Ron Mills- News And Commentary: April 2007

A new documentary by Bill Moyers examines the failure of the American press and media to alert the public about the deceptive propaganda used by the Bush administration to initiate the Iraq invasion, says John Nichols.

Bill Moyers is not the first American to ask with regard media coverage of the run-up to the invasion of Iraq: "How did the mainstream press get it so wrong?"

The man who has been a White House press secretary, newspaper publisher, author and television news program host is not alone in wondering: "How did the evidence disputing (Bush administration claims and intimations regarding) the existence of weapons of mass destruction and the link between Saddam Hussein to 9-11 continue to go largely unreported?"

But Moyers has done something that most Americans have not had the time, the resources or the contacts to do, and that is answer the fundamental questions about the failure of print, broadcast and cable news outlets to cut through the spin and give the American people the truth about the Bush administration's unwarranted rush to war.

"What the conservative media did was easy to fathom; they had been cheerleaders for the White House from the beginning and were simply continuing to rally the public behind the President -- no questions asked," explains Moyers. "How mainstream journalists suspended skepticism and scrutiny remains an issue of significance that the media has not satisfactorily explored. How the administration marketed the war to the American people has been well covered, but critical questions remain: How and why did the press buy it, and what does it say about the role of journalists in helping the public sort out fact from propaganda?"

These and the premises and purposes of a remarkable new documentary, "Buying the War," which explores the role of the press in the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The 90-minute production, which airs this week beginning April 25, on the Public Broadcasting Service channels across the country, is the special premiere of a new weekly series, "Bill Moyers Journal."

After Wednesday night's premiere, Moyers will return to PBS on the Friday night schedule where he was resident for a number of years as the host of "NOW with Bill Moyers." And, just as he did before leaving "NOW" several years ago, at a time when President Bush's allies and appointees were attacking him for giving air time to administration critics -- including Republicans such as Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel -- Moyers is still practicing the craft of journalism in the manner intended by the rebels against empire who wrote a "freedom of the press" protection into America's founding document.

In other words, he is refusing to be a stenographer for the powerful.

"Buying the War" highlights that refusal.

In the documentary, Moyers interviews former CBS news anchor Dan Rather, NBC's "Meet the Press" host Tim Russert, former CNN president Walter Isaacson, and many of the top American print and broadcast reporters. He challenges them. He presses them. He gets them to acknowledge not just the drastic flaws in the reporting before and immediately after the invasion of Iraq but also the extent to which those flaws illustrate the deeper crisis of today's "on-bended-knee" media.

The veteran CBS Middle East correspondent, Bob Simon, sums up that crisis when he refers to the Washington press corps as operating "in a bubble" shaped by the Bush administration.

"Buying the War" is not a polemic. Rather, it is an aggressively and thoroughly reported critique of pre-war media coverage, which celebrates the handful of journalists -- particularly those with the old Knight-Ridder Washington bureau -- who asked the right questions, while solemnly detailing the reality that most media merely repeated administration claims as if they were truths that could not be debated.

Remarkably, and importantly, Moyers gets journalists who are still in the game to explain where things went wrong. For instance, Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz notes, "From August 2002 until the war was launched in March of 2003 there were about 140 front page pieces in the Washington Post making the administration's case for war. But there was only a handful of stories that ran on the front page that made the opposite case. Or, if not making the opposite case, raised questions."

What Moyers has produced is a chilling account of what happens in a republic where the media, for the most part, becomes a mouthpiece for the government. As Walter Pincus, one of the last of the great Washington reporters, explains to Moyers, "More and more the media become, I think, common carriers of administration statements and critics of the administration. We've sort of given up being independent on our own."

That surrender of independence destroys the whole matter of a free press, just as it prevents citizens from gaining the information and insight needed to be functional players in America's democratic experiment. But even in this dark interregnum, there is hope for freedom of the press -- and for the democracy it sustains. Bill Moyers is back on the air.

John Nichols is the Washington correspondent forThe Nation magazine.

We Need Antother Chris Wallace Bill Clinton Moment- About 500 of them

http://www.youtube.com/v/lT7yKfXN4p0

Standing With Harry Reid By John Kerry:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-kerry/standing-with-harry-reid_b_46910.html

Excerpt from Where Have All the Leaders Gone?

Excerpt from Where Have All the Leaders Gone? by Lee Iacocca
From Chapter 1: Had Enough?

Am I the only guy in this country who's fed up with what's happening? Where the hell is our outrage? We should be screaming bloody murder. We've got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we've got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can't even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car. But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say, "Stay the course."

Stay the course? You've got to be kidding. This is America, not the damned Titanic. I'll give you a sound bite: Throw the bums out!

You might think I'm getting senile, that I've gone off my rocker, and maybe I have. But someone has to speak up. I hardly recognize this country anymore. The President of the United States is given a free pass to ignore the Constitution, tap our phones, and lead us to war on a pack of lies. Congress responds to record deficits by passing a huge tax cut for the wealthy (thanks, but I don't need it). The most famous business leaders are not the innovators but the guys in handcuffs. While we're fiddling in Iraq, the Middle East is burning and nobody seems to know what to do. And the press is waving pom-poms instead of asking hard questions. That's not the promise of America my parents and yours traveled across the ocean for. I've had enough. How about you?

I'll go a step further. You can't call yourself a patriot if you're not outraged. This is a fight I'm ready and willing to have.

My friends tell me to calm down. They say, "Lee, you're eighty-two years old. Leave the rage to the young people." I'd love to -- as soon as I can pry them away from their iPods for five seconds and get them to pay attention. I'm going to speak up because it's my patriotic duty. I think people will listen to me. They say I have a reputation as a straight shooter. So I'll tell you how I see it, and it's not pretty, but at least it's real. I'm hoping to strike a nerve in those young folks who say they don't vote because they don't trust politicians to represent their interests. Hey, America, wake up. These guys work for us.

WHO ARE THESE GUYS, ANYWAY?

