Voter Fraud Hypocrisy

The following is taken from the January 9, 2008, Supreme Court Hearing on voter fraud.

There is no requirement that the State show evidence of past in-person voter impersonation for the State’s interest in preventing such fraud to qualify as important. A State need not wait to suffer a harm; it can adopt prophylactic measures to prevent it from occurring in the first place. That is particularly true in a situation, like voter fraud, where the temptation is obvious and the consequences of undeterred and undetected violations are enormous.

Brief for the United States as amicus curiae, Paul D. Clement, Solicitor General

I suppose. I don't know if I can say significant. The situation has existed for now a number of years, and the salient fact here is that there's not a single recorded example of voter impersonation fraud.

Paul M. Smith, Esq.; on behalf of the Petitioners

... if there were that kind of as-applied challenge, one of the virtues of it would be that the remedy at the end of the day would not be to strike the statute down on its face, ...

Paul D. Clement, Esq., Solicitor General, Department of Justice, Washington, D.C.; on behalf of the United States, as amicus curiae, supporting the Respondents

Note: An as-applied challenge means you can't go to court until after after you have been affected. A facial challenge means you can go to court because you expect to be affected.

Mr. Clement is arguing that the state has the right to be pre-emptive by passing a law to prevent people from committing a crime, even though there are no cases where the crime has been committed. However, citizens do not have the right to be pre-emptive by questioning a law, even though it is obvious that they will be affected if the law stands.

In other words, it is better to prevent a few people from voting because they might vote fraudulently, than to stop a law that will definitely prevent citizens from legally voting. This whole problem could be solved by putting a little purple stamp on voter's hands. Then everyone would have one, and only one, vote.

http://www.brennancenter.org/dynamic/subpages/download_file_51017.pdf
http://www.supremecourtus.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/07-21.pdf

Senator Jeff Sessions is Responding

It must be one of the wonders of the election season. Jeff Sessions has been responding to my letters. They are even on topic, although full of Bush talking points. Could he actually be worried about his upcoming election?

Now if I could just get him to answer a few of my questions.

- How is it pro-life to vote against SCHIP?

- How can he accept government-run health care, but deny it to the rest of us?

- Why is amnesty great for big telecom companies, but bad for illegal immigrants?

- How can he say he supports the troops if he votes down funding just because it asks the president to try to bring the troops home? How can he vote against giving soldiers time off between deployments?

Oh what a tangled web

Riddle:
What do Karl Rove, a contested election, US Attorneys, criminal prosecution of a Democrat, and a singing Canary have in common?

Answer:
They are all mentioned in an affidavit obtained by TIME magazine about the 2002 Alabama Governor’s election.

The White House scandals have spread so extensively, they are beginning to interact with each other. Some of the threads have been brought together in the May 21, 2007 affidavit made by Dana Jill Simpson.

Time article

The Players:
Karl Rove – Political consultant
Don Siegelman – Governor of Alabama 1999-2003
Bob Riley – Governor of Alabama 2003-present
William Canary - Riley adviser
Leura Canary – wife of William Canary, and US Attorney for the Middle District of Alabama
Alice Martin - US Attorney for the Middle District of Alabama
Dana Jill Simpson – Lawyer and volunteer in Riley's 2002 campaign

History:
The 2002 Alabama Governor’s election, was between Don Siegelman (incumbent) and Bob Riley. The initial returns showed Riley narrowly losing to Siegelman. A recount of the Baldwin County votes, after Democratic Party observers had gone home for the night, put Riley in the lead. Siegelman requested a recount. The recount was rejected by the Alabama Court System. Siegelman considered appealing to Federal courts, but decided to concede.

Don Siegelman was the subject of various corruption investigations. One ended in a one-day trial. Charges were dropped after the judge, the third one assigned, threw out most of the evidence. In September 2005, Siegelman announced that he was running for governor in 2006 election. The next month Siegelman, and others, were indicted on new charges of racketeering, bribery, and extortion. On June 6, 2006, Siegelman lost the Democratic primary to Lucy Baxley. On June 29, 2006, he was convicted in 7 of the 33 counts. He was acquitted on indictment's most serious allegations of a widespread RICO conspiracy.

Allegations in the affidavit:
The affidavit describes a conference call on November 18, 2002, which involved a group of senior aides to Bob Riley. The call focused on how the Riley campaign could get Siegelman to withdraw his challenge to the 2002 results.

According to Simpson's statement, William Canary, said "not to worry about Don Siegelman" because "'his girls' would take care of" the governor. Canary then made clear that "his girls" was a reference to his wife, Leura Canary, the U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Alabama, and Alice Martin, the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Alabama. William Canary also stated that he had the help of a powerful friend in Washington, Karl Rove. Rove had spoken to the Department of Justice, and they were already pursuing Siegelman on a variety of charges.

So now,
we have Karl Rove, election tampering, and US Attorneys implicated together in an affidavit given by a Republican political worker.
Can we impeach them yet?

Hello Congressional Lurkers

Senator Richard Shelby, Senator Jeff Sessions, Representative Jo Bonner. This seems to have caught the attention of your notification service on my last post, so I'll try it again.

Just what do you people spend your day doing? As nice as it is to be heard for a change, how much time do ya'll spend reading obscure little blogs like this one? What made this especially amusing is the topic of my last post. I was commenting on how unresponsive some representatives are. So what happens? Congressional staffers spend time lurking, and don't even respond.

You don't spend much time reading the bills that you are voting on. All that pork gets slipped in somehow. Did you notice the military access to school records requirement in the No Child Left Behind bill? How about those back door US attorney appointments in the latest Patriot Act? And now you're thinking that maybe we should have kept Habeas Corpus when we made torture legal.

You don't spend much time writing bills either. Why bother when someone from the group being regulated is willing to write them for you? No charge.

You have been known to spend time on petty activities such as trashing Wikipedia entries for your fellow congress people.

Sounds like a great job. It even includes health care. Where do I apply?

The Senator Jeff Sessions Response Challenge

I don't expect a response to every form letter that I send to my reps, but if I go to the trouble of composing a letter, it's nice to know that someone read it. My senators and representative seem to have a different opinion.

Senator Richard Shelby is the most responsive of the lot. He's very good with the email acknowledgement, and he usually follows up with a letter by snail mail. The letter is mostly talking points, but it is on topic. He doesn't always answer. I'm still waiting for a response to my question of whether he is American first and Republican second, or vice versa. All the same, if there are applicable talking points, he does reply.

Representative Jo Bonner has a working auto response on his web site. Once or twice, he even followed up with a detailed response, even if it was nothing but talking points.

Senator Jeff Sessions is in a world unto himself. As best as I can tell, his in box goes straight to the great bit bucket in the sky. Not a single peep from him.

Which leads me to my challenge, what does it take to get a response from a mute representative? I've named the challenge in honor of my own resolute Senator, but I'm interested in hearing what has worked, or not worked, with any other non-responder.