The St. Petersburg FlA Times paper, among the posts of voter experiences was a scripted sounding complaint about MoveOn - their information tables, were "too close" to the doors of the poll place - as if this was somehow "intimidating"! Then an hour later, we found the neardentical story in an AP news story.Several "news hounds" say they saw the same story planted elsewhere - all using the near-same "script." As in FREEPER! Now check out this AP story - It is STUFFED with GOP accusations of dirty tricks against Dems - with almost NO ref. to Repug dirty tricks (despite the fact that the Repugs are the major perps here). What are they doing? Preparing their excuses for losing ahead of time?

Josh Marshall blogs about "a flyer sent around Florida by an outfit called the Florida Leadership Council. The headline reads: 'First Day of School: Eighth Grade South Florida Middle School, 2007'. Under that is a class of school children wearing gas masks and beneath that is the following faux-AP story ... (AP) Florida Red Zone -- August 14th, 2007 -- President Kerry warned parents and children in South Florida that mandatory radiation and chemical gear would be required to be worn 'for the forseeable future' since the Suitcase Dirty Bomb terrorist attack on South Florida in the spring. The first day of school was chaotic, as teachers and school officials attempted to bring some ... Click here to see the actual flyer with your own lyin' eyes. "

Barry Horston of the Cincinnatti Post reveals that GOP operatives in Ohio had, before a judge ruled against them, planned to systematically target and harass new young voters in heavily Democratic voting districts. They had even made up a 26-page training booklet (paid for by corporate cash, undoubtedly) on how to harass voters just enough NOT to get themselves thrown out of polling places. Unbelievable!

James S. Henry, a free-lance journalist, lawyer, and managing director of strategy consulting firm Sag Harbor Group was tackled, thrown to the ground and arrested by police for photographing voters waiting outside the Palm Beach County elections headquarters The police claimed that his actions were "compromising the elections process and intimidating people that were attempting to wait to vote." Yeah, right - but allowing Repugs to personally confront voters, give them the third-degree and demand to see personal info is NOT? No - not in the world of Jeb Bush politics. The new law that allowed Henry to be nabbed was an "overnight wonder" concocted by top election fraudmeister Theresa LePore. LePore claims the restrictions were prompted by voter complaints. But the law was enacted THE SAME DAY that Democrats.com and other activist sites issued an all-points call to citizens to record events at polling places with video cameras.

A.merican P.ropaganda: "The superintendent of Milwaukee schools halted a get-out-the-vote program involving students after complaints were raised about its [ALLEGED] link to a pro-Kerry organization. The students at 33 Milwaukee schools called voters and went door to door in minority neighborhoods and areas with historically low voter turnout, urging people to cast ballots in Tuesday's election....Supporters said the youngsters were getting a valuable lesson in democracy and denied any partisanship, insisting the students did not wear political buttons or clothing and did not encourage people to vote one way or another. 'The students are bearing the brunt of a decision based on political pressure.' " Note how AP ran this story - but has neglected to mention the "little story" that broke this week about College Repug groups who have defrauded elderly voters of $6.3 MILLION

Today's young Repugs - the party's 'best and brightest' - are a pack of greedy, conscienceless, con artists! The Seattle Times reports: "The College RNC has raised $6.3 million this year through an aggressive and misleading fund-raising campaign that collected money from senior citizens who thought they were giving to the election efforts of President Bush and other top Republicans. Many of the top donors were in their 80s and 90s. The donors wrote checks -- sometimes hundreds and, in at least one case, totaling more than $100,000 -- to groups with official sounding-names such as 'Republican Headquarters 2004,' 'Republican Elections Committee' and the 'National Republican Campaign Fund.' But all of those groups, according to the small print on the letters, were simply projects of the College Republicans, who collected all of the checks. And little of the money went to election efforts." Don't expect to see this monstrous crime in the nightly news!

The New Yorker weighs in on "This Presidential campaign [which] has been as ugly and as bitter as any in American memory [with] friends of the incumbent [portraying Kerry] as a coward and a traitor...." Considering "Americans ... voted to make Al Gore President [but] the [election] turned on the outcome in Florida [where] irregularities [took] votes away from Gore [and] Bush's brother [and] one of Bush's state campaign co-chairs" and a dubious Court decision installed Bush "by fiat."

BBC: "A secret document obtained from inside Bush campaign headquarters in Florida suggests a plan - possibly in violation of US law - to disrupt voting in the state's African-American voting districts. [An] elections supervisor in Tallahassee, when shown the list [of targeted voters said], 'The only possible reason why they would keep such a thing is to challenge voters on election day.' Ion Sancho, a Democrat, noted that Florida law allows political party operatives inside polling stations [but] not one challenge has been made to a voter 'in the 16 years I've been supervisor of elections [and this] can be used to slow down the voting process and cause chaos on election day; and discourage voters....' Sancho calls it 'intimidation.' And [C]ivil rights attorney, Ralph Neas, noted that US federal law prohibits targeting challenges to voters ... if race is a factor...." Watch the report at the link below.

Isn't this just typical of the free-speech hating, morally reprehensible Repugs? The Guardian newspaper in England had "invited its readers to contact voters in Clark County, Ohio, a swing state, about the importance of the Nov. 2 election. The newspaper's Web site said letter-writers were free to support either President Bush or Sen. John Kerry but noted that a Guardian poll showed 47 percent of Britons backed Kerry and 16 percent supported Bush. The campaign became a worldwide story, and Web site readers from several countries, including Australia, Japan, Canada, Morocco, Chile, France and Italy, applied for addresses...the project went well, with more than 14,000 addresses downloaded, when the site was hacked into last weekend 'presumably by someone unhappy with the debate we had created.' " Of COURSE it was a Bushie. Who else? No Bushie wants a free exchange of ideas and a show of world unity like this! It's way too scary. So they ruined it for everyone.

NY Times: "Republican Party officials in Ohio [will] challenge the qualifications of voters.... Election officials in other swing states, from Arizona to Wisconsin and Florida, say they are bracing for similar efforts by Republicans.... Democrats [say this] will inevitably delay the process and frustrate the voters. 'Our concern is Republicans will be challenging in large numbers for the purpose of slowing down voting, because challenging takes a long time,' said David Sullivan, the voter protection coordinator for the national Democratic Party in Ohio. 'And creating long lines causes our people to leave without voting.' ... 'This creates chaos and confusion in the polling site,' said R. Doug Lewis, executive director of the Election Center, an international association of election officials.' Ronald Magoteaux, 57, a mechanical engineer, said he agreed to be a poll watcher out of concern for new voters. 'I think it's sick that these Republicans are up to dirty tricks at the polls....'"

Gannett: "Confronted with mounting complaints of special treatment, Republican leaders in Congress announced Friday that a new shipment of flu vaccine intended for lawmakers and their staffs would be turned over to local health officials in the nation's capital. House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., said Capitol physician John Eisold decided to send 3,000 doses of the vaccine to the District of Columbia Hospital Association and the District of Columbia Department of Health." Yeah - watch these creeps try to take credit for a "great humanitarian gesture" that they made ONLY because they were forced to. Like stealing from an elderly lady, then wanting to be called a "hero" for returning her wallet after a policeman threatens you with jail!

AP: "Nathan Sproul, a former head of Arizona's Republican Party and the state's Christian Coalition branch, denies any wrongdoing [but] declined to name the states in which his company conducted registration drives. His political consulting firm ... received nearly $500,000 from the RNC since July, according to federal election records. Former canvassers ... in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Nevada and Oregon in the past two weeks [said] they were told to register only Republicans and to 'walk away' from people who said they intended to vote for Democrat John Kerry. Some said Democratic registration forms had been thrown out or ripped up. It is illegal to tamper with voter registration cards.... In some states, including Oregon, such acts are felonies. Eric Russell of Las Vegas told The Associated Press that he watched a Sproul supervisor tear up eight to 10 registration forms completed by Democrats and managed to grab some of the shredded documents as evidence."

AP: "In several battleground states across the country, a consulting firm funded by the Republican National Committee has been accused of deceiving would-be voters and destroying Democratic voter registration cards. Arizona-based Sproul & Associates is under investigation in Oregon and Nevada over claims that canvassers hired by the company were instructed to register only Republicans and to get rid of registration forms completed by Democrats. 'We treat these complaints very seriously,' said Oregon Secretary of State Bill Bradbury [who] said three complaints were filed with election officials throughout the state. He declined to provide details, citing the continuing investigation. Substitute teacher Adam Banse ... signed up to knock on doors in suburban Minneapolis and register people to vote. He quit after two hours. 'They said if you bring back a bunch of Democratic cards, you'll be fired,' Banse contends. 'At that point, I said, Whoa. Something's wrong here.'"

A Lakewood Republican stealing campaign signs late one night got nabbed when he ran across a low- hanging driveway chain, fell face first onto a pilfered sign and the concrete and knocked himself unconscious. Randal Wagner, 50, was loaded into an ambulance, treated at Lutheran Medical Center for abrasions and facial cuts and issued a summons. "I did a very stupid thing," Wagner said Monday, admitting theft of the signs. "I got caught up in the political passions of this highly contested election."

"Following reports of a Democratic National Committee Election Day manual giving party workers advice on how to combat potential efforts to intimidate minority voters, conservative media figures repeatedly distorted the manual's content in order to claim that the Democratic Party's official policy is to make baseless allegations of voter intimidation against Republicans. In fact, the manual does no such thing; it simply advises party workers to use standard, uncontroversial communications tactics to raise public awareness about the potential for intimidation. (Click here to view The Drudge Report's image of the DNC's 'Colorado Election Day Manual.') In contrast to accusations made by several conservative media figures, the manual itself does not encourage party workers -- either implicitly or explicitly -- to fabricate stories of voter suppression."

Washington Post: "[T]he Supreme Court today ordered a lower court to reconsider its decision upholding the 2003 Republican-drawn congressional district map for Texas. The high court said the case should be reviewed in light of its opinion last April in a case from Pennsylvania. In that complicated ruling, the court left open the door for court challenges to redistricting based on claims of partisan gerrymandering but offered little new guidance to lower courts on how to consider such claims.... Reversal, analysts believe, is a long shot. It was yet another chapter in a venomous partisan battle involving two unsuccessful walkouts by Texas Democratic lawmakers and an ethics infraction by Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.). In an unprecedented mid-decade redistricting of Texas, Republican lawmakers redrew the map so as to give Republicans a 10- or 11-member edge in the state's 32 member congressional delegation, which is now split evenly." Maybe there's some hope for fairness in Texas?

"Dick Cheney is missing from a pamphlet Oregonians consult as they ponder who to vote for - and state officials say they are getting 'tons of calls' about the omission." The Repugs, trying hard to find any evidence of Democrat election funny business to offset the growing list of GOP crimes, accused Sec of State Bill Bradbury, a Dem, of intentionally not sending in the info. Turns out it was REPUG funny business - as usual. The Bush-Cheney campaign decided not to send the material. Although they claim it was to save the $1,000 it would have cost to place Cheney in the pamphlet, we suspect the omission was done to avoid reminding voters of the fact that corporate fraud and human rights criminal Cheney wasn't part of the Bush ticket! Either that, or they wanted to create the illusion of Democratic funny business.

Progress Report: "Employees in the two western states have accused [Republican 'consultants' Sproul & Associates] of destroying, dumping or shredding the forms of Democrats who thought they were registered to vote. Also, an employee in West Virginia quit after she was told to only register individuals who would confirm they were planning to vote for President Bush. The head of Sproul & Associates, Nathan Sproul, has long ties to the GOP: he was the former executive director of the Arizona Republican Committee. Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Ted Kennedy (D-MA) have asked Attorney General John Ashcroft to launch an immediate investigation on the federal level. The New Yorker provides a look at how Ashcroft's Justice Department itself has politicized the voting process (http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040920fa_fact)."

Progress Report: "As the election gets closer, the Republican Party has turned to voter suppression efforts to try to sway the election, by keeping voters 'off of the rolls and away from the polls' (http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/10/15/florida_voters/print.html). Paul Krugman has the latest rundown on Republican efforts to block the vote (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/15/opinion/15krugman.html). The Center for American Progress joined 23 concerned parties in a joint statement on how to protect the vote and uphold democracy (http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=200321) in the upcoming election. Voters should not be intimidated by fears of a stolen election. If voters don't get out and vote, the election will not be stolen but given away. Instead, everyone should get out and vote, vote early, and - to be safe - bring an I.D. Also, any voter experiencing problems on Election Day should call the Election Protection hotline, at (866)-OUR-VOTE."

After the Monica Lewinsky case, snitch-turncoat Linda Tripp became a pariah and outcast, shunned even by many of the conservatives who wanted to bring Clinton down. Zell Miller is the new Linda Tripp - and the GOP doesn't get it! In a combination of desperation and cluelessness, they are putting Miller out in the limelight, hoping this will attract undecided, Democrat-leaning voters. But all it will attract, we can guarantee, is contempt! Miller qualifies for every single one of America's pariah class: he's a sneak, a snitch, AND a turncoat.

