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January 31, 2005

Texas: Abstinence Only Sex Ed Doesn't Work

Not that they'll pay any attention:

Despite taking courses emphasizing abstinence-only themes, teenagers in 29 high schools became increasingly sexually active, mirroring the overall state trends, according to the study conducted by researchers at Texas A&M University.

"We didn't see any strong indications that these programs were having an impact in the direction desired," said Dr. Buzz Pruitt, who directed the study.

The study was delivered to the Texas Department of State Health Services, which commissioned it.

The federal government is expected to spend about $130 million to fund programs advocating abstinence in 2005, despite a lack of evidence that they work, Pruitt said.

"The jury is still out, but most of what we've discovered shows there's no evidence the large amount of money spent is having an effect," he said.

The study showed about 23 percent of ninth-grade girls, typically 13 to 14 years old, had sex before receiving abstinence education. After taking the course, 29 percent of the girls in the same group said they had had sex.

Boys in the tenth grade, about 14 to 15 years old, showed a more marked increase, from 24 percent to 39 percent, after receiving abstinence education.

Abstinence-only programs, which have sprouted up in schools across the nation, cannot offer information about birth control and must promote the social and health benefits of abstaining from sex.

Abstinence education doesn't keep kids from having sex AND it keeps them from information regarding birth control and safe sex.

"Family values" appears to be about getting kids to have families. Nevermind the massive health risks to this sort of irresponsible way to educate young people.

Posted by Carla at 05:09 PM |

Illegal Votes! Illegal Votes!

Oh to be a Republican in Washington State. The squealing and gnashing of teeth are now a daily event.

But alas in order to perpetuate the squealing and gnashing, they've got to offer up dishonest arguments for continuing their attempt to overturn the will of the voters in Washington State.

The memes of the moment are convicted felons who weren't supposed to vote but did. There's a number of problems with this particular excuse to get a revote.

First of all, the various state elections offices can't do a thing about it. According to my research, the elections offices in Washington State only remove convicted felons from the voter rolls when the courts tell them to. And sometimes a convicted felon may believe that their rights have been restored once they've served their time. That isn't always the case.

If a felon doesn't pay their restitution their rights aren't restored even if they've served their jail time. But the counties and the individuals in question aren't informed. As I understand it, there is no database in Washington State for counties to check against to see if their voter roles have been purged of convicted felons who haven't had their rights restored.

I submit that this is a really bad way for Washington State to handle the information so that everyone understands what is going on. But these rules and systems were in place BEFORE the election. The playing field was completely even. The Republicans now want to change the rules and have a new election based in part on this excuse. Ludicrous.

The Republicans are also on the hunt for nonresident voters. And once again, Sound Politics is leading the charge of ineptitude. The latest Stefan Sharkansy effort is to comb the voter rolls for individuals that have an address that's different from their resident address. Nevermind that Washington State has a large military and retired snowbird population. Even those who often comment on the blog are reminding Stefan of this. But alas...to no avail.

Update: I neglected to mention that the laws in Washington State require illegal voters to be identified BEFORE the election.

Posted by Carla at 01:25 PM |

Rundown on Iraqi Election

Juan Cole points out that Sistani isn't an Iraqi citizen. One factor in that appears to have more to do with Saddam than anything else. Apparently, foreigners largely avoided the worst of Saddam's brutality by virtue of being citizens of other countries. Sistani likely took advantage of his Iranian citizenship in just that manner.

Noteworthy is that Ayatollah Ali Sistani follows the more theological Shiite line opposing the ideas of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the late spiritual head of Iran's Islamic revolution, who sought power for clerics. However, Sistani initially opposed Paul Bremer as well as the drawing up of an Iraqi Constitution and only modified that position in apparent response to the upstart junion cleric, Moqtada Sadr.

Cole also points out that Sunni Arab turnout in the elections was light. Sunnis in Samarra, a city of 200,000, only cast 1400 ballots.

Mishan al-Jibury, a Sunni candidate from Mosul, said, "I can honestly say that this has been in general a fair and landmark dress rehearsal for democracy." The Sunni turnout in Mosul is reportedly higher than places like Samarra, although still relatively light.

There is cautious optimism in other Gulf Arab states, along with skepticism over how this election was designed.

It needs to be kept in mind that this election was precisely what Jubury called it - a dress rehearsal for democracy. The new government that springs out of this election will basically be a caretaker interum government for about 11 months when another election is scheduled to take place.

Professor Juan Cole expresses dismay at the misinformation being spoon-fed the American public about this election by our media.

Meanwhile, retired Colonel Tom Carter expresses dismay at the polar opposite misinformation being spoon-fed the American public by our media.

Posted by Kevin at 11:47 AM |

Progressive Women Bloggers: Update

As I've mentioned before, the Progressive Women Bloggers Webring was started in August 2004 as a place for women of the progressive mindset to bring traffic to their sites. It wasn't my idea but I agreed to facilitate it.

Today the ring is running at 76 weblogs strong and still growing.

The PWBW runs the gamut from smaller and newer blogs all the way to some very prominent blogs...all written at least half of the time by women.

You'll find the ring at the bottom of our page. Please take some time to check out the work of these outstanding women.

Posted by Carla at 08:07 AM |

January 30, 2005

Loving the troops means never having to say you're sorry

The Iraqis are off to polls today in droves. With all my heart I wish them better luck than we in the US have. They certainly deserve it.

Today marks another of the many Bush benchmarks for the troops to almost be on their way home. I hope this one sticks.

I've been an aggressive critic of the war in Iraq in many ways. Due to my criticisms, I've been accused of hating the troops and hating America. New York Times columnist Frank Rich writes this morning about his observance of this phenomenon:

But in at least one way we are not back in Vietnam. Iraq hawks, like Vietnam hawks before them, often take the line that to criticize America's mission in Iraq is to attack the troops. That paradigm just doesn't hold. Americans, including those opposed to the war, love the troops (Lynndie England always excepted). Not even the most unhinged Bush hater is calling our all-volunteer army "baby killers." This time, paradoxically enough, it is often those who claim to love the troops the most - and who have the political power to help alleviate their sacrifice - who turn out to be the troops' false friends.

There was, for instance, according to the Los Angeles Times, "nary a mention" of the Iraq war or "the prices paid by American soldiers and their families" at the lavish Inauguration bash thrown for the grandees of the Christian right by the Rev. Lou Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition at Washington's Ritz-Carlton. This crowd cares about the troops much the way the Fifth Avenue swells in the 1936 Hollywood classic "My Man Godfrey" cared about the "forgotten men" of the Depression - as fashion ornaments and rhetorical conveniences. In that screwball comedy, a socialite on a scavenger hunt collects a genuine squatter from the shantytown along the East River. "All you have to do is go to the Waldorf-Ritz Hotel with me," she tells her recruit, "and I'll show you to a few people and then I'll send you right back."

It is odd how the right (in general) shouts lipservice to their reverence for the troops. Purchasing those yellow ribbon magnets for their Hummers and swelling with pride at the sight of a US flag. Or saluting their President on the deck of an aircraft carrier... his codpiece in tow. But real support...REAL reverence from this group, is sorely lacking.

Real support constitutes sending these soldiers to war with proper body armor. Real support means sending them to war with correctly armored vehicles. It means sending them to war with enough ammunition.

In other words, it means sending our troops to war with a plan to win the peace.

I sincerely hope the Iraqis have this election and in the end it's considered legitimate. That the US can start pulling out troops and no more of our young people have to die for Bush's Folly. That would be the ultimate way to support our troops.

Posted by Carla at 08:41 AM |

January 29, 2005

The search for intellectual honesty in the universe

Yesterday in comments, our good friend Tom Carter echoed a point I've often heard from others:

In the same vein, saying Bush is a liar because of the WMD business is, at best, intellectually dishonest. He, his Administration, the Democrats, all serious intelligence services, and other world leaders believed Saddam had them, and he acted based on what he knew. Criticize him, fine, but don't call him a liar. It demeans the validity of the rest of the argument.

I agree that many people believed that Saddam had WMD. But Bush made very specific claims that were known by the Administration to be untrue (or at best a very big stretch) when they were made.

"The Iraqi regime . . . possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons. It is seeking nuclear weapons."

"We know that the regime has produced thousands of tons of chemical agents, including mustard gas, sarin nerve gas, VX nerve gas."

"We've also discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas. We're concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVS for missions targeting the United States."

"The evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. Saddam Hussein has held numerous meetings with Iraqi nuclear scientists, a group he calls his "nuclear mujahideen" -- his nuclear holy warriors. Satellite photographs reveal that Iraq is rebuilding facilities at sites that have been part of its nuclear program in the past. Iraq has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes and other equipment needed for gas centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons." (Cincinnati, Ohio speech, October 7, 2002)

The information on the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) was mixed at best. The CIA and the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency did believe the UAVs could be used for dispersing chemicals. But the Air Force (the US entity which controls most of America's fleet of UAVs) didn't agree. Further, the Air Force view was widely accepted at the Pentagon Missile Defense Agency. This very obvious cherry picking of intelligence is a lie of omission, at least.

Then there's the aluminum tubes that Bush claimed were used "to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons". He had Powell giving that same claim to the UN. But the UN weapons inspectors had already undercut that claim during their latest round of inspections.

Factcheck.org has a gracious piece about Bush being "misinformed" on the yellowcake uranium/Niger statement from the 2003 State of the Union Address. However, they go on to say that the claims were known to be bogus and someone inserted them into Bush's speech. So if Bush himself was "misinformed", someone on his team was lying.

That was two years ago. None of Bush's team has been held accountable for this lie, that I'm aware of. The only person so far who's had their feet held to the fire on this is Joseph Wilson, who outed it.

These claims are, as I said, at best lies of omission. It's entirely possible that Bush himself didn't know that there were many things that contradicted the claims he was making. If that's so...then he's a puppet being used by a whole bunch of other liars. In looking at this from an intellectually honest place, I can't see how that's significantly better than Bush knowing that items in his speech were false.

Posted by Carla at 10:20 AM |

January 28, 2005

Finding the needle of reality in the haystack of BS

In my ongoing effort to sort out the accusations vs the realities in the Washington Governor Election, I've switched my focus from the military ballots issue to the latest GOP crying game, ballot/voter discrepancies.