Why are we in this mess? How did we end up with this crowd in Washington? Well, we voted for them -- or at least some of us did. But I'll tell you what we didn't do. We didn't agree to suspend the Constitution. We didn't agree to stop asking questions or demanding answers. Some of us are sick and tired of people who call free speech treason. Where I come from that's a dictatorship, not a democracy.

And don't tell me it's all the fault of right-wing Republicans or liberal Democrats. That's an intellectually lazy argument, and it's part of the reason we're in this stew. We're not just a nation of factions. We're a people. We share common principles and ideals. And we rise and fall together.

Where are the voices of leaders who can inspire us to action and make us stand taller? What happened to the strong and resolute party of Lincoln? What happened to the courageous, populist party of FDR and Truman? There was a time in this country when the voices of great leaders lifted us up and made us want to do better. Where have all the leaders gone?

THE TEST OF A LEADER

I've never been Commander in Chief, but I've been a CEO. I understand a few things about leadership at the top. I've figured out nine points -- not ten (I don't want people accusing me of thinking I'm Moses). I call them the "Nine Cs of Leadership." They're not fancy or complicated. Just clear, obvious qualities that every true leader should have. We should look at how the current administration stacks up. Like it or not, this crew is going to be around until January 2009. Maybe we can learn something before we go to the polls in 2008. Then let's be sure we use the leadership test to screen the candidates who say they want to run the country. It's up to us to choose wisely.

So, here's my C list:

A leader has to show CURIOSITY. He has to listen to people outside of the "Yes, sir" crowd in his inner circle. He has to read voraciously, because the world is a big, complicated place. George W. Bush brags about never reading a newspaper. "I just scan the headlines," he says. Am I hearing this right? He's the President of the United States and he never reads a newspaper? Thomas Jefferson once said, "Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate for a moment to prefer the latter." Bush disagrees. As long as he gets his daily hour in the gym, with Fox News piped through the sound system, he's ready to go.

If a leader never steps outside his comfort zone to hear different ideas, he grows stale. If he doesn't put his beliefs to the test, how does he know he's right? The inability to listen is a form of arrogance. It means either you think you already know it all, or you just don't care. Before the 2006 election, George Bush made a big point of saying he didn't listen to the polls. Yeah, that's what they all say when the polls stink. But maybe he should have listened, because 70 percent of the people were saying he was on the wrong track. It took a "thumping" on election day to wake him up, but even then you got the feeling he wasn't listening so much as he was calculating how to do a better job of convincing everyone he was right.

A leader has to be CREATIVE, go out on a limb, be willing to try something different. You know, think outside the box. George Bush prides himself on never changing, even as the world around him is spinning out of control. God forbid someone should accuse him of flip-flopping. There's a disturbingly messianic fervor to his certainty. Senator Joe Biden recalled a conversation he had with Bush a few months after our troops marched into Baghdad. Joe was in the Oval Office outlining his concerns to the President -- the explosive mix of Shiite and Sunni, the disbanded Iraqi army, the problems securing the oil fields. "The President was serene," Joe recalled. "He told me he was sure that we were on the right course and that all would be well. 'Mr. President,' I finally said, 'how can you be so sure when you don't yet know all the facts?'" Bush then reached over and put a steadying hand on Joe's shoulder. "My instincts," he said. "My instincts." Joe was flabbergasted. He told Bush, "Mr. President, your instincts aren't good enough." Joe Biden sure didn't think the matter was settled. And, as we all know now, it wasn't.

Leadership is all about managing change -- whether you're leading a company or leading a country. Things change, and you get creative. You adapt. Maybe Bush was absent the day they covered that at Harvard Business School.

A leader has to COMMUNICATE. I'm not talking about running off at the mouth or spouting sound bites. I'm talking about facing reality and telling the truth. Nobody in the current administration seems to know how to talk straight anymore. Instead, they spend most of their time trying to convince us that things are not really as bad as they seem. I don't know if it's denial or dishonesty, but it can start to drive you crazy after a while. Communication has to start with telling the truth, even when it's painful. The war in Iraq has been, among other things, a grand failure of communication. Bush is like the boy who didn't cry wolf when the wolf was at the door. After years of being told that all is well, even as the casualties and chaos mount, we've stopped listening to him.

A leader has to be a person of CHARACTER. That means knowing the difference between right and wrong and having the guts to do the right thing. Abraham Lincoln once said, "If you want to test a man's character, give him power." George Bush has a lot of power. What does it say about his character? Bush has shown a willingness to take bold action on the world stage because he has the power, but he shows little regard for the grievous consequences. He has sent our troops (not to mention hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi citizens) to their deaths -- for what? To build our oil reserves? To avenge his daddy because Saddam Hussein once tried to have him killed? To show his daddy he's tougher? The motivations behind the war in Iraq are questionable, and the execution of the war has been a disaster. A man of character does not ask a single soldier to die for a failed policy.

A leader must have COURAGE. I'm talking about balls. (That even goes for female leaders.) Swagger isn't courage. Tough talk isn't courage. George Bush comes from a blue-blooded Connecticut family, but he likes to talk like a cowboy. You know, My gun is bigger than your gun. Courage in the twenty-first century doesn't mean posturing and bravado. Courage is a commitment to sit down at the negotiating table and talk.

If you're a politician, courage means taking a position even when you know it will cost you votes. Bush can't even make a public appearance unless the audience has been handpicked and sanitized. He did a series of so-called town hall meetings last year, in auditoriums packed with his most devoted fans. The questions were all softballs.

To be a leader you've got to have CONVICTION -- a fire in your belly. You've got to have passion. You've got to really want to get something done. How do you measure fire in the belly? Bush has set the all-time record for number of vacation days taken by a U.S. President -- four hundred and counting. He'd rather clear brush on his ranch than immerse himself in the business of governing. He even told an interviewer that the high point of his presidency so far was catching a seven-and-a-half-pound perch in his hand-stocked lake.