Greg Palast: "[Bill] Burkett gave CBS a false name to cover for the whistleblower. Burkett should not have done that. It is inexcusable. Period. Yet, that does not tell us the document was fabricated. [William] Safire in the Times, in charging that Burkett faked the document, demanded the military open a criminal investigation. Darn right they should. They haven't. Why not? Maybe they don't want to check into this 'fake' document because maybe it's not fake. An investigation should begin with questions for [Bush] 'Mr. President, did you or did you not ask your commander Lt. Col. Killian how you could shirk your duty to show up?' 'Mr. President, did you or did you not refuse a direct order to take a medical exam and pee into a jar?' [and] 'Mr. President, did Texas Lt. Governor Ben Barnes make any calls to get you out of 'Nam and into the Air Guard? Yes or no?'" That's what Dan Rather should have done. BBC on Bush in military: www.http://www.gregpalast.com/bff-dvd.htm Burkett Interview:

John Reynolds writes "In the middle of an answer [during the presidential debate] last night Bush said, "now let me finish" as if someone was interrupting him- yet nobody did- he [seemed to be] talking to the person in his earpiece. Listen to the mp3 yourself- or watch the video at c-span. did anyone out there record the debate... The 'let me finish' quip was clearly Bush talking to ( probably Rove) in his earpiece- saying let me finish before you give me the next answer. He blows it 60 sec into his 90 sec reply- so no warning lights had gone off and Lehrer had not motioned for him to end as he had plenty of time left. my guess is that it's an implant, not something stuck in his ear. Shouldn't this be enough to warrant a major investigation of some sort- the 'president' is so incompetent he needs an earpiece to speak in public?"

The mysterious theft of campaign laptops has Rove's MO all over it. Remember the time he bugged his own campaign office in 1986 in Texas, and then tried to blame the Democrats? Or when his PowerPoint demonstration magically appeared in a DC Park, which conveniently diverted attention from the 'Bush Knew' headlines. "Three laptop computers containing campaign plans were stolen overnight from the Bush-Cheney state HQ office...The computers [allegedly] contained much of the Bush-Cheney campaign strategy for the state. "This looks like it was politically motivated," Chris Vance said in an interview." Why was Vance so quick to claim the theft of laptops - one of the most popular items of petty theft - was POLITCALLY MOTIVATED? The case hasn't yet been investigated! How would anyone have known those particular laptops had Bush's campaign plans? A bit too convenient!

365Gay.com: "The RNC has finally admitted that it was responsible for a mass mailing that claimed Democrats would permit gay marriage and ban the Bible." The mailings esp. targeted poor communities in areas like West. VA. "365Gay.com reported last week that the mailing had a return address of the RNC, but RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie [lied bald-facedly] last week [and said] he wasn't aware of the mailing. The NY Times reported that in an e-mail message, Christine Iverson, a spokesperson for the RNC, finally confirmed that the party had sent the mailings." This is a twenty-first century political party in America?? It sound more like 'KKK lite" circa 1870 in the Deep South. Anyone who still supports the RNC is NOT supporting America's principles - or ANY principles, for that matter.

Back in the post-Civil War days in the South, to scare blacks and poor whites away from the polls, the KKK used both fear and trickery. Today's "new GOP" is doing the same thing. There are getting increasingly more stories about intimidation and fearmongering by the RNC. Here's the latest: Campaign mail with a return address of the Republican National Committee warns West Virginia voters that the Bible will be prohibited and men will marry men if liberals win in November. The literature shows a Bible with the word "BANNED" across it and a photo of a man, on his knees, placing a ring on the hand of another man with the word "ALLOWED."

Robert Sam Ansen of the NY Observer rips a gaping hole in the "preemptive" strikes launched by the White House in response to CBS's report on Bush's Guard Duty. There were, says Ansen, just one too many conveniently coincidental timings to swallow - like the "Pentagon's release of allegedly newly-discovered records of Mr. Bush's flight hours and middling piloting abilities one day almost to the minute before Mr. Rather's report - following four months of insisting there were no more documents to disgorge." Then there's the myterious 'Buckhead,' a regular poster on FreeRepublic, who had way too many pat responses on supposed "technical details" of the document's far too quickly. Worst, says Ansen, "[FreeRepublic] also happens to be the repository for anti-Jew, anti-Catholic, anti-homosexual, anti-John Kerry rants by Jerome R. Corsi, Ph.D." --Co-author of Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry.

We smell a rat! You know those "experts" the media touts as having "discredited" the CBS Bush Guard documents? Their after-the-fact stories are fishier than a mackerel run! "CBS News said that Emily Will of No. Carolina and Linda James of Texas 'played only a 'peripheral role' in assessing the documents, and had seen only one of the four used in the report. Ultimately they deferred to another expert who has seen all four documents, Marcel Matley. Contrary to her claim of having 'serious concerns, ' Will did not contact the network the night before the report aired. 'I am not aware of any substantive objections raised,' says CBS senior VP Besty West. 'She did not urge us to hold the story.' " What this should prove - at least to CBS - is that the White House colludes with its toadies in Congress, the media and, it seems, assorted "experts." As to the Repug call for an investigation - We say BRING IT ON!

This ought to REALLY disgust the public - those who weren't already fed up enough over the Swift Boat fraud! While allowing the Swift Boat frauds to continue to disseminate false info on Kerry, while the White House covered up its connection to the scheme, NOT ONE Repug called for an investigation - hell, they didn't even bat an eye! But now that CBS presents far more solid info on Bush's military record, the whiners are coming out of the woodwork, led by Bush toady Rep. Chris Cox of CA. Cox no doubt jockeying for post-Nov. 2 position, knowing how well Bush rewards panderers. Cox wants a CONGRESSIONAL INVESTIGATION (can you believe the arrogance!) into the CBS story. OK, go for it - AS LONG as the Swift Boat frauds are ALSO subject to a THOROUGH Congressional investigation! In any case, there are a few observers out there who think Cox's investigation just might lead to Karl Rove's door.

DriveDemocracy blog: "The Republican Presidential campaign is a textbook demonstration of how to win an election by shrinking the voter pool. They do this by ripping the heart out of the practice of democracy. The purpose in trying to undermine Kerry's war record is not so much to make people believe Kerry is lying as to confuse the issue, so "war hero" is no longer the big plus for the Kerry campaign. They say right is left (compassionate), down (war in Iraq) is up, war hero is piker, and AWOL frat boy is defender of the free world. Maybe they convince 2 or 3% of the undecided electorate to believe their lies. But that's not the real target. What they're really after is to so confuse the issues and voters, that large numbers end up not voting. They become disgusted with the process or don't know what to believe. Potential voters even lose confidence in their own abilities to make rational choices. So they throw in the towel. That's when Rove and Company win..."

Cheryl Seal warned in 2002: "Al Regnery, the founding father of Regnery Publishing, is involved in all sorts of rightwing causes and is one manipulative and devious son-of-a-poser. He once offered Dan Moldea, an unabashed liberal Democrat $100,000 to write an investigative book about Vince Foster's death. Regnery's scheme was, of course, to get a LIBERAL to prove Foster's death was actually a 'hit' ordered by Clinton... What Regnery didn't figure on was that Moldea saw the $100,000 as payment for writing a well-researched book --not as a bribe to produce what Regnery wanted. When Moldea wrote a book that PROVED Foster's death was a suicide, Regnery basically just deep-sixed the results..." Now, fast-forward to 2004 and why are we not surprised that Regnery cranked out the Swift Boat frauds' book?

LOL! The Repugs seem intent this week on proving to the world that everything we've ever said about them is true - that they are the party of slime and hypocrisy! Today, after spending two days sliming Kerry and mocking wounded soldiers, they called Michael Moore "a fat pig." (Guess no one in the Convention center bothered to look in the mirror or around the center too closely... Let's see...Dennis Hastert, Spencer Abraham, Karl Rove, Michael Powell...In fact, it almost seemed for a while that having at least two double chins was a prerequisite for top Repug political posts!) But the bottom line is, that the Repugs are so bankrupt of ideas, not to mention ideals, that their sole strategy is elementary school-level slams. What was that the sell-out journalist said about the Bush regime returning the "adults" to the White House - Harhar!

VVA: "The Vietnam Veterans of America has received reports of delegates at the Republican National Convention disseminating and wearing 'Purple Heart' band-aids in mockery of one of nation's most distinctive honors, the Purple Heart medal. The Purple Heart is one of the oldest military awards, first introduced in 1782 by Gen. George Washington to honor the service and sacrifice of the common soldier and recognize the spirit of volunteerism and selfless dedication. It was reinstated in 1932. The Purple Heart is awarded to members of the armed forces who are wounded by the enemy. The spirit of the award recognizes the personal sacrifice of our troops without regard to the severity or nature of the wound. It is the wounding itself that merits the honor. To demean the decoration and the sacrifice it symbolizes demeans all veterans and the patriots who honor them."

A Washington Post report got it half right. The GOP is "Adding Insults to Injuries" and "Democrats are furious after a number of GOP delegates here showed up Monday wearing bandages bearing tiny purple hearts, a mocking reference to Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kerry's wounds from the Vietnam War - for which he was awarded three Purple Hearts." Of course they didn't just "show up" with the bandages. RNC leader Morton Blackwell distributed them and orchestrated the mocking attacks on our troops, even though top GOP officials lied about having any involvement. BUSTED! Veterans and all patriotic Americans share disgust with the Chicken Hawk Republicans mocking the military and the RNC-led show of contempt for those who sacrificed for their - and our - freedom.

Republican National Committee member Morton Blackwell and his shadowy right wing groups - the Council for National Policy, the Leadership Institute, and the Conservative Leadership PAC - gave out "Purple Heart" band-aids at the RNC convention to mock John Kerry's wounds and medals. Several veterans don't find this amusing. They know this denigrates all who earned the Purple Heart in service to America. No shock, right wing chicken hawk Blackwell never served in the military. Still, he mocks those who did serve and suffered wounds to win a Purple Heart. Republicans ridicule troops risking their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan. If you agree laughing at wounded Veterans isn't funny, hold Bush, Cheney and other chicken hawk Republicans accountable. Whether or not you're a veteran express your outrage at the laughing, mocking chicken hawk Republicans wearing "Purple Heart" band-aids. Call Blakcwell at 800 827-5323 or e-mail (link below) and denounce his front organizations.

The Repugs can't get enough of phony Democrats - kinda the way drunks can't get enough cheap booze. Zell "Old Duke" Miller has now given way to George "Thunderbird" McKelvey. McKelvey, like Miller, wormed his way into office by fooling voters into believing he was a Democrat. Now, like Miller, McKelvey is pulling out the stops to out Repug the Repugs, sounding like a Tom Tomorrow cartoon. Pontificated McKelvey: "the left wing hates George Bush the most because he believes in God, and you better believe that." Of course, like the Repugs, the US media can't suck up enough phonidom: "McKelvey has been making the rounds on national talk shows for the Bush campaign and said he plans to join the president on the campaign trail in Ohio."

AP: "The St. Petersburg Times rescinded its endorsement of Mel Martinez in Tuesday's Republican Senate primary, accusing him of "hateful and dishonest attacks" on fellow Repub. Bill McCollum. In an editorial published Mon., the newspaper said it took the unusual step of withdrawing an endorsement because the former Bush Cabinet member "took his campaign into the gutter with hateful and dishonest attacks" over McCollum's support of a hate crimes bill and expanded embryonic stem cell research. "The Times is not willing to be associated with bigotry," the editorial said. The newspaper said it was now recommending McCollum, a former congressman who was defeated by Bill Nelson in the 2000 Senate race."The Times is not willing to be associated with bigotry," the editorial said." But G.W. Bush sure is: Martinez was Bush's pick for U.S. Housing and Urban Development secretary.

"Yard signs promoting the Democratic presidential candidate and running mate John Edwards have been stolen and vandalized by the hundreds. In Pensacola's East Hill neighborhood, Kerry supporters are hanging their signs from trees to keep them from being stolen. Early Sunday morning in the Cordova Park neighborhood, 27 pro-Kerry signs were stolen in what Panhandle for Kerry Chairman Jerry Holt called a 'surgical strike.' The situation has become so bad that Panhandle for Kerry organizers met with Pensacola Police Capt. Dickie Johnston Monday... If caught stealing signs, offenders could be arrested for petty theft or criminal mischief, said Bonnie Jones, Escambia County supervisor of elections. But Panhandle for Kerry actually is gaining support from signs snatchings, Holt said. For every yard sign that goes missing, three more people want signs because it angers them, he said. "

AP: "A judge called Rep. Rodney Alexander's last-minute switch to the Republican Party an attempt to subvert the election process and ordered that the sign-up period be reopened for new candidates for Congress. Alexander infuriated Democrats this month when he switched to the GOP just minutes before the deadline for getting on the ballot. The move made it virtually impossible for the Democrats to field a promising candidate to run against Alexander.. "Alexander has attempted to subvert the electoral process for his own personal gain. His action deprived voters of the right to vote for a Democratic candidate," said District Judge Allen Edwards, a Democrat." We have noticed how A.merican P.roganada NEVER mentions a judges political affiliation when a ruling is favorable to Repugs.

