Election Reform, Fraud, & Related News Sat. Dec. 30, 2006

BUSH: DESPERATELY SEEKING SADDAM
By Don Davis
        
NOW BEFORE THEY HANG YOU, ‘OLE BOY, JUST BETWEEN US WAR CRIMINALS, HOW IN THE NAME OF WMD DID YOU KEEP THE LID ON THIS INSANE ASYLUM CALLED IRAQ?
http://satiricalpolitical.com/?p=474



Election Reform, Fraud, & Related News

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Please "Recommend" for the Greatest Page (it's the link just below).

J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press (left); Matthew Cavanaugh/European Pressphoto Agency

Vern Buchanan, at left above, joined other new House members at orientation last month. And so did his Democratic opponent, Christine Jennings, left in photo at right, who continues to challenge his election.

December 30, 2006
House Democrats to Object to Florida Election Outcome
By KATE ZERNIKE

WASHINGTON, Dec. 29 — Democrats said Friday that they would open the new Congress by formally objecting to the election result in Florida’s 13th District, in the hope that the Democrat who is contesting the narrow outcome there will ultimately take the place of the Republican whom the state has certified as the winner.

The move will not prevent the Republican, Vern Buchanan, from taking office with the rest of the 110th Congress next Thursday. But Democrats say that because the House is the final certifier of House election results, they want to make certain that Mr. Buchanan’s swearing-in does not prejudice a legal challenge mounted by his opponent, Christine Jennings.

The Democrats say that if they were to make no such objection, formally called a parliamentary inquiry, they would essentially be signaling the courts that the House agreed with the state-certified result. By contrast, their move will put the House on record as supporting Ms. Jennings’s challenge.

That move requires no House vote, only the approval of the chair, presumably Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, who is to become speaker next week.

>more

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/30/us/politics/30elect.html?_r=1&ref=politics&oref=slogin

Dems to Buchanan: Take seat for now
Mark K. Matthews
Washington Bureau

December 30, 2006

WASHINGTON -- Vern Buchanan's position in Congress is safe -- for now.

House Democratic leaders said Friday that they will allow Buchanan to take his seat next week, but they warned the Florida Republican not to get too comfortable.

Buchanan won his Sarasota-area seat by 369 votes this fall. But his opponent, Democrat Christine Jennings, has challenged the results in Congress and the courts because she suspects touch-screen-voting-machine malfunctions skewed the tallies.

A spokesman for incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said the new Democratic majority would allow Buchanan to join Congress while these inquiries continue. But another Democrat cautioned the situation could change.

"Any member of Congress in a contested race shouldn't get too comfortable with the idea of being in Congress," said Rep. Rush Holt, a strong advocate for election reform.

>more
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/state/orl-flcongress3006dec30,0,5570827.story?coll=orl-news-headlines-state

What can voters do now?

My wife and I are still wondering where our votes went. Did they actually become a part of the total on Nov. 7? Is there anyone out there we can really trust -- someone who can verify that we, and 18,000 other voters, were not victims of election fraud or, in the least, of poorly designed and engineered computer programs, equipment and whatever else?

Right. The silence is deafening. We didn't think anyone could convincingly reassure us.

What's next? Are we supposed to wait until hell freezes over for a reasonable explanation? Are we supposed to just accept the status quo and go on about our business? Or, are we supposed to get mad enough to make a list and demand -- through protests, signs, letters and actions -- that we not be set aside?

Perhaps at the top of that list of things to do should be to begin collecting petitions to have Kathy Dent recalled and all senior members of her staff fired for incompetence and, if proven, malfeasance.

Wake up, people! These are our rights they are messing with. Demand a countywide, noncomputerized paper revote!

Daniel F. Furtado

http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061230/OPINION/612300650/1029

Fla. judge rules against election challenger
Denies access to voting machines

By Alan Wirzbicki, Globe Correspondent | December 30, 2006

WASHINGTON -- A Florida judge yesterday ruled that a losing congressional candidate couldn't examine the inner workings of voting machines, even though the machines had no paper backup and produced 18,000 blank votes in a House race.

The ruling dealt a setback to the campaign of Christine Jennings, a Democrat who lost a Sarasota-based House seat by 369 votes.