It's no better on Capitol Hill. Congress was in session only ninety-seven days in 2006. That's eleven days less than the record set in 1948, when President Harry Truman coined the term do-nothing Congress. Most people would expect to be fired if they worked so little and had nothing to show for it. But Congress managed to find the time to vote itself a raise. Now, that's not leadership.

A leader should have CHARISMA. I'm not talking about being flashy. Charisma is the quality that makes people want to follow you. It's the ability to inspire. People follow a leader because they trust him. That's my definition of charisma. Maybe George Bush is a great guy to hang out with at a barbecue or a ball game. But put him at a global summit where the future of our planet is at stake, and he doesn't look very presidential. Those frat-boy pranks and the kidding around he enjoys so much don't go over that well with world leaders. Just ask German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who received an unwelcome shoulder massage from our President at a G-8 Summit. When he came up behind her and started squeezing, I thought she was going to go right through the roof.

A leader has to be COMPETENT. That seems obvious, doesn't it? You've got to know what you're doing. More important than that, you've got to surround yourself with people who know what they're doing. Bush brags about being our first MBA President. Does that make him competent? Well, let's see. Thanks to our first MBA President, we've got the largest deficit in history, Social Security is on life support, and we've run up a half-a-trillion-dollar price tag (so far) in Iraq. And that's just for starters. A leader has to be a problem solver, and the biggest problems we face as a nation seem to be on the back burner.

You can't be a leader if you don't have COMMON SENSE. I call this Charlie Beacham's rule. When I was a young guy just starting out in the car business, one of my first jobs was as Ford's zone manager in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. My boss was a guy named Charlie Beacham, who was the East Coast regional manager. Charlie was a big Southerner, with a warm drawl, a huge smile, and a core of steel. Charlie used to tell me, "Remember, Lee, the only thing you've got going for you as a human being is your ability to reason and your common sense. If you don't know a dip of horseshit from a dip of vanilla ice cream, you'll never make it." George Bush doesn't have common sense. He just has a lot of sound bites. You know -- Mr.they'll-welcome-us-as-liberators -no-child-left-behind-heck-of-a-job -Brownie-mission-accomplished Bush.

Former President Bill Clinton once said, "I grew up in an alcoholic home. I spent half my childhood trying to get into the reality-based world -- and I like it here."

I think our current President should visit the real world once in a while.

THE BIGGEST C IS CRISIS

Leaders are made, not born. Leadership is forged in times of crisis. It's easy to sit there with your feet up on the desk and talk theory. Or send someone else's kids off to war when you've never seen a battlefield yourself. It's another thing to lead when your world comes tumbling down.

On September 11, 2001, we needed a strong leader more than any other time in our history. We needed a steady hand to guide us out of the ashes. Where was George Bush? He was reading a story about a pet goat to kids in Florida when he heard about the attacks. He kept sitting there for twenty minutes with a baffled look on his face. It's all on tape. You can see it for yourself. Then, instead of taking the quickest route back to Washington and immediately going on the air to reassure the panicked people of this country, he decided it wasn't safe to return to the White House. He basically went into hiding for the day -- and he told Vice President Dick Cheney to stay put in his bunker. We were all frozen in front of our TVs, scared out of our wits, waiting for our leaders to tell us that we were going to be okay, and there was nobody home. It took Bush a couple of days to get his bearings and devise the right photo op at Ground Zero.

That was George Bush's moment of truth, and he was paralyzed. And what did he do when he'd regained his composure? He led us down the road to Iraq -- a road his own father had considered disastrous when he was President. But Bush didn't listen to Daddy. He listened to a higher father. He prides himself on being faith based, not reality based. If that doesn't scare the crap out of you, I don't know what will.

A HELL OF A MESS

So here's where we stand. We're immersed in a bloody war with no plan for winning and no plan for leaving. We're running the biggest deficit in the history of the country. We're losing the manufacturing edge to Asia, while our once-great companies are getting slaughtered by health care costs. Gas prices are skyrocketing, and nobody in power has a coherent energy policy. Our schools are in trouble. Our borders are like sieves. The middle class is being squeezed every which way. These are times that cry out for leadership.

But when you look around, you've got to ask: "Where have all the leaders gone?" Where are the curious, creative communicators? Where are the people of character, courage, conviction, competence, and common sense? I may be a sucker for alliteration, but I think you get the point.

Name me a leader who has a better idea for homeland security than making us take off our shoes in airports and throw away our shampoo? We've spent billions of dollars building a huge new bureaucracy, and all we know how to do is react to things that have already happened.

Name me one leader who emerged from the crisis of Hurricane Katrina. Congress has yet to spend a single day evaluating the response to the hurricane, or demanding accountability for the decisions that were made in the crucial hours after the storm. Everyone's hunkering down, fingers crossed, hoping it doesn't happen again. Now, that's just crazy. Storms happen. Deal with it. Make a plan. Figure out what you're going to do the next time.

Name me an industry leader who is thinking creatively about how we can restore our competitive edge in manufacturing. Who would have believed that there could ever be a time when "the Big Three" referred to Japanese car companies? How did this happen -- and more important, what are we going to do about it?

Name me a government leader who can articulate a plan for paying down the debt, or solving the energy crisis, or managing the health care problem. The silence is deafening. But these are the crises that are eating away at our country and milking the middle class dry.

I have news for the gang in Congress. We didn't elect you to sit on your asses and do nothing and remain silent while our democracy is being hijacked and our greatness is being replaced with mediocrity. What is everybody so afraid of? That some bobblehead on Fox News will call them a name? Give me a break. Why don't you guys show some spine for a change?

HAD ENOUGH?

