A Just Decision

Sometimes there is a person who makes those annual silly contests for Person of the Year worth our while. In 2008, Dallas District Attorney Craig Watkins has turned around an errant justice system, and in naming him their Texan of the Year, the Dallas Morning News has made a great choice.

Mr. Watkins has trained a spotlight on the flaws in the system, and two years after becoming the state's first black district attorney, he is suddenly the new face of Texas jurisprudence.

For his efforts to reform an imperfect criminal justice system and for his willingness to stake out politically precarious territory somewhere between "hug a thug" and "convict at all costs," Mr. Watkins is the 2008 Dallas Morning News Texan of the Year.

In his own words, DA Watkins tells us a lot about what has made him seek to open a badly run justice system to review, resulting in overturning convictions on DNA evidence, a process that has freed 19 innocent men to date.

This is about progress. In order to have progress, we have to talk about failures of the system. And to be absolutely honest with you, I don't think that [former District Attorney Henry] Wade was a bad person. I just think that he was a product of his environment. As a result of that, we had all these bad things that were done. ... In order for us to move past it, we've got to deal with it. There are going to be some hurt feelings as a result of that. But at the end of the day, it's the right thing to do."

"With power, there comes a lot of responsibility. I think a lot of times, in the past, we've had individuals who have misused it. I just hope that as I go along in this job that I will always have a respect for it and never get into the position of misusing what's been given to me."

"I'm surprised that people who are intelligent and who have been in this field for a long time don't even want to give any credibility to that thought [that an innocent man has been executed]. It's obvious that that's happened."

"On some of our more serious cases ... I just kind of sit down there and listen, and then I go back to talk to the jury [after the trial]. Without a doubt everyone that I've talked to, they all say that we believe in what you're doing because when you ask us to convict someone and take their freedom, we've seen the other side of it. You've used your resources to ensure that no one's wrongly convicted. We believe that you would only ask if it's absolutely necessary. So, we have a lot of credibility with the citizens."

"Politics is the greatest equalizer. You can come from the most meager existence and make a difference. That's the good thing about this country. I saw that was my entree into being in a position of making a positive impact on where I live."

We are very fortunate that in Dallas' 2006 election, Craig Watkins won the office he holds, and that he has used to benefit the city in a very big way. It is a hopeful sign that by turning political offices back into the right place for public servants, an informed electorate can turn back the many years of crimes by elected officials. Hopefully, that can begin to happen on a national level on January 20th.

Voters for a return of justice have earned the right to be proud.

Condoning Murder

The more I encounter reports about the functioning of our legal system, the more I am becoming convinced that it has covered for viciousness directed against the less fortunate in this country.

ProfessorWombat and I had a conversation, something of a continuing one, on the subject this morning in the comment section of Eschaton. He has seen injustices that have convinced him we have to cure the injustice system that we have in place, a conviction Dallas' County Attorney is bringing into prevalence throughout those of conscience in the North Texas area.

A group of death-row survivors called on the Texas Legislature on Friday to halt executions in the nation's most active death-penalty state and establish an innocence commission to free other wrongfully convicted inmates.

EXONERATED

Clarence Brandley of Conroe, Texas, and 19 other men who were on other states' death rows appeared at the state Capitol to ask for the moratorium on the death penalty. Mr. Brandley spent nine years on Texas' death row before being exonerated in the murder of a Conroe teenager.

INNOCENTS EXECUTED?

"There have been some innocent people that have been executed right here in Texas. But the politicians are not going to say that." – Mr. Brandley

FORMER DA

Former Bexar County District Attorney Sam Millsap, who once supported capital punishment, said he now believes he probably sent an innocent man to the death chamber – Ruben Cantu, who was convicted of a 1984 murder on the account of a single eyewitness. (Emphasis added.)

The ignorance we have maintained about operations of our judicial and prison system has been washed away in recent revelations about its miscarriage of justice. ProfessorWombat's comment says what he has been led to believe, and is something I've come to as well.

Ruth: anybody involved in the criminal justice system knows it to be deeply flawed. The prison system, the easy recourse to incarceration in brutal circumstances, the wildly different rates of incarceration for similar offenses amongst rich, poor, black, white and Hispanic, the huge numbers incarcerated here compared with other countries, the notion that prisons can be run for private profit.

I rant about this stuff from time to time. I think that, in a sane world, our criminal justice and prison system would constitute a human rights emergency, and reform would be a top priority. But in this country, prison rape is a national joke, the knee-jerk response to any wrong-doing at all is to lock 'em up, and the huge human and monetary cost, not to mention the system's dubious effectiveness in its stated mission, go largely unchallenged. It's a disgrace.
ProfWombat | 11.02.08 - 7:23 am | #

Their experience in powerlessness and these abuses that have resulted have made it vital to our neglected classes to bring an end to them. In Dallas, the 2006 defeat of all GoPerv judicial system incumbents has meant a real reform. This is needed throughout the country.

Justice System Reviving

In Dallas there has been a wonderful reversal of many years, even decades, of misjudgment. Very instrumental in that arousal of a renewed justice system is the District Attorney Craig Watkins. His achievements were vaunted on '60 Minutes' Sunday night, in a review of the many cases of wrong convictions that have been discovered there. DA Watkins has opened the files to research by the Project Innocence, and many wrongly convicted men have been cleared by the DNA evidence.

Today, there is an editorial in the Dallas Morning News agreeing with Watkins that prosecutors who have withheld evidence, causing wrongful convictions, need to be prosecuted themselves.

Craig Watkins has had a few misses amid many hits in his first term as Dallas County district attorney, but it's hard to argue with his there-oughta-be-a-law sentiment on prosecutorial misconduct.

Mr. Watkins has pushed as hard to free the innocent as he has to convict the guilty. In that spirit, he now wants Texas to increase punishments – up to and including prison time – for prosecutors who intentionally withhold evidence from defendants.

