6th Circuit Strikes a Blow for Vote Suppression

MSNBC: Ohio must set up a way to verify all new voters
Federal appeals court rules the system must be in place before Friday

Tuesday's order directs [Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer] Brunner to verify new registrations by comparing that information with data from the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles or the Social Security Administration.

The 6th Circuit is one of the most conservative, Bush-Bush-Reagan laden federal courts in the country. Not surprising that a decision which could disenfranchise tens of thousands of new voters comes from such a conservative circuit.

Somewhere tonight, Hans von Vote Suppressor is smiling.

Read Liberally

What the heck happened in Georgia? Tristero at Hullabaloo points to an article in the NYTimes Review of Books explaining how the US helped Georgia rise to Russia's bait, with predictably disastrous consequences. (No one could have anticipated that Russia would fight back. Where have we heard that before?)

Voter caging is coming to a state near you. Mebe at dailykos points out that voter lists are being purged right now in Ohio, Louisiana, Michigan, Kansas, Florida, New Mexico, Colorado, and Nevada. And this year they're going after absentee ballots. Christy at firedoglake has a new "scholarly" article by Hans Von Vote Suppressor, and predicts that he is setting the stage for this year's election mau-mau by the Republicans, just as his previous articles set the stage for their voter fraud and voter caging shenanigans. Check that you are properly registered TODAY.

dengre at dailykos points out that Sarah Palin's $40 billion dollar natural gas pipeline will be both an environmental disaster and a boondoggle that will cost US taxpayers billions. And like all these hairbrained drilling proposals, there's no guarantee that the giant energy companies won't just sell all the gas to China anyway.

Josh Marshall outlines why the Charles Gibson interview of Sarah Palin will be unwatchable: Gibson has agreed to interview her over several days. He won't ask tough questions, because he won't want his access cut off. Journalism is dead, long live the bought and paid for corporate media.

Jill of Brilliant at Breakfast rips into NBC for dropping Olbermann/Matthews from their debate and election night coverage. Because the Republicans complained. No liberals on TeeVee! They're giving us David Gregory, the man who demonstrated his lack of journalistic integrity by dancing backup to Karl Rove at a White House press dinner. Lackey, anyone? Booman Tribune calls this the first GOP scalp in the war on the media.

Alaska blogger Mudflats (Palin: Republican Party Infiltrator?)has a video of the Vice Chairman of the Alaska Independence Party (the secessionists) claiming that Sarah Palin was indeed a member, and that she is only now a Republican to carry out their mission. Their founder Joe Voegler famously said:

“The fires of Hell are frozen glaciers compared to my hatred for the American government, and I won’t be buried under their damn flag!”

Hans von Vote Suppressor Hired by US Commission on Civil Rights

His job, of course, will be to destroy civil rights and deny voting rights to any person who might vote for Barack Obama.

TPMMuckraker: He's Baaaack: Civil Rights Commission Hires Spakovsky to Work on Voting Rights

Hans von Vote Suppressor: OK That 98-Year-Old Nun Denied Right to Vote

Congress Keith Ellison opened a can of whoopass on Hans von Spakovsky in a hearing by the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, yesterday. He got Hansie to admit that he thought it was OK that a dozen of nuns in their 90s were blocked from voting in Indiana in the primaries. What a firstclass asshole. I hope someone comes up with video, but for now you can enjoy the transcript, from TPM Muckraker:

Ellison Slams von Spakovsky Over Disenfranchised Nuns and U.S. Attorneys

ELLISON: Now here's something that happened on the May 7th Indiana election. A dozen nuns and another unknown number of students were turned away from the polls Tuesday in the first use of Indiana's stringent voter ID law since it was upheld last week by the United State Supreme Court. Mr. von Spakovsky, you wanna stop nuns from voting?

VON SPAKOVSKY: [silence]

ELLISON: Why don't you want nuns to vote, Mr. von Spakovsky?

VON SPAKOVSKY: Congressman Ellison, uh-

ELLISON: I'm just curious to know.

VON SPAKOVSKY: Those individuals, uh, were told, were- knew that they had to get an ID, they could have easily done so. They could have voted, uh, by absentee ballot- uh, nursing homes under the law are able to get-

ELLISON: . . . Mr. von Spakovsky, are you aware that a 98-year old nun was turned away from the polls by a-

VON SPAKOVSKY: They all had passports-

ELLISON: Excuse me.

VON SPAKOVSKY: They had expired passports which meant that they could have gotten-

ELLISON: Mr. von Spakovsky, do you know a 98-year old nun was turned away from the polls by a sister who's in her order and who knew her, but had to turn her away because she didn't have a government-issued ID? That's okay with you?