As I posted the other day, the latest attempts to throw stuff on the wall to see if it sticks is under the guise of discrepancies in King County between the number of ballots cast and the number of people credited with voting.

I spoke this week with Bill Huennekens from the King County Elections office. Huennekens told me that each precinct has a book where voters sign in when they show up to vote. Those books are what King County uses to attempt to reconcile ballots to voters.

As far as I can tell, this would be the only definitive way to reconcile the ballots/credited voters. These books can be viewed by the public, but only by going into the King County offices. They're not viewable online, which makes the "definitive analysis" by Republican hack Stefan Sharkansy of Sound Politics, worth less than the pixels it was put together with.

According to Huennekens, King County has 540 polling locations and 2616 precincts. As it stands, the voter/ballot discrepancy is at 1800 more ballots than credited voters. That's equivalent to less than one ballot per precinct.

What could cause such an imbalance? One answer, voter error.

Voters who are given provisional ballots are also given a special envelope in which to place them. These provisional voters are flagged in the sign in book. After voting provisionally, voters are supposed to put the ballot in the special envelope and return it to the poll workers. If a provisional voter neglected to do this and instead put their ballot into the machine, the count is off.

The count is also thrown off by poll worker error. This happens most often when workers don't get voters properly signed into the precinct poll book. Huennekens informed me that works are given training, but humans do make errors.

Are King Counties discrepancies out of line with what goes on in other counties in Washington? What about other places around the US?

I've teamed up with Joe from Also Also to work on the answer. Joe has a post today about our initial efforts.

We'll both be keeping you up to date as we progress.

Posted by Carla at 08:58 AM |

January 27, 2005

The Bush Crusades

Buttressing Mamdouh Habib's lawyer's allegations of truly vile torture techniques used against his client at Bush's Gitmo Bay concentration camp is an AP wire piece alleging similar techniques. But, instead of coming from the lawyer of a detainee with obvious motive to exaggerate the conditions at Gitmo, the AP piece is based on a classified manuscript from within the Pentagon.

A draft manuscript obtained by The Associated Press is classified as secret pending a Pentagon review for a planned book that details ways the US military used women as part of tougher physical and psychological interrogation tactics to get terror suspects to talk.

It's the most revealing account so far of interrogations at the secretive detention camp, where officials say they have halted some controversial techniques.

"I have really struggled with this because the detainees, their families and much of the world will think this is a religious war based on some of the techniques used, even though it is not the case," the author, former Army Sergeant Erik R Saar, 29, told AP. (Via Sydney Morning Herald)

With all due respect to Sergeant Saar, this very much has become a religious war. A Muslim interrogator wouldn't have used techniques like those for stunningly obvious reasons. Saar can protest all he wants. But, at the end of the day the facts speak louder than his protests.

What we have here is phony Muslim terrorists one the one hand and phony Christian Americans on the other hand. Phony because both are blatantly violating some of the most basic and fundamental precepts of their respective professed religions.

And let's not forget the central role which Armageddon taking place in Israel plays in the theology of President Bush's most ardent core supporters.

Four more years of this?

Ugh.

Posted by Kevin at 08:46 PM |

Jihad meeting at Kev's house. BYOB

The FBI says Oregon is home to "jihadists" who trained in terrorist camps in Afghanistan.

No "imminent threat", they say.

Our terror alert color remains it's lovely shade of sunshine yellow. The feds are taking our FBI agents and reassigning them to torture duty at Gitmo.

Not to mention that Oregon is a blue state...so you can forget Bush tossing a bone this way. If he's willing to screw blue DC out of $11.9 million for his Inauguration even though they were hit on 9/11, Oregon doesn't have a prayer.

Posted by Carla at 07:59 PM |

Third time is a charm

Found at this Kos diary:

Third Columnist Caught With Hand in Bush Till

One day after President Bush ordered his Cabinet secretaries to stop hiring commentators to help promote administration initiatives, and one day after the second high-profile conservative pundit was found to be on the federal payroll, a third embarrassing hire has emerged. Salon has confirmed that Michael McManus, a marriage advocate whose syndicated column, "Ethics & Religion," appears in 50 newspapers, was hired as a subcontractor by the Department of Health and Human Services to foster a Bush-approved marriage initiative. McManus championed the plan in his columns without disclosing to readers he was being paid to help it succeed.

The accountability President has so far not bothered to promote to a higher pay grade any of his staff involved in these incidences.

Medals of Honor and newer, shinier, cushier jobs are most certainly on the way, however.

Posted by Carla at 07:35 PM |

Gonzales' Legacy

Warning: Graphic content

As Carla noted yesterday, "Gonzales has asserted to the Senate Judiciary Committee that there is a legal rationale for the use of "cruel, inhuman or degrading" tactics for nonUS citizens captured abroad."

"Gonzales is also the culprit who was sent this memo by then Assistant AG Jay S Bybee (who now serves on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and who noteably had this memo kept from his own confirmation). The memo was used by the Bush team as a guide for actions with prisoners."

How has this allegedly Christian-led administration used this advice to further our national security?

Australian Mamdouh Habib is scheduled to be released without charge from Gitmo and returned to Australia after being imprisoned for more than three years. Notably, Australian officials have declined to charge him with anything or even detain him upon his return.

Mr Habib's lawyer has released some incredibly disgusting details of techniques used by Americans at Gitmo to get information out of him.

Mr Hopper said yesterday: "The Americans used prostitutes as tools in their interrogations. They'd say to detainees 'If you co-operate with us, we'll let you at this woman for the night'. And if they wouldn't agree they'd use them in other ways."

He said detainees held at the base with Mr Habib reported that a prostitute was told to stand over him and menstruate on him.

This is our government! In the eyes of the world and these detainees, this is being done on our behalf.

What would Jesus do???

Mr Hopper said officials at the base also defaced photos of Mr Habib's wife, Maha, and their four children.

"The Americans in their wisdom have taken the heads off the pictures, enlarged them and superimposed them with the heads of animals and then strung them up all over the walls of the interrogation room," he said.

"As they sat there talking to Mamdouh asking him about his terrorist activities, they held up a picture of Maha and said, 'It's a shame we had to kill your family, it's a shame you will never see these people again'."

Try to put yourself in Mr. Habib's shoes for a minute. There's not a shred of evidence that you've participated in terrorism or with terrorists. You've been imprisoned and abused in the most vile, disgusting ways. Now you've been released without charge.

What would you wish upon the people who did this to you?

What would you wish upon the nation on whose behalf these things were done to you?

Better yet, without mentioning anything about this case or the circumstances involved, go find the most religious conservative person you can find and ask them what they'd think of a person who approved having a prostitute menstruate on another human being. Ask your mother or your grandmother what she'd think of it.

This is the legacy of the same Mr. Gonzales that President Bush wants to be the Attorney General of these United State. This is the guy who, if confirmed, will be responsible for protecting your civil rights.

Are you comfortable with that? I'm not!

PS What kind of a mind thinks up these kinds of techniques? What kind of person would think that it was okay under any circumstances to tie someone up and have a woman menstruate on them?

It's sick!

Posted by Kevin at 10:56 AM |

January 26, 2005

Ethics schmethics

First there was Armstrong Williams.

And as David Corn warned...there's more:

In 2002, syndicated columnist Maggie Gallagher repeatedly defended President Bush's push for a $300 million initiative encouraging marriage as a way of strengthening families.

"The Bush marriage initiative would emphasize the importance of marriage to poor couples" and "educate teens on the value of delaying childbearing until marriage," she wrote in National Review Online, for example, adding that this could "carry big payoffs down the road for taxpayers and children."

But Gallagher failed to mention that she had a $21,500 contract with the Department of Health and Human Services to help promote the president's proposal. Her work under the contract, which ran from January through October 2002, included drafting a magazine article for the HHS official overseeing the initiative, writing brochures for the program and conducting a briefing for department officials.

And why didn't she disclose this contract?

"I should have disclosed a government contract when I later wrote about the Bush marriage initiative. I would have, if I had remembered it. My apologies to my readers."

I don't accept "I forgot" from my kids when they "forget" to do their chores. What a lame excuse for a violation of the public trust and journalistic ethics.

And while we're on journalistic ethics, Media Matters takes Talon News to task for being an arm of the Republican Party, as opposed to a news service.

Posted by Carla at 04:50 PM |

Just say no

Today's easy confirmation of former National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice comes after some scrutiny from some Democrats who seem to have found that their spine does indeed exist.

Rice's confirmation hearings and vote have set the stage for Alberto Gonzales, Bush's nominee for Attorney General. Gonzales' nomination was approved today by the Senate Judiciary Committee with a 10-8 vote along party lines.

From my perspective, no citizen of good conscience can support the nomination of Alberto Gonzales.

Gonzales has asserted to the Senate Judiciary Committee that there is a legal rationale for the use of "cruel, inhuman or degrading" tactics for nonUS citizens captured abroad.

Gonzales is also the culprit who was sent this memo by then Assistant AG Jay S Bybee (who now serves on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and who noteably had this memo kept from his own confirmation). The memo was used by the Bush team as a guide for actions with prisoners. Gonzales tried to distance the White House from the memo. During the confirmation hearings, he tried to flip flop on his stance, at first essentially embracing the memo and then later repudiating it.

Gonzales may also have helped Bush keep his DUI quiet when Bush was Governor of Texas, in order to duck jury duty. Gonzales denies helping Bush on this matter, but judge and other lawyers in the case dispute Gonzales' statement.

This week, I will be contacting both of my senators to encourage a no vote on the Gonzales confirmation. There is much too much troubling information on this gentleman to allow him to be Attorney General of the United States.

Posted by Carla at 02:37 PM |

50 Most Loathsome People in America

An equal opportunity rant on 50 individuals who probably deserve scorn including George W Bush, John Kerry, Britney Spears,John McCain and an assembly of some truely deserving comedians.

Courtesy of Buffalo Beast.

Posted by Carla at 02:12 PM |

Detailed analysis wanted

A Political Question is an intriguing temporary blog set up to deal with a specific issue - the upcoming elections in Iraq.