Today, Texas law allows cash compensation to those wrongfully convicted but has no criminal sanctions for prosecutors who intentionally commit "Brady violations." The term stems from a 1963 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brady vs. Maryland that held that defendants' constitutional rights are violated if prosecutors intentionally or accidentally withhold evidence favorable to the defense.

A sanction from the State Bar of Texas is the worst penalty a prosecutor currently can expect, and such instances are so rare as to be noteworthy when they occur.

Even the most egregious recent example of U.S. prosecutorial misconduct – Durham County, N.C., District Attorney Mike Nifong and the so-called Duke lacrosse case – resulted in only a day in jail, a fine and disbarment. If that sounds stiff, consider the potential life ruination from his attempts to prosecute three college students on rape charges he knew to be false.

Few cases are as heinous or as obvious. Ferreting out this type of injustice is far from as clear-cut as a DNA exoneration. It can be years or even decades before legal teams can dig up the evidence needed to bring such a charge.

If time – in effect, a statute of limitations – is a potential obstacle, Mr. Watkins also knows that degree is another. Every bit of evidence, from a witness to a document to a fiber found at a crime scene, carries a different weight. This must be considered in any new law.

Since he's not a state legislator, Mr. Watkins needs someone to carry a bill for him in Austin. We would think he would have the support of the vast majority of his DA colleagues. They know as well as he does that any prosecutor who cheats the system and cuts corners makes all of them look bad.

Watkins was one of the many Democrats who replaced all GoPerv judicial candidates running for office in the last election, in 2006. He is a good example of why we need Democrats in office to bring justice back into existence.

******************************************************

Privet is in bloom in the area right now, it's beautiful and smells lovely, and is an allergist's delight. My yard is full of it, and so, so am I. Pretty isn't it?

In Which I Eat Crow

Please pass the mustard.

From the day that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told us that impeachment was "off the table" I have been ragging on her backside and on the 110th Congress, and, I submit, for good reason. We're still funding that illegal and misbegotten war in Iraq; President Bush has successfully vetoed several important bills, including those on stem cell research and health insurance for children; and there is still no guarantee that a reasonable check on the administration's domestic spying will be rammed down the White House gullet.

However, (she said, swallowing hard), Speaker Pelosi managed to push through an extremely important ethics reform bill, one that even her own party was hardly thrilled with. In an op-ed piece published yesterday in The Sacramento Bee, Washington Post writer Marie Cocco points out just how hard Speaker Pelosi had to work to get the new, independent and bipartisan ethics panel through the House.

Elections do matter. Some people who win office really do keep campaign promises. And legislation the public wants - but which the politicians, by and large, don't - actually can be enacted, even if the kicking and screaming can practically be heard coming from behind those infamously closed doors.

This is what the House of Representatives has proved by at last creating an outside panel to hear complaints of ethical wrongdoing by its members. ...

Word of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's successful struggle - and it was a struggle - to push through a new rule requiring the outside panel of ethical arbiters was buried under a torrent of campaign news and the bitter exchange of accusation over the House's refusal to go along with giving blanket immunity to telecommunications companies who were involved in the Bush administration's warrantless surveillance program. Nonetheless, its significance is political and substantive.

Political, because ethics reform was a central Democratic campaign pledge in the 2006 elections; the rallying cry against the Republican "culture of corruption" helped the party win control of the chamber. Once in power, however, Pelosi's call for an outside ethics panel faced heated opposition from Republicans and from many Democrats who are comfortable, indeed, with the back-scratching ethical compromises that have long been part of Capitol Hill culture.

But vociferous demands from the new members who won their seats on ethics platforms - and must defend them in November - were coupled with Pelosi's sheer will: "You're going to do this, whether you like it or not," she told members behind closed doors, according to a staffer. The result of months of massaging the proposal was a 229-182 vote last week to establish the outside panel. Most Republicans - 159 - voted against the plan; 23 Democrats joined them in opposition.

The days of flashing cash on the floor of the House are over. So are the days when an ethics panel member can be removed by his own party for daring to investigate a house power (as was the case when the Tom DeLay scandal was finally coming to light). Democrats running in 2006 promised an end to that kind of corruption, and Nancy Pelosi delivered.

For that we all should be grateful. Thank you, Speaker Pelosi: you did well.

Now, Madame Speaker, how about flexing some of that muscle on the other issues which matter so much to this nation at this critical juncture? We can't wait for another 8 months.

Flimflam at the Podium

Let's say you set yourself up as the antithesis of everything that your opposite is dedicated to. Let's say you make the basis of your policies the principle that your side is right, you get all the benefits of every bit of power you can wield. Let's say that you make power your goal, and much of your power is ripped from a system that doesn't provide it, by force. Let's say that you make access to your consideration available only to your own supporters. Your methods make you anathema to decent people, and you lose much of your support.

What is your answer? Demand that your opposition work with you if they are to achieve the beneficent results you've worked hard against for the past six years.

The cretin in chief has an office, the presidency, going for him. That he gained it by dishonesty, and outright lies, doesn't demean the office itself. I hope. It's his last, best hope, and his present policy is to use his office to keep decent people from gaining decent objectives.

On health insurance , well, there isn't anything more that I can say that hasn't been said. Instead of promoting public well-being, his plan is a benefit for the corporations that this president gives our country's wealth to serve. On energy 'independence', with the precedent that's been set already on the awards of contracts to friends seeking public funds, we know the results will not be good for us. Global warming has advanced without check over the past six years, and the president has been forced to make a few passes at it. And the escalation of a shameful war can't be glossed over as a sincere effort to achieve 'success', a 'success' that increasingly is just another extension of ill-gotten gains at the sacrifice of our country's moral standing.

Last night's State of the Union Address was not left for the audience to judge, it had all been given out in advance and the apologists had been hard at work long before it occurred. Listening to the comments on C-Span when I got back from another engagement last night, it was the usual divide. And this morning, getting onto CNN to see their polling, it's the usual divide.


CNN poll;

Created: Wednesday, January 24, 2007, at 00:32:43 EDT

What was your overall impression of the president's State of the Union address?