ZDNet reports: "Web page misconfiguration left dozens of [MoveOn.org's] subscriber pages easily searchable through simple Google queries. Each page included a subscriber's name, e-mail address and the mailing lists to which he or she is subscribed. CNET News.com confirmed that several searches turned up more than two dozen individual subscriber pages. The information leak is the latest version of "Google hacking," the practice of using the search engine's advanced features to find private data leaked by Web sites. Earlier this month, security researchers found a way to use the search engine to find lists of credit card numbers, along with card holder information, that had been posted online by traders of illicit financial information." We've had reports of other trouble with google - incl. rightwing-stacked search results, includng news searches." Anyone considering investing in Google may need to take the cost of future class action suits into account.

The New York Times: "After weeks of taking fire over veterans' accusations that he had lied about his Vietnam service record to win medals and build a political career, Senator John Kerry shot back yesterday, calling those statements categorically false and branding the people behind them ... 'a front for the Bush campaign' - a charge the [Bush] campaign denied.' Interviews and a review of documents show a web of connections to the Bush family, high-profile Texas political figures and President Bush's chief political aide, Karl Rove. Records show that the group received the bulk of its initial financing from two men with ties to the president and his family - one a longtime political associate of Mr. Rove's.... And the group's television commercial was produced by the same team that made the devastating ad mocking Michael S. Dukakis...." Team Bush is lying about how they assembled this crew to lie about Kerry. More dishonest dirty tricks from 'Bush's Brain' Karl Rove and Team Bush.

Remember Gollum - ya know, that creepy, spiteful little creature from the Lord of the Rings? Gollum wanted power (in the form of the ring) so badly that he'd serve - then sell out - any master he thought could help him achieve his goal. Well, Zell Miller reminds us alot of Gollum. AP: "Get ready for some more 'Zell zingers' from the political convention in New York. But this time, a Bush will be the beneficiary, not the target. Yes, the Zell Miller who Republicans tapped Thursday to deliver the keynote address for Bush at their convention next month is the same one who lampooned Bush's father 12 years earlier at the Democratic convention in the same New York arena." Back in 92 "Gollum Miller" figured Clinton was his best bet for self-aggrandizement. Now he's gambling on Bush. How two-faced and oily can ya get, 'Precioussssss!" But Kerry will have the last laugh - How much more pathetic can Bush get than following a class keynote act like Clinton with the likes of Miller?

We are not fans of Bill Frist, by any means. But we ARE fans of fairness, which not only involves rejecting evil (and thus doing all in our power to oust Bush), but placing blame where blame is due. Bill Frist is not responsible for Bush's ridiculous anti-gay marriage campaign drive. He did not create the outrageously corporate-slanted energy bill. He did single-handedly create the GOP's repugnant anti-poor person policy on social services, nor its militantly pro-gun policy. Yet both the GOP and MSNBC are blaming Frist for the failure of all the above listed turkeys to make it through Congress! It's like a racing stable owner insisting on running a goat in the Kentucky Derby, then blaming the trainer when it doesn't win! But that's the GOP, when the going gets tough - start throwing bodies overboard!

If you had any doubts that the media and Bush campaign were a single operation, doubt no more. "On the fifth floor of a nondescript building... Republicans are waging a high-tech media campaign to shatter the carefully sculpted image John Kerry is presenting to the nation this week." Some 30 young NeoNazi types have set up a media control center - that's right - they're telling the media what to say and how to say it. One of their suggested headlines: "Kerry Can't Makeover His Weak Record on National Security" is already being run by AP with just slight rewording. "It's a very well-run operation," gushes CA GOP Party Chairman Duf Sundheim. "It's a reflection of the 24-7 news cycle." On Tuesday, the staff was sending out photos of Kerry as he toured the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Monday in a goofy-looking blue anti-contamination suit. The NY Post - owned by Rupert Murdoch - colluded, with NASA officials to trick Kerry into the sete up.

This one must rank high in the list of "how low can you go"! The Houston Chronicle reports: "Stung by the appearance of Ron Reagan tonight at the Democratic National Convention, Bush campaign officials are trying to lure his mother, Nancy Reagan, to the Republican National Convention in New York next month. Initial inquiries from Republicans - who offered her a speaking role at the gathering - have been rebuffed." The GOP claims that "although Mrs. Reagan disagrees with the president on stem cell research, she counts herself among his supporters." Yeah, right! How many pro-Bush statements can ANYONE remember Mrs. Reagan make in the past three years?

AP: "Republican efforts to obtain church rosters from Southern Baptists and Roman Catholics who support Bush have alienated some of the very people the GOP campaign is trying to court, as religious leaders worry the outreach could violate limits on politics in church. This week, the RNC confirmed it had asked Catholics who back Bush to give parish directories to the RNC as a way [allegedly] to identify and mobilize new voters. The Bush campaign has asked the same of congregants in other denominations." What's worse, the RNC operatives went about getting the records in an underhanded way, bypassing clergy and recruiting Bush supporters in congregations to get copies of the records and pass them on! Outrageous! And as to just wanting to "mobilize new voters," what a crock! The RNC's standard MO is to geet hold of a mailing list then barrage the unsuspecting with endless mailings, phone calls, and enailings.

AP: "The RNC has asked Bush-backing Roman Catholics to provide copies of their parish directories to help register Catholics to vote [that's the initial excuse - before the phone calls and demands for donations start!]. The National Catholic Reporter said a GOP official had urged people who attended a Catholic outreach event in Jan. to provide parish directories and membership lists to the political party. Parish directories often contain personal information about church members, including names of family members, home addresses and phone numbers. Susan Gibbs, the spokeswoman for the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., which oversees 140 parishes in Washington and Maryland, said parish directories publish information only for use among church members and not for use by outside organizations no matter what their purpose."

The Repugs and their minions in the media just can't understand why the American public was so totally turned off by Cheney's famous 'Go f*ck yourself!' statement, but are not turned off by Whoopi Goldberg or Jadakiss's art-based slams of Bush, or Democratic Rep Caroline Kilpatrick's (MI) and Rep. Melvin Watts (NC) frank statements on Ralph 'I Work for Bush' Nader. The secret? Cheney's outburst is viewed as disgusting because of the HYPOCRISY it represents. The actual words aren't the big issue. Whoopi, Jadakiiss and Reps. Kilpatrick and Watts by contrast, aren't seen as hypocrites because they never set themselves up as self-righteous models of "American morality." So no matter how hard ya try, Repugs, you won't wipe out Cheney's obscenity by trying to make a case against someone else.

The White House can commandeer the airwaves at will and call TV/Radio station managers any time and tell them what to say and not to say. Bush routinely uses Air Force One on Campaign toots, and stages campaign PR shamelessly (his endless Reagan week shenanigans, for ex.) which gets covered - FREE TO BUSH - sans question. But now, the Bushies want to class Michael Moore's ads for his film as "campaign ads"! Moore, a professional documentary film-maker who just made a documentary film, is now "really" on the the campaign trail! OK, then, to be fair, all the advertising supporting programs and films supporting the Bush agenda should ALSO qualify. That means All advertising for Bushie news hours, like FOX, NBC, CBS, et al, should be ruled campaign ads! Which means they owe FOUR YEARS WORTH of overspending violations!

Gene Lyons writes, "Everybody says American politics were dramatically changed by the9/ll attacks, bringing an era of accountability and moral seriousness. Sometimes I wonder what everybodyâ??s been smoking. In my travels to promote 'The Hunting of the President,' the documentary film based upon Joe Conasonâ??s and my book of the same name, people ask the same two questions: Did failing to remove President Bill Clinton from office teach Republicans anything about the 'politics of personal destruction,' and how should Democrats respond? The short answer is that the operatives who put together the most successful Republican dirty-tricks campaign ever donâ??t think they failed. Who ended up running the country? If Clintonâ??s acquittal on impeachment charges denied his antagonists the joy of taking him down, it spared the GOP nomineeâ??s having to run in 2000 against an aroused electorate and an incumbent President Al Gore."

The AP is once again working with the Bush reelection campaign and Christian right (synonymous!) to try to smear Democrats and undermine election 2004. AP has now floated the story that Democrats are hiring convicted felons, some guilty of rape and assault, door to door to conduct voter registration. The AP, of course, eagerly swallowed the bait, as ever and reported the bogus story. The truth is that LABOR UNION REPS are the ones going door to door for Kerry. What better way to get people to slam the door in honest-to-god real working people's faces than to sew the rumor that they are actually "convicted felons." The REAL felon in this story is the GOP officials who engineered this vicious smear campaign.

Talk about fraud against the American people! Not only does Bush stick Americans with a $56,800-per-hour bill to use Air Force one on campaign toots around the country, but now Congress wants to turn stick taxpayers with a multi-million-dollar per hour bill for using Congressional floor time to campaign for Bush! Like the corporate sharks that they are, the Repugs have twisted open a loophole in House rules that allows lawmakers to speak about a senator during legislative session as long as the comments are not personal in nature. They are using this scheme to launch the same attacks against Kerry that are featured in Bush campaign ads. We know damn well that the rule never was intended to be used so the floor could be turned into campaign HQ for one party.

Every senator and rep. who has ever run for the presidency has been forced to be out on the road - that is if they want the slimmest chance of winning. But Bush, lacking anything better to throw at Kerry, is trying to make the senator's unavoidable absence from D.C. a big issue. The worst part is HOW Bush planned the attack: In calling for Kerry to resign, Mass. Lt. Gov. "Kerry Healey [abused her office on Bush's behalf and] became the public voice for national Republicans and Bush campaign officials." Turns out the 'Bush officials' hoped to launch a campaign to induce media columnists and pundits and bogus Democrats (Zell Miller comes to mind) to pressure Kerry into stepping down from the Senate. The 'officials' admitted "that they had shared information on Kerry's missed votes with Romney's office this spring. Yet the Bush campaign aides insisted that they did not pressure Healey or the governor to call personally for Kerry's resignation. " Yeah, right.

Is this a presidential Funeral or a Global NeoCon cocktail party? It's getting hard to tell, judging from the guest list and list of speakers. While former UK PM Margaret Thatcher has been asked to speak our own former AMERICAN PRESIDENTS Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter have been snubbed.HELLO! This should be an American moment with our presidents past and present (yep, even HIM) a part of the event. It just proves that the rightwingers are colossally petty under ALL circumstances - national mourning doesn't deter them. One thing we can say about Reagan - he had more class than that! He would definitely not approve.

NY Times: " The Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into accusations that Republican Congressional aides stole sensitive Democratic memorandums, and the department has tapped David N. Kelley, the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, to lead the politically charged case, officials said Monday. The opening of the criminal inquiry increases the significance of the case... In March, the Senate sergeant-at-arms concluded in a 65-page report that two Republican staff aides had engaged in widespread, unauthorized and possibly illegal spying by reading Democratic strategy memorandums on a Senate computer system." Note how the Times, like all the media, refuses to call this crime by its real name: HACKING A FEDERAL COMPUTER.

This article in the Wall Street Journal's "Opinion Journal" is just one of hundreds of articles, commentaries, "letters to the editor" and talk show call ins that have been systematically launched - as if on cue - on the public since Ashcroft "unveiled" the 1995 Jamie Gorelick memo. The memo - oh so conveniently declassified and exposed just as the heat turned up on Bush - is being used to deflect all attention away from the true issues of the commission... Worse, the disinformation campaign seems designed to derail or delay the commission until after the election. The OJ article, incredibly wants the public to believe that the 1995 Gorelick memo is the biggest revelation of the commission - and not Bush's failure to heed three months of warnings in 2001!

We have been blasting Zell Miller for years for what he is: a phony. Miller is no more a Democrat than Tom Delay! He merely posed as a Dem to get get elected and inflitrate Congress as a sort of "double agent" for the NeoCon movement. Now he has come out of the closet officially by pledging his support to George Bush in 2004! He is using a prepackaged Repug strategy by setting up a front group called "Democrats for Bush." This scheme has been used in many "hostile takeover" races across the country - Bush groupie Bob Ehrlich set up "Democrats for Ehrlich" front groups all over Maryland in his corruption-riddled race for governor there. Hey Georgia! Let Miller know what you think of his Trojan Horse politics! Demand a "refund!"

Boston.com: "The political director for the Bush-Cheney reelection campaign has testified before a grand jury investigating allegations that corporate money was used illegally in 2002 legislative races in Texas. The grand jury is investigating whether state law was violated when an RNC group gave $190,000 to seven candidates for the Texas House in 2002. The donations were made on the same day, two weeks after a political committee called Texans for a Republican Majority sent $190,000 in corporate money to the RNC group. Under state law, the political committee, created by US Representative Tom DeLay, could not legally give corporate donations to candidates." Yet the Bush-Cheney campaign wants MoveOn investigated! LOL!

The Bush camp is pathetic! After failing to push public buttons with gay marriage, "Massachusetts's liberal" epithets, and "soft money" smears," they have a new attack line and it is the most ridiculous yet! Kerry stated honestly recently that several foreign leaders had indicated privately to him they hoped like heck he would win. Since then, the White House (Colin Powell, as ever, the "spokesman"), AP, the Washington Times, Rush Limbaugh et al. and a few dozen planted freepers at Kerry rallies and call ins to CSPAN have colluded to try to make the "Kerry must name the foreign leaders" non-issue into a huge flap. LOL!! This is becoming a very expensive (for Bush) comedy production - let's call it "A Sound and Fury Signifying Nothing."