Tim sets up his hypothesis and then asks some questions. Three posts in all and intended to be read top to bottom.

Go tell him what you think.

Posted by Kevin at 09:01 AM |

January 25, 2005

Analyze this

The other day, Stefan Sharkansky at Sound Politics posted the self titled "definitive analysis" of King County's votes vs voters issue. For those out of the loop, there are more votes than credited voters. The discrepancy at last published count was about 1800.

I am unaware of the process being used by King County to sort out the discrepancy. But it would seem to me that there are four basic things one would need to know:

1. All duly registered voters as of November 2.
2. The assigned precinct for each registered voter.
3. Which voters actually cast ballots.
4. To which precinct the cast ballot was credited.

Unless you're Stefan...who somehow thinks that if he justs comes up with all the registered voters and how many votes were cast in the precincts..he's got the analysis pegged.

A commenter on the blog (Scottd), pointed out the problem:

Impressive analysis, but the bottom line is you don't have the one set of data you need to defend your conclusions. You don't have a complete list of voters who were credited with voting in Nov. 2004 along with the precincts where their credit was assigned.

You've done impressive work attempting to reconstruct this list using data from publicly released voter lists and other sources. And, you acknowledge some possible sources of error in your list, but you don't do much to quantify that error. Even if your list is 99.5% accurate, it would still contain nearly 4500 errors -- and it's quite possible that your error rate is higher than that. Here are three possible error sources you need to consider:

1. While you picked up voters from the Dec. 29 file who were dropped in the Jan. 7 version, I don't see any attempt to pick up voters who were registered on Nov. 2 and dropped before Dec. 29. I estimate that KingCo dropped nearly 60,000 voters from its rolls over the last year. (They added approximately 110K new voters, yet, their total voter registration only increased by 52K.) That works out to an average of nearly 5000 voters per month. From Nov. 2 to Dec. 29, it's possible that nearly 10000 eligible voters were deleted from KingCo's records. I don't know how many of them voted in the election, but neither do you. However, this one source of error is potentially as large (or larger) than the number of mismatched voter/ballots you report.

2. Your assumption that precinct assignments in the Nov. 2 file are correct is suspect. It's quite possible that some of these assignments were in error and corrected in later lists. In fact, this is practically a certainty, since one of the reasons we have provisional ballots is to deal with errors in precinct assignments.

3. Your attempt to allocate provisional, absentee, and poll ballots in the final recount is pure guesswork, as you admitted in your post:

I used the counts of each type of ballot per precinct from the machine recount, but the precinct total from the manual recount, realizing that the totals would still be off by 1 or 2 in some precincts.

Uncertainties of +/- 1 or 2 voters in some precincts could easily add up to total errors in the hundreds when you consider than KingCo has over 2600 precincts.

To borrow a phrase, it would seem that the margin of error in your analysis is at least as large as your conclusions.

Congratulations to scottd, who had his final post expunged and is probably now banned. LOL

For those of you looking for a "definitive analysis" on the Washington Gubernatorial Election and it's various foibles, I doubt you'll find it from the fingers of Mr. Sharkansky. This is not the first time his "analysis" on these matters has been less than shaky.

The only way I can see to truely analyze this issue properly is to have the four pieces of information that I outlined above. I can't rightly see how that can be done without the precinct sign in sheets (voters in Washington sign into the voter roll sheet at a table in their polling place) that outline who actually voted and which precinct they're in. And then there has to be a way to figure out which precincts each ballots were credited to.

I've picked up a partner in this endeavor in the form of Torrid Joe of Also Also blog. This sort of analysis isn't my strength, so I'm hoping Joe can hand hold me through it. LOL

Joe is in the process of making some contacts and gathering up the needed information. We'll keep you posted as to how we do.

Posted by Carla at 06:51 PM |

Wrangling the legal doggies

Today's Seattle Post Intelligencer lays out what I think is the main legal hurdle for the Rossi camp:

The heart of the Republicans' challenge so far is their contention that election workers in several counties fed 437 provisional ballots directly into vote-tabulating machines on election day without determining whether the voters were registered.

Provisional ballots are given to voters whose names don't show up on the registration rolls -- often because they recently moved from another precinct and sometimes because they're not registered voters. Election workers are supposed to set those ballots aside and verify them before adding them to the count. Provisional ballots look exactly like regular ballots, so once they're counted there's no way to go back and separate them out again.

Republicans say this allegation alone should be enough to nullify the election.

"That's more than three times the difference between the two candidates," GOP attorney Robert Maguire told Bridges at last Thursday's preliminary court hearing.

Democrats responded that even if 437 unverified provisional ballots were counted, that's not enough to nullify the election results.

"We know who won this election. It has been certified. There is a governor," said Jenny Durkan, attorney for the state Democratic Party.

Both sides point to a 72-word provision in state law addressing illegal votes. It says that an election may be nullified only if the number of illegal votes counted was enough to change the winner.

Republicans will argue that the 437 provisional ballots could change the results -- and even though there's no way to go back and find out who the votes were for, that's enough "illegal votes" to meet the constitutional requirement.

But Democrats say their foes must prove the illegal votes would actually change the results. If Republicans want a new election, Democrats say, they must prove that Rossi would be the winner if the illegal votes were taken out of the total. And in court last week Democratic attorneys indicated they're ready, if necessary, to scour the state looking for illegal Rossi votes to offset any illegal Gregoire votes.

Further, it's my understanding that the illegal votes rule won't be met unless illegal votes for both sides are presented. The list of felons who apparently voted will have to be scoured and sworn affadavits will have to be taken with folks swearing as to whom they voted for.

The backlash against Rossi on this has to be bubbling under the surface. Taxpayer dollars are being burned on an unwinnable case for what appears to be nothing more than base political purposes.

It's looking more and more like Rossi and the Washington GOP are doing nothing more than stomping on sour grapes.

Posted by Carla at 10:50 AM |

January 24, 2005

In the business of getting it correct.....

I began investigating the Washington Gubernatorial Election due to allegations being tossed around by Sound Politics blog. This one specifically raised a red flag for me:

With high praise to reader Joe O'Donnell for uncovering the answer.

He discovered that Bulk Permit #1455, the permit that is used for mailing absentee ballots, only had activity on October 2nd (1,605 pieces) and October 13th (28,000 pieces)... with no activity between those dates!

As it turns out, Joe O'Donnell had it all wrong. The ballots were mailed on time and that particular Bulk Permit wasn't the one used for the mailings.

Still, that story has really bugged me. Does the post office just give that information to anyone who asks?

In short, yes. But there's a hitch.

Last week I spoke with Jannine Young, who is the Retail Manager for the Seattle District of the United States Postal Service. Ms. Young informed me that information on Bulk Mail permits is public. But that information must be obtained via a Freedom Of Information Act Request. That Request must be submitted in writing with a very specific list of criteria.

Did Mr. O'Donnell do an FOIA request to get his information? I don't know. But it does seem very odd that he was able to get information like that so quickly to Sound Politics. At the very least, Sound Politics didn't fact check him and didn't follow through with the Post Office.

It's a lot more difficult to do the sort of fact checking required to get a story correct. But then if you're not in the business of getting stories correct...

Update:Torrid Joe at AlsoAlso has this piece up today debunking GOP claims that it's somehow King County's fault that some felons may have voted in the election.

Again...it's about getting it correct.

Posted by Carla at 08:19 AM |

WA Governor race:The mystery of Rossi's list grows deeper

In a post last week, I mentioned I spoke with Chris Hanzeli. Hanzeli is assistant to Mary Lane, who is the spokesperson for failed Washington Gubernatorial Candidate Dino Rossi.

Most of my conversation with Hanzeli had to do with a list of 260 complaints from military/overseas voters who said they didn't receive their absentee ballots. Hanzeli didn't know where the whole list was, but he was in charge of "60-65" complaints from that list. Hanzelli told me specifically about "3-4" people from the 81st Striker Brigade serving in Iraq who were the only ones in their group not to get their state's absentee ballot.

This morning I spoke again with Lt. Col. Steve Boylan of the Coalition Press Information Center in Baghdad. Lt. Col Boyland had never heard of the 81st Striker Brigade and to his knowledge, no such animal exists.

It's possible that Hanzelli meant the 81st Infantry Brigade. But what's odd is that he was alledgedly reading to me over the phone from his list. How exactly is Hanzelli supposed to assist these people when he doesn't know the correct name of their unit? Or was he really reading to me from a list at all?

I'm becoming more and more skeptical of the existence of this mystery list all the time.

Posted by Carla at 08:01 AM |

January 23, 2005

Johnny Carson, RIP

(AP Photo/NBC, Chris Haston)

Johnny Carson, the undisputed and unequaled master of late-night television died Sunday at the age of 79.

Bette Midler summed the man up perfectly: "I was his last guest, and it was one of the most moving experiences of my life. He had it all. A little bit of devil, a whole lot of angel, wit, charm, good looks, superb timing and great, great class."

Rest in peace, Johnny.

Posted by Kevin at 10:20 PM |

To blog or not to blog....

...that is the question.

So just how noble is it?

Who can argue with Dan Gillmor’s call for a grassroots journalism, a peer-to-peer alternative to the radically deregulated, massively consolidated Murdochian horror that currently passes for the newsmedia? But it sure as hell isn’t going to come from political-pundit and media-wonk bloggers, who with some notable exceptions represent More of The Same: the same gel-headed, glittery eyed weasels who make a career out of torching straw men on Scarborough Country and Sean Hannity; the same attacking heads who reduce each other to chum in what passes for debate on Firing Line; the same corporate flacks, thinktank drones, and bowtie-and-braces neocons who represent the full spectrum of political opinion (from zero-forehead centrism to the far, frothing right) on the PBS Newshour; and worst of all, the same Barcalounger-bound Masters of the Universe who feel well qualified to hold forth on any subject, no matter how arcane. Too much blogging—at least, the blogwonkery embraced by the mainstream media—looks too much like the jowly, sclerotic old white guys in tortoiseshell glasses or the lunging, in-your-face young white guys who already rule the mediaverse. Is this the bottom-up, many-to-many revolution we were promised? Another dictatorship of the commentariat? Another grotesque hypertrophy of the chattering class? None for me, thanks. You can stack your Instapundits like cordword and they still won’t have the empirical authority or moral gravitas, not to mention the hard-swinging old-school literary chops, of one blogger reporter like Chris Allbritton. (Okay, he’s white and he’s a guy, but at least he’s a young white guy, and he’s risking his life to bring back some truth about our imperial adventure in Iraq. Besides, he’s got one of those cool neo-beatVan Dyke things.)