Positive 32% 3792 votes

Negative 68% 8088 votes

Total: 11880 votes

We are increasingly familiar with the + or - 30%. They call in to talk shows and demand that the cretin in the presidency has been maligned, is unfortunate in the events he's had to put up with, and that the dirty commie hippies that oppose him are to blame for whatever present evils he's unable to cope with.

We are familiar by association with the + or - 70%, they are the ones like us who want the country saved from the rape that has gone on for the past six years.

There is a really good element in this country that has always made it a great nation. They are the many decent people who resolutely vote for the candidates they conceive of as honest people with the intention of making their country safe from misuse, its force safe from being thrown at foreign countries unwisely for ends that are not in anyone's best interest, its people free to support themselves and their families by honest industry, and its high places populated by honest dedicated public servants. Those good folks are ready to take the country back.

Should the Democrats work with this president? I think not. Working against misuse of power would be a better course to follow. Working toward the end of this atrocity of a war is much better for the country. Working for equitable access to honest reward of labor, to education, to health and safety, these are the ends this congress needs to achieve. These are the ends this administration has determinedly opposed. Working with the White House would only vitiate their honest efforts.

Call it whatever you like, but as Diane pointed out previously in 'No Bipartisanship', this so-called 'bipartisanship' is overly honored even by lip-service. The honest public servants we have elected will do well to stay out of the public trough that administration policies promote, and clean up the mess.

No sale.

The Remnant >30%

There is a diminishing group of believers in the U.S. that polls show continue to support the cretin in chief no matter what he does. A lot of liberals, the people of our society who look deeply into their leaders' behavior and choose to follow whoever shows the best powers of reasoning, can't understand how anyone can still believe the lies and give allegiance to bad behavior with bad results.

I think there are some who have either the low intelligence or lack of confidence driving them to cling to whoever holds high office, out of panic. They can't believe in themselves because of a personality or mental defect that is a remnant of prehistoric group behavior. Allegiance symbolized security, and to those who have grown up in a culture of fear of other cultures think they are well represented by this group. We got into a discussion of this at Eschaton yesterday, and I told 'mena' I was going to talk about it further.


These now fewer than 30% remind me very much of the early, primitive human groups or tribes of babboons in which there is a leader, and followers' behavior is subservient or they are separated from the group and cannot survive. Of course, when the leader doesn't lead well, the adherents are in trouble, but their role is not judgment but submission. I see this reflected in the rising hysteria of the right wing, that keeps trumpeting the leadership of some one they can only continue to respect if they ignore his increasingly erratic behavior.

The human race began in colonies in the wild, and like all species it was preyed on by other species - and needed to stick together for self preservation. Dominance was given to the strong and the smart, who brought the group to good hunting grounds and territory that was easily held. From their mindless behavior, I see the present-day recidivists clinging to adherence to their group's chosen leader in a need for self-preservation. Of course, the leader they have now was chosen by means of paid advertisements that were lies. If they ever see that, it threatens them and they react with violent anger, and often colorful vituperation.

I seldom go to the right wing websites, but once got into a discussion with one who actually thought that Jimmy Carter was weak because he didn't 'nuke' the embassy in Tehran when it was taken over by rioters. In a crowd like that, showing strength requires mindlessness - and they have their ideal in the present holder of the office. A refusal to consider options is respected if that's your own chief characteristic. Of course, to thinking people it looks suicidal - and in the case of this present administration's threatening Iran with hostilities, it may be.

This morning at Eschaton, poster 'sinfonian' had a doozy that had occurred at his blog;

Kim Barreca, mother of Michael Barreca, from Vineland, is whining about how they were expecting him home so he could get married in June.

Welcome to real life, soldiers. This sort of thing makes me laugh, only because these punk kids who join to milk the government (and we, the taxpayers) for college money and exhorbant [sic] pay packages get a real wake up call when they realize that things such as stop loss really do exist.

Hah ... pwnage. A great way to start the weekend.

It's wonderful to travel through Italy and see the mountaintop walled villages, where for aeons the group that held them kept together and warded off the hungry roving bands of pillagers. Interestingly, gated communities continue this isolation as a means of securing their goods. Now we hear them proposed for Baghdad. As Litz proposed a few days ago, they might well look for names like their prototypes here, ending in '-field', '-meadow', or as I like, '-gate'.

Listening to Chris Matthews this morning, there was running speculation on the body language shown in the latest message of continued war on Iraq, the body language of loss and dejection. The attacks on his policies, in the Matthews' panel view, showed their effect in the C-i-C's loss of confidence and demeanor of defeat. His leadership among the intellectually challenged may be seen waning in his retreat from belligerent attitude.

If groups are formed ``randomly'' and reproductive success of group founders is determined by a multi-person prisoners' dilemma game, then selfish behavior will prevail over maximization of group payoffs. However, interesting models exist in which ``group selection'' sustains cooperative behavior. Forces that support cooperative behavior include assortative matching in groups, group longevity, and punishment-based group norms.

This comes from a work on group psychology by Ted Bergstrom of UCSB. Of course, there are many other works on the subject. The group supporting the leader at all costs represents an ancient trait, thoughtless subjugation to a perceived savior. The questioners, which include most liberal thinkers, shake the structure the blind follower has always found stability in. It shouldn't surprise us that we are viewed as the enemy. We are shaking their need to follow blindly, to survive. Ironically, it is the survival of those who are less than able to take care of themselves that we are promoting, as well as the survival of the earth. Their 'punishment-based group norms' are invoked by this behavior which they don't understand.

The remnant that is clinging to the C-i-C has to hold onto its beliefs or it will accept its own idiocy. Don't expect that to happen.

Time To Call the Wah!-mbulance

The November eelection results continue to reverberate as the fact of a Democratic congress begins to sink in. If Democratic Senator Tim Johnson recovers, as now seems more likely, appointments to the federal judiciary will have to pass through a Senate controlled by the Democrats. One of the most conservative federal appeals courts has three openings, and will soon have a fourth. An article in today's Washington Post points out some of the frustrations now being expressed by the right with respect to control of the judicial philosophy of the Fourth District Court of Appeals.