Hey, I'm not trying to be the voice of gloom and doom here. I'm trying to light a fire. I'm speaking out because I have hope. I believe in America. In my lifetime I've had the privilege of living through some of America's greatest moments. I've also experienced some of our worst crises -- the Great Depression, World War II, the Korean War, the Kennedy assassination, the Vietnam War, the 1970s oil crisis, and the struggles of recent years culminating with 9/11. If I've learned one thing, it's this: You don't get anywhere by standing on the sidelines waiting for somebody else to take action. Whether it's building a better car or building a better future for our children, we all have a role to play. That's the challenge I'm raising in this book. It's a call to action for people who, like me, believe in America. It's not too late, but it's getting pretty close. So let's shake off the horseshit and go to work. Let's tell 'em all we've had enough.
http://www.leadershipnow.com/leadershop/9781416532477excerpt.html

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Today's News

The Bush Administration's Deliberate Acts of Deceit Kevin Tillman - The Guardian-UK - Apr 25th, 2007 The Bush administration's treatment of the death of Pat Tillman was an egregious attempt to manipulate the public using calculated lies ...more	Bush Holds the Troops and Nation Hostage Paul Krugman - Welcome to Pottersville - Apr 25th, 2007 Bush surged more troops into Iraq after an election in which the public rejected his war — and then dared Congress to deny him funding ...more
Bill Moyers to the Rescue - The Media Buying and Selling of the Iraq War Editorial - Capital Times - Apr 25th, 2007 "How and why did the press buy Bush's pre-war lies, and what does it say about journalists helping to sort out fact from propaganda?" ...more	Cheney is Dead Wrong George McGovern - LA Times - Apr 25th, 2007 The fact is that Bush and Cheney misled the public when they implied that Iraq was involved in the terrorist attacks of 9/11 ...more
When Women Can't Choose Marie Cocco - IndyStar - Apr 25th, 2007 The placenta, which nourishes the fetus, was breaking up and sloughing off from her uterus. The condition can cause a woman to bleed to death ...more	Sheryl Crow and Karl Rove's Fight Joe Scarborough - Huffington Post - Apr 25th, 2007 Apparently Team Bush is tired of talking and has adapted a bunker mentality. Seven years of bad press have left Rove on edge ...more

Is The Rove Investigation A Smoke Screen

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW)

today sharply criticized the decision to allow the Office of Special Counsel (OSC) to launch a broad investigation into three brewing Administration scandals, alleging that the move "suggests the possibility that the White House is orchestrating a cover-up of its illegal and improper activities."

The Los Angeles Times reported today that "the Office of Special Counsel is about to launch a sweeping investigation into Karl Rove's political operations."

The investigation will touch on three major administration scandals, according to the report. "The new investigation, which will examine the firing of at least one U.S. attorney, missing White House e-mails, and White House efforts to keep presidential appointees attuned to Republican political priorities, could create a substantial new problem for the Bush White House," the Times explained.

But as editor for The Nation David Corn noted, OSC head Scott Bloch, a presidential appointee, has been marred with scandal himself. The Washington Post reported in February that the Office of Personnel Management's inspector general has been investigating Bloch for alleged intimidation of career appointees. In May 2005, the Post reported on Bloch's refusal to enforce a discrimination ban within his office. And in April 2005, Bloch's office was accused of political bias.

CREW Executive Director Melanie Sloan commented, "Having transformed OSC into a virtual black hole for legitimate complaints of retaliation, Bloch is decidedly not the right person to tackle the issues of misconduct and illegality that surround top White House officials." Sloan continued, "There is a serious question as to whether Bloch will just provide cover for an administration that has been covering for him."

LINK TO FULL CREW PRESS RELEASE

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

The GOP's Cyber Election Hit Squad

Go to Original

The GOP's Cyber Election Hit Squad

By Steven Rosenfeld and Bob Fitrakis
The Free Press

Did the most powerful Republicans in America have the computer capacity, software skills and electronic infrastructure in place on Election Night 2004 to tamper with the Ohio results to ensure George W. Bush's re-election?

The answer appears to be yes. There is more than ample documentation to show that on Election Night 2004, Ohio's "official" Secretary of State website - which gave the world the presidential election results - was redirected from an Ohio government server to a group of servers that contain scores of Republican web sites, including the secret White House e-mail accounts that have emerged in the scandal surrounding Attorney General Alberto Gonzales's firing of eight federal prosecutors.

Recent revelations have documented that the Republican National Committee (RNC) ran a secret White House e-mail system for Karl Rove and dozens of White House staffers. This high-tech system used to count and report the 2004 presidential vote- from server-hosting contracts, to software-writing services, to remote-access capability, to the actual server usage logs themselves - must be added to the growing congressional investigations.

Numerous tech-savvy bloggers, starting with the online investigative consortium epluribusmedia.org and their November 2006 article cross-posted by contributor luaptifer to Dailykos, and Joseph Cannon's blog at Cannonfire.blogspot.com, outed the RNC tech network. That web-hosting firm is SMARTech Corp. of Chattanooga, TN, operating out of the basement in the old Pioneer Bank building. The firm hosts scores of Republican websites, including georgewbush.com, gop.com and rnc.org.

The software created for the Ohio secretary of state's Election Night 2004 website was created by GovTech Solutions, a firm co-founded by longtime GOP computing guru Mike Connell. He also redesigned the Bush campaign's website in 2000 and told "Inside Business" magazine in 1999, "I wouldn't be where I am today without the Bush campaign and the Bush family because the Bushes truly are about family and I'm loyal to my network."

Ohio's Cedarville University, a Christian school with 3,100 students, issued a press release on January 13, 2005 describing how faculty member Dr. Alan Dillman's computing company Government Consulting Resources, Ltd, worked with these Republican-connected companies to tally the vote on Election Night 2004.

"Dillman personally led the effort from the GCR side, teaming with key members of Blackwell's staff," the release said. "GCR teamed with several other firms - including key players such as GovTech Solutions, which performed the software development - to deliver the end result. SMARTech provided the backup and additional system capacity, and Mercury Interactive performed the stress testing."

On Election Night 2004, the Republican Party not only controlled the vote-counting process in Ohio, the final presidential swing state, through a secretary of state who was a co-chair of the Bush campaign, but it also controlled the technology that allowed the tally of the vote in Ohio's 88 counties to be reported to the media and voters.

Privatizing elections and allowing known partisans to run a key presidential vote count is troubling enough. But the reason Congress must investigate these high-tech ties is there is abundant evidence that Republicans could have used this computing network to delay announcing the winner of Ohio's 2004 election while tinkering with the results.