Damn. I wish I wrote like that. I've got a lot more to learn.

This sort of navel gazing is interesting in light of the current discussion about journalistic and blogger ethics.

Personally, I think trying to enforce a set of standards on bloggers would be tantamount to herding cats. I was born anti-authoritarian. I plan to go to my grave that way. I don't see myself signing on to some ethical pledge.

I choose to be ethical because I believe it's the right thing to do. I choose to research and write about topics that interest me or that I think are important. I have no intention to signing on to someone else's standards.

I have a feeling a lot of other bloggers feel the same way.

Posted by Carla at 11:15 AM |

January 22, 2005

The naughty "Coalition of the Willing"

In comments following this post of mine, Nathan chastizes me for not understanding that we must treat Iran, Syria, North Korea and other nations as "naughty children" because that is how they act:

The governments in question--Iran, Syria, North Korea—routinely indulge in unmeasured, unreasoned violence, and issue press releases that read like deranged temper tantrums. Their behavior differs from that of naughty children only inasmuch as naughty children generally have fewer guns and less innocent blood on their hands. Why should they not be treated accordingly?

Except we don't treat all the "naughty children" accordingly. We hypocritically pick and choose...as Norbizness so effectively demonstrates:

And then there's reality in.. let's say.. the Coalition of the Willing members:

Angola: In the past year, the Angolan army has subjected civilians to extrajudicial executions, arbitrary arrests and detention, torture and other mistreatment, as well as sexual violence. The Angolan army also denies civilians their freedom of movement.

Azerbaijan: The 61-page report, “Crushing Dissent: Repression, Violence and Azerbaijan’s Elections,” documents hundreds of arbitrary arrests, widespread beatings and torture, and politically motivated job dismissals of members and supporters of the opposition following the October 15 presidential election, which was widely condemned by the international community as fraudulent.

Colombia: Human Rights Watch continues to document links between units of the Colombian armed forces and paramilitary groups who have committed atrocities. Some government commanders promote, encourage, and protect paramilitaries, share intelligence, coordinate military operations, and even share fighters with paramilitary groups.

Eritrea: No private newspapers or magazines have been allowed to publish in Eritrea since September 2001. The government controls all access to information in the country, radio, television, and print. A recent survey by the non-governmental organization Reporters Without Borders classified Eritrea as 132nd in its index of press freedom of the 139 countries surveyed, below even Iraq. During the past year, the government implemented severe restrictions on the right to freedom of religion.

Ethiopia: The officers tied my hands and my ankles together with rope. They threw me down into the sand, and at night they torched me with electricity. When they beat me, they did it with a stick. They pushed my head into a bucket of water so I could not breathe, and I was so weak I couldn’t resist, and my hands were tied together. The hardest thing for me is that those people knew my feelings, they were also Ethiopians. They knew what they were doing to me... They tortured me like that for three days.

Uganda: The 76-page report, “State of Pain: Torture in Uganda,” documents cases of torture committed by military, intelligence, and security agents in the government’s pursuit of armed rebels. However, politicians challenging the de facto single-party state and the 18-year rule of Uganda’s president, Yoweri Museveni, are often detained, severely beaten and threatened with death by the uncontrolled security apparatus.

Uzbekistan: Eyewitnesses said that during the past two weeks police have physically abused independent Muslim men in detention to coerce confessions. Officers beat men, hit them on the ears and genitals, burned them with lit paper and cigarettes, stuck metal pins under their fingernails, and anally raped male detainees with bottles and other objects. One man was stripped naked and beaten “until pulpy.”

These are our allies to "win the hearts and minds" of Iraqis who we are attempting to "liberate" (now that the WMD didn't quite pan out).

So not only are we inconsistent with whom we decide to treat as children and whom we'll buddy up to, some of them even copy our torture (or nontorture if it's up to Gonzales) techniques.

Bizarre how it's okay with Bush apologists to be friends with these people as long as they help us with the "liberation".

Jeez.

Posted by Carla at 03:38 PM |

January 21, 2005

Learn, dammit...please!

Callimachus takes issue with my post earlier today that the US military is overburdened already and is unable to take on another big fight:

But I do have to wonder how this stretched-to-the-breaking-point U.S. military managed to be in Sumatra firstest with the mostest in a matter of days after the tsunami, on top of everything else, while the U.N. was still trying to find a pair of matching socks and the FAX number for a five-star hotel in Singapore.

Ahhh...the right wing spin machine at it's finest. The UN was on the ground and delivering aid to tsunami victims immediately. And while they were doing that...Bush was on his umpteenth vacation in Crawford. But how dare we criticize Bush when the UN is a much more tempting (if not factual) target? And while it might be part of an interesting fantasy life to say that because we can send some military to help out with tsunami survivors so therefore we can start up military action with Iran, it's not especially realistic.

But I digress.

Callimachus however, continues:

And I wonder how it's possible that a United States with a far smaller base population than today could have fielded armed forces that conquered the fascist empires of the 1940s, or stared down the Soviet Union in the 1980s.

Let me help you wipe away the wonder. During World War II, the United States instituted a draft and fought in concert with the Allies in defeating the Nazis. The citizens of the US also sacrificed heavily, rationing fuel and various other resources. Further, I can't think of a World War II historian who believes that we could have won WWII without the significant manpower and contributions of the Russians. The burden of resources was distributed throughout the Allies. What we're doing in Iraq right now is essentially the antithesis of that.

Then there's the "stare down" of the Soviet Union. Our armed forces didn't stare down a thing during the 1980s. The Soviets were brought down by a number of things, most noteably a ridiculous foray into Afghanistan, a pre-1980s crumbling infrastructure and an inability to spend money on their military at the pace of the US. There was no fighting involved and no military standoff. It's a silly strawman argument.

The rest of the piece is a long, slow, desperate spiral of denial:

But when you add it up, yes in fact Saddam was a genocidal tyrant. Yes, in fact, he did try to get yellowcake from Niger. Yes, in fact he did covet a WMD arsenal. Yes, the sanctions and inspections were keeping him from it, but that system was well on the way to breaking down, largely because he had discovered a way to subvert it.

But when you add it up with actual reality, the score isn't quite what Callimachus would like it to be:

Saddam was a bad guy. But Congress didn't give Bush authority to invade Iraq because he was a tyrant. The world is overflowing with tyrants and some of them we even support. We sure didn't mind the tyrant Saddam when he was our good buddy during the Reagan and early Bush 41 era.
And while Bush vigorously defended the Niger/yellowcake incident, the documents they used to verify it were forgeries. We also didn't invade based on "coveting". We invaded because Bush and his people told us that Hussein was an imminent, immediate threat to the shores of the United States.

Ironically, Callimachus agrees with me that our intelligence was bad and hopes Iran and North Korea are watching:

But actually, that fact, in this context, doesn't make me uncomfortable at all. I hope they're paying attention to our public disclosures about our intelligence in response to the Iraq war.

For one, real democracies have transparent institutions, and while I'm sure the mullahs are giggling like schoolgirls over the Congressional hearings, they may notice that their restless population has upped its respect for America a notch and longs for such transparency in Teheran.

No doubt that many in Tehran wish for a more transparent and accountable government. But they won't be looking at ours as a model. We brought the Bush Administration kicking and screaming to the table of the 9/11 Commission and other hearings on intelligence failures on Iraq. And who in the leadership was held accountable to the failings? Tenant..he of the Medal of Freedom? Rumsfeld? Rice? Wolfowitz? Perle?

For another, the leaders of Iran also now know this U.S. administration is willing to act, rather than wait for the perfect intelligence that never comes, or comes too late to be any good.

The leaders of Iran know that this US administration is careless and reckless. They also know that our military is stretched and overextended. They know that our troops have been ill equipped and understaffed. And while it's fun to opine about the good ol days of World War II, what's going on now is nothing like that.

And then of course, the requisite personal insult:

She conflates a tough negotiating position, and a tough frame of mind, with being a thoughtless physical bully. As a parent, I have to be tough and firm in my positions. That doesn't ever require me to raise a hand and do the slightest physical violence. People who can't differentiate the two probably shouldn't be parents. They certainly shouldn't dabble in world affairs.

There's no conflating here whatsoever. "Thoughtless" is exactly the appropriate word for many of Bush's foreign policy decisions to date. "Bully" is even more on the money. These other nations aren't our metaphorical children to be handled with a spanking or a time out. People who believe that these nations must be dealt with like so many naughty children to be shown the error of their ways might want to reconsider being done with mirrors.

Finally...the rhetorical question of "what is Carla's proposal"?

I propose that we first determine carefully and thoughtfully if a problem truely does exist. Yes..I know that isn't as sexy and fun as the Dirty Harry metaphors so easily quipped off of the fingers. But it's the first and best beginning step.

And instead of bombing and invading, we let the IAEA actually do their job, like they were doing in Iraq. And yes, they were getting unfettered access to every site they wanted to see. Had they been allowed to finish, the bloodshed we've seen over the last two years could have been avoided.

When I made the statement, "Learn, Dammit!", I mean we must learn from the mistakes of Iraq. But first there has to be recognition of those mistakes and the problems that have stemmed from them. A willingness to be intellectually honest doesn't hurt, either.

Posted by Carla at 08:54 PM |

When you lose Peggy Noonan....

....do you lose America?

The inaugural address itself was startling. It left me with a bad feeling, and reluctant dislike. Rhetorically, it veered from high-class boilerplate to strong and simple sentences, but it was not pedestrian. George W. Bush's second inaugural will no doubt prove historic because it carried a punch, asserting an agenda so sweeping that an observer quipped that by the end he would not have been surprised if the president had announced we were going to colonize Mars.

There's plenty for liberals like me to dislike about the speech. It was more saber rattling rhetoric from a man I consider inept at the job people keep giving him a chance to screw up further. But Peggy Noonan?