A growing list of vacancies on the federal appeals court in Richmond is heightening concern among Republicans that one of the nation's most conservative and influential courts could soon come under moderate or even liberal control, Republicans and legal scholars say.

A number of prominent Republican appointees have left or announced plans to leave the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, which has played a key role in terrorism cases and has long been known for forceful conservative rulings and judicial personalities.

...During the Bush administration, the 4th Circuit has been the court of choice on national security, issuing key rulings that backed the government on the detention of enemy combatants and the prosecution of Sept. 11, 2001, conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui.... [Emphasis added]

Besides being the venue of choice for national security issues, this circuit has also been the venue of choice for other conservative issues. One "forceful conservative ruling" suggested that the Miranda Warning to arrestees was not essential, a holding that the Supreme Court knocked down.

It's instructive to see just who is whining the most over the current state of political affairs.

"I think everyone is concerned because the 4th Circuit literally hangs in the balance here," said Jay Sekulow, chief counsel for the conservative American Center for Law and Justice, who has advised the White House on judicial nominees. "With the nature of the cases the court has been taking, especially on the terrorism issue, its direction is really critical."

...Jan LaRue, chief counsel for Concerned Women for America, said she and other conservatives are disappointed with Bush and Senate Republicans for not pushing harder to fill the vacancies before losing control of the Senate.

"Now all they've done is managed to kick the can down the road, and we've lost the majority," said LaRue, whose group advocates for conservative jurists. "That circuit in the wrong hands could certainly move toward the center-left." [Emphasis added]

Mr. Sekulow established his street cred with an ongoing series of suits to force such issues as prayer in the schools and other demands from the Religious Reich on the nation. That he has "advised the White House on judicial nominees" comes as no surprise, given this administration's preference for this segment of the citizenry.

Ms. LaRue's organization (which is misnamed, given that the leadership is mostly male) is another right wing outfit which fights against women's reproductive rights as often as it does for conservative jurists. It is certainly understandable that Ms. LaRue fears the circuit will be moving "toward the center-left."

The fact that this nation just moved "toward the center-left" must frighten the hell out of all the right-wing extremists.

Good.

Sighs of Relief

US liberals are not the only ones pleased by the results of last week's elections. A great deal of the rest of the world has issued a collective sigh of relief as well. From the UK's Guardian:

For six years, latterly with the backing of both houses of a markedly conservative Republican Congress, George Bush has led an American administration that has played an unprecedentedly negative and polarising role in the world's affairs. On Tuesday, in the midterm US congressional elections, American voters rebuffed Mr Bush in spectacular style and with both instant and lasting political consequences. By large numbers and across almost every state of the union, the voters defeated Republican candidates and put the opposition Democrats back in charge of the House of Representatives for the first time in a dozen years.

When the remaining recounts and legal challenges are over, the Democrats may even have narrowly won control of the Senate too. Either way, the results change the political landscape in Washington for the final two years of this now thankfully diminished presidency. They also reassert a different and better United States that can again offer hope instead of despair to the world. Donald Rumsfeld's resignation last night was a fitting climax to the voters' verdict. Thank you, America.

In US domestic terms, the 2006 midterms bring to an end the 12 intensely divisive years of Republican House rule that began under Newt Gingrich in 1994. These have been years of zealously and confrontational conservative politics that have shocked the world and, under Mr Bush, have sent America's global standing plummeting. That long political hurricane has now at last blown itself out for a while, but not before leaving America with a terrible legacy that includes climate-change denial, the end of biological stem-cell research, an aid programme tied to abortion bans, a shockingly permissive gun culture, an embrace of capital punishment equalled only by some of the world's worst tyrannies, the impeachment of Bill Clinton and his replacement by a president who does not believe in Darwin's theory of evolution. The approval by voters in at least five more states of same-sex marriage bans - on top of 13 similar votes in 2004 - shows that culture-war politics are far from over.

...The big questions under the new Congress will be the way that Mr Bush responds to this unfamiliar reduction in his authority and whether the Democratic win will push the president into a new Iraq policy. At his White House press conference yesterday, Mr Bush inevitably made plenty of suitably bipartisan and common-ground noises. He had little alternative. But they rang hollow from such a tarnished and partisan leader. It will take more than warm words in the immediate aftermath of an election reverse to prove that Mr Bush is now capable of working in a new way.

The departure of the disastrous Mr Rumsfeld has come at least three years too late. But it shows that Mr Bush has finally been forced to face the reality of the Iraq disaster for which his defence secretary bears so much responsibility. As the smoke rose over the Pentagon on 9/11, Mr Rumsfeld was already writing a memo that wrongly pointed the finger at Saddam Hussein. He more than anyone beat the drum for the long-held neoconservative obsession with invading Iraq. It was he who insisted, over the advice of all his senior generals, that the invasion required only a third of the forces that the military said they needed. He more than anyone else is the architect of America's humiliations in Iraq. It was truly an outrage that he remained in office for so long.

But at least the passing of Mr Rumsfeld shows that someone in the White House now recognises that things cannot go on as before. Business as usual will not do, either in general or over Iraq. Mr Bush's remarks last night showed that on Iraq he has now put himself in the hands of the Iraq Study Group, chaired by his father's consigliere James Baker, one of whose members, Robert Gates, an ex-CIA chief, was last night appointed to succeed the unlamented Mr Rumsfeld. Maybe the more pragmatic Republican old guard can come to the rescue of this disastrous presidency in its most catastrophic adventure. But it has been the American voters who have at last made this possible. For that alone the entire world owes them its deep gratitude today. [Emphasis added]

It is ironic that this editorial was written in a country that not only is one of our strongest allies, but also was a partner in the crime of the Iraq War. Mr. Bush's counterpart in the UK, Tony Blair, had to feel the sting of these lashes quite deeply, as he obviously was meant to.

The critique of Bush's administration is the same one that liberals in this country have been making for much of the past five+ years, and I take great solace in the fact that not only have voters in this country finally gotten it, so has much of the world.