VON SPAKOVSKY: Yes. . .

Hans von Vote Suppressor Steps Down

San Francisco Chronicle: FEC nominee withdraws name

President Bush's contentious nominee for the Federal Election Commission removed his name from consideration Friday, potentially ending a lengthy stalemate that had paralyzed the work of the agency.

Hans von Spakovsky, a former Justice Department official who never had Democratic support to win confirmation, withdrew his nomination, saying it was time for the protracted deadlock to end.

[]

Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., welcomed von Spakovsky's withdrawal. Democrats have charged that von Spakovsky tried to suppress voter participation through new restrictions such as voter identification laws and voter roll purges.

"Democrats stood united in their opposition to von Spakovsky because of his long and well-documented history of working to suppress the rights of minorities and the elderly to vote," Reid said. "He was not qualified to hold any position of trust in our government."

Why he had to go (short version, via Talking Points Memo, go there for links to supporting articles):

To remind you of some of the lowlights of Spakovsky's career at the Justice Department: his attempt to disenfranchise thousands of voters in Arizona singlehandedly (and then his false testimony to Congress about that), his petty attempts to retaliate against Department employees who did not agree with his legal philosophy (and his contested testimony about that), and his advisory letters that led to restrictive voter roll policies in a number of states.

Hans von Spakovsky: Liar

McClatchy: Ex-Justice Department lawyer changes his testimony

WASHINGTON — A former senior Justice Department official has backed off sworn Senate testimony that he consulted with senior agency voting-rights lawyers before inaccurately advising Arizona officials they could deny thousands of voters their rights to provisional ballots.

Hans von Spakovsky, who hopes to win confirmation to a full six-year term on the Federal Election Commission, revised his statement in a recent letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee after former senior department voting-rights lawyers challenged his veracity.

[]

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., the committee's chairwoman, has yet to schedule a vote on the nominations of von Spakovsky and three others to the bipartisan FEC. The committee is under pressure to act on the nominations, because vacancies have left the main election-regulatory agency limping along as it heads into a presidential election year.

Von Spakovsky couldn't be reached for comment.

Keep the pressure on the committee to reject this vote-suppressing loser:

ePluribusMedia: Keep Yer Vote Thievin' Hans Off (the FEC): Action Alert!

Today's Hearing on Hans von Vote Suppressor

I didn't get to see the Rules Committee hearing on von Spakovsky's nomination to the Federal Election Commission today, so here is a round-up of reactions.

McClatchy wins both the headline and reporting award with this story:

McClatchy: U.S. ATTORNEYS
Ex-Justice Dept. lawyer can't recall his role in controversial policies

WASHINGTON - Another former Justice Department lawyer went before Congress on Wednesday with few answers for his Democratic interrogators and a spotty memory.

Hans von Spakovsky, who's seeking a full six-year term on the Federal Election Commission, deflected questions about whether he undermined voting rights laws, saying, "I was not the decision maker in the front office of the Civil Rights Division."

Time and again during his confirmation hearing, he cited either the attorney-client privilege or a cloudy memory for his purported role in restricting minorities' voting rights.

Von Spakovsky couldn't remember blocking an investigation into complaints that a Minnesota Republican official was discriminating against Native American voters before the 2004 election.

Under oath, he also said he didn't recall seeing data from the state of Georgia that would have undercut a push by senior officials within the Civil Rights Division to approve the state's tough new law requiring photo IDs of all voters. The data showed that 300,000 Georgia voters lacked driver's licenses. A federal judge later threw out the law as unconstitutional.

John Lewis, who spilled his blood for voting rights, and other Georgia Democrats have opposed von Spakovsky's nomination, 'saying his appointment "could potentially turn back the clock on 50 years of progress" in voting rights.'

salon.com: The grilling of von Spakovsky

NYTimes Editorial: Another Sorry Ascension

[] President Bush gave him a recess appointment to the commission last year. The new Democratic-controlled Senate now has the opportunity to strike a blow against electoral skullduggery with a blunt rejection of Mr. Spakovsky’s nomination for a full six-year term.

Slate: Implausible Deniability
The Internet foils fudging by three "voter fraud" warriors.

Senator Dick Durbin questions von Spakovsky:

Updates

SI Neg. 2003-12114. Date: 2003...Pacific Lions Paw shell on exhibit at the National Museum of Natural History
Credit: John Steiner (Smithsonian Institution)
flickr
News on some stories we've covered previously:

The Washington Post has an article on racist vote-suppressor Hans A. von Spakovsky and his nomination to the Federal Elections Commission; did you know that half the career lawyers in the Voting Rights Section of the Justice Department left during his tenure there? He is a very bad man and must be stopped. Call your Senators; or call these Senators, on the Rules Committee.

