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.

Can you hear me now, Mr. Christie?

Waking the beast? We can hope. Finally a mainstream newspaper chain has picked up the real voter fraud story that has long been reported in investigative blogs but was swept under a rug by Big Media, perhaps because the Goebbelsean spin machine told dutiful Big Media reporters to look the other way. Most of this was old news:

Accusations about voter fraud seemed to fly from every direction in Missouri before last fall's elections. State and national Republicans leaders fretted that dead people might vote or that some live people might vote more than once.

The threat to the integrity of the election was seen as so grave that Bradley Schlozman, the acting chief of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division and later the U.S. attorney in Kansas City, twice wielded the power of the federal government to try to protect the balloting. The Republican-controlled Missouri General Assembly also stepped into action.

Now, six months after freshman Missouri Sen. Jim Talent's defeat handed Democrats control of the U.S. Senate, disclosures in the wake of the firings of eight U.S. attorneys show that that Republican campaign to protect the balloting was not as it appeared. No significant voter fraud was ever proved.

The preoccupation with ballot fraud in Missouri was part of a wider national effort that critics charge was aimed at protecting the Republican majority in Congress by dampening Democratic turnout. That effort included stiffer voter-identification requirements, wholesale purges of names from lists of registered voters and tight policing of liberal get-out-the-vote drives.

Bush administration officials deny those claims. But they've gotten traction in recent weeks because three of the U.S. attorneys ousted by the Justice Department charge that they lost their jobs because they failed to prove Republican allegations of voter fraud. They say their inquiries found little evidence to support the claims.

So, where are those indictments resulting from the "Bob Menendez under investigation" leak from New Jersey U.S. Attorney Chris Christie's office in September 2006 as the Democrat was running a close and ultimately successful U.S. Senate campaign against Christie's party favorite Thomas Kean Jr.?

Mr. Christie, did your call get "dropped" on that "investigation"? After eight months without indictment, let alone conviction, can you blame us for thinking your wild election-time subpoena was a partisan ploy?

So much "voter fraud," so little time

In blogs nationally, I'm seeing lots of talk about Karl Rove's obsession with getting U.S. attorneys to make "voter fraud" claims against Dems at election time. This Atlantic story is just one source.

Does anyone remember stories written hot off the fax machines from press releases from now-Assemblywoman Jennifer Beck and failed candidate Declan O'Scanlon in September 2005 asking New Jersey's U.S. Attorney Chris Christie to investigate Monmouth County "voter fraud"? It was right about the time Christie's office dutifully "leaked" subpoenas on records Menendez held as landlord to a subject of a later-turned-out-fruitless (surprise) investigation. The GOP had that twisted into campaign ads "Menendez under federal investigation" faster than the little birdies whispered that scoop into reporters' telephones.

Here's one version of the story on that Beck/O'Scanlon press release, plucked from the memory hole.

"The Attorney General has been handed clear evidence of voter fraud and has done nothing. It’s time for US Attorney Christie to take over (or start) the investigation. We hope our opponents will join us in trying to root out voter fraud in Monmouth County.”

What's interesting, given the latest in Gonzogate, is the press release didn't give details even to a clue of verifiable facts, and I haven't seen anything more about it since.

Anyone else know what came of the Monmouth County "voter fraud" claim?

I dare say that no evidence of any voter fraud in Monmouth County -- let alone fraud exclusive to Democrats -- has come foreward in these two years, has it?