"With no Democrats present, [Senate Judiciary] committee Chairman Sen. Orrin Hatch... announced on Thursday evening he was not going to take any further action on the memo probe and would leave it up to the Senate sergeant-at-arms to decide what to do next... Democrats were caught by surprise, thinking they had a few more minutes to cast votes on the Senate floor before returning to the Judiciary session. 'We weren't boycotting this -- we thought we had 10 more minutes,' said... Sen. Dick Durbin, who said some Republicans wanted to stop or curtail the probe because they did not want any revelations about 'which interest groups received these stolen documents' about the battle over the judges." Earlier, Hatch made a big noise about getting to the bottom of this, just enough to make it seem like the Republicans would pursue justice. But he was just doing it for the cameras. Now he has killed the probe, and it will be barely noticed by the 'liberal' media. GOP Talk is Cheap.

In true corporate media style, Lynn Denniston slants her story outrageously. Instead of just saying the Senate Judiciary Committee, she starts her story: "ALL NINE DEMOCRATS on the Senate Judiciary Committee joined yesterday in asking the Justice Department to name a special prosecutor to investigate Republican staff aides' secret snooping into committee Democrats' computer files." Note she says "snooping," instead of HACKING, to hide the true criminal nature of the case, esp. since Ashcroft himself called for life sentences for federal computer hackers. "The senators urged Ashcroft to disqualify himself from the decision on a special prosecutor, saying he had a conflict of interest because, among other reasons, questions remain about whether any of the files were shared with the Justice Department or the White House. 'You and your staff were actively engaged in issues relating to judicial nominations' when the files were invaded [another euphemism for HACKED] , the letter said."

Glen Yeadon takes on Republicans like Marc Racicot and Tom Cole who say we shouldn't change Presidents during a War. "While the Battle of the Bulge was raging in Europe, Republican candidate Dewey was making ignoble charges against the Roosevelt delaying the end of the war by insisting on an unconditional surrender. Several people with ties to the Republican Party had conducted secret and unauthorized talks with the Nazis and were willing to accept a peace treaty that removed Hitler but left the Nazis in power usually with either Himmler or Goering as Chancellor. In the previous 1940 election, former President Herbert Hoover worked closely with officials in Berlin to bring about the defeat of FDR. In fact, the Republican Party accepted funds from Berlin for the 1940 elections. While the total amount of Nazi funds the Republican Party spent during the 1940 election cannot be determined precisely, it was not less than one third of the total amount spent. "

TPM Reports: "[Four] Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee (Durbin, Leahy, Kennedy and Schumer) wrote White House Counsel Alberto R. Gonzales with a series of detailed and pointed questions all of which focused on whether the White House had any knowledge of the pilfering or involvement in it and whether they had made use of those pilfered memos in any way. One of the questions dealt with whether any outside groups had been the conduits for passing pilfered files to the Counsel's office: 'Did you or anyone who has served in your office or at the White House receive from C. Boyden Gray, Sean Rushton, Kay Daly, the Committee for Justice, the Coalition for a Fair Judiciary or any other intermediary any of the computer files of Democratic Senators or their staffs or information derived from those files?'"

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) sent a Freedom of Information Act request to the Department of Justice and a letter to the White House asking for the release of any records regarding information taken from the computers of Senate Judiciary Committee Democratic staff in regard to judicial nominations: "Our request includes, but is not limited to, any and all communications regarding the records of staff members for Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Senator Joseph R. Biden, Senator Herbert H. Kohl, Senator Dianne Feinstein, Senator Russ Feingold, Senator Charles E. Schumer, Senator Richard J. Durbin, and Senator John R. Edwards. We request that you search for responsive records regardless of format, medium, or physical characteristics." To see the letter to the DOJ go to http://www.citizensforethics.org/activities/20040227/foia_doj.php

From Roll Call via "Daily Health Policy Report": "FBI agents reportedly are investigating allegations that Rep. Nick Smith (R-Mich.) was offered 'significant financial support' for his son's House campaign in exchange for a vote in favor of the Medicare legislation (HR 1), Roll Call reports (Bresnahan, Roll Call, 2/26). In December, Smith, who is retiring this year, said that unnamed Republican leaders promised to donate $100,000 to his son's congressional race in exchange for his support on the Medicare bill. However, Smith later backed away from that comment, saying that suggestions he was bribed are 'technically incorrect." Smith would prefer a nicer word, like "gift" or "good will payment."

BBC reports: "The photographer whose image was used to try to discredit Democrat frontrunner John Kerry, says mainstream media can help to expose dirty tricks. 'We act as an important filter in determining what is real and what is truthful,' Ken Light told the BBC. The fake photo combined two images to make it seem as if Mr Kerry shared a stage at an anti-Vietnam war rally in the 1970s with the actress, Jane Fonda. The forgery was widely aired on the internet before it was exposed. Two British national newspapers - the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday - used the picture in editions last week and over the weekend. The photo, falsely credited to Associated Press, was circulated in the US to link Mr Kerry with a radical. 'That is an important role we have in the media - to reveal these hoaxes."

Matt Bivens writes: "Try this on: You notice that a rival at work is away from his desk. You sneak in and make secret copies of all of his private files -- with the intention of passing off some of his ideas as your own, and sabotaging the others. You enjoy doing so for several months, until you get caught. By way of a defense, you blame your rival: He ignorantly left his computer running with the password logged in, he didn't lock his office door, he didn't lock his office filing cabinet. It was just 'sheer luck' that you 'found' his files. As alibis go, this is equivalent to a burglar protesting his innocence on grounds that he'd 'found,' by 'sheer luck,' a spare key recklessly left under the welcome mat. Only the morally retarded could offer it. So meet the Bush Republicans. Caught sneaking into the files of Democratic colleagues in the Senate, they have blamed ... the Democrats. (When are those awful Democrats going to take personal responsibility for their actions?)"

"Senate Democrats who were briefed Monday about an investigation into how Democratic strategy memorandums dealing with judicial nominations ended up in the hands of Republican staff members said they now believe the problem was far more extensive than previously thought. Some of the internal memorandums appear to have been used to prepare one or more of President Bush's appeals court nominees to answer specific questions from Democratic senators during their judiciary committee hearings, Democrats said Monday. Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., said he learned from Pickle's briefing that the improper reading, copying and distributing of confidential Democratic memorandums had gone on far longer and had involved a greater amount of information than had previously been believed. Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the committee's ranking Democrat, told reporters after the 90-minute meeting that it appeared to him Pickle's investigation would lead to a criminal investigation."

From Roll Call, via the Daily Kos: "Key Senate Democrats predicted Monday that the internal investigation into the Judiciary Committee's leaked memos would be turned into a full-blown criminal investigation. Exiting a 90-minute briefing about the probe with Senate Sergeant-at-Arms Bill Pickle, a quartet of senior Judiciary Democrats declared that what they had heard led them to believe a criminal inquiry, most likely with the Justice Department handling it, should occur. 'Eventually, this has to be looked at as a criminal matter,' said Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), the ranking member on Judiciary... While their levels of belief in the probability of a criminal investigation varied slightly, each of the Senators raised the issue of an increasing likelihood that the probe would bring about criminal charges. 'I think there's a possibility of a criminal investigation,' Feinstein said. Kennedy added that the accessing of memos was 'probably criminal.'"

Maryland's governor Bob Ehrlich - who gained his job through one of the dirtiest election campaigns in the state's recent history - has come under fire once again for his collusion with the media. During his election campaign, he was ferried around the region in a helicopter provided by a FOX News exec. Now his campaign manager Richard Hug was caught trying to finance a TV ad campaign to promote slot machines (which Marylanders have repeatedly voted AGAINST) using money laundered through a newly established group called Citizens for Maryland's Future. This group - which bills itself as nonprofit - would then pay for a broadcast ad campaign to encourage lawmakers to adopt Ehrlich's slots bill. Ehrlich, who is a frequent Bush houseguest, must get free tips on media graft from Karl Rove.

From Buzzflash on 1/9/04: "Nick Smith, our GOP Hypocrite of the week has suddenly gotten amnesia. Not only did he temporarily take a vow of silence on the bribe, in December he suddenly claimed it didn't occur. Of course, his December denial was a bit hard to swallow since a Michigan reporter had recorded interviews in which Smith stated that the $100,000 bribe attempt had indeed occurred. Robert 'CIA Operative Outer' Novak also confirmed the bribe offer, and the Washington Post produced Republican Congressmen who claimed that Smith had told them of the bribe attempt... A January 7th story now reports that Congressman Smith is returning ... somewhat ... to his original bribery tale. He now says that he was offered money for his son's campaign, but not specifically $100,000."

WashPost reports: "The House ethics committee is conducting an inquiry into whether lawmakers offered bribes or threats on Nov. 22 as they tried to persuade Rep. Nick Smith (R-Mich.) to vote for a Medicare prescription drug bill, which narrowly passed. The panel's chairman, Joel Hefley (R-Colo.), and ranking Democrat, Alan B. Mollohan (W.Va.), said this week they are undertaking an 'informal fact-finding' mission that started two months ago. Democrats have been demanding a probe for weeks. Smith created an uproar last year when he said GOP leaders offered 'bribes and special deals,' including contributions for his son's 2004 congressional campaign, if he would vote for the bill. Smith, who voted nay, later retracted the bribery allegation."

The Knoxville News-Sentinel reports: "Federal investigators reportedly have seized a staff computer in Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's office in a probe to find Republican aides who improperly accessed Democrats' memos on opposing judicial nominees... The office of the Senate Sergeant-At-Arms, which is using computer experts of the U.S. Secret Service to investigate, expects to finish its analysis of who did what within three to four weeks, an office spokesman said. The final report will be given to Hatch and the committee's senior Democrat, Patrick Leahy of Vermont... Leahy criticized the 'cyber theft' of confidential Democratic memoranda. 'This invasion was perpetrated by Republican employees both on and off the committee... This is no small mistake. It is a serious breach of trust, morals, and possibly the rules and regulations governing the U.S. Senate.'" You go, Pat!

"An investigation [has been launched] into how excerpts from 15 Democratic memos showed up in the pages of the conservative-leaning newspapers and were posted to a website last November," reports the Boston Globe. So far, about 120 people have been questioned and over a half dozen computers seized, "including four Judiciary servers, one server from the office of Senate majority leader Bill Frist of Tennessee, and several desktop hard drives. But the scope of both the intrusions and the likely disclosures is now known to have been far more extensive than the November incident, staffers and others familiar with the investigation say." Private memos were allegedly passed onto Robert Novak, the corrupt columnist who outed CIA agent Valerie Plame and used in a February 2003 column to try to smear Sen. Ted Kennedy.

"U.S. Rep. Nick Smith said Tuesday that heavy traffic contributed to what he calls a misstatement about being offered $100,000 for his son's campaign if he would support a Medicare bill that passed Congress in November. Speaking out amid continuing controversy, Smith said he was promised 'aggressive and substantial support' for his son's campaign to succeed him in exchange for his vote. But he said a dollar amount never was mentioned even though he said so in a radio interview. 'The first offer was to give him $100,000-plus for his campaign and endorsement by national (Republican Party) leadership,' Smith, who ended up voting against the bill, said during the Dec. 1 interview. Smith, R-Addison, acknowledged Tuesday that he made the statement but said he misspoke after first reading that figure in a report by syndicated columnist Robert Novak. Novak didn't identify the source of the number." No, but we KNOW it's his best pal Karl Rove. We demand a Special Prosecutor!

"Democrats serving on the House subcommittee on labor, health and human services, and education, including Nita M. Lowey of New York, Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland and David R. Obey of Wisconsin, said they were threatened with the loss of funding for projects for their constituents if they didn't vote as the Republican leadership and Bush administration wanted. All voted against the final bill. Rep. Ralph Regula (R-Ohio), who chairs the committee, said in a letter to Obey in late October that he would not provide funds for projects in the districts of members of either party who voted against the bill, which he defended as 'fair and balanced.' He said that he had to make 'priority choices within available funds to secure at least 218 votes' and that the tactic had been used by 'both Democrats and Republicans throughout the history of the institution... I am certainly not trying to intimidate members; I am simply trying to do the best I can within the funding available,' Regula wrote."

"'Texas Rep. Ralph Hall switched parties Friday night, filing for re-election as a Republican after nearly a quarter-century as one of the most conservative Democrats in Congress. 'I've always said that if being a Democrat hurt my district I would switch or I would resign,' Hall said. He said GOP leaders had recently refused to place money for his district in a spending bill and 'the only reason I was given was I was a Democrat.'" Hey Ralph, that's called EXTORTION - and you're a COWARD for surrendering! "Hall, 80, was first elected to the House in 1980. Hall has long been among the most conservative Democrats in Congress. Speculation that he might switch parties first surfaced in 1995, when the GOP gained control of the House for the first time in 40 years."