Did Ohio Republican Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell or other GOP operatives inflate the president's vote totals to secure George W. Bush's margin of victory? On Election Night 2004, many of the totals reported by the Secretary of State were based on local precinct results that were impossible. In Clyde, Ohio, a Republican haven, Bush won big after 131 percent voter turnout. In Republican Perry County, two precincts came in at 124 percent and 120 percent respectively. In Gahanna Ward 1, precinct B, Bush received 4,258 votes despite the fact that only 638 people voted for president. In Concord Southwest in Miami County, the certified election results proudly proclaimed at 679 out of 689 registered voters cast ballots, a 98.55 percent turnout. FreePress.org later found that only 547 voters had signed in.

These strange election results were routed by county election officials through Ohio's Secretary of State's office, through partisan IT providers and software, and the final results were hosted out of a computer based in Tennessee announcing the winner. The Cedarville University releases boasted the system "was running like a champ." It said, "The system kept running through the early morning hours as users from around the world looked to Ohio for their election results."

All the facts are not in, but enough is known to warrant a serious congressional inquiry. Beginning with a timeline on Election Night after a national media consortium exit poll predicted Democrat John Kerry would win Ohio, the first Ohio returns were from the state's Democratic urban strongholds, showing Kerry in the lead.

This was the case until shortly after midnight on Wednesday, Nov. 5, when for roughly 90 minutes the Ohio election results reported on the Secretary of State's website were frozen. Shortly before 2am EST election returns came in from a handful of the state's rural Republican enclaves, bumping Bush's numbers over the top.

It was known Bush would carry rural Ohio. But the vote totals from these last-to-report counties, where Karl Rove said there was an unprecedented late-hour evangelical vote giving the White House a moral mandate, were highly improbable and suggested vote count fraud to pad Bush's numbers. Just how flimsy the reported GOP totals were was not known on Election Night and has not been examined by the national media. But an investigation by the House Judiciary Committee Democratic staff begun after Election Day 2004 and completed before the Electoral College met on Jan. 6, 2005, was first to publicly point to vote count fraud in rural Ohio.

That report, "Preserving Democracy: What Went Wrong in Ohio," cited near-impossible vote totals, including 19,000 votes that were mysteriously added at the close of tallying the vote in Miami County. The report cited more than 3,000 apparently fraudulent voter registrations - all dating back to the same day in 1977 in Perry County. The report noted a homeland security emergency was declared in Warren County, prompting its ballots to be taken to a police-guarded unauthorized warehouse and counted away from public scrutiny, despite local media protests.

In our book, "What Happened in Ohio: A Documentary Record of Theft and Fraud in the 2004 Election" (The New Press, 2006), we go beyond the House Judiciary Democratic report to analyze precinct-by-precinct returns and we print copies of the documents upon which we base our findings. We found many vote-count irregularities based on examining the certified results, precinct-level records and the actual ballots.

The most eyebrow-raising example to emerge from parsing precinct results was finding 10,500 people in three Ohio's 'Bible Belt' counties who'voted to re-elect Bush and voted in favor of gay marriage, if the official results are true. That was in Warren, Butler and Clermont Counties. The most plausible explanation for this anomaly, which defies logic and was not seen anywhere else in the country, was Kerry votes were flipped to Bush while the rest of the ballot was left alone. While we have some theories about how that might have been done by hand in a police-guarded warehouse, could full Republican control of the vote-counting software and servers also have played a role?

The early returns on the Secretary of State's website suggest Blackwell's vote-tallying and reporting system could manipulate large blocks of votes. Screenshots taken during the early returns in Hamilton County, where Cincinnati is located, gave Green Party presidential candidate David Cobb 39,541 votes, which was clearly incorrect. Similarly, early return screenshots in Lucas County, where Toledo is located, gave Cobb 4,685 votes, another clear error. (The screenshots are in our book). Were these innocent computer glitches or was a GOP vote-counting and reporting system moving and dumping Kerry votes?

There's more evidence the late returns from Ohio's Republican-majority countryside were not accurate. During the spring and summer of 2006, several teams of investigators associated with Freepress.org, notably one team led by Ron Baiman, a Ph.D. statistician and researcher at Chicago's Loyola University, examined the actual election records from precincts in Miami and Clermont Counties. These records - from poll books where voters sign in, to examining the actual ballots themselves - were not publicly accessible until last year, under orders from Ohio's former Republican Secretary of State. Baiman compared the number of voters who signed in with the total number of votes attributed to precincts. He found hundreds of "phantom" votes, where the number of voter signatures was less than the reported vote total. That discrepancy also suggests vote count fraud.

There was other evidence in the observable paper trail of padding the vote, including instances in Delaware County where in one precinct, 359 of the final punch-card ballots cast on Election Day contained no Kerry votes, which means the day's last voters all were Bush supporters, which also is improbable. In another Delaware County precinct, Bush allegedly received the last 210 votes of the day. Were partisan local election workers trying to mask what was happening electronically to tilt the vote count?

Ohio's 2004 ballots were to be destroyed last September. However that fate was blocked by a federal judge, who ruled in the early phase of trying a Voting Rights Act lawsuit that accused Ohio officials of suppressing the minority vote in Ohio's cities. The state's new Secretary of State and Attorney General, both Democrats, are now holding settlement talks for that suit, suggesting its claims have merit. However, unlike Florida after the 2000 election, there still has yet to be a full accounting of Ohio's presidential vote.

What's clear, however, is the highest ranks of the Republican Party's political wing, including White House counselor Karl Rove, a handful of the party's most tech-savvy computer gurus and the former Republican Ohio Secretary of State, created, owned and operated the vote-counting system that reported George W. Bush's re-election to the presidency. Moreover, it appears the votes that gave Bush his 118,775-vote margin of victory - the boost from Ohio's countryside - have yet to be confirmed as accurate. Instead, the reporting to date suggests that what happened on the ground and across Ohio's rural precincts is at odds with the vote tally released on Election Night.