Posted by Carla at 02:27 PM |

Learn, dammit!

Callimachus refuses to learn from history:

A two-pronged approach to Iran could be effective, if the U.S. and Europe can cooperate long enough to work it. But the Anglo-Franco-German diplomatic approach will work only because there's a serious U.S. threat lurking on the other side of the room. Otherwise, it's all carrot and no stick.

I don't relish my nation in the bad cop role. But I do like the idea that the rulers of Syria and Iran, and the Glorious Leader of North Korea, awake in a cold sweat at midnight, with nightmares of the U.S. military.

Wake up and smell the coffee,Callimachus. The US military is overstretched, overburdened and barely treading water when it comes to dealing with Afghanistan and Iraq.

Not to mention the fact that we can't trust our intelligence community and the Executive Branch braintrust to get it right and not be completely wreckless. Or did you miss the fact that pretty much all of Bush's entire premise for invading Iraq has fallen apart like a cheap house of cards?

If you don't think the guys in charge of Syria, Iran and North Korea aren't paying attention to that uncomfortable fact, let me disabuse you of your illusions right now. While it may be gratifying to some base need to be a tough guy...more arrogant posturing and ass-kicking style tactics will get us nowhere. Why? The notion that we're there to back up our words with tough action....Bush and what army?

And then there's the intelligence aspect. How can the American citizenry be sure that Bush, the CIA and other intelligence agencies haven't screwed up another country's information? We can't. The bottom line is...we can't trust these guys to get it right. Until they can prove to us that they've managed to sort out their problems and reformed to the point where they are once again effective, there's no reason to believe they know what they're talking about.

The rest of the talk about Europe and Israel is useless and meaningless. This is about the US and what we can do and what we can't. And right now...we can't trust Bush and we can't trust the intelligence agencies to get it right.

Posted by Carla at 01:55 PM |

January 20, 2005

Frozen in Hell

DC was looking like an icebox today, hence the subject heading.

Interesting Inaugural speech, too. Especially this part:

This is not primarily the task of arms, though we will defend ourselves and our friends by force of arms when necessary. Freedom, by its nature, must be chosen, and defended by citizens, and sustained by the rule of law and the protection of minorities. And when the soul of a nation finally speaks, the institutions that arise may reflect customs and traditions very different from our own. America will not impose our own style of government on the unwilling. Our goal instead is to help others find their own voice, attain their own freedom, and make their own way.

Ironically it would seem noone has bothered to inform W of the many innocent Iraqi civilian voices his actions have silenced. They won't be making their own way or attaining freedom. It's an odd notion...the idea that killing all of these innocents is the price to pay to "attain their own freedom". Or perhaps that really isn't something that Bush has bothered to think about. I can't decide which is worse.

When you click on the article, notice who's quoted. It's Lt. Col Steve Boylan. Remember him? I'm reasonably certain that's the same guy.

Posted by Carla at 04:45 PM |

Better listen to the Doc

:::steps up on soapbox:::

Maybe I'm wrong about this. But, it seems to me that 9/11 did fundamentally change some very fundamental political dynamics... at least for the short-term. And I think that Bush's choices over the last 3 years have been calculated to reinforce that altered dynamic in a way that would be politically advantageous to him and to the Republicans. And that the Dems, as a group, have largely misunderstood the changed dynamic. Particularly in terms of how they ought to adjust to it so as to minimize any political disadvantage it might bring them.

Today's The Hill has an article about Dem jockeying for the open DNC Chair position within the context of abortion rights.

It seems that Nancy Keenan, incoming president of NARAL doesn't want the openly anti-abortion Former Rep. Tim Roemer (D-Ind.). And some of the contenders for the throne are concerned that Howard Dean might be cruising to victory while they are distracted over whether or not the DNC should be Chaired by Roemer because of his position on abortion.

First of all, I don't see why Roemer's position on abortion should somehow disqualify him from any position within the Democratic Party. I'm not saying that Dems are trying to prevent him from even running. I'm just making the observation that it'd be politically stupid to apply too strict a litmus test to who can or can't apply.

Secondly, given the continued support that abortion rights enjoy with a majority of Americans, it seems incredibly short-sighted for the Dems to get overly spun up over calls for them to ditch abortion rights plank. An elementary grasp of mathematics ought to make that contrived controversy a non-starter. Whether abortion is right, wrong or indifferent, on whatever scale one wishes to apply, the fact remains that it enjoys popular support. And in the realm of politics it's often suicidal to buck popular sentiments.

But that's just one example with which to set up my larger ponderance here.

Tuesday's Christian Science Monitor had a fascinating article on how Ohiowans are getting on with their lives in the wake of a deeply divisive political election that sometimes left family members barely speaking to each other.

Even though it wasn't really a major theme of the article, what struck me about the CSM piece was how apparently more than a few voters chose Bush despite disagreeing with him, sometimes very strongly so, on any number issues.

I think it's a basic tenet of the human condition that in times of crisis and uncertainty (real or contrived) we look for strong leadership, often at the expense of what our common sense might tell us is the wiser path on specific issues. And I think the CSM piece reinforces that hypothesis rather strongly.

Where I think that a lot of Dems have failed themselves is in the notion that they might somehow improve their lot politically by distancing themselves from traditional Democratic positions and moving closer to positions that the Republicans have staked out.

While it's unquestionable that Bush's core support is based largely on his positions on the issues, he didn't win on the issues. He won on the perception that he is a strong leader!

In times of crisis and uncertainty, people gravitate towards strong leaders. If I'm right about that then it goes without saying that the path to political strength for the Dems is via strong leadership rather than by fiddling with wonkish issue planks.

Howard Dean appears to be surging ahead in the race for DNC Chair for the same reason that he surged ahead in the run-up to the Dem primaries last year - strong leadership qualities. It was only after Dems started second guessing themselves, with a LOT of help from Karl Rove & Co., that Kerry surged ahead to win the nomination last spring. And while Kerry certainly gave a strong showing in the finale this past November, nationally the Dems took more lumps on the chin. It was only at the grassroots level that Dems retook some ground from the Republicans. And who made a very concerted effort to contest every election at every level and not give an inch? One Dr. Howard Dean.

There's certainly a place for wonkish policy debates in the current political climate. But, Dems would be very smart to understand that those issues won't win or lose much of anything in and of themselves.

:::steps down from soapbox:::

Posted by Kevin at 02:05 PM |

WA Gov: Judge offers mixed rulings

Chelan County Superior Court Judge John E. Bridges handed down a mixed rulings today on the Gubernatorial Election contest sought by Washington State Republicans.

Bridges denied the motion to stay the proceedings but also denied Republican motions to expedite.

Bridges also stayed a motion by the Democrats and the various counties to dismiss the case outright. That motion will be heard on February 4.

I did attempt to audio stream the hearings today, but had a lot of trouble getting the audio to come across clearly. There was a lot of feedback and background noise. Much of it was unintelligible. I did manage to hear (partially) the part of the hearing in which various county officials came forward to complain of the extraordinary burden put upon them by the Republican requests for discovery, especially the expedited dates.

It looks like the next court date to watch is February 4, when the motion to dismiss is heard.

Apparently, Rossi spokesperson Mary Lane will be the guest speaker on Monday for the dinner meeting of the Seattle Downtown Republican Club. Perhaps those in attendance might ask her about the mystery list of 260 complaints that noone else seems to be able to verify.

Posted by Carla at 12:02 PM |

January 19, 2005

Revving up the Mystery Machine

One of the more mysterious allegations coming out from Dino Rossi's camp in regard to the Washington State Gubernatorial Election is their alledged list of 260 military/overseas voters who've complained to Rossi's office about not getting their absentee ballot.

So far, Rossi's office has not made this list public. Whether or not this list truely exists is questionable, in my opinion.

Yesterday, I spoke with Chris Hanzeli in Rossi's office. Hanzeli is assistant to Mary Lane, Rossi's spokesperson. Hanzeli was well aware of the list in question, but was vague when I started asking specifics. Hanzeli said that he didn't know where the full list was located when I pressed for more information.

Hanzeli did say that he was personally responsible for "60-65" of the complaints that Rossi's office alledgedly received. All on that particular list were military. One on the list is Tyler Farmer, a Marine who is stationed in Iraq. Farmer says he received his Snohomish County Washington State absentee ballot on November 3 and thinking it was too late to vote, threw his ballot away.

Farmer's story appears to be at odds with what I've been hearing from the US military. Farmer's unit should have had a voter representative there to assist him with any issues surrounding absentee ballots. Farmer should have known that he still had time to get his ballot in (November 16 was the Washington State deadline) as voter reps were holding meetings to inform and assist soldiers with deadlines and paperwork.

I spoke this morning with Wendy at the Shohomish County elections office. Wendy informed me that Farmer had multiple options both through the military and Snohomish County for ballot access. When it became apparent that his ballot wasn't showing up by November 2, Farmer could have contacted Snohomish County via email or phone to have a ballot faxed or emailed to him. He also should have had access to a Federal Military ballot. Whether or not Farmer himself had internet access at the front lines is still in question. But it's evident that many do.

Wendy also informed me that Snohomish County has received zero complaints since the election from voters who couldn't get an absentee ballot. Military absentee voters had until November 16 to return their ballot. Snohomish County accepted ballots via fax and accepted Federal Military Ballots. They also had all voter pamphlet information available on their website for those who needed information about all of the state and local races/issues.

It's incumbent upon the military and the various elections offices around the country to make voting as accessible as possible for our soldiers serving overseas. But the soldiers have to take responsibility on their end as well. Certainly soldiers who are serving in combat roles probably have more important things on their mind (like staying alive, for example) than voting. But it's clear to me that Tyler Farmer had ample opportunities and access to a ballot and didn't avail himself.

Rossi and the people in his office are using the Farmer case as a "poster boy" for military voter disenfranchisement. Yet when I asked Chris Hanzeli what official offices these voters were sent to for redress for their complaints, Hanzeli told me that they just took down their names and information.

Rossi and Washington State Republicans are asking the public to believe they are indignant about these voters being disenfranchised even though the military voters had multiple opportunities and access. They want us to believe that they are fighting for the rights of our soldiers to vote, despite not having bothered to help them report their alledged voting problems to the military or county elections officials.