It's redemption time. I hope the new Congress, anad I mean both sides of the aisle, has gotten the message.

Those Damned Machines

Election 2006 is technically not over. While the overall results are not in question, there are still some House seats in question because of the closeness of the votes. Overall, though, the election appears to have gone more smoothly than the last couple of elections. There certainly are fewer claims of fraud and election mismanagement in the process itself. At the same time, however, there were plenty of glitches on November 7: inadequate numbers of paper ballots at several polling stations; problems with voter lists; and, of course, malfunctioning electronic voting machines.

Richard L. Hasen, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles and an elections expert, has an interesting op-ed piece in today's NY Times in which he makes the case for shifting the emphasis on election analysis away from the machines (or methods used to cast votes)to the people responsible for running the elections.

But this reaction to the bugs and glitches shows that Americans have not learned the right lesson from 2000: the problem is not with the technology of running our elections but rather with the people running them.

The United States should join the rest of the world’s advanced democracies and put nonpartisan professionals in charge. We need officials whose ultimate allegiance is to the fairness, integrity and professionalism of the election process, not to helping one party or the other gain political advantage. We don’t need disputes like the current one in Florida being resolved by party hacks.

Critics of electronic voting raise two main issues: machines are susceptible to fraud (or hacking) and they are difficult to use.

Fraud problems would not go away if we switched to vote by mail, as Oregon has. Such voting — let’s call it mandatory absentee balloting — takes the voter out of the polling booth and puts him at home or elsewhere, someplace where votes could be sold to the highest bidder. Most of the documented cases of voting fraud in the United States in recent years involve absentee ballots. At the beginning of the last century, voter turnout declined as states adopted secret, in-person balloting, most likely because corrupt politicians stopped buying votes since they couldn’t verify that people were really voting for their candidate.

The point is not that electronic voting is the best system; maybe it should be scrapped. The real solution is to create a cadre of dedicated, professional nonpartisan administrators with enough money to run a scrupulously fair and voter-friendly system of election administration to resolve such questions.

To improve the chances that states will choose an independent and competent chief elections officer, states should enact laws making that officer a long-term gubernatorial appointee who takes office only upon confirmation by a 75 percent vote of the legislature — a supermajority requirement that would ensure that a candidate has true bipartisan support. Nonpartisanship in election administration is no dream. It is how Canada and Australia run their national elections.

The strawman in election reform has always been the machine, just as it is in this analysis. The complaints are not about the machines, but rather the reliability and security of the machines. People want to know that their votes count and will be counted. Too many independent studies have shown that the current election machines are insecure, easily hacked, and prone to rather suspicious breakdowns. These problems could, however, be fixed if there were a will to do so. It is no accident that a Senate bill which proposed such fixes never made it to the floor in the current Congress.

That criticism of Mr. Hasen's argument aside, however, the man makes a good point: the people in charge of elections are the critical factor. In California, the Secretary of State is charged with that responsibility, and that post is an elected position, which means that the office holder is to some greater or lesser extent a partisan. At the local level, the County Registrar of Voters is charged with the nuts and bolts of the election (overseeing voter registration, providing ballots, machines, poll locations, poll workers, tabulation workers, etc.). In most municipalities, this also is an elected position.

Could the current Secretary of State order a questionable voter list purge as was done in Ohio? Probably. Would such a purge happen under an independent commission? Probably not, although there certainly is no absolute guarantee of that. The benefit of an elected Secretary of State, however, is that the individual holding the position can be ousted, either by recall or by voting him or her out at the next election. The independent commissioner proposed by Mr. Hasen does not have that direct accountability.

Perhaps a national, independent commission running all elections should be explored, but until it can be demonstrated that there will be a direct accountability to voters, the idea will be a hard sell.

People Voted Yesterday

A lot more people than usual voted yesterday in the mid-term elections,and the beneficiaries were the Democrats. While liberals such as myself are (and should be) gratified, the move by the electorate was not so much to the left as to the center. Further, the main reason cited by the voters who were polled after voting for the Democratic gains was the Iraq War, not some grand progressive program to return fairness to the economy and to restore civil liberties. While an argument can be made that by repudiating the war, voters were in fact voting for a more viable economy and the restoration of the Constitution, the fact is that they want an end to the war. Period.

Political wonks and pundits from both sides of the debate are already spinning the results, and the consensus is that Emperor in Chief now faces a Congress that will no longer simply rubber stamp his wishes. Robin Toner's analysis piece in today's NY Times is a pretty thoughtful example of this kind of thinking.

Everything is different now for President Bush. The era of one-party Republican rule in Washington ended with a crash in yesterday’s midterm elections, putting a proudly unyielding president on notice that the voters want change, especially on the war in Iraq.

...For six years, Mr. Bush has often governed, and almost always campaigned, with his attention focused on his conservative base. But yesterday’s voting showed the limits of those politics, as practiced — and many thought perfected — by Mr. Bush and his chief political adviser, Karl Rove.

...Most critically, perhaps, Republicans lost the political center on the Iraq war, according to national exit polls. Voters who identified themselves as independents broke strongly for the Democrats, the exit polls showed, as did those who described themselves as moderates.

...Geoffrey Garin, a Democratic pollster, said, “An important feature of this election, with implications for 2008, is that the center of the electorate clearly
doesn’t like to be ignored in an era of base politics. The Republicans played to the base at their great peril among the middle.”

The Democrats have the House, and may still grab the Senate, depending on how the races in Virginia and Montana break, but the message still seems to be that the center has spoken, not the left.

It seems to me that the Democratic Party has to do two things in the next two years. First, it has to work hard to clean up some of the messes created by the Bush regime the last six years. Second, and just as important, it has to educate the electorate on issues beyond the Iraq War. Only by doing both jobs well will it be able to remove the opprobrium attached to the term "liberal."