As numerous congressional committees attempt to retrieve and examine the secret White House e-mails surrounding Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' firing of eight federal prosecutors, those panels must also probe the privatization and partisan manipulation of the 2004 presidential vote count in Ohio. The lessons from 2004 have yet to be f'lly understood or learned.

Similarly, the House Administration Committee, which is expected to soon mark up H.R. 811, a bill by Rep. Rush Holt, D-NJ, to regulate electronic voting technology, also must take heed. The vote count and outcome of American elections cannot be left in the hands of known partisans, who can control and manipulate how the votes are counted and what is reported to the media and American people.

Public vote counts on private, partisan servers and secret proprietary software have no place in a democracy.

--------

Bob Fitrakis is a political science professor and attorney in the King Lincoln Bronzeville civil rights lawsuit against Ken Blackwell. Fitrakis, Rosenfeld and Harvey Wasserman are authors of What Happened in Ohio? A Documentary Record of Theft and Fraud in the 2004 Election, (New Press, 2006).

First Online-Only '08 Debates

Media websites Yahoo, Slate and the Huffington Post have joined together to host to two online-only presidential debates.

The debates - one for invited '08 Democratic candidates and another for invited GOP '08 candidates - will be held after Labor Day.

PBS intellectual heavyweight Charlie Rose has signed on to moderate.

"We intend for these debates to be a groundbreaking mix of old and new traditions in politics," said Rose in a press release announcement.

The plan is for candidates to debate live on the Internet from whatever location they choose.

The news sites say voters will have the opportunity to ask the candidates questions in real time.

Buying The War

Preview of "Buying the War"

How the administration marketed the war to the American people has been well covered, but critical questions remain: How and why did the press buy it, and what does it say about the role of journalists in helping the public sort out fact from propaganda?

Bill Moyers Journal:
Buying the War

Wednesday, April 25, 2007 at 9 PM on PBS (check local listings)

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Monday, April 23, 2007

Today's News

Back Bush's Iraq Strategy ... Then Bring Back the Draft Joseph L. Galloway - McClatchy - Apr 22nd, 2007 The question for those who still support Bush's strategy to stretch out the war until he's left office, are you willing to support the draft ...more	Gun Violence Editorial - Philadelphia Inquirer - Apr 22nd, 2007 The gun lobby has framed the gun violence debate perversely to its advantage and done a powerful job of it. It's time for reality ...more
Lights, Camera, Killing: America's Deadly Craving for Celebrity Rod Liddle - The Times-UK - Apr 22nd, 2007 Everything, especially in America, is appropriated for the purposes of entertainment nowadays. The more vile and murderous the better ...more	Tom DeLay, Like Most Republicans Today, Delights in Deceit Roger Buoen - Star Tribune - Apr 22nd, 2007 Instead of coming clean on ethical and political problems, Tom DeLay blames liberals and expiates his trespasses by finding Jesus ...more
Bush - A Man Who Never Knows When to Shut Up Tim Grieve - War Room - Apr 22nd, 2007 "Nobody ought to ever hope to be a war president, or a presidency -- a president during war. But that's how I see the world." ...more	US Losing Another War...in Asia Fareed Zakaria - Newsweek - Apr 22nd, 2007 'You have many friends [here]. But the attitude of many Asian nations is that China will be here for 2,000 years. America may go away.' ...more

Karl Rove Vs. Sheryl Crow

Karl Rove Gets Thrown Under the Stop Global Warming Bus

Mr. Rove immediately regurgitated the official Administration position on global warming which is that the US spends more on researching the causes than any other country.

They felt compelled to remind him that the research is done and the results are in (www.IPCC.ch). Mr. Rove exploded with even more venom. Like a spoiled child throwing a tantrum, Mr. Rove launched into a series of illogical arguments regarding China not doing enough thus neither should we. (Since when do we follow China's lead?)

At some point during his ramblings, They became heartbroken to think that the President of the United States and his top advisers have partially built a career on global warming not being real. We have been telling college students across the country for the past two weeks that government does not change until people demand it... well, listen up folks, everyone had better get a lot louder because the message clearly is not getting through.

What on Earth Mr. Rove was talking about when he said "the American people." If more than 60% of American voters, the Supreme Court, over 400 cities, the US National Academy of Sciences, numerous major US corporations, and others don't constitute the American people, then what does? The truth is, if this administration cared one iota about the American people, they would have addressed this problem long ago, and the sad reality is that this problem has been left to us, all of us, since the current administration has abandoned this issue entirely. In the absence of true leadership, we must guide ourselves. We can solve this, but we had better act fast.

www.stopglobalwarming.org

Saturday, April 21, 2007

Today's News

Iraq's Deaths Belong to Us Polly Toynbee - CommonDreams - Apr 21st, 2007 In Iraq, 200 people were blown to bits in what witnesses called "a swimming pool of blood" with "pieces of flesh all over the place" ...more	Maybe Gonzales won't Recall His Painful Day on the Hill Dana Milbank - Washington Post - Apr 21st, 2007 Instead of contrition, the attorney general treated the committee to a mixture of arrogance, combativeness and amnesia ...more
Mass Murders, Women and Guns: What We're Not Getting About VA Tech James Ridgeway - Mother Jones - Apr 21st, 2007 Lax gun laws combined with precious little awareness of the role violence against women plays in psychopathic behavior have led to tragic results ...more	Republicans Still Push Fiction of Widespread Voting Fraud Cynthia Tucker - Daily Chronicle - Apr 21st, 2007 The Bush-Rove axis of mendacity has dealt in dissembling for so long that it's not clear they are able to recognize the truth any longer ...more
Bush's Iraq Version of 'Who's on First' Editorial - Toledo Blade - Apr 21st, 2007 No one wants to be in charge of a war that was started on false pretenses and has been prosecuted without any coherent policy ...more	Obama Closes the Gap in National Polls Blake and Youngman - Zogby - Apr 21st, 2007 The three closest polls, all conducted in the last 10 days, come after Obama's fundraising totals for the first quarter rivaled Clinton's

