What Is Voter Caging?

Cage him for stealing elections.

What the heck was Maniacal Goodling talking about when she testified about voter caging? It was a very confusing moment in her testimony. The Congresscritters seemed flummoxed. She said it was a direct mail term. That made no sense to me. Tonight I stumbled upon the answer.

Here's how reporter Greg Palast describes voter caging:

The Bush-Cheney operatives sent hundreds of thousands of letters marked "Do not forward" to voters' homes. Letters returned ("caged") were used as evidence to block these voters' right to cast a ballot on grounds they were registered at phony addresses. Who were the evil fakers? Homeless men, students on vacation and --- you got to love this --- American soldiers. Oh yeah: most of them are Black voters.

Why weren't these African-American voters home when the Republican letters arrived? The homeless men were on park benches, the students were on vacation --- and the soldiers were overseas. Go to Baghdad, lose your vote. Mission Accomplished.

Palast has 500 emails -- many of them Karl Rove's emails that the White House now claims are lost -- because they were sent accidentally to whitehouse.org, a domain that is owned by a friend of Palast. (They meant to send them to whitehouse.com -- Doh!)

So our soldiers registered to vote, then went to Iraq. The Republican party sends mail to their official address, but it is returned as undeliverable, because the soldier is in Iraq. So when that soldier's absentee ballot comes in, and the elections personnel go to count that ballot, they find that the ballot has been challenged as being from a phony address. Because the soldier was overseas in George W. Bush's war for democracy. And the guy who led this effort was Tim Griffin, Karl Rove's protege, who is now the USAttorney for the District of Arkansas. The chicken now guards the henhouse.

Some of the emails (SUBJECT: caging) are in the middle of this post on Palast's research.

I highly recommend watching all three Youtube clips, below, in which Palast lays out the caging scheme and how it related to the US Attorney scandal. These are felonies and impeachable offenses.


Part 1 (8:18)


Part 2 (4:58)


Part 3 (9:07)

Republican Memory Loss

hat tip to Americablog

Another Modest Proposal

DOJ Barbie: I don't know nothing 'bout vote caging!
In Re Monical Goodling's testimony yesterday (Monical is a typo, but I'm inclined to let it stay) I must apologize for my aborted attempt at liveblogging. I think I was distracted by the prospect of the Champions League final in the afternoon, and didn't want to get tied down to the computer.

But I did listen to much of the testimony, and it struck me once again that most members of Congress couldn't cross examine their way out of a paper bag. Watching the rows and rows of Congresscritters lined up to question DOJ Barbie reminded me of the Watergate hearings, back in the day. Remember when the committee investigating the breakin used staff to do the questioning? Remember attorney Sam Dash, who was appointed committee counsel by Senator Sam Ervin? It was Sam Dash doing the questioning the day Alexander Butterfield revealed the existence of Nixon's secret taping system.

I wish the Congressional committees questioning these witnesses would appoint a professional to assist them. Now, who is both qualified and has the time? How about recently fired New Mexico USAG David Iglesias? He's not working and he certainly knows the issues here. He's handsome and telegenic. There may be complaints that he's partisan, but he's a Republican. Besides, this isn't a criminal trial. It's a political hearing, and both sides are allowed to be as political as they want.

John Conyers, hire David Iglesias. Let him question. Would there be any
better showdown ever, than to watch Iglesias question Karl Rove? YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH! (A Few Good Men was based on a case tried by Iglesias.)

US Attorney News

LATimes: 'Cowboy up,' Alberto Gonzales
A fired U.S. attorney calls on the attorney general to serve the people, not politics.

LATimes: Goodling: a Power player behind Justice's scenes
The former Justice insider, a mystery to many, is set to testify under immunity in Congress on the U.S. attorneys' firings.

WaPo: Officials Describe Interference by Former Gonzales Aide [Monica Goodling]

Monica Goodling: Liveblog

She asserts her Fifth Amendment right in a helium-squeaky voice. I cannot stand professional women who sound like children.

10:46

Higher and higher her voice goes. Now she's five.

10:48

She knows nothing! Nothing!

10:52

Took politics into consideration in hiring; "may have gone too far."

10:53

Her long, sad history to this chair. She worked as hard as she could! That is why she got promoted five times! She cares deeply about my Justice Department family!

Liveblogging is boring. I'm just going to listen.

Out Long National Wait Is Over

Monica Goodling, the former Justice Department's White House liaison, arrives on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, May 23, 2007, to testify before the House Judiciary Committee. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

A new photo of Monica Goodling.

We're all so tired of the old one:



Looks like she's had an extreme makeup makeover.

The Imperial President Prizes Loyalty Above All

This article is worth watching an ad on salon.com to read:

salon.com: All hail the king
Under Bush, loyalty has reigned supreme. But as his presidency unravels, his obligation to his faithful servants -- from Gonzales to Wolfowitz -- has become perilously relative.
By Sidney Blumenthal

Good Friday News Dump

Monica Goodling at a Regent Law School picnic
MSNBC reporting that Abu Gonzales aide Monica Goodling to resign -- tomorrow. Probably busy with some Good Friday reenactment today.

Goodling, graduate of the famed Pat Robertson law school Regent, has asserted Fifth Amendment rights to avoid testifying before Congress. Neither the Fifth Amendment nor this resignation will take the focus off the Bush Administration's relentless politicizing of the Justice Department.

Just today we learn that Rachel K. Paulose, the new US Attorney for the District of Minnesota, was BFF with Monica Goodling. Maybe that's why a 33-year-old with minimal legal experience (here's her resume, pdf doc, page 11) was appointed to this position, after the former US Attorney mysteriously resigned without explanation. And before she was appointed she was -- wait, wait -- a senior aide to none other than Abu Gonzales. Today the four most senior members of Paulose's office resigned en masse from their supervisory positions, bumping down to regular trial attorneys in protest of her management style.

Four of her top staff voluntarily demoted themselves Thursday, fed up with Paulose, who, after just months on the job, has earned a reputation for quoting Bible verses and dressing down underlings.

A Bible-quoting bitch. Must have been a real treat to work with.

Then there are the other US attorneys. Not the ones who got purged; not the young Christian zealots who replaced them. No, I'm speaking of the 85 or so US attorneys who kept their jobs. The ones who went along with the Bush Administration's demands for bogus voting rights cases. The ones who investigated Democrats, not Republicans. Like the US Attorney for the Eastern District of Wisconsin, U.S. Attorney Steven M. Biskupic, who brought a bogus case against a state purchasing supervisor (a woman) for steering a state travel contract to a political contributor of the Democratic governor. The Republican candidate for governor in 2006 hammered away on this case in political ads. (Fortunately for the citizens of the state of Wisconsin, the Democrat won anyway.)

And yes, this was a certifiably bogus case. Yesterday the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals heard the case and set the poor woman free. That's almost unheard of in appeals cases. On the very day they heard the arguments they issued their opinion that she was innocent. The three-judge panel ordered her set free immediately. The Seventh Circuit is no land of liberals. It's a strongly right-leaning circuit. And they found this case thin as tissue.

The Carpetbagger Report lists other US Attorneys who may have been bringing political hitjob cases for the Bush Administration.

The incompetence, the cronyism, and the corruption are now joined by the criminality of using the impartial justice system for partisan, political ends.