Doin' the voter fraud shuffle

I did a double-take on Monica Goodling's testimony in Congress on Gonzogate Thursday.

"I believe the deputy (Paul McNulty) was not fully candid about his knowledge of White House involvement in the replacement decision, failed to disclose that he had some knowledge of the White House's interest in selecting Tim Griffin (former RNC research director) as the interim U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Arkansas, inaccurately described the department's internal assessment of the Parsky commission, and failed to disclose that he had some knowledge of allegations that Tim Griffin had been involved in vote caging during his work on the president's 2004 campaign."

I was shocked no one on the House Judiciary Committee seemed to ask her anything about Griffin "caging." Caging is illegal. It's a.k.a. voter suppression, preventing targeted groups, usually black people, from voting. Caging was one of the tricks the Republican National Committee used in both 2000 and 2004 to succeed in overturning the true elections of Al Gore and John Kerry for president. Caging is reportedly the reason the White House snuck a clause into the Patriot Act renewal to bypass Senate confirmation on U.S. attorneys, because they couldn't risk Griffin being asked about his '04 caging.

BBC reporter Greg Palast, as always was on top of this, has his well-written report at Bradblog. Lawyers at Balkinization have a good post, too. The day after: Palast blasts both barrels at a troll making Internet mileage criticizing his research.

Griffin’s sending this email to Goodling while he’s a sitting US prosecutor. How dumb can you get? This dumb: He adds, “The Republican State Parties wanted to show that thousands of fraudulent voter registrations had been completed. They ultimately did.”

Oh, no they didn’t. And that brings us full circle: to the prosecutor firings. None of the honest US Attorneys found a single “fraudulent voter” in the hundreds of thousands that were challenged as a result of ‘caging.’

See, what Griffin's caging crew "found" was that they prevented registered voters -- targting black populations -- from voting, which does not mean those votes wouldn't have been valid. None of those who didn't vote, or whose vote is among more than 100,000 in Ohio alone still sitting uncounted from the '04 presidential election, has been proved to be an illegal vote, which is what "voter fraud" would be. Indeed, the New York Times has reported that despite the DOJ's 2002 attorney training specifically to nail "voter fraud," virtually no voter fraud was found, try as they might.

Griffin's activities described in his own emails should have him now sitting charged with federal felonies, but instead he's sitting as Arkansas' top federal law enforcement official. This is just nuts, and evidence neither party in Washington is representing "we the people." If corporate sugar daddies could be denied a vote, we'd see fists up.

Flashback to our post on New Jersey "voter fraud."

Curious that New Jersey U.S. Attorney Chris Christie was on the firing list from January to November 2006. In September 2005, then-candidate Assemblywoman Jennifer Beck did Rove's dirty work crying Democratic foul on the enigmatic "voter fraud" claim. It's no wonder Christie was put on the firing list in January 2006. It's not really hard to speculate what got him off the list in November, either, with that political ploy in what appears -- at least until he comes up with an indictment and conviction in this now stale case -- to be abuse of his power to undermine now-Sen. Bob Menendez's campaign.
It all seems so strategic, doesn't it?

Think about it: If Christie's "Menendez under federal investigation" stunt had worked, Republicans would have the majority in the Senate today and would control every piece of legislation in committee. This wouldn't be investigated in a Sen. Arlen Specter's Senate Judiciary Committee.

Extra credit: Are they going to steal the '08 election? They already did, Palast says.