations with now-convicted former lobbyist Jack Abramoff have clouded his re-election prospects, even though Ney strenuously denies wrongdoing. In Pennsylvania’s 10th, Sherwood’s well-publicized past extramarital affair with a young woman has made him politically vulnerable in his culturally conservative district.

Most of the 13 candidates have won primary elections or face minimal intraparty opposition. In Florida’s 13th, though, the DCCC has long made clear that it prefers Jennings, both as a fresher face than Schneider and because party officials think her business background will give her broader appeal in the Republican-leaning district.

Inclusion on the Red to Blue list has not always translated to success at the ballot box, however. Two of the 22 original candidate inductees, both California Democrats, lost to other contenders in June 6 primaries.

Steve Filson, an airline pilot, was the DCCC-backed candidate to take on Rep. Richard W. Pombo in California’s 11th District, but he badly lost the Democratic primary to 2004 nominee Jerry McNerney, an executive of a wind turbine company.

Francine Busby, an educator, narrowly lost a special election to former Republican Rep. Brian P. Bilbray in California’s 50th, which had been vacated by resigned Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham following his conviction on bribery charges. Busby and Bilbray also will vie for a full term this November, but Bilbray is expected to prevail by a more comfortable margin.

© 2006

BLOGGED BY Brad ON 7/14/2006 11:49AM  

BREAKING: DNC'S VOTING RIGHTS INSTITUTE ISSUES STATEMENT CALLING FOR 'MANUAL COUNT' OF ALL BALLOTS IN BUSBY/BILBRAY ELECTION!

Denounces Adminstrative Failures, Irregularities, Security Breaches and Diebold Voting Machine 'Sleepovers' in Bellwether June 6th U.S. House Special Election!

Announcement Comes as DNC Chair Howard Dean Set to Address Activist, Election Integrity Convention in San Diego!

Filed by Brad Friedman from San Diego…

In a harshly worded statement, the DNC's Voting Rights Institute has issued a statement condemning the administration of the recent U.S. House race between Democrat Francine Busby and Republican Brian Bilbray, joining a growing national outcry in calling for "a swift and verifiable 'manual count' of all 150,000 ballots cast in California's 50th District's 'bellwether' June 6th special election."

"This is no longer about whether or not Busby or Bilbray won the election on June 6th," the just-issued statement reads. "This is about the importance of verifying the facts related to election and voting machine irregularities in this race and the need to ensure an accurate count of all votes cast in this election so that the electorate may have confidence in the announced results in future elections."

The long-awaited announcement of a position on the matter by the DNC comes at the end of more than a month of outrage from both national and state election integrity organizations, many of whom have declared "No Confidence" in the reported results of the race held to replace jailed Republican Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham. Bilbray declared himself the winner on election night, and was sworn into office several days later, before all votes had been counted, and nearly three weeks prior to the election being certified by either state or county officials.

Massive security breaches were reported the day after the election, in regard to the deployment of the county's Diebold optical-scan and touch-screen voting machines as directed by San Diego County Registrar of Voters, Mikel Haas. The progammed, election-ready voting machines, poll workers have informed The BRAD BLOG, were stored unsecurely in home garages and cars, which Haas has admitted to us would "not be considered secure" in an earlier interview. Due to the presumed-contamination of the extremely hackable voting systems used in the race — as allowed via the lengthy, unsupervised "sleepovers" in the days and weeks prior to the election — nobody, even the Registrar's office, has been able to prove the accuracy of the results as announced by Haas.

CNN's Lou Dobbs, CourtTV's Catherine Crier, Tribune Media's Robert Koehler and the far-right conservative Rush Limbaugh fill-in host, Bilbray supporter and San Diego radio personality Rodger Hedgecock have been amongst the mainstream media figures to report on the debacle, decrying the security breaches in the election.

Hedgecock recently excoriated the way in which the electronic voting machines were used in the election, exclaiming on-air: "We now have allowed a system of counting our votes to be presented to us as a system that does it accurately, when it has manifestly been proven that it can be monkeyed with…and the results tampered!"

Today's statement, posted by Greg Moore, Director of the DNC's Voting Rights Institute — citing "election irregularities" and several points of "new and disturbing information" concerning the mis-administration of the election — was issued this morning as DNC Chairman Howard Dean heads down to speak at DemocracyFest!, a grassroots activist gathering being held this weekend in San Diego.