"Norman Ornstein, a congressional scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, says GOP leaders have found 'you must keep your partisans together.' House Republicans in particular, he says, 'have been gradually using, on a regular basis, techniques that violate all the norms of conduct and behavior. And they've gotten away with it.' Nearly half the electorate - people who chose Dems to represent them - are, to an increasing degree, disenfranchised. Their representatives aren't simply outvoted on the House and Senate floors, they're not even present when key legislation is discussed and refined. The pendulum always swings back eventually, though, and should the White House and Congress shift hands, this year's brutal and partisan practices may ensure a retaliatory cycle in which each aggrieved party feels compelled to wreak vengeance, lest it be viewed as wimpish. Even GOP Sen. McCain recently warned: 'The Republicans had better hope that the Democrats never regain the majority.'"

Timothy Noah writes: "In the absence of conclusive evidence, however, two considerations stop Chatterbox from exonerating House members, and especially the House leadership. The first is that Smith's earlier comments seemed to be directed mostly at House leaders. Although Smith explicitly stated early on that Speaker Dennis Hastert and House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (along with Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson) were not the folks he was talking about, the original Associated Press story about the strong-arming had Smith (via paraphrase) pointing the finger at 'House GOP leaders.' In a Nov. 24 press release, Smith railed against the 'arm-twisting' he was subjected to and then quoted at length a passage from a Washington Post story focused on how Hastert and Thompson worked him over... The second reason not to exonerate House members is that lobbyists were not on the floor of the House that night."

Josh Marshall writes, "There are more and more signs of the IRS and other arms of the federal government taking a conspicuous interest in the finances and political spending of Democratic-leaning organizations. Most establishment, mainstream Dems don't want to think this sort of thing is happening. But I've spoken to several in recent days who are starting to think that it is. The IRS, for instance, has just began a top-to-bottom audit of the NEA's (the National Education Association, the country's largest teachers' union) finances." The ghost of Richard Nixon lives - in George W. Bush!

"Three days after Gov. Mark R. Warner was made a victim of a Republican eavesdropping, members of the attorney general's staff discussed redistricting with the chief eavesdropper. Edmund A. Matricardi III, executive director of the Republican Party of Virginia at the time, attended the March 25, 2002, meeting and walked away with most of the public relations strategy assignments two weeks after an adverse redistricting ruling, three participants said... The previously undisclosed meeting in then-House Speaker S. Vance Wilkins' office included lawyers from the national Republican Party, a Richmond law firm and the attorney general's office as well as state legislators and top political aides. Participants said the meeting had been called the previous week to formulate a GOP public relations strategy on redistricting. Two days later, Virginia State Police who had been alerted to the eavesdropping by Attorney General Jerry W. Kilgore raided Republican Party of Virginia headquarters."

"The Justice Department said Thursday it would review complaints from political watchdog groups that Republican House leaders tried to bribe Rep. Nick Smith, R-Mich., to vote for a Medicare bill. Smith voted against the bill despite what he described as threats against his son, Brad Smith, who is running for the House seat his father is vacating next year. Nick Smith said his own party's leaders offered money for his son's campaign if he voted for the bill and that they threatened to support other GOP candidates for the seat if the congressman voted against the legislation. 'Bribes and special deals were offered to convince members to vote yes,' Smith wrote in a Nov. 23 newspaper column. Mark Glaze of the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center said if the allegations are true, House members violated a federal law against bribing public officials... His group filed a complaint Wednesday, as did a separate group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, which has Democratic ties."

Timothy Noah writes: "Rep. Nick Smith, R-Mich., says that sometime late Nov. 21 or early in the morning Nov. 22, somebody on the House floor threatened to redirect campaign funds away from his son Brad, who is running to succeed him, if he didn't support the Medicare prescription bill... Promising to direct $100,000 to Rep. Smith's son's campaign clearly meets the legal definition of bribery. The only question, then, is who to prosecute. The AP had Smith attributing threats to support his son's opponent to 'House GOP leaders,' but that was a paraphrase, and it is possible Smith meant someone else when he spoke of an actual offer of $100,000. We know House Speaker Dennis Hastert spent a lot of time that night trying to win over Smith... If Smith witnessed an attempted bribery, he has an obligation as a citizen--and even more so, as member of Congress--to make that person's identity known to law enforcement officials."

Walter Pincus writes: "The Senate sergeant-at-arms has opened an investigation into Republicans obtaining and publicizing internal memos from the computer and network resources of two Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Late Tuesday, Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) confirmed that his inquiry had found that a member of his staff 'had improperly accessed some of the documents' and a second former staff member 'may also have been involved.'"

Josh Marshall writes, "Caught red-handed. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch has placed one of his committee staffers on administrative leave for what the media reports are agreeing to call, with some delicacy, 'improperly obtaining data from the secure computer networks of two Democratic senators.' (Reminds me of my pals who used to get kicks by improperly obtaining Snickers bars from the local drug store when we were in grade school.) Keep in mind, Democratic Senators raised questions about how an unsent memo from the Democratic staff on the Intel Committee ended up in the hands of radio chatmeister Sean Hannity three weeks ago. Now that it seems the Judiciary Committee memo was in fact stolen, the Democrats' demands that the other incident be investigated sounds a lot more compelling. Was that one 'improperly obtained' too? Following is a selection of Hatch's press conference late Tuesday." We demand an investigation!

"Enraged House Democrats say that bipartisan relations in the House -- especially regarding joint House-Senate conferences -- have reached an all-time low, far worse than when they controlled Congress for 40 years... House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) explained to reporters that last Thursday's 'acting up' on the floor on the Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization bill 'is really a very blunt and somewhat ineffective instrument.' Hoyer continued: 'Why? Because what you do is you can delay, but you can't stop. And you guys [the media] yawn, and it doesn't get reported to the republic.' He added, 'For the most part, you don't write about it, and because for the most part people don't care about process, and I understand that, except us insiders who care about it'... House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said...: 'As I say, just when you think you have seen it all, the abuse of power gets even more abusive. But that's the way it is with the abuse of power.'"

"The Republican National Committee today falsely accused People For the American Way and the NAACP of distributing a cartoon publicized by Republican Senators in connection with the judicial nomination of Janice Rogers Brown. Enclosed is a letter demanding a retraction and an apology [from PFAW's Ralph Neas]... 'I was shocked to learn that at a press conference today in Detroit, you claimed that People For the American Way and the NAACP distributed and 'used in a press release' a cartoon recently publicized by Republican Senators in connection with the Janice Rogers Brown nomination. This is absolutely false, as you well know or should have known. The cartoon in question was created by a Black Commentator.com cartoonist and posted on its web site along with a reprint of a joint People For the American Way / NAACP press release on the Brown nomination. This cartoon has never been part of any statement or press release by People For the American Way, nor would it ever be.'"

"California passes a tough financial privacy law, and Washington moves to scuttle it. State officials propose strict antipollution standards for certain kinds of engines, and a congressional committee moves to block the new rules. Gov. Gray Davis signs into law a measure allowing illegal immigrants to obtain drivers' licenses, and within days legislation is introduced in Congress to deny federal funds to the state unless it repeals the law. When it comes to California, the Republican-controlled Congress has abandoned its natural tendency to support states' rights. Congressional Republicans are moving on a variety of fronts to rein in state actions they believe go too far, leaving Democrats to complain about federal interference with state business. 'If anybody had told me that I would be on the floor of Congress arguing states' rights I would have told them they are crazy,' Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) said during a recent House debate."

Mayor John Street, the Democratic Mayor of Philadelphia that played a major part in Al Gore winning PA -- and in Ed Rendell winning the Governorship -- had his office wiretapped by the FBI. Mayor Street is up for re-election in a few weeks and has a big lead over his opponent. "Do we believe that the Republican Party, both at the federal level and state level, is pulling out every stop to get Pennsylvania in 2004? Absolutely. Is the Republican Party capable of dirty tricks? I think that is well documented," said Street campaign spokesman Frank Keel. Welcome to Ashcroft's America!

"If anybody really thought the 'Choose Life' automobile tags weren't a thinly disguised effort to promote the anti-abortion cause, Johnnie Byrd certainly has dispelled the idea. Byrd, a Republican who is speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, used his office to obtain a list of the 30,000 'Choose Life' tag purchasers. Then he used $14,000 in state money sending a letter to each one on the list drumming up support for a state constitutional amendment to restrict abortion. Byrd announced at about the same time that he was a candidate for the Republican U.S. Senate nomination in 2004. He's staking out a conservative position that should play well with people who have strong feelings against abortion. And who would have those feelings more than buyers of 'Choose Life' tags? It's worth remembering that when the Legislature authorized the 'Choose Life' tags in 1999, sponsors denied that the message was simply a code phrase for opposing abortion. Byrd broke the code."

Molly Ivins writes: "Hang in there, Texas Eleven. You are not forgotten. Gov. Goodhair Perry says the AWOL senators are holding up 'issues of great importance to the people of Texas.' That's funny. There has been one and only one item of business on the agenda for both special sessions called by the guv (at a cost of $1.7 million each): the crass rejiggering of congressional district lines in order to elect more Republicans out of Texas. Using taxpayer money for partisan political purposes, period... Really Bad Idea of the Week: Attorney General John Ashcroft is now investigating judges. He is requiring prosecutors to report cases where the judge hands down sentences that are less than the federal guidelines suggest... If it weren't for Bill O'Reilly, we wouldn't be having any fun at all. In one of the most hilarious lawsuits ever filed, Fox News is suing the satirist Al Franken over his new book, 'Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right.'"

The Roanoke Times reports: "The chairman of the Republican Party of Virginia resigned Tues. after pleading guilty to a misdemeanor charge stemming from a state and federal investigation of eavesdropping on Democratic Party telephone calls. Gary Thomson said he 'accepted responsibility for a technical violation of the law' and stepped aside to protect the interests of the state's dominant political party. He appeared before a federal magistrate Tuesday to plead guilty to a charge of aiding and abetting the unauthorized publication of a wire communication and was ordered to pay a $2,000 fine and serve two years of supervised probation. Thomson's conviction could be the final chapter in a long-running criminal investigation that began in March 2002, shortly after a Republican operative monitored and recorded a telephone conference call involving Democratic legislators, their lawyer and Gov. Mark Warner." What, NO JAIL TIME? Guess the 'Rule of Law' only applies to non-Republicans.

"Now that the election to recall California Governor Gray Davis is official, the state famous for eccentric residents may be getting a few unconventional candidates to fill his shoes," writes AP. "Among those floating their names as possible replacement candidates in the October 7 election are a freeway rest stop caretaker, a teen who couldn't get elected to his school's student congress and a woman selling g-strings bearing her campaign slogan."

WashPost reports: "Republican state attorneys general in at least six states telephoned corporations or trade groups subject to lawsuits or regulations by their state governments to solicit hundreds of thousands of dollars in political contributions, according to internal fundraising documents obtained by The Washington Post... The attorneys general were all members of the Washington-based Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA)... One of those soliciting funds between 1999 and 2001, according to the documents, was Alabama Attorney General William Pryor Jr., a pending nominee by Bush to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit... Other attorneys general mentioned in the documents include then-Virginia Attorney General Mark L. Earley; Delaware Attorney General Jane Brady; then-South Carolina Attorney General Charlie Condon; then-Texas Attorney General John Cornyn, now in the Senate, and then-Ohio Attorney General Betty Montgomery."

WashPost reports: "Only hours after Rep. Roy Blunt was named to the House's third-highest leadership job in November, he surprised his fellow top Republicans by trying to quietly insert a provision benefiting Philip Morris USA into the 475-page bill creating a Department of Homeland Security, according to several people familiar with the effort... Once alerted to the provision, Speaker J. Dennis Hastert's chief of staff, Scott Palmer, quickly had it pulled out, said a senior GOP leader who requested anonymity... The provision would have made it harder to sell tobacco products over the Internet and would have cracked down on the sale of contraband cigarettes, two practices that cut into Philip Morris's profits. Blunt has received large campaign donations from Philip Morris, his son works for the company in Missouri and the House member has a close personal relationship with a Washington lobbyist for the firm."

"A Republican political action committee voted Friday to give $100,000 to Rescue California, one of several groups working on a recall campaign of Gov. Gray Davis. The donation from the Lincoln Club of Orange County matches a contribution made last week by U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Vista, who is interested in replacing Davis should the recall effort succeed. The money is being used to hire a professional staff to help gather the 900,000 valid voter signatures needed to qualify the recall by a September deadline... Roger Salazar, an adviser to the Davis campaign, said... 'Even with what they've already gotten, they are far short of the several million dollars they need to make the recall effort any more real than it was yesterday,' Salazar said. He said the Lincoln Club is among the most conservative groups in the state and that the recall is 'nothing to do with policy and everything to do with politics.'" And the GOP says we should 'get over' Bush's theft of the 2000 Election?

In an unbelievable secret, very-closed-door ruling the last week of April, the IRS, meeting with a handful of Republicans overturned a ruling against the bogus Abraham Lincoln Opportunity Foundation. The ALOF was used by Newt Gingrich in the early 1990s to channel tens of thousands of dollars into a rightwing propaganda operation called "Renewing America." Congress voted 395 to 28 against Gingrich in the case, in which there was overwhelming evidence of the misuse of the ALOF. A federal tax court upheld the IRS ruling, as did the 11th District Court. Now, just in time for the 2004 election, Bush/Gingrich operatives want to make fraud and debunking taxpayers LEGAL!! We will not let this case rest! A three-part expose by Cheryl Seal is forthcoming.