Jennings has mounted the most prominent legal test so far of the effectiveness of high-tech voting machines, an issue that has aroused concern in many states.

The judge, William L. Gary, ruled that the voting machine's maker, Nebraska-based Electronic Systems & Software Inc., could keep the computer program secret to protect its code from competitors, provoking outrage from voting-rights groups.

"The idea that this is an impenetrable trade secret can't hold up," said Judith E. Schaeffer, the associate legal director for the liberal People for the American Way Foundation. "We're not talking about the recipe to Coca-Cola, we're talking about people's right to vote."

>more

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2006/12/30/fla_judge_rules_against_election_challenger/

Amanda McCoy/Getty Images

John Edwards, the former senator, spoke in front of a house damaged by Hurricane Katrina as he formally announced his campaign for president.

December 29, 2006
New Orleans Is Exhibit A as Edwards Opens His Presidential Campaign
By ADAM NOSSITER

NEW ORLEANS, Dec. 28 — Framed by two ruined houses and a dead tree, John Edwards inaugurated his 2008 presidential campaign here on Thursday with an appeal to citizens to take on challenges like the one represented by this still-devastated city.

The choice of a battered New Orleans neighborhood for Mr. Edwards’s unconventional announcement, with student volunteers at his side, was intended to highlight what, in broad terms, would be a central theme of his campaign: the need for a fresh wave of citizen activism to “change this country.”

The message, delivered without notes, was as loose and generalized as the setting was informal. Clad in shirt-sleeves, blue jeans and work boots, and standing in the muddy backyard of a homeowner struggling to come back from the destruction of Hurricane Katrina, Mr. Edwards explained to reporters gathered in the morning chill that “the basis for my campaign will be a ground-up campaign, where we ask people to take action.”

As one of the first to enter the barely nascent campaign — his most likely competitors, Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois, have yet to announce — Mr. Edwards, the losing vice-presidential candidate in 2004, seemed at pains to begin on a positive note. He delivered a Kennedy-like appeal for grass-roots volunteerism rather than a broadside against President Bush, though he called Mr. Bush’s foreign policy team “an absolute disaster” in the question-and-answer session afterward.

>more

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/29/us/politics/29edwards.html?ref=politics

article | posted November 9, 2005 (November 28, 2005 issue)
Cornbread and Roses

Bob Moser

Chapel Hill, North Carolina

On a soft gray Monday in mid-October, the Interfaith Council shelter in downtown Chapel Hill has a brand-new volunteer, brimming with enthusiasm that's almost annoying at 10:15 in the morning. "How're you all doing back there?" John Edwards calls out to the kitchen crew as he beams into the dining room, trailed by a clutch of staffers, University of North Carolina antipoverty activists and TV cameras. While he chats up the shelter volunteers and residents, alternately squinting his perma-tanned face with concern and flashing the yard-wide smile that almost won Iowa, two white-haired women on the kitchen crew, both named Jane, are nudged toward him for a souvenir shot. "I want this picture for me," Edwards says with his best Sunday school charm, hugging the women under his arms. After a bit more chatting and hugging, there's a momentary lull. Hands on hips, with mock impatience, Edwards tilts toward the kitchen and hollers out, "So am I supposed to do something or what?"

"Well, we've got some unloading," offers Paul Eberhardt, the day shelter coordinator. Quick as a flash, last year's Democratic nominee for Vice President is back in the pantry, tearing cans of generic lima beans and tomatoes out of their plastic-wrapped cardboard while Eberhardt feeds him an earful of insights from the front lines of poverty-fighting. "Lately we're getting hospital workers, construction workers, here at lunchtime," Eberhardt says, talking fast. "It's low employment now, not just unemployment." Edwards purses his lips, furrows his brow, gives every sign of listening, even as he briskly moves on to filling up water pitchers, smiling on cue for the local affiliates until it's time to clap his hands and cry out to his staff, "What's next?"