'Very Deep Concerns' About Security and the Administration of the Election…

"Very deep concerns" are enumerated in the announcement, describing several of the problems found so far in the special election on which The BRAD BLOG has been reporting almost exclusively since June 6th, when we first revealed that the programmed, election-ready Diebold optical-scan and touch-screen voting systems used in the race were inappropriately sent home with poll workers before the election. The security breaches that occurred during those so-called "sleepovers" were in violation of new state and federal rules, laws and provisions issued in the last few months after recent discoveries confirmed dozens of extreme security flaws in the Diebold voting systems, confirming them to be exceptionally vulnerable to tampering.

Upon violation of the new federal and California state emergency security mitigation requirements, as issued in February and March of this year, the voting machines were effectively and immediately decertified and illegal for use in the election, according to provisions spelled out by both authorities.

The vulnerabilities in the particular Diebold systems used in the election, as referenced in the DNC statement, include: on the touch-screen systems, the ability to completely replace the election and operating system software, as well as the computer firmware in less than two minutes time with no password required or authentication by the system; on the optical-scan systems, the ability to hack the memory cards used to store vote tabulation which may result in a complete reversal of election results, as demonstrated by hackers during a mock-election test held at the end of last year in Leon County, Florida. Such a hack on the optical-scan systems could be accomplished without a trace being left behind, save for a manual count of the paper ballots used in the race.

Indeed, in the recent Iowa primary elections, held on the same day as the California CA-50 election, as many as nine Republican races had their results reversed after a manual hand count of optically-scanned ballots revealed that the original machine count had declared the actual winners to have been losers in their races. Only a hand count would have revealed the erroneous totals.

San Diego County Registrar Haas has stymied the effort by citizen election integrity advocates in San Diego to have the ballots in the Busby/Bilbray race counted by hand.

The election was the first federal race to have been run in the country since the new security mitigation requirements were mandated by the National Association of State Election Directors (NASED), the body tasked the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission as the federal voting machine certification body.

'A Single Person Can Reverse the Results of An Election'

Further underscoring the dangers of allowing unsupervised physical access to the systems is a landmark report released just weeks ago by NYU's Brennan Center for Justice, detailing more than 120 security threats to e-voting systems. That study, widely reported by mainstream media outlets, led to a recent Washington Post article headlined "Single Person Could Swing an Election." The Brennan Center study picked up, in turn, on another recent study by computer scientist Harri Hursti and Security Innovation in March, revealing vulnerabilities that have been described by several experts as a "major national security risk" and "the most severe security flaw ever discovered in a voting system." Those discoveries occurred during another landmark analysis of Diebold systems conducted by BlackBoxVoting.org in Emery County, Utah just two months prior to the election.

After the results of that examination were released, one of the leading computer scientists on the California Secretary of State's own voting systems technology advisory board, David Jefferson of Livermore National Laboratories, explained during an interview on the PBS News Hour : "You can affect multiple machines from a single attack. That's what makes it so dangerous." Jefferson was part of the team who advised the CA SoS on the new security mitigation requirements, which were then ignored by Registrar Haas' voting machine "sleepovers".

Demands for a Manual Hand Count Stymied by Registrar

Dozens of election integrity organizations, including California Election Protection Network, Progressive Democrats of America, Election Defense Alliance, the Commonweal Foundation, VelvetRevolution.us and many others, along with several candidates and journalists have previously called for a hand count of the paper ballots and "paper trails" in the Busby/Bilbray race to ensure accuracy and accountability in the election.

A request to hand count the ballots was filed by CA-50 voter Barbara Gail Jacobson, but was eventually stonewalled by Haas, who refused to commit to the production of chain of custody documents for ballots and voting machines. Haas also set what appeared to be wholly arbitrary charges for the requested hand count, quoting three different estimates to three different inquiries. His final estimate, as given to the hand-count requester, was for as much as $150,000 to count the election. The price of nearly $1 per vote is in contrast to neighboring Orange County, CA who recently charged just .14 cents per vote to hand count an election. Haas has refused to offer any accounting or explanation for the exorbitant and prohibitive pricing.