Carolyn Kay writes: "Now that Bush's post-war ratings are about to fall, it's refreshing to see that the anti-Clinton forces have once again crawled out of the woodwork to try to demean him and his wife with lies and innuendo. Here's part of the text of a message from the 2000 campaign that's making the rounds again... Here's my answer: ... Ronald Reagan approved and encouraged the sale of arms to Iran, as he promised the terrorists holding our hostages, against the express will of Congress. He approved and encouraged the use of profits from those illegal sales to support Nicaraguan rebels, also against the express will of Congress... 'By the end of his term, 138 Reagan administration officials had been convicted, had been indicted, or had been the subject of official investigations for official misconduct and/or criminal violations. In terms of number of officials involved, the record of his administration was the worst ever.'"

Cheryl Seal Reports: "I have it on good authority that the Egg Man is trying to shore up his sagging credibility and nonexistent popularity with the American public by launching his own fan club and web site. I hear the site is being designed and operated mostly by Karen Hughes, Les Kinsolving (Ari's biggest fan from the White House Press Corps) and Fleischer's doting spinster auntie, Miss Eunice Fleischer. Eunice, Les, and Karen are very excited to have landed the site's first two big sponsors: the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Boring Spokespeople and the American Egg Council. ..Seriously, though, there IS an Ari Fleischer fan club - it's part of a jingoistic, scary site called ProBush.com that has been launched with an untraceable domain via new web loophole - perhaps the first of many GOP-corporate fronts site in preparation for the election."

"The political ad beseeches readers to 'Tell Sen. Voinovich we need his help to preserve what we've worked our whole lives to save.' It's as though your grandmother is pleading for someone to protect her life savings before it's too late. The reality is much different. The ad is a pitch for the repeal of corporate dividends tax...The truth is most seniors, as well as most Americans, won't benefit a whit by the plan to eliminate the tax on stock dividends...it's brought to you by the Seniors Coalition and the 60 Plus Association, described respectively as 'the responsible alternative to the AARP' and 'the conservative alternative to the AARP.' Both groups bill themselves as non-partisan. But the president of 60 Plus has a long history of GOP connections and once gave a young college student named George W. Bush his first political job working on a campaign."

"Victims in a sex-assault scandal at the Air Force Academy are criticizing Rep. Joel Hefley, saying he weakened legislation signed Wednesday aimed at holding academy leaders accountable. The measure, included in the $80 billion spending bill for the Iraq war that the resident signed Wednesday, calls for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to appoint a seven-member panel to independently investigate the assault scandal. But before Congress approved the bill, Hefley had the words 'accountability and responsibility' removed, so the proposed investigation would call for a 'study of the policies' that allowed a hostile environment to exist at the academy north of Colorado Springs, rather than pointing to who should be held responsible." A typical GOP collusion: Bush signs the bill for a show of action, while Hefley removes all the teeth.

Alternet reports, "When Dixie Chick Natalie Maines told fans in London that she and her fellow Texas-born chicks were ashamed George W. Bush was a fellow Texan, it started a nationwide backlash against the group. Listeners flooded country music stations with demands they stop playing Chicks songs, fans sent their CDs in to be burned. Good old American pride? Not entirely. according to the blog AmericanNewsreel : 'Turns out the whole thing was orchestrated by the National Republican Party. Party operatives spammed their email lists the day after Maines made her statement, urging them to contact radio stations. Phone calls originating from the GOP headquarters in Washington went out to country stations, urging them to remove the Chicks from their playlists.' Get ready for mega dirty tricks come election time 2004." [Note: the link to http://www.americannewsreel.com/artman/publish/cat_index_5.shtml#98 has been scrubbed].

Business owners and professionals around the country have been receiving telephone calls informing them that they've been named a "Professional of the Year" or been nominated for the National Republican Congressional Committee's Business Advisory Council. Then they're told the price -- anywhere from $500 to help pay for an ad in the Wall Street Journal to $5,000 to attend a conference to accept their "award". The public-interest group Democracy 21 calls it a telemarketing scam. The Wall Street Journal calls it an outrage that the Republican Party has been misusing the Journal's name. Anybody who's been paying attention to Republican antics the last few years calls it GOP business as usual.

Mike Magee writes, "If you do a search on the truly marvelous Google on the phrase Bush 'demonstrating genuine leadership', like the Three Bears song goes, you're in for a big surprise. The search engine reveals three pages of results which list letters to the editors of august publications including the Boston Globe, the Star Press, the Suburban Chicago Courier News, and many many more. They all have a similar form, starting: 'WHEN IT COMES to the economy, President [sic] Bush is demonstrating genuine leadership. The growth package he has proposed takes us in the right direction by accelerating the....' We learn that a similar letter has crossed the pond and been published in our very own Financial Times and the Paris based International Herald Tribune. And we also learn the Republican Party can automate letter writing, with this unique spam engine at gopteamleader.com" If you see a letter like this in your local paper, call the editor and say "stop Republican spam"!

Mike Magee writes, "If you do a search on the truly marvelous Google on the phrase Bush 'demonstrating genuine leadership', like the Three Bears song goes, you're in for a big surprise. The search engine reveals three pages of results which list letters to the editors of august publications including the Boston Globe, the Star Press, the Suburban Chicago Courier News, and many many more. They all have a similar form, starting: 'WHEN IT COMES to the economy, President [sic] Bush is demonstrating genuine leadership. The growth package he has proposed takes us in the right direction by accelerating the....' We learn that a similar letter has crossed the pond and been published in our very own Financial Times and the Paris based International Herald Tribune. And we also learn the Republican Party can automate letter writing, with this unique spam engine at gopteamleader.com" If you see a letter like this in your local paper, call the editor and say "stop Republican spam"!

GOP candidate John Ehrlich ran a very dirty campaign. First, it made headlines for disseminating false notices in black neighborhoods to scare voters away from polls. Later, it was discovered that the Ehrlich folks had enticed homeless people - a higher percentage of them black - to work their polls for them in exchange for payment - then refused to pay them. The workers nearly rioted, forcing the Ehrlich staff to pay up. Now an Ehrlich campaigner has been officially indicted for hiring homeless workers to accost voters outside polls. Not only that, but officials say the investigation has just begun. Who knows what sort of flimflam will turn up next? After all, Ehrlich is a Bushista!

Invoking the Bill Clinton witch-hunt as his rationale, Brian Lambert is just one of many rightwing pundits urging liberals NOT to demand answers from the Bush administration and their toadies (such as Norm Coleman). We suspect that the GOP intentionally used the Clinton circus to induce "investigation fatigue" in the public as a way to skate out of being investigated for ANYTHING themselves later. Willing dupes like Lambert make that all too easy.

What a prince! First Bob Ehrlich rounds up a bunch of homeless people from a D.C. shelter to work his polls in the days before the election and TRIES to stiff them out of their promised pay. The homeless folk, however, raised such a ruckus that the police were called in and Ehrlich was forced to pay up. Now he's refusing to pay the students who did the same work. Of course, it was the Ehrlich campaign that disseminated fliers in poor black neighborhoods throughout liberal Baltimore falsing "announcing" that anyone going to vote should have all parking tickets paid and their rent current, as well as giving the wrong date for election day.

Since Julian Henson is such a PR whiz, we are sure he knew EXACTLY what he was doing when he called MD GOP candidate Robert Ehrlich a "Nazi" for the press's benefit. Maryland has a huge Jewish community, who, of course, were quite upset. The next thing Henson does is claim Dem. candidate Kathleen Kennedy Townsend fired him for the comment. Not so, says Townsend - he was never hired! But Henson continued to make damaging allegations, determined to keep the issue in the press. Now, come to find out that Henson had sought a job with Ehrlich FIRST. Now it looks pretty fishy to us that he claims to have been working for Townsend at all. We suspect he's still on the Ehrlich payroll - just like Ehrlich's black running mate Michael Steele, who is receiving a $3,000 per month "consulting fee" to run. The "Black Commentator" was right! (see http://www.blackcommentator.com/12_trojan_horse_watch.html)

"But once again, the thing about the rightwing and their corporate pals is that they come by damn little honestly. From rigged telephone polls to rigged elections, these folks leave nothing to chance - or to the real will of the people. Leaders of the Christian right like Tom Delay, Bob Barr, etc. all profess their moral saintliness as they lie, cheat, and steal to gain and keep their power. Tom Delay, for ex., raises money by defrauding doctors and teachers in a boiler room scam that has yet to be investigated by the GOP-dominated Congress. A GOP panel this week self-righteously browbeat Martha Stewart for not being more eager to turn over her financial papers - yet the same group has failed to call for an investigation of the pRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES in a case of fraud far more blatant than anything Stewart might have done (the Harken flimflam). But then, Stewart made the mistake of donating thousands to the Democratic party." So writes Cheryl Seal.

Here is an amazing post from the Seminole (FL) Republicans Discussion List. Republican Ishah Wright wanted to run against Corinne Brown (D-FL). But she was forced to drop out last week after receiving threats from fellow Republicans. "What made me decide to withdraw finally was when , on Friday, people high up in the JAX GOP said that they would put cocaine in my car if I continued to run. They said they own the police and FBI. I do have reports in with Seminole County Sheriff, Florida Dept. of Law Enforcement, and the FBI." We demand an investigation by Attorney General Bob Butterworth!

Laure Quinlivan, a reporter on Cincinnati's local TV news, WCPO, broadcast an expose' of racist Republicans at work. In 2000, Republican state legislator Jim Raussen lost his seat to Democrat Wayne Coats, and House Speaker Larry Householder (R) will do "whatever it takes" to get the seat back. His chief of staff told a GOP primary challenger, "Al Gore did an incredible job in getting black turnout to unprecedented levels in inner cities across the country…African American turnout was at an all time high. The impact of that in the real world in the Raussen race is you have several different precincts where Jim Raussen got zero votes…Because of the changes that we've made in redistricting to help Jim, we essentially took 13,000 African Americans out of the Raussen district and put 14,000 Republicans in." The GOP challenger, Doug Mink, told the GOP staffer "that's unethical and that's racist." And that's the Republican Party, caught in the act on tape. Where is the outrage???

"A three-judge federal panel declared Pennsylvania's congressional redistricting plan unconstitutional yesterday, throwing the state's political map into disarray just weeks before its May 21 primary. The district court ruling marked a victory for Democrats, who had challenged the plan drafted by the GOP-controlled state legislature in hopes of increasing the number of Republicans in the state's U.S. House delegation. With the nation's Democrats needing a net gain of six seats to control the House, a new map in Pennsylvania could brighten their hopes. Yesterday's ruling, with one of the three judges dissenting, does not guarantee a final Democratic victory. The state can appeal directly to the Supreme Court [uh-oh the Bush Family's Felonious Five], and the Pennsylvania legislature has three weeks to devise a new plan that passes constitutional muster."

Edmund A. Matricardi III, executive director of Virginia's Republican Party, was indicted on charges of illegally intercepting telephone conference calls involving Gov. Mark Warner and other Democrats. Matricardi was charged with two counts of illegal wire interception and two counts of attempting to disclose the contents. The GOP Executive Director is accused of eavesdropping on calls by Democrats that discussed a court fight over redistricting. Matricardi and his lawyer contend that "listening in on a phone conversation is not illegal" and have asked that the charges be dropped. How outrageous!

A couple of years ago, House Republicans went "nukular" after Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA) was given transcripts of intercepted phone calls by Newt Gingrich. But now the shoe is on the other foot, and Republicans are insisting everything is just peachy. The Executive Director of the Virginia Republican Party, Ed Matricardi, spied on a Democratic conference call involving Governor Mark Warner and 30 other Democratic strategists. Matricardi recorded the call without consent and circulated a transcript - breaking Virginia's wiretapping laws. But leave it to Republican lawyers to twist the facts around so Matricardi avoids the jail time he so richly deserves.

"If you're ready to give $250 to the Republican Party, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee is ready to offer you an up-close and personal briefing on America's war on terrorism," reports the Orlando Sentinel. What it will buy is a seat at the hour-long "national defense briefing" - for GOP donors only. It is an event, say critics, tantamount to selling info about 9/11 and subsequent events to the highest bidder. Tom "Boiler Room Scam" DeLay will be one of the speakers at the event. And, in true GOP style, with money never far from their minds, even when discussing terrorism, House Ways and Means Chairman Bill Thomas will be on had to offer tips to small business owners! Oh, btw - a donation of $1,000 will buy you access to the "exclusive" Speaker's Circle.

In 1968, Richard Nixon's foreign policy advisor Helen Chennault sabotaged LBJ's Vietnam peace talks to prevent LBJ's VP, Hubert Humphrey, from entering the 1968 race as a peacemaker. (Despite his post-election expansion of the Vietnam War, Nixon ran as the "peace" candidate against Humphrey.) This treasonous action was repeated in 1980, when Ronald Reagan's advisor William Casey and Bush Sr. persuaded Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini to keep American hostages after the election, dooming Carter's chances. And it was repeated in 2000, when George W. Bush's advisor Richard Perle worked to sabotage Bill Clinton's Middle East peace talks between Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat. Perle worked against peace to deny the Clinton/Gore administration an historic achievement - for evil political purposes. Instead of blaming Clinton for working tirelessly for peace, Bush should apologize to Americans, Israelis, Palestinians, and the world for sabotaging peace for Bush's political gain.