A Little Late

Election day is finally here. I awoke at 2:00AM feeling like a 5-year-old on Christmas Day, but the 60-year-old quickly let some of the anxiety and dread creep into the excitement. After five years of botched, perhaps even stolen, elections, can I expect this one to be any different? Many voters worry about the sheer mechanics of the voting and tabulating, especially because of the technology in place: electronic voting machines that have no paper trails for auditing purposes. Some of us have been screaming about this for the past two years, our opinions shored up by multiple articles citing concerns from prestigious and politically neutral experts. We have all been advised to loosen our tin-foil hats.

Today, the LA Times has finally seen fit to look into the issue in this editorial.

NEW VOTING MACHINES, like new computers, are generally faster than old ones. But as every computer user knows, reliability is often more important than speed. And a lot depends on who's using the machine and how.

...Some poll workers and computer scientists predict an election day plagued by long waits, glitches and miscounted votes. A more promising possibility is that, with the right equipment and procedures in place, electronic voting machines will deliver an unusually accurate and speedy count.

Unfortunately, the experience this election day is sure to fall somewhere in between. A number of states lack the safeguards necessary to address the machines' vulnerabilities to glitches and tampering. And even in states with those safeguards, such as California, the integrity of the results will depend on voters taking extra steps to make sure everything works as it should.

So far, the most common complaint about the electronic voting devices is that they break down or freeze too often, which is an engineering problem (and one hardly new to computer users). More troubling are the reports that some of the devices have inexplicably tallied the occasional vote for the wrong candidate. Computer experts also have demonstrated how easy it is to rig a machine's software (or hardware) to steal votes.

These problems highlight the need for machines to print and store a record of each vote as it is cast. Manufacturers have resisted putting printers in their machines, and only a portion of the states where the machines are being deployed have insisted on a paper trail. One of them is California, where 32 of the 58 counties will make routine use of the new machines on election day. (In Los Angeles County, voters mark paper ballots that are counted by optical scanners.) [Emphasis added]

It's election day, and a major newspaper finally gets around to commenting on the issue. Why wasn't this editorial, or one like it, written back when Senator Boxer co-sponsored a bill that would have required a paper trail in every precinct in the nation. That bill was introduced in 2005 but it never reached the Senate floor. Perhaps such an editorial would have raised awareness of the problem when it might have done some good.

And the cynic in me believes that's exactly why that editorial didn't show up until today.

V - for Victory - Day

Tomorrow we know for sure, but getting here is great. I just have to savor it that the country has come to this point, it has seen the complete breakdown at the top and is ready to act in the logical, lawful way that the constitution provides, a free election.

I can hear the snorts of laughter out there, of those who think the Grand Old Prevaricators have already rigged it. The Die(bold) is cast. The redistricting put all the good thinkers in a minority in every district. The big money has bought up such professional ads that six years of malfeasance are gone, in the face of the threat of the fabled profligate tax-and-spend Democrat tradition, ignoring the pay-as-you-go precedent it set, memories of the surplus have been erased by the overdose of Koolaid. I don't accept that. I live in a world of tribal people, too, but I continue to believe that decency will prevail.

This is the first day of a great opportunity, the way the world looked when WWII was won and people kissed, when JFK was elected, the way it looked when Nixon left, the day you got back your SAT's and you had a perfect score (in English language, not math), the day you got that Council on the Arts award in playwriting, the day you held the love of your life. By the way, if you didn't click on 'This is the first day', you don't have great music for great events playing, do yourself a favor and click on it.

I am ready and you have been working steadily, believing that fellow citizens will see reason, will have the good will to put into play the powers of government that this great nation has in place for the good of its people. Truth will out, good will triumph, good citizens will be elected today - the time has come for that to happen.

And for all of our sakes, I am looking forward to men and women of good will taking back the reins of government, using the powers for good. Not wishful thinking here. There are perfectly good mechanics available. Throughout history, the attempts of presidents of one persuasion or another have not overcome the good will of the American people for any length of time, and appointments to the Supreme Court of ideologues has for the most part turned those ideologues into men of stature and judgment. Not many people who have achieved high office have been sanguine about knowing their place in history will be one of contempt and disrepute, and I deeply wish for all of our sakes that the next two years will not bring one, or more than one, out, any more than already has happened. And that a wish, even need, for honor will overcome present greed and corruption.

Sometimes I think our forefathers were overly optimistic about education and freedom being the element that would bring out humanity's good judgment and moral sensibilities. That belief has been sorely tested. This country is at a very low ebb but it can, and shows the ability to, come back from the abyss. Please join me in giving the United States a boost. Those admitting they did wrong are not to be despised, they are to be congratulated. Truth is triumphing, long let it wave.

To those who stuck doggedly to the high path, today is your day. You should be proud, and you should be rewarded. The honor you have earned isn't the cheap politicized variety , but real gold. Today is a good day for you to be proud.

Have you voted yet?

Thanks.

It's Not About the Oil...

...Except when it is.

Yesterday, Ruth and several other Atriots referenced a Washington Post article at Eschaton. I hadn't hit the on-line edition of WaPo at that point, and then I got busy with my usual Sunday chores and didn't get around to Pravda on the Potomac until late yesterday evening. I can see why folks were genuinely het up by the article in question.

As he barnstorms across the country campaigning for Republican candidates in Tuesday's elections, Bush has been citing oil as a reason to stay in Iraq. If the United States pulled its troops out prematurely and surrendered the country to insurgents, he warns audiences, it would effectively hand over Iraq's considerable petroleum reserves to terrorists who would use it as a weapon against other countries.

"You can imagine a world in which these extremists and radicals got control of energy resources," he said at a rally here Saturday for Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (R-Colo.). "And then you can imagine them saying, 'We're going to pull a bunch of oil off the market to run your price of oil up unless you do the following. And the following would be along the lines of, well, 'Retreat and let us continue to expand our dark vision.' "

Bush said extremists controlling Iraq "would use energy as economic blackmail" and try to pressure the United States to abandon its alliance with Israel. At a stop in Missouri on Friday, he suggested that such radicals would be "able to pull millions of barrels of oil off the market, driving the price up to $300 or $400 a barrel."