Friday, April 20, 2007

Today's News

On the Mindless Menace of Violence Robert F. Kennedy - Apr 20th, 2007 Violence breeds violence, repression brings retaliation, and only a cleansing of our whole society can remove this sickness from our soul ...more	Gonzales' Tortured Testimony John Nichols - The Nation - Apr 20th, 2007 It was a pathetic performance, especially when Gonzales struggled to respond to the instances where his testimony contradicted his own actions ...more
Obama on Our Violent Culture Ruth Coniff - The Progressive - Apr 20th, 2007 "But I hope there will be some discussion of violence in all its forms...[In American culture] we glorify it, encourage it, ignore it..." ...more	Bush's Fascist Justice Jonathan Chait - Los Angeles Times - Apr 20th, 2007 The U.S. attorney scandal is about whether Bush sought to subvert democracy by turning the federal judicial system into a weapon of the ruling party ...more
Time for PBS to Go Robert Parry - Consortium News - Apr 20th, 2007 PBS is broadcasting what amounts to a neoconservative propaganda series including a full hour info-mercial for Bush's invasion of Iraq ...more	Wild West Era Had Stricter Gun Control Than America Has Today Mark McDonald - Beggars Can Be Choosers - Apr 20th, 2007 The Wild West era, in fact, was considerably less bloody than the violent reputation it has garnered over the years ...more

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Today's News

Brutal Truth: Massacre is Part of Everyday Life in America Rupert Cornwell - The Independent-UK - Apr 18th, 2007 The Coverage is formulaic. There is no soul searching, no wondering what might be wrong with a society where such things happen so frequently ...more	Iraq Leaving GOP in Peril Charlie Cook - MSNBC - Apr 18th, 2007 More ominous for the GOP is that independents are coming down on the anti-war side, and portends peril for Republicans in 2008 ...more
America's Love of Guns Editorial - New Zealand Herald - Apr 18th, 2007 The guns that feature in campus shootings are not generally hunting rifles and the like. They are for killing people, nothing else ...more	Giuliani's Dubious Kind of Leadership Joe Conason - NY Observer - Apr 18th, 2007 If that sounds like the same primitive mind-set that created our current disaster, that's because Giuliani is a fervent admirer of Bush ...more
Virginia Tech...Another American Massacre Editorial - Capital Times - Apr 18th, 2007 If America can do nothing about its violent streak, the NRA will argue, it is silly to place limits on gun ownership. Better to arm ...more	US Military to Iraqis: Sorry We Shot Your Kid, Here's 500 Bucks Greg Mitchell - Editor and Publisher - Apr 18th, 2007 What price do we place on the life of a child shot by our soldier who mistook his book bag for a bomb satchel? $500 ...more

Monday, April 16, 2007

News Quotes

Impossible to Sustain Bush's Iraq 'Surge' David Sarasohn - ST Paul Pioneer Press - Apr 16th, 2007 Once again Bush announced a policy - increasing U.S. forces in Iraq - and only later looked for a way to carry it out ...more	Bush: Always Too Little Too Late Trudy Rubin - Philadelphia Inquirer - Apr 16th, 2007 The Bush White House seems driven by a secret doctrine that has gotten little public attention: The Doctrine of Two Years Too Late ...more
Bush is Walking in Nixon's Shadow Adam Cohen - Rutland Herald - Apr 16th, 2007 U.S. vs. Nixon is the Supreme Court's major ruling on executive privilege: Presidents cannot simply declare what information is privileged ...more	Bush's Troop Support - Shipping their Dead Bodies Home FedEx Editorial - Toledo Blade - Apr 16th, 2007 The bodies of troops were unloaded from a commercial flight with a forklift. The remains were then turned over to relatives in a warehouse ...more
A Whole Lot of Stupid Going On Leonard Pitts JR - Seattle Times - Apr 16th, 2007 In this school, coarseness is its own justification, rudeness its own reward. One pushes the boundaries because they are there ...more	The Democrats' New Direction Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid - Orlando Sentinel - Apr 16th, 2007 Our troops and our citizens cannot afford to remain in an Iraqi civil war when the fifth anniversary of Baghdad's fall comes round next April ...more

Sunday, April 15, 2007

Sunday Funnies

CLICK EACH CARTOON TO ENLARGE

Drew Sheneman: Three more months

Bill Day: Radio hero

Mike Keefe: Bush's support

Scott Stantis: All aboard!

Steve Sack: Extended tours

Mikhaela Reid: The non-apology

Don Wright: Storm surge...surge

Bob Englehart: The Bush mess

Matt Davies: Tour extension

News Quotes

Bush's War Vets are Returning Home and Homeless Jonathan Curiel - San Francisco Chronicle - Apr 15th, 2007 Tens of thousands of Americans who went to Iraq and Afghanistan will eventually become homeless -- a number that VA is woefully unprepared for ...more	'Loyal Bushies' Lost the Emails...Not Likely John Nichols - Capital Times - Apr 15th, 2007 The Senate's interest in the Wisconsin case indicates that the inquiry is examining White House pressures on prosecutors who were retained ...more
The Humanitarian Crisis in Iraq Can't Wait for Bush Baltimore Sun - Apr 15th, 2007 Director of the International Committee of the Red Cross warns that the security crackdown in Baghdad hasn't done anything to improve security ...more	Bush Needs a War Czar Because He isn't Up to the Job Editorial NY Times via IHT - Apr 15th, 2007 We have long suspected that there is no one in charge of the Iraq war. How else can you explain four years of multifront failures ...more
Silence of the War Hawks Neil Clark - The Guardian-UK - Apr 15th, 2007 As the humanitarian crisis in Iraq goes from bad to worse, the war propagandists are turning to more trivial matters ...more	The Sirens of Tyrants Welcome to Pottersville - Apr 15th, 2007 I no longer hold out hope for our perfectibility. Survival is just about the limits of our expectations ...more