With the help of friends in high places, including Orrin Hatch, oil billionaire Earl Holding got pretty most of his wish list - including a $15 million road that will make access to his new development a breeze. Not only is the road being paid for by taxpayers, it was exempted from basic environmental reviews. Holding also used the Olympics as a pretext for conducting a sneaky land swap with the U.S. Forest Service that handed him 1,320 prime acres for his development. How could this be? Holding's pals in Utah's Congressional delegation (including Hatch, who received $30,000 from Holding) ensured that Holding got all he wanted, complete with special riders tucked neatly into massive spending bills and other complex legislation, where nobody would pay attention. Not only that, but these folks lied for Holding, claiming the land swap and road were necessary for the Games' success--even though most of the building on the land he acquired is years away from completion.

Writes Tamara Baker: "I was wondering how the Bush Junta was going to try to distract our attention from the imminent release of the names of the high-profile Bush/Cheney folks who were involved in the Enron 'partnerships' scams. I thought it was going to be by bombing Iraq, or Iran, or maybe the Philippines or Colombia. But no! The good folk in those lands can rest easy -- for this week, at least -- because the GOP has instead chosen to bomb another target, namely Bill Clinton, by reviving a long-discredited FauxGate...The House 'report' actually utilized a throwaway bit of satire from one of Maureen Dowd's columns, wherein she spoke of nonexistent gift registries for the Clintons' separate houses, and QUOTED IT AS FACT!...Pre-empt this thing with letters to the networks, to the editors of the New York Times, Maureen Dowd (dowd@nytimes.com), and to your local paper -- or better yet, the ombudsman of your local paper." Check out the e-mail exchanges between Dowd, Tamara, Mike Hersh and Maia Cowan!

"According to both the Washington Post and [Rev. Moon's] Washington Times, the current phase of the campaign to turn Daschle into Satan was ordered by the President himself, shortly after Thanksgiving…But when the Democrats declined to go along with an Administration proposal to give new tax breaks to rich individuals and corporations…the demonize-Daschle campaign was revived, this time in coordinated earnest. In December, Frank Luntz, the pollster who helped guide Newt Gingrich to glory in 1994, circulated a memo explaining, in urgent italics, that it is time for someone, everyone, to start using the phrase 'Daschle Democrats' and the word 'obstructionist' in the same sentence…Cheney and leading Republicans dutifully went on television to utter sentences containing the recommended word combinations. The conservative press wheeled in tight formation [including the Moonie Times]…Four right-wing lobbying organizations have lately conducted advertising campaigns against Daschle in his home state of South Dakota."

"The elderly lady shared a secret about herself with her neighbor. Laughing about it, she said she was a Republican, but had registered as a Democrat so she could vote in all of the Democratic elections. The Winter Texan asked why in the world she would register with the opposing party. With a smile, the old woman said she did it so that she could vote for the "weakest Democratic candidate", to help the Republican odds in the general elections. Is that dead fish or something else I smell?" So writes William Bright.

In their typical sleazy switcharoo-style, Rethuglican "accountants" have moved $270,000 dollars from their "recount fund" over to the RNC. The Rethugs didn't even need money for their "recount-" their Less-than-Supreme Court called the tunes! The story is being buried underneath our New Years Cheers. "The Bush-Cheney Recount Fund, created to raise money to pay legal bills stemming from last year's post-election battle [coup], is closing up shop and has handed a surplus $270,000 over to the Republican Party. The group's original plea for donations had promised contributors that 'any monies not expended for this purpose will be returned on a pro rata basis.'" Since there is no disclosure of donors, we have no idea if any of that money came from Ken Lay and Enron. Lies and deception have become the cornerstone of Rethuglican tactics.

"In South Dakota last month, newspapers carried political ads featuring side-by-side photographs of Saddam Hussein and Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D). The ads accused Daschle of helping to keep the Iraqi dictator in power by blocking oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The ad campaign -- sponsored in part by the lobbying arm of the Family Research Council, a Washington advocacy group -- is part of an escalating attack against Daschle in his home state and elsewhere by conservatives and their allies on Capitol Hill." So writes John Lancaster.

"Linda Tripp is facing foreclosure on the home where she recorded the telephone calls with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky that triggered the impeachment of President Clinton. CitiMortgage Inc. filed a foreclosure action in Howard County Circuit Court against Tripp late last month, noting a mortgage balance of $116,098.61, including late charges and interest. Attorney Joseph Murtha, who defended Tripp in the state's unsuccessful prosecution on wiretap charges, said she hasn't lived in the house for months, and has been out of work since she was fired from the Department of Defense. Tripp surreptitiously taped recordings of Lewinsky confiding a sexual relationship with Clinton. Tripp lost her job at the Pentagon after she refused to resign like other political appointees on the last day of Clinton's term, her lawyer has said. The Defense Department said her termination letter was routine and that she was not singled out."

In the periods safely between elections, Republicans love to proclaim their "love" for Hispanics. But at election time, they show their true colors by doing everything possible to intimidate Hispanics from voting - just as William Rehnquist did in Phoenix at the start of his rise to Supreme power. In New Jersey, a group called "Democrats for Democracy" sent an official-looking mailer warning "in English and Spanish that it was illegal for convicted felons on probation or on parole to cast a ballot. The mailer said 'armed' officers would be on guard at polling places." Democratic chair Joe Roberts denounced the mailer and demanded an investigation. [Note to Joe: "DfD" is the same name Bush advisors planned to use to overturn a Gore Electoral College victory - write us for details]. Let this serve as one more reminder of the importance of EVERY Democrat voting.

"The presidency of William Jefferson Clinton may be history, but his longtime supporters, producer Harry Thomason and his wife, producer Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, are preparing a final defense on his behalf. Along with filmmaker Adam Friedman, the Thomasons are set to begin filming a theatrical documentary based on Joe Conason and Gene Lyons' nonfiction book 'The Hunting of the President: The Ten-Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton,' which documents efforts to discredit the couple from the time of Bill Clinton's governorship in Arkansas through the 1998 presidential impeachment trial. Thomason, Bloodworth-Thomason and Friedman will produce the project, with Friedman and Thomason sharing directing duties." Meanwhile, Jeffrey Toobin's 'A Vast Conspiracy' (which is somewhat of a companion piece to the 'The Hunting of the President') is under development by HBO Films.

"Senate Republicans blocked a $15.5 billion foreign aid bill yesterday in an effort to force Democrats to step up the pace of confirmations for President Bush's judicial nominees. On a 50 to 46 party-line vote, the Democrats fell 10 votes short of the 60 needed to break a GOP filibuster and force consideration of a relatively noncontroversial foreign aid measure... The foreign aid bill includes funds for key Middle East allies the United States is relying on during its military operations against Afghanistan... But Senate Democrats harshly disputed claims they were deliberately slowing the process, pointing out that Republicans controlled the Senate during the first four months of the administration and never held a confirmation hearing on a judge." Is this "unity" and "compassion?" Is this "patriotism before partisanship?" Republicans never cease to amaze us with their ugly hypocrisy.

For over two decades the Raptor (as in hawks, eagles, etc.) Education Foundation has provided award-winning wildlife programs for the state of Colorado. Three years ago, REF laid plans to create a much-needed National Raptor Center. To finance the center, REF devised an original speciality license plate featuring a bald eagle. Drivers who opted for the plate - the only wildlife plate available in CO - were to pay an additional fee and become members of REF. The fee would then go to REF. Other groups in CO have successfully raised funds the same way. REF received a signed contract from the Dept. of Motor Vehicles - the same contract given to all specialty plate sponsoring groups. But now the CO legislature, which is dominated by anti-environmental GOPers calling themselves "property rights defenders", has screwed REF. It refuses to honor the legal contract, and is meanwhile selling the lovely plate to any driver, with no mention of REF, then pocketing all the funds.

Parris Glendening, Maryland's well-liked progressive Democrat governor whose term ends in 2003, is no doubt viewed by the GOP as a potential presidential contender. So, in an effort to dig up dirt on the governor, the already ethically-challenged Washington Post slid to an all-time low. Glendening, who is estranged from his wife, allegedly had an affair with his Deputy Chief of Staff Jennifer Crawford. In true "National Enquirer" style, two Post reporters spent a MONTH staked out in a shopping center parking lot spying on Glendening, then later posing as tourists at a Delaware beach for days so they could peer in his beach house windows. This, of course, while major events in the U.S. and around the world went unreported by the Post. Of course, the Post would never have dreamed of staking out Jeb Bush's mansion or office! Nope - he's not likely to run against Georgie in 2003! Meanwhile, the Post's efforts to turn the Glendening thing into a viable story are truly comical.

It doesn't say much for any group if the only way they can make it to the top and try to stay there is through deceit, intimidation, and smear campaigns against the opposition. Yet this has been the GOP's modus operandi since Abraham Lincoln died and left Andrew Johnson in charge. Now, with the corporate media acting just like Igor to Dr. Frankenstein (the movie version), it looks like they can get away with anything - possibly even murder.

The Patient's Bill of Rights has been watered down so many times no one's gonna get anything out of it. For the final watering, we can thank Charles Norwood, yet another weak-kneed corporate specimen. After selling out his constituents and his fellow legislators (the decent ones, anyway), and his former patients - he was, unbelievably, a dentist - Charlie NoGood whined lamely "Like it or not we have to work with this president..." Maybe you and your fellow pharmaceutical/insurance industry toadies do, Charlie. Republican sellouts were said to cheer when the vote was announced, confident they had, once more, put one over on the American people while still ensuring hefty insurance industry donations in 2001. Btw- why is anyone surprised by NoGood? This is a man who displays a Confederate flag in his house, opposes gun control and has long been know to fight dirty.

While granting themselves weeks, sometimes months of delay so they can twist and turn the knife in bills they don't like, the Congressional Republicans refused to grant the Dems ONE hour to defend the will of the American majority when the Energy Plan was on the table. Dick Gephardt summed it up: "All we asked for was an amendment to deal with the glaring flaws in this bill, for an effort to make the bill better and stronger, more fiscally responsible. All we wanted was an hour. One hour, 60 minutes, is all we asked the Committee on Rules for, to put out an alternative vision on energy policy to the American people. That hour request was refused. This in my view suppresses a free and fair dialogue in this House of what one of our most important policies should be. We have been shut out and shut down, I guess because somebody was worried we might win the amendment."

Despite scores of complaints, the National Republican Congressional Committee - in a boiler room scam spearheaded by flimflam artist Tom Delay - continues to prey on doctors. Doctors are treated to a flattering spiel that they've been chosen to join a "select panel" of physicians, who will advise congressional GOPers on healthcare issues. Most are even told they've been named "chairman." Said one disgusted NY doctor: "Had you listened to the sales pitch, you would have thought the next thing, you were going to do was get a ride on Air Force One." When the victims, who are eager to have a voice on issues close to their heart, accept the position, they are promptly hit up for a $500 donation. The fact is - there is no "select panel." Over 1,000 doctors have been reeled in this way - to the tune of over one million dollars. Some doctors were savvier than others. Retired family physican James Langley, himself a Republican, said "C'mon, give me a break. How many chairmen can you have?"

When you read about Oscar Stilley, who wants to be Arkansas' next governor, you'll read about what a folksy guy he is, one who got a GED instead of a diploma, did manual labor, and then pulled himself up by the bootraps to become a tax lawyer. You'll also read about his four-month-old baby and his wife, who shares her down-homey recipes in his website. You'll hear about how he's "just trying to get some stuff done for the people of Arkansas." What you won't find without digging is his carefully hidden political affiliation. When asked point-blank if he is a Republican, he evasively replies, "I'm not a registered Republican." How's that for a "Clintonian" answer! But he slams Democrats, belongs to rightwing organizations like Americans for Tax Reform, and wants to revive chain gangs. And just like Bush, he thinks that planting a few trees makes up for everything else. Stilley's a sure sign the GOP knows that the public is sick of Republicans!

When the House "leadership" [sic] blocked a House vote on the Patients' Bill of Rights yesterday (7/25), they came under heavy fire by the public, who by overwhelming majority want the bill, and fellow House members, who had mustered enough votes to pass the bill. Hastert et al.'s move made them and the White House look glaringly pro-insurance industry (which of course, they are!). So Hastert is trying a new, transparent tactic aimed at convincing the public he will NOT delay the bill, that he WANTS a bill, and there are TWO sides to the issue. Yeah - and on one side are about 200 million Americans and 218 Congressman and on Hastert's, a gang of about a dozen. Word has it Hastert and Bush plan to pressure, schmooze, and call in favors with a vengeance over the weekend (who cares what the people want!?). We can't wait to see who comes back with a "new attitude" on Monday, or how much it cost to buy that attitude.