Around this time last year, a lot of people were asking that very same question about Edwards. After his cometlike ascent from first-term senator to the national Democratic ticket, Edwards crashed to earth when he failed to persuade running mate John Kerry to contest George W. Bush's questionable victory in Ohio. Suddenly, Edwards's giddy three-year campaign to lift himself into the political stratosphere--and knit together the "two Americas" he dearly loved to preach about--was over. His wife, Elizabeth, had been diagnosed with breast cancer. His Senate seat, which Edwards had abandoned to focus on the national race, would return to Republican hands in January, leaving him without a built-in mechanism for staying in the national spotlight. For the first time in his adult life, this blue-skies optimist was staring straight into a blank horizon. Friends and admirers offered advice and speculated: Would he return to his law practice? Start a foreign-policy think tank to shore up his presidential résumé? Run for governor? Cash in on his connections with some Dan Quayle-style consultancies?

In February Edwards surprised them all, announcing a campaign to "eradicate poverty in America." With a $40,000 annual salary paid by private funds, Edwards became the first director of the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity at UNC, Chapel Hill's law school, largely a think tank designed to bring antipoverty scholars, activists, journalists and politicians together to cook up innovative ways to tackle economic and racial inequities.Edwards is also putting some of his ideas into action, including the College for Everyone program he promised in 2004. In low-income Greene County Edwards this summer announced a pilot program to pay for the first year of college for local high school graduates willing to work at least ten hours a week.

>more

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20051128/moser

December 29, 2006

Election Reform: Grow it from the grassroots

By Nancy Tobi

Following are my remarks from th6 May 2006 conference in New Hampshire on Cleaning up our Statehouses:

Democracy for New Hampshire is a true grassroots organization. We are 100% volunteer-powered sustained by small donor funding.

As a people-powered organization, we are intensely and directly connected to community needs and values.

In New Hampshire, we know a lot about the importance of community and community-based political engagement. We have the largest citizen legislature in the nation, our elected representatives are eminently accessible, in many of our towns we debate community and political decisions in open town meetings, and in 45% of our polling places we count our ballots by hand with community members and volunteers pitching in to keep the count honest.

Looking at electoral reform, we face three challenges directly related to this question of community-based politics:

1) How do we prevent a lot of hard work at the state and local levels from being swept away by federal mandates?
2) How do we bring more on-the-ground stakeholders into the process to reach solutions that really work?
3) What is the intersection between clean and honest elections and citizen participation in the process?

>more

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_nancy_to_061229_election_reform_3a_gro.htm

December 30, 2006 at 06:29:40

The Reform That Enables All Other Reforms

By Timothy V. Gatto

This year has come and gone. In its wake are left cherished memories, chance encounters and new friendships as well as sad goodbyes and broken relationships and promises kept and promises forgotten. Like every year that has come before, it has left an indelible mark, a permanent footmark on our perception of reality as we try to comprehend the events that have taken place, and desperately try to organize these events into a scenario that we can understand, one that makes sense. Thus, with information that is incomplete, as well as tools for understanding out of reach, try as we may, the average American will have a hard time trying to understand and categorize this violent year as anything but sanctioned mayhem, with no point, and no conclusions reached, with the promise of more of the same to mark the new years arrival.

This New Year, like all the years that have come before it, will start out with renewed sense of determination that comes with every new beginning. It's as if we take this time of the year, and close the door on the last 365 days as if they are over, left to the dark recess of history, which in a way they are. This perspective of starting over seems to satisfy a human need to close past events out and start again fresh, as if we can actually do that. There will be resentments and remorse, hatreds and revenge that will follow us into the New Year unabated. We talk about the year we are marking with the authority of someone that has learned something, someone with new perception's of life that were gained by witnessing the events of the old year, but in reality... we haven't learned anything, and by not learning, we are condemned to repeat the mistakes of yesterday, today.

To amazement and astonishment, this President seems not to understand nor comprehend anything about the course he had led this nation on. Either he is intellectually incapable of making rational assessments, or he is privy to things that we don't know, and he is leading us into something that only he and his "inner circle" are aware of. In reality, both of these explanations warrant removal from office. The only other recourse that he has, is to explain to the American people what it is exactly he is trying to achieve with this schizophrenic foreign policy. If it is solely for profit and power which is what I believe, of course he won't come clean. If it is for some other reason, then he should make it known to the opposition, someone like Sen. Kennedy or Sen. Boxer who can then tell us that the President is really acting in out best interests. I sincerely doubt it though. If that were indeed the case, he would have done this long ago.