A public record request from Jacobson for the results of the state mandated 1% manual audit of ballots has also not been supplied. As of this date, we are unaware of anyone having seen the results of that mandated audit.

The Fight for Accountability Continues…

As citizens organizing to fight for accountability in the race are collecting donations towards the effort at VelvetRevolution.us, they are weighing the legal options in consideration of the next step which will certainly be expensive.

After weeks of frustration, waiting for national organizations such as the DNC and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) to weigh in on the matter, the DNC's announcement will likely bring encouragement to the election integrity advocates (including The BRAD BLOG. The DCCC, we have learned from several sources, had advised Busby to stay away from discussion of electronic voting machine issues prior to the election, and has still failed to comment publicly on the matter.

This morning's statement by Greg Moore, Director of the DNC's Voting Rights Institute, is posted at the National Democratic Party website, and also posted below in full…

DNC Voting Rights Institute on CA-50 Special Election

For several weeks since the June 6th Special Election in California’s 50th Congressional District there have been reports of election irregularities. The DNC Voting Rights Institute (“VRI�) has been monitoring the developments since Election Day and has raised a number of concerns regarding new and disturbing information.

First and foremost is the fact that any election where there are allegations of machine tampering, break downs in chain of custody, security breaches and other such irregularities must be taken seriously. There are several facts in this race that raise very deep concerns.

On the facts:

1. We know for a fact that San Diego County election officials have admitted that a number of the voting machines were taken home in violation of the federal security regulations and guidelines and that a number of the machines showed evidence of tampering (broken seals, which should also have immediately disqualified those machines from use according to state laws implemented in just the last several months in response to new severe vulnerabilities discovered Diebold's optical-scan and touch-screen voting systems.)

2. We know that under state and federal guidelines, any such breach of security seals or the new "secure storage" requirements for these machines and their memory cards should have immediately disqualified those machines from use in the election for the reason that they became effectively decertified for use upon such security and chain of custody violations.

3. We also know that both the Diebold optical-scan and touch-screen (DRE) machines have been proven to be vulnerable to tampering in test after test by industry experts, including a team of computer scientists and security experts convened by California's Secretary of State in response to recent revelations concerning the hack ability of Diebold voting systems.

4. We know that serious security issues and efforts by Diebold to obfuscate problems with their hardware and software led California’s former Democratic Secretary of State to decertify Diebold touch-screen systems in 2004, only to have the Republican Secretary who succeeded him reinstitute the machines over the objections of scores of computer scientists and experts
and hundreds of election integrity advocates.

The San Diego County election official responsible for administrating post-election manual vote counts has given three different arbitrary cost estimates for conducting the hand count. The quoted fees are as much as six times the costs estimates for similar hand counts in surrounding counties. The estimates portray the expense of a manual vote count to be cost prohibitive.

This is no longer about whether or not Busby or Bilbray won the election on June 6th. This is about the importance of verifying the facts related to election and voting machine irregularities in this race and the need to ensure an accurate count of all votes cast in this election so that the electorate may have confidence in the announced results in future elections.

The VRI will continue to monitor facts as they become available and will call for a swift and verifiable "manual count" of all 150,000 ballots cast in California’s 50th District’s "bellwether" June 6th special election in order to ensure the integrity of November 7th general elections and the overall integrity of our country’s voting systems in this still-untested age of computerized voting.

Greg Moore is director of the DNC's Voting Rights Institute.

All Content & Design Copyright © Brad Friedman

The 'Times' Is Us

[from the July 31, 2006 issue]

Mainstream media coverage conveys the impression that the Administration's attacks on the New York Times were motivated by the paper's 3,550-word story detailing US attempts to track terrorist financing methods, published despite an official request for self-censorship. In fact, they constitute another front in the Bush (& Co.) war on the press. And once again many members of the media have enlisted as apparatchiks in undermining their own putative profession, preferring ideology to independence and access to accountability.

Remember: The Administration has been bragging about its post-9/11 money-tracking efforts for years. The UN Al Qaeda and Taliban Monitoring Group discussed it in its December 2002 report to the Security Council, and former State Department official Victor Comras explained that "the information was fairly well known by terrorism financing experts back in 2002." "Quite frankly, I don't think the terrorists were tipped off to anything," said Ron Paul, like Bush a Texas Republican.