...Some analysts, however, said that Bush is exaggerating the impact of Iraq's oil production on world markets. Iraq has more than 112 billion barrels of oil, the second-largest proven reserves in the world. But it currently pumps just 2.3 million barrels per day and exports 1.6 million of that, according to the State Department's tracking report on the country, still short of what it produced before the invasion.

That represents a fraction of the 85 million barrels produced around the world each day and less than the surplus capacity of Saudi Arabia and other Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, meaning in a crisis they could ramp up their wells to make up for the shortfall, analysts said. The United States also has 688 million barrels of oil in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, enough to counter a disruption of Iraqi oil for 14 months. [Emphasis added.]

In the run-up to the Iraq War we were assured that oil had nothing to do with the intended agression. It was about WMDs, er...toppling an evil dictator, er...bringing democracy to the Middle East, or something noble like that. Now, however, we have to stay...because of the oil.

And just like all the other reasons, this one is bogus, as the analysts cited in the article make clear. Yes, this was just a stump speech for a struggling GOP candidate in Colorado, but it makes clear once again how Bush and his minions are perfectly happy to lie about anything if it will keep their hold on power intact. What is especially horrific about this lie, however, is that it is being used to justify even more death and destruction, all so that we can continue to drive our SUVs to the supermarket two blocks away.

A pox on his house, and the houses of those aligned with him.

Lawyering Up

And this is what our democracy has been reduced to: from yesterday's NY Times:

A team of lawyers for the Democratic Party has been arguing with postal officials in Columbus, Ohio, trying to persuade them to process thousands of absentee ballots that have arrived with insufficient postage.

In Pennsylvania, the Republican Party has opened a “recount account” and set aside $500,000 to pay lawyers who will answer telephones on Election Day and monitor polls to see whether officials demand proper voters’ identification. In Maryland, lawyers representing candidates for senator and governor from both parties met recently and swapped cellphone numbers and e-mail addresses to smooth out the logistics of potential litigation.

Democrats say they are most concerned that voters will be prevented from voting by long lines or poll workers’ demanding unnecessary forms of identification.

Republicans say they are guarding against ineligible people trying to vote.

The parties are sending their largest concentrations of lawyers to states with the tightest races like Maryland, Missouri, Ohio and Tennessee. Most of them are unpaid volunteers, though many from large firms are working pro bono to meet their firms’ expectation for hours of public service.

...It is not just parties gearing up.

In its largest mobilization ever for a non-presidential election, the Justice Department will dispatch about 800 lawyers to potentially troubled polling locations in 65 cities in 20 states to ensure voting rights laws are obeyed.

The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the N.A.A.C.P. and the People for the American Way Foundation will jointly have 2,000 lawyers fanning out across 20 states.

Here we are, in the 21st Century, 230 years into our nationhood, and we have to have lawyers on hand to ensure the integrity of our elections. And why is this?

Aside from new voter identification laws, new voter registration databases and so many close races, the rollout of electronic voting equipment provides an unusually high potential for suits during and after the election. [Emphasis added.]

The last three national elections have had enough "irregularities" that most of us don't trust the process for the reasons cited by the article. I think we can add to the list the various voter-list purges and other dirty-tricks tactics to suppress the vote.

What's next, asking for UN observers to be present at each precinct?

Shameful.

What Our Neighbors Think

The polls over the last six weeks make it clear the George W. Bush is not the most popular man in America. Only 34% approve of him and his policies. What I found interesting is that most of the world thinks even less of him. From the Toronto Star:

Canadians believe the world has become a more dangerous place since George W. Bush was elected U.S. president and a majority believe he will launch military strikes in Iran or North Korea before his term ends in 2008, according to a new Toronto Star poll.

Canadians also consider Bush more dangerous to world peace than Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.

The EKOS poll was done in Canada for the Star and Montreal's La Presse ahead of Tuesday's U.S. mid-term elections, expected to be decided on the issue of the Iraq war. The same questions were posed to respondents by pollsters in Britain, Israel and Mexico.

...Canadians — like Americans — have soured on the U.S. invasion of Iraq with 73 per cent now telling EKOS that Washington had no justification for it. When the same question was asked of Canadians in April 2003, right after the Bush invasion, EKOS found 53 per cent thought it unjustified.

Canadians told EKOS they believed Osama bin Laden posed the greatest danger to the world, followed by North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, then Bush, Ahmadinejad and Nasrallah.

Mexicans ranked Bush the second-most dangerous of the five, behind Al Qaeda's bin Laden.

Analysts here say anti-Americanism has become more intense under Bush than any other U.S. president before him.

"The feeling goes well beyond just policy choices," says Charles Pena of the Independent Institute. "There is the perception the Bush administration went into Iraq unilaterally and has made other choices unilaterally. There is a belief we ran roughshod over allies and that their opinions didn't matter and we wouldn't listen anyway." [Emphasis added]

Obviously the rest of the world is as concerned about Tuesday's election as we are. I would imagine our neighbors to the north and to the south (and to the east, and to the west)hope enough people turn out for the Democrats to completely hamstring Mr. Bush's foreign forays as much as possible. May they get their wish.

24/7/365.25

It is remarkable to have a coterie of elected and un-elected national leaders who have completely eschewed any pretense of leadership in favor of political aims that throw off the gloss of high position.

The spectacle of sending out onto the hustings a Secretary of State , a White House press secretary, a President and a Vice-President, makes the high stakes evident in the coming Democratic return to power.

It's a spectacle that makes me wonder if the American public isn't showing how badly it has been damaged in its sense of values by the past years of GOP wrangling against public interests. Like most principled people, I wince at the necessity of making this a one-sided accusation. But it would be dishonest to say that Democrats are equally guilty. It is the Republican party that throughout the past administrations, Clinton's as well as w's, have been excoriating the principles of government. The GOP has entered fully into service of the myth that re-aligning government's role to serving business, at the expense of public service, was the right path. Greed has become the GOP mantra. (Google 'Republican greed', get more references than we can fit in here.)