Besides this abhorrent foreign policy and this war, as well as dealing with potential adversaries such as Iran and North Korea, the people of the United States want different reforms in government. Many people want universal heath care, or an increase in the minimum wage. Some want the repeal of the Military Commissions Act and Habeus Corpus restored. The citizenry are concerned with gerrymandering, taxes, eminent domain as well as our elected leader's unresponsiveness to the people that voted them into office. People are tired of "business as usual" on Capitol Hill and want a Congress that legislates in the best interests of the electorate, "the people".

The more that I read about these problems, the more disenchanted I become with my fellow citizen's priorities. I don't want to put anyone down, or cast aspersions on anyone either. What I believe...no, what I know is, we will never, ever have true reforms until we start with The Reform that Enables all Other Reforms. That reform is campaign finance reform. Unless we implement that, unless we publically finance all election campaigns, we will never get rid of the what is stopping us from getting these reforms passed in the first place, corporate and special interest campaign money. This is the "grand poobah" so to speak. The elephant in the living room, the hidden family secret, the real reason that Congressmen and Senators don't respond to their electorate, the people that put them in office, the billion dollar payoff to government , and the way the elected officials keep their jobs; corporate and special interest campaign money.

>more

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_timothy__061230_the_reform_that_enab.htm

Article published Dec 30, 2006
A rare win in court for free speech
Campaign 'reformers' are sure to strike back

By GEORGE F. WILL
Washington Post Writers Group

Dec 30, 2006

A three-judge federal court recently tugged a thread that may begin the unraveling of the fabric of murky laws and regulations that traduce the First Amendment by suppressing political speech.

Divided 2-1, the court held - unremarkably, you might think - that issue advocacy ads can run during an election, when they matter most. This decision will strike zealous (there is no other kind) advocates of ever-tighter regulation of political speech (campaign finance "reformers") as ominous. Why? Because it partially emancipates millions of Americans who incorporate thousands of groups to advocate their causes, groups such as the ACLU and the NRA.

And Wisconsin Right to Life. It is another organization by which people assemble (see the First Amendment) to speak (see it again) in order to seek redress of grievances (the Amendment, one more time).

In 2004, WRTL was distressed because Wisconsin's senators, Russ Feingold and Herb Kohl, were helping to block confirmation votes on some of President Bush's judicial nominees and wanted to run ads urging people to "contact Senators Feingold and Kohl and tell them to oppose the filibuster."

>more

http://www.cmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061230/REPOSITORY/612300304/1028/OPINION02

on edit: Feel free to drop the editor a note. Seems like he needs some education.
http://www.cmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/misc?Url=/forms/opinion/letter_to_editor.pbs
Or, I found this email address for George:
georgewill@washpost.com <georgewill@washpost.com>

State Green Party says 2006 was a very good year
The Times-Standard
Eureka Times Standard
Article Launched:

SACRAMENTO -- The Green Party of California said recently that 2006 cemented its position as the alternative political party for the growing number of dissatisfied voters in the state.

The party cited significant electoral gains in 2006 -- punctuated by the upset win by Gayle McLaughlin, who although outspent by about 4-1, defeated the incumbent mayor of Richmond and became the first-ever directly elected Green city mayor in California. Her victory gave the Greens 19 wins during 2006, and they now hold 50 elected offices in the state, from mayor to numerous city council, boards of education and other local offices.

Greens, who ran in every state constitutional election and a bevy of candidates for Legislature, Senate and the House, also made strides. In particular, Sarah Knopp, a high school teacher who came within a few votes of forcing incumbent Jack O'Connell into a runoff, spent just $3,000, and finished with 17.3 percent of the vote, and nearly 696,000 votes -- the most ever garnered by a Green candidate in California.

Greens running for Congress forced Democrats and Republicans to confront the war in Iraq and troubles at home, garnering vote totals many times the percentage of registered Greens in their district. Barry Hermanson, running in San Francisco's 12th Assembly District, won nearly 13 percent of the vote, the highest percentage by any Green, or third party candidate, in the state running against a Republican and Democrat.