Perhaps next time I contact Rossi's office, I should ask to speak to the Tooth Fairy or the Easter Bunny.

Posted by Carla at 10:06 AM |

January 18, 2005

..pushing an elephant up the stairs....

I recently completed my second interview with an attorney in hopes of gaining a greater understanding of the legal (state statute) issues involved in the Dino Rossi attempts to unseat Washington Governor Christine Gregiore.

As I understand it, here's the basics:

There are five legal reasons that an election in Washington State can be contested (RCW 29A.68.020):

1. For misconduct on the part of any member of any precinct election board involved therin.
The key word here is "misconduct". Misconduct generally means an affirmative action to do something wrong. In other words there has to be intent to wrong.

2.Because the person whose right is being contested was not at the time the person was declared elected eligible to that office.
The person contested in this case is Gregiore. This means the election can be contested if she was ineligible for the office of Governor of Washington.

3. Because the person whose right is being contested was previous to the election convicted of a felony by a court of competent jurisdiction, the conviction not having been reversed nor the person's civil rights restored after the election.
Or in layman's terms..a convicted felon who hasn't had their civil rights restored after serving their time.

4. Because the person whose right is being contested gave a bribe or reward to a voter or to an inspector or judge of election for the purpose of procuring the election, or offered to do so.
Or bribery to a voter or election officer.

5. On account of illegal votes.

I'm reasonably certain that #2 and #3 can be rejected on their face.

#1 involves misconduct on the part of election officials. As I understand it, Rossi must prove that election officials deliberately mishandled the election in some way.

#4 involves bribery. Rossi will have to prove that Gregiore was bribing voters or election inspector/judge(s) for the expressed purpose of tipping the election to herself. At first I thought this might be an absurd issue. But apparently it isn't. The Republicans probably have private investigators combing through every event, fundraiser and meeting Gregiore was involved in to see if anything exchanged hands. I'm told that even three cent election pins could be brought as cause but probably dismissed as unreasonable by the judge. My guess is that there would have to be a pretty high threshold for this one to be met.

#5 involves illegal votes. There are specific criteria within Washington State law for a vote to be considered illegal. If Rossi can prove that some people voted illegally, he's likely out of luck, however.

If illegal votes are involved, several other statutes come into play.

First is RCW 29A.68.110:

No election may be set aside on account of illegal votes, unless it appears that an amount of illegal votes has been given to the person whose right is being contested, that, if taken from that person, would reduce the number of the person's legal votes below the number of votes given to some other person for the same office, after deducting therefrom the illegal votes that may be shown to have been given to the other person.

As I've had this explained to me (twice), it's not sufficient for Rossi to just find 130 illegal votes. He has to find 130 illegal votes that went to Gregiore. And for this statute to be met, Rossi must present all illegal votes that went to him as well as the ones that went to Gregiore. Once those votes are subtracted from both sides, whoever has the most votes would prevail.

However, there's another "hitch in the giddy-up" under the "Illegal Votes" heading:

Illegal votes do not include votes cast by improperly registered voters who were not properly challenged under RCW 29A.08.810 and 29A.08.820.

29A.68.820 is procedural. It uphill battle lies with 29A.08.810:

Registration of a person as a voter is presumptive evidence of his or her right to vote at any primary or election, general or special. A person's right to vote may be challenged at the polls only by a precinct judge or inspector. A challenge may be made only upon the belief or knowledge of the challenging officer that the voter is unqualified. The challenge must be supported by evidence or testimony given to the county canvassing board under RCW 29A.08.820 and may not be based on unsupported allegations or allegations by anonymous third parties. The identity of the challenger, and any third person involved in the challenge, shall be public record and shall be announced at the time the challenge is made.

Challenges initiated by a registered voter must be filed not later than the day before any primary or election, general or special, at the office of the appropriate county auditor. A challenged voter may properly transfer or reregister until three days before the primary or election, general or special, by applying personally to the county auditor. Challenges may also be initiated by the office of the county prosecuting attorney and must be filed in the same manner as challenges initiated by a registered voter.

In a nutshell, if illegal voters weren't identified three days before the election, it's too late.

So even if they find 130 illegal voters who voted for Gregiore, it doesn't matter. Those voters needed to be contested three days before the election.

Much of this is speculative, of course. The law is subject to interpretation and the judge may decide to give Rossi a sympathetic ear. But even under the most generous of situations, the Republicans are on very shaky legal ground.

There's also apparently a 1975 court case that has set some precedent in the past. But as I understand it in order for that precedent to be relevant, Rossi's people would have to prove that a sufficient number of ballots were illegally tampered with to tip the balance to Gregiore.

Again, legal issues are subject to interpretation. Your mileage may vary.

Posted by Carla at 01:33 PM |

January 17, 2005

Weapons of Mass Deception

The sloppy and dubious efforts by Sound Politics blog continues.

Despite being soundly debunked at this blog here and here as well as in The Seattle Times, they're still trying to alledge that military voters from Washington State were disenfranchised.

The first factual error on the Sound Politics post from today is in the first sentence:

Unfortunately, the question whether King County issued all of its military absentee ballots in compliance with the Oct. 7 deadline, has not yet been answered.

The deadline was not October 7. It was October 8.

And then there's this gem:

It's possible that all of King County's military ballots went out on time. I've heard credible but as yet unconfirmed reports that a significant number of the ballots did not go out by the deadline, but I need more confirmation to settle the question one way or another. So I'm going to keep asking questions. The latest Times article which only confirms that some of the military ballots went out on time does not in any way put this controversy to rest.

Were these the same "credible" sources that gave them the errant October 7 deadline? I certainly hope these "credible" sources are more reliable than the one that was used last week citing a King County bulk mail permit as evidence of late mailings...when it turned out that permit wasn't the one used at all. (I am still working on that individual's initial claim, fyi. I can find no evidence that the USPS gives out that information by simply walking up to the counter and asking...as was alledged).

The sloppiness continues (bold print added by Carla):

Let's take a close look at the facts. If we give King County the benefit of the doubt and assume that the most recent version of their "Fact Sheet Military and Overseas Ballots" is correct, we learn that:

Number of military/overseas ballots issued on that date:

On Oct.1, 246 ballots were issued
On Oct.7, 3055 (emphasis-Carla) ballots were issued

For the Oct.7 mailing, King County prioritized our mail-out to ensure military and overseas ballots were mailed as soon as they were available and within the timeframes required by state law and guidelines from the United State Department of Justice.

Total number of military/overseas ballots issued in the General Election:

15,289 ballots that were issued were designated in voter categories that would include military personnel and overseas voters (any RS, RM, Subs).

First, note that they are not making any distinction in their numbers between military ballots and overseas ballots.

Except if you keep reading...the Times does. They quite carefully explain the number of mailed out military absentee ballots. Here are the two relevant passages:

"The log of outgoing mail shows that 1,853 ballots destined for armed-forces members (emphasis-Carla) were delivered to the International Station post office in Seattle on Oct. 7."

"King County Elections Superintendent Bill Huennekens said the last of 3,055 overseas military ballots (emphasis-Carla) went into the postal system Oct. 8 — meeting the federal deadline."

1853+3055=4908. So in fact based on the Times story there are 4908 military absentee ballots mailed out on October 7 and 8.(There's that pesky October 8 deadline again).

These are very different things. "Overseas" ballots would go to non-military expatriates and are handled differently from military ballots.

What is meant by overseas expatriates ballots "handled differently"? Their bulk mailing might be slightly different. I can't see how there would be a major appreciable difference there. But in terms of returning and counting...they'd certainly be handled the same from the research I've done so far.

Indeed, we have no idea from county information how many truly military ballots are in question. The Seattle Times article does not help answer the question. All we learn is this:
The log of outgoing mail shows that 1,853 ballots destined for armed-forces members were delivered to the International Station post office in Seattle on Oct. 7.
and
After delivering the first batch of military ballots to the post office, King County election workers took the remaining ballots to a mailing contractor in Snohomish County later that day and on the morning of Oct. 8.

Let's try it again.1853+3055=4908

The county Fact Sheet shows that a total of 3,055 military/overseas ballots were issued on Oct. 7. The article says that 3,055 ballots went into the mail on Oct. 7.

The logs apparently did not show how many of these were military.

The Times quotes Huennekens as saying "3055 overseas military ballots" as going into the postal system on October 8. Not October 7. Further, we know how many of them were military. All of them. The article says so.

From the Fact Sheet we infer that there are still another 11,988 military/overseas ballots that were issued after Oct. 7. The article seems to explain 5,478 of them.

That still leaves 6,510 military/overseas ballots unaccounted for.

No, actually it doesn't.

The facts as we know them so far:

15,289 military/overseas ballots were issued in total. (source: King County fact sheet)

"Several hundred" (246?) military overseas ballots were mailed between Oct 1 and October 7.(source: King County Fact Sheet)

4908 military overseas ballots were mailed out October 7-8.(source: Seattle Times)

5478 mailed to armed forces within the United States.(source: Seattle Times)

1342 federal military ballots received on time by King County (source: King County fact sheet). The number "issued" isn't given on the fact sheet. We can safely assume it's more than what is received, but to be fair, I'll go with the 1342 number.

16 federal military ballots received too late to be counted (source: King County fact sheet)

4908+5478+1342+16+249=11,993.

15,289-11,993=3296.

It's entirely possible that 3296 could be the nonmilitary ballots sent out. We can't know for sure unless the county differentiates between the military and overseas ballots in the 15,289. But the numbers hardly seem out of line.

Once again, sloppy reporting and inaccurate fact checking are causing a stir up where one need not be.

Posted by Carla at 05:01 PM |

Give me Liberty...

So, I'm driving to work this morning and as is my habit I was listening to OPB (Oregon Public Broadcasting) radio. And one of their stories really caught my attention.

It seems that there is some concern with the increasing popularity of hybrid vehicles. Specifically because they consume less fuel. See, the tax monies that go to pay for road maintanance comes directly from Oregon's vehicle fuel tax. What with the hybrids consuming significantly less fuel, the tax revenues are forcasted to decrease and that means less money for road maintanance.