The reason that publishing the new details in the Times piece may have been a more difficult call than, say, the Times story on the Bush illegal domestic spying program--which it held for more than a year--is that unlike almost everything the Bush Administration does, instead of being arrogant and incompetent it's actually a good idea. Arguing for publication, however, would be the charge of honest journalism not to mention the program's potential for abuse, the Administration's lack of respect for constitutional niceties in its implementation and its demonstrated proclivity to lie to the public about virtually everything.

None of these nuances play much of a role in our benighted public discourse. Cheney called the decision to publish "offensive." Bush called it "disgraceful." Rumsfeld claimed the article would "cause the loss of American lives," and the crowing for editor Bill Keller's head has been nonstop as the right-wing echo chamber has ratcheted up its typical "work the refs" attack-machine into a furious frenzy of phony froth. New York Republican Representative (and IRA supporter) Peter King called for the Times to be prosecuted for violating the 1917 Espionage Act. Two hundred and twenty House members--including every Republican but Christopher Shays--voted to condemn it.

They were quickly joined by a group of conservative journalists and pundits who apparently prefer a Soviet-style political discourse to the kind envisioned by America's Founders. National Review editor Rich Lowry called upon the government to jail the reporters involved if they refused to reveal their sources, and the Review demanded that the White House revoke the Times's press credentials. Heather MacDonald, writing in The Weekly Standard, called the Times "a national security threat...drunk on its own power and...antagonistic to the Bush administration." Talk-show host Melanie Morgan said she'd have "no problem" if Keller were "sent to the gas chamber" for treason. And the always reliable David Horowitz insisted that the Times was purposely inviting assassination attempts against Cheney and Rumsfeld in its--I kid you not--travel section. (Even Rumsfeld was apparently in on it, however, having approved the photographs of his home for the offending article. These conspiracies can get real complicated...)

The most interesting recruits in the Bush team's journalistic jihad, however, were the editors of the Wall Street Journal. Their intervention proved particularly illuminating of the distinctions between honest journalism and fellow-traveling. "Would the Journal have published the story had we discovered it as the Times did, and had the administration asked us not to?" they asked. "Speaking for the editorial columns, our answer is probably not." Trouble is, the Journal's news editors did decide to publish the story mere hours after the Times story appeared. Its editorial page editors shamefully sought to explain away this inconvenience with the damning "guess" that the Administration "felt [Journal reporter Glenn] Simpson would write a straighter story than the Times." As if falsely insisting their own reporter was in the Bush tank wasn't bad enough, the editors went on to declare that the Times "has as a major goal not winning the war on terror but obstructing it." It's official: According to the judgment of the Dow Jones Corporation, when a newspaper acts methodically and responsibly to publish information of vital national importance that the government would prefer to suppress, it is on the side of terrorism. It's a shame Joe McCarthy isn't alive to enjoy all this.

Of course, it's hardly a coincidence that this orgy of Times-bashing is occurring just as Rove & Co. are ginning up the GOP base with stunts like the flag amendment, amendments against gay marriage and a wave of immigrant-bashing, now coming to a hearing near you. As Massachusetts Representative Jim McGovern explained during the silly House vote to condemn the paper, "We are here today because there has not been enough red meat thrown at the Republican base before the Fourth of July recess." The meat is not merely unkosher; it's poisonous.

Why has the right's rage focused on the Times, when it was one of three papers to run the story? As the San Francisco Chronicle's Jon Carrol points out, the New York Times "contains the word 'New York.' Many members of the president's base consider 'New York' to be a nifty code word for 'Jewish.'" This isn't the first time the Rovian right has toyed with Jew-hatred. Remember the attacks on George Soros two years ago, with pundits like Tony Blankley using terms like "robber baron," "pirate capitalist" and "self-admitted atheist"?

The point is not that Bush, Cheney, Rove or even Blankley is an anti-Semite. It's that they will stop at nothing to discredit their perceived enemies. War may be politics by other means, but for the White House and its allies, politics is war and accountability is the enemy. As Dick Cheney explains in Ron Suskind's explosive new book, The One Percent Doctrine, "It's not about our analysis, or finding a preponderance of evidence. It's about our response."

In wartime one loses the luxury of choosing one's allies; Judith Miller and Jayson Blair notwithstanding, now the Times is us.

Copyright © 2006 The Nation