>more

http://www.times-standard.com/local/ci_4924981

12/30/2006
Election investigation concludes
By: MARK D. MAROTTA , For The Times Herald

He hasn't been sworn in yet, but incoming state Rep. Jay Moyer, R-70th District, has his office open for business.In the November general election, Moyer won the seat held since 1992 by retiring Rep. John W. Fichter.It was a close win over Democrat Netta Young Hughes - 10,912 votes to 10,809 votes - in a race marred by allegations of racism.

The election gave rise to allegations that a Democratic campaign worker had been the victim of expletive-filled text messages containing both racial and sexual slurs.

Another campaign volunteer also said she heard Moyer make racial remarks about Hughes, who is black, at a polling place.

"That investigation is coming to a close," said District Attorney Bruce L. Castor Jr. by telephone Wednesday.

He was involved in the joint investigation by Lower Salford police and county detectives into the allegations of racial intimidation.

>more

http://www.timesherald.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=17651353&BRD=1672&PAG=461&dept_id=33380&rfi=6

LAWMAKERS TALK OF SHORTENING EARLY VOTING

By Larry Ault/OF THE COMMERCIAL STAFF
Friday, December 29, 2006 11:18 PM CST

State lawmakers and civil rights advocates are taking sides on an idea that if enacted by the state Legislature would shorten the early voting period before an election to ensure people cannot vote twice.

State Sen. Jerry Taylor, D-Pine Bluff, said he has been considering supporting a bill that would end early voting on either Friday or Saturday before a Tuesday election. He said the Little Rock legislative delegation is promoting such a bill.

The problem, which Taylor said has surfaced in Jefferson County as well as other parts of the state, is that if a person votes on Monday, the day before the election, county election officials don’t have time to update their voting records prior to the Tuesday election. This makes it possible to vote again on election day without being detected immediately, he said. The proposed changes would allow two weeks of early voting.

Taylor said he referred two Jefferson County Election Commission officials, Trey Ashcraft and Stu Soffer, to a lawyer with the Legislative Council staff council to provide input into the problem.

>more

http://www.pbcommercial.com/articles/2006/12/30/news/news2.txt

Posted on Sat, Dec. 30, 2006


It's an up-Hil battle

By Michael Goodwin

New York Daily News

(MCT)

The 2008 presidential election is a long way off, but the first tea leaves raise an intriguing question: Is Hillary Clinton the new John Kerry?

Clinton has been the front-runner for the Democratic nomination, but she's suddenly looking tired next to two surging opponents. Recent polls from Iowa and New Hampshire, two of the first states to cast nominating ballots, show Illinois Sen. Barack Obama and former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards either ahead of her or tied with her.

The early results recall Kerry's tortured path to the 2004 nomination. He was flying high in the preliminary jockeying, then sagged like rotting fruit as the voting drew closer. He got his groove back only with a dramatic comeback victory in the Iowa caucus.

Clinton would be happy with such an outcome, but she can't be happy at the recent turn of events, which count as the first surprises of the 2008 race. It's bad enough that Obama is the hot ticket after his stunning decision to test a race. But even more surprising is that Edwards, Kerry's lackluster running mate in 2004, is doing so well in both states.

>more

http://www.belleville.com/mld/belleville/news/editorial/16350329.htm

BushWorld, it is the "Election Reform, Fraud and Related News" Forum at DU. We shall overcome!

12/29/2006
New York City Council to cast ballots on new voting machines
By Helen Klein


A total of 45 city councilmembers have signed onto a resolution asking the Board of Elections to opt for paper ballot digital scanners. Photo by Helen Klein

The City Council is poised to make its voice heard on the controversial issue of which voting machines the Board of Elections should choose for New York City.

A resolution recommending that the Board of Elections select paper ballot optical scanners, was introduced earlier this year by City Councilmember Charles Barron and has 44 additional sponsors. The council will be holding a hearing on the matter in January, with the city’s election commissioners supposed to be making a decision in February.

In general terms, the choice the Board of Elections faces is between optical scanners and touch screen voting machines, also known as DREs (Direct Recording Electronic).

As the last state in the union not to have complied yet with the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), which was passed in 2002 in the wake of the controversial 2000 presidential election, New York is under orders from the federal Depart-ment of Justice to replace its old lever machines with machines that comply with HAVA’s requirements.