To be fair it's a valid concern. Hybrid vehicles cause as much wear and tear to the roads that non-hybrid vehicles do, yet their owners are paying less into the upkeep of those same roads.

What caught my attention was the one proposed solution for which Oregon State University received a grant to design and test for the legislature's approval or denial as a fix.

The gist of the idea is to radically change the way that road maintainance fees are assessed. Rather than tax the amount of fuel purchased, they're looking into taxing the number of miles driven as a more equitable and stable means of getting road maintainance monies.

How the OSU team has proposed to meet the criteria handed them is to use a Global Position Satellite receiver unit to track how many miles are driven.

My concern with this proposal is how easily it could be subverted to use for spying on citizens. Particularly the nearly unaccountable FISA court. Any assurances by Oregon to it's citizens that we won't be spied on are meaningless if FISA approves a plan which the state would never know about.

Bad idea!

Posted by Kevin at 01:15 PM |

January 16, 2005

Bloggers and Journalists and money...oh my!

I'm pushing this up to the top in order to update. The first paragraph in bold includes new information.

The Wall Street Journal had a piece last week eviscerating two left leaning bloggers for accepting money from the Dean Campaign. This was written after the Armstrong Williams brouhaha, presumably to show that leftists do the same thing. This piece from Raw Story makes a connection between Wall Street Journal chief editor William McGurn and a board that he serves on for George W. Bush. And who's on that board with McGurn? ArmstrongWilliams.

Question:

Is the Armstrong Williams case of taking tax payer dollars for saying nice things about No Child Left Behind and not disclosing it the same thing as Markos Moulistas (Kos of Daily Kos) taking money as a political consultant to Howard Dean (and disclosing it on his website)?

Are you kidding me?

Frankly, I could care less who takes money to offer consulting or to spout a side of an argument, as long as they're forthcoming about who is paying them and as long as it isn't taxpayer money.

Trying to link these two situations as the same thing is ridiculous, however.

Williams had a contract that was paid for by tax payer dollars. He didn't disclose it. Not only is that slimy, it's probably illegal. Further, Williams considered himself a journalist.

Moulistas consulted for Dean and was paid with Dean's campaign dollars. Moulistas fully disclosed his relationship with Dean on his website. Moulistas doesn't consider himself a journalist, either.

Having worked my ass off this week on researching the story for the Washington Goobernatorial Election (heh..I love that, Joe) I think I have a very real understanding when it comes to the difference between bloggers and journalists. Journalists actually have to WORK. It's a real job. Bloggers have the luxury of linking up to the work of journalists. That's why there's a special understanding that the work of a journalist is at a much higher level, in general.

That's not to say that bloggers don't have a responsiblity. We publish material in the public domain and if we get it wrong, it's our responsibility to correct it. What we say does matter. But it's not the same as those who do journalism as a profession...and write legitimate stories that require hours of research. Not even close.

What Williams did is slimy and underhanded. His level of responsibility to the public is at a much higher threshold than Kos...yet Kos is the one who disclosed his relationship, not Williams.

Trying to link those two situations as equivalent says a lot to me about the intellectual honesty (or more accurately, lack thereof) of the linkers than anything else.

(Update: Link added for clarification--sorry for any confusion. Carla)

(Update 2: TalkLeft has a long list of news outlets that reported the relationship between Dean and Moulistas through 2003-2004).

Posted by Carla at 05:28 PM |

Spam

FYI - In our ongoing battle against comment spammers, I've disabled all HTML in the comments as well as disabled the function which converts URL's into clickable links.

The incentive for the majority of spammers to spam blogs is to jockey for prime rankings on search engines. The way it's been explained to me is that search engines use bots to crawl the web looking for links and the more clickable links (the only thing they look for in this particular regard) they find to a given site, the higher ranking that site is assigned and thus the sooner it will show up on a web search. It's all about funneling customers to their sites.

While the changes that I've made won't necessarily stop the automated spamming of PK by mindless computer programs, they will prevent the spammers from gaining anything from spamming us.

We may well have to make more drastic changes because we are getting a fair amount of spam on a daily basis. Apparently we've become big enough to present an enticing target for them. And even if they gain nothing from spamming us now, the spam still takes up a lot of space and poses a hindrance to discussions here. So, we'll likely be taking further steps in the immediate future. But, rest assured that we're trying everything we can to deal with this without unduly interfering with our reader's ability to post comments.

Posted by Kevin at 11:09 AM |

January 15, 2005

Bush: Don't blame me, you voted for me.

Washington Post:

President Bush said the public's decision to reelect him was a ratification of his approach toward Iraq and that there was no reason to hold any administration officials accountable for mistakes or misjudgments in prewar planning or managing the violent aftermath.

"We had an accountability moment, and that's called the 2004 elections," Bush said in an interview with The Washington Post. "The American people listened to different assessments made about what was taking place in Iraq, and they looked at the two candidates, and chose me."

For those of you who were expecting a change in Bush's tack when it comes to Iraq or recognizing the problems and mistakes...welcome to your wake up call.

In other words...he's got your mandate. What say you?

Posted by Carla at 08:53 PM |

You know you've hit a nerve when....

...the blog you've outed as putting out false information blocks you from comments on their blog.

The collective over at Sound Politics have blocked the words "preemptivekarma.com" from being posted on their site. If one tries to put those words in either a post or as the ID info, one is blocked from posting.

I guess I should take that as a compliment, eh?

Posted by Carla at 03:18 PM |

Allegations of dead voters in WA governor's race bogus

The Seattle Times does the heavy lifting:

But despite the handful of suspicious cases in which dead people were credited with voting, in at least half of the two dozen cases there is no evidence that extra votes were cast in dead people's names, according to a Seattle Times analysis reviewed by county officials. The clerical errors and surviving relatives' slip-ups mean the wrong person — but not an additional person — was credited with voting.

All but two of the dead voters were in King County. Pierce County did not provide voter history despite numerous requests for the records. One dead voter was from Clark County in southwest Washington, and one was from Spokane County. Of the 24, 14 were credited with voting absentee and 10 with voting at the polls.

The Republicans are still fishing, however...in the convicted felon pool:

Republicans want a copy of the state's criminal-records database to compare it with the names of the nearly 3 million people who voted in the governor's race, as party attorneys search for felons who cast illegal ballots.

Yesterday, attorneys for Dino Rossi and the Republican Party asked the State Patrol for an electronic copy of that database, the Washington State Identification System. The list contains more than 1.2 million records. Republicans are hoping to do a quicker and less expensive search than what is available to the general public.

Apparently this is at taxpayer expense and outside the way the State Patrol handles these records.

At least the "I see dead people voting" contingent can lay that one to rest.

It's my understanding that convicted felons can vote once they've served their time. It seems a stretch to go through this database fishing for felons who are entitled to vote.

Posted by Carla at 08:32 AM |

January 14, 2005

Mine is not to question why...

... Mine is just to do or die. Or so the logic seems to be.

"The Pentagon may never publicly declare that its new missile defense system is fully ready to defend against long-range missiles aimed at the United States, but it already has a limited capability against a small-scale attack, a Pentagon official said Thursday." - AP

A limited capability? Given what we know thus far, that "capability" appears to be equal to any other unguided missle capable of reaching the same altitude. Which is to say that there is always a remote possibility that if you're throwing enough flak in the way then you're bound to hit something... sooner or later. In terms of capability this $y$tem doesn't appear to be any more capable of intercepting a missle than a conventional anti-aircraft gun is of connecting with a fighter jet.

The important thing here is that you not question any aspect of this extremely expensive, heretofore unworkable missle system. The important thing, obviously, is that you feel safe.

Now be a good little sheep and go graze somewhere.

Posted by Kevin at 12:57 PM |

I deserve a break today...

Lots of loose ends yet to tie up on my investigation of the military balloting in regard to the Washington Gubernatorial (or Goodbernatorial, as AlsoAlso blog calls it...LOL). I could work on this for days and still be digging, I think.

As it is, I am going to have to take a break from my investigations for today and go out to work with my students. Believe it or not..those people I work for actually expect me to go to work if I want to get paid. The nerve of them!

I do need to clear up a couple of misconceptions that may be floating around, however.

In regard to the bulk mailing of military ballots for King County, it's my understanding that King County stuffs the envelopes and that's it. They send the envelopes and addresses off to the vendor, who does the rest of the work and gets the things mailed off. There's some quibbling over why ballots were mailed from Snohomish County. It's my understanding that the vendor is located in Snohomish County and after the bulk mailing preparation is done, they just take it to the closest post office. This seems like fairly nitpicky stuff...but apparently people that want to quibble over every little detail are going to. Hopefully that puts that to rest.

Second, there may be some who think I prompted the story to come out in the Seattle Times yesterday about King County mailing the ballots on time. I don't know that this is the case. I had been emailing back and forth a little with Keith Ervin who wrote the story...but to my knowledge he was working on it independent of me already. I suppose he may have pushed it harder with me working on it..but he may not have. I don't want anyone believing that Ervin's story happened because of me, tho. It happened because of Ervin.

Posted by Carla at 09:14 AM |

January 13, 2005

Military balloting and the WA Governor's Election

Yesterday on this blog, I debunked several allegations being tossed about by Sound Politics blog regarding the handling of military ballots by King County in the Washington State Governor's Race.

In my pursuit of those efforts, I've discovered that the more I dig on this issue, the more questions surface.

One of the main allegations perpetuated by Sound Politics is that King County disenfranchised voters by not mailing military ballots out on time. That allegation was soundly debunked earlier today.

Earlier this afternoon, I had the honor of speaking with Lt. Colonel Steve Boylan (I really hope I'm spelling that correctly) from the Coalition Press Information Center located in Baghdad, Iraq.

Lt. Colonel Boylan informed me that if a service person serving outside the United States didn't recieve a ballot on time from the place where they're registered, they can still vote. In that case, they may use a Federal Write-In Absentee Ballot. Lt. Colonel Boylan also informed me that those ballots were in ample supply. State and local races can be voted using those ballots as well. Those ballots are also available online.

Lt. Col. Boylan also told me some other interesting facts. Beginning in what he believed was "early Summer", the US military conducted a major voter education drive.