As a result of cutting out the needy to assume the role of Champion of the Rich, the GOP has attracted a great deal of support from Corporate America. It's hardly a surprise to see their coffers fill up accordingly. But disservice of public interest has not made corporations healthy. Note in a recent post I pointed out the spectacle of our supermarket chains trying to revive the food safety standards that this government has eschewed. It was in the corporate interest to assure public safety. Anyone with the slightest economic sense can see that retail is suffering because there are a decreasing number of comfortable consumers out there who can buy their stuff. Students who cannot afford higher education are not going to be adding to the affluent who made this nation great. Minimum wage workers aren't able to buy houses - has anyone taken note of the homebuilding industry's woes of late?

Europe has taken a socialist direction in recent decades because it had learned that the public, not monarchies, make a country wealthy and sound. Incidentally, our latest welcomed nuclear partner, India, is an avowedly socialist country. Are my winger readers leaping with glee that they can jump, ooooh, I am advocating socialism, by now? Hardly. I am pointing out that cutting out the less affluent has been tried and failed, and the rest of the world knows it, but we seem under GOP errors to be about to learn that lesson the hard way.

The White House is fighting for its life, because if the public rebukes it by voting in Democrats in either or both houses of congress, the spending spree is over and responsible financial management is nigh. Congressional oversight is much needed. They hates it, with reason. Corruption is due to be costly for the corrupt. Watch them campaign to keep from the light, and pity them, for 'at my back I always hear, time's winged chariot drawing near'.

Voting Early

One of the trends I've noticed is that more people are voting early and/or voting via absentee ballots. It used to be that absentee ballots were sent only to those with a damned good excuse (soldiers who were deployed, or business travelers,for example), but most states have loosened those requirements. In California, for example, absentee ballots are available just for the asking: no excuse required. Minnesota, on the other hand, still has restrictions on the process, but officials are clearly interpreting those restrictions liberally.

The Star Tribune had an interesting article on the whole issue of absentee and early voting.

Absentee voting was once considered a rare and exotic practice reserved for wealthy snowbirds, vacationers and soldiers overseas. But it is becoming an important and widespread part of the election process. The rise of absentee voting may spell convenience and accessibility, but it also is raising questions about the integrity of the system.

...Nationally, absentee voting accounted for 20 percent of those voting in 2004, up from around 14 percent in 2000.

...Minnesota is one of four states that require an excuse for in-person absentee voting and one of 21 states that require an excuse for voting absentee by mail.

Excuses include being an election judge, being away on business, having an illness or disability or having election day fall on a religious observance. Minnesota Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer said election officials apply the restrictions generously.

Curtis Gans, director of American University's Center for the Study of the American Electorate, said there is evidence that absentee voting lowers overall turnout, partly by reducing incentives for vigorous get-out-the-vote efforts. He acknowledged, however, that this is not likely to be the case this year when people want to make sure they have their votes counted.

He also said absentee and early voting is more susceptible to fraud. People can be paid for the votes and vulnerable voters, such as the elderly, may be more easily coerced or intimidated. In seven states, third parties can collect absentee ballots, leaving open the possibility the ballots might be discarded.

Given the potential for fraud, why are states starting to loosen the rules on early/absentee voting? Probably because of citizen demand. It's easy to see why travelers, military personnel, and the disabled would prefer access to the absentee or early ballot, but I think more is behind this than that.

I think people just don't trust the new voting machines, nor do they have any reason to. In the rush to avoid another torturous delay caused by hanging chads, the voting reform bill passed after the 2000 Florida debacle mandated electronic voting machines nation-wide. Unfortunately, that same bill contained no provisions for securing the new system, no paper trail, as it were, and the papers and airwaves have been filled with stories of the easiness with which the voting machines can be hacked and manipulated. Ohio in 2004, and San Diego and Maryland in 2006 certainly seemed to justify the fears that the machines were highly suspect.

This is not to say that the absentee ballot system is foolproof and fraud free, far from it, but at least the voter has a piece of paper that has to be looked at. There's some comfort in that, even for the non-Luddites among us. Senators Barbara Boxer and Hillary Clinton introduced a bill in 2005 that would have required a paper trail for every electronic machine, but that bill never made it to the Senate floor.

After November 7, depending on the outcome, it may very well be re-introduced, and this time might actually be considered. I certainly hope so. We need people to vote, and they need to believe their votes matter.

Hold Back the Vote

We've come to that point in an election campaign where the emphasis is on getting out the vote. Workers are manning phone banks and walking precincts in order to convince their candidate's supporters to actually show up at the polls next Tuesday. Well, at least that's what traditionally happens. Republicans have a different tactic. Many of them are busy finding ways to keep people from voting.

Voter suppression is certainly nothing new, but the Republicans are currently relying on it as never before. Voter rolls in Florida and Ohio have been unilaterally purged by Republicans. The Georgia legislature, controlled by the GOP, passed a voter ID bill that has been found unconstitutional by two courts so far. A Republican candidate for Congress in California sent out a letter to Spanish surnamed voters in the district implying that no immigrants were entitled to vote.

Now comes word that a Republican Party lawyer is challenging voter registrations in a New York just a week or so before the election. From an editorial in today's NY Times:

One of the most deplorable political tactics — trying to suppress the votes of poor or minority citizens by raising the specter of voter fraud — is playing out this week in the city of Yonkers. Republican Party lawyers are calling for an 11th-hour purge of voter rolls in a clear effort to help their endangered state senator, Nicholas Spano.

...last Friday, Republican lawyers filed challenges to nearly 6,000 voter registrations in the Senate district, charging discrepancies between county voter lists and change-of-address records compiled by the Postal Service.

There is a process for investigating an accusation of voter fraud. It involves sending a letter to an address in dispute, and possibly following up with a police inquiry. The Westchester County Board of Elections is doing that. But it has never had an outside party dump so many contested names so close to such a fiercely contested election.

No citizen wants the election tainted with fraud. Every citizen who actually votes wants that vote to count and not be offset by an illegal one, but the cynical tactic of voter suppression is shameful.

Apparently it's the only tool left for the Republicans. Running on their records doesn't seem to be working.