Paging Katherine Harris

Miami Herald: Gov. Crist extends early voting hours statewide

Declaring a state of emergency in Florida because of long voting lines, Gov. Charlie Crist on Tuesday extended early voting hours across the state to 12 hours a day.

The executive order comes after record early voting turnout has contributed to long lines at polling sites.

Current Florida law allows for early voting to be conducted eight hours a day each weekday and for a total of eight hours during the weekends. With Crist's order, early voting sites will be open the rest of this week from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. They will be open a total of 12 hours on Saturday and Sunday, the last day of early voting.

''It's not a political decision,'' Crist said moments after signing the order. ``It's a people decision.''

Crist said he made the decision after seeing numerous news reports about long lines and after he had a conversation with state House Democratic leader Dan Gelber of Miami Beach. Crist's appointed secretary of state, Kurt Browning, had rejected the idea of extending the early voting hours earlier this week.

Speculation is that Charlie Crist is putting it to McCain because after he got married to prove his I'm-not-gay conservative cred, McCain still picked Palin instead of Crist.

Regardless of why, it's refreshing to see a Republican come out in favor of voting instead of vote suppression. Especially in Florida.

John McCain Sells His Soul

According to today's New York Times, the McCain campaign is raining negative robocalls on voters in swing states.

McCain hired the same firm that Bush hired to make robocalls in the 2000 election about McCain's "interracial child" and his wife's drug addiction.

So it is official, John McCain has sold his soul to the devil.

Action Alert: Don't Let The Fascists Steal The Election Again

dailykos: Call to Action: Voter Rolls in several States purged!!!

In swing-state Colorado, the Republican Secretary of State conducted the biggest purge of voters in history, dumping a fifth of all registrations. Guess their color.

In swing-state Florida, the state is refusing to accept about 85,000 new registrations from voter drives – overwhelming Black voters.

In swing state New Mexico, HALF of the Democrats of Mora, a dirt poor and overwhelmingly Hispanic county, found their registrations disappeared this year, courtesy of a Republican voting contractor.

In swing states Ohio and Nevada, new federal law is knocking out tens of thousands of voters who lost their homes to foreclosure.

Robert F. Kennedy and investigative journalist Greg Palast are teaming up to get this information out into the public eye. They're fundraising here; you can get copies of Palast's DVDs and books for certain levels of giving.

If giving money is not your thing, isn't this the perfect topic for your weekly letter to the editor of your local paper?

Clinton and the Florida Primary: Against It Before She Was For It

Then
Now
In 2007 Hillary Clinton signed the DNC pledge saying that she would not campaign in Florida; nor would she participate in the Florida primary. She issued this press release on September 1, 2007:

9/1/2007

Clinton Campaign Statement on the Four State Pledge

The following is a statement by Clinton Campaign Manager Patti Solis Doyle.

"We believe Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina play a unique and special role in the nominating process.

And we believe the DNC’s rules and its calendar provide the necessary structure to respect and honor that role.

Thus, we will be signing the pledge to adhere to the DNC approved nominating calendar.

Many Democrats elected not to participate in the Florida primary, as they knew that under DNC rules the primary would not count.

Neither Clinton nor Obama campaigned in Florida, and Clinton won the state overwhelmingly. Now that she is behind in the delegate count, she wants those delegates counted based on the primary she agreed that she would not participate in -- last year, when she thought the nomination would be hers after Super Tuesday.

Yesterday Clinton, who originally was in favor of stripping Florida of its delegates, argued that not seating the Florida delegation based on the primary she promised not to participate in, was like the struggles against: women's suffrage, civil rights, Florida 2000, and Zimbabwe.

Since no one has died during the Florida delegation fight, these claims are patently absurd. I wish Clinton would just drop out. She lost. She hired a poor team to run her campaign, and they ran her into the ground. I don't like the way the DNC handled Florida and Michigan, but that doesn't mean that her way is correct either.

I want the Democrats to stop spending money on primary foolishness and move on to the general election.

Surrender Hillary. For the good of the party; for the good of the country.

2007 Is Second Warmest Year Ever

The climate crisis continues unabated. "The Arctic is screaming" says climate scientist Mark Serreze. The Bush Administration position at the climate talks is: Hurry up and wait. Wait until January 20, 2009. Bush will do nothing. He is the greatest do nothing in the history of do nothings. What has he done to stop global warming? Nothing.

And I'd like to give a shout out to the five morons on the Supreme Court who seven years ago today gave us the Master of Disaster George W. Bush as President, over the vote-winner, now Nobel Prize winner Al Gore. Thank you very fucking much for seven years of the plague of Shrub, Sandra Day O'Connor, Clarence Thomas, Injustice Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia, and Anthony Kennedy (four appointed by Ronald Raygun, one by Buckfush41). Equal protection, my ass. Equal protection for rich malevolent assholes.

ClimateProgress: NASA: 2007 Second Warmest Year Ever, with Record Warmth Likely by 2010

Through the first 11 months, 2007 is the second warmest year in the period of instrumental data, behind the record warmth of 2005, in the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) analysis. The unusual warmth in 2007 is noteworthy because it occurs at a time when solar irradiance is at a minimum and the equatorial Pacific Ocean has entered the cool phase of its natural El Niño — La Niña cycle.

… barring the unlikely event of a large volcanic eruption, a record global temperature exceeding that of 2005 can be expected within the next 2-3 years.

[]

The six warmest years in the GISS record have all occurred since 1998, and the 15 warmest years in the record have all occurred since 1988.

DailyMail: World told to act now on climate change as 'Arctic is screaming'

"The Arctic is screaming," said Mark Serreze, a senior US scientist.

Edited to add, oh, and by the way, American scientists told the American Geophysical Union meeting this week that there may be NO ARCTIC ICE by 2013. That's six years, folks. Wave goodbye to the polar bears.

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