Mistrustful of the War Machine Dave Peyton - Charleston Daily Mail - Apr 30th, 2007 The day we start believing everything someone in the government - military or non-military - shoves at us is the day America is doomed ...more	Bush's Personnel Denial John W. Mashek - US News and World Report - Apr 30th, 2007 No president wants to admit he has made poor choices in selecting advisers. Bush, however, praises them for blunders the public sees right through ...more
Bush Has a Lot of Apologizing to Do Stanley I. Kutler - The Capital Times - Apr 30th, 2007 When accusing Congress of ignoring Generals, Bush might remember that he removed a lot of Generals because he did not want to listen to them ...more	Congress Should Deliver War-Funding Bill in a Flag-Draped Coffin Mary MacElveen - Apr 30th, 2007 The war supplemental bill should be delivered to Bush in a flag-draped coffin signifying what this war has cost the American people ...more
White House Turning Serious Iraq Debate into Partisan Squabble EJ Dionne - IndyStar - Apr 30th, 2007 Bush cannot make the case that his Iraq policies have succeeded, so he is turning an honest debate over policy into a partisan squabble ...more	All the President's Press Frank Rich - Welcome to Pottersville - Apr 30th, 2007 Iraq's sole recent democratic achievement is to ban the release of casualty figures, lest they challenge Bush's happy talk about 'progress' in Iraq ...more

Sinister Symmetry - Car Bomb Deaths Soar During Iraq's Surge Mike Davis - The Guardian - Apr 27th, 2007 Since the "surge" began in February, Sunni and al-Qaida insurgents have mounted at least 93 car bombings, killing or wounding more than 4,000 ...more	A Failure in Leadership: Bush's Lapdog Generals LT Col. Paul Yingling - Armed Forces Journal - Apr 27th, 2007 After going into Iraq with too few troops and no plan for stabilization, the generals did not accurately portray the insurgency to the public ...more
Another Dubious Attorney Firing Editorial NYTimes via Truthout - Apr 27th, 2007 Republican Renzi was locked in a close re-election battle last fall when the local U.S. attorney, Paul Charlton, was investigating him for corruption ...more	Serving British Soldier Exposes Horror of Iraq War Terri Judd - The Independent - Apr 27th, 2007 "Basra is lost, they are in control now. It's a full-scale riot and the Government are just trying to save face," said Private Paul Barton ...more
The Myth of General Petraeus as Iraq Savior Arianna Huffington - The Huffington Post - Apr 27th, 2007 The sooner Bush stops waiting for a play-acting god to intervene, the sooner we can do the right thing and bring our troops home ...more	What Happens After Bush Vetoes the Military Funding Bill Erik Leaver - AlterNet - Apr 27th, 2007 If Bush can't agree to a plan like the one passed this week, then he really does want a war with no end ...more

Monday, April 30, 2007

Mistrustful of the War Machine

Bush's Personnel Denial

Bush Has a Lot of Apologizing to Do

Congress Should Deliver War-Funding Bill in a Flag-Draped Coffin

White House Turning Serious Iraq Debate into Partisan Squabble

All the President's Press

Saturday, April 28, 2007

Friday, April 27, 2007

U.S. Media Have Lost The Will To Dig DeepA Changed News Culture Has Let Several Important Investigative Stories Slip Through the Cracks.

Sinister Symmetry - Car Bomb Deaths Soar During Iraq's Surge

A Failure in Leadership: Bush's Lapdog Generals

Another Dubious Attorney Firing

Serving British Soldier Exposes Horror of Iraq War

The Myth of General Petraeus as Iraq Savior

What Happens After Bush Vetoes the Military Funding Bill

Thursday, April 26, 2007

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

The Bush Administration's Deliberate Acts of Deceit

Bush Holds the Troops and Nation Hostage

Bill Moyers to the Rescue - The Media Buying and Selling of the Iraq War

Cheney is Dead Wrong

When Women Can't Choose

Sheryl Crow and Karl Rove's Fight

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

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Monday, April 23, 2007

Back Bush's Iraq Strategy ... Then Bring Back the Draft

Gun Violence

Lights, Camera, Killing: America's Deadly Craving for Celebrity

Tom DeLay, Like Most Republicans Today, Delights in Deceit

Bush - A Man Who Never Knows When to Shut Up

US Losing Another War...in Asia

Saturday, April 21, 2007

Iraq's Deaths Belong to Us

Maybe Gonzales won't Recall His Painful Day on the Hill

Mass Murders, Women and Guns: What We're Not Getting About VA Tech

Republicans Still Push Fiction of Widespread Voting Fraud

Bush's Iraq Version of 'Who's on First'

Obama Closes the Gap in National Polls

Friday, April 20, 2007

On the Mindless Menace of Violence

Gonzales' Tortured Testimony

Obama on Our Violent Culture

Bush's Fascist Justice

Time for PBS to Go

Wild West Era Had Stricter Gun Control Than America Has Today

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Brutal Truth: Massacre is Part of Everyday Life in America

Iraq Leaving GOP in Peril

America's Love of Guns

Giuliani's Dubious Kind of Leadership

Virginia Tech...Another American Massacre

US Military to Iraqis: Sorry We Shot Your Kid, Here's 500 Bucks

Monday, April 16, 2007

Impossible to Sustain Bush's Iraq 'Surge'

Bush: Always Too Little Too Late

Bush is Walking in Nixon's Shadow

Bush's Troop Support - Shipping their Dead Bodies Home FedEx

A Whole Lot of Stupid Going On

The Democrats' New Direction

Sunday, April 15, 2007

Sunday Funnies

Bush's War Vets are Returning Home and Homeless

'Loyal Bushies' Lost the Emails...Not Likely

The Humanitarian Crisis in Iraq Can't Wait for Bush

Bush Needs a War Czar Because He isn't Up to the Job

Silence of the War Hawks

The Sirens of Tyrants

VIDEO NEWS WIRE

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U.S. Media Have Lost The Will To Dig Deep
A Changed News Culture Has Let Several Important Investigative Stories Slip Through the Cracks.