Each military unit was provided a voting representative. The representative was sometimes an officer and sometimes noncommissioned personnel. This voting rep was trained and provided materials to assist military persons with voting. This training and materials included information on how to register to vote, obtain absentee ballots, filling out all of the necessary paperwork properly, etc.

According to Lt. Col. Boyland, every individual was made aware of deadlines for the various states. In addition, the military postal service ensured ballots were expedited to the best of their ability. In other words, any time they could ship them out, they did, unless there was something else that needed to be on the truck that was absolutely more necessary.

In fact, there's a whole website dedicated to military absentee voting. (Thanks, Kev)

I'm expecting a call back tomorrow from the Army Media Relations Office to further verify Lt. Col. Boyland's information.

Also, this story in today's Stars and Stripes indicated that the US military has found no evidence of problems with overseas military absentee ballots.

This opinion piece by Captain Samuel Wright of the USNR, says some military absentee ballots weren't counted. I've yet to call and verify Captain Wright's assertions (see what I mean by more questions surfacing..the more I dig?). But until there is actual evidence that there was an effort to disenfranchise the miltary vote, it flat didn't happen.

I also put in a call to Rossi's campaign office. They claim in Stars and Stripes to have a big list of complaints from people who say they didn't get their ballots, although not all are military. I left my name and phone number with Rossi's office...and their spokesperson, Mary Lane, is supposed to call me back. Cross your fingers.

It is unfortunate that some votes might not count due to arriving late, if that is indeed the case. But those are the rules. And from what I can tell, every effort was made both by the counties and by the military to get that to happen.

Posted by Carla at 03:35 PM |

Demagoguing Oil-for-Food

For months now the rightwing echo chamber has been like a dog with a bone on Oil-for-Food scandal. Not to be outdone, the rightwing portion of the blogosphere has gotten into the act too.

A few weeks ago Political Musings.net cited a National Review piece blaming both Europe and the UN for the oil-for-food mess by way of trying to make the case that the Left is doomed to extinction for being out of touch. More recently the meme has been to discredit the UN's role in Tsunami relief, citing... you guessed it: Oil-For-Food. Even the rightwingers in Congress got into the act, calling for Kofi Annan to resign, aided and abbeted by rightwing think tanks.

The Left side of the blogosphere has attempted to rebut the misinformation, but to little avail.

So, imagine my surprise when I found this little nugget in TomPaine.com's daily list of Overlooked but important headlines of the morning.

It seems that a joint investigation by the Financial Times and Il Sole 24 Ore, the Italian business daily, has uncovered evidence that the Bush-led American government not only knew about specific instances of illegal oil sales, but turned a blind eye to it. Ditto for the British government. Why didn't they do something? We were running an active interdiction effort in the Persian Gulf via the Multinational Interception Force (MIF), the force led by the US Navy that had been enforcing the embargo on Iraq.

Saybolt, the Dutch company hired by the UN to oversee oil loading operations in Iraq, reported the incident (apparent illegal loading of oil onto tankers) to the MIF.

On February 21 2003, when reports of the smuggling first appeared in the US press, Jeff Alderson, spokesman for the Maritime Liaison Office (MLO), the US navy office in Bahrain that co-ordinated the MIF activities, was quoted as saying that he had “no information” about it.

His successor, Jeff Breslau, confirmed to Il Sole/FT that “we have no record that we were warned” about the smuggling. But Il Sole/FT has discovered that on February 17 2003, Saybolt sent an e-mail to the MLO about smuggling that specifically mentioned the Argosea. The same day, the MLO sent a reply to Saybolt acknowledging that notification.

Out of this one operation, traders estimate, Iraqis pocketed about $50m, all off the UN books, while subsequent sale of the oil netted $150m in profits.

Bush's motive for turning a blind eye?

Oil traders were told informally that the US let the tankers go because Amman needed oil to build up its strategic reserves in expectation of the Iraq war.

Last week Paul Volcker, head of the independent commission created by the UN to investigate failures in the oil-for-food programme, confirmed that Washington allowed violations of the oil sanctions by Jordan in recognition of its national interests.

However, only a fraction of the oil smuggled out of Iraq reached the Jordanian port of Aqaba. Most was sold to the Middle East Oil Refinery, in Alexandria, Egypt; to a refinery in Aden, Yemen; and to Malaysia and China. “This operation was not permitted under the Security Council resolutions dealing with the oil-for-food programme,” said Michel Tellings, one of the two UN inspectors responsible at the time for the implementation of the programme. “The volume of oil was not inspected and payments were not made to the UN escrow account, as required by the programme.”

Maybe this is why Bush has not only resisted joining in the calls for Annan's resignation, but has gone out of his way to cooperate with the UN of late... He didn't want the whole truth to come out. All he wanted was to get his base fired up for the November election.

Posted by Kevin at 12:35 PM |

Truth and Consequences: Update

Tully beat me to it:

FOLLOWUP!!! King County produces the goods! Carla incentivizes truth release!!!! TRUTH RELEASE!!!

Truth release via the Seattle Times.

This confirms the information I was told by Bobbie Egan at King County Election's office. I don't have a fax from her yet, as far as I know. I'm off later to the local mailbox place to check again.

There are more followups to come on this as well. It's amazing how much one can find out when one starts digging a bit. It also helps to be very polite to people on the phone...LOL

I'd like to throw special props to Tully. He and I often butt heads. But he came around pretty quickly when the Sound Politics blog accusations fell apart.

Posted by Carla at 09:43 AM |

January 12, 2005

Truth and consequences

Yesterday over at Centerfield, Tully brought to my attention soundpolitics, a blog seemingly devoted to getting a revote in the Washington Gubernatiorial election.

soundpolitics is alleging very specific charges against the King County Elections Office (KCEO).

Specifically, soundpolitics is charging that the KCEO failed to mail military ballots out on the date that was negotiated with them by the federal government (October 8,2004). Further, they are alledging that KCEO deliberately changed the dates on their website fact sheet from October 10 to October 7, in a nefarious bid to cover up their wrongdoing:

He discovered that Bulk Permit #1455, the permit that is used for mailing absentee ballots, only had activity on October 2nd (1,605 pieces) and October 13th (28,000 pieces)... with no activity between those dates!

In conjunction with Stefan's discovery of the Google cache, this is pretty powerful evidence that King County attempted to cover-up the actual date of the mailed ballots.

So in the entire nation, this state and this county was the last to send out military ballots: on the 13th, not on the 7th, or even the 10th (the Sunday before Columbus day). It is simply not reasonable to suggest that a bulk mailing made on Thursday the 7th would not be sent out on the 8th or 9th.

Our military voters were disenfranchised. "Honest mistake" or not, they should own up to the facts, not disappear the truth from their website.

These charges, if true, are quite serious. However, the specificity of information regarding the bulk mailing permit was a red flag for me. Would the United States Post Office give out such information to anyone who walks up to the counter and asks..especially if the questioner doesn't own the permit? And how do they know for sure that the pieces of mail in question were actually absentee ballots?

Yesterday afternoon I set about trying to find the answers.

After a bit of legwork, I eventually contacted the main Business Mail Entry office for the Seattle area, specifically the 98104 zip code, which is the one for KCEO. The gentleman I spoke with on the phone was very nice, but very closed mouthed. I asked my questions and he politely replied that he couldn't give out that sort of information. He also specifically stated that he didn't feel comfortable speaking to someone who might publish such information and that I could speak with his supervisor, who's name and phone number I was given. I also left my name and phone number, asking to be called back.

I then contacted Bobbie Egan, the media relations person for the King County Elections Office. Ms Egan knew of the soundpolitics allegations.

Egan informed me that the King County Elections Office doesn't handle the mailing for most of the military ballots directly. They do send emailed and faxed ballots out to those military people who request them. However, King County uses a hired vendor (contractor) to send out military ballots to most APO and US military addresses. King County puts the ballots in the envelopes and addresses them, then hands them off to the vendor who prepares them for the bulk mailings through the US Postal Service. King County's bulk mailing permit isn't used for these ballots. There is a federal permit used for mailing military ballots. Ms. Egan further informed me that they have a paper trail to verify that the mailings were properly sent. I'm hopeful that she will be faxing me copies of this paperwork later today.

I did get a call back from the USPS, but not the supervisor of the Business Mail Entry office in Seattle. I spoke with the media relations person for the region, who is following up on my questions and is set to get back to me later today.

Finally, I emailed Keith Ervin of the Seattle Times who had this story in yesterday's paper about the ballot number problems in King County, as well as the website changes.

Ervin's piece indicates that the County changed the website fact sheet date for mailing military/overseas absentee ballots from October 10 to October 7, after the erroneous date was discovered. The County says that the number should have said October 7 from the outset, but was inadvertantly changed when the fact sheet was put into HTML. Ervin confirmed that for me in email.

Ervin is also expected to view today the paper trail information from King County Elections Office to be provided by Bobbie Egan. Ervin informed me via email that unless information is forthcoming showing Egan (or Dean Logan of the KCOE) incorrect, he doesn't see a "factual basis for concluding that a mailing wasn't sent Oct. 7."

If the braintrust at soundpolitics had just made a few phone calls, they could have checked their information. Instead, they published what appears to be dubiously and sloppily sourced material, misleading their readership. This misinformation is being used to prop up some very serious allegations.

Bloggers aren't usually held to the same standard as journalists. It's clear that the kind of sourcing and fact checking usually done by journalists isn't part of the blogosphere, in general. However soundpolitics is making some very serious charges (and working hard to self promote in the wake of these charges). Their readership is whipped up into a frenzy without all of the facts.

This tossing about of serious wrongdoing coupled with dubious sourcing and fact checking is irresponsible.

I'll try to have more on this topic later as the facts continue to come in.

Posted by Carla at 09:38 AM |

January 11, 2005

Re-Framing The Message

Brian Patton points out one of the better examples of Democrats learning how to frame the message along the lines of how Republicans have been.

Recently, Waldo Jaquith and others, launched a non-partisan Virginia political action committee called Virginia Family Values.

The Virginia Family Values PAC intends to target specific races each election and already have a list of state legislators targeted for defeat for their anti-family values.

Talk about fighting fire with fire. Jaquith looks to be armed for bear, as they say.

Posted by Kevin at 01:00 PM |

If at