Connecticut substitute teacher Julie Amero has been granted a new trial. Now that I think about it, I may not have covered this previously, but I should have; she was convicted for being in an elementary school classroom with a computer running Windows 98 that was filled with porn popups. If that was a crime, half of America would be in jail. If anyone should go to jail, it's Bill Gates or some other Microsoft honcho. Vive la Firefox. Or Safari. Anything but Windows.

Boston College has hired assistant Katie King (three-time Olympic medal winner) to replace sexual harasser Tom Mutch. From the Boston Globe article: "Two-thirds of the Division 1 head coaches in women's hockey are men and only three of Hockey East's are female."

Looks like Joe Scarborough "I-don't-know-nothing-about-that-dead-intern-in-my-office" is leading the pack to replace Don Imus. He's certainly qualified; why just this week, he said this about Fred Thompson's wife Jeri:

Scarborough asks Crawford, "Have you seen Fred Thompson's wife?" Crawford: "Oh yeah." Scarborough: "You think she works the pole?"

I can't believe he'd say such a thing about the shy, retiring Mrs. Thompson:

Paul Wolfowitz, recently shorn of girlfriend, checks out Fred Thompson's assets. He is not looking at her face.

Stop Voter Fraud

FEC Commissioner Hans von Spakovsky wrote a law review article while he was a staff lawyer at the Justice Department supporting a photo identification program for voters in Georgia.
Photo Credit: By Charlotte B. Teagle -- Atlanta Journal-constitution

Stop the Republicans from putting one of their number one vote-challenging whores on the Federal Election Commision. Hans von Spakovsky is the guy who masterminded the 2000 Florida "felon" purge that prevented tens of thousands of legitimate, mostly African-American Florida voters from casting their ballots for Al Gore. He has been nominated to a four-year term on the Federal Elections Commision by the Chimperor, and there is a hearing on the nomination on June 13, 2007 by the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration. Please call your senator if they are on the list below; if he makes it through committee, all senators must be contacted.

dailykos: Keep Yer Vote Thievin' Hans Off (the FEC): Action Alert!

Hans Von Spakovsky will appear before the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration on June 13, 2007, at 10:00 a.m. for his confirmation hearing. []

Democrats
Dianne Feinstein (CA) - (202) 224-3841
Robert Byrd (WV) - (202) 224-3954
Daniel Inouye (HI) - (202) 224-3934
Christopher Dodd (CT) - (202) 224-2823
Charles Schumer (NY) - (202) 224-6542
Richard Durbin (IL) - (202) 224-2152
Ben Nelson (NE) - (202) 224-6551
Harry Reid (NV) - (202) 224-3542
Patty Murray (WA) - (202) 224-2621
Mark Pryor (AR) - (202) 224-2353

Republicans
Robert Bennett (UT) - (202) 224-5444
Mitch McConnell (KY) - (202) 224-2541
Thad Cochran (MS) - (202) 224-5054
Trent Lott (MS) - (202) 224-6253
Kay Bailey Hutchison (TX) - (202) 224-5922
Saxby Chambliss (GA) - (202) 224-3521
Chuck Hagel (NE) - (202) 224-4224
Lamar Alexander (TN) - (202) 224-4944

McClatchy: Efforts to stop `voter fraud' may have curbed legitimate voting

WASHINGTON - During four years as a Justice Department civil rights lawyer, Hans von Spakovsky went so far in a crusade against voter fraud as to warn of its dangers under a pseudonym in a law journal article.

Writing as "Publius," von Spakovsky contended that every voter should be required to produce a photo-identification card and that there was "no evidence" that such restrictions burden minority voters disproportionately.

Now, amid a scandal over politicization of the Justice Department, Congress is beginning to examine allegations that von Spakovsky was a key player in a Republican campaign to hang onto power in Washington by suppressing the votes of minority voters.

"Mr. von Spakovsky was central to the administration's pursuit of strategies that had the effect of suppressing the minority vote," charged Joseph Rich, a former Justice Department voting rights chief who worked under him.

He and other former career department lawyers say that von Spakovsky steered the agency toward voting rights policies not seen before, pushing to curb minor instances of election fraud by imposing sweeping restrictions that would make it harder, not easier, for Democratic-leaning poor and minority voters to cast ballots.

WaPo: Official's Article on Voting Law Spurs Outcry