>more

http://www.kingscourier.net/site/news.cfm?newsid=17650568&BRD=2384&PAG=461&dept_id=576270&rfi=6

without comment. This corporate news monopoly story is insidiously framed to make it look like New York is lagging behind in a needed reform, when, in truth, New York is resisting the most fraudulent and corrupt voting system ever devised--voting on electronic machines that are run on TRADE SECRET, PROPRIETARY programming code, owned and controlled by rightwing Bushite corporations! New York may be "out of compliance" with the "Help America Vote for Bush Act" of 2002, but it is IN compliance with democracy and TRANSPARENT elections! New York needs to KEEP its old, reliable and virtually unriggable lever voting machines! These old "gray lady" mechanical voting machines are bastions of integrity. Electronic voting systems are just the opposite--they are bastions of corruption: extremely insecure, unreliable, and insider hackable, and extremely expensive to purchase and maintain. And the money--$3.9 billion in boondoggle funding, engineered by the biggest crooks in the Anthrax Congress (Tom Delay and Bob Ney, abetted by corporatist 'Democrat' Christopher Dodd)--has been used to bribe and bully election officials across the land. Electronic voting has been a disaster, on its face--with reports of thousands of 'disappeared' votes in Florida, machine "breakdowns" all over the landscape, and tales of secrecy and lack of accountability on every hand--and that is not even to mention the many highly suspicious results of this SECRET, corporate-controlled vote counting system, including the Max Cleland Senate loss in Georgia in 2002, the Bush/Kerry and other contests in 2004, the election reform initiatives in Ohio in 2005, the Bilbray/Busby race in CA-50, and the Buchanan/Jennings Congressional race in Florida. The "Help America Vote For War Act" should be repealed!

New York is not retarded. New York is not "behind." New York is not resisting needed reform. New York is leading the way BACK to democracy by RESISTING Bushite legal bullying on "compliance" with this crapass, unamerican law! And Alberto Gonzalez can take his corrupt "Department of Injustice," and its coercive tactics against the voters of New York, and shove it up his toadying, torture-memo writing ass!

From the OpEd article posted below by Nancy Tobi...

"Then Secretary Gardner explained how we do all of our recounts by hand. How we count the ballots and examine them when necessary for voter intent. And how the paper ballots, the counting, the examination for voter intent, all of it, is done out in the open, in public view. He said that the thing about our hand recounts is that when they are done, people have seen everything. They've seen the ballots; they've seen them be counted. They have a comfort level in that, and they believe in the outcome.

He then said something so profound that the implication of what he said still resounds within me.

The thing with machines, he said, is that people want to trust them. But when the machine makes a mistake, people are unforgiving. They don't know if it was a mistake, or if it was intentional. And they never trust that machine again. They are unforgiving and they lose faith.

Once we stop trusting in our elections, we lose our freedom. Once we stop believing in the legitimacy of the outcome, it is no longer legitimate."

on edit: oops, wrong source

December 29, 2006

Patriot's Day: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

By Nancy Tobi

In the evening of Patriot's Day, 2006, we held what may well have been an historic meeting in the New Hampshire Legislative Office Building. Secretary of State William Gardner hosted a meeting for town moderators from 24 towns facing the choice of having the State replace their obsolete voting machines, or taking the money to pay for hand counting instead.

We – ordinary citizens – were invited to speak to the moderators about choosing hand counting instead of taking these new machines.

It might have been historic, but almost none of the invited moderators came. I don't know why they didn't come. Maybe because it happened to be a heavenly, balmy, early spring evening. Maybe they thought they had nothing to learn from us. Maybe they didn't receive the notification about the meeting from their town clerks. Or maybe the machine salesman, with much more time and resources to make his sales calls than we will ever have, had already cornered the market.

But you never know, really, why things turn out the way they do.

>more

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_nancy_to_061229_patriot_s_day_3a_the_r.htm

Will Democratic-led Congress deliver, or dispute?
30 Dec 2006 15:17:01 GMT
Source: Reuters


By Thomas Ferraro

WASHINGTON, Dec 30 (Reuters) - Democrats take control of Congress from President George W. Bush's Republicans next week with lawmakers facing a crucial question: can they halt the partisan sniping long enough to get much done?