The Patients' Bill of Rights has the 218 votes needed for passage, including 11 Republicans. The Senate passed the bill and, even more importantly, the American people overwhelmingly support the measure. But the House "leadership" (is that supposed to be satire?)- a tiny posse that includes Tom Delay, Dennis Hastert, Ernie Fletcher (author of an alternative- as in fake - bill) and J.C. Watts (who apparently doesn't do the right thing even when the whole nation is looking, to paraphrase his own hypocritical line), have refused to let the bill come to the floor for a vote. In doing so, they have loudly proclaimed their real allegiance: to the insurance and pharmaceutical industries and to making Bush look good (by buying time to avoid his PR-damaging veto)- American people be damned. Contact your Rep. and Dennis Hastert (speaker@mail.house.gov/202-225-2976) and DEMAND that the American people, not corporations, be served.

Clinton overstepped ethical bounds with one intern, but his misstep was purely sexual and Monica was (to say the least) consenting. Now Bush is using a whole stable of interns stationed in his Office of Faith-based Initiatives to perpetrate a deceitful scheme to sandbag the townhall meetings Democrats had been planning to holding over the Independence Day recess. The interns were directed to call Dems and dig for the info on the meetings - without, of course, telling them that they were calling from the White House (a little snooping by Dems revealed the calls' source). Why? Bush planned to plant "activists" (i.e. saboteurs) at the meetings to harangue Dems about the Faith-Based plan. This is the same tactic corporate lobbyists for the medical industry do to try to discourage people from supporting health care reform. Of course, to add to the interns' training in the art of deceit, the White House is denying any dishonest motivation in the scheme. Hey - at least Bill didn't try to corrupt Monica's SOUL!

In a 7-0 decision in which all seven participating judges were Republicans, the Alabama Supreme Court overturned a judgement won earlier by Sen. Lowell Barron (D) against the Alfa insurance Co.. Barron sued the company after it hired a private investigation firm to try to dig up dirt on him. Barron said Alfa was trying to force him to support an Alfa vice pres. for a spot on the Auburn University board of trustees. A lower court had ruled that Alfa had indeed overstepped its bounds against Barron. But then Alfa appealed to the Republican-loaded Supreme Court, it ruled that having private eyes tailing you and pawing through your private records does not constitute an invasion of privacy. Yeah, and robbing a bank does not constitute a theft of money, either. The U.S. Supreme Court has been a great example nationwide., giving big business everywhere a whole new way of doing business, and courts a whole new way of helping them do it.

Common Cause has condemned Tom DeLay's egregious fundraising tactics as resembling the worst sort of boiler-room telemarketing scams. DeLay's people call doctors and announce that the MD has been selected to be an 'honorary co-chairman' of a prestigious 'Physician's Advisory Board' addressing public health policy. Only later in the pitch are victims told that Tom DeLay isn't really interested in their advice: he just wants their money. It's like being told you 'may already have won' a million dollars and then -- after buying some magazines you don't really want -- you find out you didn't even get the cubic zirconia or the set of steak knives. Gee, whatever happened to Judicial Watch's big show about going after Delay? Guess they're too busy doing their own boiler-room form of 'justice.'

First Shrub and Co. make public protests not only extemely difficult, but downright dangerous (remember the awful treatment received by protestors in Vieques?). Now the GOP is trying to suppress expressions of dissent even among fellow legislators. In Oregon, 25 Democratic state representatives boycotted the Legislature in Salem for a week. This was to protest a redistricting plan by the GOP that would have eradicated a traditionally Democratic district and thereby failed to accurately reflect the urban residents who belong to the district. Although the Democrats had planned to return to work on Saturday, as an odious power (and PR) play, GOP House Speaker Mark Simmons (take note Oregonians for the next election) sent process servers out to find the missing reps and slap summonses on them. The rumor was also spread by the GOP that the missing reps were really off on a gambling toot at casinos. But this sleazy stuff is just business as usual for this class of GOPers.

PoliticalMoneyLine, a campaign financing watcdog group, raided the Federal Election Commission last month, hauling off two huge filing boxes full of info on the Democratic Party and the ACL-CIO's dealings during the 1996 election. The Democrats demanded that the material be pulled from public view until trade secrets and personal data could be removed. However, egged on by the GOP, the FEC refused to do so. Sounding nauseatingly self-righteous, the GOP National Committee's Michael Toner claimed resealing the files would have been an outrage - a "bizarre action." Gee, Toner, we don't see you expressing any indignation over Bush's illegal short-stopping of the Reagan files, which, re: FEDERAL LAW should have been released IN FULL to the public six months ago. Bush and his cabinet are still pawing through the stuff in search of "embarrassing" information. Did the GOP invent the word "hypocrite," or just develop it into a new art form?

"The Federal Election Commission has decided to drop a 4-year-old case accusing major business organizations of illegally coordinating their 1996 campaign efforts with the Republican Party, but only after a stinging report by FEC investigators that questioned the credibility of 'much of the testimony', [and stated that] 'the facts make for a compelling case' of illegal coordination under the rules in place during the 1996 campaign but could not meet the restrictive standard the commission adopted last year...Representatives of the five founding members of the Coalition--the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Assn. of Manufacturers, the National Restaurant Assn., the National Assn. of Wholesaler-Distributors and the National Federation of Independent Business--regularly attended meetings [then-House Republican Conference Chairman John A.] Boehner held…to discuss ways of winning congressional passage of the GOP's 'Contract with America' and how to 'mobilize' members."

The only thing missing from the IRS refund publicity blitz is Ed McMahon's photo on the letterhead and a camera crew knocking on your door at 8:00 a.m to deliver a giant-size cardboard version of your check for a pre-cashing photo op. The estimated cost of this free (to Bush, anyway) PR campaign: $29.3 million. A better use of the cash would be to hire a new president and cabinet - there'd even be enough cash left over to pick up a few new Senators. Just like those sleazy "NO MONEY DOWN!!!!" mass mailing scams, the pre-IRS check notice (like we needed one?) promises MORE tax cuts "for years to come"! And, just like these ads, the note trashes its competition: "We understand that there are many people on Capitol Hill who oppose tax relief..." In actuality, Democratic reps are largely responsible for this year's rebate, but Bush will steal the credit. If anything, this entire travesty proves one thing: Bush's qualifications without doubt run more to Used Car Sales than Statesmanship.

Knowing you were probably in need of a good laugh, we thought we would share the latest front group Bush has enlisted to publicly pump up his missile defense system. The once-moderate "American Conservative Union" comically describes its hawkish lobbying as an "Offensive for Peace" (it's offensive, all right!). The site offers such such reading material as "DeLay: the Real Compassionate Conservative," and (for a price, of course - movie star sellouts don't come cheap) "The Courage to Be Free" by Charlton "Moses" Heston. The site's latest press release announces the formation of a website "designed to muster like-minded [i.e., rabidly rightwing] proponents of national missile defense and lobby Congress" to "efficiently move through legislation in favor...of the plan." Shrub is now reduced 100% to feeding off the illusion of "public support" such outfits can create.

Today's "Roll Call" is full of the pathetic and disturbing antics of the GOP, who are now behaving like a cross between spoiled five-year-olds and small-time thugs. One Louisiana GOP supporter stopped off at Jeffords office to threaten to kill him, while another GOPer hung a photo of the VT senator in a urinal at a GOP Capitol Hill Club. In another "Roll Call" tidbit, Trent Lott threw a tantrum because the Washington Post is finally giving equal coverage to the Dems. What amazes us is that there are ANY decent and/or intelligent people still willing to admit membership to this party.

"A former aide to George W. Bush's media adviser has agreed to plead guilty to mail fraud and perjury, admitting she stole and mailed a Bush debate videotape to Al Gore's campaign and lied about it to a grand jury. Under the deal she reached with federal prosecutors, Juanita Yvette Lozano, 31, faces a $200 fine and prison sentence of between six months and a year, The Dallas Morning News reported on its Web site Friday." The main suspicion was of a Bush team dirty trick that backfired -- the Gore team didn't take the bait so that the Bush team could later sing about it to the authorities -- and the Media. After all, Karl Rove once bugged his own office and tried to blame the political opposition for the bugging. Lozano sure seems to be getting a sweet deal under the Bush/Ashcroft Justice Dept. -- compared to the original penalties of a $750,000 fine and up to 15 years in prison. It will be interesting to see what she finally gets -- and if Bush pardons her somewhere down the road.

Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter writes: "One day last month in the lobby of New York’s Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, I was approached by Chris Ruddy, the 'journalist' who gave the world the 'Vince Foster Was Murdered!' story. Ruddy introduced the smiling gentleman with him as 'Dick Scaife': yes, Richard Mellon Scaife. After a cheerful hello, the reclusive right-wing billionaire, now nearly deaf, said that he couldn’t think of any reason to criticize President [sic] Bush so far. This was extraordinary-the symbol of the far right in total agreement with the president. Then I asked him what he was going to do now that he didn’t have Bill Clinton to kick around any more. Scaife, who spent several million dollars over eight years on the 'Arkansas Project' and other efforts to destroy Clinton over Paula Jones, Whitewater and the rest, shouted with a grin: 'There’s always Hillary!'"

A Talk magazine article about the Debate Tape mystery paints a portrait of suspect Yvette Lozano as a bright woman who may have still harbored Democratic sympathies. Did she cleverly pick a tape that showed Bush actually cracking under pressure? Or was she mailing a performance that had been scripted to mislead Gore? While the article appears to cover the different angles of the story, it still tips away from the theory that Lozano acted under orders from the Bush team (esp. Karl Rove). It even concludes with this quote by a Bush adviser, "There is some chance that this is Watergate, that this is broader. My gut tells me that there's someone who got her to do this, if she did this…I just don't buy the lone gunman theory." Obviously, this Bushie is pushing the paranoid "Gore mole" theory, rather than that it was a dirty trick against the Gore campaign. After all, Karl Rove once bugged his own office to frame the opposition. (Enter "debate tape" in our "Compass" search engine)

"A jury has concluded that Utah shopping center mogul and prominent Republican insider John Price cheated two former associates in a New Mexico mall out of more than $1 million… Plaintiffs' attorney Robert Campbell said a large punitive award is justified by the arrogant disregard with which a powerful businessman and his company executives attempted to ' run over small people. '" Campbell declared, "This courtroom for the last two weeks has rocked with the evidence of deceit. They cooked their books." What's more -- "Price has long been a Republican Party activist and key campaign donor. Last election, Price and his wife, Marcia, gave $471,550 to the GOP and individual candidates, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. A large chunk of that money went to the election of President Bush, who was rumored to be considering Price for an ambassadorship." Another example of the kind of people Bush and the GOP hold in high esteem -- "honor and dignity" in full hypocritical flourish!

"House Democrats settled their racketeering suit against House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) and three affiliated political groups yesterday…Last spring Democrats charged that DeLay had engaged in extortion and money laundering. They said he pressured donors into giving to the GOP and subsequently funneled some of that money to outside groups that disclosed neither their donors nor how they spent the money." Ever the hypocrite, DeLay does some classic projection: "The Democratic leadership's lawsuit against me was never anything more than a desperate political ploy to win back the House." Remember -- DeLay led the impeachment drive to hopefully win dozens of GOP seats in '98. "DCCC spokesman Erik Smith said that…the suit…proved a deterrent to business groups that wanted to make sure contributions to the DeLay-affiliated groups remained secret." We'd still like to see DeLay's 1996 Triad case re-opened that laundered millions from the Kochs, Cones and others for issue attack ads.

Carey Cramer, a henchman of Newt Gingrich, is spending over $500,000 to broadcast an ad showing a girl counting daisy petals as while an announces counts down to a nuclear attack. The ad falsely accuses Democrats of giving "Red China" missile technology to use in an attack on the U.S. When Lyndon Johnson ran a similar ad against Barry Goldwater in 1964, the criticism was so fierce that the ad was pulled after one broadcast. Fearing a similar backlash, the Bush campaign urged Cramer to pull the ads.

The Republican Leadership Council, which played dirty in the Republican primaries to beat John McCain, is sinking to new lows. They are spending $100,000 to run ads for Ralph Nader in Wisconsin, Washington and Oregon, in order to push votes away from Gore. If anyone doubts that a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush, just remember the old Watergate axiom: follow the money.

In a sign of desperation - and contrary to the rules of the Internet - George W. Bush ordered his troops to invade online communities with spam messages in support of Bush. But we can play this game too - so click below for the list of sites to express YOUR views on the Presidential race.

Based on this Weekend's polling, Nader is poised to swing six traditionally Democratic states to Bush. Together they total a whopping 61 electoral votes, which will, of course, ensure a Bush presidency. It makes you wonder if Nader is being partially financed by the Bush campaign. Just asking.

'If anyone is seeking proof that the Bush camp doesn't have a clue about the Net, this should about do it,' wrote one angry recipient of the RNC email in a message to Wired News. 'This is SPAM, plain and simple. A fake source address, a non-functional remove link, and a deceptive subject line. If it wasn't so funny it would be sad that the RNC would either (a) be this stupid, or (b) be this desperate.'

The head of "opposition research" for the re-election campaign of U.S. Senator Rod Grams (R-MN) was caught conducting a "dirty tricks" campaign by e-mail in May of 2000. Terry Cooper used the e-mail pseudonym "Katie Stevens" to attack DFL candidate Mike Ciresi. The Grams campaign tried to deny responsibility, but the matter is now the subject of a criminal investigation under the Minnesota Fair Campaign Practices Act.