After a decade of mounting political battles, Democrats and Republicans vow to seek common ground on divisive matters such as a new strategy in the Iraq war, upgrading health care and revamping immigration laws when the 110th Congress convenes on Thursday.

Yet in the wake of the Nov. 7 elections that saw Democrats win both the House of Representatives and the Senate for the first time in 12 years, both sides are also certain to quickly resume jockeying for political position.

"House Democrats have complained for the last 12 years that they have been shut out of the legislative process," said Paul Miller, a veteran Capitol Hill lobbyist. "I find it hard to believe that most Democrats are now going to let bygones be bygones. It may be payback time."

>more

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N30177382.htm

BLOG | Posted 12/27/2006 @ 10:15am
A Democrat Who Thinks Like A Democrat

Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chair Rahm Emanuel, the corporate-friendly centrist who actively worked against a number of anti-war progressives in 2006 Democratic primaries for US House seats and then refused to support at least some of those candidates in November, is handing his DCCC leadership position off to Chris Van Hollen, a congressman who has a dramatically better track record on foreign and domestic policy issues.

Emanuel, the former Clinton administration "fixer" who organized support for the North American Free Trade Agreement and other Wall Street-favored policies and who then went to Congress as a pro-corporate, pro-war Democrat, has tried to spin his management of the DCCC during the 2006 election cycle as a success. In fact, many of the Democrats who prevailed on November 7 did so despite the Illinois congressman's efforts, not because of them.

In primaries from California to New Hampshire, Democratic voters rejected Emanuel's hand-picked candidates and nominated progressives who went on to win in November. Indeed, while candidates such as Illinois centrist Tammy Duckworth, who had Emanuel's full support, were going down to defeat, the list of breakthrough winners included contenders such as New Hampshire anti-war candidate Carol Shea-Porter, who never got any support from Emanuel or his DCCC team.

While Emanuel was an effective fundraiser and a reasonably good strategist in some close races, no one should doubt that he worked the 2006 cycle wearing ideological blinders. And that caused him to make choices with regard to key races that erred on the side of candidates who shared his White House-friendly views against candidates who adopted more progressive positions--and who had more grassroots support.

>more

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat?pid=150504

article | posted December 21, 2006 (web only)
The Irrelevance of Joe Lieberman

Ari Melber

Here's a New Year's resolution that liberal bloggers and mainstream journalists can agree on: Let's talk less about Joe Lieberman next year. A lot less.

For most of 2006, Connecticut's junior senator was relentlessly lambasted by bloggers, who jump-started Ned Lamont's successful primary campaign, and hailed by Beltway reporters, who celebrated Lieberman's re-election by declaring him the most pivotal member of a closely divided Senate. The unrelenting criticism, glorification and analysis of the political enigma that is Joe Lieberman could certainly benefit from benign neglect in 2007.

Yet just as Augustine prayed, "grant me chastity...but not yet," perhaps one last rehash of the fall and rise of Joe Lieberman is in order. Especially if it's a freewheeling, three-hour knock-down debate with strategists from the three campaigns from Connecticut's Senate race, local and national reporters, an academic pollster (and this writer) at a symposium convened by Lieberman's alma mater, Yale University. That was the scene this month, in two feisty panels that showed Lieberman's supporters and detractors still have plenty to fight about. (C-SPAN posted both panels here under "Conference on Connecticut Senate Race, Part 1.")

Bill Hillsman, a maverick adman who worked for Paul Wellstone and Ralph Nader before helping Lamont's primary campaign, argued that Democrats would not have won Congress "if it wasn't for Ned Lamont." Across the country, he said, Democrats' antiwar ads and messages were pulled right from Lamont's playbook. "My cat could have run those ads," replied Lieberman strategist Roy Occhiogrosso. He said it was obvious that Democrats should run against the unpopular war. The two camps traded barbs in that vein for about half an hour.

Then the discussion turned to the elephant in the room, but absent from the panel. What exactly did those famous bloggers do?

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http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070108/melber

Much joy to you in the new year. :hug:

Where on earth did you find that one. I thought it was lost foreer ;)

I hope he didn't mind me borrowing. It was too good to resist.
Here's his site:
http://satiricalpolitical.com/

and here's a link to a posting today. Funny stuff!
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x253956